INTRODUCTION

Witchcraft ‘prowls the borderlands of Christianity’, to borrow a phrase from Michel Foucault (1987: 16). To the Protestant reformers, it followed in the wake of heresy as surely as night follows dusk. Regarding the magic of witchcraft as different to that of Catholic priest-craft only in intent, the rituals of witchcraft were perceived as inversions of the latter’s quasi-magical liturgy. Familiarity, it is said, breeds contempt, and the witchcraft of the contemporary Western world has sought to distance itself from the Christian traditions of the reformations, both Protestant and Catholic, deemed responsible for the persecution of those accused of witchcraft. Yet within these Christian traditions are contained not only many themes drawn upon in modern witchcraft, but also an inheritance that is both personal – in the sense that varieties of Christianity remain the religion in which the majority of witches were raised – and infl uential in the development of contemporary Wicca. Drawing on evidence that has only recently come to light, and which heretofore has received only cursory attention, this book seeks to explore the borderlands between Wicca and the marginal forms of Christianity in England and France, both heterodox and Catholic. The book thus uncovers a part of Wiccan history that has either been unknown or studiously ignored, a history found in the borderland, marginal region where Christianity and Wicca meet.