Today I Have Mostly Been Reading...

A Murray-ite scholar, Hughes's thesis takes the view that witchcraft is a survival of pre-Christian religious beliefs and practices, which had all but died out by the 20th century. He cites isolated incidents of people believing in witchcraft in the early part of this century, but nothing to suggest that the practice continued in an organized fashion. Hughes also sets out to prove that the terms fairies and witches were originally interchangable, with both relating to a suppressed indigenious race in Britain.

As a work alone, there seems nothing notable about Hughes's book, other than as a more 'user-friendly' reworking of Margaret Murray's 'The Witch Cult in Western Europe' and 'The God of the Witches'. Ronald Hutton describes it as 'pop-history' and it is certainly easy to read. The main point of interest is therefore that Gerald Gardner's 'Witchcraft Today' was written as a response to Hughes's 'Witchcraft'. Gardner's book being the first to disclose the fact that Wiccans, a survival of the witch-cult decribed by Murray and Hughes, survived into the present day.

It is interesting to note that, by the book's third imprint in 1967, Hughes continued to maintain that the witch-cult had not survived 'in spite of anything that has happened since I wrote this book' (p 218), yet he now included Gardner's 'Witchcraft Today' in the book's bibliography.

If the reader is familiar with Murray's works, then there will be nothing new gleaned from Hughes's 'Witchcraft'; however, if Murray's books have too great an academic dryness to suit, then Hughes's easier style and tone may help bridge the gap.