History of Witchcraft

Dear Neophyte,

I wrote this history of witchcraft about a year ago when I was starting my religious studies from the top.  If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to leave them after the essay.  You having the exact same history books I do is highly unlikely, so I sited only the online sources here :)

History of Witchcraft

By: Sesh

Gris Gris Bag 

Witchcraft is the craft of the Witch.  A Witch is a person who uses magic to bring about a desired change in the physical or metaphysical world.  Such magic includes health, wealth and money magic.  Folk magic is magic that is tied to a specific culture or area, and is generally local herbalism, charms and incantations to ensure good harvests and such.

Ancestor Shrine, Greece

When human conscious evolved to include a kind of religion, it’s thought that the first kind of ritual was for the dead.  Ancestor worship became the first religion.  Since the ancestors were real and able to effect change, it was believed that one could pray to ancestors for desired results.  Paleolithic humans deified what they did not understand in a process called animism.  Soon, nature and animal spirits were added to ancestors to create the first primitive pantheons.  What evolved into God/desses came to have power over the world around Neolithic humans and humans began attempting ritual and ceremony in order to curry the favor of the Devine.   Soon it was noted that some members of a tribe or family were better at getting results and they became the village Shaman or Witch doctor.  Thus is the beginning of Witchcraft.

Village Witch

In Neolithic times, early humans practiced what’s called sympathetic magic.  Sympathetic magic is the act of showing a deity what one needs in order to get the desired result.  This magic included rain dances and mock deer hunts to ensure the actual hunt would be fruitful. 

Hunter's Magic

Hunter-gather families became tribes, such as the Native Americans, that followed animal herds and would often act out hunts before they happened in order to achieve a successful hunt.  As tribes became communities and kingdoms, nomads settled down and began planting crops and domesticating animals.   Fertility rituals were some of the most common forms of magic used and ensured, not just human fertility, but also the fertility of food animals and crops

Heket

Early man took teachings and inspirations from nature, animals and the heavens.  There was no set of dogmatic beliefs at first and obviously no scripture.  Witches used Witchcraft to predict seasonal and weather changes and to find water and other essentials for nomadic tribes.  They were wise elders of the family.  When groups of primitive humans banded together, it was often the council of elders who lead the groups.  When chieftains and kings arose, the elders played a dominant role in the hierarchy as seers and mystics who used their craft for the betterment of the territory.

Elders

Shamanism is probably the oldest form of witchcraft.  Shamans, female and male, would use noxious concoctions and fumes to induce trances and visions.  These visions were called vision quests, where a practitioner would often leave their body and visit their tribe’s deities or ancestors on the astral plane.  These meetings would result in the parting of useful information that the shaman would take back to their chief. 

That's right: Magic Mushrooms, yo!

The earliest God/desses were a Mother Goddess and a God, who was a hunter figure, often portrayed with horns and other animal parts.  Aside from God/desses, there were many spirits of animals, plants and natural elements that were all deified latter.  To show respect for the sacrifice of animals, their unwearable or inedible parts were used as decoration around camps and homes.  Skulls, or instance, were hung on poles around the perimeter of a community to ward off possible attacks from other communities.

Rain Bringer

Symbolism is of great importance in the history of witchcraft.  Symbols of The Goddess were carved on cave walls and are the same ones used to this day.  In fact, the famous Goddess Position in ritual came from one such cave painting.  The God symbols, too, were on cave walls, often showing the animals He ruled over and who sacrificed themselves for food. 

Upper Left 

Life continued in tribes and communities for thousands of years, until more powerful weapons were devised and battle strategies were perfected.   Then chieftains united tribes and communities into clans, relying heavily on witchcraft to ensure success, and clans became a people and people became a kingdom with a name and one ruler.

King Author

Perhaps the most famous practicing group of witches was the Celts, who lived between 700 BC and 100 AD.  Descended from Indo-Europeans, the Celts were hunters, musicians, metalworkers, farmers and warriors.  Deeply spiritual, they worshiped a vast array of Deities, some adopted from conquered nations.

Celts, Celtic Burial

All pre-Abrahamic religions are Pagan.  Pagan rituals, in this area of the world, blended with Indo-European groups and spawned the practice of concocting potions, ointments, casting spells and magic in general.  These practices, which were held in high regard all over the world, were practiced by the Celts and became known as Witchcraft.

