according to liddell's initial 1974 claims, since the eleventh century the pickingill family had been priests of a pre-christian, pagan religion devoted to the worship of the horned god. in this, his claims fitted within the historical framework of the discredited witch-cult hypothesis as propagated in the works of margaret murray. later he added that the "medieval witch cult" was influenced by the "tenets" of the iron age druids, in particular their knowledge of ley lines which were marked out by the stone circles erected in the neolithic and bronze ages. conflicting with these ideas, in 1998 liddell personally informed hutton that the witch-cult did not derive from ancient pre-christian religion but that it instead had been founded in fifteenth-century france, emerging from a union between christian heretics, cunning lodges, and a cult of lucifer founded by islamic moors with the intent of undermining christianity.