Swain Wodening’s Blog

Mead has an almost mystical quality about it, and its reputation amongst Heathens is almost mythical. Ale is not far behind as is home brewed beer, wine, melomels. There is nothing better than gathering around and toasting, boasting and oathing all in the name of the ancestors and Gods with a horn full of good mead, ale, or wine. It creates community togetherness, and brings pleasure to many. Still, there are dangers.

Er-a svo gott
sem gott kveða
öl alda sonum,
því að færra veit
er fleira drekkur,
siacute;ns til geðs gumi.

Less good than they say for the sons of men
is the drinking oft of ale:
for the more they drink, the less can they think
and keep a watch o’er their wits.
(Havamal 12)

Ölur eg varð,
varð ofurölvi
að ins fróða Fjalars.
Þviacute; er öldur best,
að aftur um heimtir
hver sitt geð gumi.

Drunk was I then, I was over drunk
in that crafty Jötun’s court.
But best is an ale feast when man is able
to call back his wits at once.
(Havamal 14)

The above Havamal quotes are just two of the warnings in the lore about getting overly drunk. Alcohol intoxication leads to impaired judgment, which can lead to all sorts of problems. Disruption of sacred rites through silliness, rude behavior, even fights can be the result. It is in poor taste to get drunk at symbel. That is not just my opinion as can be seen from the above quotes from the Havamal.

When in symbel and one is drinking naturally one should be aware of their level of intoxication. If one is beginning to have euphoria, slurring speech, and loosing control of one’s coordination it is probably too late. Once those symptoms occur, one is already drunk. In such a case, one should excuse one’s self from the proceedings, and find someplace else to go. Under no means should one stay in symbel if they are drunk unless they can control their behavior. Even then they should stop drinking so as not to compound the problem. I have seen symbels disrupted by drinking, and seen men I respected nearly fall face first into the table from too much mead. Many a fool’s oath or boast has been made when one is drunk. I know as when I was younger I was a heavy drinking and made oaths that the next morning I would regret (with luck I was able to fulfill them). I have seen others do the same. Even when one is not making fool’s boasts, one can get loud and disruptive. I have seen symbels disrupted by loud, obnoxious folk that have had too much to drink. I have no problem with folks getting drunk as long as they do not drive, and definitely do not do so in symbel. Mead may be mythical, but it is dangerous too.

A few modern Wiccans try to trace their magic practices back to
Anglo-Saxon practices.  The sad truth is however, Anglo-Saxon
witchcraft and modern Wiccan practice have little to do with each
other. With the exception of some kitchen witchery and other such
practices, there is no evidence of an unbroken tradition of organized
witchcraft from the Elder Heathen Period until now. For one thing, the
ancient Anglo-Saxon witches certainly did not worship a God and
Goddess, not in the sense that Wiccans do today (they worshipped gods and goddesses like Woden, Thunor, and Frige of the Germanic pantheon). Nor did they have anything like the Wiccan Rede. Modern Wiccan magic practice largely owes its orgins to Masonic ritual and the practices of High Ritual Magic groups formed in the early 20th century like the Golden Dawn with bits and pieces of kitchen witchcraft thrown in. The Old English words for witch, wicce “a female witch” or wicca “a male witch” in no way means “wise one,” by the way.  Neither word is even remotely related to our words wit, wise, wisdom, or their Old English equivalents. As near as scholars can tell the words either derive from an Indo-European *wik- meaning “to bend,” or another Indo-European root, *weg-  related to words for “lively, watchful.”  Old High German had a cognate to witch, wikkerie, as did the Saxon German dialects in the term wikker as does Dutch with wikken. The term does not appear however in the Scandanavian languages (Old Norse vitki
is cognate to Old English witega “wise one”). Similarly, there are no
cognates in the Scandanavian languages for High German Hexe or Old
English hæg (which was once used interchangeably with witch).
None of this invalidates Wicca as a religion, it is merely a statement
of the facts at hand. That being said, we can move onto the topic at
hand. What was Anglo-Saxon witchcraft?

