Germanic witchcraft refers to the practice of witchcraft and sorcery within the Germanic peoples and their subsequent cultures. These practices have a long history that dates back to ancient times. The Germanic peoples, including the Vikings and various Germanic tribes, had their own unique beliefs and practices related to magical and supernatural phenomena. In Germanic mythology, certain individuals possessed the ability to use magic and connect with the spirit world. These individuals were known as seers, shamans, or witches. They were believed to have the power to communicate with gods, ancestors, spirits, and other supernatural entities.

Roots & Bones 1: Witchcraft’s Germanic Roots

Witchcraft has it origins in the heathen religions of our European ancestors. Traditional village wisecraft is the survival of fragmented pagan beliefs from the archaic period, but not the survival of an organized universal cult with a priesthood or even covens. (The term coven was an invention of the Inquisition to create the illusion of a powerful anti-Christian organization.) Pagan festivals and observances lingered and merged with those of the Christians. Many worshipped in hybrid forms of religion, following ancient customs and retaining the animistic aspects of the former faiths. For example, there are several folk prayers from Anglo-Saxon England and Scandinavia honoring both Mother Earth and the Christian God. The evidence suggests that during this transitional period, dual faith beliefs, practiced by the masses, co-existed peacefully with specialized individuals who were known as witches.

Many modern Wiccans feel that their faith has its roots in a Celtic or even pre-Celtic religion, and this is not entirely untrue. The Celts left behind a plethora of superstitions, folklore, and magic, much of which has Roman influences. What needs to be remembered, though, is that the word witch is not a Gallic or Brythonic word.

The Linguistic Roots

Linguistics reveals much in regard to our origins. The word witch is derived from the Anglo-Saxon term wicca, (pronounced witcha) meaning knowledge. The female version of the term is wicce. To bewiccian meant to bewitch, a term that contains the idea of enchantment. The word enchant has its roots in the Old French chaunt and the Italian cantare. Both words mean to sing or chant, providing a connection between song and sorcery. There are many literary references to the Scandinavian Icelandic sagas with their song-like qualities. Nordic oracles, who sat on high platforms and prophesied to the community or to individual households, were sung into trance by a choir. Poetic incantations or charms are a type of spell used largely in oral societies including the Teutons and Celts. The Scandinavians had the last intact pagan religion in the British Isles, when they settled in England, Scotland, Ireland, and the northern islands.

In Old English the word wita means wise man, and it is the forebear of the later terms cunningman or country wizard. Cunning comes from the Old Saxon word cunnan, which means to know. There is also a relationship to the Old Norse word kenna, from which the word kenning derives. A kenning is a particular type of poetic technique which employs analogies to refer to a common noun (i.e., wave rider = sailor).

In summary, wisdom was communicated in the form of poetry. The Frisians (early Dutch), who raided and settled in parts of southern England during the Viking Age, still called their seeresses witta wijven in the 17th century in the province of Drenthe. The Germanic tongues of Frisian and English are comparable, and the resemblance is more than coincidence. The witta wijven were healers and weavers of spells, as well as being oracles.

Witan in Old English means to know; the Saxon councils in early England were also called witan. Beowulf, a Christianized tale, states that their wise men sought counsel from omens. Were these counsels the Saxon court wizards? The word wizard comes from the Middle English word wysard, meaning wise man or male witch.

Wisian is an Old English term that meant to incline or turn to your means, which is also the definition of wise among the Saxons. The continental German equivalent is weissagan, meaning wise-saying. One’s power of persuasion was seen as a gift of wisdom.

The Anglo-Saxon word haegtesse refers to a hedge witch, the seeress and soothsayer skilled in healing lore. Medicine and magic have strong connections in Saxon England before and after the introduction of Christianity. Many charms contained in leech books from the Middle Ages reveal a dual faith practice. In rural communities there were few recognized doctors, and parish priests turned a blind eye to the white witch unless political pressure demanded otherwise. Even during the Inquisition, documented trials rarely listed the white (healing) witch among those sentenced and condemned. It was more common for a charlatan or an unpopular neighbor to be accused of black magik (cursing).

Although magik for good or ill was used in both pagan and Christian cultures, nevertheless there is evidence that the incoming culture feared the white witch, as is shown in the statement, “for no one did more harm to the Catholic Church than midwives.”

