Margaret Alice Murray's Biography(Books)

Margaret Alice Murray (July 13, 1863 – november 13, 1963)
was a prominent British anthropologist and Egyptologist. She

existed across Europe. The pagans organized in covens of
thirteen worshippers, dedicated to a male god and held

was well known in academic circles for scholarly
contributions to Egyptology and the study of folklore which

ritual sabbaths. Murray maintained that pagan beliefs and
religion dating from the neolithic through the medieval

led to the theory of a pan-European, pre-Christian pagan
religion that revolved around the Horned God. Her theories

period, secretly practised human sacrifice until exposed by
the witchhunt starting c. 1450.

are acknowledged to have significantly influenced the
emergence of Wicca and reconstructionist neopagan religions.

Murray's work is criticized by some contemporary historians
(such as Ronald Hutton), who consider her thesis to

Murray's later books were written for a more popular

extrapolate beyond the evidence.

audience and in a style that was far more imaginative and
entertaining than standard academic works. "The God of the

Witches", 1931 expanded on her claims that the witch cult
had worshiped a Horned God whose origins went back to

born in Calcutta, India, July 13, 1863. she later moved to
England and entered University College, London (1894) where

prehistory. Murray decided that the witches' admissions in
trial that they worshiped Satan proved they actually did

she was subsequently a Fellow of University College (D.Lit.,
F.S.A. (Scot.), f.r.a.i.), and by 1899 became a junior

worship such a god. Thus, according to Murray, reports of
Satan actually represented pagan gatherings with their

lecturer on Egyptology. She retired in 1935. She
participated in excavations in Egypt (1902-4), malta

priest wearing a horned helmet to represent their Horned
God. Murray also discussed the murder of the Archbishop of

(1921-24), hertfordshire, England (1925), minorca (1930-31),
Petra (1937), and Tell Ajjul, South Palestine (1938). during

Canterbury, Thomas Becket, claiming to show that he too was
a pagan by saying that his death "presents many features

which are explicable only by the theory that he also was the
substitute for a Divine King" (Murray 171).

of valuable works on archaeology, but is better remembered
for her controversial books on witchcraft.

Murray now became more and more emotional in her defence of

In The Witch Cult in Western Europe (1921), murray proposed

her ideas, claiming that anyone who opposed her did so out
of religious prejudice. In "The Divine King in England",

the idea that witchcraft was a pre-Christian religion in its
own right, rather than a heretical deviation from

1954 she expanded on her earlier claims there was a secret
conspiracy of pagans amongst the English nobility, the same

established Christianity. The book had a great influence on
Gerald B. Gardner (1884-1964), pioneer of the modern

English nobility who provided the leading members of the
Church. The suspicious death of William Rufus, King of

witchcraft revival. Murray in turn contributed an
introduction to Gardner's book Witchcraft Today (1954). she

England, was a ritual sacrificial killing of a sacred king
carried out by Henry I, a man so pious he later founded one

also wrote two other books on witchcraft: The God of the
Witches (1931) and The Divine King in England (1954). she

of the biggest Abbeys in England. This secret conspiracy,
according to her, had killed many early English sovereigns,

died November 13, 1963, soon after her hundredth birthday.

through to James I in the early seventeenth century. Saint
Joan of Arc - whose Catholic piety and orthodoxy are

Murray's Witchcraft theories. Further information:
Witch-cult hypothesis

attested in numerous documents (such as the letter she
dictated threatening to lead a crusade against the

Hussites), and who was executed by the English for what even
the tribunal members later admitted were political reasons -

Murray's "Witch Cult in Western Europe" 1921, written during

was rewritten as a pagan martyr by Murray. Her portrait of
messianic (self-) sacrifices of these figures make for

a period she was unable to do field work in Egypt, laid out
the essential elements of her thesis that a common pattern

entertaining speculation, but they have not been taken
seriously as history even by her staunchest supporters,