Re: [tied] Re: The Tripartitive Nature of IE Tripartition

John Croft wrote:

> Håkan wrote:
> > Sex-cuse me, but what is a Wiccan?
>
> Wicca is a modern neo-pagan reconstruction of the supposed pre-
> Christian religion of witchcraft. It comes in fact from the writings
> of Gerald Gardiner who wrote that he came across a coven of "witches"
> still practicing pagan relion in the New Forest before the end of
> World War II. Margaret Murray, the Egyptologist, wrote how the
> worship of the "horned god" religion survived into the Middle Ages to
> influence Witchcraft (and Christian conceptions pof Satan) and
> Chaqrles Leyland writing at the end of the last century, early part
> of this century created some imaginative reconstructions of
> the "strega" in their worship of "Diana" and "Herodias".
>
> All of this has become assembled by Alexandrine, Gardnerian and other
> varieties of modern self-proclaimed witches into a full blown post-
> Christian religion. The chief written works for reference are by
> Margot Adler "Drawing Down the Moon" (Adler is the grandaughter of
> the early psychiatrist Adler), and Starhawk "Spiral Dance"
> and "Dreaming the Dark: Sex, Magic and Politics". Starhawk's
> novel "The Fifth Sacred Thing" gives some exposition of the belief
> set too. It seems that this grew up in the attempt to distance
> themselves from the OTO, Spiritual, Theosophical and Golden
> Dawn "Western Mystical Tradition" found in John (Julianus)'s
> Thelemite beliefs.

Yep. There is no better way to make most Wiccans squirm than to point
out that Gardner was a member of Crowley's OTO and quoted extensively
from Crowley's work in composing his own rituals (had a charter, which
he never used, to establish an OTO lodge on the Isle of Man too.) Of
course due to the proliferation of Wicca from books rather than lineage
you sometimes find Wiccans who have never heard of Gardner.

It's only fair to mention that many Wiccans *are* perfectly familiar
with the above and discount the myth that Wicca is an unbroken legacy of
pre-Christian or Stone Age religion.

-- John

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I are wandering blindfolded through a myth devised by a maniac.’
-- Master Li Kao (T’ang Dynasty)
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