During the 6th century CE, Angles, Saxons, Frisians, and Jutes transformed Gallo-Roman Britain into a new Angle land. Romanized Celtic monarchs and their warrior elite were driven into Wales, Cornwall, and Brittany. What peasants remained were destroyed or absorbed by the new Teutonic inhabitants. It needs to be stressed that Gallo-Roman and Romano-British cultures were already hybrid societies with strong Christian elements, Latin being the educational language. By this time, paganism had degenerated into a folk tradition. An example of a synthesis between paganism, specifically Druidism, and Christian influences is the Culdee Church in the British Isles.

Roman Britain fell totally to the Teutonic invasion. Christian churches were forced to abandon British soil between 570 and 597 CE. When missionaries returned, they found a Germanic-speaking country whose kings traced their ancestry to divine beings from a new heathen religion. All forms of Roman organization and the Latin language had disappeared from the areas settled by the Anglo-Saxons. Language history and placename evidence of the goddess Frig and the gods Woden, Thunor, and Tiwaz suggest the Old English saturated the area. In the district of Schleswig-Holstein in north Germany, part of the Saxon homelands, there is a sizable gap in settlement continuity, supporting the theory of large migrations.

The Saxons, and later the Scandinavians who also settled thickly in the British Isles during the Viking Age, worked the land as farmers. Many English placenames have the root leah or grove; heath, a hilltop sanctuary; and ealh, meaning temple, indicating that a new pagan religion was dominant in the British Isles before Christianity and after the Roman British pagans.

Now that we have provided a background of historical events, let us look at the new Germanic heathenism.

The Germanic Alfader and Eorthe Moder

Woden was a popular god to the English people, and the majority of kings traced their lineage to him and Mother Earth. They were the Alfader and Eorthe Moder. Old Wode was a god of wisdom, magic, poetic inspiration and the Wild Hunt of the Dead, which was also believed to be led by various female beings. Dual faith prayers exist, such as the Merseburg and Nine Herbs charms. Old superstitions, such as the making of oaths on the Odin Stone in the Orkney Islands, survived the new faith of Christianity. An image of Woden with his ravens, Thought and Memory, is in the cathedral at Great Canfield, Essex. Until the 18th century, Woden was still seen as an apparition in Northumbria. The image of Wode with a wide-brimmed hat and dark cloak wandering the countryside astounding those who met him with his wisdom may have lent to the belief of the “man in black,” the enigmatic male figure from the Witches’ sabbat.

Central to the myths of Woden/Odin is his sacrifice on the World Tree to acquire the runes which held the knowledge of the universe. Woden, it is believed, learned the magic art of seidr or trance magic from the goddess Freya. Women were believed to possess the power of prophecy and retained an element of holiness that led some to attain a status of being semi-divine. Some priests even dressed as woman to connect with that most ancient of powers. Seidr was shunned by the warrior elite themselves, although they took council from those who practiced it. Odin’s involvement in seidr sets him apart from the warrior mainstream.

The Fates and Other Goddesses

Fate was seen as a single goddess, or as a set of three divine women. The Scandinavians called them the Norns; they are: Urd, that which is; Verdandi, that which is becoming; and Skuld, something owed or the debt we pay when we die. In Old English the concept of fate was called Wyrd. Wyrd was even more powerful than the gods. In the play Macbeth, the weird sisters are witches who take their name from the older term Wyrd. In dictionaries today, the word weird is still defined as ‘pertaining to fate and witchcraft.’

Frigga had the power of foreknowledge and was considered the Queen of Heaven; Friday is named after her. She was connected with the weather, fertility, marriage, and domestic concerns. Sometimes she is equated with Mother Earth, or Erda. From the 13th century there is a mural of Frigga riding a distaff and Freya riding in a cart in the Schlewig Cathedral in Schlewig-Holstein Germany—provocative images for a Christian holy place.

