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WHICH bits of pre-historic religion or historic paganism is Wicca "burying" in its revivalism?
> After reading through some of the book by Vivianne Crowley that i mentioned above there
> doesn't seem to be anything that could be buried. Connections go from Celtic with the four
> festivals stemming from theirs, Greek, Norse, Anglo-Saxon, Germanic, Egyptian and Roman.
I think that the standard argument for Wicca having distorted its antecedents is that its syncretism obscures the “authentic” classical practices. Whatever they were. In other words, Wicca’s modern (or rather post-modern) jamming together of any ancient religion that had fertility-worship and female-centricity erases our ability to visualise specific historical religions. I don’t think it’s a good argument, but you hear it.
“The reformed religion also made Isis not just one of many Egyptian Goddesses, but The Goddess… This is the Goddess as worshipped in Wicca; immanant, transcendant and mysterious.”
I think Vivianne is alright and philosophically she’s strong, but this doesn’t half sound like an ex-cathedra appeal for authority. Who gives a fuck what the Isian orthodoxy was 2000 years ago? Is Wicca supposed to be “THE authentic Goddess religion”? It ain't. No such animal.
“While many harked back to the ways of Paganism, those European scholars who had re-appraised the Witch trials generally believed that the craft had died with the fires of the Inquisition.”
No they didn’t. Inquisition scholars familiar with the numerous records of witchcraft burnings were clearly of the opinion that the people being burned were not witches, certainly not in the modern Wiccan sense. Nor was the number of people burned in the millions.
“Towards the end of the nineteenth century, a book emerged which suggested that Goddess worship had not been completely suppressed in Europe. In 1886, the American folklorist Charles Leland met an Italian fortune-teller and Witch from Florence called Maddalena. Leland claimed that as his friendship with Maddalena grew, she gradually imparted to him secrets that had remained hidden for centuries. These were the beliefs of the Italian Witch tradition that the Witches called the Old Religion.”
Leland collected cunning craft (stregaria) folklore from Maddalena and dressed it up as the remnants of an ongoing pagan religion even though a lot of it was clearly Catholic in outlook and orientation – which is interesting in itself but something different from “surviving witchcraft”. And either Maddalena or Leland himself seems to have made a lot of this up. His documentary evidence is simply non-existent and many of his supporting references are from Michelet, who did no original research at all but dashed off his “histories” of witchcraft to make a quick buck. People in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries WANTED to believe in surviving paganism and invented it, misappropriating large amounts of folklore material in the process. Wicca is but one outcome of this process, which can be seen as an offshoot of Romanticism and a reaction to industrial modernity. All of which, when you strip away the invention and the self-delusion, makes Wicca more powerful and satisfying as a modern magickal system, IMO.
Taverneiro:
> Thats exactly my point: wicca claims to be the rebirth os european ancient traditions as it
> actually introduces a whole bunch of thelema and a bit of chaos magic
Does it introduce Thelema? Well, Gardner had authorisation to start a “Lodge of Minervals” but didn’t manage to get it going, partly because of ill-health. He worked with Crowley. He almost certainly didn’t pay him thirty grand to write the rituals. Moreover, while the links with OTO magick are clear, there’s lots of it that isn’t Thelemic in origin. Don’t forget Gardner was a folklore expert, a published scholar in the field and senior in the Folklore Society. Wicca was a pretty substantial synthesis. One might argue compellingly that it is a more advanced syncretism than Thelema, though it’s not an argument one hears frequently, if at all. Perhaps we should – it would put the cat among the pigeons!
> And I think in the future when people go looking for those ancients traditions they'll probably
> find it as wicca, and as there will be no more horses to whisper to, or milk to be curdled, the
> ancient traditions will finally perish (I'm making it sound so dramatic, isnt it?).
I think you’re being sucked into the Spectacle here. Wicca is not responsible for the erosion of traditional rural folklore. Industrial capitalism is. And when people look at traditional rural folklore with a modern worldview, it is that of Romanticism, of which Wicca is but one element. Let’s not put the cart before the horse.
> Anyway, does anyone here knows where to find good things about those ancient traditions/
> religions? British, celtic, anything.
Your best bet is probably Hutton’s books on the ritual year in England and on the history of the Pagan Religions of the British Isles. Prepare to be disappointed if you’re looking for unbroken lines of initiation from the neolithic.
> later I'll talk more abou candomble and umbanda.
Do! I know nothing about them. |
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