Druids

The Celtic form of witchcraft became blended with the Romans when they were conquered.  The Romans had their own way of practicing magic, which included the use of anti-fertility curses etched on lead for those who wanted to be promiscuous.  There were even laws distinguishing between good and bad forms of magic, bad magic being banned of course. 

Lead Curse Tablet

When the Christians began rising in power, the practice of witchcraft was accepted as being a practice of the ‘paganus’, or rural people and their non-Christian religions.  As Christians gained more power, and forced conversion became common in all conquered nations, the rural religion was banned, as was the practice of witchcraft, which not longer had a reputation of being usable for good.

Drove snakes, i.e. Druids, out of Ireland, forcing the Irish to convert to Christianity

In Europe, beginning about A.D. 700, witchcraft began to be associated with heresy.  That is, the rejection of church teachings.  Prior to this, some say as late as the 14^th century, witchcraft was thought to be a collection practices and beliefs that included healing through spell, ointments and concoctions.  It was also the act of dabbling in the supernatural, divination and clairvoyance.

Cause Reading palms is DANGEROUS!

Heresy was officially made a crime in about 1000 A.D.  religious leaders made an effort to end heresy and sentenced what they considered non-Christians to death.  The Inquisition, which was made famous in the Poe tale “The Pit and the Pendulum”, officially began about 1230 A.D. 

"Free thinking is bad for Church business, so STFU!"

The Inquisition was an attempt by the church to get the country folk to change their beliefs, but mostly did more damage to the church by burning it’s own followers, most off whom got on someone’s bad side before being accused.

Women were targeted in order to 'bring their gender to heel'. 

About this time North America was discovered.  Some went to America to escape the Inquisition and settlers practiced witchcraft for the same reason primitive man did- to grow crops and bring about a successful hunt.  Despite a decree that forbid witchcraft in the North American colonies, some colonists continued to do so.  Some of these rituals were said to help protect their settlements form hostile natives.

Witch Bottle, popular form of Colonial Witchcraft

Back in Europe, by the 1500’s the secular (nonreligious) court was doing most of the trials of witches, most of who were accused of human sacrifice and Devil worship.  Historians doubt Devil worship was widespread, though modern Satanists will agree that their religion came about partially as a result of the hardship of Christian doctrine.

15th Century Engraving of Devil Worhipers

The peak of the witch hunt came in the 1500s and early 1600.  Many said witches weren’t practitioners of any kind of Witch’s craft, but were tortured until they confessed.  Even if they confessed, they still faced torture, banishment and execution.  Even in New England, America, trials were being conducted into the early 1700s.

Salem Witch Trials

         As a result of the with hunt, which didn’t actually get many witches, witchcraft and the Pagan religions had to go underground or risk getting caught. Some formed secret societies, others died out.  Though there is little proof, it’s nice to think that those who claim hereditary descendant of an ancient branch of witchcraft might be telling the truth.  Perhaps they are, maybe not.  Folk magic, a form of witchcraft, has been practiced around the world as hearth craft for eons and is usually passed on from parent to offspring as family tradition.  Making soup for a sick loved one, for instance, could be considered witchcraft.

Magic in  Bowl, Mm-mm Good!

In modern times, the reemergence of witchcraft for the modern public began with Gerald Garner in 1954 when he started a new religion: Wicca.  Though Garner believed he had been initiated into a line of witches that went strait back to the ancient days, there is irrefutable evidence that most of his material was culled from different secret societies, brotherhoods and lodges.

Freemasons are a (not so) Secret Society that Practices 'Witchcraft' by Modern Definitions of the Term

Because of the need for a more interactive religion, as well as reverence for the Mother Earth (the concept as Gianims), Neo-Paganism and the practice of witchcraft quickly took off.  Garner’s book “The Meaning of Witchcraft” became the basis for the modern movement of religious witchcraft.  We’ve come full circle with our Neolithic forbearers. 

Gaia

The modern practice of witchcraft has spread from Britain to the US and Ireland and from the UK to the rest of Europe.  Even Canada, Australia and Asia.  In the past books have helped spread the word, but now the Internet is the most prolific instrument for the reemergence of this truly ancient practice.

The Witches Voice (Witchvox) Website

To this day we are seeing the reemergence of more and more varied traditions of witchcraft.  What in the past were only interesting snippets of folklore and family tradition are being given new and greater meaning by a new generation of Witches.

And I don't Care What they Come to Circle Wearing!

