#gardnerian

I've talked a couple times about how I don't use this blog much anymore for various reasons. At first, the biggest reason was some of the harassment I received for being a male witch. I'm nonbinary now so IDK if that even matters anymore, but more recently It's been another reason anyway: Wicca has a terrible reputation in online spaces, so I very often don't exactly feel welcome. I got very tired of opening every introduction with an apology for being my religion.

This was upsetting, but fine for awhile. I've been initiated as a Gardnerian Wiccan in the last couple years so I was content with my little offline community. But recently I was hosting a potluck with friends of mine and had a friend's spouse, who knows my faith, look me in the eyes and tell me about how much they dislike Wicca. I just changed the subject at the time but I haven't been able to let it go. So I want to talk about it a bit. I'm open to discussion, even criticism, if people aren't hateful.

Wiccan altar.

Yes, I'm talking about Wicca, the religion that ppl love to hate these days. it was all apparently invented by a controversial figure, Gerald Gardner in the "1's" which I imagine is before the awful 2000's? Right?!?

Yes, he was a nudist which probably influenced him for nude rites. Still, ppl from the 1940's and early 1960's's were looking for freedom in their lives because social norms were quite restrictive except for porn houses and peepshows. That stuff wasn't for "normal" ppl. That stuff was for degenerates. Until the 60's sexual revolution - changed the whole game with Free Love. :)

Ppl now are being too critical about "sex stuff." The Great Rite in True was a very sacred act, usually with a couple, not perverted strangers. The Great Rite is very powerful and the energy is palpable. It feels like the Goddess and God are there in the room. BTW, Wicca haters, when they perform this rite, it is tradition to turn around. And it is not long either, nor have I heard or seen anything true about orgies! My coven was nude. Nothing weird happened.

I know that ppls problem now is that a Gardnerian coven wouldn't initiate you for your lack of witchcraft knowledge, your lack of resolve and resilience, only learning online and through to-day's books, lack of maturity and not fully accepting the "1's" teachings. So, stop looking through a closed lens and open up the aperture. I'm not here to insult. But I think Wicca, especially Traditional Wicca, should make a resurgence. Its a beautiful religion that needs ppl again. Don't bitch about it unless you've had a really bad experience!! If your judging, keep your hole shut on my blog. I may go back to Wicca someday. It balanced me and made me blissful. Check out my favorite Witches on Pinterest:

Sybil Leek

Louise Huebner

Patricia and Arnold Crowther

The Farrar's, Janet and Stewart

Luba Sevarg (quite rare!!!)

Sarah Lyddon Morrison

The Frosts (read over their weird shit and there are gems)

Don't engage with their politics. Who cares? Religion is not directly linked to it. For me, there just is no purpose to combining these or thinking of them in the same brainwaves. Here are some of my great old book collection!

All of these are pre-1980. Great stuff! My favorites are the two bottom ones.I'm missing my two Louise Huebner books!

Miss Unbreakable, Insufferable, J. Thorp

https://knoxvillerose.etsy.com/listing/1592946808/the-witch-book-by-raymond-buckland

Before we can ask if Wicca or Neopaganism are “religions”, we must question what we mean by religion, and whence those ideas arose.

I majored on Religious Studies at UC Berkeley.  In the first course every major took – RS 90a – the first book we read was The Meaning and End of Religion by Wilfred Cantwell Smith.  It pointed out to the many students who came in making assumptions about what a religion was and wasn’t that, among the so-called “Big Five” religions…

Christianity – refers to the followers of an incarnate god, Christ

Buddhism – refers to the followers of an enlightened teacher, the Buddha

Islam – refers to the followers of  the teachings in a Book, the Qur’an

Judaism – refers to the members of a tribe

Hinduism – refers to “everybody on the other side of that river” (the Indus) from the point of view of European colonizers

These are all wildly different categories yet we lump them together under the term “religions”.  Smith argued for abandoning the term “religion” altogether and instead using “faith” and “practice”.

Yet Smith was still coming from the assumption that religion necessarily involves “faith”.  When I started doing public education on behalf of Craft groups back in 1985, I enjoyed responding to the question “What do Witches (as we used the term back then) believe?”  I would respond by reminding people of the (then) recent interview series on PBS that the journalist Bill Moyers did with mythographer Joseph Campbell.  It was most Americans’ first exposure to global mythology, Eastern religions, and Indigenous traditions.  At the end of the series, Moyers asked Campbell “What do you believe?”  Campbell replied, “I don’t need belief; I have experience.”

