Maria, the Immaculate Witch: A Modern-Day Sorceress

Maria Immaculate Witch is a term that refers to a mythological figure who is believed to possess extraordinary powers and abilities related to witchcraft. This term is frequently used to describe a witch-like character who is considered to be pure, untouched, and perfect in their craft. Maria Immaculate Witch is often associated with the idea of a witch who is untainted by negative or malicious intentions. Instead, this figure is thought to embody purity, innocence, and goodness. Despite being connected to the practice of witchcraft, Maria Immaculate Witch is regarded as someone who uses her powers for benevolent purposes rather than for personal gain. In many folk tales and legends, Maria Immaculate Witch is depicted as a wise and compassionate individual who aids those in need.

~Henry Fynes Clinton

Beneath this mild and thoroughly orthodox exterior, I sensed a the rippling, undulating presence of something much darker and weirder and wilder lurking within. The Viking and Anglo-Saxon nobles, products of a warrior society that made them something more like the clan leaders that we associate with Celts, were killed or exiled, and a new, foreign aristocracy installed.

In many folk tales and legends, Maria Immaculate Witch is depicted as a wise and compassionate individual who aids those in need. She is said to possess immense knowledge of healing herbs, potions, and spells that can alleviate suffering and bring about positive change. Maria Immaculate Witch may also possess the ability to communicate with animals, manipulate the natural world, and even foresee future events.

The Witch of Walsingham

“At Walsingham everything tends to increase and foster belief in the reality and powers of the spiritual world. Here one might well realise for the first time how warm and intimate our relations with that world can be.”

~Henry Fynes Clinton

“You want me to be a virgin? I’ll be a virgin.”

The placid face of Mary, pixellated in shards of stone, seemed to speak from behind the altar of the Lady Chapel in Westminster Cathedral. Head cocked and turned to rest on that of her infant son, her eyes gazed at me plaintively from beneath her golden halo. Beneath this mild and thoroughly orthodox exterior, I sensed a the rippling, undulating presence of something much darker and weirder and wilder lurking within. It felt as though the seeming solid, physical reality of the tiles before me were about to rearrange themselves.

“They wanted a mild and meek virgin, so I made myself one,” she said. “But you know I’m something more than that.”

I wasn’t sure what, exactly, I was doing in England that summer of 2021, only that the strange apocalyptic events of the previous year made me realize that life was short and very unpredictable and, after spending the winter tending to cardiac patients in a sterile, windowless hospital basement, I was desperate to break out and suddenly possessed of a burning desire to see Britain. I had three months to kill, and would have liked to go to Germany and France and some other places, but given the shifting state of Covid policy, I decided one set of borders was enough to worry about. After two months spent tramping around Wales, Devon, and Cornwall visiting ruins and churches I was enjoying myself, but also feeling a bit aimless and homesick.

Westminster Cathedral—not to be confused with the famous Abbey— is a late Victorian neo-gothic building full of glittering mosaics that are impressive in their own right. It was around the corner from my hotel, and I had stopped in to say the rosary. Prayer, like all spiritual practices, can take you to some strange places, and here was I speaking to stones in the middle of London.

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“What do you want from me?” I wondered silently.

“You’ll find out soon enough,” she replied.

Later that week I drove through the flat, grassy landscape of Norfolk to a small chapel one mile outside the village of Walsingham. This was one of the great pilgrimage sites of Medieval England, and pilgrims who had walked from all corners of England would arrive at the “Slipper Chapel” and doff their shoes for the last mile’s walk into the shrine at the center of town.

I am a champion walker, and I had already decided it would be easy enough to walk the last mile. Setting off on the way, I thought about that old tradition of removing shoes and thought, “why not?” I proceeded to pick my way over a dry dirt path riddled with many sharp pebbles and occasional blobs of horse dung. Occasionally I would find a grassy spot along the path that was softer on my feet, but it was mostly thistles. Walsingham hasn’t changed a whole lot in the last 500 years, and the dirt path turned to pavement as I arrived at the doors of the shrine. Having walked the full mile, I was relieved to return shoes to my aching feet.

