Way of The Witch

By Ipsita Roy Chakraverti

Way of the Witch is a captivating guide to the implements and tools of Wicca, a Pagan witchcraft tradition. It describes in meticulous detail the goddesses worshipped as part of it, and the important spells, powerful natural crystals and charms used by the worshippers of this tradition.

Featuring excerpts from the author's diary, the book also offers a glimpse into the life of one of India's most famous witches.

This is a perfect manual for the budding witch and a spellbinding read for those interested in the craft.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins India
• Release date: Dec 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9789356294455

Ipsita Roy Chakraverti

A descendant of the old Bengal aristocracy, from the houses of Cooch Behar and Mayurbhunj, Ipsita created a storm when she declared herself a 'witch'. She is credited with singlehandedly bringing Wicca to India and presenting before the people, an understanding of the supernatural, divorced from superstition. Ipsita is the Founder-Chairperson of The Wiccan Brigade, India's first academy for the study of Wicca and other areas of the esoteric. It is under Ipsita's pioneering research that the first investigations into the orb phenomenon as spirit manifestation has been carried out in India. Ipsita is the author of many books on Wicca and allied subjects and many of her stories have been adapted for film and television as well. Over the years, Ipsita's journey as a Wiccan has been fascinating. It has taken her from a chalet in the Laurentian Mountains, to the temple of the 64 yoginis in Hirapur, and to the academic world of UK. But her Destiny has always been Wicca and today, in India and the subcontinent, one can truly say that Ipsita is Wicca and Wicca is Ipsita.

Book preview

1

The Witch and Her Many Names

YOU MAY FIND IT HARD TO BELIEVE, OR YOU MIGHT BE hesitant to believe it, but the truth is – real, honest-to-goodness witches have been around for a long time. It’s just that you never noticed. Or maybe fairy-tale witches with hooked noses was as far as you wanted to believe. But then, I don’t blame you. You were not around when the first witch came to town.

In the Jewish Talmud, we hear of the beautiful and formidable Lilith, made by God out of dust – just as Adam was. She was the first wife of Adam. She was independent, and a free thinker who refused to kowtow to Adam’s whims and sexual domination. Lilith insisted they were equal, having been created from the same dust by God. She finally left him to dwell in a cave, and Adam started maligning her.

Adam and his friends are said to have started calling her a demoness and a child-snatcher, but Lilith didn’t pay heed to them. Strong women never do. Legends and myths grew around her. She was said to have coupled with the archangel Samael. (I don’t blame her. Better an archangel than foolish Adam who spurned her.) However, to come back to the myth they built around her, they said that because of her ‘iniquities’, 100 of her children or the little demons she had ‘spawned’ were to be killed every day. She was depicted with the body of a woman but with the claws of a bird of prey. In the meantime, Adam, true to his sex, had taken another wife – Eve. She was a bit of a blunderer, but didn’t mind being bullied and bossed around by Adam, loved the Garden of Eden and ate apples on the sly. What a pity! Because believe me, my lovelies, every strong woman is a witch. If Eve had been more forthright and less vulnerable to temptation, she might still have enjoyed Eden. But that was not to be. Strength is one of the prime requisites if you are to call yourself a ‘witch’. Lilith deserved to be called a witch. Eve did not. She was a wimp.

History says that the first divinity we worshipped, the Mother Goddess, was a witch. Is that bad? No, not at all, because the word ‘witch’ comes from the old English word wicce or wicca, meaning ‘wise’. And who was wiser than the Mother Goddess? She was worshipped and appealed to in times of trouble. All the old cultures had their forms and manifestations of the goddess but she was one and the same. She was a witch or a Wiccan. The wisest of the wise. She was the unafraid one, and the one who protected her children from harm. The one who went to battle if needed and the one who brought order during peacetime. She was also what we would call the complete woman. Wiccans chose Isis, the Egyptian goddess, to be their patroness and supreme. Isis was a warrior, a scholar, a healer and a stateswoman par excellence. A seductress? If need be. The one who could outwit the great Ra if need be. The enchantress who could utter the famous Wiccan ‘words of power’.

These were some of the goddesses worshipped by Wiccans and others alike. But hypocrisy and herd morality played a role here too, and there were always a few, like Lilith, who were considered not quite ‘proper’. Take, for example, the Greek Medusa. Her sisters were given the titles of ‘goddesses’, but for some reason, legend took away her ‘immortal’ tag and she was struck down by her own sex because of the jealousy of her peers. Medusa, like Lilith, came to be portrayed as a demoness. Her lovely hair was depicted as coiled snakes. It was rumoured that anyone whose eyes met hers would be turned to stone. But in actuality, the beautiful Medusa of the Gorgons was a victim of rape by the god Poseidon. Unable to control his lust for her, he abused her in the temple of Athena. The sorry part was that the powerful goddess Athena, finding out about this and being consumed with jealousy, blamed Medusa for having seduced Poseidon and ordered Perseus to kill her. Perseus decapitated Medusa and thus ended the life of yet another goddess worshipped by Wicca. She had been known for her strength and courage. It is only much later that people realized Medusa’s innocence. Poems were written about her. Pictures were painted of her beauty. But then, in this way gods and mortals are alike. The beautiful one, the talented one, the one who stands alone has always been destroyed. The individual poses a threat to the herd. Society is for the commoner, not the individual. And Wicca is only for the chosen one. She passes by the rest. Rather elitist in that way.

