MURRAY, Margaret Alice.

£1,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

The God of the Witches. First edition, inscribed by the author on the half-title, "Catriona Mackintosh, with kind regards from M A Murray". Mackintosh was a fellow anthropologist; she presented a paper entitled "Hebridean Music and pre-Christian myths and legends in song" at the British Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Dundee, 30 August to 6 September 1939.Alongside Murray's 1921 The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, this is a foundational text for modern Western paganism and develops Murray's theory of an ancient witch-cult who worshipped the figure of a Horned God. Murray uses the work to expand upon her article about the witch-cult published in The Listener in 1929. There, she claimed that the late Palaeolithic cave-drawing known as the Sorcerer, found at Trois-Frères in 1914, is the earliest depiction of this god; in this work she cites it as "the earliest known representation of a deity" (p. 13). While Murray's academic theories are now largely disputed, their depiction of a female-led religion had a monumental influence on both the historical understanding and contemporary practice of witchcraft.Murray was a forceful person. "Her strength of character was shown in her success in the hitherto entirely male world of professional Egyptologists. She was determined to do whatever she could to improve the conditions of women as shown in her time at University College by her undemonstrative but unfailing support for her female colleagues and pupils. Further

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