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Introduction
The same dictionary defines witch as ‘a person, usually a woman, who
practises or professes to practise magic or sorcery (there’s that mental
picture again) especially black magic, or is believed to have dealings with
the devil.’
There is little to quibble with here. Delete the reference to black magic
and accept the fact that in the past witches were believed to be in league
with the devil and we have a perfectly acceptable definition of witch. We
could also delete the reference to women, and that done we have a
perfectly acceptable description of what a witch is – a person who
practises or professes to practise magic.
The main purpose of this book is to explain what modern-day witchcraft
is and to tell how anyone with a belief in the power of nature can draw
on that power to weave spells that bring good into a life, be it the spell
caster’s or someone else’s.
We will look briefly at the history of witchcraft, how it came to be
regarded as a black art and how it was ‘reborn’ during the last century as
the art of Wiccan.
Why the quotation marks around ‘reborn’? Witchcraft never really died
out. Because of the reputation it gained for devil worship and because of
the scepticism in which it was held, it was driven underground. But as
Three witches by cauldron
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