Neopaganism, I would explain, was a religion that did not require a leap of faith.  We were never asked or expected to believe something.  We were taught techniques that could lead to a direct experience of the Divine.  If those techniques worked for you, and your experience of the Divine was similar to ours, then you would stay.  If they didn’t, then we would help you find somewhere else that did work for you.  I only “believed” in things I had experienced myself or were logical extensions of my experience.

When I started doing interfaith work, many Witches had problems with the terms “interfaith” and “faith traditions”, since we didn’t see ourselves as having anything to do with “faith”, but the terminology was there and in widespread use and there really wasn’t anything we could do about it.  It was in widespread use because the organizers of global interfaith had – by and large – been Christians, and they projected their own ideas about “religion” onto the rest of the world.  This became a problem when the United Religions Initiative was forming.  Many of the global representatives at the organizing Summits from around the world objected to the term “religion”.  In the end, the URI had to adopt the language “religions, spiritual expressions, and indigenous traditions” (where once they would have said just “religions”) before everybody was satisfied.

Coming from a religious studies background, and if I have to the time to go into sufficient depth, I will explain to non-Pagans that the best way to understand modern Neopaganism is as a “religious context”, much as we understand Chinese religion or classical Greek religion.  In all three groups, most people have a general religious sense and spiritual connection to the world, but then go to “specialists” for different needs…

In classical Greece & Rome, I would go to the Apollo temple if I need healing, or I might become an initiate of the Eleusinian Mysteries if I felt so inclined, or pursue the Mysteries of Mithras if I was a soldier, but these things weren’t exclusive.  It was common for people to be members of more than one group.

In Chinese religion, I might go to the Taoists for healing or a spell, or to the Confucians for help preparing for a civil service position, or become a Budhhist monk if I wanted to pursue a contemplative life.  And traditional veneration of ancestors and local spirits was a part of everyone’s lives.

In modern Neopaganism, I might just live a generically Pagan life – caring for the Earth, going to the occasional Sabbat – or I might become a Wiccan initiate (our analog to the ancient Mysteries) – or I might attend a Heathen seidh ceremony if I needed the answer to a question in my life, or a Kemetic group, or a Druidic group, whatever, but none of these are exclusive and it’s quite common for a Neopagan to be an attendee, initiate, or even priest/ess of more than one tradition simultaneously.

That’s because these are “religious contexts” rather than religions.

So, I see Wicca as a Mystery path within the religious context of Neopaganism.  I am a High Priest of a Wiccan coven, but I am an initiate of two Craft Traditions, a first Degree Druid (RDNA), and even a first Degree member of the Church of Satan (but that’s another story).  I’ve attended Heathen, Lucumi, and Kemetic ceremonies in the US, indigenous ceremonies in Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico, Inca ceremonies in Peru, Shinto ceremonies in South Africa & the US, traditional Chinese ceremonies in Taiwanese temples, and even Maya ceremonies deep in the Guatemalan jungle.

These are not “spiritual tourism”.  These are all important parts of my spiritual / religious life as a Neopagan.

Why are Witches and Pagans so hard on Robert Graves and practically denounce everything he's ever written? It's certainly become verboten in some circle amongst the Craft to cite his book, The Greek Myths (despite its storied use amongst contemporary Classicist), nor the classic academic treatise, The Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology for no other reason than he wrote the Introduction! Nevertheless, as a Witch, I must contend with the view that amongst my own kind--due to guilt by association--every book attached to Robert Graves is now viewed as highly suspect and dubious, which is (if you'll pardon the pun) gravely unfortunate.

As a matter of fact, in the criticisms of Graves, I wonder how many of us have overlooked the subtitle of The White Goddess (UK: Faber & Faber/U.S.: Creative Age Press, 1948), which quite clearly calls it a work of "poetic myth." The term, "mythopoetic" is an adjective defined as: Relating to the making of a myth or myths, i.e. Relating to or denoting a movement for men that uses activities such as storytelling and poetry reading as a means of self-understanding.

What's wrong with that? Contribution to one's myths are a wonderful thing. Unless one feel otherwise. I would argue that the strengths of Graves's The White Goddess have been overshadowed by pedantic critics that insist its misinformative. But, from my perspective, it teaches one how to look at folk-lore, archaeology and mythology from a different perspective that I (and others) have personally found invaluable.

