NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/alt/pagan/14879

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-04 | 5.0 KB

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From: [e-mail] (Robert Mathiesen)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: Re: Documented Evidence
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 00:09:54 EST
Organization: Brown University - Providence, Rhode Island  USA
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In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail]
(Paul Ciszek) said:

>I think the question being asked here, and I would also like to see it
>answered, is if there is any evidence of Wicca existing before Gardner.
>Family traditions are a separate issue, unless these traditions appear
>to be related to Wicca.

I think there is some slight evidence that the religion into which Gardner
was initiated in 1939 actually existed for about ten years earlier, since
about 1930: at any rate, I can construct a weak argument that Gardner's
own Book of Shadows contained texts composed closer to 1930 than to 1940.
See my postings from a week or two ago on ALT.MAGICK.  However, I suspect
this may not be precisely what you mean ...

The term "Wicca (tm)," originally with one "c," seems to have been first
used as the name of that religion by one of Doreen Valiente's high priests,
known as "Ned."  Originally, of course, it was a name for a kind of person
(a witch), not the religion or system which that person might practice.

As to the specific religion itself, apart from its Book of Shadows and
apart from the name "Wicca," there is to the best of my knowledge NOT ONE
authentic piece of documentary evidence for its existence before the 20th
century.

Witchcraft as a kind of magical practice did indeed exist, and can be docu-
mented here and there rather well from the 16th century on in England and
from the 17th century on in North America.  This is not the same thing as
a religion.  Analogues can also be documented, say, for the German-speaking
world, and one of them survives among the Pennsylvania Germans.

The argument that we should not expect documentary evidence to survive for
fear of persecution may be sound for the earlier centuries, but is NOT
sound for the late 18th and the 19th century.  A surprisingly large number
of manuscripts of magical rituals do survive from these centuries, yet not
one of them seems to reveal anything about Gardner-type witchcraft.  How-
ever, the fact that they have survived in the dozens shows that a similar
kind of manuscript for Gardner-type witchcraft COULD have survived, had it
ever existed.

Moreover, my wife's family's own preservation of its "Book of Benjamin"
from the 1840's (when it was written by her great great grandfather Ben-
jamin as a legacy for his descendants) up to now, despite its rather off-
beat religious teaching, shows that such a manuscript might have been
written by some Gardner-type witch, had one really existed, in the same
century, and might have survived until now.  (To set the record straight,
the "Book of Benjamin" is NOT a Book of Shadows, or even a book of magic.
It begins with a year-by-year chronicle of its author's life, and then
contains his essays on a variety of philosophical and religious matters.
His views are extremely unorthodox and critical, much colored by Sweden-
borgianism; despite his views, however, he worked regularly as a village
schoolmaster in Maine, where he lived and farmed.  He himself had about
three years of formal schooling, which seems to have been enough to qualify
him to keep school at that time, but was very widely read.  His library
has also come down in the family, and is full of books on religious mat-
ters -- and not just from the perspective of Christianity, either.)

The upshot of all this, I think, is that Gardner-type witchcraft CANNOT be
viewed as having been handed down from one generation to the next since
pre-Christian times in England.  Rather, it is an attempt to *reconstruct*
such a religion in the absence of a true unbroken tradition, on the basis
of speculation, scholarship and fragmentary survivals in folk magic and
folk ritual.

This is NOT to say that such a pre-Christian religion might not have been
handed down in secret in some isolated village in the North of England --
Ann Ross claims to have found such an isolated village, but refuses to
make its location widely known, so one cannot judge for oneself --, but
only that Gardner-type witchcraft is not THAT religion (though it might
approximate it, if the reconstruction was skillful), and was not DIRECTLY
descended from that religion in any way that has left traces which a
scholar might use to prove such descent beyond question.

This is hardly a complete answer to the question that inspired it, but it
may serve to clear away some of the underbrush ...



Robert Mathiesem, Brown University, SL500000@BROWNVM