With the exception of some kitchen witchery and other such

practices, there is no evidence of an unbroken tradition of

organized witchcraft from the Elder Heathen Period until now. For

one thing, the ancient Anglo-Saxon witches certainly did not worship

a God and Goddess, not in the sense that Wiccans do today (they

worshipped gods and goddesses like Woden, Thunor, and Frige of the

Germanic pantheon). Nor did they have anything like the Wiccan Rede.

Modern Wiccan magic practice largely owes its orgins to Masonic

ritual and the practices of High Ritual Magic groups formed in the

early 20th century like the Golden Dawn with bits and pieces of

kitchen witchcraft thrown in. The Old English words for witch, wicce

"a female witch" or wicca "a male witch" in no way means "wise one,"

by the way.  Neither word is even remotely related to our words wit,

wise, wisdom, or their Old English equivalents. As near as scholars

can tell the words either derive from an Indo-European *wik- meaning

"to bend," or another Indo-European root, *weg-  related to words

for "lively, watchful."  Old High German had a cognate to witch,

wikkerie, as did the Saxon German dialects in the term wikker as

does Dutch with wikken. The term does not appear however in the

Scandanavian languages (Old Norse vitki is cognate to Old English

witega "wise one"). Similarly, there are no cognates in the

Scandanavian languages for High German Hexe or Old English hæg

(which was once used interchangeably with witch). None of this

invalidates Wicca as a religion, it is merely a statement of the

facts at hand.

That being said, we can move onto the topic at hand.

What was Anglo-Saxon witchcraft?

"What was Anglo-Saxon witchcraft?" is a very difficult question to

answer. Our sources are primarily laws against the practice of

witchcraft. These laws unfortuantely lump a whole lot of Heathen

practices together so that it is difficult to tell whether galderes

"charm speakers," seers, and leechs "healers" were counted as

witches, or if these were counted as seperate types of magic users

much like the difference made in Germany between the modern Hexen

and Hexmeister. However when faced with many of the law codes, as

well as words commonly used in conjunction with wicce or wicca, we

begin to see a pattern somewhat confirmed by folklore about the

witches or Hexen on the continent. The following paragraphs from

Aelfric's Homilies parallels many of the folktales about the witches

in the Hartz Mountains:

"Nu cwyth sum wiglere thaet wiccan oft secgath swa swa hit agaeth

mid sothum thincge. Nu secge we to sothan thaet se ungesewenlica

deofol the flyhth geond thas woruld and fela thincg gesihth

geswutelath thaera wiccan hwaet heo secge mannum thaet tha beon

fordone the thaene drycraeft secath"

"Now some sooth sayers say that witchs often say the truth of how

things go. Now we say in truth that the invisible devil that flies

yonder around this world and many things sees and reveals to the

witch what she may say to men, so that those that seek out this

wizardry may be destroyed."

"Gyt farath wiccan to wega gelaeton and to haethenum byrgelsum mid

heora gedwimore and clipiath to tham deofle, and he cymth him to on

thaes mannes gelicnysse the thaer lith bebyrged swylce he of deathe

arise, ac heo ne maeg thaet don thaet se deada arise thurh hire

drycraeft."

"Yet fares witches to where roads meet, and to heathen burials with

their phanton craft and call to them the devil, and he comes to them

in the dead man's likeness, as if he from death arises, but she

cannot cause that to happen, the dead to arise through her

wizardry."

The first passage mentions activities we see connected with witches

in later medieval folklore.  That is the ability to use a fetch to

travel far away, and see what is going on there. Very similar are

folktales about the witches of the Hartz mountains and their

abilities to fly through the air.  In Old Norse, this practice is

generally referred to as hamfara "soul skin faring." The second

passage mentions a practice we see in the Eddas and Icelandic sagas,

the ability to speak to the dead. In addition to the ability to

travel long distance through flight and communication with the dead,

we find indications that witches were shape shifters. Terms such as

Old English scinnlæca (scinn "phantom" + læca "leech or healer") may

well refer to this practice which is well documented in the Norse

Eddas and sagas, not to mention Germanic folklore.

Looking at German folk tales, we see that the German Hexe (cognate

to our word hag and Old English hæg) too was accused of flying

through the air to places far away, as well as shape shifting. The

following is from the German folktale, "The Trip to the Brocken"

which demonstrates German beleif in the ability to travel through

the air to a place far away:

"The day came when witches go the Brocken, and the two women climbed

into the hayloft, took a small glass, drank from it, and suddenly

disappeared. The bridegroom-to-be, who had sneaked after them and

observed them, was tempted to take a swallow from the glass. He

picked it up and sipped a little from it, and suddenly he was on the

Brocken, where he saw how his fiancée and her mother were carrying

on with the witches, who were dancing around the devil, who was

standing in their midst."

The Canon Episcopi dating from the 10th century confirms this

folktale:

"Some wicked women, perverted by the Devil, seduced by illusions and

phantasms of demons [who] believed and profess themselves, in the

hours of the night to ride upon certain beasts with Diana, the

goddess of the pagans, and an innumerable multitude of women, and in

the silence of the dead of night to traverse great spaces of earth

and to obey her commands as of their mistress and to be summoned to

her service on certain nights"

Another folktale, shows they were also thought able to shape shift:

"In Trent there formerly lived a girl who had inherited a witch's

thong from her grandmother. Whenever she tied the thong around

herself she would turn into a hare. In this form she often heckled a

forester who lived in the vicinity. Whenever he would shoot at her,

his bullets just glanced off her pelt. When he came to realize that

there was something uncanny going on here, he loaded his flintlock

with a coffin nail that he had somehow acquired."

