Porter of Hellgate: The Historical Reality of the Witches of Macbeth with Kadmus

The witches of Shakespeare’s play Macbeth have been understood to be  such a potent force that the play itself has been thought to be cursed  since its earliest performances. Actors have refused to appear in it,  people have died under tragic circumstances, and the very name of the  play itself is considered unspeakable in most theaters. Who or what  were, or are, these witches and what type of force did Shakespeare tap  into in his play?   

Answering this question will involve diving into the actual witch trials  during which a conspiracy to kill King James I and his wife with magic  was supposedly uncovered, a study of King James’ Daemonologie which was  written in response to his experience presiding over those same witch  trails as well as the anti-witchcraft laws he crafted (laws which  governed the witch trials in Salem itself), as well as other historical  and literary sources. Not only will we look at the actual and supposed  witches James encountered and from which Shakespeare drew, but also look  at Shakespeare’s wider sources such as Holinshed’s Chronicles of  England, Scotland, and Ireland from which the story of Macbeth meeting  three “weird sisters” largely derives.   

In a larger sense, thinking about the nature of Shakespeare’s witches  will require thinking about Shakespeare’s use of the goddess Hecate, the  connection between Shakespeare’s central mythological framework and the  myth of Venus and Adonis, and the conflict between Protestantism and  Catholicism - with their distinct views of female power. Ultimately,  there is a real occult power in this play and this class will attempt to  lay the groundwork for practitioners to access that power for  themselves.

This is a 90-120 minute, foundational level lecture.

About the Presenter:

Kadmus is a practicing ceremonial magician, pagan, and professor of  philosophy at the college level. He recently published the book "True to  the Earth: Pagan Political Theology" through Gods and Radicals Press.  This will be his fourth-year teaching classes for the Salem Witchcraft  and Folklore Festival. Most recently Kadmus taught two classes on  Teiresias and Medea for The Cauldron Black Mighty Dead series, gave a  keynote address entitled “Towards a High Pagan Astrology” at the  AstroMagia conference on astrological magic, and has a paper in the  upcoming fifth edition of the Conjure Codex entitled "Every Nekuomanteia  is a Katabasis: Ancient Insights for Contemporary Goetic Practice".