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Originally Posted by norseman
You ought to stress that Starhawk writes about AMERICAN wicca, not wicca in general. Wicca in the UK [where it originated !] tends towards it's roots in Traditional British Witchcraft.
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But what is "Traditional British Witchcraft"? The ancient pagans never called themselves "witches".
Gardner based what developed into Wicca on the theories of Margaret Murray about a witch-cult, which were completely debunked. It's not surprising that he believed it (and had Murray write the forward to
Witchcraft Today). A lot of people did.
Murray was an expert on Egyptology, not Europe. With her witch-cult theory, she had a problem with cooking the data, quoting things from trial records out of context, in one case even eliminating an entire paragraph to make what was said just before and after seem like it supported her theory. Of course, nowhere in the trial transcripts was there any mention of paganism, just Satanism. Also, it helped that, at the time, people in general were unfamiliar with the ancient Celts or Germans, so could easily believe both worshiped a horned god and goddess. Woden who? The Tuatha De what? If people knew that the Celts and Germans each had their own pantheons, Murray's theory would never have gained acceptance. The thing is, though... You'd
think a professional like Murray would have looked the gods and goddesses of Europe that weren't the Olympians
up before coming up with her theory.
Since I don't have enough posts to provide links, Google "wicca for the rest of us margaret murray's unlikely history" for a modern Wiccan view of Murray's theories. Warning: The writer doesn't mince words.
To add, Murray was very insistent that confessions made under torture, where the torturer was telling the victim what to confess to, was the true testimony, and the recanting of it after the torture ended was the
false testimony. That... defies all logic. Also, there's her claim that Becket was not only secretly a member of the witch-cult, but was killed by his fellow pagans in a ritual sacrifice. Nah, it had nothing to do with Henry II, according to Murray. Same with Joan of Arc. According to Murray, her trial and death had
nothing to do with that war going on between England and France.
While Gardner can be given the benefit of a doubt regarding believing Murray's theories, he can't with some of his other claims. Reincarnation? That wasn't from the ancient Celts, but from Hinduism and Buddhism. Those rituals he claimed were ancient pagan ones handed down over centuries through families? Some were taken from the esoteric Christian Masons, others from the Golden Dawn (which was rooted in the esoteric Christian traditions based in Kabbalah, which is, of course, Jewish, not Celtic).
His worst offence was slightly rewording rituals created by Crowley for Thelema (Gardner had been part of O.T.O. for a while), and claiming
Crowley stole them from the witch-cult. Naturally, he waited until Crowley was dead to do this. And, anyone who knows anything about Crowley and his history knows better. Again, since I don't have enough posts to be able to put up links, Google "hermetically.net history of wicca" for a Thelemite perspective.
And, what was Crowley's work rooted in? Again, Kabbalah. And, where does the term "Sabbat" come from? It's Jewish. So, American Wiccans adding things from Folk Christian practices wasn't inconsistent with what Gardner developed, since his version of "Traditional British Witchcraft" was Judeo-Christian in the
first place. But then, it was only Jews and Christians doing these rituals and practicing magic in Britain for so many centuries.
Also, it needs to be remembered that the Celts and Saxons were
not friends. They didn't share a common culture or religion. Celts didn't celebrate "Yule". Saxons didn't celebrate "Imbolc".
What Starhawk did was
legitimize Wicca, and acknowledge its Universalism.
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