“What was Anglo-Saxon witchcraft?” is a very difficult question to answer. Our sources are primarily laws against the practice of witchcraft. These laws
unfortuantely lump a whole lot of Heathen practices together so that it
is difficult to tell whether galderes “charm speakers,” seers, and
leechs “healers” were counted as witches, or if these were counted as
seperate types of magic users much like the difference made in Germany between the modern Hexen and Hexmeister. However when faced with many of the law codes, as well as words commonly used in conjunction with wicce or wicca, we begin to see a pattern somewhat confirmed by folklore about the witches or Hexen on the continent. The following paragraphs from Aelfric’s Homilies parallels many of the folktales about the witches in the Hartz Mountains:

“Nu cwyth
sum wiglere thaet wiccan oft secgath swa swa hit agaeth mid sothum
thincge. Nu secge we to sothan thaet se ungesewenlica deofol the flyhth geond thas woruld and fela thincg gesihth geswutelath thaera wiccan hwaet heo secge mannum thaet tha beon fordone the thaene drycraeft secath”

“Now some sooth sayers say that witchs often say the truth of how things go. Now we say in truth that the invisible devil that flies yonder around this world and many things sees and reveals to the witch what she may say to men, so that those that seek out this wizardry may be destroyed.”

“Gyt farath wiccan to wega gelaeton and to haethenum byrgelsum mid  heora gedwimore and clipiath to tham deofle, and he cymth him to on thaes mannes gelicnysse the thaer lith bebyrged swylce he of deathe arise, ac heo ne maeg thaet don thaet se deada arise thurh hire drycraeft.”

“Yet fares witches to where roads meet, and to heathen burials with their phanton craft and call to them the devil, and he comes to them in the dead man’s likeness, as if he from death arises, but she cannot cause that to happen, the dead to arise through her wizardry.”

The first passage mentions activities we see connected with witches in later medieval folklore.  That is the ability to use a fetch to travel far away, and see what is going on there. Very similar are folktales about the witches of the Hartz mountains and their abilities to fly through the air.  In Old Norse, this practice is generally referred to as hamfara “soul skin faring.” The second passage mentions a practice we see in the Eddas and Icelandic sagas, the ability to speak to the dead. In addition to the ability to travel long distance through flight and communication with the dead, we find indications that witches were shape shifters. Terms such as Old English scinnlæca (scinn “phantom” + læca “leech or healer”) may well refer to this practice which is well documented in the Norse Eddas and sagas, not to mention Germanic folklore.

Looking at German folk tales, we see that the German Hexe (cognate to our word hag and Old English hæg) too was accused of flying through the air to places far away, as well as shape shifting. The following is from the German folktale, “The Trip to the Brocken” which demonstrates German beleif in the ability to travel through the air to a place far away:

“The
day came when witches go the Brocken, and the two women climbed into the hayloft, took a small glass, drank from it, and suddenly
disappeared. The bridegroom-to-be, who had sneaked after them and
observed them, was tempted to take a swallow from the glass. He picked it up and sipped a little from it, and suddenly he was on the Brocken, where he saw how his fiancée and her mother were carrying on with the witches, who were dancing around the devil, who was standing in their midst.”

The Canon Episcopi dating from the 10th century confirms this folktale:

“Some
wicked women, perverted by the Devil, seduced by illusions and
phantasms of demons [who] believed and profess themselves, in the hours of the night to ride upon certain beasts with Diana, the goddess of the pagans, and an innumerable multitude of women, and in the silence of the dead of night to traverse great spaces of earth and to obey her commands as of their mistress and to be summoned to her service on certain nights”

Another folktale, shows they were also thought able to shape shift:

“In
Trent there formerly lived a girl who had inherited a witch’s thong
from her grandmother. Whenever she tied the thong around herself she
would turn into a hare. In this form she often heckled a forester who
lived in the vicinity. Whenever he would shoot at her, his bullets just
glanced off her pelt. When he came to realize that there was something uncanny going on here, he loaded his flintlock with a coffin nail that he had somehow acquired.”