Freya, her name meaning Lady, is a deity of the Vanir. She had strong ties to witchcraft in the northern countries during early Christianity. Often she is paired with Woden/Odin in Germanic tales. Many scholars see her as an aspect of Frigga. As the receiver of half the chosen slain, she is connected with the Underworld. Chthonic qualities are common among nature goddesses. She is the patroness of love and magic and is empowered with the ability to shapeshift. Her magic was an art called upon by the Scandinavian volva. The volva, or Nordic witches, were venerated in their communities for their oracular feats, yet also feared, for they communed with the powers of life and death. These wise women practiced their soothsaying at night, visiting houses and giving domestic advice for which they received food or gifts. The traditions and occupation of the holy women and men have strong similarities in the different Germanic countries.

Worship of the Disir or locality goddesses took place in smaller rituals like those of the Aesir gods. Disblot or sacrifices were offered with prayers for their blessings. Related to the Disir are the Fylgia or Following Ones, beings who were seen as female guardian spirits to humans. Both sets of supernatural women point to the belief in the white ladies of folk tradition. Holda, Huldra, Frau Holle, Berta, and Frau Gode were all names for the White Lady. As well as being linked with the natural forces of seasonal weather, the white ladies were guardians of children and women.

Huldra, the mother of the elves, protected cattle in rural continental Germany. Holda and Berta are imaged riding a cart and are similar to the earlier goddess Nerthus, or Mother Earth, worshipped by the ancestors of the Saxons and Jutes as reported by Tacitus in the 2nd century. The lineage seems to follow from pagan religion to folk tradition yet the deity in a wagon persisted in the countryside, demoted but still revered. These female figures also led a phantom troop of followers whose spirits joined in their sleep to dance and change shape.

The cult of the Mothers was imported from the Rhineland into Britain during the Gallo-Roman era by Germanic warriors serving as mercenaries along with Gaulish cavalry units in the Roman army. Soldiers tended to honor the Mother. Most of the dedications and images of the Matrones are found in military zones. Seated in groups of three, the mothers bear emblems of fruitfulness and were also associated with protection. Both the Teutons and Celts worshipped these divine women. Please bear in mind that the triple image of the Matres does not represent one goddess but three separate deities.

The Alf

Significant to the beliefs of the dual faith period that shaped witchcraft was the veneration of the alf or elves. These beings are not the gossamer-winged women of literary fantasies or little men with pointed caps, but a type of goddess and god with strong ties to nature and the cult of the ancestor. The elves were linked to natural features of the land and water. Burial mounds are also an important part of observances made to the alf folk. In Icelandic and Scandinavian sagas dead ancestors receive the title of alf. Do the dead live with the elves or become them? Or do the two aspects of Northern religion concerned merely overlap?

It is interesting to note that the word alf means alive. Elves were and still are connected with the cult of the Vanir, bringing protection, inspiration, and fertility. People turned to the elves for the practical needs of everyday life. Alfblot or offerings were used to maintain a favorable relationship between the human and divine realms. In England, Winters Night and Mothers Night, which correspond to Hallowmass and Yuletide, were auspicious occasions requiring a sacrifice to appease the alf, Disir, and mothers. In more than one circumstance witches in the high Middle Ages and the Burning Times were said to receive their magik from the elves; only within the past two hundred years did the barrows and hallow places of the alf folk lose their influence over the country folk who worked with such spiritual orders. The age of enlightenment and industrial revolution have more to do with the decline of belief in witches and nature spirits than the Inquisition, although over a span of three hundred years it had claimed something less than 60,000 victims.

Summary

In England the wise woman and cunning man were solitary practitioners of a spiritual profession rather than a priesthood of a pagan enclave. People from the countryside went to them for healing and knowledge that required psychic intuition. The cunning folk who were white witches also countered the dangerous spells of black magicians. These blessing witches, repositories of natural and local lore, were known and usually trusted by their neighbors. In the 19th century the white witch practiced freely without much harassment by authorities despite the laws against witchcraft. One of the last of such cunning men was George Pickingill of Canewdon, Essex, who died in 1909.

The Germanic people left us all with a proud heritage and there is more to be learned of their customs in order for us to embrace our legacy.