In 1061, according to a ballad published by Richard Pynson 400 years later, a noblewoman named Rychold had a vision of a small wooden house in which the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary. She was told to recreate the house as a shrine to the Lady, which she promptly did. Five years later, England would experience a momentous rupture: the death of King Edward the Confessor and the subsequent invasion by the Norman William the Bastard, aka the Conqueror. By 1100, the landscape and culture of old Angle-Saxon England was completely transformed. Clergy were replaced with Normans loyal to William, and churches were razed and rebuilt in the Romanesque style; scarcely any ecclesial architecture from the pre-conquest era remains. The Viking and Anglo-Saxon nobles, products of a warrior society that made them something more like the clan leaders that we associate with Celts, were killed or exiled, and a new, foreign aristocracy installed. They also brought with them a strange new type of building designed to provide fortification against any native uprisings: Castles.

There is a lot of debate over who this “Rychold,” the visionary who established the shrine at Walsingham, could have been. She is identified with a woman named Richeldis de Faverches who is mentioned 100 years after the Conquest in some legal documents. Based on that information and the fact that Richeldis de Faverches is undoubtedly a Norman name, some historians have assumed that the 1061 date is incorrect, and that the shrine was established in the 12th century. On the other hand, historian Bill Flint makes a vehement case that Rychold is actually Edith the Fair, wife of the last Saxon King of England, Harold Godwinson, and a wealthy and powerful woman in her own right; he contends that King William, unwilling to destroy a Marian shrine, obscured the truth of its founding.

Whatever the case, it is likely, given that there were two healing wells at the site, that it was a site of veneration before any shrine was built. Close by, on the other side of the village, was once a Roman temple to Mercury, and it may have been a Celtic sacred place before that. Marian apparitions often occur at such places of natural and ancestral power right before or during wars and violent upheavals: Our Lady of Sorrows in Kibeho, Rwanda, right before the genocide; Our Lady of Peace in Medjugorje, Bosnia, as Yugoslavia moved toward collapse in the 1980’s; Our Lady of Fatima during World War I. While the official church narratives are always sanitized to align with doctrine, the initial reports are often quite strange, having much in common with stories of fairies or even UFO apparitions. Nonetheless, her message is almost always to pray for peace, or strength, or healing; an insistence that there is a mother we can turn to in difficult times.

Ruins of Walsingham Abbey with twin wells in the foreground. The pool in back was once used for the sick to bathe in the healing waters

It is interesting that the Walsingham vision was of the Annunciation. While it is counted the first of Mary’s “joys,” the truth is that an unexpected pregnancy would have been a terrifying prospect for a young girl: a breach between innocent childhood and the harsh realities of growing up, not unlike an invasion. Assuming the woman at Walsingham was Edith the Fair or some other Saxon woman in the years preceding 1066, it’s likely she felt a fair amount of apprehension as King Edward grew older with no heir established. We can’t say the regime change was wholly good— it was certainly not pleasant for the Anglo-Saxons— but the Normans ended blood feuds and honor killing; they also abolished slavery, though most of the native population that had once been free became tethered to the land in serfdom. The high medieval culture of Anglo-Norman Britain is one that is remembered in myth and legend— the source culture for all the sword and sorcery epics that are so popular today, and some of the greatest works of literature are written in a language that is a product of Anglo-Saxon and Norman French. Norman legal reforms form the basis of our modern democracies in Britain and America.

Today the shrine is a copy, rebuilt in 1922 after four centuries of decay. There is a small “Holy House,” brick rather than wood, but encased in a larger church, as before, and a well runs beneath it. Like many modern shrines that lack the patina of age, it can come off as a bit cheesy. Inside the Holy House is the statue of Our Lady of Walsingham, swathed in a rich fanned cape and gilded penumbra.

Despite my skepticism, once I stepped inside, I felt a strong energetic current radiating from the statue, one that could have knocked me over if I hadn’t sat down in one of the chairs lining the wall. The only other place I felt that potent electric energy was at the Chalice Well in Glastonbury, another place that I had arrogantly assumed was too cliched to be real. It was clear to me that something very ancient was manifesting in both these places.

Mary reached the height of her glory in late medieval Western Europe, the era when the rosary and many other devotions to her were developed. England, however, had been known since Anglo Saxon times to be especially devoted to her veneration, and by the 14th century proclaimed itself the “ Dowry of Mary ,” meaning it was a place set aside for her dominion. Walsingham competed with Canterbury for the greatest pilgrimage site of Medieval Britain; its Lady radiating a power that characterized the culture of the surrounding region. Some historians believe that before Loreto in Italy outstripped it in the late 1400’s, Walsingham was the most visited Marian shrine in Europe.