While much of what was said of witchcraft in the Middle Ages may be suspect, the earliest records seem to indicate that the ability to fly, shape shift, and
commune with the dead may have been central to Anglo-Saxon witchcraft. Whether or not these practices were in any way related in the minds of the Heathen Anglo-Saxons to the use of galdor, the runes, and other magic arts is subject to question. Considering that galdorcraft was allowed to continue, all though in a Christianized form, and that the runes continued to be used, at least for non-magical purposes, it is likely the two were seen as different from witchcraft even in the minds of the ancient Heathens. Also perhaps held to be seperate from witchcraft was the use of herbs or lybbcraeft.

Subject to question also is whether Anglo-Saxon witchcraft was related to, or a part of the Norse practice known to us as seiðr. There are tales of the “witch ride” in the Scandanavian countires of the sort seen in German folktales, and of course there are well documented tales of shape shifting.  None of these seems to have been refered to as seiðr however. Communication with the dead on the other hand may well fall under the heading of seiðr.  In  Erik the Red’s Saga,
we are not told whether the spirits the seeress summoned were the dead, land wights, or secondary gods. The seeress ritual portrayed there is commonly thought to be seiðr by many Heathen scholars and academics. This however, has been hotly debated, and many feel it should not fall under the heading of seiðr, but spá
(seercraft). Nonetheless, “seið hon kunni,” or “seiðr she
knows” was said of the völva that was summoned by Woden in the Prose Edda, and  volvas were known for their ability to speak with the dead. It could be therefore that communication with wights was not seiðr while commnuication with the dead was. Eric Wodening has identified the primary components of seiðr in his work Chanting Around the High Seat as 1) Use of a seiðhiallr or “seiðr platform.” 2) Chanting. 3) Use of a staff 4) Use of Talsimans.

The seiðhiallr or “seið platform” appears no where in Anglo-Saxon or Germanic witchcraft practices, and this may be an indication that seiðr and witchcraft are similar but seperate arts. In fact is interesting that what objects are emphasized in the practice of seiðr are not even mentioned as important in connection with witchcraft and those objects and practices of witchcraft are not mentioned as important in connection with seiðr, save perhaps for the talismans and staff.  This would definitely seem to indicate that the two practices may be similar but are somehow different. To further this line of thought, Kveldulf Gundarsson in his article Spae-Craft, Seiðr, and hamanism  notes:

”
In fact, the word seiðr is never used in conjunction with any sort
of shape-shifting or travelling out of the body (the latter being
usually the province of Saami, as with the ‘Finnish’ wizards Ingimundr
sent after his Freyr-image in Vatnsdoela saga ch. XII), let alone for
journeying to the Underworld or Overworld.”

If 
seiðr and witchcraft are seperate arts, then where does seiðr
appear in the southern Germanic sources? The answer to that is we do
not know. Witchcraft in the form seen in the English and German
materials is also seen in the Scandanavian countries, but other than a
possible cognate to the term seiðr in Old English (sidsa “charm”) one would be hard pressed to find evidence of seiðr in Germany and England.

Finally, there are some indications from Germanic folklore that witchcraft was linked to the worship of a specific goddess.  Holda
or Dame Holle is mentioned frequently in folklore of the Hartz
Mountains in connection with the Hexen.  There is unfortunately no corrensponding evidence in the Anglo-Saxon corpus. That is not to say ancient Anglo-Saxon Heathen witchcraft was not a part of a Goddess’ cult, but merely to say there is no evidence either way. Part of the connection to the Goddess Holde in Germany appears to be linked to the Wild Hunt and the witches’ ride on May Eve. The Hunt appears in Anglo-Saxon literature and we have tales of the witches’ ride as well.  The only factor missing in the Anglo-Saxon corpus appearing in the German is the Goddess Holde. Both the Wild Hunt and the witches’ ride appear in English folklore.