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Witches in Sixteenth-Century Germany: The belief in witches, what they were accused of and why

Early modern Europe is known for its climate of fear as highlighted by the moral panics surrounding the witch trials (Roberts and Naphy, 1997, p. 1). Repeated war and death from disease and famine, fostered conditions for superstitious beliefs (Zika, 2007, p. 5; Bartrum, 1995, pp. 9-10). Accusations against witchcraft was usually the product of neighbours incriminating neighbour for their misfortunes including loss of livestock or even children (Sidky, 1997, p. 233; Lea, 1957, p. 231). Germany was at the centre of the witch persecutions in early modern Europe. The majority of witch trials took place in the German-speaking territories of the Holy Roman Empire. At least a third of the estimated individuals accused of witchcraft in Europe were derived from German-speaking lands. This equated to between 30,000 and 45,000 executions within the Germanic region (Robisheaux, 2013, p. 179). The publication of Malleus Maleficarum (‘Hammer of Witches’) (1486) by German Dominican inquisitors Heinrich Kramer (c. 1430-1505) and James Sprenger (c. 1436-95) promoted the idea that witches were abound in the German lands. Its popularity and influence are shown in the approximately thirty editions that were published between 1486 and 1669 (Williams, 2007, p. 769). The witch panic in Germany followed European trends and peaked around 1580 and 1590, along with latter peaks in the seventeenth century (Brady, 2009, p. 337). These periods coincided with the ‘Great Famine’ during the 1590s due to climatic shift, as well as famine and disease that spread due to the Thirty Years’ War (Waite, 2013, p. 502; Trevor-Roper, 1968, p. 145).

Anonymous, A broadside on witchcraft in the Bishopric of Trier and elsewhere, c.1600,
Etching, 233 x 290mm,
© The Trustees of the British Museum

Pope Innocent VIII’s Summis desiderantes affectibus (‘Desiring with supreme order’) of 1484 was published on the insistence of Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger who stated that people had deviated from Catholicism and practiced sorcery in ‘Mainz, Cologne, Trier, Salzburg, and Bremen’ (Waite, 2013, p. 43). These were also the same regions that saw the greatest number of witch persecutions and burnings (Williams, 2007, p. 770). The Canon Episcopi (Cannon 11B) (c.900), denied the reality of witches (Canon Episcopi cited in Kramer and Sprenger, 2009, p. 100). However, in publishing Summis desiderates affectibus and including it in Malleus Maleficarum, Kramer and Sprenger essentially overruled the Canon Episcopi. This point was underscored by Kramer and Sprenger stating: ‘Whether claiming that sorcerers exist is such a Catholic proposition that to defend the opposite view steadfastly is altogether heretical’ (Kramer and Sprenger, 2009, p. 91). No book during the early modern period did more to promote the belief in witches and was recognised by being given papal legitimacy by including the Summis desiderantes affectibus (Kamen, 1998, p. 270). Suddenly, denying witchcraft was heresy, spiralling into suspicion of any signs of otherness.

The concentration of witch persecutions could further be a product of Catholic religious zeal within the region (Linder, 2008, p. 124). Mainz, Cologne, Trier, Salzburg, and Bremen remained under Catholic influence during the sixteenth century (Brady, 2009, p. 16). Protestant authors generally avoided the most sensational aspects of witchcraft, including metamorphosis (Clark, 1997, p. 528). Catholic reconquests are correlated with increased witch persecutions (Trevor-Roper, 1968, p. 145). Catholic territories driven by Counter-Reformation moralism was connected to wide-scale witch persecutions and thus rooting out non-conformity (Rowlands, 2009, p. 11). However, while noting the connection between Catholicism and witch persecution, Bengt Ankarloo and Stuart Clark stipulated that this connection was far from conclusive. They provided examples of Protestant rulers who were more severe in the persecution of witches (Ankarloo and Clark, 2002, pp. 10-11). Württemberg and Saxony are notable exceptions (Schulte, 2009, pp. 51, 56). R. Po-chia Hsia noted that there were fewer witch trials in areas where there was greater political stability, which is a plausible explanation for the contradiction (Hsia, 1989, p. 160). Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks further notes that prince-bishoprics, such as Bamberg and Cologne had the highest level of witch executions as a way to show their piety and authority (Wiesner-Hanks, 2006, p. 392).

