Margaret Alice Murray (1863 1963) was a prominent British anthropologist and Egyptologist. Her theories were acknowledged to have significantly influenced the emergence of Wicca and reconstructionist neopagan religions. Her main thesis in The Witchcult in Western Europe was that a common pattern of underground pagan resistance to the Christian Church existed across Europe. Pagans worshipped a male God in covens of 13 worshippers. She believed that pagan beliefs and religion dating from the neolithic through the medieval period, secretly practiced human sacrifice until exposed by the witchhunt starting c. 1450. Murray confined her study to the cults in Great Britain
