If a campaign of genocide succeeds, it may be very difficult to learn much about those persecuted. The persecutors may well work hard to destroy or twist any accurate information about their targets. But sometimes, gems of good information will get through, often buried within the persecutor's own propaganda.

So it is with Witchcraft and Paganism. Though a few people have claimed to be part of hidden family traditions going back centuries, there are many scholars - and most modern Pagans - who dismiss such claims. Further, there are increasing numbers of scholars - and of Pagans! - who claim there never were any old traditions. Medieval Witchcraft, it's frequently said, never actually existed. It sometimes seems as if there's a new sub-industry dedicated to "proving" Gerald Gardner (and maybe a few friends) made it all up over a weekend.

The evidence, however, argues otherwise. But you have to dig a little, because those who commit genocide try to be thorough.

In the opening years of the eleventh century, the Bishop of the See of Worms, a man named Burchard, published a vast collection of church law culled from councils, papal letters, and the writings of theologians from centuries past. This collection is called the Decretum.As Book 19 of the Decretum, Burchard composed a series of questions which confessors were supposed to ask people in their parishes, to determine whether they were following Christian beliefs and practices. This anthology of questions is called the Corrector Burchardi, a title which can be loosely translated as, "Burchard's Manual of Corrections." It was also known as Corrector, seu medicus, or "Corrector, with remedies". (See the New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia article on Burchard here).

Within the Corrector are dozens of questions dealing with Pagan and Magical practices and beliefs. In fact, of the 194 questions in the Corrector, 73 of them - nearly 40% - deal with these topics. It's hard to overstate how seriously Burchard took this subject.

These questions reveal a lot of detail about the beliefs and customs of which the Church disapproved. Burchard tried to be accurate and complete. Since he sought to root out and eliminate actual beliefs and practices, it wouldn't do to intentionally misrepresent these things. If you ask a person, "Do you believe X?" and "X" is an intentional misrepresentation of that person's belief, the person is obviously going to say, "No! Of course not!" and you'll have made no headway in identifying what that person actually does believe - or identifying who believes in the things you dislike. For this reason alone, it's likely Burchard's questions represent, as accurately as a Churchman can be expected to represent them, the actual beliefs of actual people.

Here are a couple of samples. Prepare to feel right at home:

Here, Burchard is complaining about worship of the Moon, the Sun, the Elements. He condemns observations of the lunar phases, and the seasons of the year ("the course of the stars"). There is a hint at astrology, and an awareness of lucky and unlucky days for beginning projects, making marriages, and so on. There is an interesting custom described concerning helping the Moon to return during a lunar eclipse, and there is acknowledgement of comfort and protection ("succor") - and power - being provided by the intelligences represented by the Sun and the Moon. All of this is described as Pagan tradition, as hereditary custom "which fathers have ever left to their sons even to these days." And it is all specifically said to be non-Christian, for it is not done "in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." There is very little here which would be unfamiliar to a modern Witch, other than some details of practice. Certainly the ideas behind that practice are obvious and are quite in keeping with modern ideas about the Craft.

Of course, these things are hardly shocking. All can be traced to verifiable pre-Christian religious practices and beliefs. What may be surprising is to find them still being condemned in the eleventh century in the heart of supposedly Christian Europe - and to find them so concisely described, in a form which provides quite a good (if biased) capsule description of something nearly indistinguishable from the modern Craft.

Here's another sample:

The actual customs here may be very unlike most modern Craft traditions, but the ideas behind those customs are quite familiar. Circle dances, song-charms, divination for the future, feasting, all this is very common in modern Paganism. Items such as the bull-skin and the crossroads will most certainly become part of the imagery of later Medieval Witchcraft. Doing divination at the New Year, when the veil is thinnest, is also familiar, though the modern Craft usually places the New Year at Samhain. Again, Burchard called these customs and ideas "Pagan," and he condemned them specifically because they are non-Christian.

But perhaps most interesting in this passage is the reference to drawing a Circle with a Sword - and for the purpose of divination, no less. Such a thing is often claimed to be a particularly Judeo-Christian Ceremonialist Magick practice. The presence of such a ritual element in modern Craft has even been said to "prove" the Craft has no real history reaching back farther than the 1950's or so. But here, the practice is being criticized for being Pagan. And do recall, Burchard wrote this hundreds of years before most of the well-known Ceremonialist grimiores were supposedly written. We have the beginnings of evidence of the Ceremonialists having stolen this ritual idea from the Witches, rather than the other way around.

