Urban Folklore

A Joint Conference of The Folklore Society and the School of Welsh

University of Cardiff, 19-21 April 2013

The urban folklore of Otherworldly horse mane braiding, and the persistence of superstition
regarding witch knots in horses manes, from Shakespeare to Spiritual Warfare.

Introduction

This paper discusses how centuries old folkloristic beliefs about Elf Knots or Witch
knots in horses manes are extremely enduring, but are changing in their contemporary
British context due to various powerful forces. Logic and evidence point to these knots being
the result of minimum horse management, and particular weather conditions. However
ignorance, the superstitious fear of supernatural powers, fear of the other, and the broken
telephone /Chinese whispers effect of oral transmission of facts, are key propagators of
the folklore today, just as they were hundreds of years ago. The urban myth has changed over
the centuries, from citing fairies and witches as the mysterious knotters, to thieves, gypsies,
and then Pagans. Moreover the plaiting folklore has been most recently linked in press to a
more sinister urban folklore of Satanic horse ripping, which seem to originate in deliberate
spiritual warfare waged on esoteric new religious movements by fundamentalist Christians.
Such provocative fundamentalisms are linked to deeply held beliefs, and in these instances to
lucrative publishing and therapy businesses, which may help to perpetuate folklore. In
preparing for this conference what initially seemed to be a straightforward talk on urban
folklore amongst horse owners, from a fairly unique position of authority and expertise, soon
became a much longer odyssey into areas beyond the limits of my expertise or the time I had
allotted to producing this paper, thus I present this in first person as a report of research in
progress.

The conception of this paper.

The paper was conceived when I answered a query on the Pagan Federations council e-list in
November 2012. The Pagan Federation is a UK based organization promoting awareness and
acceptance of Paganism. Its council yahoo group is a means of communication and support
for its volunteers which is usually used for facilitating the administration of a large voluntary
organisation. Occasionally a volunteer posts a query that they have not been able to answer.

This particular query was whether anyone knew of any connection between Paganism and
horse mane braiding. The querant had been contacted by press in her area of Scotland after
someone reported their horse to have been anonymously braided overnight. The journalist
was seeking corroboration of the contemporary urban folklore that modern Pagan witches
secretly braided horses manes for an unspecified form of magic or worship. This folklore had
been growing and appeared in various newspaper articles.

There was also a subtext to the query in that previous local press reports in Scotland had
mentioned witches when reporting an attack on a horse, although the injury turned out to
have inflicted as part of a long term grudge by someone known to the owner, with no occult
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links, and this was not subsequently reported. This kind of journalism was not unusual, the
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worst recent case of this happened in January 2012 when the Sun lifted multiple photographs

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of Britains first tax-rated wise women from their professional website without permission,
and interspersed their photos with reportage of the horrific killing and mutilation of Eric the
Cornish stallion in an article headed Cornwalls (sic) -fear-after-ritual-slaughter-of-horses.1

The entire council of the Pagan Federation, drawn from people of all ages, of all pagan paths,
and across the British Isles (including some representatives from Pagan Federation
International), had never heard of anything linking any form of Paganism to the braiding of
horses manes. This information was given back to the Scottish journalist, and no article
ensued, perhaps because there was not enough of a sensation or story.

I have been around horses for fourty years, and witches for twenty-five. I love folklore,
teach cognitive psychology, and research contemporary Paganism. I was intrigued as various
aspects of the query seemed to jump out at me. I answered the email with my thoughts, and
when shortly afterwards the Folklore Societys call for papers was announced I decided to
offer a paper on the subject from this fairly unique vantage point, although folklore is not my
academic area of expertise.

Thoughts from the stable yard

My first thought was that this modern urban folklore could be a survivor of much earlier folk
lore regarding witches, horses and fairies, which were due to superstitious understandings of
natural events, and folk beliefs. Story telling recycles the best stories, and reservoirs of
knowledge about folk lore and folk magic, imaginary or practiced, are the bedrock of much
fantasy literature and fantasy and sci-fi TV and film. Stories of witches using knot magic over
the centuries may have leant a certain coherence to the folklore, as may have pictures of
witches ladders found in old houses, and the wide practice of cord magic, past and present.

Horses were thought to get witch knots in their manes if they had been secretly ridden by
witches. If hag ridden at night the animals were found exhausted in the morning, lathered
in sweat in their stables. Thus hag stones, round stones with holes in them, were hung by
the door as an amulet to deter witches. Such horses were also thought to have possibly been
ridden by fairies, thus the knots are also called Elf Locks, and iron horse shoes were hung
on the stable to deter the tiny riders who were believed to fear iron.

It is possible that hag ridden horses had simply been borrowed without permission for a joy
ride, or a journey, possibly returning with tangled manes that had been hung onto while
galloping, or possibly plaited to add to a supernatural explanation for an exhausted horse.
Borrowing still happens occasionally today, though it may have been more common when
the massed populace had more knowledge of horses.

There is also the long held belief in earlier times that witches malefica was responsible for
all kinds of ill health and death in humans and livestock. In modern western society we
attribute these illnesses to natural causes, and there is one for night sweats in horses.

The horse has evolved as a fleet, nomadic, herbivore with an extremely long digestive tract,
which benefits from mobility and frequent light grazing; and domestication has not been kind
to it. As well as sweating when they are too hot, or unwell, a horse will sweat if it has colic,
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It was co-incidental that the death occurred in Cornwall, where the wise-women live, but such press coverage
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of Britains first state recognised professional witches could be perceived as prejudice and persecution, and
legal advice was sought though no action has yet been taken.

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which is quite common, can be mild, but which can also kill a horse within hours. Irregular
feeding, too much food or water before or after exercise, indigestion, stress, lack of water,
and confinement to stables, are known causes of colic, and all would have been endured by
stabled working horses, particularly those kept in tight stalls in limited space in a town.
Horses that are kept outdoors in fields in more rural areas can also get colic from intestinal
blockage due to eating soil when grass is sparse, lack of water, and worms form an
overgrazed and under maintained pasture. Occurrence of colic also increases with a lack of
adequate roughage, which may have been a problem for people for whom feeding their
family was struggle as well as feeding a working horse. Such problems are seen today by
charities that deal with working horses and donkeys in the third world. Modern horse
management recommends daily exercise and turnout, with ad hoc feeding of specific food to
prevent colic and promote well-being. Colic is still a problem for horse owners, but no one
attributes it to supernatural entities.

