On Tue, Apr 01, 2003 at 09:46:46PM +0100, Ken Brown wrote:
> Completely correct. The stuff of modern neo-paganism is synthesised from
> bits of Celtic and Norse lore got from books (books written, of course,
> by Christian priests and monks who preserved the ancient pre-Christian
> stories - without them we would know nothing of the old stories); bits
> of renaissance & early modern astrology and magic; 18th & 19th century
> speculations; and stuff borrowed from India; and stuff that was just
> plain made up. Very little of it is older than about 1880, almost
> nothing older than about 1700.
Why would you think the only knowledge comes from books? The older wiccan
tradition would certainly have been an oral one, nothing written down, just as
all indig religions are. Even Judaism was totally an oral tradition for a long,
long time. Wiccan practices would have been handed down generation after
generation, probably mother to daughter.
So what do you think happens to a culture like this when persecution
occurs? It just becomes more secretive, and, since there are no institutions, no
temples or other infrastructure to be destroyed, no books to be burned, why
would anything be lost? Primarily the wiccans were healers, herbal pharmacists,
midwives, and, some seers. Certainly the herbal knowledge, healing knowledge,
midwifery, continued to be handed down -- why not the rest?
Look at Africa -- still plenty of the old religions there, despite centuries
of christer persecution. Europeans would just be a lot quieter about it, more
secretive, keeping it hidden just as homosexuality has remained largely hidden,
but even more so.
Look at South and Central America -- the church came in there with their
inquistions, burned temples, killed the priests, even banned the growing of
certain crops like amaranth because they were used in rituals. The people just
took it underground, the old religions are still very much alive. All oral
culture.
Just because people didn't declare themeselves to be wiccans for a long time
doesn't mean they weren't there -- after all, why would they? Getting burned at
the stake probably isn't much fun. Still there seems to have been quite a bit of
magical goings on around Europe through the centuries. Every read any of Viktor
Schauberger's stuff? He was an Austrian inventor who was forced to help in
Hitler's flying saucer experiments, also know as the "Water Wizard". Fascinating
books, quite bizarre stuff he talks about, a lot of which is essentially magical
in nature. Or nature relgion, however you want to take it.
>
> That doesn't mean it is bad, evil, or wrong; it does mean it probably
> has very little connection with anything our ancestors thought, said, or
> did 2,000 years ago. In a social sense it is fundamentalism's twin -
> both are reactions to a world dominated by liberal agnosticism, as it
> has been (at least amongst the educated ruling classes in western
> Europe) for the last 2 or 3 of centuries. It arose not in opposition to
> Christianity but in mourning for it.
Oh please! It's gain in popularity is more likely from disgust and an desire
to find something real.
> And if Christianity and her tomboy
> sister Islam are getting more powerful again, it might well be that
> neo-paganism, like the old-fashioned sort, is on the way out.
>
I'd say it's more the opposite.
> There is certainly no significant unbroken pagan or magical tradition in
> Western Europe.
And how would you know that? Because they didn't preach it on the street or
have grand cathederals?
>
> Mediaeval and early modern magical practices in Western Europe were
> mostly post-Christian, or para-Christian, rather than survivals from
> paganism, and those that were survivals came through the *literary*
> tradition rather than through folk memory. Many of them arose in a
> Christian/Jewish context from a cobbling together of Classical and
> Cabbalistic sources with folk practices derived from debased versions of
> Catholic liturgy - people excluded from a theological understanding of
> Catholic ritual developed folk traditions that gave a magical or
> superstitious meaning to the rituals.
>
> Two books to read if anyone is interested: "Religion and the Decline of
> Magic" by Keith Thomas, and "The Stripping of the Altars" by Eamonn
> Duffy (the latter is basically an anti-Protestant polemic, but the vast
> amount of information in it about 15th century ritual makes fascinating
> reading, if you like that sort of thing)
I'm sure academics wouldn't have a clue as to whether or not a secret
religion was handed down thru the ages. After all, how much do they know even
about fairly open groups like Masons and Rosecrucians?
--
Harmon Seaver
CyberShamanix
http://www.cybershamanix.com
