Another Scholarly source does not go as deep into this but supports the results:

German Literature Between Faiths: Jew and Christian at Odds and in Harmony (2003), edited by Peter Meister, examines how German literature reflects and negotiates Jewish and Christian themes. The essays explore medieval German texts, analyzing how biblical narratives and figures are adapted for Germanic audiences. The book highlights both conflict and dialogue between Judaism and Christianity, showing how literary works serve as a cultural and theological bridge. 

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Personal Note:​ I would have appreciated more details how he arrived at the same conclusions by showing as much supporting evidence as I have done, which I believe would have made a far better case to the conclusions. It should be noted that this is also not an appeal to authoroty.  

Editor Credentials: Peter Meister holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA and PhD from the University of Virginia, and teaches German at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He has written extensively on gender and religion in German literature and specializes in medieval Germanic philology. His scholarship emphasizes the nuanced interplay between literary form, theology, and cultural identity.

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Chapter Highlight: “The Jews in the Heliand”

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Author: G. Ronald Murphy, S.J., Jesuit priest and professor emeritus of German at Georgetown University, specializes in medieval German literature and the Heliand. His publications include The Saxon Savior (1989), The Heliand: The Saxon Gospel (1992), and The Owl, the Raven, and the Dove (2000).

Content Summary: Murphy’s chapter focuses on the depiction of Jewish figures in the Heliand, particularly Pharisees and other Sanhedrin members. The poem, an Old Saxon retelling of the Gospels (c. 830–840 CE), employs Germanic heroic conventions to present biblical stories.​

A key term, “uuarlogan” (modernized as warlogan), appears on page 18 as a plural noun describing Pharisees and similar figures. Etymologically, warlogan combines Old Saxon war (“man”) and log (“law”), literally translating to “lawmen” or “lawyers.” Murphy interprets this as a gloss or interpretive label, translating Jewish religious authorities into a Germanic cultural framework. This linguistic strategy allows the poem to blend traditions, emphasizing both fidelity to scripture and resonance with a Germanic audience.

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In his 2004 volume, Peter Meister challenges the traditional pejorative translation of warlogan. While standard Germanic philology defines the word as “oath-breakers” (the precursor to the English warlock), Meister proposes a revisionist etymology. He argues that the Heliand’s author used the term neutrally, as a descriptive title for the Pharisees, translating it literally as “men of the laws.” This re-interpretation shifts the term from moral judgment to functional identification.

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Technical Linguistic Evidence

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Meister’s argument rests on a careful deconstruction of the compound word warlogan as it appears on page 18 and throughout the text.

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A. The Prefix: War (Man)

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• Meister identifies war as a variant of the Old Saxon/Old High German wer (cognate with the Latin vir).

• Cognates: Latin vir; Old English wer (found in words like wergild or werewolf).

• Conclusion: Here, war signifies “man” or “male figure,” often within a formal or warrior social structure.

B. The Suffix: Logan (Plural of Laws)

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• Meister asserts that logan is not derived from the verb leogan (“to lie”), as traditional interpretations suggest.

• Cognates: Old Norse lög (cognate of lag), meaning “that which is laid down” or “law.”

• Conclusion: Logan refers specifically to laws, rather than falsehood or deceit.

C. Combined Translation

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• Men of law, law men, lawyers from war = man; log = law with the -an = a plural.

Application to The Pharisees

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The significance of this translation lies in its functional and cultural application to the Pharisees and Sadducees in the Heliand.

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Functional Identification: Meister argues the Saxon poet was identifying Jewish leaders by their primary scriptural role—as practitioners and defenders of Mosaic Law—rather than insulting them as “liars.”

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• Cultural Translation: For a 9th-century Saxon audience, a “man of the laws” was a recognizable legal status. This interpretation indicates a measure of “harmony,” integrating Jewish figures into a Germanic social framework instead of dismissing them through vitriolic labels.​

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Multiple sources support this interpretation:​

• Manuscript Evidence: The term uuarlogan appears in line 3816 of the Heliand manuscripts M and C, in dialogue addressing religious authorities.

