Necromancy has had a long and very disparate history between cultures and generations. The definition seems to slide in every way at once thus seemingly muddling its clarity. Many cultures and societies and sub-cultures have adopted the term "necromancy" as the title of their practice, which is not necessarily wrong, but it has caused confusion for the etymologically-minded who tend to be quick to point a finger at things which do not fit the strict definition of "corpse divination" as it might appear to their modern standards. Necromancy's etymology comes from two Greek words. "Nekros" which means "corpse" and "manteia" which means "prophesy". Despite these roots though, we must remember a fact about the nature of dictionaries which is most poignantly brought out by Jorge Luis Borges in the prologue to "El otro, el mismo". He cleverly noted that "It is often forgotten that [dictionaries] are artificial repositories, put together well after the languages they define.

The roots of language are irrational and of a magical nature." It is difficult, and indeed often impossible, for the modern occultist to look at a dictionary as their source of information about the nature of a practice. "Necromancy means spirit divination!" they shout. Delving into case examples, both modern and historical, gives us quite a different picture though. A peculiar (and damning!) habit of those claiming knowledge in the ways of necromancy is how they define the art. It takes little more than a brief scan of random internet pages about the subject of necromancy to discover that, in the overwhelming majority of sites that exist on this subject, the definition is a simple etymological breakdown which then immediately departs from the roots of the system to dash blindly into new age mediumism. The origins of the word "necromancy" itself comes from the Greek and Roman world where necromancy was practiced as the name might suggest: divination out of corpses. It developed, however, in many ways which would bring about the common myths and legends that we know of in the modern age...

by Greywolf

Druidry 5000 - 800 BCE: In the popular imagination, links have always been made between Druids and megalithic monuments such as the Avebury henge in Wiltshire and the Rollright Stones in Oxfordshire. This was also the accepted academic orthodoxy until the 1930's, when it was decided that Celtic civilisation did not reach Britain until 500 BCE, that Druids were a purely Celtic priesthood, and that they could not, therefore, have had any connection with megalithic structures erected circa 3000 BCE. Recent developments in linguistic archaeology have, however, re-opened the debate. Professor Colin Renfrew, in his book Archaeology and Language, (Jonathan Cape, 1987), suggests that Indo-European language and culture had already spread across Europe and into Britain by 4000 BCE, and that the cultural and linguistic group we call Celtic developed in situ out of this earlier base, rather than being the result of external influences. This `steady state' theory of cultural evolution was dramatically borne out by the recent discovery of a teacher living in the West of England who is genetically descended from a man whose remains were found in a cave in Cheddar Gorge, and who had lived in the same area 9000 years ago. It seems that Celtic Druids may, after all, have been the linear descendants of the megalithic builders of late Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe.

Our knowledge of the ritual practices and religious beliefs of these early periods derives from our interpretation of the physical evidence they left behind. These include complex passage graves such as New Grange in Ireland, where a narrow window above the entrance admits a shaft of light at sunrise on the winter solstice, illuminating an inner chamber deep within its covering mound, massive stone circles such as those at Avebury in Wiltshire, with its complex lunar and solar alignments, and the nearby Silbury Hill, an enigmatic structure which is the largest man-made prehistoric mound in Europe....

By Diana Rose Hartmann

Mention the Sacred Whore to most people and you'll get raised eyebrows or disgusted grimaces. Many of us believe that prostitution is all about money for street hookers, fame for Hollywood starlets, or security for suburban housewifes. Prophetic texts, rituals, and icons are called sacred, even particular mountains or rivers are considered sacred, but whores? Sexually empowered women are called bitches, dykes, ball-busters, etc., by both sexes. Sexually independent women, once respected as sacred vessels of the Goddess, are degraded as evil temptresses, obstacles between man and a sexless heaven. One exception is the paradise of Islam, although it is a men-only club stocked full with re-virginating nymphs; Islamic women are said to be soul-less.

