An archeologist before there were any.  The point of origin for the idea that witches gather in covens. The mother of all subsequent covens, in a way. The first woman to unwrap a mummy. Author of ''The Witch-Cult in Western Europe''. Criticized for her cognitive leaps, discredited for the way she pieced through sources choosing what resonated, and for the way that, over time, the ellipses in some of her quotes go missing. A Feminist who marched for the vote and ardently supported women scholars and archeologists out in the field. A witch who cursed a peer in front of witnesses and became president of the Folklore Society when she was in her 90s. A person of fierce connection to the past, who sketched into mainstream modern thought the idea that pre-christians had a system of worship and practice that was joyful, tied to a goddess, and deeply invested in the earth and animals...

This episode is dedicated to that smart as a whip, fairy godmother witch, tomb-whisperer and wildly prolific and problematic author, Margaret Alice Murray. 

The Life of Margaret Alice Murray: A Woman's Work in Archaeology. Kathleen Sheppard, Lexington Books, Toronto, 2013.

The Witch Cult in Western Europe: A Study in Anthropology. Margaret Alice Murray, 1921.

Murray, M A (1963). The Genesis of Religion. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

https://www.britannica.com/place/Abydos-ancient-city-Egypt#ref83857

Palgrave Advances in Witchcraft Historiography

https://www.lonelyplanet.com/egypt/abydos/attractions/osireion/a/poi-sig/1574759/1330439

https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=KWYSAAAAQBAJ&pg=GBS.PA196

https://www.ancient-origins.net/history-famous-people/margaret-murray-mother-egyptology-grandmother-wicca-or-fairy-godmother-007832

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Murray#cite_note-FOOTNOTEWinick2015565-237

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/xye9yk/the-forgotten-egyptologist-and-first-wave-feminist-who-invented-wicca

https://www.ai-journal.com/articles/10.5334/ai.1608/

The Mistake of Dismissing Margaret Murray and the Origins of Wicca

http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/egyptabydoss.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mishnah

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gematria

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osiris#:~:text=The%20ritual%20reenactment%20of%20Osiris's,been%20drowned%20in%20the%20Nile

https://www.gaia.com/article/ancient-egypt-and-freemasonry

https://www.ai-journal.com/articles/10.5334/ai.1608/

https://english.alarabiya.net/en/features/2017/04/11/How-Egypt-was-Christian-before-the-birth-of-Christ

Word Made Number Made Building

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/591897

About Missing Witches

Amy Torok and Risa Dickens produce the Missing Witches Podcast. We do every aspect from research to recording, it is a DIY labour of love and craft. Missing Witches is entirely member-supported, and getting to know the members of our Coven has been the most fun, electrifying, unexpectedly radical part of the project. 

These days the Missing Witches Coven gathers in our private, online coven circle to offer each other collaborative courses in ritual, weaving, divination, and more; we organize writing groups and witchy book clubs; and we gather on the Full and New Moon from all over the world. 

Our coven includes solitary practitioners, community leaders, techno pagans, crones, baby witches, neuroqueers, and folks who hug trees and have just been looking for their people. 

Our coven is trans-inclusive, anti-racist, feminist, pro-science, anti-ableist, and full of love.

If that sounds like your people, come find out more. Please know that we've been missing YOU. 

https://www.missingwitches.com/join-the-coven/