Acknowledgements

One of the few pleasures of an author's life which never lose their savour is to be found in the honest recognition of the debt that he or she always owes to others. If no man is an island, entire of itself, then certainly no book is the work of any single mind, entire of itself. We not only need the help of others; it is right that we should have that need; and, if we are as fortunate as we could hope to be, we shall find ourselves needed as much as we need others.

First and foremost - the trite phrase is unavoidable here - I have to thank the late Dr Margaret Murray for that inspiring encouragement to which I have alluded more than once in the book that she so warmly urged me to write. That she died as her last letter to me was being written only adds an unusual -perhaps unique? - force to the urgings of one of the most brilliant minds that this or any other period has produced.

Margaret Murray was fortunate in being born into an age of brilliant women, all as eager and competent to exploit Woman's new 'liberation' as any of these noisier contemporary 'Liberators' who, to flatter themselves, have managed to persuade many that Woman's almost complete liberation did not come a century ago - a fact which was proved, in the academic field alone, by such dazzling imaginative intellects as those of Margaret Murray, Jane Harrison, Jessie Weston and Janet Bacon: to all of whom I have often acknowledged my deep indebtedness.

It is the fashion, among some shallow minds, to dismiss Dr Murray's theories as - I quote one such opinion - 'vapid balderdash'. I am not sure, but I have the uneasy feeling that the reluctance to accept Dr Murray as a pioneer in the more speculative aspects of Anthropology springs simply from a far too common masculine prejudice (that I, thank Heaven, do not share!) against conceding the possibility that any woman could contrive to pioneer in any activity, physical or mental.

How may this indefensible prejudice possibly continue to exist in the age which has produced its Nightingales, its Garret Andersons, its Curies, its Meitzners, and so many other women pioneers!

Fortunately, as I have mentioned in the text, Dr Murray's warm supporters far outnumbered her detractors, and it is my hope that, in the not-so-distant future, all will agree with me that, in her literally epoch-making book, The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, Dr Murray shewed, for the first time, the true relationship of Western Witchcraft to that Primaeval Faith which sprang from Man's first important use of his differentiating and segregating mental superiority.

That first important use of his mind was demonstrated when he asked those three questions which lie at the beginning of all intellectual enquiry; which are, indeed, the origin of all intellectual enquiry: 'Who am I?', 'Who made me?' and 'Why am I here?'

In this book, encouraged by many a dead and living writer, I have endeavoured to state the conditions in which these essential questions were first asked - and (to a much larger extent than many think) were answered.

The several sources that I have used have been acknowledged both in the body of the text and in the Bibliography at the end of this book. Such acknowledgement is not only the courteous and just admission of a debt to others, it serves, also, as a useful guide to further reading on the subject.

However, there are two writers on Witchcraft whom (with their respective publishers) I wish specially to thank for permission to quote from their books: the late Mr Pennethorne Hughes and Messrs Longman, for permission to quote from Witchcraft; and (the Executors of) the late Mr T.C. Lethbridge and Messrs Routledge & Kegan Paul, for permission to quote from Witches: Investigating an Ancient Religion.

I must also acknowledge my deep debt to two other books, both of which treat of the Fertility Religion only incidentally: the late Sir F.M. Stenton's Anglo-Saxon England, my opinion of which is sufficiently indicated, I trust, by the frequency and length of my references to it in my book; and - once again! -Professor L.R. Palmer's The Latin Language, the one indispensable handbook, in my opinion, to any writer whose work involves the subject of Dr Palmer's matchless book. Anglo-Saxon England is published by The Clarendon Press, Oxford; The Latin Language by Messrs Faber & Faber. To all authors (or their Executors) and their publishers, for permission to quote from the works mentioned above, my sincere fraternal thanks!

If no book, to go back to what I said at the beginning of this Note, may ever be entirely original; entirely the work of one single author; it must yet, to justify its writing and publication, contain at least one original contribution, by the author, to the history of, or the thinking upon, the subject of which the book treats.

In this book, my claim to originality lies in my having identified the language in which the Western form of the ancient and universal Fertility Cult first achieved sophisticated expression; and which language, over the millennia, 'fossilised' into a ritual and no-longer-comprehended speech, as has happened to the pre-Dravidian 'Elephant Language' of the Indian mahout; to the Sumerian of the Semitic rituals of Akkad; to the proto-Latin of the Carmen Arvale; and (so far as the general run of worshippers is concerned) to the Latin of the Roman, and to the Old Slavonic of the Russian Orthodox, Church. The identification, as well as the theories based upon that identification, are mine, and I take full responsibility for them.