Jungian psychologist Nancy Qualls-Corbett describes the Holy Whore as "a woman, who, through ritual or psychological development, has come to know the spiritual side of her sexuality, her true Eroticism, and lives this out according to her individual circumstances." By this definition, a Sacred Prostitute uses sex as a means to God/dess and to enlightenment. Fundamentalist Christians believe that the door to the kingdom of heaven is opened to those re-born of fire and water. Occult traditions such as Tantra, and magickal orders which esteem the Holy Whore, persuade us to experience our divinity by immersing ourselves in the fires of sexual passion and the baptismal waters of sexual ritual. Sexuality becomes sacred when the Goddess residing in every women is honored.

The term "sacred whore" is not oxymoronic. If we explore the etymology of the words "whore" or "harlot," we find that the split between "priestess" and "prostitute" is a relatively recent one. In her book When God Was A Woman, Merlin Stone informs us that the Hebrew word zonah means both prostitute and prophetess. Barbara Walker, in her Dictionary of Woman's Myths and Secrets, points out that the Hebrew word hor means a cave, pit, or dark hole. The Spanish word for whore, puta, derives from the Latin term for a well, but the Latin term for grave, literally "a hole in the earth," is puticuli, meaning womb of rebirth. These terms for whore were not derogatory.

The Latin term had its root in the Vedic, an early Sanskrit language, wherein the word puta is defined as pure and holy. The cave, the pit, the hole, and the bottomless black lake were metaphors for the Great Goddess, She who is unnameable, that darkness primordial from which all life (light) is born. She is the Everything and The Nothing -- Hole-y, Holy, Wholly. The Sacred Whore at work was, in fact, the manifestation the Great Goddess.Today these ideas are not completely lost. The Hebrew folk dance named the hora, a tradition at Jewish weddings, is named after the circle dances of the sacred harlots. Such holy harlots were often "brides of God" similar to modern nuns, the "brides of Christ." The holy harlots were set apart to give birth to Sons of God. In other words, these women had the job of changing human-animal into human-god.....

by Diane Vera Copyright © 1992, 1994, 1996 by Diane Vera.

In their attempts to dissociate themselves from Satanism, Wiccans have tended to distort their own history. Wicca and Satanism are indeed very distinct religious categories. But there are some intimate historical ties between the two, as even some Wiccan scholars are finally starting to admit. See, for example, Aidan Kelly's book Crafting the Art of Magic (pp.21-22, 25-26, and 176).Wicca is not "the Old Religion", though it does draw inspiration from various old religions. Wicca as we now know it is derived from 19th-century occult philosophy -- including literary Satanic philosophy, among others -- projected onto a non-Christian Goddess and God, plus some de-Christianized Golden Dawn style ceremonial magick, plus assorted turn-of-the-century British folklore, more recently re-shaped by neo-Pagan scholarship and by modern feminist and ecological concerns. At least several different sides of Wicca's convoluted family tree can be traced to 19th-century literary Satanism, some forms of which had more in common with present-day Wicca than with present-day Satanism.The prime example of literary Satanism that strongly influenced Wicca, especially feminist Wicca, is the book La Sorciere by the 19th-century French historian Jules Michelet (published in English by Citadel Press under the title Satanism and Witchcraft).

Michelet's ideas, as paraphrased by feminist writers such as Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English in their booklet Witches, Midwives, and Nurses: A History of Women Healers (Feminist Press, 1973), have played an important role today's women's health movement. (At least Ehrenreich and English were honest enough to list Michelet in their bibliography.) See especially Michelet's introduction. Michelet was, as far as I know, the literary origin of today's feminist image of the Witch as a healer. Among other things, he theorized that the witchhunts were used by the emerging male medical profession to wipe out their peasant female competition.According to Jeffrey B. Russell in A History of Witchcraft, pre-feminist classical Wicca also drew lots of inspiration indirectly from Michelet. Michelet was a major source of inspiration to Margaret Murray, Charles G. Leland, and Sir James Frazer, whom most knowledgeable Wiccans do recognize as influential. (Russell points this out, yet neglects to inform the reader that Michelet's book is full of passionate, sympathetic depictions of Satan as well as of the medieval witches. Russell too perpetuates the false counter-myth that Wicca Has Nothing To Do With Satanism.) I'll leave it to folks more scholarly than myself to debate just how indebted Murray and Leland were to Michelet. In any case, the Italian witch mythology Leland presented in Aradia: Gospel of the Witches (originally published 1899), one of Wicca's major sources, contains some diabolical-witchcraft elements of its own.