to inspire terror in the minds of the foolish and the wicked". Conversely, others have suggested that it is a depiction of a pre-Christian god. In her 1931 book The God of the Witches, Margaret Murray connected the Ooser to her version of the witch-cult hypothesis—the idea that those tried as alleged witches were adherents of a surviving pre-Christian fertility religion—claiming that the mask was a cult item that reflected continuing worship of the cult's Horned God. Murray's hypothesis is now discredited. The historians Jeffrey B. Russell and Brooks Alexander have stated that "today, scholars are agreed that Murray was more than just wrong [regarding the existence of the witch-cult] – she was completely and embarrassingly wrong on nearly all of her basic premises". The Ooser's pre-Christian origin theory was echoed in the Reader's Digest encyclopaedia of British folklore, Folklore, Myths and Legends of Britain, where it was described as "the idol of a former god of fertility". A gold embossed image of the Ooser was included on the front of the black clothbound encyclopaedia. Although not believing that the Ooser was a specific depiction of a surviving pre-Christian deity, Dewar suggested that the imagery of the Devil, and thus of the Ooser, was originally drawn from the pre-Christian gods of "phallic or fertility worship". Contemporary usage and influence In 1975 the local Morris dancer John Byfleet made a replica of the original Ooser, which he carved from a log using a penknife. This replica is on display at Dorset County Museum in Dorchester. It is taken from the museum twice a year, on May Day and St. George's Day, when it is used by the Wessex Morris Men as part of their seasonal festivities. In 2005, a journalist from The Guardian reported on a dawn ceremony performed by the troupe on May Day atop Giant Hill near Cerne Abbas. The ceremony involved one member carrying the Dorset Ooser replica atop his head, with other Morris men dancing around him; after the rite they proceeded, still dancing, to a local pub, the Red Lion. In summer 2006, the Wessex Morris Men took the replica to Melbury Osmond for the first time, where they performed a dance in a local street. Murray's interpretation of the Ooser was embraced by Doreen Valiente, an earlier practitioner of the modern Pagan religion of Wicca, who stated that the mask "is certainly connected with the