Horses will also thrash around their stables panicking if they get cast, i.e. stuck against the
wall of the stable, and may be able to right themselves, but sometimes need to be hoisted
back onto their feet with ropes, so banked edges to beds are recommend in loose boxes today.

Methodology

I started looking for themes and motifs in this modern urban folklore by searching the
internet for material on horse mane braiding. I found a clutch of newspaper articles from the
United Kingdom, some referring to earlier articles starting in the mid 2000s but with the
majority on the net published during the last five years. I also looked at Horsewatch sites and
equestrian forums. These all referred to reported incidents of mane braiding across Britain,
with some cross references. Many articles had internet commentary columns that offered a
rich source of primary data of discussions of the braids. Newspaper reports were
sensationalist, shallow and repeated the same individual stories. Only one excellent article in
the Fortean Times gave an overview of older mane braiding lore combined with good
reportage of contemporary reports, and other legends of supernatural horse braiders; the Lutin
in France, the Sasquatch in Canada, and the Duende in South America (Harpur 2010).

Findings

Themes and motifs could be identified within the modern folklore. All the braiding had been
done by unknown hands at night. Even difficult horses had been braided on terrible nights,
perplexing owners as to how this could have happened. The braiders were never apprehended
except for a few cases of children playing with ponies, with corroboration from
commentators who admitted to braiding /riding other peoples horses as children. Today the
braids are never said to be done by fairies. Fairies are apparently no longer agents of
mischief; perhaps they have fully become the stately guardians of the otherworld as seen in
Tolkienic literature, or in the massed artworks of the festival scene; perhaps they are
generally no longer believed to exist other than in literature and film.

A new agent of mischief had arisen in the contemporary folklore, and braids were widely
attributed to thieves. They were seen to be markers of a potential target. Urban myths
abounded about the horse braided then stolen, and/or found wandering at a docks, Pikeys
were involved, and sometimes men with Irish accents. However the thief motif seems to be
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dying out due to the spread of information across the internet, particularly from Horse
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watch, and via the police. Where the police had originally been warning owners to beware

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of thieves if their hose was found plaited they had now stopped doing so, for the very obvious
reason that not one braided horse had been stolen, and stolen horses had not been braided.
The excellent practical advice of Horsewatch, that may have stemmed recognising the
transmission of this folklore, was that owners should only report an incident if they had an
incident number for a real occurrence. This advice came amongst Horsewatchs daily
business of reporting long lists of stolen equine goods, from the scruffy rug off a horses back
to cars and trailers, and of course horses themselves. This motif was clearly drawn from a
logical fear of theft, which occurs regularly as equine equipment is highly expensive and left
in unguarded rural stables. A horse fetches a good meat price and can be quickly transported
to an abattoir, and the emotive thought of this grisly end to ones pet is likely to fuel the
propogation of such rumour.

The police role in the story telling was important as they added veracity and authenticity to
the folklore by reporting possible motives for plaiting, and originally warned owners to
beware of theft. However, as the theft motif died away plaits continued to be found and
another explanation became current, that there was a Pagan motive to the plaits. White
witches crept up to horses in the night to plait their manes for unspecified acts of magic and
worship. It is not clear to me exactly when or where these motif first emerged, or whether it
is a conflation of older lore with a growing awareness of modern Pagan Witchcraft, but it was
not universal in the reports, and until the Pagan Federation was contacted at the end of 2012
there does not seem to have been much corroboration sought from bona fide Pagans, despite
comments after most articles from people who were witches or knew one, saying that this had
no part in modern Paganism.

There may be a moment when this particular folklore took flight, in 2009, when Police
officers were contacted by aWarlock. The Bridport News stated on 3rd of December 2009
that they had been good advice from an unnamed warlock that plaiting was done by witches.
This travelled rapidly round the press in local papers, tabloids and broadsheets until on 23rd
January 2010 the Brighton Argus filled out the folklore with words from a/the warlocks
mouth:

Officers in Dorset have been contacted by a warlock, or male witch, who claimed the plaits
are used in rituals by followers of knot magick, also known as cord magick. But Kevin
Carlyon, the Hastings based, self proclaimed High Priest of Witches, told The Argus some
plaits or knots could be evidence of devil-worship or black magic. He said mostly the practice
by white witches is harmless and intended for the witch to benefit from the horses natural
power or as a gift or tribute if they see horses as sacred animals. Mr Carlyon said plaiting has
also been known to precede ritual mutilation of horses in black magic. Mr Carlyon said: It
still goes on unfortunately. If it is normal plaiting, like a girls hair, that is beneficial
witchcraft. With more complex, more tightly knotted plaits, youre looking down the darker
side. It is like they are marking the horse to say, this is our chosen one. PC Peter Child said
the possibility of witchcraft has not previously been considered as part of the Sussex
Police investigation.

The word Warlock is never used in modern witchcraft as it believed to mean oath breaker,
and modern witches are both male and female with no separate nomenclature. If initiates of
esoteric Wicca they are known as Priests or Priestesses, so any use of the word Warlock is
highly suspect and derives from press or police ignorance, or a theatrical Warlock who is
not part of any known modern Pagan witchcraft. Any of these was possible, as the Warlock in
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question had been finally named Kevin Carlyon, a notorious self publicist, to whom a thread
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on the forums of the Fortean Times had been devoted discussing the extent and unreliability

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of his stories. He is the source of both mirth and despair within the Pagan community because
of publicity stunts such as this press report, which was widely replicated, and led to a rapid
acceptance of the Pagan hypothesis for the plaits.

Photographs of worried horse owners, and statements that they are members of riding clubs
are also added to press accounts as a form of veracity, though they have no relevance to the
Pagan plaiting hypothesis, whilst the police and journalists continued to give authority to the
folklore. In 2012 Inspector 1765 Erika Green of Derbyshire Horse watch quoted the original
2009 Bridport times article almost verbatim, with no references to it, just its information.

