Anglo-Saxon Witchcraft
The Anglo-Saxon system of magic was of course Teutonic. Their pretenders to witchcraft were called wicca, scin-laeca, galdor-craeftig, wiglaer and morth-wyrtha. Wiglaer is a combination from wig, an idol or a temple, and laer, learning. He was the wizard, as wicca was the witch. Scin-laeca was a species of phantom or apparition, and was also used as a name of the person who had the power of producing such things; it is literally, "a shining dead body." Galdor-craeftig implies one skilled in incantations, and morth-wyrtha is literally, "a worshipper of the dead." Another general appellation for such personages was dry, a magician. The laws visited these practices with penal severity. The best account that can be given of them will be found in the passages proscribing them.
"If any wicca, or wiglaer, or false swearer, or morthwyrtha, or any foul contaminated, manifest horcwenan(whore), be anywhere in the land, man shall drive them out."
"We teach that every priest shall extinguish heathendom, and forbid wilweorthunga (fountain worship), and licwiglunga (incantations of the dead), and hwata (omens), and galdra (magic), and man worship, and the abominations that men exercise in various sorts of witchcraft, and in frithspottum, and with elms and other trees, and with stones, and with many phantoms."
From subsequent regulations, we find that these practices were made the instruments of the most fatal mischief; for penitentiary penalties are enjoyed if anyone should destroy another by wiccecraeft; or if any should "drive sickness on a man"; or if death should follow from the attempt.
They seem to have used philtres; for it is also made punishable if any should use witchcraft for another's love, or should give him to eat or to drink with magic. They were also forbid to wiglian(divine) by the moon. Canute renewed the prohibitions. He enjoyed them not to worship the sun or the moon, fire or floods, wells or stones, or any sort of tree, not to love wiccecraeft, or frame death spells, either by lot of by torch; or to effect anything by phantoms. From the Poenitentiale of Theodore we also learn, that the power of letting loose tempests was also pretended to.
Another name for magical arts among the Anglo-Saxons was unlybban wyrce, "destructive of life." The penitence is proscribed for a woman who kills a man by unlybban. One instance of philtre using is detailed to us. A woman resolving on the death of her stepson, or to alienate from him his fathers affection, sought a witch who knew how to change minds by arts and enchantments. Addressing such a one with promises and rewards, she enquired how the mind of the father might be turned from the child, and fixed on herself. The magical medicament was immediately made and mixed with the husband's meat and drink. The catastrophe of the whole was the murder of the child and the discovery of the crime by the assistant, to revenge the stepmother's ill treatment.
The charms used by the Anglo-Saxons were innumerable. They trusted in their magical incantations for the cure of disease, for the success of their tillage, for the discovery of lost property, and for the prevention of casualties. Specimens of their charms for these purposes still remain to us. Bede tells us, that;
"Many, in the time of disease (neglecting the sacraments) went to the medicaments of idolatry, as if to restrain Gods chastisements by incantations, phylacteries, or any other secret of the demonical arts."
Their prognostications, from the sun, from thunder, and from dreams, were so numerous, as to display and to perpetuate superstition. Every day of every month was catalogued as a propitious or unpropitious season for certain transactions. We have Anglo-Saxon treatises, which contain rules for discovering the future and disposition of a child, from the day of its nativity. One day was useful for all things; another, though good to tame animals was baleful to sow seeds. One day was favourable to the commencement of business; another to let blood; and others were a forbidding aspect to these and other things. On this day one must buy, on a second sell, on a third hunt, on a fourth do nothing. If a child were born on a such a day, it would live; if on another, its life would be sickly; if on another, he would perish early. In a word, the most alarming fears, and the most extravagant hopes, were perpetually raised by these foolish superstitions, which tended to keep the mind in dreary bondage of ignorance and absurdity, which prevented the growth of knowledge, by the incessant war of prejudice, and the slavish effects of the most imbecile apprehensions.
The same anticipations of futurity were made by noticing on what day of the week or the month it first thundered, or the new moon appeared, or the new years day occurred. Dreams likewise had regular interpretations and applications; and thus life, instead of being governed by counsels of wisdom, was directed by those solemn lessons of gross superstition, which the most ignorant peasant of our days would be ashamed to avow.
Written by Lewis Spence
Copyright by University Books, Inc