Rebuilding a Modern Practice

Ancient witchcraft appears to have consisted of faring forth (to put it in modern Heathen magical terminology) or travelling out of body, shape shifting, the use of the fetch, and communication with the dead. General spell craft and divination (augries and omens are mentioned in Anglo-Saxon laws in close relation to witchcraft) probablly accompanied these arts to form the core of Anglo-Saxon witchcraft.  In order to reconstruct these arts, we are reliant upon other magical traditions to a degree. Harner’s book The Way of the Shaman can be of great help.  While ancient Anglo-Saxon witchcraft was not shamanic
in character, it has much in common with shamanism. Faring forth from
the body is central to shamanism, as is the use of power animals (in
our case, the fetch).  Shape shifting in ancient witchcraft was
probably done in out of body form, so here too we can be helped by
modern Pop Shamanism. Divination or the taking of omens, can no doubt be reconstructed with ease (many omens survived in folklore), as well as the use of the spa rite based on the instance in Eirik the Red’s Saga. It must be stressed that it is doubtful Anglo-Saxon witchcraft was a healing art, at least not in the sense shamanism is.  Galdor and herbcraft seem to have been the means that were used in healing the body. No doubt, many ancient wiccan knew these arts as well though.

Suggested Reading

Glosecki, Stephen O.  Shamanism and Old English Poetry, Garland Press, 1991

Griffiths, Bill.  Aspects of Anglo-Saxon Magic, Norfolk: Anglo-Saxon Books, 1996.

Harner, Michael, The Way of the Shaman, Harper Collins, NY, 3rd Edition, 1990

Storms, G. Anglo-Saxon Magic, Martinus Nijhoff: The Hague, 1948

I have seen it asked why reconstruct an ancient religion? Why not just worship the Gods in new ways? The answer is really quite simple, the ancients knew more about worshiping the Germanic gods than we do. The wisest of us knows less than a ten year old child of Germanic tribesmen two thousand years ago about Heathenry. Put quite simply, the ancient Heathens worshiped the Gods for thousand of years using roughly the same methods over and over again. The portrayal of symbel in Beowulff (dated to roughly to the seventh or eighth centuries using Kaluza’s law on resolution of metre, other methods date it to as late as 1025 CE) is almost the same as it is in the Heimskringla (written by Snorri Sturluson in the thirteen century). Our ancestors stuck to the tried and the true, and they did so for a reason. Not because it was the right way, but because it worked. That is not to say there is no room for experimentation. It is to say that we are unlikely to find better ways of doing symbel or blot. The ancient Heathen had a wealth of knowledge about Heathenry passed down mouth to ear for thousands of years, most of it we are not privy too. So we take what survives and using scholarship try to extract a religion from it. Yes, there are gaps. Many of the Gods are just mere names (this is esp. true for Anglo-Saxon Heathenry), but there is enough to form a basis for a religion. It only makes sense to use what the ancient Heathens knew as a basis for what we do. Modern Heathenry will evolve and change (it has in just the twenty five years I have been Heathen), but its groundwork, its foundation should always remain the same. It should always be grounded in what we know of what the ancient Heathens knew to be true. So that is why we seek to reconstruct an ancient religion instead of worshiping the Gods in new ways. Simply put, the ancient Heathens knew more about Heathenry than we do.

Holda appears no where in the Anglo-Saxon literature, on the continent
however, there are many folktales linking the Goddess Holda or Holle
with witches and witchcraft. Many of these occur in areas lived in by
the Old or continental Saxons. According to Grimm, “Horselberg is at
once the residence of Holda and her host, and a trysting-place of
witches.” This link beween Holda and witchcraft appears over and over
in medieval literature. Holda is first mentioned in literature c.1015
by Burchard, Bishop of Worms:

Credidisti ut aliqua femina sit, quae hoc facere possit, quod quaedam a diabolo deceptae se affirmant
necessario et ex pracepto facere debere, id est cum daemonum turba in similitudinem mulierum
transformata, quam vulgaris stultitia Holdam (al. unholdam) vocat, certis noctibus equitare debere
super quasdam bestias, et in eorum se consortio annumeratum esse.