Sources
http://ca.essortment.com/historyofmagi_rsav.htm

http://www.angelfire.com/realm2/amethystbt/witchcrafthistory.html

http://www.satanic-kindred.org/history.htm

Salutations,

Sesh

This short essay was written a year or so ago after I did research to better understand the history of my religion.  I have an insatiable need to go digging about and figuring out how and why things turned out the way they did.  This is one of the many things that lead me to study anthropology in college. 

This history goes back threw the timeline that most Americans will find more useful.  America > Britain > Roman/Egyptian > Cro-Magnon > Primitive.  I left out most of the native spiritualities that are present around the world.  Attempting to write a history that detailed would be a lifetimes worth of research :)

History of Paganism

By: Sesh

          Paganism is an umbrella term that means any religion that didn’t come from Abraham – anything besides Christian, Islamic, Jewish or Muslim (which are all descended from the same teachings).  Paganism is the world’s oldest religious practice, dating back to the dawn of human conscious, and going forward into the present day and into the future.  Even though the Abrahamic religions did much to exterminate Paganism in their areas of the world, there are many religions that were never touched or influenced by them, such as Hinduism, Native American beliefs and Shintoism.

Ancient Burial Mounds

          Pagans are people whose practices are usually based around the primal and personal aspects of life.   These practices are used today as they have always been: to ensure plentiful food, wealth, safety, health and fertility.  

  

To ancient peoples, everything had a spirit and every spirit had a purpose.  Archeologists say even primitive humans had a concept of the afterlife that sprang up about the time the first recorded religious practice did. 

Ancestor worship is probably one of the first religions in the world.  Ancient cultures began to see death as a transition and sets of beliefs sprang up to theorize what happened to the human psyche when the body died.  From primitive cultures to ancient times humans believed in life after death and the ability of the dead to influence us today.  The Ancient Egyptians and Romans held such beliefs.  The latter of who borrowed heavily from the Greek and Etruscans.  Modern cultural religions that still follow this belief include the Japanese, Chinese, Native American and most of the indigenous African religions.

Shamanistic Medicine Man

          Another of the oldest forms of religion is animism and shamanism.  Humans were afraid and became reverent of the animals in their everyday world.  Traces of animism survived primitive times and were continued into ancient cultures and then onward into modern cultures.  Osiris and Jehovah were worshiped as Bulls; Jesus was the Lamb of God; most Egyptian gods had animal counterparts, and the Holy Spirit of Christianity was a Dove and Shamans work with and invoke animal spirits.

As humanity realized it could plan crops and grow food, rites and superstitions developed around agriculture.  This lead to the rising of the first Deity, a fertility Goddess.  Examples of early Goddesses include Venus of Willindworf and the Willendworf Goddess.  It was though that women alone held the power of fertility and so the first God to be worshiped was actually a Goddess.  It wasn’t till much later than men realized that *ahem* they had a hand in the process.

Venus of Willendorf

             The earliest religious symbols were found in Kalahari Dessert in Botswana and Willendorf Austria.  A famous image amongst modern pagans, the figure from Austria shows a woman who is obviously well fed and maybe pregnant.  This statue, thought to be an ancient fertility or crop Goddess, and is also though to be a magical talisman.  The shape of the statue, and the implications behind how someone could also look that way, is though to be a plea to the early Deity of Willendorf for as much food and fertility.

The carved head of a python found in the Kalahari Dessert dates to 70,000 years ago and has recently been discovered to be the oldest religious artifact in human history.  This supports the theory that animism and animal worship was the world’s first religion.

Sympathetic magic is probably the oldest magic known to date.  Examples, such as rain dances, are still used to this day.  The stamping of the feet symbolizes the rain batting the ground.  Great importance was put on using sympathetic magic in hunts, fertility rights and to make crops grown.  Anyone familiar with the Arthurian legends will recognize the last vestments of the ancient fertility and hunting rites in the way Author came to impregnate his half-sister.

As groups of people moved from being hunter-gatherer tribes and settled into agrarian cultures, people started making offerings and working religious rites in honor of the spirits who rules over crops and wealth.  This is the beginning of true religion.  These Deities were though to be separate entities, and not just archetypical stereotypes.   The names of early Gods and Goddesses are lost to us, but other ancient deities (i.e. Celtic, Egyptian and Roman) are well known and worshiped to this day. 

Deities became a part of everyday life for ancient cultures around the world.  Emphasis was put on appeasing and appealing to these Deities for everything from finding lost objects to getting a good mate.  As man-made occurrences such as war and marriage came to exist, more and more specialized Deities evolved. 

