Lessons from Bucklands

These are the answers I am giving to the lessons from Raymond Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft, found in Appendix B. This is part of my year and a day studies. I decided to do this for myself, at my own pace :)

Lesson 1:The History and Philosphy of Witchcraft

1. The two most important deities revered by the Wo/Man were the Horned God and the Fertility Goddess, or the God and Goddess. The God represented the Hunt and was important for food whereas the Goddess represented fertility and abundance.

2. 'Sympathetic' magick is where the early pagans would do rituals that mimicked what they hoped would happen in real life - for example a man would wear horns and they would dance or enact a hunt which symbolise killing the beast. This was supposed to help it happen in reality. This is like the early manifestation of re-training or using the Id.

sympathetic magic is the belief that similar things have similar effects (like attracts like)



 This image found here :)

3. Pope Gregory built early churches on sacred pagan grounds, so that they wuld have to go there to worship.

the sites were rededicated to the Church and God.

4. Jack of the Green - is that another name for the Horned God, or Pan?

They were carvings representing the old God of Hunting and Nature. Robin of the woods.

5. The Witches Hammer was ..  and  .... was responsible for it.

Malleus Maleficarium was the main reference on how to discover witches and interrogate them during the Burning Times.

6. Margaret Murray was a Egyptologist/Anthropologist who advanced Witchcraft as a religion in the 1930s.

7. The last law against Witchcraft was repealed in England in the 1951.

http://pentalcleproject.wordpress.com/2011/06/03/a-pagan-history/

8. The first to speak up of the craft was Gerald Gardner in England and Raymond Buckland in America.

9. A witches only animosity against the christian church is its claim that it is the only way, the only religion that is 'right'.

and that it seeks to deny others freedom and supress other religions.

10. You do not have to belong to a coven to do a spell. Wicca is a broad religion that allows you to practice in a way that suits you.