“It was believed that somehow it was possible for some female to do this, who had been deceived by the
Devil, and who confessed herself compelled to do it by a spell; that is, by a demon changed into the form
of a woman whom vulgar stupidity calls Holda (or Unholda), being forced on certain nights to ride upon
certain beasts, and to be numbered among their company.”
(translation by Nick Ford)

It
is interesting to note that the first passage about her is one
pertaining to the witches’ ride. This link between the witches’ ride
and Holda is echoed throughout the Middle Ages, to the point that one
gets the feeling it is not just another false accusation by the Church.
It appears in canons of the Church, witch trials, and folk tales as
well. It appears in later folk tales as well, “The Trip to the
Brocken demonstrating a belief in the witches ride:

“The day came when witches go the Brocken, and the two women climbed into the hayloft, took a small glass, drank from it, and suddenly disappeared. The bridegroom-to-be, who had sneaked after them and observed them, was tempted to take a swallow from the glass. He picked it up and sipped a little from it, and suddenly he was on the Brocken, where he saw how his fiancée and her mother were carrying on with the witches, who were dancing around the devil, who was standing in their midst.”

These tales are usually linked in some way to Holda or the Brocken or other mountain peaks. The Canon
Episcopi states pretty much the same thing as Burchard, but uses the
name of the Roman goddess Diana instead of Holda:

“Some wicked women are perverted by the Devil and led astray by illusions and fantasies induced by demons, so that they believe they ride out at night on beasts with Diana, the pagan goddess, and a horde of women. They believe that in the night they cross huge distances. They say that they obey Diana’s commands and on certain nights are called out in her service…”

This confusion too continues throughout the Middle Ages with the names Holda, Diana, and sometimes Hecate being used interchangeably.  The question then becomes whether Holda was goddess of the witches, or a Germanic Goddess of faeries and leader of the Wild Hunt, and therefore confused with the Roman and Greek Goddesses of witches. There are no easy answers to this. The folklorist Lotte Motz felt that Holda as goddess of the witches was a native tradition, and that her attributes arose independently of Diana and other southern goddess. Another explanation, since all of the areas these Goddesses appear were at one time or another settled and held by Germanic tribes, is that the Southern goddesses are merely the imported Holda guised under a native name. Confusion later came about when the Church, not knowing the name of the Goddess identified her with Diana or Hecate². Regardless, in the Medieval mind there seems to be a connection between the Goddess Holda, and witches riding through the air at night, usually to some sacred mountain peak.

A rather late documentation of Holda, in connection with a mountain occurs in 1630 when a werman in Hesse, Diel Breull, confessed to have traveled in spirit form to the Venusberg (Blocksberg or the Brocken) in a witch trial. There he was shown by Frau Holt the sufferings of the dead refected in a pool of water. This testimony though is very suspect as it seems confused with perhaps more southern beliefs. No one is certain where the idea of a goddess in a mountain first origninated. It does not seem current in the folklore surrounding Holda (Germanic folktales always take place on top of the mountain, not in it), merely in Germanic literature. Marion Ingham traces the origin of this tale to thirteenth century German literature where the goddess appears as Venus, as well as Italian and French versions that date to the fifteenth century. Ingham goes on to say:

The motiff of the hollow mountain inhabited by malicious beings seems to occur first in German literature, in the thirteenth century, and by the fifteenth, when the Tannhauser legend was gaining gorund, the Church was condemning the belief. Most of the sources suggest people connected the Venusberg with Italy, so the beginnings of the motiff may lie in traditions of the Sibylline grotto and the Elysian fields derived ultimately from Virgil. Early German sources equate it with the fairy realm where Arthur lives on, and also portray it as the home of the Grail: in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the place wa apparently known as der Grale as well as der Venusberg.
(Ingham, The Goddess Freya and Other Figures, p 194)

It would appear then that we are not faced with a genuine Germanic belief, but a literary motiff which either originated in the south in connection with tales about the Sibyl, or with Arthurian legend. This really does not matter much to us as  there may be grains of truth to Breull’s tale, as it appears he went to sleep and awoke in the Venusberg. It appears then he may have traveled to it in spirit form, just as the witches in the folktales are said to do, and such tales about witches travelling there may have influenced his tale as much as the literary tales about a goddess in a mountain.