As I said, Wicca and the goddesses of Wicca go back a long time. They are a part of the universal, animistic paganism. If we forget Adam and Eve for a while, we find that Wicca goes back to the start of man’s awareness, when he began to deify and align with the various manifestations of nature. Let us go back 25,000 years when the female deity was worshipped as a mother – the mother goddess. Her statues and carvings have been excavated from around the world – from France to India. Wicca was a global phenomenon.

Each ancient culture had a different name for her, but She was the same. The magnificent Witch.

In the twentieth century BC, Egypt worshipped her as Isis. Turkey called her Arinna. Ishtar in Babylon. From pre-Vedic times India has known Durga and Kali. Tibet called this Wiccan goddess Tara, and the ancient Mayans Ix Chel. In Africa, till today, beautiful, green, pagan stones stand for Yemaya because she was a Wiccan, the goddess of the sea. And in Rome, Fortuna created abundance. The Japanese called their witches Dakini-ten, and the mother goddess amongst them was Amaterasu Omikami, the sun goddess. The beautiful witch of China, compassionate and a healer, was Kuan Yin. In Sumeria, the protectress witch was Inanna, while far north, amongst the Navajos, the mother goddess with the qualities of a Wiccan was Changing Woman.

In the Baltic Islands, it is interesting to note that the most prayed-to witch was also a goddess: Baba Yaga. If you wanted good fortune in Ireland, you appealed to the witch Sheela Na Gig. The Celtic society called their witch Queen Brigit, the Lady of Flame, who is worshipped till today at a convent in Ireland. Brigit is the goddess of poetry and medicine, churning both in her cauldron, creating and transforming. Libya looked up to Medusa, despite all the venom which was spat at her by common society. In Ancient Mexico, Coatlicue was the mother of all, who lived on the mountaintop at Azlan. Furthermore, never to be forgotten was the Witch Goddess Hecate, the guardian of the crossroads, the witch without fear, who carried a lamp like Brigit and had three wild dogs running before her, warning her of the dangers ahead. In Rome, Diana, the huntress, was worshipped by Wiccans for her independent attitude and virgin grace. It is interesting to note that the word dayan used in our part of the world, in a negative way which is deeply steeped with superstition, came from the name of this very respected and beautiful goddess. Countries and attitudes can change the revered to the ugly. It is learnt through knowledgeable sources that the worship of the great goddess in the guise of a witch can be traced back to 50,000 BC. Society was matriarchal. Wicca was not a religion; it was a path, a way of life. Unfortunately, in a country like India, in spite of extolling the Devi or Mother Goddess Parvati, women were treated as the inferior sex, and the ugliest demonesses were considered to be witches. They were supposed to prey on children, haunt burning ghats and eat the flesh of the dead.

Perhaps, we cannot blame only our country for these practices. In Europe and America, from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, women were being tortured for being witches and being burnt at the stake. Some historians believe that as many as nine million women were executed for witchcraft during this period. It has also been said that these women were not the victims of witchcraft. They were the victims of the witch-craze, comparable to Nazism, in which hundreds and thousands of women (and a few men) were brutally tortured by the authorities of the town or village and condemned to ghastly deaths, for ‘crimes’ which were not crimes at all. They had not followed orthodox religion or they had chosen to live life on their own terms. It is strange to think that in most cases they were not condemned by the rabble, but rather by the so-called ‘intelligentsia’ – the learned and the religious.

Orthodox religion has always played a significant part in humiliating women. In Hinduism, it is only recently that women have been allowed to recite the powerful Gayatri Mantra invoking the Sun. To this day, they are not allowed to enter all temples unless they are over a certain age. In some villages I have visited in West Bengal and Orissa, women who earn even a pittance for some handiwork or labour have to give over their money to their menfolk. If the men are displeased with their wives, they do not hesitate to call them a dayan or witch and drive them out of hearth and home. The elders of the village are generally approving. In that sense, we are still living in the Middle Ages of Europe.

But going back to that period, why did the treatment of certain women referred to as ‘witches’ become so horrible? The Church or, as I call it, ‘orthodox religion’ started to spread weird and frightening rumours amongst a populace who were already suffering from poverty and epidemics. It said that witches were bringing the blight upon them. They flew through the air, met at Sabbats, took off their clothes and had sex with the devil. The people at that period in time were as vulnerable and superstitious as many people in our country are now. They turned on these women, and various types of torture and then death followed. It is a sad statement on human nature, in which both men and women were included, that torture played a major role. Bringing pain and humiliation to another fellow being can be for many reasons. Jealousy, frustration, domination – all play a part. This sadistic treatment of one by the other, who happens to be in a stronger position, goes back aeons. Most human beings are despicable creatures.