Sure, one might belittle the Archetype of the Lunar Triple-Goddess of the Maiden-Mother-Crone as an invention; but rather, it has contributed greatly towards Pagan myth-making and it should be celebrated for that, rather than shunned. Although this should not be cited, as it has been publicly misappropriated, usually as an excuse to denounce the Wica/ "Wicca" as an utterly modern religion with no roots in the past.

We should not, therefore, be quick to pass judgement onto the late English poet and Classicist, Robert Graves (1895-1985 C.E.), as the alleged provocateur who contrived the modern lunar archetype of the Triple-Goddess as Maiden, Mother and Crone since this archetype may be interpreted as a mere reaction to human longevity. Throughout the Greco-Roman world there were numerous Triple Moon-Goddesses, virtually none of whom can be described as older in appearance than the median age of women, which was an average of twenty-five years (Carrieri, Maria Patrizia and Diego Serraino. "Longevity of Popes and Artists Between the 13th and 19th Century." International Journal of Epidemiology, 34:6 (December 2005): pp. 1435-1436.). As a matter of fact, ancient Triple Moon-Goddesses chiefly depict three women of a similar age, which should come as no great surprise since the difference in age between an unmarried female, a bride or mother (if she survived childbirth), and a woman nearing the end of her typical life-expectancy was quite narrow. This is how these ancient goddesses would have been conceived in the popular imagination of antiquity. In fact, Graves seems to have been well aware of this detail when writing his historical novel, The Golden Fleece (Cassell, 1944), in which he describes the fashion in which the Old Religion is practiced on the Spanish island of Majorca:

Maiden, Nymph and Mother are the eternal royal Trinity on the island, and the Goddess, who is worshipped there in each of these aspects, as New Moon, Full Moon, and Old Moon, is the sovereign deity.

As a result, Graves has merely brought to light what was self-evident, thus demonstrating how a contemporary culture would have viewed this archetypal goddess in his own day (and in ours). Remember that between the decades of the 1930s and 1950s, which spanned the years of WWII, one was considered elderly if they had reached the age of forty (Philip Heselton: pers. comm.), which is scarcely how one might define a crone in our own day.

This evident knowledge is underscored by the fact that Graves wrote The White Goddess in response to a conversation with his friend, the English historian Alan Hodge (1915-1979 C.E.), regarding the psychological process of poetic inspiration. Graves then acquainted himself with the works from noted scholars of his day that were especially en vogue, albeit some of which have not aged particularly well in retrospect: The Mabinogion (Bernard Quaritch, 1877), quoted at length, by Lady Charlotte Guest (1812-1895 C.E.); The Golden Bough (Macmillan & Co., 1890), which was meticulously researched by Sir James Frazer (1854-1941 C.E.) [and for more research consult this phenomenal essay]; Celtic Researches (Privately Printed, 1804), an imperfect and somewhat speculative treatise by Edward Davies (1756-1831 C.E.); the ideas of his friend, the anthropologist W. H. R. Rivers (1864-1922 C.E.), who was a proponent of the "mother-right" or matriarchal theory; The Witch-Cult in Western-Europe (Oxford University Press, 1921) by Margaret Alice Murray (1863-1963 C.E.), which Grevel Lindrop—Emeritus Professor of Romantic and Early Victorian Studies—described as "scholarship blended with myth-making" (Lindop, Grevel. "The White Goddess: Sources, Contexts, Meanings." Graves and the Goddess: Essays on Robert Graves’s The White Goddess. Eds. Ian Firla and Grevel Lindop. Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 2003: p. 31), whilst English historian Steven Runciman (1903-2000 C.E.)—who wrote the Foreword to The Witch-Cult when it was reissued in 1971 by Oxford University Press—stated that Murray "has always had solid evidence to back her claims" (Murray, Margaret A. The Witch-Cult in Western Europe. 1921. FWD. Sir Steven Runciman. Reprint, New York: Barnes & Noble, 1996: p. 5), which is not to detract from Murray’s more unfortunate suggestions (e.g., that blue bonnets were worn by the High Priest of the Coven as a headdress); and the masterful trove, The Secret Languages of Ireland (Cambridge University Press, 1937), edited by noted Irish archaeologist, Dr. R. A. Stewart Macalister (1870-1950 C.E.), which was reissued due to its importance amongst the field of Celtic Studies.

