Ritual Nudity

Ritual nudity is common today as well as in the ancient world. Both the Greeks and the Romans favored it, as did the naked wise men of India-the Gymnosophists. According to Pliny, ancient British women performed magickal rituals naked, as did ancient Persian women. Charles Godfrey Leland states that the daughters of the ancient Persian magi worshiped the sun as it rose by waving freshly picked verbena (one of the seven most potent plants in magick). In Aradia, Gospel of the Witches of Italy, Leland says that "these Persian priestesses were naked while they thus worshipped, nudity being a symbol of truth and sincerity." Many ancient Jewish prophets also worked in the nude. The Old Testament states (1 Samuel 20:23-24): "And the spirit of God was upon him also, and he went on and prophesied, until he came to Naioth in Ramah. And he stripped off his clothes also, and prophesied before Samuel in like manner, and lay down naked all that day and all that night. Wherefore they say, Is Saul also among the prophets?"

Leland relates Aradia, goddess of the witches, speaking to her cohorts: "And as the sign that ye are truly free, Ye shall be naked in your rites, both men and women also." This exhortation is echoed in modern Wicca in the rite of "Drawing Down the Moon."

Many early illustrations of witches and sabbats portray nude witches, Albrecht Dürer's drawing of a witch riding on a goat to the Walpurgisnacht depicts the witch naked, as does his The Witch and The Four Witches (1491). Similar is Hans Baldung Grun's Witches Concocting Flying Ointment before the Sabbat (1514). Grun did several illustrations showing naked witches, such as Witches at Work, The Consecration of the Fork, and Witches Sabbat. The Douce Collection, Bodleian Library, Oxford, includes an illustration of The Witches Sabbat on the Brocken with several of the participants naked. Practically all of Goya's paintings of witches show them unclothed, Two Witches Flying on a Broom is an example. In the 1610 (Paris) edition of Pierre de Lancre's Tableau de l'inconstance des mauvais anges, a large gathering of witches is shown with a circle of dancing nudes in one part and a naked mother handing her likewise naked child to the Horned God in another part, this engraved by Ziarnko. Johannes Geiler von Keiserperg's Die Emeis (1517) depicts a naked Assembly of Witches. An ornamentation on the right hand voussoir of the western doorway of Lyons Cathedral (14^th century) shows a witch riding on the back of a goat naked.

In modern witchcraft, Wiccans are divided. Most in Europe seem to follow the original tradition and favor ritual nudity, while in the United States more prefer to be clothed. A number of traditions, such as Garderian, prefer ritual nudity, while others leave it up to the individual covens.

Bibliography:
Buckland, Raymond: Witchcraft from the Inside. 1995.
de Givry, Grillot: A Pictorial Anthology of Witchcraft, Magic and Alchemy. 1931.