Western Christianity has long been plagued by St. Augustine of Hippo’s particular formulation of original sin and the notion that sex was the source and transmitter of this evil. England, however, was the innovator of a feast that contradicted this notion: the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin, rooted in a vision of materiality that saw sex as simply natural and not inherently sinful. While later Church theologians would assert that Mary was conceived sans intercourse, as this was the only way her purity and freedom from sin could possibly be preserved, British theologians Anselm, Eadmer, and Duns Scotus claimed she had been conceived in the usual way, seeing Mary as a “second Eve” who inaugurated a materiality with the capacity for profound good.

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Churches along the many pilgrim paths in the East Anglian countryside were full of female saints associated with motherhood, nursing, and birth; Saints Withburga, Catherine, Anne, Elizabeth, Barbara, and all the various Marys strewn like flowers down the Walsingham Way. The road from London to the shrine was also called the Milky Way, and vice versa— the galactic streak across the nighttime sky was said to point the way to the shrine of her nourishing presence, and a purported holy relic of the Virgin’s milk was kept there. Plays depicting the Lady’s life were performed in which midwives quite frankly and admiringly discuss the condition of Mary’s breasts, womb, and vagina. Women were the most numerous, though not sole, pilgrims at Walsingham, often praying for fertility, safe childbirth, and the health of their children. Church authorities worried over what from their persepctive was a less savory side to this fleshly bounteousness: the opportunity for sexual hijinks between pilgrims.

The country surrounding the shrine became known too for its powerful female mystics and benefactors; one of the most famous, Julian of Norwich, would insist “But for I am a woman, should I therefore believe that I should not tell you of the goodness of God?” before proclaiming her visions of God as an embodied, nurturing mother. Another Norfolk woman, Margery Kempe, though clearly someone who was very very extra , wrote the first autobiography in English, boldly insisting on the validity of her own spiritual revelations and writing honestly about the raw details of her life, including postpartum psychosis and “temptations to lechery.”

Mary and her embodied jouissance were for most people of this time, men as well as women, the first presence they turned to in their daily prayers. They prayed for healing, they prayed for love, they prayed for safety, sometimes they even prayed for revenge. Yes, the official doctrine of the church was that Mary petitioned Jesus on behalf of her children. But it was to this mother, very much alive in the trees and rocks and springs of the earth, that they prayed.

It was precisely this vital, fecund, carnal quality that the English reformers came for when the shrine was destroyed in 1538. Henry VIII had made his own pilgrimage to Walsingham in 1511 to pray for a healthy male heir, but by 1525, with nothing to show for it but but one surviving daughter, Henry was finished with his wife, Catherine of Aragon, the church, and the Lady. It is true that his primary motivation was independence from the Pope, rather than any genuine religious sentiment, but the English Reformation took on a distinctly misogynist cast that seems to mirror his treatment of women.

One 17th century Puritan complained that the old devotion to Mary made “the paps [breasts] of a woman equaled with the wounds of our lord, and her milk with his blood.”

The primary offense was the notion that something of the divine could be present in matter, and while a few of the male saints survived the purge, the female saints attracted a special vitriol, derided as harlots and whores. The great Lady Chapels like the one at Ely Cathedral were stripped of all ornamentation, the stained glass windows shattered and sculptures smashed. Statues of Mary were stabbed in the breasts, beheaded, and ultimately incinerated. The Lady now vilified as “the Wych [Witch] of Walsingham” was supposedly burned along with Our Lady of Ipswich and the Black Madonna of Willesden in a bonfire outside Thomas Cromwell’s house in Chelsea (though some historians believe it survived ).

There was another motivation for the vilification of matter, the feminine, and the destruction of shrines associated with sacred landscapes. The monasteries and religious orders that cared for the shrines owned a quarter of the land in England, and served as a valuable resource for the peasantry by administering schools, hospitals, and relief for the poor. The land they occupied was often marginal, seen as wasteland unsuitable for cultivation. Monks, and Cistercians in particular, developed innovations that would allow them to farm and flourish in these supposedly unfruitful landscapes, and their landholdings were looking very tempting to the Crown and nobility.

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While feudalism tethered peasants to the land, it also gave them rights over the use of it that afforded protection from the wealth-accumulating instincts of lords. In the words of one Marxist historian:

“Peasants have since time immemorial employed various means of regulating land use in the interests of the village community. They have restricted certain practices and granted certain rights, not in order to enhance the wealth of landlords or states but in order to preserve the peasant community itself, perhaps to conserve the land or to distribute its fruits more equitably, and often to provide for the community's less fortunate members. Even private ownership of property has been typically conditioned by such customary practices, giving non-owners certain use rights to property owned by someone else. In England, there were many such practices and customs. There existed common lands, on which members of the community might have grazing rights or the right to collect firewood, and there were various other kinds of use rights on private land, such as the right to collect the leavings of the harvest during specified periods of the year.”

