Editing Margaret Murray (section)

====Early support====
Upon initial publication, Murray's thesis gained a favourable reception from many readers, including some significant scholars, albeit none who were experts in the witch trials.{{sfn|Hutton|1999|p=199}} Historians of Early Modern Britain like [[George Norman Clark]] and [[Christopher Hill (historian)|Christopher Hill]] incorporated her theories into their work, although the latter subsequently distanced himself from the theory.{{sfn|Thomas|1971|p=515}} For the 1961 reprint of ''The Witch-Cult in Western Europe'', the Medieval historian [[Steven Runciman]] provided a foreword in which he accepted that some of Murray's "minor details may be open to criticism",{{sfn|Runciman|1962|p=5}} but in which he was otherwise supportive of her thesis.{{sfn|Cohn|1975|p=108}} Her theories were recapitulated by [[Arno Runeberg]] in his 1947 book ''Witches, Demons and Fertility Magic'' as well as [[Pennethorne Hughes]] in his 1952 book ''Witches''.{{sfn|Oates|Wood|1998|pp=28–29}} As a result, the Canadian historian Elliot Rose, writing in 1962, claimed that the Murrayite interpretations of the witch trials "seem to hold, at the time of writing, an almost undisputed sway at the higher intellectual levels", being widely accepted among "educated people".{{sfn|Rose|1962|p=14}}

Rose suggested that the reason that Murray's theory gained such support was partly because of her "imposing credentials" as a member of staff at UCL, a position that lent her theory greater legitimacy in the eyes of many readers.{{sfn|Rose|1962|p=15}} He further suggested that the Murrayite view was attractive to many as it confirmed "the general picture of pre-Christian Europe a reader of Frazer or [[Robert Graves|[Robert] Graves]] would be familiar with".{{sfn|Rose|1962|p=15}} Similarly, Hutton suggested that the cause of the Murrayite theory's popularity was because it "appealed to so many of the emotional impulses of the age", including "the notion of the English countryside as a timeless place full of ancient secrets", the literary popularity of Pan, the widespread belief that the majority of British had remained pagan long after the process of Christianisation, and the idea that folk customs represented pagan survivals. At the same time, Hutton suggested, it seemed more plausible to many than the previously dominant rationalist idea that the witch trials were the result of mass delusion.{{sfn|Hutton|1999|p=199}} 

Related to this, the folklorist [[Jacqueline Simpson]] suggested that part of the Murrayite theory's appeal was that it appeared to give a "sensible, demystifying, liberating approach to a longstanding but sterile argument" between the rationalists who denied that there had been any witches and those, like [[Montague Summers]], who insisted that there had been a real Satanic conspiracy against Christendom in the Early Modern period replete with witches with supernatural powers. "How refreshing", noted the historian [[Hilda Ellis Davidson]], "and exciting her first book was {{em|at that period}}. A new approach, and such a surprising one."{{sfn|Simpson|1994|p=90}}