The Witch-Cult in Western Europe: A Study in Anthropology

The Witch-Cult in Western Europe is the term for a hypothetical pre-Christian, pagan religion of Europe that survived into at least the early modern period. As late as the 19th and early 20th centuries, some scholars had postulated that European witchcraft was part of a Satanic plot to overthrow Christianity; most of the evidence for this theory was compiled by studying the accounts of the persecutors in the witch trials in early modern Europe. From the late 19th century an opposing view arose, that witches were not Satanists, but adherents of a surviving underground pagan religion. In the 20th century, the theory gave rise to the neopagan religion of Gardnerianism, with its various offshoots and traditions summarized under the term Wicca.