• Samuel J. Youngs (2021): Notes the Heliand replaces specific Jewish subgroup names with Germanic terms, consistent with the “lawmen” reading.

• Valentine A. Pakis (2010): Reprints Murphy’s essay, reinforcing warlogan’s cultural adaptation.

• Linguistic Analyses: Discussions of “warlock” trace the word to Old Saxon roots, corroborating Meister’s etymology.

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Key Takeaways

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1. War = man, attested in multiple Germanic languages.

2. Log / Logan = law / laws, a plural denoting a body of established decrees.

3. War + Logan compounds reflect functional roles like lawmen, not moral judgment.

Frisian and Saxon evolutions preserve these compounds while undergoing predictable phonetic shifts.

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Note: Prior to Tolkein

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Bosworth-Toller (BT) and Holthausen dictionaries are the primary pillars for the "Oath-breaker" theory, but a cross-reference of the root wǣr reveals a significant linguistic divergence that these dictionaries chose to ignore. It is accurate that Bosworth-Toller (1898) and Ferdinand Holthausen (1900) derived the term from wǣr (covenant) + loga (liar). 

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• The BT Bias: Joseph Bosworth and T. Northcote Toller were working within a 19th-century Victorian framework that heavily moralized "pagan" or "secular" Germanic terms. They categorized wǣrloga under "miser, wicked one, or traitor." 

• The Holthausen Error: While Holthausen is a giant in Old Saxon philology, his Altsächsisches Wörterbuch (1900) often defaulted to Old English parallels when an Old Saxon word was ambiguous. Since the Heliand poet was retold for a Christian audience, Holthausen accepted the "liar" suffix (-logo) because it fit the theological narrative of the Pharisees, despite the phonetic evidence of -logan (the law-plural).

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The "Academic Malpractice" rests on the assumption that the variet wǣr means "oath" or "covenant." However, historical linguistics shows wǣr (and its variants war/wer) has entirely different, non-religious roots that align with Authority and Awareness, and in fact even the word man is associated with the root meaning thought and mind. In both Old English and Old Saxon, wær/war frequently can also be used to means "cautious," "observant," or "having knowledge of."

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• Source: The Exeter Book (Guthlac A).

• Context: Used to describe someone who is "wary" or "mindful."

• Combined with Logan (Laws), this yields "Aware of Laws/Mindful of laws"—a literal description of a legal expert or judge.

While J.R.R. Tolkien is celebrated for his fiction, his professional work on the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) between 1919 and 1920 is where the historical meaning of "Warlock" was formally subverted.

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Wer/War as "Man" (Cognate: Vir/Were-wolf)

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As noted with uuaruld (world/man-age), the root war/wer is a standard West Germanic term for "Man."

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• Source: The Gothic Bible (Ulfilas) uses waír; Old Frisian uses war.

• Context: Denotes a male of status or a warrior.

• Application: Combined with Logan (Laws), this yields "Man of the Laws"—corroborating the Murphy/Meister "Lawman" thesis.

C. Wær as "True/Truth" (Cognate: Latin Verus / German Wahr)

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In Old High German and Old Saxon, wār (truth) is a common root.

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• Source: Schade’s Altdeutsches Wörterbuch (1872).

• Context: Distinguishes "the truth" from "the lie."

• Application: If the suffix -log means "to lay down" (Law), then Wær-log translates to "The True Law" or "He who lays down the Truth."

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The pre-Tolkien dictionaries were already leaning into a "Church-approved" etymology. Tolkien did not invent the error, but he codified it as a "fact" for the OED, using his status to ignore the uuar- (Man/Aware) and -log (Law) roots that were clearly present in the manuscript variants (warlawe, warlagh) that I’ve identified.