However, in all this no reporter or police officer seems to have actually looked at the plaits,
photographed them, or consulted horse experts, horse forums, or pagan experts (other than
Kevin). I found all these heavily sensationalist press reports, with scared and adamant horse
owners, before I found photos of the braids on forums. I had been expecting to see real
plaits, but what I saw were long, tangled, unkempt manes with self formed dreadlocks. I
had undone knots like that on my own ponies when they were kept outdoors, but never on
stabled competition horses that are well groomed, with trimmed manes

Wind knots not Witch knots

Looking at the witch knots I came to the conclusion that these were not braids at all. A
horses mane and tail are its protection against flies, which bring annoyance and disease.
Even when stabled they quickly get a miasma of grease and dirt that leads to a more effective,
harder fly whisk, and tend towards tangling from the bottom up. The horse naturally
produced a protective grease on its coat that is groomed out daily in highly maintained
horses, but it is not recommended to be removed in those kept outdoors as it water-proofs
them, so the natural horse is greasy and fairly dirty creature that will get tangles quite easily.
Even Shakespeare seemed to corroborate my conclusion, saying that a elf locks are found as a
consequence of foul sluttish hairs in Romeo and Juliet in Mercutio's speech. He says of the
queen of the fairies, Queen Mab,

She is the fairies midwife, and she comes

In shape no bigger than an agate stone...
That plaits the manes of horses in the night
And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes.
(Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet Act One Scene 4).

It is interesting that Shakespeare attributed ill fortune to those who undid the elf locks, an
aspect of the modern folklore that also seem to have been lost, but that may play a part in the
subconscious maintenance of the fears surrounding their appearance. If something
supernatural wants your horse in plaits is it a good idea to untangle them?

There is a vast world of folk art in horse plaiting presentation, which is an art in itself;
knowledge of this may have crept into the folklore. At this point I would like to show you
presentation plaits of different kinds, and witch locks photographed by worried owners.
(Slides of competition plaits and witch knots).
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The expert opinion

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My conclusion was affirmed in the commentary on the news articles and in equine forums.
According to long term horse owners these are wind knots, not witch knots. Experienced
owners repeatedly explained that the locks were naturally caused, with one pointing out that
he lived on an offshore island and the plaits still occurred.
(http://www.thestalkingdirectory.co.uk/archive/index.php/t-43105.html Another pointed out
that the plaits occurred in snow, with no human footprints appearing in the fields.
(http://www.thestalkingdirectory.co.uk/archive/index.php/t-43105.html) One made this
diagram explaining how the knot forms. (Slide)

Horse and hound forums offered a detailed explanation of plait formation:

Increasingly we are hearing of horses with plaited manes and inexplicable reasons as
to why. There are a number of cultural reasons and control methods using plaiting, but
almost ALL call for the mane or tail to be plaited in the conventional manner from the
root out and then the end secured either by a knot or binding. Torqs as the name
suggests is a twisting motion of the hair but yet again the almost always start from the
root. The majority of what we are seeing displayed show some form of adhesion of
the hair at the lower loose end first. The resultant plait is then formed by the knot
passing through the hair it has entangled, this leads to the separate parts being twisted
in opposite directions usually one round the other. This is as a result of natural action
and can be started simply as a result of two horses necking and then high winds. The
effect of this type of plait is that it looks like it was plaited from the bottom up, the
tightest part being near to the knot and loose and muddled at the root end, as once the
mane and knot get to heavy to be lifted by the horse movement the plait stops.
Horses which suffer from this the most are those that are fair skinned and suffer from
the effects of the sun also those which are vulnerable to yeast /skin disorders. No
amount of grooming can avoid this. On no account should any reported plaiting be
ignored as it may still have significance.

American commentators also give natural reasons for the knots appearing quickly on
particularly horses: pastures with little wind protection, fine manes, wavy manes, beads of
mud & burrs starting the tangle, the horse rubbing, playing, or tossing its head

Do they snake their heads? Everyone who has ever had that problem in my
barn is a head snaker. Usually alpha behavior. Don't know the physics,
but about 1/3 to 1/2 way up their necks is a 2-4 inch area that is
_always_ trying to be dreadlocks. I just detangle them every night.
I've heard that you can break them of it by attaching a chain to their
halter during turnout, but I've never had the heart to do it. As long
as they behave when in hand or under saddle, it isn't much of an issue. Combing
manes in Corbett (mostly on Arabs)
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/rec.equestrian/ck95zk50ryE

These Americans ride western style, and own Arabian, Andalusia, and Friesian horses who
are shown with long, free, flowing manes. They joked about fairies or witches, but used the
term witch knots to describe matted hair, and many forums offered advice on removing
tangles with branded products such as show sheen, Vetrolin Shine, EquinElite Shine &
Shield, and Cowboy magic (http://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-
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355715.html); or bath oil, cooking oil, hair or fabric conditioner, pledge furniture polish and
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even WD40. Braiding the mane to avoid tangles is often recommended.
(http://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-332857.html)

Credulity vs. Evidence

Plaiting

I found that plaiting folklore is regularly dismissed by equine experts, and Pagans, yet still
regularly surfaces. However, owners remain adamant that these braids are made by human
hands, even whilst commenting that a plaiting may have occurred in windy conditions that
would have created wind plaits, but made the horse unmanageable, ie.

Tink wouldn't stand to be plaited like that in the field...they would have had to
walk/be dragged with her across the field...The fence is mains connected but no signs
and they would have to have been in the field...not sure I as a child would have
climbed into a strange horses field..especially with Cobbie the size he is....Its a mile
away from the nearest village and we didn't leave till very dark 8pm...cant see kids
coming up then or even being able to see the ponies in the field..for it to be left in
overnight (http://www.equine-world.co.uk/horse-forums/archive/index.php?t-
17963.html).

