Coven Coven A coven usually refers to a group or gathering of witches. The word "coven" remained largely unused in English until 1921 when Margaret Murray promoted the idea, now discredited, that all witches across Europe met in groups of thirteen which they called "covens". In Wicca and other similar forms of modern neopagan witchcraft, such as Stregheria and Feri, a coven is a gathering or community of witches, much like a in Christian parlance. It is composed of a group of believers who gather together for ceremonies of worship such as Drawing Down the Moon, or celebrating the Sabbats. The
New Forest coven Western Europe" (1921) and "The God of the Witches" (1933). The idea of the pagan Witch-Cult has been disproved and dismissed by historians specialising in the Early Modern witch trials since Murray's death in 1963, with works by academics like Elliot Rose, Norman Cohn, Carlo Ginzburg and Keith Thomas instead showing the real nature of the witch trials as a combination of social, economic and religious factors. It is for this reason that the historian Ronald Hutton (1999) dismissed any possibility of the New Forest coven being the continuation of the Witch-Cult. Instead, it has been proposed that the New