The evolution of Deities can be traced back for thousands of years, threw names and associations- even from one culture to another.  During the Hellenistic period in Egypt, for instance, swapped Deities quite often.  New names evolved from the combination of two cultures religions and Gods such as Serapis were created.

Makes this Guy... Somehow

This Guy

Plus This Guy

There was a Deity for everything and everything had a Deity.  Every house and family had their shrines to household guardians and ancestors.  Eventually, these God/desses began to take on other responsibility that was sympathetic to their original aspect.  The rain, for instance, came to clean not just the body but the spirit and soul.  God/desses were given names and personified.  Along with war and marriage, crafts and cooking and government came to have their own God/desses.

Selu, Corn Woman

Beliefs started to vary between groups of humans around the time the Deities started taking on names and specialized priesthoods.  Agro-tribes met other agro-tribes and settled into communities.  With their shared knowledge, helping hands and their religious practices, lifespan lengthened, disease took a back seat and language and writing developed.  Communities became towns and towns became races and races became kingdoms.

             Whenever one country would invade another they would do one of three things: Adopt the loosing countries God/desses (as in the previous Serapis example) and blend them with their own, quench the native religion or allow the current Deities to be worshiped, but erect temples to their Gods.  The Romans were such victors.  They would allow a current population to worship their own but demanded they pay homage to Roman Deities.

Egyptians, Not Christians, Invented Monotheism

            A notable major religious revolution happened around this time in history.  Ankanatan attempted to unite all of Egypt under one All-Powerful God – the Atan.  He at first though to gradually replace the traditional Deities with his One Deity.  Latter all the temples of other Deities were closed and their priesthoods disbanded.  However, after Atenatens death, the polytheism returned to Egypt. 

            Several theories suggest that the Christian religion is a continuation of the religion of the All Powerful Aten.  Latter it is though that Mary and Jesus were taken from Isis and Horus the Savior.  Since the Christians did not believe other Gods existed they refused to pay homage to Roman God/desses.  They weren’t persecuted, as so many believed, for being Christian; they were punished for disobeying the law. 

Can I have What's Behind Door Number 2?

              For a long time the Romans hesitated to do anything to Christians.  But for their insistence that there was only one God, the Romans would have left them along.  This threatened the stability of religion in the Roman’s vast empire.  One thing that kept native people placated was the right to worship their own Gods.  Christianity threatened to take that right away from the people.  Also, with their refusal to perform ruler worship to the current Emperor, they were being disloyal subjects and were punished thus.

               How the Christians became so powerful is a matter of study.  Without going into those details, one theory suggests it was the Christians willingness to become martyrs for their God that willingly converted enough followers that eventually rulers were converted.   Another is that the Christians did what the Romans before them had done and gradually took over the ancient spots of worship and either replaced those Dieties with the Christian pantheon or adopted those Deities and latter declared the old worship of those same Deities as against the new religion.

Celtic Goddess turned Christian Saint

              Constantine I (Emperor of Rome) was the first Roman ruler to convert to Christianity and lift the bans on that religion.  Shortly after Christianity was declaired the official state religoin of Rome.  As a result, Christianity spread threw the wold whiping out and persecuting Pagans as far as they were able to reach.  Only a few places excaped such forced conversion and millions of pepole died.  As a result, many religions went underground or moved to other locations.  America, for instance, seems to be a melting pot of folk religion from Germany, England, China and all over the world.  

            Most of these underground religions died, but enough of some of them survived.  Secred societies were able to take them up and use them to compliment already existing practices.  Freemasons, The Order of the Golden Dawn, Bavarian Order of Illuminati, Ordo Templi Orientis (Crowley’s Group) and many, many others.

Though there aren’t any proven links to ancient Celtic, Italian, etc relgions,  bits and pieces have survied in one form or another.

          In England in Elizabeth’s day John Dee, a phychic, practiced witchcraft openly and in the 16^th century Charles Leland claimed to have gotten “The Gospel of the Witch” from an Italian witch who’s practices, she claimed, survieved the Burning Times.

Colonel Sanders?
Nope, Try Again

          In the ‘50s the last of England’s witchcraft laws were repealed and Gerald Garner started Wicca.   This brought Paganism into the light again and thoes hungering for a religion that accepts our connection and oneness with nature quicly took the idea and ran with it.  Garner is the father of the moder Neo-Pagan movement and modern practitioners are still writing the history.