It is untenable to imagine that religions do not naturally flux in response to such obvious changes as human life-expectancy, social and political changes. Even the early Christians likely would have affixed in their minds a younger image of the Abrahamic god than that which has swept the popular imagination in our current century. The same is also true of the modern image of the Ancient Greek god, Zeus, who is often portrayed in film and on television far older than he actually would have been perceived by the Ancient Greeks themselves. Even the Virgin Mary of the Christians was probably thirteen or fourteen years of age when she gave birth to the Christ, which was the age when Hebrew maidens became marriageable ('The Blessed Virgin Mary.' The Catholic Encyclopedia. New Advent. Web. 13 March, 2023). This may explain why observant Catholics who witness visions or apparitions of the Virgin Mary often describe her resembling a very young maiden.

Therefore, it is my position, that Robert Graves may be forgiven for his axiomatic contribution to the theology of contemporary Witchcraft, and therefore updating the public imagery and understanding of this Archetypal goddess. Yet again, this should not be interpreted, as it has, that Graves directly inspired our concept of the Triple-Moon Goddess through a book that is now lauded as "disingenuous"; and thereby misappropriated as supposed "evidence" that the Wica/ "Wicca" is a fabricated religion by Gerald Gardner that amounts to us virtually LARPing or Cos Playing the fantasies of Margaret Murray under the auspices of "religion."

CODA: It's not as though Graves concealed his speculations and inventive outlooks, which means that we are projecting our misplaced resentment and insecurities onto Graves. As a matter of fact, personal responsibility is one of the hallmarks of the Craft. Indeed, one of the empowering things about the Craft is that is demands personal responsibility and introspection as a code of ethics, rather than a series of divinely ordained proclamations. So, if one feels that Graves had duped or cheated them, then they clearly hadn't read Graves carefully since he was fairly open about this fact. Therefore, any enmity expressed towards Graves and his legacy is best explained the personal projections and insecurities of those witches and pagans who accepted The White Goddess more seriously than the author did.

Graves quite clearly states that he copied his information on Ogham from Roderick O'Flaherty (rather then inventing it himself), and then on the succeeding page he states that he contacted Dr. Macalister who was then the greatest living scholar on Ogham who told Graves not to accept O'Flaherty's ideas "seriously." Graves then writes, "I pass this caution on in all fairness, for my argument depends on O'Flaherty's alphabet, and Dr. Macalister is a very broad back for anyone to shelter behind who thinks that I am writing nonsense"; and how his [Graves's] argument "began with an assumption." Therefore, the fault is our own to shoulder; not his--and we must take responsibility for our own role in this.

Honestly, I see nothing objectionable with people regurgitating Graves anymore than someone doing the same with Ovid and Hesiod. There are many variants of a given myth, which are simply an elaboration onto that which came before--indeed, the Craft follows this pattern. But the strength of The White Goddess is its ability to inspire others in looking at the world, myths and folklore with new eyes filled with wonderment, to enquire philosophical thought, and to make meaningful additions to old myths for a new era. It very much encourages philosophical thinking! The kind that I think any Sagittarius would deeply appreciate.

Of course, one might have a problem with any of this only if they believe that embroidering upon myths is wrong and makes us look foolish to the uninitiated. I do not. If the Craft is a rebirth, then it's core myths "damn well" (to quote an interjection of Doreen Valiente) should have evolved, which should be expected! That is why the MMC Archetype is a benefit to the craft, rather than a deterrent. Anyone who feels shame because the craft isn't a mirror image of an ancient religion--because that is the litmus test being used by historians with which to judge us--clearly don't understand how thriving religions work! Graves just pointed out what should have been axiomatic to us all in terms of the Lunar Triple-Goddess. This isn't to say that there are no examples in antiquity that mirrors the Craft! There are actually a great many historic shards if one knows where to look. But accepting them means accepting that what you thought was true about ancient paganism is much more blurry than you or some scholars have realized. The Old Religion, however, has adapted to meet new social and political stresses on society and the marginalized.

References:

The White Goddess, by Robert Graves

The Pagan Heart of the West, by Randy P. Conner

Lindop, Grevel. "The White Goddess: Sources, Contexts, Meanings." Graves and the Goddess: Essays on Robert Graves’s The White Goddess. Eds. Ian Firla and Grevel Lindop

Carrieri, Maria Patrizia and Diego Serraino. "Longevity of Popes and Artists Between the 13th and 19th Century." International Journal of Epidemiology, 34:6 (December 2005): pp. 1435-1436.

The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, by Margaret A. Murray

And that looks like chanting and talking to the moon and dancing in the firelight and rubbing oils and herbs on candles and consulting my oracle cards and meditating and worshipping ancient gods and singing and laughing and following the seasons and walking in the woods and all manner of things.

It's very spiritual but it's also VERY religious.

"Sometimes you have to go through another door to find what you actually need"