Slashing

Claims that horses have been attacked by unknown assailants can also be dubious, with cuts
caused by bad fencing materials, bad horse management, or another horse being reported as
slashing . (http://www.thisisgloucestershire.co.uk/Slashed-horse-incident-near-
Tewkesbury-leads/story-18532495-detail/story.html#axzz2Oq7YfAle) I cite one example of
a press report that could be used to explain rather than fuel the folklore of slashing. The
owner had already lost two horses due to suspected poisoning (which she attributed to others)
and been investigated by the RSPCA in a later incident. She had ramshackle fences made
with corrugated iron in the field, clearly visible in the photograph, and went to press with a
fairly small cut on her horses leg. Comments came from fellow horse owners who were
scathing about the alleged slashing, and may even have been the people who called the
RSPCA in the earlier incident. Just observing the article it is clear that if she was riding the
horses rather than just keeping it she was far too heavy for it, a current concern within the
equine community. Moreover, the fact she had had two horses poisoned reflects the horror
that responsible owners feel when seeing horses wandering amongst common poisonous
plants, such as ragwort and yew which are deadly to horses.

Tail cutting

Some cases of alleged interference have possible organic causes suggested by the statements
themselves. Tail chewing, which can look like a tail had been cut off, can be due to a lack of
food, deficiency in nutrients including copper or silica, digestive upset, lack of fibre,
boredom and dental issues, all which can occur at any time in a companion horses life,
particularly on horse-sick. It occurs so frequently that show riders can buy fake tails to
cover the damage. This report on tail cutting also features a previous incident, in which mane
plaiting was reported, and has possible organic causes listed within the statement.
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 The below incident is becoming more prevalent especially in the East Meon area of
Hampshire. A horse, a 12yo 16.2hh fleabitten grey Irish Sports Horse appears to have
had about a foot of his tail cut off. The horse was kept at Leydene Gardens Farm, East
Meon (next to the Sustainability Centre on the Old Winchester Hill road) and this
happened today between 0700 and 1900. He is in the same field as the horse that was
the subject of incident no 1137 (mane plaiting, possibly prior to theft) that was
reported to Waterlooville Police last month. It is remotely possible that his tail was
chewed by another horse but it is hard to imagine imagine him standing still for the
required length of time. In any case he is in a paddock with one other pony that has
been there for some time and this has never happened before.
http://www.appaloosa.org.uk/Welfare/HWB (27th September 2008)

This determination to believe in a mysterious Other interfering with their horse is the bedrock
of this folklore, and part of the process of its transmission, no matter what agent of mischief
is attributed the blame. It seems to be due to a mixture of old beliefs, basic worries, blaming
mechanisms and modern ignorance. Horse welfare organisations and equine charities deal
daily with animals in pain and distress due to unknowledgeable ownership. As I was
researching this article Google would suggest other articles of a similar nature and it seemed
that for every owner claiming a horse slashed there would be three others who were being
prosecuted for the most appalling acts of negligence, from leaving feet to grow so much that
horse could not walk; leaving animals with avoidable nutritional ailments such as laminitis
untreated, and so acute that the animal had to be put down; to leaving head collars on a
horse/donkey as it grew, until they cut to the bone in a mass of infection. It was too horrible
to fully document here but is easily findable on the net, as an example of the culture of
ignorance surrounding horsecare that is illustrated most graphically by the incident at
Appleby horse fair in 2007, when someone with no equine knowledge whatsoever bought a
horse, and had drowned it within an hour of buying it http://www.redwings.org.uk/news-man-
found-guilty-in-drowning.php.

With new generations of people keeping horses for leisure, who start off knowing nothing
about their complex needs and care, a certain level of ignorance will always exist, and
inexperience may be a factor of promulgation of neglect, and of folklore. Spring 2013 edition
of Horse and Rider, the UKs best setting equestrian monthly, was covered in headlines
about fairly basic horse care, obviously a selling point. One headline even referred to a rare
disease that quickly killed a horse, something that might have been attributed to Witchcraft in
days gone by. I suggest that lack of knowledge, along with fears of horse theft or damage,
combined with hearing some pre-existent plaiting folklore, is what makes owners refuse to
believe that tangles are nothing more than a product of the length of their horses mane,
minimal grooming, and the weather. The fact that there is a long cross cultural history of elf
knots lore reflects the fact that some horses get these tangles when others do not, the speed
at which they can occur given the right conditions, and how such small issues feed into the
vast complexities of the human belief system, to spawn unexpected consequences.

A twist in the tale

I had originally thought this paper would end here, on an upbeat note about social networking
ending a folklore that had been around since before Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet.
The articles I had found on the net on horse mane braiding had shown trends of urban
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folklore relating to thieves and witches, which looked like they would die out as the fairy
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motif had died out, through disbelief as information about the statistics of plaited horse not
begin stolen, and about the non involvement of Pagans became obvious.

However, Kevin Carlyons comments had the sinister sub-text of evil occultists hurting
horses, linking some form of speculative magical practice with unsolved animal attacks. This
resonated with the email conversation that sparked my interest in writing this paper, the
speculative linking of Paganism to horse plaiting, and beyond that to supposedly Satanic
horse ripping.

In very rare cases reports include pagan symbols and candle wax near to attack sites,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2002/nov/10/paulharris.theobserver. These may or may not be
related, they may have been left by Pagan rites that were not linked to the attack, although it
is frowned upon to leave marks or rubbish after a ritual2. They may be part of an invented rite
that was related to the attack, but it is not part of Paganism or Modern Pagan Witchcraft, in
which such attacks would be ethically abhorrent to Pagans. Wicca has only one rule, an it
harm none, do what thou will ie do what you want/perceive to be your life path, but harm
no one, and Paganism attracts large numbers of tree hugging ethical vegetarians and
ecological volunteers. Satanists have even commented on the discussions forums and pointed
out that this has no part in Satanism. All esoteric and occult practitioners welcome scrutiny
of these cases as all avenues of inquiry need to be properly investigated to catch the
perpetrators; but are angered by being erroneously linked to animal sadism, and the waste of
police time looking for answers in Pagan practice, supposed Satanic rites, or wind tangles.

It is most likely that such attacks are performed by sadists, who are regularly convicted for
all sorts of animal cruelty, and/or the very severely mentally ill some who have also been
convicted of killing humans and animals, or as has been already noted, by those with a
grudge towards the owner. However, as speculative occult links had been made in press I
started to Google horse attacks, and to include key words like Satanism. I found many articles
making this link, with gruesome attacks eliciting most press coverage, especially if they
contained references to magical ritual of any sort.

