Did the women and men susceptible to accusation of witchcraft in the Middle Ages try to prevent this fate by organising themselves? It was alleged at the time that some witches did do so. Some killed as witches in England were accused of plotting to overthrow the monarch. Montague Summers in his 1928 Foreword to his English translation of Malleus Mallificorum stated that Bodin , an infamous Protestant Lawyer and French Assembly member , claimed that the witches "were, in fact, the active members of a vast revolutionary body, a conspiracy against civilisation."

This is no doubt a paranoid overstatement - but it is hard to imagine that women and men who knew they were likely to be targeted by witch hunts did not have taken steps to protect themselves. The suspects included independently minded women and men engaged in healing or midwifery, in magic or experimenting, who must have been very aware of their danger. Those accused were by no means all illiterate. Many were upper class with connections and political influence. Some indeed were condemned for challenging the men who held authority. Many would have escaped and needed sheltering. Since the persecution was Europe wide, so could have been their self-support and resistance network.

The Beguine movement of independent women showed that many women had a considerable degree of international organisational ability - a fact that did not escape the Churchmen's attention. It may not have been entirely a co-incidence that it was at this time the Church began to persecute numbers of women as heretics or witches. During the Renaissance period, while many female witches were being burnt or hung, many men organised themselves into secret societies to minimalise their danger while still working magic, casting circles and invoking spirits. There is evidence that women were also members of some of these societies - but their names are rarely found. Perhaps they were perceived as being in more danger than the men so in more need of protection by having their names concealed? But their lack of prominence could simply have been a product of the chauvinism of the times.

The male members of these societies wrote books on magic and few were killed. They organised themselves protection by securing powerful friends in the palaces and among the nobility. Their societies were evidently inspired by the early pagan gnostic literature, including the Corpus Hermeticum, or Works of Hermes, which were purchased in 1450 and then translated by the powerful nobleman Cosimo de'Medici. Some tried to contact angels or aspects of deity in order to work magic. This became known as High Ceremonial Magic. Elements from the Jewish Qabbalah also were introduced by such as Pico della Mirandola.

The well connected German Cornellius Agrippa in 1531 published his De Occulta Philosophia which taught that magic was based on natural psychic gifts and not on demons. His drawings showed a magical circle protected by pentagrams at the quarters. His book "On the Nobility and Superiority of Women" argued for gender equality and for the ordination of women. He said women should be venerated by men for reflecting for them the beauty of God and that menstrual blood had a unique ability to rejuvenate and bestow wisdom. For his pains he was eventually banned from Germany - but he escaped the stake that was the fate of others with vastly less magical knowledge.

The society known as the Family of Love had over a thousand members in 1580. Many influential people joined these societies. Some groups mixed magic with aspects of Christianity and of ancient paganism. This movement had great influence in the Knights Tempars, as well as on the new societies of the Rosicrucians, the Freemasons and the Illuminati. A member of this movement, John Dee, a famous mathemtician said to have completed the first translation of Euclid, alchemist and for a period imprisoned as a magician, was an advisor to Queen Elizabeth, adviser her on the most auspicious date for her coronation and her secret envoy to European courts. The French Court was experimenting with the Eleusinian Mysteries. Some groups created Grimores, or magical reference works, or treasured much older similar books such as the two Keys of Solomon which later were to inspire Gerald Gardner, a founder with Dorleen Valiente of modern Wicca

A French historian, President de Thon, recorded in 1598 a confession about the secret societies reportedly given without torture by Beumont, a man already sentenced for magical practices: "He held commerce with aerial and heavenly spirits" and confessed that "schools and professions of this noble art had been frequent in all parts of the world and still were in Spain, Toledo, Cardona, Grenada and other places; that they had also been very celebrated in Germany but here for the most part failed since Luther had sowed the seeds of his heresy.... that in France and England it was still secretly preserved as it were by tradition in the families of certain gentlemen so only the initiated were admitted into the sacred rites." He also mentioned that John Dee and others in England had at Hallow E'en 1590; "entered the circle for necromantic spells". (Ref. Ron Heiser. The Impact of Freemasonry on Elizabethan literature.)

But women were discriminated against in some of these orders. Freemasonry at first admitted a few women, but from early in the 18th century excluded them. The Rosicrucians were more gender-balanced but when I read the documents produced by the men of the Renaissance revival, it was evident that many were dominated by male interests and approaches. I found them mostly heavy, full of hierarchical ranks and to excessively exalt reason over emotion. Much of their work had nothing of the sparkle and taunts of the Beguine women mystics although sometimes there were lovely gems. It would not be until the late 19th century that women started to take their place in new magical orders that catered for both genders such as the OTO, Golden Dawn and then Wicca in the 20th Century.