          In 1955 the last of the Witchcraft laws in England were repealed.  This allowed thoes who had been practicing these religions threw secret societies or in small clutters of folk religion to come forward into the light.  This allowed validation for thoes who have always felt that Abrahamic religions were not sufficient, to shop around for a religious experience that appeals to them. 

          In 1985 Wicca was given legal status in the United States.  America, being the land of consumerism, ate it up by the doses.  The earliest recorded non-Wiccan Pagan religion was the Neo-Pagan group called the Temple of Aphrodite in Rhode Island.  Structured Paganism filled a very real need for a more personal and deep spirituality amongs the Americans.  It also allowed us to connect with our non-American roots.  As a country that is a melting pot of all the countries of the world, we don’t have firmly established roots as a country and therefor are missing out own indiginous religion.

          Neo-Paganism differs from Paganism as one is a moder reconstruction of the ancient religions and the other is a continuation of the ancient religions.

Modern Paganism includes the following list:

Secret Societies – Bits and pieces of ancient religious parctice combined with information from modern sources.  Most are eclectic and borrow tradition from a variety of sources and are heavily reliant on symbolisn and internal alchemy.

Reconstructionists – Piecing together a true and acurate ancient religion and bringing thoes practices forth into the modern age.  Two kinds of reconstructionist types exists: One that is attempting to bring forth ancient religions without changing the religion or faith at all (example includes Kemetic Orthodox Faith).  The other is attempting to use ancient practices but change them to reflect changes to modern society (example includes the Isian faith).  Examples include debating animal sacrifice’s place in modern religion.

Buddhist Nuns Praying

Neo-Paganism – Constructing a very general religion based on bits and pieces of ancient relgions cobled together from various sources.  Neopaganism started with the Wiccan religion, but has since branched out to mean any modern-day reconstruction-type religion that is following ancient practices but not from any specific ancient religion.

Pagans – Religions which have not be influenced by the persecution of non-Abrahamic faith and have continued threw hundreds, if not thousands of years.  Native American spiritualities and Hinduism are amongst these. 

Sources

1. Paganism: Past and Present
2. Serapis
3. History of Ordo Templi Orientis
4. Aradia, or Gospel of the Witches
5. Constantine the Great (Constantine I)
6. Venus of Willendorf
7. Blunt use of Search Engines
8. Oldest Known Religious Object - Carved Python Head
9. Anhenaten and Atenism
10. Witchvox: History of Paganism in America

Loreena Mckennitt and Pagan Music

Dear Neophyte,

If my religion had a soundtrack it would be played and sung by Loreena Mckennitt.  I have an entire playlist on Youtube for songs that evoke worship in me and most of it is her!  It's kept in a separated list from my other music so that when I turn on shuffle I dont wind up with my religious music as background noise.  Nothing kills the mood faster than the song that's suppose to set your heart a-flutter playing while you'r trying to pwn noobs in WSG.  

At one point I had heard her songs so much that I was actually skipping past them; they no longer evoked that sense of mystery or the energy that originally made me love them to begin with.  This music is almost sacred to me and too much exposure wears out the 'lore' and the feelings evoked.

Minerva - Goddess of Music

Currently I'm updating the playlist to remove all old videos that got 'copyblocked' (my term for 'cockblocked' when discussing music rights) by copywrite and small print.  I'm going threw and attempting to find the videos that have the best quality of music, not just the prettiest videos.  In face, videos mean nothing to me as I will only watch them maybe once and never see them again.  My playlist stays on in the background of whatever I'm doing.

Ms McKennitt isn't the only artist present in the list, but she is the most prominent.  As I discover better artists I've been adding songs slowly.  Woefull to me I discovered that there are not a lot of good Pagan artists (IMHO), but a LOT of them there are.

I start reading the lyrics to some songs as the music is winding up and I'm liking what I'm reading and in my mind I'm already hearing the words being sung in some angelic or gentle masculine voice and then - OMG EAR RAPE!  I don't know who told some of these people they could sing but they need to be shot lied to you! 


It's so hard to find good Pagan themed music that for a very long time I had must Loreena on my list and that was it.  Slowly I would come across The Spiral Dance or look up chants like The Goddess Song and find that someone did it and put it up for public use and now I know how it's suppose to sound.  It's just sad that 90% of the music slanted at Pagans on Youtube is just stuff you cant listen too.  It's grating on the ears, the music is all wrong, it's cheaply produced (which make sit harder to listen to than a bad vocalist) or it's obviously being sung wrong.  Not to say they author of the song is singing it wrong, but that it rubs me the wrong way to listen to it period because I dont feel the words need be sung that way.