Extremely little press coverage was given to injured horses with known causes, i.e. one in
which a horse had to be put down after a dog attack, and one in which a horse was shot with
an air gun; both merited a small paragraph. However, more colourful language and huge
jumps in deducting reasoning regularly lead to the work of a mysterious Satanist in
unexplained incidents. One example is that of nasty cut on a foals neck which looked very
similar to that sustained by an adult horse in a dog attack, it may have been caused by barbed
wire round the field, but was attributed to satanic slashing. Yet no journalist or police officer
seems to have asked anyone with any real knowledge of contemporary, historical, or even
fictive Satanism if there was any connection or relevance to these occurrences.

The Satanic Conspiracy

Unfortunately there are experts on Satanism, who are all too ready to offer their opinion,
and who have done so to terrible effect in recent history, as was seen in the Satanic Ritual
Abuse controversy of the 1980s. The satanic ritual abuse controversy is now well
documented and well researched, with a good number of books devoted to it, and very
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2
There is an exception for cloutie trees and well dressing, which even then are often not
regarded well: http://cornishwitchcraft.co.uk/clouties.html
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concise, informative references to it on the net
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_ritual_abuse.

Professor Ronald Hutton describes it thus:

It arrived in Britain in 1988 with the agitation of the Reachout Trust, and rapidly
made an impression upon social workers and police. In the event, the tragedies which
resulted afflicted families which were not Pagan, but this was partly due to the speed
and vigour with which Wiccans responded to the threat, and fought it during the five
years until a government report disproved the assertions of the Reachout Trust and its
allies (Hutton 1999:68).

The government report of which Hutton writes was published in 1994 by the HMSO, with
full cooperation of the police force. It concluded that none of the 84 alleged cases studied had
any evidence of abuse directed towards a religious or magical objective. However, three had
evidence of abuse which included a proclamation of mystical/magical power to entrap and
impress victims of the abuse, the abuse being the perpetrators prime objective. It was also
found that interviews with alleged victims had been very poorly conducted including leading
questions, contamination, pressure and inducements to agree to suggestions (La Fontaine
1994:30). Furthermore, it was stated that the evangelical Christian campaign against new
religious movements has been a powerful inducement encouraging the identification of
satanic abuse (La Fontaine 1994:30), whilst specialist qualifications and claims were rarely
checked and their information proved unreliable. The final conclusions were:

A belief in evil cults is convincing because it draws on powerful cultural axioms.

People are reluctant to accept that parents, even those classed as social failures, will
harm their own children, and even invite others to do so, but involvement with the
devil explains it. The notion that unknown, powerful leaders control the cult revives
an old myth of dangerous strangers. Demonising the marginal poor and linking them
to unknown Satanists turns intractable cases of abuse into manifestations of evil (La
Fontaine 1994:31).

Professor Jean La Fontaine, went on to expand this research for the scholarly series The
Athlone History of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe, published 1999, where she stressed
inherent dangers in the Christian fundamentalist evangelical response to the rise of New
Religious Movements:

This mythology was revived as a direct result of the New Christians struggle against
other religions. Fundamentalist Christians had always opposed freemasonry and
previous dissident Christian sects such as the Seventh Day Adventists, condemning
them as the devils work; from the 1960s onwards they also campaigned against the
practices of the hippies and against New Religions as manifestations of Satan. The
neo-pagans, and particularly witches (it was only later that the evangelicals learnt to
call them Wiccans) were, from the first deemed to be servants of Satan and their rites,
about which little was known, to be modern forms of devil worship. The term cult
was used to refer to all New Religions, particularly those that were small and
unconventional and the term quickly took on a derogatory inflection. Christian
10

campaigning organizations in both the USA and Britain described themselves as anti-
cult. The term cult-cop was used in North America to describe those policemen and
Page

10
 women who became experts in Satanism and who propagated the myth in lectures
and workshops (La Fontaine 1999:122).

Propaganda of spiritual warfare - The Satanic Calendar

Astonishingly however, despite widespread condemnation of the SARC, journalists continue

to spread disinformation related to it as fact. The 2012 article that interspersed pictures of
modern pagan witches with pictures of a mutilated horse was shocking in its casual inclusion
of unrelated women, but it included even more shocking material that was circulating in other
press accounts. This was the allegation that Eric the stallion had been slaughtered on a
particularly day in the Satanic Calendar. The Daily Mail went as far as to write:

St Winebald Day is traditionally a small Christian festival in December celebrating

the work of its namesake St Winebald, who was an Anglo-Saxon Benedictine Abbot
and Missionary, and led a seven year pilgrimage to Rome followed by a mission to
Germany where he founded a monastery and Heidenheim. In recent years, small
satanic groups have marked the St Winebald Day as January 7, and associated the
date with animal sacrifice ( http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2085564/Eric-horse-
sacrificed-Satanic-ritual.html#ixzz2LYLLkmZI ).

11
Page

11
I googled St Winebald and found a Roman Catholic saint with no connection to animals or
slaughter. I googled The Satanic Calendar and found versions on various web sites, giving
a long list of dates on which Satanists were alleged to do all manner of unlawful activities
such as abduct, hold and sacrifice humans and animals. The modern Wiccan seasonal wheel
and classical Pagan festivals had been imported into the calendar, interspersed with what
seemed to be a random selection of catholic days, Thelemic holidays3, and imagined
congresses with demons. I did not search all available links but found that none of the
websites I looked at was run by any satanic groups, and all, apart for some humorous ones
mocking the material, were linked in some way to Christian fundamentalism.

