The Religion of Witchcraft
This view is very generally held at the present time as accounting for the phenomena of witchcraft. But the researches of Charles Godfrey Leland, Miss M. A. Murray, and others, seem to indicate that the cult of witchcraft is by no means a thing of the imagination. The last-named writer, indeed, claims that it is the detritus of an ancient pagan faith surviving into modern times, having a priesthood and well-defined ritual of its own, and in a measure conserving the practice of child-sacrifice.
There can be little doubt that this conception of witchcraft is the correct one. In the records of the caste there are numerous proofs that it had a definite ritual and an established priesthood, and that imagination played but a small part in shaping the belief of the adherents of the cult.[1]