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As to Witch...

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Sir James Murray and the Volume X Revision (1926) Following Tolkien's research, the OED’s primary editor Sir James Murray and his team codified these definitions in Volume X (W–Z), published in 1926. The codification of Witch in Volume X of the OED (1926) mirrors the "Warlock" corruption by systematically linking the title Witch to moral and physical deviance.

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The "Wicked" Association (The Middle English Pivot)

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The OED team sought to bridge the 9th-century term wicce with the 13th-century term wicke (meaning "bad," "false," or "evil").

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• The Claim: The OED suggested that the word Witch shares a root with wicked (from the Middle English wicked/wicke), implying that the title itself meant "The Wicked One."

• The Linguistic Deception: To make this work, they had to ignore the earlier phonetic roots. Wicked is more likely derived from the Old English wicca (witch) in a recursive loop—meaning they used a later insult derived from the word to define the word's original meaning.

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What they choose not to mention is:

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The 1898 Structural Error (Bosworth–Toller) did the same crap with Witch.

Bosworth and Toller formalized the gendered binary by forcing 11th-century Old English forms into a Latin-style grammatical framework:

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• Wicca (M) / Wicce (F) — categorized as separate gendered nouns, despite Old English weak-declension patterns often producing variant forms rather than rigid male/female lexical pairs.

• The plural issue — defining the singulars as “male sorcerer” and “female sorceress” led to interpreting wiccean (attested in early legal texts such as the laws of Cnut the Great, c. 1020s) as a mixed-gender plural.

• This interpretation ignores the possibility that wiccean—morphologically derived from wicce with the plural -an ending—could function as a specifically female collective.

The 1926 OED Regurgitation (Craigie)
 

• William Alexander Craigie, editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, largely adopted the Bosworth–Toller (1898) framework rather than re-examining the original Old English manuscripts.

• The OED repeated the wicca (M) / wicce (F) classification and added a moral layer connecting the terms to “wicked” or morally “bent,” reinforcing the idea that the words described inherently malevolent characters.

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The "Weak/Bent" Fallacy

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A secondary claim popularized by Murray’s editorial era was that wicce derived from the Proto-Germanic roots for "to bend" or "to turn" (cognate with wicker or weak).

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• The Claim: That a witch is one who "bends" reality or is "weak/bent" in character.

• The Correction: This was a back-formation designed to frame the female authority as "twisted."

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Sir James Murray’s successors, specifically W.A. Craigie who finished the volume—explicitly highlighted the link between "witch" and "wicked." 

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• The 1926 Logic: The editors categorized wicked (originally wicke or wikke in Middle English) as an extension of the Old English word for witch. 

• Other Meaning: They argued that wicked effectively meant "bewitched" or "rendered evil by witchcraft" before it shifted into a general term for moral depravity.

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The claim that wicca is masculine, wicce is feminine, and wiccan is a "practice" is a fabrication. In the Laws of Cnut (c. 1020–1023), the word used is wiccean. This is not an abstract noun for a religion; it is the weak plural of wicce (the feminine singular).

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• The Suffix Fallacy: The suffix -an in wiccean is a plural marker identifying a group of people. It is not a descriptor of a "practice" or "belief system."

• The 'E' Separator: The 1926 editors ignored the mechanical function of the letter 'e' in Old English. In compounds like wiccecræft, the 'e' serves as a necessary phonetic separator between the root and cræft ("skill/profession"). Without it, the triple-consonant 'ccc' would render the word unintelligible.

• The "Wicked" Misstep: Sir James Murray’s successors argued that wicked (Middle English wicke) meant "bewitched." This was a circular attempt to define the word as a passive state of being "rendered evil."

The Religious Invention (Gerald Gardner, 1954): Gardner came to the scene early with every other New Age of Aquarius Occult movement in England, along with the fraternities that took hold prior to the OED's compilation, and Margaret Murray’s debunked "ancient cult" theory and combined them but also included prior Germanic interests that eventually got wrapped up into the National Socialist movent of Germany and the "race theories" therein.