Grimm connects several other figures with Holda, most notabally Perahta and Berchta (also called variously Perchta, Perchte, Bertha). Neither of these figures are as readily connected to witches as Holda.  They are however spinners like Holda, disdain laziness, and are celebrated at Yule. Most notabally however is their link to to troops of children that follow them about. Grimm retells one of the tales of Percha invovling the children (quoted in part here):

“Below the Gleitsch, a curiously shaped rock near Tischdorf, the story varies in so far, that there Perchthu along with the heimchen was driving a waggon, and had just broken the axle when she fell in with a countryman, who helped her out with a makeshift axle, and was paid in chips, which however he disdained, and only carried a piece home in  his shoe. A spinning-girl walked over from the Neidenberg during that night, she had done every bit of her spinning, and was in high spirits, when Perchtha came marching up the hill towards her, with a great troop of the heimchen-folk, all children of one sort and size, one set of them toiling to push a heavy plough, another party loaded with farming-tools; they loudly complained that they had no longer a home.”
(Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, Stallybrass translation)

This is very similar to the Norse and Danish tales about Hulla, whom Grimm links to Holda:

“Of still more weight perhaps are the Norwegian and Danish folk-tales about a wood or mountain wife Hulla, Huldra, Huldre, whom they set forth, now as young and lovely, then again as old and gloomy. In a blue garment and white veil she visits the pasture-grounds of herdsmen, and mingles in the dances of men; but her shape is disfigured by a tail, which she takes great pains to conceal. Some accounts make her beautiful in front and ugly behind. She loves music and song, her lay has a doleful melody and is called huldreslaat. In the forests you see Huldra as an old woman clothed in gray, marching at the head of her flock, milkpail in hand. She is said to carry off people’s unchristened infants from them.”
(Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, Stallybrass translation)

The fact that these children are unchristened is crucial. In the ancient Heathen religion, children that had not yet been named (which was done at nine days of age), were considered not to possess a complete soul. They could not be exposed by the father if he accepted them at birth, but neither the orlog and fetch were thought to have attached to the child until an ancestral name was given. It would seem then (in my opinion anyway), that without ancestral spirits to protect them, the Goddess Holda fulfilled that role. Thus it may be that if a child died before it was named, its soul stayed with Holda for protection. Thus we have evidence, though suspect,  of Holda as protector of the dead souls of children. The witches ride and children’s procession were not the only links to nightly travels however.  Holda was also said to lead the Wild Hunt.

“Then we see both the name and the meaning [m. or f.] fluctuate between frô Wôdan and
frôwa Gôda. A goddess commanding the host, in lieu of the
god, is Holda, his wife in fact. I am more and more firmly convinced,
that ‘Holda’ can be nothing but an epithet of the mild ‘gracious’ Fricka; conf. Sommer’s Thür. sag. 165-6. And Berhta, the shining, is identical with her too; or, if the name applies more to Frouwa, she is still next-door to her, as the Norse Freyja was to Frigg. It is worth noting, that her Norweg. legend also names a ‘Huldra,’ not Frigg nor Freyja. The dogs that surround the god’s airy chariot may have been Wuotan’s wolves setting up their howl.”
(Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, Stallybrass translation)

The Wild Hunt appears throughout Northern and Central Europe amongst both the Celtic and Germanic peoples. Its leader is variously named as
Harlequin, Herne the Hunter, Dietrich of Bern, but also Woden and
Holda. The first mention of the Hunt is in the Ordericus Vitalis
written by Wachlin, who claimes to have seen the Hunt in January of
1092. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the year 1127, also mentions it:

“Let no one be surprised at what we are going to relate, for  it was common gossip up and down the countryside that after February 6th many people both saw and heard a  whole pack of huntsmen in full cry. They straddled black   horses and black bucks, while their hounds were pitch black with staring hideous eyes. This was seen in the very deer park of Peterborough town, and in all the woods stretching from that same spot as far as Stamford. All through the night monks heard them sounding and winding their horns. Reliable witnesses who kept watch in the night declared that there might well have been twenty or even thirty of them in this tantivy as near as they could tell.”
(translation by Brian Branston)

Whether the Wild Hunt of Holda’s was thought the same as the procession of children or seperate is not clear.  Woden as leader of the Hunt was sometimes said to have children with the Hunt, not to mention take
children. How a procession of dead children and the Wild Hunt relates
to the nightly ride of witches is hard to explain.  The link
between Holda as leader of the Wild Hunt is ready enough to be seen if
ancient Germans saw her as the wife of Woden, its usual leader. As a
Goddess linked to children, it is logical she lead a children’s furious
host as well. As to how this links to the witche’s ride, one explanation may be that witches also served as midwives, thus the link to babies, not to mention witches may have summoned the aid of the Huldufolk.  We are told repeatedly that Holda’s witches rode the backs of beasts. May not these beasts have been the wights of field and stream, mountain and forest, in essense the huldufolk? There is a
distinct possibility that the witches ride, the children’s procession,
and the Wild Hunt as far as it concerns Holda were all and one the same thing That is the unnamed children joined the Wild Hunt to be under its protection, not a seperate one of its own, and the witches as
priestesses of Holda also took part.

In conclusion, under the
Heathen religion, witchcraft and the cult of Holda was probably out in
the open.  Its rites were probabally not secret. Witches may well
have been merely the priests and priestesses of Holda. While no doubt,
wermen (males), played a role in witchcraft, and are mentioned, the
image of the witch has come down to us as female. It could be that
women were held to be the more powerful, and formed the core of Holda’s cult. Strabo described priestesses performing human sacrifices.
Elsewhere we are told by Tacitus that Veleda was honoured as a goddess and gave oracular counsels to whomever wanted them. Jordannes also mentioned female witches in his history of the Goths. King Filimer, a convert to Chirstianity exciled female witches known as
haliurunnae. It would not therefore be strange for women to be at the
forefront of a Goddess’ cult. The places where witches once gathered
would suggest a cult that was once in the open. The Brocken and other places thought sacred to Holda where witches were said to gather may well have been places that all Heathens once gathered for the Spring rites. Grimm states in the passage cited above that Hulla was thought to join in the dances of men, and thus this may be where the idea of a special witches’ dance came about. He also notes that the gathering places of witches were fomerly the places of Heathen justice. Originally, these dances may have been nothing more than the Maypole dancing of the ancient Heathens later restricted to the priests of Holda after the Conversion only to die out. The tales however lived on in folklore and were gradually demonized by the Christians with the addition of details even the Heathens would have been appalled at.

We can probably safely conclude that Holda was a Goddess of witches. Was she THE goddess of witches for the Germanic panthoen may be a different matter. Freya in the Old Norse texts appears as the Goddess of a different form of magic, seiðr, and may have had a similar “witch” cult. Indeed, Woden may have had a similar cult of users of galdor, beserkers, and runesters. Indeed, Woden may have been a god of witches in the sense Holda was. Some of the gathering places linked to witches are crossroads and gallowes, both connected to Woden. Finally, Grimm mentions several other figures linked to the witches, and commonly thought to be Holda such as Perchta. While these figures could well be Holda, they may, indeed be seperate Goddesses in their own right. Holda’s cult, secluded by the Hartz mountains may well have survived due to its location. Deep in the Hartz Mountains, the cult may have been left alone.  Many of its celebrants may have well been Christians wishing to continue the age old rites of their ancestors. Regardless, folklore has retained the image of Holda of Goddess of witches. Many modern Heathens link Holda to Frige on the basis of Grimm’s conclusions. Others view her as Hel, although this is doubtful.