The era in which Burchard compiled these condemnations is important, too. The evidence of Witchcraft in the Medieval Witch-trials is sometimes said to be undependable because those accused of Witchcraft were often tortured in an effort to get them to admit to whatever the torturers wanted to hear. But Burchard assembled these questions nearly three centuries before the first recorded cases of torture being used in any Witch-trial. In fact, Buchard lived three centuries before the Holy Office of the Inquisition was even created. No one was subjected to torture under these provisions. Period. No one.

There is much, much more. Burchard has page after page of Pagan custom. Taken together, it presents a picture of Pagan and Magical practice very well integrated into the daily lives of the people, and pretty much identical to the modern Craft notions of what ancient and Medieval Witchcraft must have been like. There are New Years' customs and funeral rites, spells and observances for the Faeries, cord Magic and weaving Magic, hints at an annual calendar of festivals and of sacred days, all of it explicitly associated with Pagan custom and Pagan Gods. Take one more short sample:

Here Burchard condemns worship at verifiable Pagan sacred sites - wells and standing stones, sacred trees and cross-roads - all of which also are traditional meeting places for Witches. There are candles and torches, Magical healings, offerings of bread and of sacred meals - all very familiar stuff. Sometimes a critic of the idea of a historical religion of Witchcraft will admit to there having been quaint folk-customs and Magical remedies, perhaps even Magical customs and spells - but will insist these things do not constitute a religion. Here, these things are tied specifically to worship at natural shrines, and to prayers, and to places unapproved of by "your bishop or your priest." Such a passage as this cannot be mistaken for anything other than a religion of Witchcraft.

The Corrector Burchardi was intended to seek out individual Pagans and people who practice Pagan customs and who hold Pagan beliefs, and to punish such things on an individual level. The Church responded on a larger level, too. Not only did the Church try to discourage individual examples of Pagan worshippers; the Church also wanted to destroy the Pagan places of worship, so as to make Pagan worship itself impossible. In Book 10 of Burchard's Decretum is the following bit of advice:

Not only penance and fasting, but exile - a virtual death-sentence - was required for those who insist on worshipping the Old Gods - Gods which the Church insisted, time and again, were demons in disguise.

The Corrector Burchardi was used by confessors from the beginning of the eleventh century until the closing years of the fifteenth. Throughout that time, it was seen as useful and necessary, and its provisions were timely and applicable. The issues it dealt with were still of living and current concern. The people refused to give up the Old Ways and Old Gods. In fact, the problem grew worse, and in the intervening centuries the condemnations from bishops and theologians grew increasingly forceful and desperate. The Corrector did finally stop being used - not because people were no longer following the Old Ways, but because a better manual came along, one which prescribed far stricter penalties and far more violent methods of fact-finding: the Malleus Maleficarum, or Witches' Hammer. That's when the Church started using torture in a big way, and started burning tens of thousands of men and women on suspicion of Witchcraft.

Much of Burchard's Decretum has never been translated into English, and indeed, as far as I'm aware, some of the excerpts here are seeing English publication for the very first time. This is part of the reason why some writers can insist Witchcraft never existed. The documentation which proves it did exist is simply not available to anyone but specialists who want Witches to think they have no history.

There is a strong make-it-up-as-you-go-along movement in modern Paganism. This movement survives, in large part, because its supporters have bought into the argument of Craft non-history. Since Gardner just made everything up, and since the religion of Wicca was invented in the 1950's, it's said, there's no reason not to continue making things up. In fact, that'd be more faithful to Gardner, Witchcraft's inventor, than would any pretense of traditionalism, wouldn't it?

But no, claiming to be a Witch, and then denying our history, does a stunning disservice to the Old Gods and to all those who died to pass the Old Ways down to us. The claim of Gardner as the creator of Wicca plays into the hands of the Medieval persecutors of Witches. They did their best to make people forget the Old Ways and the Old Gods. If we today pretend Witchcraft is a newly-minted do-it-yourself religion - if, that is, we insist there never were any Old Ways or Old Gods - then Burchard will have won after all.