He claimed:

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• "The Wica" (his spelling) was the name of the people/religion based off the Scotts language wice for wise.

• In Witchcraft Today (1954) and The Meaning of Witchcraft (1959), Gardner used “Wica” (with one c).

• “The Wica” referred to the people (witches), not the religion itself.

• Gardner frequently described it as “the Witch Cult” or “the Old Religion of Witchcraft.”

• Otherwise it was called the Bricket Wood Coven.

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This isn't the only example where meanings are misapplied. Consider the word Hex. Hex, Hexe and Hexen comes from Germanic/Old High German meaning Hacks and split into hex as an act of striking someone or something with an affliction as well as hack and hacken with the following meaning as they are in fact the same word with the same basic core sense. 

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• Hack / hacken = literally “to chop, cut, or strike”

• Old High German hacken → “to chop, cut, strike”

• Related to the modern German hacken → “to hack, chop, dig”

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Of course, all the other claimed associations are misrepresentations because of a couple of centuries of disconnect and misapplied assumptions becoming associations and implanted as definitions that are meaningless because they do not get to the core meaning, just the over generalizations. This is often coupled with various authors failing to take the time to consider how native speakers actually understand the words or choose to ignore specific language barriers which results in all the confusion and distortions of old and new.  

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The Correction

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In reality, the source text identifies wiccean as an active collective of women. By falsely gender-coding these words and inventing a "practice" (wiccan) that didn't exist, the 1926 team obscured the fact that the law was a direct, physical mandate. It targeted the wiccean (women) and wigleras (male war-teachers) to be hasted out of the earth—not because they were "bewitched," but because of their specific, active skills.

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Pre-1898 sources

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• The male/female distinction is a post-hoc scholarly imposition (Bosworth & Toller, 1898).

• Any later claims that Wicca = male / Wicce = female before Gardner are speculative.

• There is no pre-1800s evidence that anyone used “wicca” and “wicce” as gendered nouns other than feminine in manner and application of the word forms.

  • The earliest manuscript evidence for these words:

    • wicce occurs in law codes and glosses (e.g., Cnut’s laws) — plural wiccian/wiccean sometimes appears, but no gender distinction is specified. The manner in which the linguistics actually work it is entirely feminine.

    • wicca appearances are extremely rare, and the distinction as a masculine form is not explicit in any pre-1800 source.

  • No attested text from the 10th–18th centuries explicitly says:

    • “wicca = male witch”

    • “wicce = female witch”

  • The attested text from the earliest available centuries explicitly demonstrate in linguistic structures: 

    • “wicca = female witch”

    • “wicce = female witch”

    • "wiccian/wiccean = plurals"

    • The context of these words indicate female oracles. 

We must not cave to academic error and scholarly laziness

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• To continue perpetuating these unchallenged fallacies is to surrender historical truth to a cycle of academic regurgitation rooted in shoddy scholarship.

• If we merely copy and paste these "standard" definitions into modern dictionaries—adding more false equations and poor translations—we are choosing to uphold a linguistic fiction.

• If we insist on the fiction that warlogan (or its variants that became warlock) must mean "oath-breaker" and "traitor," then by that same logic, we must conclude that the plural wiccean (and the variants that became witch) simply means "bent" and "wicked"—defining a person as twisted, weak, and perverse.

• To accept one false etymology is to be forced into the other.

• We must either challenge these inherited errors thoroughly, as has been done here, or admit that we are merely documenting a centuries-old game of telephone that has stripped these words of their original proper context, meaning and reality given over to delusion, bigotry and wilful ignorance.