"Female Musicians"
modern take on an ancient mural

Also, not everything has to be sung by five people!  You can do solos!  Just look up Healther Dale.  She sings solo or with her own voice as accompaniment and a lot of her songs are beautiful.  Granted, they are not targeted at Pagans, but a fair few of them are open to interpretation.  Crashing Down is one such song, and could be about any regime being toppled.

It seems as if most Pagan themed music would sound a lot better if you heard and saw it live.  If you could see the expression on the artists faces as they made instrument and voice slip together and create a harmony maybe it would make you not pay attention to the fact that there is only one real verse and the rest is the singer (or ten) doing scales and repeating one line over and over again.  If this is the case then these bands need to realize that in order to market to today's discerning American, they need to step it up a notch with production and sound.

So far nothing I have heard comes remotely close to Loreena McKennitt.  When I hear her I just want to cast a circle and worship.  I want to ride the celestial winds threw the grass while dreaming up at the crescent moon.  The image this woman's artistry puts into my head and what she pulls out of my soul remind me that I am a Witch.  I am a Pagan.  I am a Goddess.

Everything is Sacred.  We all come from the Goddess, and to Her we shall return.

Tools like Youtube made it so much easier to study Paganism since they allow you to see rituals, hear music, feel the beat of the drums and the candescence of the chants.  I'ts been an invaluable tool for me in place of a coven or even any other Pagans that live near me.

One last note: I also like the group Celtic Women.  Most of their stuff is Christian and while their songs evoke a sense of awe and wonder (Orinoco Flow), they don't pull worship out of me the way the Ms McKennitt does.

Salutations,
Sesh

To Kill a Fluffy Bunny

Dear Neophyte,

In and about the year 2001 I became hooked up to the internet and threw the internet I discovered Wicca: real witches practicing real witchcraft.  Not only that but I discovered that the 'dead goddesses' I had been worshiping and giving praise to in my heart for most of my life were real, alive and waiting for me to find them.

A decade (more or less) ago I was a part of the Wiccan counterculture.  That is, the Hunters of the Fluffy Bunny.  Me and my fellow Hunters were on a crusade to keep Wicca pure.  We used phrases like, "Wicca is NOT like, whatever you want it to be!"  and passed around witty emails about the Know-It-All High Priestesses and Indigo babies.

Most of you will hopefully not ever be accused of being a Fluffy Bunny (which used to be abbreviated to FB, but that was eons before Facebook came out), but if you ever have then you know how much it hurts to have someone so thoroughly disrespect your religious views on such a deep a profound level.

In the same manor as most of you did, I probed the internet for information because I didn't have access to the books or teachers to teach it to me properly.  I picked and chose which parts of the Wiccan religion I wanted to practice.  For me it was about reverence to the Gods and staying in tune with nature.  Spell craft was never really my big thing, at least not till I had the reverence down.

In 2004 I discovered The Obsidian Mirror and the seed of hatred was planted.
The Obsidian Mirror's message was clear: Kill the Fluffy Bunny, and all his articles are very good and damn near spot on.  Even deconstructing the Rede ("We need some Rede be Gone") is poignant and revealing.  The message: Question Why!

In that same year I discovered Fluffy Hossenfeffer, a yahoo group designed to allow 'true Wiccans' to swap stories and mock those among our community who arnt truly Wiccan.  That is, we all sat around cackling to each other and pointing fingers, drinking up our spiritual superiority and gloating about how we were doing it right and everyone else was wrong, wrong, wrong!

This was also where I met Harlequin, the pen name of a man who took one of my posts and published it as an article on his own website.  I have my original post, but I never did the get link to his website and now it has shut down.  (Most of us have moved to other areas since then.)

Then, in this group I discovered Daven's Journal.  Keep in mind that when I was original reading this journal it looked a LOT different.  Daven was still Daven and a disciple of Raymond Buckland and his particular brand of Wicca.  What Daven has done since then I'm not sure, but all of the older articles are still up and I highly recommend reading them even if you are an Elder of the Wiccan community.

I went on a crusade and took a lot of other people along for the ride.  Not just Harl, but Bodica and a lot of other members of various groups I was a member of.  We crusaded and we taught; we infiltrated newbie groups and set things in order; we led threw example and we changed a LOT in the online Wiccan community.  For about three years our little group of Bunny Hunters shot ever Fluffy we could fined, skinned them alive and hung them up for the rest of the newbie Wiccans to see.  Lessons learned the hard way.

