Quick witch history
The first written account is in the Old Testament Book of Samuel, from around 3,000-2,500 years ago (BC 1,000-500). The Witch of Endor. Though witch is a modern word. She was “a woman, possessor of an ’ōḇ at Endor.” An ōḇ could be a ritual pit, a spirit, a talisman. Suffice, female, conjuring dead spirits with rituals. As she was the last remaining witch or necromancer (others had been driven out of Israel) there must have been a long history of people who practised an opposite and certainly unsanctioned view on ritual.
Witches at Stonehenge
Before the Witch of Endor, and nearer home, the cremation cemetery that was the early Stonehenge, must have involved not only respect for the black ash and white bones of the dead, but some kind of afterlife belief, some kind of communion. In short, some kind of magic. So too, the pine posts from 10,000 ya. They could have been simple land ownership markers, a serviceable calendar. Perhaps a good utilitarian spot to tie up your as yet undomesticated pet auroch. Of course, there was respectable ritual involved.
White hat vs black hat
And it is only human that there should be legal, shop bought, official rites. And homemade, backstreet, darker, dangerous spells. A heaven and a hell. Good gods and bad gods. Scriptures and the occult.
That witches, necromancers, satanists would be allowed to perform at Stonehenge, in that hallowed ground, I doubt it. But, for sure, in desperation, a king with authority would, could, have sanctioned dark magic, just like Saul.
From the gallows to the New Forest
England spent centuries making witches illegal — then made them impossible. The Witchcraft Act of 1735 declared, in high Enlightenment style, that witches did not exist; henceforth the crime was pretending to be one. Remarkably, that Act still had teeth two centuries on: in 1944, with D-Day looming and the Admiralty twitchy about leaks, the Scottish medium Helen Duncan was jailed for nine months under it — the last person imprisoned under a British Witchcraft Act.
And the war gave us one more tale. In August 1940, with invasion expected, a New Forest coven is said to have gathered to raise “Operation Cone of Power” — a great ritual directed at Hitler’s mind across the Channel: you cannot cross the sea; you cannot come. He didn’t. Correlation, causation — I merely report.
When the old Act was finally repealed in 1951, witchcraft became, for the first time in English history, simply legal. Out of the New Forest stepped Gerald Gardner, retired customs officer and self-declared witch, whose Witchcraft Today (1954) launched Wicca — now Britain’s largest homegrown new religion. Which is why, at every solstice open access, among the white-robed druids you will find actual practising witches, quite legally, inside the stones. It took only ten thousand years.
Today, too, would English Heritage have, once more, allowed the public access with the stone circle on solstice and equinox days had the white robed, do-gooder druids been replaced with warty, black hatted hags?
In my other life as a witch photographer, telling tall tales and selling magical pictures around the fairs and markets of the Welsh Marches, I’d often meet, mostly women, who described themselves as witches. When asked if they were a good witch or a bad? Always, always described as good, as a folk healer. When asked if they knew of any bad witches, as I had a job for one, they would recoil and absolutely deny any relationships or knowledge.
You just cannot find a black witch these days.
Not naked and dancing? You’re missing out
Skyclad
But in this set of pictures we have black as night witches, dancing merrily, naked, around Stonehenge, wearing customary hats. Therefore, they must be good witches, white witches, just caught in silhouette, else English Heritage would not allow them to practise their occult nudity at Stonehenge. (Ritual nudity, skyclad, was one of Gardner’s own signature imports into Wicca — so we have him to thank for this entire set of pictures.)
The last naked dancing witch event I attended was the Winter Solstice 2010 under a red moon on The Stiperstones — a dangerous photographic assignment. I don’t get invited to nearly enough ritual nudity parties. Please send invites via the witch photographer contact page.