Just How “Silent” Should a Witch Be?
by Jason Mankey
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the Witchcraft related tenet “to keep silent.” It’s a rule (or sugges-
tion) I have a lot of problems with from time to time. Part of that’s because I’m an extremely publ ic Pagan. I
write books, this blog, go to festivals and teach, and I do all of this under my own name. That I’m a practicing
Witch is certainly a part of my life I’m not quiet about, and probably never will be. It’s far too late to put the
genie back in the bottle, and people who are close to me most likely suffer guilt by association. My public prac-
tice has most likely outed my wife to anyone who cares.
“Silence” in just about every aspect of early Modern Witchcraft made a lot of sense. People could lose
children and jobs due to involvement in the Craft (a situation that has improved, but probably still happens
to some degree), and the instruction “to keep silent” was most certainly about keeping the identities of early
Witches a secret. Not every Witch “kept silent,” obviously Gerald Gardner was extremely loud about his prac-
tice, as was Robert Cochrane, and “Witch shouting” was taken to an entirely different level less than ten years
later by Alex Sanders and Sybil Leek.
“The Madonna & Sleeping Child With John the Baptist” by Annibale
Carracci. From Wikimedia.
Those who could afford to share their
Craft were (mostly) doing Modern Witchcraft a
favor, so don’t take my comments as disparaging
ones. Certainly some of Gerald and Alex’s pub-
licity seeking was ill-advised, and had disastrous
consequences for some involved, but mostly it
probably turned out OK. A lot of us are here to-
day because they were loud and refused to keep
silent.
Pagan Living Magazine Litha 2017
25