NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/alt/pagan/14860

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-03 | 6.6 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!news.claremont.edu!nntp-server.caltech.edu!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!usc!cs.utexas.edu!qt.cs.utexas.edu!news.Brown.EDU!news.Brown.EDU!news
From: [e-mail] (Robert Mathiesen)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: Re: Documented Evidence
Date: Sun, 3 Jan 1993 12:50:56 EST
Organization: Brown University - Providence, Rhode Island  USA
Lines: 101
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
NNTP-Posting-Host: brownvm.brown.edu
News-Software: BNN via BNN_POST v1.0 beta

In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Tammy Stark
Blandino) said:

>I started not to reply to this thread and I did say that I wouldn't, but I
>noticed something earlier and my big mouth just won't let me stay shut up..:)
>
>The way it seems to be comming out is that only Gardenarian Wicca is
>"Witchcraft" and only it is a witch religion.  Fam Trads are not because of
>the fact that they are not Gardenerian, but only folk magic.  Therefore
>you have no documented evidence of Wicca existing before Gardener.
>
>Does everyone else see the circle that I do?

Not quite the same way, I guess.  My own family tradition contains both
magic and religion, but they are in principle independent of one
another.  Magic is done by the mind (though props may be useful) and
could continue to be done even if there happen to be no deities and the
religious part of our tradition happens to be vacuous.  The power of any
deities that may exist plays no role in this magic.  Moreover, the
religion does not need the practice of magic, nor does the deity whom
it venerates draw anything from acts of magic when people perform them.
This deity -- there is one, not two or more -- is simultaneously female
and male, may be addressed as "Father-Mother," but has no real name, and
little resembles a person even in outward seeming: he/she is within all
things, everywhere in the universe; is not more concerned with mankind
than with any other part of the universe (nor less concerned); is sentient;
is both creator and destroyer, and is perhaps best viewed as a kind of
fire (which might warm, or might purify, or might even wholly consume).
We have no name for this religion, but feel comfortable characterizing
it as a kind of pantheism.  It has no secrets, for the experiences are
ineffable; and no initiations, for all life is an initiation; and no
sacred, set-aside space for worship or for magic, for that would weaken
and contain the power of either.

However, this family tradition is NOT a family tradition of witchcraft,
let alone of Wicca; nor is it a family tradition of ceremonial magic.

It is indeed a tradition of magic and of religion; and each of them
resemble the magic and the religion of Witchcraft or Wicca sufficiently
that, were I so inclined, I could probably persuade Witches to accept me
as a fam-trad witch, with all the prestige that this entails.

Were I to do so, I would be unfaithful to my own heritage: I know that my
foremothers would regard this as dishonesty on my part, as would I.  The
basis for this feeling lies in the parts of my tradition which are NOT
at all like Witchcraft or Wicca, and which would inevitably become
transformed or destroyed over the decades by influences from the latter
if the two traditions were to cross-fertilize one another, or to merge.

It is clear that other, similar family traditions are also to be found
here and there in North America,and I do not doubt that some of their
adherents have happily embraced Wicca or Witchcraft in general as their
long-lost community.  But, if they have the same roots as mine, they are
not Witchcraft or Wicca in the sense in which Gardner used the term.
Rather, they seem to stem from what Catherine Albanese has recently
characterized as an indigenous North American alternate tradition of
Nature Religions [see my first post on this subject, two days ago],
which can be traced back at least to the 18th century on this side of
the Atlantic, if not indeed to the 17th.  Within this tradition, the
religion tends toward pantheism, and occasionally reaches it; and the
magic is essentially propless, a question of mind over matter.  Visu-
alization is one of its major techniques.  Gardner himself owned at
least one published book on magic from within this tradition, for it is
still in his library, now preserved at Toronto.

So I do not doubt that there are family traditions within the present
community of Witches, and that some of them may have good documentation,
while others may have only undocumented tradition.  I do not, however,
think that all of these family traditions were originally traditions of
witchcraft.  Some clearly were: such traditions of witchcraft have been
studied by 20th-century folklorists in the Ozarks and among the
Pennsylvania Germans (Hexerei).  These two seem to have connections with
one another, and with 17th and 18th century German ceremonial magic.
Others, if one could talk to their earlier proponents, were not; and
these earlier proponents, like my great grandmother, would have rejected
the labels "witch" and "witchcraft" (for all labels limit, and are to be
rejected).  These latter, I think, do not go back to any pre-Christian
European paganism, but have other sources (which Albanese has begun to
uncover).  If they somewhat resemble Gardner's Witchcraft and its many
offshoots, this is because the latter also has been influenced by the
same kinds of 19th and early 20th century occult writings (as can be
proven from the texts of Gardner's Book of Shadows).

There are *also*, naturally enough, families in which elements of
European folkloric magic have been preserved, and these folkloric
traditions may indeed go back to pre-Christian European religions in
some cases.  This is another strand in the cord that is modern
Witchcraft, and is distinct from the kinds of strands I have been
talking about up to now.

The same things may be true of at least some of the pre-Gardnerian lines
of Witchcraft in North America.  The figure of the Witch has always been a
powerful and evocative one, especially for women; and in North America these
alternate traditions of Nature Religion may well have been rechristened as
"Witchcraft" by more than one woman at more than one place and time.  Some
of the ways in which Starhawk's Witchcraft, or Laurie Cabot's, or some other
kinds of Witchcraft, differ from Gardner's own, remind me of these Nature
Religion traditions, and suggest to me that they may have begun as relabel-
ings of the latter.

Robert Mathiesen, Brown University, SL500000@BROWNVM