2

Witch Torture in England and Europe

MOST HUMANS ARE DESPICABLE. BUT, MY LOVELIES, that is my personal opinion I share with you. Such opinions may not be the case with all. Before I talk further about torture, let’s go over some of the important dates in Wicca and a few important Wiccans.

Circa 750–650 BC

In Homer’s Odyssey, an enchantress by the name of Circe, living on an island called Aeaea, beguiled mariners and turned them into swine. The Greek hero Odysseus, finding some of his men missing, went to the island and confronted Circe. He was able to rescue many, but as compensation perhaps, and to keep the enchantress happy, he lived with her on Aeaea for one year, begetting two sons. They must have been twins. Circe loved him and would have continued perhaps to enjoy his company without indulging in her usual pastimes. However, Odysseus, no matter how much his fascination for Circe, had a home and wife to return to. So that’s what he did. It’s another matter that once Odysseus returned to Penelope, the faithful wife who had waited a long time for her wandering husband, he found her a bit dull and getting on in years. I have no doubt he kept on comparing her with Circe. That wasn’t fair. After all, she was a witch and difficult to compete with. Besides, he had wanderlust – he wanted adventure. So he set sail again. The wonderful part is that Penelope was content to go into another period of wait and watch. That’s what good wives are made of.

Circa 630–540 BC

Witchcraft is condemned in the Old Testament of the Bible. However, witches are called upon when needed. Thus, the Witch of Endor appeared when King Saul sought communion with her. What she had to say wasn’t very comforting, but then witches tell the truth. He asked for it.

1208 AD

Pope Innocent III publicly criticized those who claimed that both God and Satan had supernatural powers. People were not afraid of God, but they were terrified of Satan. They fought back by attacking witches. Strange psychology.

1273 AD

Thomas Aquinas, a Dominican monk, declared that demons existed and that they could invoke the darker powers. Once again, we rode the merry-go-round. People said witches were to blame.

1400 AD onwards

Witch trials, inquisitions and torture of so-called witches became rampant across Europe. The accused were brought to trial over claims of shapeshifting, invoking curses on the innocent, calling down plagues and bad weather, ruining crops and flying on broomsticks to consult with the devil.

1484 AD

Pope Innocent VIII called for a complete report on suspected witchcraft practices, resulting in the publication of Malleus Maleficarum, which translates to Hammer of Witches. This book became the basis for determining a witch in a trial and led to many women being cruelly harassed and prosecuted. I have read chunks of this book myself, being unable to read the whole. It is one of the most obnoxious, lustful, sadistic and unclean books targeting women that I have ever come across.

The 1500s

Renaissance artists such as Albrecht Durer presented pictures and images of ugly crones with hooked noses. This had a great influence on the classical view of witches till the present day.

The 1500s-mid-1600s

Witch trials ran amok over Europe. Over a century and a half, approximately 80,000 ‘witches’ were executed. The biggest number was killed in Germany where 26,000 innocents lost their lives for ‘consorting’ with the devil. Over 80 per cent of these were women.

1563

The Witchcraft Act, first introduced in England, punished those who ‘practised’ witchcraft or consulted witches. These practitioners of the esoteric arts were often consulted for health concerns or clairvoyance. As their popularity grew, the Church felt this was a threat to its power, and maligned these women in obscene ways.

1590

King James VI of Scotland and his new queen were engulfed in a violent storm at sea, which their captain blamed on witchcraft. Surprisingly, six witches admitted to the offence and were burned at the stake. One feels they were somehow forced into submission and confession. Those were strange times. King James VI (later to be crowned James I of England) continued with the torture of women branded as witches and it is said that his reign saw one of the biggest witch-hunts in British history. He was the author of a book called Daemonologie, published in 1597, about his views against witches and magical practices.

1612

The Pendle witch trials took place when large parts of Lancashire were reportedly in the grips of witchcraft. Any sickness which affected a family was said to be due to witchcraft and a curse. A poor harvest was the doing of witches.

Early to mid-1640s

Following on from the massive witch-hunts in Britain, France was not to be left far behind. By the mid-1600s, 600 women were arrested.

1645

Torturing women became a favourite pastime in Britain. A man called Matthew Hopkins became Witchfinder General and was assigned to seek out all forms of heresy and witchcraft. It was tragic that his deductions were based on ‘witches’ marks’, such as a wart or large mole on the woman’s face. He also believed that certain parts of her body were impervious to pain and would use a prodder with a long needle that would retract into the sheath when pressed against the skin. As a result, she would feel no pain and that was the ‘proof’ that she was a witch. She would have her thumbs tied to her opposite big toes and be thrown into a river or deep pond. If she floated, she was a witch. This was proof enough. If she drowned, she was innocent. A witch was truly caught between the devil and the deep blue sea.

1640s

From this time the number of witch trials slightly diminished. The English Civil Wars set people thinking of other things, and witches started going into hiding. It was a period of loss for intellectual discoveries and herbal literature. Many brilliant ‘Books of Shadow’, written by witches, containing recipes for healing and scientific observations, were burnt by them so that they did not fall into the hands of their persecutors. I would