Old poor women, as the most marginalised members of society, were most often accused of witchcraft (Bailey, 2013, p. 150). This is because older, widowed women could be seen as a drain on society. Of the hundreds and thousands of witches killed, it has been estimated that between 75 and 90 per cent were female. However, the proportion of male witches convicted of witchcraft differed considerably across different parts of Europe (Brauner, 2001, p. 5; Rowlands, 2009, pp. 6-7). Martin Luther translated the Vulgate Bible in 1529, which changed the masculine maleficos to the feminine maleficas. Erik Midelfort was certain that this change in translation contributed to the concentrated attack on female witches during the late sixteenth century (Midelfort, 2013, p.14). The beginning of the witch hunts saw slightly more males charged than women (Brauner, 2001, p. 6).

Hans Baldung, The Witches’ Sabbath, 1510
Woodcut, 373mm x 257mm
© The Trustees of the British Museum

The witch was a monster in the female form. This was, in part, the result of women already being regarded as sub-human and closer to animals than man. In this way, the female body was regarded as a monstrosity. Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) viewed women as imperfect men (or less developed humans), a view that still held sway during the Renaissance (Women were a ‘deformity, but on which occurs in the ordinary course of nature.’ Aristotle, 1943, p. 460 (Book IV, vi). However, this feminist interpretation of Aristotle is a point of contention. Theorists continued to debate whether women were indeed human during this period (Kosman, 2010, pp. 147-68). One work by Clive Hart published in Germany in 1595 argued that women were not human (Hart, 2004). This sentiment was espoused in Malleus Maleficarum, which helped bring about a clear definition of the ‘female’ witch during the sixteenth century. It stated that a woman’s defects derived from her original shaping, formed from the curved rib of man that is ‘twisted and contrary’ in a way that made her into an ‘imperfect animal (Kramer and Sprenger, 2009, p. 165).’ It was not just the female’s body that was a monstrosity but also her sexuality, which was a preoccupation of the late fifteenth and sixteen centuries (Zika, 2003, p. 238).

Albrecht Dürer, The Witch Riding Backwards on a Goat, c. 1500-1501,
Engraving, 11.5 x 7.0 cm,
The British Museum

The witch trials demonstrated fear of the power of women’s sexuality. The female witch was understood to be a product of woman’s excessive carnal lust who were affiliated with fornication and orgies with the Devil. This made them more susceptible to falling prey to his influence (Oldridge, 2009, p. 165). It was believed that the pact with the Devil was sealed with intercourse (Kwan, 2012, p. 510). The belief that women were more likely to succumb to temptation dates to the Old Testament with Eve’s original sin in the Garden of Eden leading to the fall of mankind (Ruff, 2001, p. 35). During the early Renaissance, Kramer and Sprenger argued that women’s sexuality made them more prone to witchcraft and whose obedience to the Devil included ‘a relationship with him alone (Kramer and Springer, 2009, p. 165).’ Witches were frequently depicted in sixteenth-century German prints as naked with long flowing hair symbolising their sexual impropriety like in Albrecht Dürer’s, The Witch Riding Backwards on a Goat, (c. 1500-1501) (Zika, 2007, p. 12). Witches accused of hypersexuality and sexual relations with the Devil played on the theme of the over-assertive female. The theme of a domineering woman in sixteenth-century German prints reflects the fear of being overpowered or cuckolded by women (Grössinger, 1997, p. 121). The greater physical strength of man was thought to make a woman’s natural place as passive and subservient (Milliken, 2012, pp. 16, 18-9).

There was a shift in the representation of witches as peasant ignorant ‘rustics’ to an organised conspiracy. As sixteenth-century witches were believed to be aligned with the Devil it was thought that they sought to corrupt the true faith of Christendom (Bailey, 2013, p. 198). Witches were conceived as the antithesis to proper moral and social order. The belief in this conspiracy is further reflected in mass executions of witches in Germany from 1580 (Oplinger, 1990, p. 39).