While much of what was said of witchcraft in the Middle Ages may be

suspect, the earliest records seem to indicate that the ability to

fly, shape shift, and commune with the dead may have been central to

Anglo-Saxon witchcraft. Whether or not these practices were in any

way related in the minds of the Heathen Anglo-Saxons to the use of

galdor, the runes, and other magic arts is subject to question.

Considering that galdorcraft was allowed to continue, all though in

a Christianized form, and that the runes continued to be used, at

least for non-magical purposes, it is likely the two were seen as

different from witchcraft even in the minds of the ancient Heathens.

Also perhaps held to be seperate from witchcraft was the use of

herbs or lybbcraeft.

Subject to question also is whether Anglo-Saxon witchcraft was

related to, or a part of the Norse practice known to us as seiðr.

There are tales of the "witch ride" in the Scandanavian countires of

the sort seen in German folktales, and of course there are well

documented tales of shape shifting.  None of these seems to have

been refered to as seiðr however. Communication with the dead on the

other hand may well fall under the heading of seiðr.  In  Erik the

Red's Saga, we are not told whether the spirits the seeress summoned

were the dead, land wights, or secondary gods. The seeress ritual

portrayed there is commonly thought to be seiðr by many Heathen

scholars and academics. This however, has been hotly debated, and

many feel it should not fall under the heading of seiðr, but spá

(seercraft). Nonetheless, "seið hon kunni," or "seiðr she knows" was

said of the völva that was summoned by Woden in the Prose Edda, and

volvas were known for their ability to speak with the dead. It could

be therefore that communication with wights was not seiðr while

commnuication with the dead was. Eric Wodening has identified the

primary components of seiðr in his work Chanting Around the High

Seat as 1) Use of a seiðhiallr or "seiðr platform." 2) Chanting. 3)

Use of a staff 4) Use of Talsimans.

The seiðhiallr or "seið platform" appears no where in Anglo-Saxon or

Germanic witchcraft practices, and this may be an indication that

seiðr and witchcraft are similar but separate arts. In fact is

interesting that what objects are emphasised in the practice of

seiðr are not even mentioned as important in connection with

witchcraft and those objects and practices of witchcraft are not

mentioned as important in connection with seiðr, save perhaps for

the talismans and staff.  This would definitely seem to indicate

that the two practices may be similar but are somehow different. To

further this line of thought, Kveldulf Gundarsson in his article

Spae-Craft, Seiðr, and Shamanism  notes:

" In fact, the word seiðr is never used in conjunction with any sort

of shape-shifting or travelling out of the body (the latter being

usually the province of Saami, as with the 'Finnish' wizards

Ingimundr sent after his Freyr-image in Vatnsdoela saga ch. XII),

let alone for journeying to the Underworld or Overworld."

If  seiðr and witchcraft are seperate arts, then where does seiðr

appear in the southern Germanic sources? The answer to that is we do

not know. Witchcraft in the form seen in the English and German

materials is also seen in the Scandanavian countries, but other than

a possible cognate to the term seiðr in Old English (sidsa "charm")

one would be hard pressed to find evidence of seiðr in Germany and

England.

Finally, there are some indications from Germanic folklore that

witchcraft was linked to the worship of a specific goddess.  Holda

or Dame Holle is mentioned frequently in folklore of the Hartz

Mountains in connection with the Hexen.  There is unfortunately no

corrensponding evidence in the Anglo-Saxon corpus. That is not to

say ancient Anglo-Saxon Heathen witchcraft was not a part of a

Goddess' cult, but merely to say there is no evidence either way.

Part of the connection to the Goddess Holde in Germany appears to be

linked to the Wild Hunt and the witches' ride on May Eve. The Hunt

appears in Anglo-Saxon literature and we have tales of the witches'

ride as well.  The only factor missing in the Anglo-Saxon corpus

appearing in the German is the Goddess Holde. Both the Wild Hunt and

the witches' ride appear in English folklore.

Rebuilding a Modern Practice

Ancient witchcraft appears to have consisted of faring forth (to put

it in modern Heathen magical terminology) or travelling out of body,

shape shifting, the use of the fetch, and communication with the

dead. General spell craft and divination (auguries and omens are

mentioned in Anglo-Saxon laws in close relation to witchcraft)

probably accompanied these arts to form the core of Anglo-Saxon

witchcraft.  In order to reconstruct these arts, we are reliant upon

other magical traditions to a degree. While ancient Anglo-Saxon

witchcraft was not shamanic in character, it has much in common with

shamanism. Faring forth from the body is central to shamanism, as is

the use of power animals.  Shape shifting in ancient witchcraft was

probably done in out of body form, so here too we can be helped by

modern  Shamanism. Divination or the taking of omens, can no doubt

be reconstructed with ease (many omens survived in folklore), as

well as the use of the spa rite based on the instance in Eirik the

Red's Saga. It must be stressed that it is doubtful Anglo-Saxon

witchcraft was a healing art, at least not in the sense shamanism

is.  Galdor and herbcraft seem to have been the means that were used

in healing the body. No doubt, many ancient wise ones knew these

arts as well though.