In this section we want to explain to you in detail much about our beliefs and practices.
There are many traditions or paths within witchcraft, and here we just explain ours, if you want to see detail across many traditions then go to www.school-of-witchcraft.com, or if you want to get links to other witchcraft sites, find out a little about other traditional paths and projects, as well as access to many other witchcraft sites, then go to www.book-of-shadows.org
We are over simplifying history here, but to cut a long story short, we start by going back before most of recorded history. There were 4 types of witches, each associated with one of the four elements, water, fire, earth and air. Witchcraft grew from self taught skills, plant cures, skills developed by trial and error and some skills came from sources we no longer know of. It was never a dead belief system and grew by incorporating new skills and information, often renaming their god and absorbing and converting more.
The keepers of the spiritual flames had buildings, in order to tend the flames and protect it from the elements. The earth witches had stones and stone circles, and the water witches rivers, lakes, springs and wells.
The druids either took over or grew out of or merged with some of the earth witches, and early Christianity took over the fire witches and later many of the druids. This was more of a merger than many appreciate, as there is far more from the older roman religion and pagan religions around the known world at that time, than from the old Jewish religion, within what we today call Christianity, but that's another story.
We know little of the air witches, although within our tradition we believe that they were persecuted largely out of existence, and remaining ones joined the water witches as did some from both the earth and fire witches who wanted to keep a wider more tolerant and open perspective.
We believe that there was at least two groups of water witches, a German based group, that spread and we know a limited amount about and were last operating within the UK when the last canal freight was traveling about the UK. At that time we have recorded details of one of the ceremonies, and older documents that show part of their history. As far as we know this has now died out. There is some documentation available about this path.
The other pre Celtic British water witches, have been continued over the centuries, as secretly as it could, although we can show more occasions than they would have liked, through each century when they are reported in some book orother. Usually spotted by some keen eyed person. Up until the last few generations water witches was nearly completely country people, who kept no written records, and most could not write, but passed the knowledge on from generation to generation. The knowledge was adapted as it went, so what we have now is the sum total of the centuries, but with many missing details.
Because witchcraft was continued secretly, due to persecutions and their lives being in danger, a number of different traditions or variations developed. In recent years we have as far as we have been able, tracked down remaining traditions that formed the Water Witches and shared our knowledge, once again building a unified tradition. Where we find a divergent tradition of course we make no attempt to convert them to our path. The Traditional Craft Association is the organization that allows all the traditional groups to work together and we play an active part in this, their web site is at www.book-of-shadows.org.
Water we believe is special, it has many properties that we all appreciate, and many that marvel anyone looking at it, but we believe it has far grater importance than that and carries the equivalent of a hologram within it. While at first sight this may seem far fetched, we can prove some of what we say. Much of this is of course accepted as a part of homeopathy, and it can be proven that water changes when magnetized in different ways, and that information can be passed from one small drop of water into a larger mass.
We do not worship water in any form, but it is the element that we combine with others as a means of transporting spells and making magic happen. Of course just about every religion or belief system uses or recognizes some special properties or uses of water.
Ultimately what you will find out from us is that we have pieces of knowledge going back from before recorded history, and proofs of the ideas we tell you, and legends and beliefs that perhaps need one further step, once the proofs have been understood.
We don't know all the answers and have not attempted to make up bits to fill in the gaps however tempting this might be. If we don't know we tell you. Likewise we question ideas put forward by others as scientific facts that bear further investigation.
So to answer the original question, why are we called Water Witches, its because we treat water as having many magic properties, and as the most important element in all our rituals or ceremonies. We use many other items as you will discover and have absorbed knowledge from fire witches, earth witches and air witches, and many other areas including modern science. As water is present as vapor in air, as well as in rivers, lakes, oceans and your water tap or bottled water and all drinks, any spell dissipated through water will reach each and every person, plant, animal or situation.
This page is only the very beginning of the largest section of this web site, in this section we are going to try to explain many areas of our craft, and we hope that it will lead you to a better understanding of the path we have chosen. We have another web site for our members, so here we have kept it all fast moving and fairly light reading.
There are many other witchcraft and other similar traditions, here we are telling you just about ours, we do not suggest ours is the best or only route, and would always encourage people to understand as many paths as they can.