Source books · Witchcraft and demonology
The Witch-Cult in Western Europe
How this book fits
- Traditions
- Witchcraft and demonology Modern witchcraft
- Role in the tradition
- Secondary source A study of the tradition from outside it: history, scholarship, anthropology or reference.
- Public attention
- Notable Wikipedia has an article about it in 6 languages.
Read it
- Read at sacred-texts.com ↗ sacred-texts.com checked against the Internet Archive's copy of May 13, 2026, because the site refuses scripts · archived copy
- Read at gutenberg.org ↗ gutenberg.org checked September 11, 2026
From Wikipedia
The Witch-Cult in Western Europe is a 1921 anthropological book by Margaret Murray proposing her witch-cult hypothesis. This suggests that the accusations made towards "witches" in Europe were in fact based on a real, though clandestine, pagan religion that worshiped a horned god.
From the Wikipedia article The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, revision 1338616071, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Wikidata Q2049717: “book by Margaret Murray”.
In this study
In the chronology, in Margaret Alice Murray's account.
Argues from witch-trial material for an organised pre-Christian religion surviving into the early modern period.