From Fact To Fallacy Margret Alice Murray Analysis

Understanding the scope and context of witchcraft is key to deciphering the subject. Margaret Alice Murray’s understanding of witchcraft, evident through her books The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, and The God of the Witches, increased public interest in witchcraft. However, it was almost immediately denounced by professionals in the field, and has been discredited many times since. Cathrine Noble completely dissects Margret Murray’s hypothesis in her article “From Fact to Fallacy: The Evolution of Margaret Alice Murray’s Witch-Cult,” however she does not completely discredit her work. Noble gives credit to Murray in that she increased the awareness and popularity of witchcraft. Nonetheless, most of Murray’s ideals are flawed on the basic principle of her generalization. Noble is able to pinpoint Murray’s inconsistencies through other

Murray even uses a quote from the Liber Poenitentialis of Theodore, as the first reference by a Christian of a horned man. However this again returns to the root of Margaret Alice Murray’s problems, in that she uses mostly English sources to justify her thesis across Europe. One of Noble’s points to justify Murray’s generalization is the idea that Murray is piggybacking off of other theories purposed before her. Although there is not substantial evidence that Margaret Alice Murray used the text of historians before her in the field of witchcraft, Murray acknowledges, vaguely, that some of her connections between sources can be established by previous historians. Specifically, Noble sources Jules Michelet, and his theory that witch hunts were originally used to prosecute pagans, such as Hellenic beliefs like Pan, and that “witches” were keeping these beliefs alive in a Christian based society. Nobel then again, acknowledges that although Murray was not the first person to establish the connection between pagan religions and witchcraft, her work was the most popularized