Finally, no indepth studies have been made by Heathen scholars of Holda and her links to witches with the intent of reviving their rites in modern times. Studies instead have centered on the runes, galdor, and seiðr with the spirit journeys of the Hartz Mountain witches falling by the wayside.

1. Note: Many have attmpeted to link Holda with Hel on the basis of the name Holle. What they fail to take into account is the word Hel or hell in High German is Hölle not Holle. While Holda or Holle is linked to the dead, the dead are the souls of children, and not the dead in
general.

2. Burchard’s is the earliest to name a goddess in connection with the witches of the Hartz Mountains, and he names Holda, not Diana.

3. “Still more plainly do the Localities coincide. The witches invariably resort to places where formerly justice was administered, or sacrifices were offered. ”
(Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, Chapter 34)

Bibliography

Crawford, Jane. “Evidences for Witchcraft in Anglo-Saxon England.” Medium Ævum. 32:2 (1963) pp. 99-116.

Guiley, Rosemary Ellen, The Encyclopedia of Witches and Witchcraft, Facts on File, New York, 1989

Grimm, Jacob (Stallybrass, James translator), Teutonic Mythology, Peter Smith, Gloucester, Mass. 1976

Ingham, Marion, The Goddess Freya and Other Female Figures in Germanic Mythology and Folklore, Cornell University, 1985

Kieckhefer, Richard. Magic in the Middle Ages. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989.

Motz, Lotte. “The Winter Goddess: Percht, Holda, and Related Figures.” Folklore 95:2 (1984) pp. 151-166.

Russell, Jeffrey Burton. Witchcraft in the Middle Ages. Cornell Univ. Press, 1972.

Waschnitius, Viktor, Perht, Holda und verwandte Gestalten. Ein Beitrag zur deut-schen Religionsgeschichte,&

If one searches a digital copy of Bosworth and Toller’s An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary one will be surprised to find there is no word for luck. This does not mean that the old English were unfamiliar with the concept. They had plenty of words that meant almost the same thing such as sæl, “happiness, good fortune, good time, prosperity;” gelimp, “good fortune, success;” and gesundfulnes, “good fortune, prosperity, happiness of condition” to name a few. It may be that it was more a preference of the Bosworth and Toller to use “good fortune” instead of “luck. Other dictionaries define sælig and eadig as “lucky.” Regardless, the Norse had several words for luck, and it would seem strange that the Anglo-Saxons lacked one. Of course, it may simply not been recorded. The word hap appears in the fourteen century with the meaning of “chance, fortune, luck.”

Therefore, one is at a loss to define what the Anglo-Saxons believed constituted luck given the sparse resources at hand on the topic of luck. For that we must look to the Norse. Unlike the Anglo-Saxons, the Norse had several words for luck; Hamingja, gipta, heill, happ (cognate to English hap), and gengi to name a few. What do these words tell us about luck? Hamingja and heill are the two most commonly used words for luck perhaps followed closely by gipta. Hamingja is perhaps most known as also referring to a female spirit that attaches to an individual and is passed down families. At death, the hamingja was passed on to another family member. Heill on the other hand is related to words for holy and wholeness. Finally, gipta is related to Old English gifeðe, “what is granted by fate, lot, fortune, fate.”

Looking at these words for luck in Old Norse, one can quickly see that luck was seen as having a family connection, that it was linked to holiness or at least wholeness, and was seen as granted by fortune or fate. This fits well with what we know of luck in the lore. Kings were seen as having powerful hamingja, and were able to lend it. That the king was a sacral leader this would fit well with the idea that luck is somehow linked to holiness. That it is granted by fate would seem reasonable, although one would suspect the Gods play a role in this as well.

So how does one improve their luck? The key seems to be good relations with one’s family or artificial family (such as a warband). How much luck one has seems to be determined by how one interacts with those around them, kin and kith, and to a lesser degree, strangers. The Gods should be included perhaps in our family or artificial family. Regardless, all our interactions play a role. Honorable behavior builds one’s luck.