The God of the Witches by Margaret A. Murray [U.K. TRADE PAPERBACK] 1970 • Oxford

The God of the Witches by Margaret A. Murray

U.K. TRADE PAPERBACK [1970] OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

First Oxford trade paperback edition. 7th printing.

Book is like new and unread.  

Tiny corner crease and a small scuff mark to front cover.

Reads like new with a hint of tanning to pages.

ABOUT THE BOOK

This celebrated anthropological study of witchcraft in Europe traces the worship of the pre-Christian and prehistoric Horned God from paleolithic times to the medieval period. Dr. Murray, the first to turn a scholarly eye upon the mysteries of witchcraft, enables us to see its existence in the Middle Ages not as an isolated and terrifying phenomenon, but as the survival of a religion almost as old as man, whose devotees held passionately to a view of life threatened by an alien creed. The findings she sets forth, once thought of as provocative and implausible, are now regarded as irrefutable by folk-lorists and scholars in all related fields.

Dr. Murray carefully examines the rites and ceremonies associated with witchcraft. In the pattern that emerges, she establishes the concept of the dying god-the priest-king who was ritually killed to ensure to the country and its people a continuity of fertility and strength. And she introduces strong evidence to support her thesis that William Rufus, Thomas à Becket, Joan of Arc and Gilles de Rais were, in fact, such "priest-kings," and their deaths ritually imposed.