Why, you ask?  Because we didn't want our religion to dissolve into nothing.  Wicca is NOT an umbrella term meaning "Pagan".  The word "PAGAN" is the umbrella term and Wicca is under it.  We didnt want to be laughed at anymore by people who took our circles names at face value and though we were trying to become a Wolf or Silver Sun; we didnt want to be discredited because our rituals only date back 50 years; we didnt want newbies telling everyone Wicca was thousands of years old; we didnt want people thinking we believe our way is the only way; we wanted to get away from Satan and his influence over the Christian hearts; we wanted to reconstruct an older path but make it work for the modern world.

In the end I discovered that we were fighting to hold a religion together that was made from pieces of other religions to begin with.  Garner invented Wicca.  Alex Sanders invented Wicca.  Raymond Buckland invented Wicca.  The list goes on, and with every new piece of information added from another source it grows further and further away from being 'real Wicca'.  That it, it quits being what Garner invented and starts being something else.

This is what we crusaded for the hardest: to keep Wicca pure.  To keep it free of other influences.  To keep ALL the traditional practices together.  To not allow seekers to just cast off the parts they dont like, gloss over the ones that only mildly interest them, start invoking unicorns for protection and start casting spells from some random glitter-clogged internet site where they have you invoke a goddess from a damn list (!), who's name they cant even pronounce and who's story they dont know, and believe that there is no such thing as wicked in this world.

The magic circle does not stop the Goddess from smacking you with the Cosmic 2x4.  If you disagree then YOU are part of the problem with the direction Wicca is going.

In the end I left the Wiccan community.  Most of the so-called Wiccans cant even tell you which way widdershins is, most can make a sound argument against having a boline and they probably have no clue that, YES, WICCANS HAVE LITURGY.

You can only take so much away from something before it quits being something else.  The amount of authors out there (R.I.P. Scott Cunningham, you should have wrote fiction) who are saying that you should always do what is best for you, what feels right and if anyone tells you otherwise they are missleading you... are misleading you.

More on this: 

Teachers Distorting Religious Teachings

(Found this in another blog, so glad I did!)

No one ever learned to write because scribbling worked for them so their teachers let them do it.  Wiccan seekers NEED a strong foundation of ALL the basics before they are allowed to 'pick and choose' what is right for their own personal practice.

And for heaven sake, admit when what you're doing isn't Wicca anymore.  I have two altars, one for Isis and one for Hekate.  When my room mate asked me why I dont just say I'm Wiccan I responded, "Because I'm not Wiccan.  I'm Pagan."

You dont have to force yourself to be something you are not.  If you find yourself ignoring directions for invoking circles (i.e. not invoking them at all), rewriting the Charge of the Goddess to be about your specific Deity, incorporating rosary into your practice, working with totem animals, practicing Voodo, calling on angels or Saints or in general doing anything that is not an integral part of practicing Wicca, then YOU may dear are a Fluffy Bunny if you keep calling yourself Wiccan.  You arnt.  But that's ok.

The whole Anti-Fluffy-Bunny movement spawned something else years and years latter:  Project Pagan Enough

This project is moving and growing within the Pagan community.  People like that Hunter I am (no longer active, but still hold these beliefs, articles to come) now have to contend with people like Mr. Lyte.  I hope we can work together to allow people to express their true selves threw religion while still maintaining the integrity that Pagans are striving towards and value so much.

I do NOT want to take a step back to the days when $ilver Ravenwolf was the number one author on every Wicca 101 list.   Thanks to crusaders like me the seekers of that community no longer need to contend with the likes of her.  Unfortunately, we cant make the likes of her go away.  Fluffy Bunnies like her are not true Wiccans, teaching her own brand of spirituality that is more in tune with Dutch magic and animism than Wiccan Lord and Lady worship, but ...

... they are Pagan Enough.

Salutations,
Sesh

A Dream of Bran the Blessed?

Dear Neophytes,

I had a dream.

In this dream I was attending school, I think it was high school but it could have been University.  It was my first day and I was being driven there by one of my mothers careless boyfriends (the kind you love to speak ill of in their presence cause they cant lay a hand on you).  I was wearing this very Egyptian style dress that sorta resembled this:

Shae from Game of Thrones

I kept thinking that if I didnt walk carefully that it would flash open and everyone would be able to see my chest.  I'm particular about keeping that covered so I didnt want that to happen.  My dress was very, very white and had an Egyptian style pectoral collar:

Tutankamun and Ankhenamun

The van that we were in, my sister and I, was black.  I was sitting up front and fretting about my first day.  My sister was in back, the perpetual troublemaker who will never attentions a school (University or whatnot)  .  The van stops in front of this school where students are already lining up to get instructions.  I'm late and I dont want to miss anything.