Landlords began to enclose and appropriate these common lands in the 16th century, and the English Reformation was a motivated by a desire to further subjugate the land and its inhabitants to maximize profit. To do that, the ancient beliefs, practices, and symbols that bound the people and the spirits of place in an interdependent web of relatedness had to go. The Virgin Mother, ancient symbol of the sovereignty of the land and the sacredness of matter, was offered up on the altar of Mammon.

On the left is possibly the original Lady of Walsingham, hidden in a Norfolk country house for centuries and now on display in the V&A. On the right is the Lady of Walsingham that resides in the Slipper Chapel.

The old priories and abbeys became new estates for the landed class. Peasants who once had a great deal of agency and control over their labor and the production of resources became tenants and wage laborers subject to the vicissitudes of the market. The buildings at Walsingham, like many of the old monasteries, are now picturesque ruins adjoining a newer manor house. The stones that once enclosed bustling communities of scholars, healers, and hospitalliers became mansions for a wealthy few.

One poem , author unknown though possibly the Earl of Arundel Phillip Howard, who was executed in the Tower of London for his faith, lamented:

Weep, weep, O Walsingham,
Whose days are nights,
Blessings turned to blasphemies,
Holy deeds to despites.

Over the next decades, any remnant of “popish” practice— using prayer beads and other Marian devotions, saying the old prayers to saints and charms for healing— was stamped out. Some families kept the faith, hiding precious statues, icons, and relics; secretly harboring priests and holding Mass. These were known as recusants and persisted in some cases until the Catholic Emancipation Act in 1829. One of my ancestors, Henry Spinke, was a recusant from Yorkshire who emigrated in 1640 to the newly established Catholic colony of St. Mary’s, in what would become the U.S. state of Maryland.

In the 19th century, the emancipation of Catholics and a movement to restore pre-Reformation styles of worship in the Anglican church (now known as Anglo-Catholicism) laid the groundwork for the return of Mary. In 1921, a charming and eccentric Anglo-Catholic priest with a flair for the dramatic was given the parish church of St. Mary’s in the old village of Walsingham. Father Alfred Hope Patten had been waiting his whole life for this moment. He organized the entire village to work together in an extraordinary project to restore the shrine of Our Lady and make it once again a great site of pilgrimage.

Patten’s shrine is just across the street from the original site, though it too has a genuinely ancient well that was discovered when excavation for construction began. The old ruins are still privately owned though open to visitors, the Roman Catholics run the Slipper Chapel, and the old train depot has become an Orthodox church, making Walsingham an ecumenical affair. The old medieval village was originally constructed to provide accommodations for pilgrims, and most of the houses are once again lodging some of the 250,000 people who visit annually.

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As I sat in the Holy House before the statue of Our Lady of Walsingham, feeling her immense power and presence, I heard her speak again:

“Will you tell my story? Will you dedicate yourself to it?”

I knew she didn’t mean just the story of Walsingham, but something older. Something bigger.

“What is your story?” I asked.

“Just follow me. I’ll teach you.”

I’ve been following threads for the past year, trying to gather a coherent picture before writing about it. I don’t think it’s unreasonably Anglocentric to suggest that the Britain has, for better and for worse, had a significant impact in shaping the modern world we live in today. It was the children of the English Reformation, divorced from the old ways of relating to the land, who colonized and set the cultural template for my own country, the United States. That culture has spread itself around the world, and we all feel the repercussions of an economy and ethos devoid of relational rootedness.

There’s something unique about Mary as she is expressed in Britain, particularly England; how she relates to the land and to older traditions; and how she shows up now that needs to be teased out. But her story is also much bigger than one country or region, reaching all around the world, connecting to the deep past and the beginnings of civilization, and I am convinced that understanding it matters very much for how we live our lives today. As we go through our own cultural, political, and economic transitions, we need wisdom from our ancestors who have navigated these crises before us, and I believe her story can reveal things that are worth reclaiming.

As the story spools out in unmanageable tangles, I’m realizing that I’m going to have to tell it as I go, following disparate threads and trusting they might all add up to something. I hope it will be interesting, and meaningful, and I hope it will ultimately hang together. Regardless, I have to trust its unfolding.

