THE ORIGINS OF THE WITCH
The witch, in the broader sense of the word, may be said to have existed ever since mankind first evolved an imagination, and may be expected to expire only with the death of the last woman. Given the supernatural, and sorcery must follow in some shape or other as its corollary. Whence also the witch is as ubiquitous as she is enduring. Under some form or other she exists, and has existed, in every quarter of the globe; she is as familiar to the English peasant as to the West African, in South America as in Japan. Her attributes vary, and have varied, with the racial temperament and the religious conceptions of her worshippers and persecutors, as widely as do, and have done, their gods. But it was left for mediæval Christianity to give her the definite shape in which she is now most universally recognised, and it is to the Christian ideal of celibacy that she owes, if indirectly, the more obscene, and latterly the more grotesque, of her attributes, lifting her at first to an evil equality with the horned Devil of the Middle Ages, degrading her ultimately to the "horrid old witch" of nursery legend.
It is a far cry from this same "horrid old witch" to the pagan divinity, but there is no break in the long pedigree. It may be traced still further through the mists of antiquity—to the earliest days of human motherhood. Only, as between goddess and witch, we are confronted with a Darwinian problem. Is the witch indeed daughter of the goddess, or are both descended from a common ancestress? To my mind, the latter is the more correct line of descent, with the pagan priestess as connecting link.
"To one wizard, ten thousand witches," quotes Michelet from a forgotten writer of the days of Louis Treize; and throughout all the history of sorcery women have formed the majority of its practitioners. Our forefathers attributed this to the weakness of womankind, always curious to probe the mysteries of the Unknown, always prone to fall into the snare of evil. A more charitable—and correcter—explanation would be found in the greater quickness of her perceptions. If Eve first gave the apple to Adam, she gave with it the future of civilised humanity. The first mother gave birth to twin-daughters, the goddess and the witch, and from one or other of them came the impetus which has carried mankind to its present stage of progress, and will carry it yet nearer towards Heaven.
The primitive father was an animal, with potentialities—among animals without them. His intellect was concentrated in his activities, in providing for the material needs of himself and his family. His position towards his wife was very much what satirists would have us believe is that of the American business man to-day. His laborious days were spent in tracking his prey through the forest, his leisure in sleeping, eating, and digesting. The mother, on the other hand, was bound to the home by reason of her motherhood. Less active, she was more contemplative, noting in the order of events the best means of preservation for the small pink thing that could not live without her care, her mind always alert to the exigencies of the moment. Thus she acquired knowledge of things beneficent or harmful, of the food most apt for its nourishment, of the herbs growing around the clearing best fitted to cure its infantile complaints. She experimented, cautiously but continuously, and with each recurrent need she added a little to her small stock of wisdom. Small in itself, but vast in proportion to that of men or childless women. Little by little she "walked her hospital"; little by little she learnt the relative value of her simple potions, to whom they should be given, and how, and when. To the primitive mind this was cause for wonder, as indeed it is, almost as wonderful as the first smile of the first baby. Pain can no longer run riot unchecked. If it have not yet found its mistress, at least a protest has been entered against it—reason not only for joy and wonder, but for respect and gratitude—even perhaps for worship.
Whatever his divinity, Man worships himself. In every form of religion the worshipped tends to become confused with the worshipper. Man cannot escape his own environment. The thunderstorm frightens him; there must be a storm-demon. What is that demon but another man like himself, though uglier and wickeder and very much more powerful? Such a demon must be flattered and propitiated as an angry man of might must be. But a Primitive with his living to make cannot spare the time necessary to propitiate a worldful of demons. He deputes the duty to a weaker neighbour, one who sits at home, engaging for his own part to find food for both. Whence the first priestess—from whom later descends the first priest. For who so apt at propitiation as she who can cajole that most domesticated of demons, the ever-present Pain. So, later, when the propitiation of Evil gives place to the invocation of good, who so worthy of honour, which is to say of worship, as she who, in the dawning of the race, first relieved poor humanity of its bodily ills? Goddess, priestess, White Witch and Black—all are but variations on that oldest and most beautiful of themes, Motherhood.
To return to the first house-wife. Throughout her life she adds always a little to her store of natural knowledge, and when she dies she bequeaths it to her daughters. They in turn add to it until the time comes when to the cure of bodies is added that of minds. For Man's nascent mind begins to trouble him almost as much as does his body. Already the eternal problem of why and wherefore raises its head; already he begins his age-long struggle with the inevitable. That "all that is, is good" does not commend itself to Pre-historic Man. He knows so much better. He must often go hungry, his cattle die, drought destroys his meagre crops, his neighbour robs him of his war-spoil. He appeals to the woman, who thinks so much, for a way out. Cannot she, who with her potions drove the pain out of his body, help him in this also? Can she not cure his cattle? Can she not reason with the delinquent rain-demon, or, by making a little rain herself, move him to emulation? Best of all, can she not, out of the plenitude of her wisdom, suggest some means of outwitting that treacherous neighbour? He will reward her handsomely, especially for this last.