The Jewish community were previously used as a scapegoat for the murder of children (Oberman, 1996, p. 22). After the Jewish community was decimated within the German-speaking territories of the Holy Roman Empire, a new conspiracy was created by targeting other marginalised individuals as a scapegoat. Authorities including law-makers, magistrates and churchmen created the idea of the diabolical plot against society caused by witches in the service of the Devil (Sidky, 1997, p. 147). Witches were therefore accused of killing and devouring children (Kramer and Sprenger, 2009, p. 27). The obsession with infanticide during this period was reflected in stories and pictorial representations of Jews, witches, Turks, and others abducting and killing children and sometimes eating them or cooking them for magical potions (Lewis, 2016, p. 82; Grössinger, 1997, p. 131; Wheatcroft, 1993, p. 25. Arnds, 2015, p. 72). Girolamo Cardan in De Subtilitate (Basel, 1557, p. 500), for example, listed exhumed bodies of babies as one of the ingredients of witches’ ointments (Oates, 1989, pp. 304-364).

An anonymous seven-page pamphlet published in 1589 in Cologne describes the acts of sorcery in that year in the German territories. The pamphlet includes stories of witches murdering many children in 1589. A witch in Mergenthal, eastern Germany, was said to have killed eighty children over forty years (Anonymous, 1589, p. 3). Although she was not said to be a midwife, the text read: ‘there were no pious midwives to be found around Mergenthal for ten miles, for they all were witches (‘es were keine fromme hebamme umb Mergenthal/ auff zehen meilen zu finden/ dann es alle hexen weren.’) (Anonymous, 1589, p. 4) The pamphlet further stated that eight witches were executed in Swabia for the murder of over a hundred and forty children. Again, the pamphlet mentions two of the witches were midwives (Anonymous, 1589, p. 4). The link between midwives, witches, and the murder of children had at least been established by the time Malleus Maleficarum was printed (Kramer and Sprenger, 2009, p.27). However, David Harley argued that the number of midwives accused of witchcraft was minimal (Harley, 2001, p. 49). This is not to say that there was not a connection made between midwifery and witchcraft amidst the popular imagination. The pamphlet contextualised the fear of sorcery as well as the considerable fear over the loss of children in the year 1589.

Kramer and Sprenger gave the belief in witchcraft validity and as a result, the possibility of powers of transformation. This was supported by the statement in Malleus Maleficarum that through the help of the Devil, sorcerers could transform into wolves. Although this was despite later assertions that such metamorphosis could not exist without the will of God (Kramer and Sprenger, 2009, pp. 100, 201-02). It was surely no coincidence that the same region that was suspected of sorcery would later witness high rates of witch persecution and werewolf accusations. As Kramer and Sprenger were natives of the Rhineland, their examples of witchcraft were also drawn from this region, thus making western Germany particularly suspect (Trevor-Roper, 1969, p. 105). The wolf had a special bond with the witch in early modern Europe that surpassed the belief that they could transform into wolves. Witches were also thought to ride on wolves to the Sabbath and those called Wolfbanners could magically instruct wolves to attack people (Schulte, 2009, p. 226; Schulte, 2009, p. 58).

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Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, Volume 6

The roots of European witchcraft and magic lie in Hebrew and other ancient Near Eastern cultures and in the Celtic, Nordic, and Germanic traditions of the Continent. For two millennia, European folklore and ritual have been imbued with the belief in the supernatural, yielding a rich trove of histories and images.

A series that combines traditional approaches of political, legal, and social historians with critical syntheses of cultural anthropology, historical psychology, and gender studies, Witchcraft and Magic in Europe provides a modern, scholarly survey of the supernatural beliefs of Europeans from ancient times to the present day. Each of the six volumes in the series contains the work of distinguished scholars chosen for their expertise in a particular era or region.

Witchcraft today continues to play a role in European societies and imaginations. This concluding volume includes a major new history of the origins and development of English "Wicca" and an account of the circumstances in which the term 'Satanist' has been used to label individuals or groups. The widespread prevalence of such phenomena proves the contemporary reality of beliefs in witchcraft and its threats.

Other volumes in the series Witchcraft and Magic in Europe:
Ancient Greece and Rome
The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Biblical and Pagan Societies
The Middle Ages
The Period of the Witch Trials

Modern Pagan Witchcraft
—Ronald Hutton
Satanism and Satanic Abuse Mythology
—Jean LaFontaine
The Witch, her Victim, the Unwitcher and the Researcher: The Continued Existence of Traditional Witchcraft
—Willem DeBlecourt

Bengt Ankarloo is Professor of History at Lund University, Sweden. Stuart Clark is Professor of History at the University of Wales, Swansea.

