The term 'witchcraft' originated in one of "the proudest and most revered offices in Germanic Paganism. The Germanics believed that all women were endowed with divine and sacred qualities. Moreover, (a woman) sometimes was the most venerated and feared person in the tribe. . . .Referred to as priestess, prophetess, wise-woman, sorceress, or sibyl. " Rockwood, RJR.
Once the Christian conversion began, women, who were once highly revered, became known as "women who served the gods {Christian devils), who dedicated their heart and soul to the cause of evil." They were women who once commanded "a sphere of activity in which they were able to exert lasting and momentous influence." In reality, it was women who interceded on behalf of the men mediating between them and their deity. According to Grimm (p 397), (women) were regarded as a mixture of divine and earthly natures." Additionally, while the supreme deities saw women as half-goddesses or handmaids, to the men of their tribes "they were the revealers."
While men earned their pedigrees through valor of war, women earned their pedigree through their gifts of wisdom and their ability to prophesize. And prophetesses were everywhere. According to Mallet (1885, p. 200) "there were ten prophetesses to every one prophet." In fact, among the Druids, there are believed to have been nine Gallic priestesses inhabiting the Island of Sark in the British Sea whose knowledge and ability to prophesize was sought by sea-faring people.
Women were largely responsible for the selection and preparation of herbs, medicines, reading, writing, casting runes (and it was up to the women to etch these symbols onto the sword blades of the warriors) , and creating charms (spells). Young girls who were not marriage-minded, were often sent to Finland, which according to Gummere (1892, p 140) was "the chosen country of magic and sorcery." (This school, this concept, serves as the basis for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling.
In pagan times, there was not evil connotation linked to practice of magic or sorcery. But the Germanics disapproved of magic and sorcery only when it was deemed harmful, unless it were used against a warring tribe, and only when it served the home tribe. According to Grim, "As an herb, a stone, a spell proves a source of healing, so may it also act perniciously too; the use was proper and permissible, the abuse abhorred and punished." Rockwood, RJR.
It was in the 2nd and 3rd centuries of Christendom that Christianity "passed from Greece and Italy into Gaul." (The Burgandians converted to Catholicism in the beginning of the 5th century.) The Celtic Druids had already believed much of what the Christian faith sought to teach them, including the belief in the Afterlife. Christianity provided for the Druids an extension of their belief system; their spirituality, thus supplanting the idea of one going to Heaven when anyone dies, lest he be eternally damned. Paganism was considered "sensuous, cruel and barbaric" whereas Christianity as considered "mild, simple and spiritual." Thus, the Celtic Druids were open to an extension of their current spiritual belief system because Christianity took their beliefs a step further. "The general notion of immortality that was so firmly fixed in the heathen mind was individualized, ennobled and confirmed by the new faith, which negated the need for a mediator. God could be spoken to by the individual." Rockwood, RJR.
Thus begins the beginning of the end for the Priestesses. When once, priestesses were believed to ride through the air, "Christianity hurled the goddesses from their thrones and they were transformed from gracious adored beings to into malign and dreaded ones." Moreover, Grimm (Vol. III, p. 1062) states, "that as soon as the Devil was able to overcome the persistent Germanic attempts to feminize him, the witches passed into fellowship of the Devil himself, and the relationship was transformed into something wicked and sinful." It was believed that the Devil sought to take the women, thus creating an alliance. It is from this notion that the idea of witchcraft was born. That the witched were "in league with the Devil and dedicated to the evil for the sheer love of it; that they are the Devil's helpers."
Germanic and Celtic Priestesses thus became witches in the Christian sense of the word, when they opted to continue with their previous ways. Wise women who were once revered, had now become second class citizens, because the Christian monks who arrived to convert them to Christianity, sought to convert the men first. Thus, if they could convert the men, the women would follow, just as they did in regard to Hebrew and Christianity elsewhere. Furthermore, because the Christian monks revered the men, the women, feeling as outsiders, "could not and would not abandon their art, they went underground, and practiced the rites and rituals of paganism in secrecy and shadows." That is until the forces dedicated to eradicating "magic" became so powerful that a reign of terror began (in the 14th century and continued for four centuries.) Rockwood, RJR.
Grimm (Vol. III, p. 1067) explains the situation this way,
"What with the priestly Inquisition, the formality of the Canon and Civil law process simultaneously introduced in the courts, and to crown all, with Innocent VIII's Bull of 1484, as well as Malleus Maleficarum and the tortures of the criminal court, the prosecutions and condemnations of witches multiplied at an unheard-of rate, and countless victims fell in almost every part of Europe." Thus, drownings, hangings, and burnings of many innocent women occurred. (Such as those that occurred in Salem, Massachusetts.) Rockwood, RJR.
When the horrifying murders of innocent women finally came to an end, so too did a longstanding tradition "of the tribal priestess, which represented the highest conception of the very real Germanic virtue of respect for women, had by this time been marred beyond recognition." What remained was nothing more than deep sadness and mourning for what had been. An entire society and belief system was completely destroyed. And women, who had once been revered for their keen insight and wisdom, have been admonished to nothing. Their status still second class prevails still in many areas of the world and the respect for women also lacking in many instances. In a society where women were once honored and revered, was abolished in the name of religion. Rockwood, RJR.
Works Cited:
Grimm, J. (1880-1883). Teutonic Mythology. 3 Vols transcribed from the 4th ed. with notes and appendix by James Steven Stallybrass. London: W. Swan Sonnenschein & Allen.
Gummere, F. (1892). Germanic Origins. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
Mallet, P. (1959). Witchcraft in old and new England. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: Russell Press.
Rockwood, RJR. (2012). The Germanic/Celtic Priestess: Before and After the Conversion. Printed Hand-Out.