The following outline represents the current shape of the project. It is a living document — my research continues to inform and redirect it. All titles are working titles and will evolve as the project evolves. 

Part 1: Is Witchcraft Ancient?

Ancient Mesopotamia — A witch is someone practicing unsanctioned rites and magic?

1. Temples, priests, priestesses and practices. The temples practice magic in a way that we would recognise as witchcraft today. Witches are those who practice magic outside the temple?
2. The Codex of Ur-Namma — anti-witchcraft laws — against accusing others of witchcraft. What is it they are accusing?
3. The Maqlu — anti-witchcraft magic and rituals.

 

Ancient Egypt — What is a Witch? We don’t know.

1. Egyptian animism
2. The influence of ancient Egypt on modern western magic and the occult
3. The absence of witches in Egypt

 

The Graeco-Roman World — Witches practice magic professionally.

1. Magic in everyday society
2. Mageia and goetia — licit and illicit magic
3. The Twelve Tables laws on witchcraft
4. The fast-growing influence of Christianity

 

Witches of the Bible — Witches are women who act against the word of God.

1. The Witch of Endor
2. Jezebel
3. Herodias and Salome

The Middle Ages: 5th–15th Century — Witches are threats to the community: dependents, the poor, women without men.

1. The collective imagination sees the Middle Ages as the witch’s natural home — the land of fairytales, legends, courtly love, and questing knights
2. Localised traditions increasingly absorbing Christian practices
3. The growing power of the church and the creeping definition of witches and witchcraft, particularly in relation to women
4. The witch as divisive — healer, cunning-woman, increasingly seen as suspicious and unpredictable. The suspicions of the community create the witch trials.

 

The Early Modern Period: 16th–18th Century

1. The Witch Trials — a brief obligatory mention — a toxic result of church desire for power and small-town politics
2. Revolutions, science, nation-building
3. Witches don’t exist, magic doesn’t exist — but neither does spirit or consciousness in nature or animals
4. The Enlightenment didn’t just dismiss witches — it denied the possibility of any consciousness outside the human rational mind
5. The Witchcraft Act of 1735 — and equivalent laws across Europe

 

The Romantics and the Witch: 19th Century — The witch is a mysterious seductress or a cannibalistic crone.

1. The Romantics, re-enchantment of nature and the feminine through art, poetry, and music
2. D’Aulnoy, de Murat, the Grimms, Perrault — fairytale writers shaping the reputation of witches
3. The role of imagination in magic and witchcraft
4. Somnambulism, spiritualism, and mesmerism — repressed spirit expressed anyway
5. Margaret Murray’s first academic study of witchcraft — its lasting influence and its discreditation

Witchcraft in the 20th Century

1. The birth of modern witchcraft — Gerald Gardner
2. Vali Myers — the Witch of Positano
3. Rosaleen Norton — the Witch of King’s Cross

 

Second Wave Feminism and the Rebirth of the Witch

1. W.I.T.C.H. and reclaiming the witch figure
2. The Women’s Spirituality movement of the 1980s

 

Witchcraft Today

1. WitchTok and social media
2. The witchcraft explosion — why now?
3. Witchcraft, environmentalism, animism, and globalism

 

Summary and a Look to the Future