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Conclusion: Clarifying the Historical and Linguistic Truth of Warlock and Witch

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In the spiritual tradition of Druwayu, the titles Warlock (male) and Witch (female) denote equal clergy roles, reflecting balanced authority and identical duties. These include leading rituals, teaching, protecting sacred spaces, promoting harmony, and supporting community engagement. Their equality in function embodies Druwayu’s commitment to unbiased spiritual leadership and rejects notions of neutralized gender nonsense, inferiority complexes of hierarchy, or mystical superiority based solely on one's male or female gender distinctions and realities. The presence of a penis or vagina does not make one superior, nor does the lack of one or the other make one inferior; only the profoundly stupid and depraved come to such conclusions.

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Historically, however, much of the conventional understanding of these terms has been shaped by post-medieval scholarly impositions and later ideological reinterpretations. The earliest attestations in Germanic and Anglo-Saxon texts—such as warlogan in the Heliand (c. 830 CE) and wicce/wiccean in Alfred’s Domboc (c. 893 CE) and Cnut’s laws (c. 1020s)—demonstrate the following:

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• Warlock / warlog / warlogan: Literally “man of the laws” or “lawman,” derived from Old Saxon war (man) + log(an) (laws). There is no indication in these early sources that warlock meant “oath-breaker” or “traitor.” Its later association with deceitful or malevolent behavior originates in misreadings and moralized interpretations of the 19th–20th century (Bosworth & Toller, Holthausen, OED).

• Witch / wicce / wiccean: Feminine singular/plural nouns used for female diviners, oracles, and counselors, from Old English wicce and related cognates. The suffixes and plurals reflect standard Old English grammatical structures rather than a gendered or moralized binary. Assertions that “wicca” is masculine or that “wicce” merely means “wicked” are unsupported by any pre-1800 source.

• Misinterpretation by Later Scholars: Bosworth & Toller (1898) imposed Latin-style gender distinctions; OED editors (Craigie, 1926) codified “wicca = male, wicce = female” and linked the words to moral deviance, despite manuscript evidence to the contrary. These errors created a false dichotomy that persisted in popular culture and New Age literature, including misreadings of Gardner and others.

Taken together, these findings make clear:

1. Warlock and Witch originate from the same cultural-linguistic matrix, reflecting social and functional roles rather than moral or mystical judgment.

2. Claims of gendered or morally loaded meanings prior to the 19th century are unfounded; no pre-1800 texts explicitly identify “wicca = male” or “wicce = female” in a manner consistent with later interpretations.

3. Scholarly and popular misinterpretations must be actively corrected to preserve historical accuracy. Accepting one false etymology (e.g., warlock = oath-breaker) forces the acceptance of a mirrored falsehood (e.g., witch = wicked), creating a logically inconsistent and biased framework.

In Druwayu, the titles Warlock and Witch embody historical and linguistic truth. They signify equal and responsible clergy, entrusted to serve, guide, and protect the community. By rejecting later distortions and ideological projections, Druwayu preserves the authentic meaning of these roles, ensures true equality between male and female leadership, and grounds spiritual practice and cultural heritage firmly in documented evidence rather than centuries of scholarly misrepresentation.

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Ultimately, fidelity to language reflects fidelity to practice and brings forth a deeper spiritual connection and awareness that bypasses modern superficial cosplay. Upholding such integrity means confronting the weight of historical misinterpretation and recognizing that authority, guidance, and spiritual insight are not bound by modern biases of gender or morality—but flow naturally from the wisdom and structures recorded in the earliest sources with a deeper sense of ethical and equal treatment.

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Scottish Origin Claim/Divisional Fallacy

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To make this part simple, the claim usually goes — without citing sources like the Heliand, Domboc, and other such important texts — that Warlock as a title comes from “Old Saxon” sources, recorded by English sources and repeated by Scottish sources. This is never cited as the source of the so-called Scottish origin claim because it would once more discredit the idea of warlocks and witches being fundamentally opposed to one another and that they are not gender-neutral titles and never were.

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First known source:

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• John Dryden, an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright from the 1600s CE.