I get out of the van and then start grabbing my things.  I close the door once and start to walk off as the van pulls away.  Remembering I forgot something else I call for the asshole boyfriend to stop.  He does, saying some nasty stuff about me being a goody-goody (for attending a school this nice), and I shut the door again. Turning around once more I remember I've forgotten my shoes.  In my waking life I go barefoot as often as I can.  Comes with the whole Barefoot Hearthwitch and Pagan territory.

This time the van doesn't stop.  I run after it screaming bloody murder because I cant go to school (not the first day especially.  The jerk won't stop.  I don't know if it's because he cant hear me or because he's just being an ass. Either way, my sister pulls a Buffy move and dives right out the side of the van thinking that if she's not in there that the ass behind the wheel will stop.

We watch him drive away together, upset the plan had failed.

Now I had to contend with no shoes, an armload of stuff I don't know if I need (I don't know why I didn't have a bag for all this stuff), a dress that was barely staying closed and my little sister!  Lets just say that when I turned around and saw all the other students standing in neat little rows with their pleated skirts and logo-ed shirts that I felt a little out of place.

Them

Cloning's Greatest Success:
Find the black sheep!

Versus Me

I want this dress!

Needless to say I stood out so they put me, and my sister, right up front.  For the next half an hour or so we all got a lecture on the values of the school, our place in society, what the school has churned out so far and then going further into the schools official unofficial religion.  I

[Note: Most Greek organizations (that is, sororities and fraternities) have a 'matron goddess' or 'patron god' of their specific organization.  Usually this deity is not actually worshiped in the house, but is honored as being the embodiment of one of the values the house holds above all others.]

n the meantime I'm trying to hide my feet under my dress so no one can see that I dont have any shoes on.  In my waking life I've done this quite often if I was wearing a long dress/skirt and didnt feel like donning 'proper' footwear. 

"Our deity is Bran, who governs commerce."

At least, I think she said that... I should have written it down when I woke up.  I know I got the name "Bran" right because I automatically though of Bran from Game of Thrones and his wolf dreams (yes, I am reading the books).  In his dreams he is his wolf because he was crippled in the first book and can't walk.

Bran from Game of Thrones dreaming that he is his wolf.

Now that I'm writing this I wonder if this is just another way Wolf is reaching out to me?  Probably not since I didn't think wolf at anytime in the dream.  I didn't see any animals at all actually. 

My initial reaction was to research "Bran" and see if there is any deity of any sort by that name and if he had anything to do with commerce, merchandise or business in any way - at least as far as money was concerned.  

Bran the Blessed 

Country of Origin: Welsh, Pan-Celtic  (Of which I have ancestry; but what white American doesn't?) 

Mother: The Goddess Iweridd, else Pendarddun

Father: The Sea God, Llyr

Physical Features:  Giant, legend says he was too large for any house built and he laid across a river so his troops could march over his back to invade Ireland. 

Most Notable Accomplishment:  Making bad choices of husband for female relatives. 

Died:  Poison arrow threw the foot.

Buried:  Tower Hill, which is known today as the Tower of London

Animal Associations: Ravens

Rules: Prophecy, arts, war, writing, and a popular theme among the Celtic religions: cauldron god who could revive slain soldiers and make battles take forEVAH, bra!

Raven's from the Tower of London

Trivia:  Bran's head was buried on Tower Hill (modern home of the Tower of London) facing France to warn off invasion.  When King Author dug the head up as a way of having a pissing contest with a deity figure, he claimed he could keep Britain safe sans mystical talking heads.  Of course, when that failed they started keeping the ravens that had moved into the Tower. Don't know what happen to the head when it was dug up, but new legends say that if the ravens ever leave the Tower that the British empire will fall.  Needless to say that even the modern Brits don't take this lightly and the ravens have their wings clipped so they cant fly away.

Anyway, none of this has anything to do with merchandise, commerce, schooling, shoes, me dressing in flowing white when I'm suppose to be in a prep school blazer and if it is a deity dream... wouldn't animals be in it at least? 

At least this time the dream wasnt about zombies, so that's a step towards healing, right?

Salutations,

Sesh