This calendar contained many of the motifs of sexual abuse, torture and murder that were the
lexicon of the 1980s SARC. On a psychological level these looked to be the barely
concealed shadows of repressed lust and desire for transgression being projected onto an
imagined other. They appeared to have been collated by someone who was obsessed with
sexuality, transgression, sadism and a sensationalist view of the occult, then formed in the
image of their creators fantasy. The calendars seemed to me to be exploiting the same
mechanisms of shock, titillation and disgust as X rated horror films, catering to the
entertainment of the lowest common denominator of humanity:

OCTOBER 22 - 29 Sacrifice preparation: kidnapping, holding and ceremonial

preparation of person for human sacrifice.
28 - 30 Satanist high unholy days: Related to Halloween. Human sacrifices.
31 All hallow's Eve (Halloween): One of the two most important nights of the year.
Attempts are made to break the bond which is keeping the doors to the underworld
closed. Blood and sexual rituals. Sexual association with demons. Animal and human
sacrifice - male or female. (http://www.survivorship.org/resources/altcalendar.html)

As a serious student of esotericism for more than quarter of a century I had never heard of a
satanic festival calendar. I was aware that there are a small number of contemporary satanic
religious and philosophical organisations, and some individuals who chose to adopt a satanic
belief system. As far as I was aware these organisations, the best known being the Temple of
Set and the Church of Satan, were framed as a response to modernity and Christianity, they
seek a life affirming celebration of individuality within a worldly context. There is an
element of Satan as opposer to the perceived wrongs of Christianity, and as the true liberator
of mankind, with Lucifer as the enlightening light bringer. But I knew of nothing as
organised as a central religious calendar, and certainly none recommending the mass rapes
and murders described on these supposed calendars

Sensationalism

It is probable that the sensationalist element of these reports leads to such widespread
newspaper coverage of these calendars, but they are fiction, and part of a serious and
sustained campaign of spiritual warfare. The press was capitalising on their sensationalism,
whilst being used to perpetuate dangerous urban folklore. Several newspapers stated as fact
the adoption of St Winebald into satanic festivals, and labelled his festival as causal in the
terrible death of Erik.
12
Page

3
Thelema is an esoteric philosopy/religion founded by notorious magician Aleister Crowley, 1875 1947.

12
Such was the appalling nature of Eriks mutilation that it is easy to see how it could not be
comprehended as an act that could be the done by a normal human, and how it seems easier
to attribute the blame elsewhere, to a person who has stepped outside of the bounds of decent
society seduced by a terrible creed, or a supernatural evil that cannot naturally dwell in
humankind.

Scapegoating the Other in the modern age.

However, such scapegoating of external agencies is something that has been generally
receding from late modern/post modern western society. Part of the huge growth in atheism
and humanism, and the movement from Christian culture into a secular society has been the
modernist willingness to take control, agency and blame within our own individual lives. Part
of the loss of the belief in fairies or supernatural witches is also due to the loss of belief in the
reality of magic. It is part of the disenchantment and demystification of the world as spoken
of by Weber, Freud and Marx, as the true inheritance of our age. This, according to the
secularisation thesis, is the consequence of the death of religion, with religion perceived as
superstition mixed with pacifying ritual, used as a mystical opiate to control the plebeian
masses.

However, modernity, education, science multifaith, multiculture, and secularisation have not
been able to erode superstition, religion or the spiritual righteousness that can lead to spiritual
warfare. And none have managed to erode the blind belief in creeds that feed that simplistic
credulous fear of Satan as demonic possessor and cause of all evil. It is a fear that is
logistically a legacy of Christianity in this country, but it is more than that; the Christian faith
has only adopted older trappings of the same primitive human function of making a
Pandoras box in which to lock up the worst parts of ourselves, and clothe them in the bogey
mans body of the dreaded Other, who is the blank canvas that fits the picture that is painted
with humankinds darkest hues.

Thus, in 2012, a wide sector of the British press wrote that satanic groups had marked St
Winebald's day for sacrifice, and Eriks (and others) deaths were the result, balanced views
of commentators were rarely replicated in subsequent reports. There was reward of 2,000
for information to catch Eriks killer, but the perpetrator was never apprehended, as fear and
superstition wrote the headlines that fed that perceived knowledge of the world to the
masses. The voices that monitor and control our society seemed to be just as easily lead and
deceived as they ever were in the witch craze, creating a subversively titillating smokescreen
of fear and superstition that allowed truly evil people to remain at large, possibly preparing to
attack again.

Scholarly discussion

I emailed the forum for the Academic Study of Magic to ask if anyone on this international
forum of academic and scholarly researchers of magic and esotericism knew anything about
The Satanic Calendar. The answer was unanimous.

Professor Sabina Magliocco, of the department of Anthropology at California State

University responded to point out that a similar piece of folklore was circulating in the US,
13

with no correspondence to modern esoteric satanic practice. She saw the satanic calendar as a
product of a small number of right-wing Christian extremists who created it from a variety of
Page

sources to present to law enforcement agencies in information about "Satanic ritual crime."

13
She thought that this was linked to the satanic legend complex of the 1980s, which seems to
be returning in this new guise or, in some cases, had never fully subsided.

The leading academic scholar of contemporary religious Satanism, Jesper Petersen, an

associate professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology Trondheim also
answered my query. He observed that the satanic calendar was part of a recurrent theme of
satanic panic which cyclically reoccurred in the press, survivor groups and marginal
segments of religious, law enforcement, social service and therapy circles. He provided a
bibliography of scholarly work on the creation of satanic panic and stated:

The calendar has no direct relation to satanic practices for two reasons: First, there is
no unified "satanic movement" in agreement on one calendar. Second, most of the
dates are common pagan festivals, some of which Satanists are also celebrating,
although often for different reasons. The "satanic" content is entirely fictional and has
more to do with conspiracy theory than contemporary Satanism.

Suzanne Newcombe, a research officer at INFORM (the Information Network Focus on

Religious Movements) suggested I contact them to ask for information on the Satanic
calendar. Inform is an independent charity that was founded in 1988 with the support of the
British Home Office and the mainstream Churches with the aim of obtaining and making
available objective and up-to-date information about new religious movements or 'cults'. I
emailed the office where Sarah Harvey responded promptly to tell me that they that had
literature on file from conservative Christian groups that used these calendars (e.g. Maureen
Davies of the Reachout Trust in the UK in the late 80s) but had not seen much academic
analysis of them other than Jean la Fontaines work, the rigorous academic study of the
satanic ritual abuse controversy in Britain.