• Language: Late Middle English / Early Modern English usage.

• Recorded On: April 15th, 1755 CE. Original Edition A Dictionary of the English Language, compiled by Samuel Johnson, Page 2243.

Quotation:

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“Warlock, in Scotland is applied to a man whom the vulgar suppose to be conversant with spirits,

As a woman who carries on the same commerce is called a witch.”

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Year of Quotation: Claimed to be or estimated around Between 1672–1673 CE.

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1. It uses the spelling of Warlock was Warluck. Reason unknown. Perhaps a typo of Samuel Johnson

2. The same source is likewise cited in the first edition of A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), compiled by Samuel Johnson.

3. Additionally, and seldom mentioned, both Warlock and Witch later came to be applied as surnames.

​The same source is likewise cited in the First Edition “A dictionary of the Scottish Language” published on January 1, 1818. Additionally, and seldom mentioned is both Warlock and Witch came to later be applied as sir names. However, in any case, we have some clear and specific points that cannot be ignored. 

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All the same, many will use this to claim Warlock is of Scottish origin but Witch is of English. As shown, the information is a lie and also why such never cite these sources because it exposes the lies that have since played the whole warlock bad and witch good bit as a mask for the same old feminist bullshit of man bad, and woman good misandry. But once confronted with this, the same run to other things to try and pull from as false alternatives. The following will address some of these. 

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There are several claimed substitutes for the terms in question, but the two most commonly inserted — and incorrectly interchanged — are Wizard and Witan. These are false equivalencies because their documented origins and meanings are distinct from Witch and Warlock.

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Wizard as Alternative to Warlock: False

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• Origins of Wizard: Wysar (Wise One, from Wisan).

• First known source: Promptorium Parvulorum (c. 1440 CE), an English–Latin dictionary.

The word developed through later spelling variations including wyser, wizer, wysard, wisard, vizard, and wizzard.

Wizard historically refers to wisdom or advisory function, not to sorcery, and is not linguistically derived from warlock. In any case, it was simply a term for an advisor and also expanded to include a Natural Philosopher as a proto-scientist. 

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Witan as Alternative to Witch: False

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• Origins of Witan: Witegan (from Old English wit, meaning to know or observe).

• First known source: Ælfric of Eynsham, Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church (955–1010 CE).

Related spellings include wītega, wītiga, witnes, witigan, witeȝan, and others. Witangemot referred to an assembly of witnesses or council members. Witan derives from a knowledge/witness root and is linguistically unrelated to witch.

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Witchdoctor as Counterpart to Witch: False

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• The term Witchdoctor in its modern English usage was coined by Francis Hutchinson in 1718 in An Historical Essay concerning Witchcraft.

• It was used as a critical term referring to fraudulent practitioners and self-styled witch-finders. It was not originally a neutral occupational counterpart to Witch.

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Shaman Meaning “One Who Knows”: False

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• The term entered European scholarship through Siberian accounts, notably associated with Nicolaes Witsen (1692). and called such the "same priests of the devil."

• Later academic systematization expanded in the 19th century, but the word itself predates that framework.

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Sorcerer Means “Sorter”: False

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Sorcerer derives from Latin sors, meaning lot or fate.
The term developed linguistically from lot-related meanings, not from administrative voting procedures.

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Spae Meaning Female Witch: False

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• Spae derives from roots related to observation, foresight, or seeing.

• Gendered Old English forms reflect grammatical structure rather than identity classification.

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Those that push such things try and make it a entirely "female" thing. Reality states otherwise because a spákona  literally means spy woman as spámaðr means spy man. because the word means spy factually, its this basis why such is often translated as seer and seeress. 

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The bottom line is a Warlock is a Warlock and Witch is a Witch, neither words are bad words and so called alternatives are not factually alternatives regardless who or how many push forward the falsehood of such proclamations, and a Warlock is male and a Witch is female and those that don't like it can get over it. 

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