To: alt.pagan
From: warrl@blarg.com (Donald Edwards)
Subject: Re: Warlocks???
Date: 15 Feb 1995 00:14:12 -0800
Quoting: |Raven (JSINGLE@MUSIC.LIB.MATC.EDU) 
         |>rsearcy@utdallas.edu (Ron) 

|>What I want to know is, what is a warlock. I know it's not a male witch, 
|>but I don't know what it is. Could someone enlighten me?
|
|Literally, one who breaks faith, a renegade.

Ah, there has been a *long* discussion of the meaning of warlock.

To summarize as best I can remember: a warlock is a person who either
records and enforces agreements, or breaks agreements, or has the 
recognised authority to declare agreements invalid; or a storyteller 
or historian.  Choose one or more.


|In religious/magical
|context, someone who violates the oaths or codes of his or her religion,
|presumably by practicing forbidden ("evil") magic.  More generally, it
|could refer to anyone who abuses the power entrusted to him or her,
|acting to harm those who had given the trust; an oathbreaker or traitor.

|In Middle English, "waer" was faith or troth, "loga" was lie.

So a waerloga would be one who brings truth and lie together or
perhaps makes one from the other.  Imagine different contexts
where that description applies, and you have different possible
meanings of the term -- and the record of usage supports several
meanings.