This podcast is specifically about what a Hedge Witch does today, and as best as we can piece together true historical accounts, what they once did. I'm a stickler for the truth, not fanciful things to satisfy people who want to dress up or claim to be a witch just to spook their Christian parents or the unenlightened. What you do, should be your choice however. There is no dogma here. Today we'll be looking at the working tools, or rather the lack of them.

The main issue here for me, is that one person's guesswork or creative writing becomes another person's dogma. Once it's been repeated and reprinted a thousand times it becomes their facts which they quote as though it was just like that. I'll put it to you that if you hold so strongly to any belief or idea, then you really need to reconsider why you believe that is so, and prove it to yourself by researching where that dogma or idea actually came from. Often you will find someone made it up, quite recently.

We won't be doing that here. We will be looking at what is known and verified. Emphasizing ALWAYS that there is no such strict dogma in the true Scottish Witchcraft practiced by my ancestors. Whether what these Cunning women, Cunning men, and Highland Seers, and Spaewives, practiced was even witchcraft as we understand it today, is open to question.

When it comes to Hedge Witchcraft, some things are assumed or borrowed from other Pagan practices. Whether they were one and the same, no one is alive today to confirm or deny any of that. One basic tenet of paganism is that all paths to the creative life force are valid and are to be respected.

The aim of these podcasts is to give you as true an idea of what went on, as we possibly can. The only books referenced will be well over 100 years old, and often were based on oral testimonies which the Scottish authors wrote down and published.

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There is much imagined and written down by people who in recent times, have made incredible assumptions, often showing complete ignorance of recorded history of what pertains to witchcraft, and what does not.  The question is, was this done out of ignorance, or was it done intentionally?  In the case of Gerald Gardner, probably mostly the former and partly the latter.  I've hinted at this before, but it would seem that he wanted to wash Lucifer out of Leland's Aradia, and yet to use the book to create a ritualistic dogma which does not exist within Aradia.  Aradia is about a slave class of people who have broken free, live apart, and view mainstream society and anyone affluent as their enemy.  Gardner of course, could not have that in his new improved Wicca.

Okay so the obvious question here would be, do any other similar historical records of witchcraft exist which could corroborate this idea?  In particular, since Gardner was looking for evidence of British witchcraft, yet Aradia is about Italian witchcraft.  Well, yes there are. Let's start by ignoring the testimonies of alleged 'witches' were forced to make under duress by the very oppressive church, who through pain and threat of death could make people admit to anything.  Sure, we can gleam some things from them, but in the main we know how flawed that is as an historical resource.

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