With these kinds of interpretations, Murray created for the first time the idea of the witch as a practitioner of good magic and religious rites to ensure fertility of people and the land. This ran counter to all previous ideas about what witchcraft was in history and folklore - even Leland's variant of the witch-cult hypothesis in "Aradia" depicted witches as not fully benevolent, but rather as revolutionary figures who would use cursing and black magic to exact revenge on their enemies, the upper classes, and the Catholic Church.