Witchcraft Myths I Had to Unlearn

The older I get, the more time I have spent disconstructing the beliefs and systems I was raised in. Part of breaking ancestral and societal cycles is spending time learning and reflecting on your beliefs. I cannot, in good faith, call myself a lifelong learner and scientist if I refuse to continue learning, growing, and questioning.

I started my witchcraft journey when I was 15 years old. Now 37, much of my practice has changed, and things I thought and believed have changed as well. For a long time, I trusted the "experts", believing the information they had put forth into the world. I trusted authors and the publishing industry to fact-check historical information, correspondence, and practices. I was naive to think the publishing industry followed the same sort of protocol as scientific journals. After all, that was my only previous experience with the publishing industry, and it took a lot of time, effort, and defense to get my scientific research published. Surely if I had to jump through such great hoops defending my research, authors writing about history would have to do the same. Unfortunately, that just isn't the case.

As such, I grew up believing a lot of myths and downright lies, even perpetuating some of those on my blog! I will not be going back and rewriting those articles. Maybe one day I will add a note to them about potentially spreading misinformation. But for now, I am content to clear the air by discussing some of these myths, misconceptions, and lies I have believed, and I bet you may believe in some of these, too.

Witchcraft is ancient and based on a continuous ancient goddess cult.

This is one of the most insidious myths witches and modern pagans believe, and I fell for it, too. The idea that modern witchcraft is a revival of an ancient goddess cult was perpetuated by Robert Graves in his pseudoscientific book, The White Goddess. Graves asserts that the ancient Celts believed in and worshipped a "Triple Muse" or "White Goddess," which is not at all supported by primary Irish or Welsh texts nor archeological evidence. Instead, Graves presents a personal interpretation of mythological evidence, filled with pseudoscience and fabrications that sound logical. Ronald Hutton has called Graves' work a "major source of confusion," while Hilda Ellis Davidson says he "misled many innocent readers with his eloquent but deceptive statements about a nebulous goddess in early Celtic literature." 

However, many traditions in modern paganism, witchcraft, and Wicca are built upon his work: the triple goddess, oak and holly kings, and the 'Celtic' tree calendar, which was partially used to create the modern Wheel of the Year. Again, all of this seems logical. I have read The White Goddess and highly recommend others read his work as well, so that you understand the foundation upon which many customs and beliefs are built. However, it is important to read critically and widely, understanding that Graves's work is entirely unfounded.

Morgan Daimler does an excellent job breaking down why Graves is wrong, but I also recommend reading Stalking the Goddess by Mark Carter to learn more.

The Wheel of the Year is ancient.

While many of the sabbats featured in the Wheel of the Year were celebrated by our ancestors in some way, shape, or form, they were not all celebrated together as suggested. The Wheel is an amalgamation of several traditions inspired by Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and Germanic cultures. This largely reconstructed framework was popularized by Gerald Gardner and Ross Nichols in the 50s and 60s, where it was presented as fact. Unfortunately, this just isn't the case and is largely why I have chosen to no longer celebrate or revolve my seasonal practices around the modern calendar.

On top of this, the Wheel of the Year feels arbitrary and incohesive. This is most likely due to the fact that not all of these traditions are real or even get along with each other. The Anglo-Saxons invaded the Celts during the 5th-century, stealing their lands and murdering their people. As such, the two were not on friendly terms, and forcing their cultural practices together is...wrong. The Wheel completely ignores the conflicts and colonization that occurred throughout much of Europe, and this is reflected in the poorly constructed holidays that were forced to exist together.

The Eco-Pagan wrote a great article about this in 2023, if you wish to read more, titled Wheel of the Year criticisms peak at Autumn Equinox.

Christmas trees are a pagan tradition.

This one hurts and goes right along with the Wheel of the Year myth. Many of the sabbats presented by Gardner and other occult leaders over the years merged many cultural traditions into single holidays. They begged, borrowed, and stole from multiple cultures to create something that seemed plausible. And that is where they get you. If it seems logically true, more people are likely to believe it.

We do know that ancient pagans across many cultures, from the Romans to the Norse, decorated their homes around the Winter Solstice with boughs of evergreen. We know they believed the evergreen was associated with everlasting life and was thought to bring health, luck, and protection to those within. It is not a crazy leap, then, to assume that bringing in boughs eventually turned into bringing in trees. Unfortunately, there is no historical or archeological evidence to suggest that pagans brought in and decorated evergreen trees during their winter celebrations.

Late last year, Jewitches wrote a lengthy article on this topic, Christmas Trees Are Not Pagan, that I highly encourage you to read.

Easter comes from the goddess Eostre or Ishtar.

Again, the Wheel of the Year and its bullshit. There is a growing trend to de-Christianize holidays and traditions, and while I understand the urge, we cannot, in good faith, claim they are something they are not. Easter is one of those holidays that is largely Christian in nature. Are there some pagan aspects? Yes. Are they from a single tradition? No. Is it secretly based on a pagan goddess? No.

While Easter and Eostre and even Ishtar may sound similar, they are not related in the slightest. In fact, there is very, very, very little evidence that Eostre even existed. The only mention of her appears in Bede's De Temporum Ratione from the 8th century, where he suggests that April, formally known as Eosturmonath, was named after the goddess Eostre. Most historians doubt her existence and believe Bede invented her as a convenient explanation.

This didn't matter. People ran with it and even added to her myth. Jacob Grimm is one such person who popularized Eostre in story, claiming she transformed a bird into a bunny and that she was a fertility goddess. This is a fabrication, one that has infiltrated all of the pagan/occult community.

You can read more in The Pagan Myth of Easter by Theos.

Cursing and hexing are unethical and should never be used.

When I started getting into witchcraft at 15, the first book I read was Teen Wolf by Silver Ravenwolf. In this work, Ravenwolf describes the Three-Fold Rule and how any negative work you do will return to you three times. It's a bastardization of Karma and a very Christianized take. I understand why such a rule may be more palpable for new witches, especially those coming from Christianity, but that does not make it true or even ethical to say and promote.

In fact, the idea that curses and hexes are unethical and should never be used is a sign of white supremacy. Many marginalized groups have relied heavily on baneful magic to fight their oppressors. To demonize such behavior is to support and uphold oppressive systems. I wrote pretty extensively on this topic in my Guide to Curses, Hexes, Jines, and Ethics in Spellcrafting if you wish to learn more.

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Needless to say, I have fallen victim to misinformation. It's hard to know what is true and what isn't when you trust the "experts" to be truthful, but they do the exact opposite, continuing to spread myths on their platforms. Does this mean that you can't celebrate the Wheel of the Year, believe in the Three-Fold Rule, or celebrate Yule with a decorated tree? Absolutely not. Modern spiritual practices are valid, but you cannot continue to claim they are something they are not.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, and I would love for you to share what myths you may have believed in the comments below. This is meant to open discussion, not just me yelling into the void. Haha!

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