She recommended looking at the website of the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance
webpage which lists the different festivals and the conservative Christian books from the
80s and 90s which list the dates. She also suggested I could follow earlier investigation of St
Winebald as a satanic festival by looking at the work of Chris Bray of the Sorcerers
Apprentice Fighting fund, which started in response to the rise of satanic panic in the 1980s.
http://www.saff.ukhq.co.uk/winebald.htm which states:

The SAFF has collected many examples of these 'Satanic Calendars' over the past 20
years from dozens of different sources. We are satisfied that they originated in the
work of David Balsiger, an extreme right-wing Christian Fundamentalist in the
U.S.A. who runs Writeway Literary Associates a fundamentalist publishing house. In
the first edition of Balsiger's 'Satanic Calendar' ... St Winebald's Day is clearly
included on January 7th - the wrong date - and this error has been transferred forward
upon each copying (see A). This is, to our expert knowledge, the first time that St
Winebald's was quoted as a satanic festival. Note that Balsiger provided 'information'
to Cult Cops and government agencies so they could track down Satanists and
Witches (see B) in effect exactly what is happening in British police forces at this
very moment through their weakness in admitting untested evidence from biased
sources; and C His first Satanic Calendar was published in 1987 when the U.S.
Satanic Ritual Child Abuse scare was just taking off and right at the moment that the
14

British child care industry was becoming infected with the idea through being
supplied with 'sanitised' fundamentalist disinformation via Christian fundamentalist
Page

activists in the U.K. who had imported the USA stuff and began distributing it

14
 amongst social work professionals, therapists and the police without making clear
their sectarian aims.

Chris Brays observation is borne out by the excellent book by Jeffrey S Victor Satanic
Panic, the creation of a contemporary legend (1993), that goes into great detail of how the
SRA moral panic arose, who was invested in it, who profited from it, and the flaws in experts
training, assessments and practice that sustained it.

From Shakespeare to Spiritual warfare,

Thus it appears that the Christian fundamentalist founders of the most negative urban folklore
in living memory, the Satanic Ritual Abuse Controversy (SRAC), significantly influenced
urban folklore that horse attacks are a product of Satanism. They are still active, still profiting
from selling books and dubious therapy, still running conferences, i.e. The 16th Annual
Ritual Abuse, Secretive Organizations and Mind Control Conference, August 9 11, 2013;
and still intent on proving that widespread SRA exists
http://www.survivorship.org/index.html

As was found in the examination of the SRAC, a small number of the cases of alleged child
abuse were real, but clothed in details from the imaginations of those who sought to prove
satanic involvement. The terrible crime of child abuse is abhorred by all sections of society,
but it is not a product of Satanism, and should not be hijacked by the complex interwoven
web of Christian fundamentalists who are invested in pushing the SRA myth. That sort of
Satanism is, in the words of Gordon Melton the largest religion in the world NOT to exist
(Hjelm 2009). It is also noteworthy that the only global religious organisation with proven
links to long term child abuse is the Roman Catholic Church,and the only large-scale
organisation subject to investigation in Britain for covering up long term paedophilia is the
British Broadcasting Corporation. Clearly any abuse of any sort should be dealt with by the
authorities, and muddling up real cases with fantasies of Satanism is disservice to all genuine
abuse cases, particularly when wasting police time with accounts of multiple sacrifices that
clearly did not take place, and eliciting controversial memoires via highly questionable
psychotherapeutic techniques associated with creating false memories. If it can be proven that
certain individuals are disseminating false religious calendars and/or false information
regarding abuse to elicit panic and religious hatred as part of a campaign of spiritual warfare,
then the legality of this should be investigated, and charges made.

No correlation between the Pagan calendar and horse attacks

The lack of evidence of SRA reflects a lack of evidence for any correlation between Pagan
ritual dates and horse attacks. Following my email query to the Forum for the Academic
Study of Magic I delighted to be contacted by one of the foremost writers on the history of
Witchcraft, Owen Davies, Professor in social history at the University of Hertfordshire. He
knew of some academic research into horse attacks and the pagan calendar. He kindly put me
in touch with Alan Jones and Alison Griffiths. Alison Griffiths is a lawyer, and Alan Jones
undertook a PhD looking at rural discontent in Derbyshire 1830-50, of which one aspect was
animal maiming.
15

Jones and Griffiths fascinating article Should we believe the headlines looks at historical
animal maiming accounts, and reviews contemporary aspects of animal maiming by looking
Page

at recent crime reports and comparing and contrasting them to research results taken from

15
previous centuries. Jones and Griffiths looked at methods of attack and found that slashing
was by far the most common cause of injury but not the only one, 37 other ways to
endanger/damage horses were reported, which I think may reflect what I saw in photographs
of alleged cutting incidents, that some of these reports are of accidental injury rather than
deliberate intent. The cases of various convicted horse attackers were also discussed, which
were found to have mundane reasons including drunkenness, revenge, bestiality, and even in
times past, the possibility of the sale of horse hair in times of austerity.

The analysis of contemporary attacks is broken down into days, months, and the eight sabbat
festivals. Jones and Griffiths correlated two hundred and thirty-four cases of attacks on horses
in the UK with pagan festivals and full moons. They found that there were marginally more
attacks on the lighter nights of the full moon than the dark nights of the new moon, but less
than the first and last quarters. Only sixteen attacks were found to fall on festival days, with
most on light summer nights when horse were more likely to be left out in fields, and none at
Halloween. Most attacks happened on week days when owners were less likely to be around,
and none were of a sacrificial nature (www.animalmaiming.webeden.co.uk) Thus, in a
quantitative piece of academic research sensationalist press accounts of links to Paganism
were proved to be without foundation.

Conclusion

In conclusion, there are some medical and practical causes for a horse to appear hag-ridden,
and natural causes for witch/elf knots, and even alleged slashing incidents. Mane braiding
myths relate to fears about theft, loss and damage, and supernatural fantasies that have
changed little since early modernity, which are fuelled by real incidences of theft and attack
that have mundane but dangerous motives. There is slowly shifting sense of the Other who
may interfere with horses in the night.

There remains a semi supernatural element in these reports. No one has seen the braider, but
the almost invisible hand that knots these manes has the otherworldly edge of witchcraft,
gypsy hood, or Satanism. This speaks volumes about age old prejudice about gypsies, and
the uneasy mainstream acknowledgment of a perennial occult subculture within western
society, that has flowered into neo-Paganism in the twenty first century (Teryakian Hutton
1999; Hanneegraaf; Partridge) .