Bibliography

Boss, S. J. (2007). The Development of the Doctrine of Mary's Immaculate Conception. In S. J. Boss (Ed.), Mary: The Complete Resource (pp. 207–235). essay, Burns and Oates.

Collins, R. (1986). The Weberian revolution of the High Middle Ages. In R. Collins, Weberian Sociological Theory (pp. 45–76). Cambridge University Press.

Flint, B. (2015). Edith the Fair: Visionary of Walsingham . Gracewing.

Garnett, G. (2009). The Norman Conquest: A Very Short Introduction . Oxford University Press.

Rear, M. (2019). Walsingham: Pilgrims and pilgrimage . Gracewing.

Waller, G. (2011). The Virgin Mary in Late Medieval and Early Modern English Literature and Popular Culture . Cambridge.

Waller, G. (2011). Walsingham and the English Imagination . Routledge.

Wood, E. M. (2017). The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View . Verso.

My thinking on the purpose and function of Marian apparitions owes a debt to Clark Strand and Perdita Finn’s book The Way of the Rose.

William Crashawe, quoted in Waller, 2011a

I’ve been following threads for the past year, trying to gather a coherent picture before writing about it. I don’t think it’s unreasonably Anglocentric to suggest that the Britain has, for better and for worse, had a significant impact in shaping the modern world we live in today. It was the children of the English Reformation, divorced from the old ways of relating to the land, who colonized and set the cultural template for my own country, the United States. That culture has spread itself around the world, and we all feel the repercussions of an economy and ethos devoid of relational rootedness.

However, it is important to note that the exact characteristics and abilities attributed to Maria Immaculate Witch may vary depending on cultural and regional beliefs. Each culture may have its own unique interpretation of this figure, which can shape the myths and stories that surround her. In conclusion, Maria Immaculate Witch is a mythical character associated with witchcraft who embodies goodness, purity, and the use of power for benevolent purposes. Whether she is portrayed as a healer, a seer, or a protector, Maria Immaculate Witch represents the idea of a witch who uses her abilities to bring about positive change and help those in need..

Reviews for "Maria, the Immaculate Witch: A Woman with Powers Beyond Imagination"

1. John - 1 Star

I found "Maria Immaculate Witch" to be extremely disappointing. The story was poorly developed, with little depth to the characters or their motivations. The pacing was all over the place, making it difficult to get invested in the plot. Additionally, the writing style felt amateurish, with awkwardly constructed sentences and clichéd dialogue. Overall, I was left feeling unsatisfied and underwhelmed by this book.

2. Sarah - 2 Stars

While I appreciate the attempt to create a unique and imaginative world in "Maria Immaculate Witch," I found it to be confusing and convoluted. The author introduced too many different magical elements and concepts without providing enough explanation or context, leaving me feeling lost and disconnected from the story. Additionally, the characters lacked depth, making it difficult for me to become emotionally invested in their journey. Overall, I struggled to fully engage with this book and would not recommend it.

3. David - 2 Stars

"Maria Immaculate Witch" had an interesting premise, but I felt that the execution fell flat. The plot was predictable, with little suspense or surprises along the way. The dialogue between characters felt forced and unnatural, making it difficult for me to connect with them on any meaningful level. Additionally, the pacing was inconsistent, with certain parts dragging on while others felt rushed. Overall, I found this book to be mediocre at best and not worth the time invested.

4. Emily - 3 Stars

I had high hopes for "Maria Immaculate Witch" based on the premise, but unfortunately, it did not live up to my expectations. While the world-building was decent, I found the plot to be lackluster and unoriginal. The author relied too heavily on clichés and tropes, making the story feel predictable and formulaic. Additionally, the characters lacked depth and development, making it difficult for me to care about their fates. Overall, while it wasn't a terrible book, it didn't offer anything new or exciting to the genre and left me feeling unimpressed.

5. Michael - 2 Stars

"Maria Immaculate Witch" had potential, but ultimately failed to deliver. The writing style was often confusing and difficult to follow, with excessive use of metaphors and flowery language that overshadowed the actual story. The plot meandered without clear direction, and the pacing felt off, with long stretches of slow development followed by abrupt and rushed resolutions. Ultimately, I found myself detached from the characters and uninterested in the outcome. Overall, this book was a disappointment and not one I would recommend.

Maria, the Immaculate Witch: A True Witch of Our Time