Scottish Witchcraft: The History and Magic of the Picts
Raymond Buckland

So. Where do I start?

Here’s the premise: Wicca, an Olde and Anciente religion of witchcraft has existed through time and many cultures. There is but one religion of witchcraft, but many expressions of that religion can be found depending on the local flavour. Gardner’s flavour is the best known, of course (quintessentially English), and relies heavily on coven practice, as do most other traditions. Not so the Scots. They, of course, have to be different.

Oh yes, but it’s not the Scots. It’s the Picts. Although the book’s called Scottish Witchcraft and Magic…But the tradition is called PectiWita…And doesn’t really involve anything that’s recognisably Pictish at all… Hmm.

You might be surprised to find that I have a few quibbles with this book, and not just on the historical points. I’ve often seen it said that PectiWita is just ‘Wicca with bits of Scottish folklore thrown in.’ But I’d say while I agree it’s something with Scottish folklore thrown in, it’s not Wicca. It’s not even neoWicca, McWicca, or whatever else you might call it. It’s more a neopagan, Wiccanesque/Llewellyn-influenced idea of four quarters, classical elements…blah blah blah. And to be honest, it’s a smattering of lore thrown in at best.

That aside, one of my biggest quibbles is the whole Pictish issue. If you’re going to synthesise, create, reconstruct, introduce, pass on…whatever you call it…a tradition…and present it to an audience, decide on what culture you’re going to focus on. Don’t call it Pictish and then throw in Gaelic, Norse, Gypsy and neopagan influences without at least mentioning why this might be so. It’s confusing! And in places where history was dealt with, it was often just plain wrong - Pictish was not a Goidelic language as stated in the book, for a start.

There could have been a real opportunity to present something that was vaguely authentic or different at least: either a form of Wicca incorporating Pictish elements in practice, or an attempt at presenting a Scottish tradition of witchcraft from the lore available. It’s not like he didn’t have the resources to hand, because he references the majority of books from which it could be done - The Silver Bough, Carmina Gadelica, John Gregorson Campbell’s works. But while they’re referenced to (presumably) supply some authenticity in some parts, some important bits are conveniently and blithely ignored - so while yes, they are a wealth of information on lore and practice of magic as he says, no, they don’t say that all witches were regarded as being good as he also maintains.

More importantly, in most cases the examples of lore he cites weren’t regarded as ‘witchcraft’ at all. On the whole the tradition he presents seems superficial and lacking in any depth whatsoever - little explanation is given as to why things are done in the way they are, and in places he seems to contradict himself - witches don’t set out to harm and stick to the Rede, but then again elsewhere he describes the belief that witches could and frequently did steal milk from their neighbours, and so on.

I could go on. And on. But to sum it all up, my overall feeling about this book would be: The mind boggles. It really does. In so many different ways.

Guises of the Morrigan
Sorita D'Este and David Rankin

I confess, I’m more impressed by this than I thought I would be. The title gives a big hint at what it's about, so there's probably no need to introduce what it's all about and so forth, so instead I'll head straight for my first thoughts and impressions about it.

On the one hand, in spite of the fact that I have some fairly fundamental disagreements with the book, it also gave me a lot of food for thought. On the other hand, while I can get past most of the bits I disagree with, the approach - that all the goddesses they list are just guises of one 'great goddess' - is a fairly fundamental problem I find with the book. For a soft polytheist I guess it’s a useful approach, but to my mind there should at least have been some discussion of how the pre-Christian Irish viewed (or may have viewed) divinity instead of blithely assuming, or perhaps inferring, that that’s how it was.

To me there is a difference between motifs - elements of a deity or occurrences in tales that can be commonly found within a culture, like 'sovereignty goddesses' - and genuine relationships between two deities or characters that are likely to suggest that they were counterparts and so on. A lot of what they discussed - like the horse goddesses Macha, Epona and Rhiannon being a ‘guise’ of the Morrigan because Macha is linked with her in Irish literature is, to me, simply a motif found in Celtic belief that can be seen to be expressed in the three goddesses. This does not automatically mean they’re all guises of the Morrigan…Aside from the fact that she's so popular in modern pagan paths, why choose the Morrigan? Why not single out another goddess that falls under this umbrella?

And I suppose that leads to another problem I had with the book: it seemed to deal with the material in a somewhat superficial and repetitive manner, with the individual entries on the various goddesses they look at being basically verbatim accounts of what the authors have already written in previous chapters. On the one hand that’s probably a good thing because most people don’t want to be going round in endless circles about the minutiae of detail, but I’m a minutiae kind of gal and I would have liked to have seen a little more expansion on the themes they dealt with.

I was also a little wary of the bits that said “sources say…” and so forth, because ’sources’ to me implies primary sources, yet a few of the references they gave were not primary sources at all, far from it (Peter Beresford Ellis being one example, not a source I’d trust). But still, the chapter on the Cailleach was interesting because it gave some good pointers in hunting up some tales mentioning her regenerative aspects from winter hag to summer maiden that I haven’t been able to find. The appendix also gave some good references I’d like to hunt up, so all in all in spite of my grievances I wasn’t all that disappointed with the book at all. But much of the content I wouldn't necessarily associate with the Morrigan per se...I can see where they're coming from. But ultimately my quibbles on their opinions err on the side of outright disagreement...

Better than I expected, but ultimately not to my taste, and from a CR point of view there are far better books out there than this one. A later edit: You wouldn't be wasting your money completely, but given the slightly iffy references (I followed some of them up and they didn't refer to anything relevant discussed in the book), and occasionally dodgy scholarship, I wouldn't recommend it as a good resource.