The one motif that has endured over the centuries is that of the witch, who is seen more
positively than she was in earlier times, probably due to a loss in belief in magic combined
with the rise of Paganism as a new religious movement. The malefic witch might have
dispersed along with the fairy from the folklore of horse keepers had Wicca not emerged as a
new religion in the mid 20th century. Wicca remains one of the most misunderstood and yet
sought after paths in Paganism, as the draw of the Witch is powerful for seekers of re-
enchantment. Yet on its bumpy journey of appropriation and legitimation the word witch
remains problematical, both in term its transition from night riding hag to pagan priestess,
and in its association in popular lore with misunderstood occulture, particularly Satanism,
historic, imagined, or contemporary.

Problematical aspects are increased by an underlying current of spiritual warfare being waged
16

by evangelical Christians who have many vested interests in the spread of moral panic; they
instigated the SRAC of the 1980s/1990s and continue to spread disinformation about esoteric
Page

religion, of which the Satanic Ritual Calendar has been picked up and spread by

16
sensationalist press. The highly inclusive and sensationalistic nature of this material speeds
its dissemination, fuelling urban folklore of malevolent occultists interfering with horses,
whilst leaving the real perpetrators to escape.

Consultation with experts on horse care and Paganism, along with proper forensic
examination of horse attacks might lead less fantasy and more arrests for the crime of horse
attack. However, due to the nature of the transmission of urban folklore, and the highly
emotive content of the rumour it is likely that this folklore will never die, but will move on to
further centuries of retelling with a slowly changing Other.

No journalist or police officer should really speak on Satanism unless they have read the
works of Jean La Fontaine, Jeffrey S Victor, Bill Ellis and David Frankfurter which
extensively review the creation of moral panic, and the processes of folkloristic transmission.
Bill Elliss work stands out as he is an active member of the Evangelic Lutheran Church in
America as well as a former president of the International Society for Contemporary Legend
Research and of the American Folklore Societys Folk Narrative Section.

This topic could be the subject of significant further work, which could be undertaken in any
of the above areas. It raised a lot of interest when I was writing the paper and I would like to
thank and acknowledge those people who have been named above as contributors for their
information and encouragement. One contributor remains who had not yet been mentioned,
Jessica Dohle a student of Professor Magliocco, who sent me information on the Lutin. The
last reference in this paper is from her, and brings us back to where I started, far from the
true horrors of neglect, cruelty, ignorance, scapegoating, abuse, spiritual warfare and moral
panic; and back to what hides these shadows under childrens stories, and makes it all better ,
a lovely folklore of little people who braid horses in the night.
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20030408/LIFE/304089952&cid=sitesea
rch

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Jones A and Griffiths A Should we believe the headlines?

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Opinions on tangles

http://horsegossip.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=stole&action=display&thread=127112

http://www.tracingequines.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=1396

http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=347732&page=5

http://ihdg.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=gh11&thread=120142

Horse and Hound Forums http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/forums/archive/index.php/t-

503895.html
www.chronofhorse.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-298248.html

http://ihdg.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=ght10&action=print&thread=102617

http://ihdg.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=gh11&thread=120142&page=2
#1525813#ixzz2LTzOTUdc

http://www.newrider.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-156568.html
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http://ihdg.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=gh11&thread=120142
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Grooming & Knots
http://www.horseforum.com/horse-grooming/does-anyone-else-have-problems-witchs-19365/

http://ezinearticles.com/?Horse-Grooming---Solutions-For-Matted-Hair-and-Knots-in-
Manes-and-Tails&id=3669393

http://www.horseforum.com/horse-grooming/braiding-mane-just-keep-horse-cool-
83456/page3/http://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/showthread.php?298248-

http://www.luckypony.com/articles/mane_braid_grow.htm

theequestrianvagabond.blogspot.com/2009/01/which-knot.html

https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/rec.equestrian/ck95zk50ryE

Tail chewing

http://www.horseforum.com/horse-grooming/tail-chewing-78424/

http://www.horsegroomingsupplies.com/horse-forums/horses-chewing-on-each-others-tails-
382163.html

Horse Care

http://www.equisearch.com/farm_ranch/pest_fly_control/flycontrol_diseases_071003/

Ongoing SRA Therapy and Conferences

http://www.survivorship.org/index.html

Jesper Petersens selected bibliography.

Original academic literature on SRA and satanic panic from the early 1990s:

Hicks, Robert D. (1991). In Pursuit of Satan: The Police model of Satanic Crime. Amherst,
N.Y.: Prometheus Books.

Richardson, J. T., Best, J., & Bromley, D. G. (Eds.). (1991). The Satanism Scare. New York:
Aldine de Gruyter.

Victor, J. S. (1993). Satanic Panic: The Creation of a Contemporary Legend.Chicago; La

Salle: Open Court.

Petersens collected volume with many recommend articles on the subject

Lewis, J. R., & Petersen, J. A. (Eds.) (2008). The Encyclopedic Sourcebook of Satanism.
Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books.
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Newer treatments
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Dyrendal, A. (2003). True Religion versus Cannibal Others? Rhetorical Constructions of
Satanism among American evangelicals. (nr 174), PhD thesis, Faculty of Arts, University of
Oslo, Oslo.

Ellis, B. (2000). Raising the Devil: Satanism, New Religions, and the Media. Louisville:
Univ Pr of Kentucky.

Ellis, B. (2004). Lucifer Ascending: The Occult in Folklore and Popular Culture. Lexington:
Univ Pr of Kentucky.

Frankfurter, D. (2006). Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and Satanic Abuse in
History. Princeton: Princeton UP.

Gunn, J. G. (2005). Prime-Time Satanism: Rumor-Panic and the Work of Iconic Topoi.
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Hjelm, T. (2009). Satanism and Satanism Scares in the Contemporary World. Special Issue.
Social Compass, 56(4), 499-576.

Jenkins, P. (2004). Satanism and Ritual Abuse. In J. R. Lewis (Ed.), Oxford Handbook of
New Religious Movements (pp. 221-242). Oxford; New York: Oxford Univ Press.

La Fontaine, J. S. (1998). Speak of the Devil: Tales of satanic abuse in contemporary

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