The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft [Paperback]

This is a veyr detailed and informative history. However the paperback edition has miniscule print on low grade paper, so much so that it is hard to read for a long period of time. I would reccomend getting the hardback. The work itself is great and it's worth paying the extra to be able to read it without needing aspirin on standby.

This book was a very enjoyable read, partly for the quality of the writing style, partly for the way it catalogues so many interesting people, events and ideas, and partly for the thrill of the hunt as I tracked down and nailed mistake after mistake.
In a work of this scope a few factual errors are to be expected, but the sheer number of these errors, and the immensity of some of his misrepresentations is staggering, especially from someone who claims to be unbiased, and to have not left any significant silences.
Hutton's scholarly yet entertaining tone has totally starstruck a generation of pagans who previously had seen nothing better than Llewellyn's books (note all the 5-star reviews), however his scholarship is full of big, black, holes.

The main thrust of the book is to destroy any possibility of any kind of history or continuity to pre-Gardnerian "Wicca" or witchcraft. This is fine up to a point, but in his anti-Murray-ist zeal he goes so far as to conclude that not one single practitioner of any kind of pagan religion was persecuted in Europe during the time of the witch trials (1400-1700).
To support this extreme claim he employs character assassination against such people as Gardner and Leland (supported on a series of shaky or downright wrong information), qoutes other authors very selectively or out of context, paints quite unrealistic pictures of historical folk-magic (for instance, describing English cunning folk as isolated and having little or no contact with each other, and getting all their skills by mail order from London, when contemporary accounts describe that in some areas there were as many cunning-folk as parishioners).
He criticises the eminent scholar and historian Carlo Ginzburg (certainly a more rigorous scholar than Hutton) of being Murray-ist, but seems to have either not read, or somehow not understood Ginzburg's books which he has quoted from. He even at one point gives a list of authors who supposedly agree with him that no condemned "witches" held pagan religious beliefs - however if you actually read these authors, you will find that only one or two of them make any such claim, and in fact about half of them seem to take quite the opposite view, suggesting all kinds of connections with pre-christian religion (and giving lots of evidence in support).
Hutton doesn't even attempt to address the wealth of previous work that has gone into understanding the pre-christian religions of Europe and their continuation through folk-lore and custom. Folklorists like Jacob Grimm may have written some years ago when different academic approaches were in vogue, but this doesn't give Hutton license to entirely ignore their seminal works. There is an enormously different picture to be painted if you read just the authors Hutton has cited, let alone if you expand into wider areas such as folklore and legislation.
I really did enjoy reading this book, and I see it offering a good starting point for other better-prepared researchers, providing as it does such a nice catalogue of people and ideas (also, research is more fun when you have a contentious point or two to argue over). However as a book to be read and believed by Wiccans and pagans it is a tragedy. Instead of tracing the development of modern Wicca and witchcraft in an honest light, he rather stamps on these thin tenuous roots and casts a blackening smokescreen across what is already a dim enough area of history.
I don't really understand how or why he would get it so wrong. Is it really just plain sloppiness, or does he have some sinister agenda? :) But then, the world of witchcraft is a strange place, full of strange people. Perhaps Hutton is no less strange than some of the people and events he writes about.

(...)

First, what this book is:

...a long, exhaustive and highly engaging look at the social changes in England during the Romantic era, their influence on poetry and the interpretation of history, and how these attitudes, as well as the influence of secret societies like the Golden Dawn and Freemasons, contributed to the notion of witchcraft as an ancient fertility cult, and why and how this notion was brought to the forefront when, in 1954, a British civil servant claimed he had discovered a survival of this cult in New Forest, and published what were suposedly its inner secrets.

What this book is not:

...an attack on the credibility and intentions of Wicca's founders by a disgruntled accedemic hell-bent on "exposing" Wicca as a religious and historical farce within the context of an accedemic study.

"Triumph of the Moon" represents to date, the only book of its caliber to take an in depth look at the history of pagan witchcraft not only from a historical point of view, but from a sociological and literary one as well. What we find when all is said and done is a book that will strengthen and solidfy the Wiccan beliefs of some, as it finally gives them a complete and coherrent historical account of their beliefs not intended to defame them, but to reveal Wicca as a religion born of poetry, literature and mysticism. For others, it will signal a death nill, as an (almost) irrefutable refutation of the, now discredited, notions of antiquity, ancient matriarchy, and survival("the burning times") that many fundementalist Wiccans are still trying to sell to the public, and which serves as a lure for many new adherents.

As a historical textbook, it's no less riveting. No other book so accurately, and with such detail, examines and interprets the goings-on of the occult community prior to, and during Wicca's compilation in the 1950's. The sheer cast of characters alone is staggering. (...)

If there is a flaw however, it is that Hutton is too nice. The only author who he genuinely downplays and criticizes is Margaret Murray. And while he is quick to point out the errors and misrepresentations made by Wiccas founders(Gardner, Valiente) and the authors who contributed to it's source material(Graves, Frazer), he most often does this while attempting to isolate and play up their better points and/or best intentions. Which brings up another potential flaw, that he is too kind to modern pagans as well. In the chapter "Coming of Age" he describes Wicca as a religion rapidly maturing, and its adherents increasingly tending to disregard Gardner's story, the Murray thesis, and the erroneous myth of the burning times. Perhaps this is true in England, but in America, the inqueries made in the 90's into both pagan Wicca and its historical claims, and the dissapointing (to believers) conclusions made by these inqueries, have only served to divide serious Wiccans into bitter and opposing camps, with newcomers being totally clueless and their Wicca being almost entirely self-styled from fluffy Llewelyn books. Such individuals, sadly, make up the bulk of people calling themselves "Wiccan" at any given time these days. He also fails to mention most Wiccans' (both camps) continuing hatred of the traditional, fairy tale representation of the witch, denouncing this image as a misrepresentation of "true" witchcraft. I would argue that this image is an intergral aspect of the folklore upon which Wicca is based on, and should be reverred and cherished as yet another level of the witch's mystique. Most modern wiches are oblivious to this fact. My children are fed a steady diet of veggie burgers and the brothers Grimm, and I am pleased to inform you that they most assuredly believe in witches.

Perhaps Hutton is working a little revisionist history of his own, bending the truth of Wicca's current state to give an example of how Wicca COULD redeem itself if it wanted to, and exemplifying a potential path that Wicca, and neo-paganism might take in it's long, hard road to accedemic and religious credibility. If this is his intention, then he proves to be Grave's and Murray's true heir in the developement of neo-paganism, using a bit of deception with the best intention of inspiring those who read it to do something new and positive. But as a testement to paganism's, indeed growing, maturity, this time the deception is a conscious one, serves a specific and useful purpose, and everyone is in on it.

Blessed Be. Yes, this review was written by a Wiccan.

note: as I stated, the book's few flaws are open to interpretation, and don't necessarily amount to factual errors, or at least they don't ammount to factual errors of the type Wiccans are famous for spouting, and for what it's worth, that is, a historical overview of the developement of Wicca and neo-paganism, you will not find a finer book available, therefore it still gets a perfect five stars.