"Although the volumes are intended mainly for scholars, there is much in them to interest the common reader." —New Yorker

They were believed to have the power to communicate with gods, ancestors, spirits, and other supernatural entities. Germanic witches were often portrayed as wise women or cunning men who could provide spiritual guidance, divination, healing, and protection. Germanic witchcraft was often intertwined with the worship of Germanic gods and goddesses.

The Germanic peoples had a rich pantheon of deities, including Odin, Thor, Frigg, and Freya, among others. Witches often invoked these gods and goddesses in their magical rituals and spells. They believed that by harnessing the power of these ancient deities, they could influence the world around them and achieve their desired outcomes. Rituals were an integral part of Germanic witchcraft. These rituals often involved the use of incantations, amulets, herbs, and other magical objects. The goal of these rituals was to manipulate the natural forces of the world to achieve a desired result. For example, witches might perform rituals to bring good luck, ensure a bountiful harvest, protect against evil spirits, or heal the sick. However, Germanic witchcraft was not always viewed positively. The spread of Christianity in the Germanic regions led to a demonization of witchcraft and persecution of practitioners. The established church viewed witchcraft as heretical and associated it with devil worship. As a result, many accused witches were executed during the Witch Trials of the Early Modern period. In modern times, there has been a revival and resurgence of interest in Germanic witchcraft and pagan practices. Contemporary practitioners of Germanic witchcraft often draw inspiration from historical sources, folklore, and archaeological findings. They seek to reconnect with the spiritual traditions of their ancestors and incorporate them into their modern lives. In conclusion, Germanic witchcraft is a complex and multifaceted practice that has evolved over time. It is rooted in the ancient beliefs and traditions of the Germanic peoples and their connection to the supernatural world. While witchcraft was once demonized and persecuted, there has been a renewed interest in reconnecting with these ancient traditions in recent years..

Reviews for "The Role of Ancestors in Germanic Witchcraft"

1. John Smith - 2 stars - I found "Germanic witchcraft" to be quite disappointing. As someone who has always been interested in Germanic folklore and traditions, I was looking forward to diving into the topic. However, this book fell short on many levels. The information provided was scattered and vague, with no clear structure or organization. In addition, the author relied heavily on personal anecdotes and subjective experiences, which made it difficult for me to take the content seriously. Overall, I felt like "Germanic witchcraft" lacked depth and authenticity, and I would not recommend it to others seeking a comprehensive understanding of the subject.

2. Emily Davis - 1 star - I regretted purchasing "Germanic witchcraft" almost immediately after starting to read it. The writing style was convoluted and pretentious, making it hard to follow the author's train of thought. Furthermore, the information provided was often contradictory and lacked scholarly references. It seemed as though the author was simply regurgitating popular beliefs without conducting proper research. I was also disappointed by the lack of practical applications and actionable steps, as I was hoping to incorporate some Germanic witchcraft practices into my own spiritual journey. All in all, I found this book superficial and misleading, and it did not meet my expectations at all.

3. Sarah Johnson - 2 stars - "Germanic witchcraft" left me feeling underwhelmed. The author attempted to cover a vast range of topics related to Germanic witchcraft, but the resulting content felt disorganized and incomplete. While there were some interesting insights and historical tidbits, they were overshadowed by the author's personal biases and speculative theories. It felt more like an opinion piece than a serious exploration of the subject matter. Additionally, the lack of practical exercises or guidance made it difficult to apply the information in a meaningful way. I would not recommend this book to anyone looking for an in-depth and well-researched understanding of Germanic witchcraft.

4. David Thompson - 1 star - I was utterly disappointed with "Germanic witchcraft." Not only was the book poorly written, with numerous grammatical errors and typos, but the content itself was severely lacking. The author seemed more focused on promoting their own beliefs and agenda rather than providing accurate information. The historical context was superficial at best, and the spiritual aspects were presented in a way that felt contrived and unauthentic. Overall, I found this book to be a waste of time and money, and I would strongly advise others to steer clear of it.

Germanic Folk Magic: Spells and Charms from the Old World

The Winter Solstice and Germanic Yule rituals

Germanic Witchcraft and Divination: Reading the Signs