Glossary - exWitch Australia (formerly 'Born Again Pagan')

SCOT or SCOTT, Reginald (c.1538-1599)

English writer, member of parliament and country gentleman who spent most of his life in Kent. He wrote two books, the first treatise on hop-growing, published in 1574, and Discoverie of Witchcraft, published in 1584. This book drew on the works of Greek and Arabic writers as well as Europeans, and Scot also included the superstitions respecting Witchcraft that he had observed in courts of law in country districts where the prosecution of witches was increasing and in village life where the belief in witchcraft flourished in a variety of forms.

With an insight that was far in advance of his times, he set out to prove that the belief in witchcraft and Magick was rejected by both reason and religion and that spiritualistic manifestations were illusions conjured up by mental disturbances in the observers. He wrote with the philanthropic aim of stopping the cruel persecution that generally pursued the poor, the aged and the simple who were the people most likely to be accused of being witches. He laid the blame for the maintenance of the belief in witchcraft at the door of the Roman Catholic Church. While he attacked the writings of credulous writers like Jean Bodin (1530-96), author of Demonie des Sorciers (1580) and Jacobus Sprenger, joint author of Malleus Maleficarum (1494), he respected the views of others, like Cornelius Agrippa.

Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft was an exhaustive encyclopedia of contemporary beliefs about witchcraft, spirits, alchemy, Magick and sleight-of-hand. He was a victim to contemporary superstition only in his references to medicine and astrology.

He believed in the medicinal value of the unicorn's horn and thought that precious stones owed their origin to the influence of the heavenly bodies. Scot's book attracted widespread attention and for a time was influential on magistrates and members of the clergy, but the ancient be-lief in witches was not easily uprooted and many writers came to its rescue.

Following attacks by others on Discoverie of Witchcraft, James VI of Scotland repeated the attempt in his Daemonologie (1597), in which he described Scot's opinions as 'damnable'. On his accession to the English throne, James went a step further and ordered all copies of Discoverie of Witchcraft to be burnt.

Shakespeare drew on Scot's book hints for his picture of the witches in Macbeth, and Thomas Middleton drew on it for his play Witch.

PLEASE NOTE:
One of the major problems with 'defining' Paganism and/or its beliefs and practices is that it is an 'organic' movement, in that it is undergoing constant change and re-evaluation from within, and as such any 'one-size-fits-all' approach to understanding Paganism will be found wanting.

Due to the very 'organic' nature of Paganism, and the many differing Paths and Traditions within it, in many cases no one definition may be universally accepted by all Pagans. Therefore, where such cases of possible conflicting and/or contradictory meanings of certain terms occur I have endevoured to give not only the generally accepted meaning, but also any major 'variations' in belief and/or practice.

Christians who believe this difference in meaning of certain key terms, beliefs and practices to be unique to Paganism need to remember that such conflicts also arise within the Body of Christ - the Church. Take for instance the differing practices amongst Christians concerning Baptism and the different attitudes towards women in the clergy.

- Jean-Luc