A historian's critique of popular conceptions of witchcraft
athenaeumreview.org
A historian's critique of popular conceptions of witchcraft
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Re: A historian's critique of popular conceptions of witchcraft
#2The problem with this article is that it seems to cherry pick the easiest examples of pagan identity to criticize and then simply rebukes them by pithy aphorism.
This makes it an extremely uninformed article. The mainstream witchcraft (i.e. wiccan) movements stem from Gerald Gardner's attempt to reconstruct Italian and British witchcraft traditions and turn it into something acceptable for modern audiences. Both his specific reconstructions and the problems with them have been well documented (see his own books and those of Valiente).
In many way what happened with modern witchcraft is similar to what happened with modern Yoga traditions (see Mark Singleton's book the Making of Modern Yoga), in that a few people tried to create mass marketable phenomenon by taking some old traditions and then creating a consumable package. Obviously this often comes with overstated claims considering the guru, authenticity, etc. Then it also creates identity movements where people create an identity around their new belief system.
As far as what various pagans did in the Roman empire and how many of those traditions were gradually eradicated by Christianity, some of those things are well documented and some are not, partially because of the presence of many non-recorded mystery traditions in ancient Rome.
As far as people choosing a "pagan" identity as a reactionary counter culture vis-a-vis a perceived mainstream Christianity that also clearly exists where Christianity is mainstream. In various forms it seems to have merged with other reactionary version of feminism.
Re: A historian's critique of popular conceptions of witchcraft
#3Though not quite on point with TFA, to anyone interested in this type of stuff I highly recommend The Secret History of Western Esotericism podcast[0].
Re: A historian's critique of popular conceptions of witchcraft
#4I have no love lost for new-age fraudsters peddling magical nonsense, but it still feels a tad cowardly to focus your ire on modern self-styled witches for espousing ahistorical belief structures that recycle old material in ways that are at odds with historical fact but is more palatable to the modern masses when, across the country, there are protestant megachurches doing precisely the same thing but with orders of magnitude more adherents and orders of magnitude more political influence.
Re: A historian's critique of popular conceptions of witchcraft
#5I have no love lost for new-age fraudsters peddling magical nonsense, but it still feels a tad cowardly to focus your ire on modern self-styled witches for espousing ahistorical belief structures that recycle old material in ways that are at odds with historical fact but is more palatable to the modern masses when, across the country, there are protestant megachurches doing precisely the same thing but with orders of…
This is still a phenomenon worth examining. How is this cowardly? The author can’t do anything about the IRS. What else is there to say about megachurches that hasn’t been said?
Re: A historian's critique of popular conceptions of witchcraft
#6I have no love lost for new-age fraudsters peddling magical nonsense, but it still feels a tad cowardly to focus your ire on modern self-styled witches for espousing ahistorical belief structures that recycle old material in ways that are at odds with historical fact but is more palatable to the modern masses when, across the country, there are protestant megachurches doing precisely the same thing but with orders of…
This is still a phenomenon worth examining. How is this cowardly? The author can’t do anything about the IRS. What else is there to say about megachurches that hasn’t been said?
I didn't say anything about the IRS and I didn't say the phenomena should be ignored. I think that the most impactful manifestations of the phenomenon should be the focus of study, on account of being the most impactful.
Cowardice seems likely when somebody ignores the high impact manifestation that enjoys popular support, choosing instead to lampoon the low impact fringe manifestation.
Re: A historian's critique of popular conceptions of witchcraft
#7I think that while there's a lot of informationally isolated pagans out there who still buy into the "burning times", hidden matriarchal religion, pagan survivals in folk customs, etc etc stuff, anyone who's well informed knows that all that has been shown to be 19th-century romanticism at work. So what is left is a contemporary mystery religion founded in the 1940s by a charismatic man, that borrows aesthetics from the popular idea of a witch, and combines a magical style in the Crowley tradition with western herbalism, western astrology, Masonic ritualism, and its own theology. And that's fine.
There's room out there too for grimoire traditionalists, cunning-man revivalists, catholic folk-magic, brujeria, santeria, pagan historical reconstructionists, and any number of other detailed traditions that aren't Wiccan. And that's fine too.
I welcome the idea of learning from the past rather than imposing romantic fantasies over it, but that doesn't mean the past is where everything of value resides. If you think religions relate to real things, rather than purely being a human construct, then those things have agency of their own, and exist in the present day. Authenticity, then, becomes about the strength of connection.
Re: A historian's critique of popular conceptions of witchcraft
#8Though not quite on point with TFA, to anyone interested in this type of stuff I highly recommend The Secret History of Western Esotericism podcast[0]. [0] https://shwep.net/
I am a subscriber! And, for the readers, try Wouter Hanugraff's "western esoterism: a guide for the perplexed".
We are truly lucky to have such great scholarship
Re: A historian's critique of popular conceptions of witchcraft
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is still a phenomenon worth examining. How is this cowardly? The author can’t do anything about the IRS. What else is there to say about megachurches that hasn’t been said?
I didn't say anything about the IRS and I didn't say the phenomena should be ignored. I think that the most impactful manifestations of the phenomenon should be the focus of study, on account of being the most impactful. Cowardice seems likely when somebody ignores the high impact manifestation that enjoys popular support, choosing instead to lampoon the low impact fringe manifestation.
Could just be "this is in my ballpark, that is not".
Also going against contemporary American megachurch Christianity would require a very different kind of focus and approach. There are deep subtleties to it on a sociological perspective that are far more interesting than its extreme fish-in-a-barrel status theologically. Maybe that doesn't interest the author?
Re: A historian's critique of popular conceptions of witchcraft
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't say anything about the IRS and I didn't say the phenomena should be ignored. I think that the most impactful manifestations of the phenomenon should be the focus of study, on account of being the most impactful. Cowardice seems likely when somebody ignores the high impact manifestation that enjoys popular support, choosing instead to lampoon the low impact fringe manifestation.
Could just be "this is in my ballpark, that is not". Also going against contemporary American megachurch Christianity would require a very different kind of focus and approach. There are deep subtleties to it on a sociological perspective that are far more interesting than its extreme fish-in-a-barrel status theologically. Maybe that doesn't interest the author?
Maybe you're right. The impression I got was that the author picked a soft easy target, but maybe that's an uncharitable take.
> Also going against contemporary American megachurch Christianity would require a very different kind of focus and approach
I'm not sure I agree with that though. The same method, pointing out conflict between modern espoused belief and historical reality, seems like it would be equally effective against both.