Conclusion: Old Ways, New Directions: Evaluating Witchcraft from its Earliest Beginnings to its Future Potentialities

'The Old Religion of the past is growing and changing into the New Religion of the future. It will be a happy, constructive religion, and what we now call magic will be a part of it. It will be involved in communication with Mother Earth and with the changing seasons and the elements of life. It will take its stand against greed, cruelty and social injustice. It will help every man to be his own High Priest and every woman to be her own High Priestess. It will be part of the Aquarian Age.'

From the Birth-Place of All Sorceries to East of Midgard, from Pagan Goddesses to anti-Christian Satanists from South of Heaven we have traced the trajectory of the Witch across the European imagination. As Celtic Twilight turned to night and Golden Dawn brightened into day we have charted the emergence of the modern religion of Witchcraft as a Craft of Invention born out of the imagination of one man, the Wicca man, Gerald Gardner. We have seen how that idea jumped Out of the Cauldron and landed in the Fire, a fire both of enthusiasm and antagonism, and that once out of Gardner’s cauldron grew and mutated into new forms. Now this Society of Witches has been studied and understood, we have seen how and why they call down the moon and how and why they draw the magic circle. These Old Ways, of religious engagement with the natural world, have met with new ways, of gender equality and a religion called Witchcraft, to move in New Directions.