28 Grimoire for the Apprentice Wizard
imported from Egypt, the Middle East, and Asia. The
Greek god of Magick was Hermes, giving us the name
of Hermetic magick. Like the Egyptians, the Greeks
envisioned magick as divided into two classes: High
and Low. Throughout the Greco-Roman world, the
most influential forces were the Oracles, dedicated to
various Gods. At these ancient sites, specially trained
priestesses would deliver notoriously ambiguous
responses to questions. Also during this period,
various forms of divination were in constant use, most
notably that of examining the entrails (guts—
especially the liver) of slaughtered livestock to discern
the will of the gods. Greece was also the home of
several significant initiatory mysteries, the most
famous being those of Eleusis, which enacted the story
of the grain goddess Demeter, her daughter Kore the
flower-maiden, and Hades Lord of the Underworld,
who abducts Kore each Fall to become Persephone,
his bride and Queen.The Druids (600 BCE–500 CE)
Throughout Gaul and the British Isles, the
educated priest caste of the Celtic peoples was the
Druids. Dru means “Truth,” as in “Truth-Knower.”
The title may also have a connection to oak and is
sometimes said to mean “oak priest.” Druids regarded
fire and water as the original building blocks of
creation, and trees as sacred along with stones,
animals, birds, plants, and the unseen spirits of the
Otherworld. They honored the Gods and Goddesses
of the Celtic peoples and celebrated the Cross Quarterfestivals of Beltaine, Lughnasadh, Samhain, and
Imbolg. Both men and women, their skills included
codifying laws, dispute resolution, the bardic arts,
healing, sacred story-telling, genealogy, mathematics,
astronomy, divination, philosophy, politics, teaching,
administering justice, ritual, and magickal work.
Druids legitimized and presided over the crowning
of the High Kings of Ireland at Tara.
The Celtic culture originally coalesced in eastern
Europe (Black Sea area, Danube basin), moving ever
westward. For a thousand years or more, the Celtic
religion and culture covered most of Europe, from
the Western shores of France and Brittany to the Black
Sea, and from Germany to northern Spain and northern
Italy. The Druids and their religion were thus the
spiritual foremothers and forefathers of Europe as we
know it. They were heavily persecuted under Roman
rule, but the Romans never got to Ireland or north of
the Antonine wall in Scotland, and Druids persisted
in many areas. Bardic schools continued well into the
17 th century.Rome (735 BCE–455 CE)
A principal Roman god of Magick was Mercury,
the messenger of the gods. The Romans used sorcery
and counter-sorcery to defeat rivals and advance them
politically and materially. Though sorcery was popu-
lar with the public, the private practice of it was greatly
feared by those in authority, and harsh laws were
passed against it. The Cornelian Law proclaimed:
“Soothsayers, enchanters, and those who make use
of sorcery for evil purposes; those who conjure up
demons, who disrupt the elements, who employ waxen
images destructively, shall be punished by death.”
These same attitudes were preserved in the Medieval
Christian Church.Medieval Europe (455–1400 CE)
Because magick connected people to their pre-
Christian Pagan beliefs and traditions, the Christian
Church worked diligently to separate magick from
religion. The use of magick by the people was pro-
hibited, while the Church itself adopted what it found
useful and systematically banned the rest. In western
Europe, most villages had healers, herbalists, and
midwives. These practitioners, called Witches, were
frequently women. Their arts were called Low Magick
(humble, accessible) as opposed to High Magick (ex-
alted, elite) such as Alchemy. Such women, who con-
tinued to follow the Old Ways, were targeted for per-
secution by the Church’s Canon Episcopi, issued
c. 900: “Some wicked women are perverted by the
Devil and led astray by illusions and fantasies induced
by demons, so that they believe that they ride out at
night on beasts with Diana, the pagan goddess, and a
horde of women. They believe that in the silence of
Druids cutting sacred mistletoe in the oak forest the night they cross huge distance....They say that they- Wizardry.p65 28 1/14/2004, 3:23 PM