Tag Archives: Wicca

“Wicca Man” Trailer

Here is the trailer for the new British documentary on Gerald Gardner, theatrically introduced by Ronald Hutton rather like an episode of the archaeology program Secrets of the Dead.

Britain’s Wicca Man – (C) Matchlight from Matchlight on Vimeo.

I am happy to hear Professor Hutton say that Wicca was developed in the 1940s—I would say the very late 1940s at that, definitely post-World War II.

It is time to give up on the whole legend of the hidden coven at the Rosicrucian Theatre, of Gardner’s 1939 initiation at Dorothy Clutterbuck’s house, of the 1940 Lammas working against a possible German invasion, and all of that.

There is no evidence for any of it except Gardner’s say-so, and if those things happened, they do not gibe at all with what we know that Gardner was doing in the 1939-1947 period, namely trying out a variety of different esoteric groups before he “found” the one that he liked—Wicca.

Why the Pantheacon Gender Controversy Persists

For the second year running, some attendees at Pantheacon have become involved in protests, sit-ins, and a whole lot of blog posts about gender issues.

I am not going to weigh in on Z Budapest, etc. I was not there. But I was reading a post on Religion Bulletin the other day titled “Yogis and the Politics of Offense,”  by Matt Sheedy, that suggested a reason for the size and persistence of this particular Pantheacon kerfuffle.

Reading past the yogis and the “Shit Yogis Say” parody video, I came to this paragraph:

When groups are new and not well defined, and where the boundaries of their self-understanding are generally recognized to be unstable, the work of critique becomes that much easier since it focuses the conversation on tangible matters that can be discussed and debated. As many scholars are aware, this instability and contingency is true of all religious formations, yet it remains an uphill battle to speak of older traditions in the same way—unless of course one’s goal is to cause offense in the first place.

Contemporary Paganism in all its forms is “not well defined.” Our boundaries are not merely porous, they are vaporous. You could do a “Shit Pagans Say” video — and maybe someone has — but a lot of Pagans probably would say that it just critiques the fluff bunnies or something, that none of “that stuff” is really central to their spiritual practice.

On the other hand, the author writes,

Whenever the social practices of a group are presented as the essence of that group as a social whole, there is a risk of causing offense. For something to be considered “offensive” in a categorical sense, however, it must involve more than hurt feelings on the part of an individual. There must be some notion of a “social whole” in the first place and, what is more, those things that are being lampooned must be considered central to the self-understanding of the group in question.

Sheedy argues that another video, “Shit Girls Say,” is indeed offensive because it addresses a social whole, whereas “Shit Yogis Say” does not.

If “girls” constitute a social whole, then certainly “women” do as well.  There is a general assumption of what constitutes “women.” Some people insist that self-identified transwomen, for example,  can also be included. But there is a boundary, and the argument is about who is inside it and who is not. There is something worth struggling over — as long as Paganism(s) valorize women-only ritual and female religious leadership.

UPDATE, Feb. 28: Gus diZerega writes the most reasonable blog post on this whole issue from a Pagan-politics standpoint that I have seen.

To summarize, the protest against Z’s genetic-women only ritual was political.  Its advocates were making a statement about how they believe the entire Pagan community should act: not simply not to condemn, not simply to accept other ways, but to modify their ways so as to include a group that wanted such affirmation even while they were free to practice in their own way within a largely accepting environment.  Sometimes this is necessary to do, as with a hypothetical case of having the community ban a group practicing ritual child abuse. But most of the time this is not necessary.

I am asking different questions, but I applaud Gus for making that point. Wicca, in particular, has always been a small-l libertarian, “live and let live,” do-it-yourself religion. I hate to see one group demanding that another group change its ways to accommodate them based on a self-proclaimed moral authority.

Quick Review: “Dark of Moon”

If you are a Pagan watching Dark of Moon, you probably will be thinking “I know her! I’ve met them! I’ve been there!” — even if, of course, you have not.

You will probably be so pleased to watch a feature-length film that treats Wicca and Druidry as normal rather than as scary or exotic that you will overlook the technical glitches and occasionally wooden dialog.

To me, skill in lighting separates the pros from the wannabes. The movie’s lighting was occasionally flat and harsh. M. is more conscious of dialog and kept saying that the first half of the movie was “propagandistic.”

And why all the door and window moldings have been removed from the Gardnerian covenstead must be a third-degree secret. It is odd, considering that the protagonists enter expecting something fancier than their own shared house, only to find quite the opposite.

At the center of the movie is an ensemble of Wiccan housemates, friends since college, each one single, members of the Coven of Mystic Light — and all on the threshold of “real life,” or as Beth says, “Woo-hoo, I’m an adult. What do I want from my life?”

The  zaftig Sammi (Angelia DeLuca) bubbles  her lines, most of which have to do with how much she enjoys various aspects of sex.

Like Samantha in Sex and the City, is she a gay man written as a female character? There is a lot of risqué humor in Dark of Moon, most of it about as subtle as a wet towel to the face.

Drew (Roger Conners), the actual gay housemate, is the only one with a back story—he is a would-be graphic artist waiting tables to pay the bills

The slacker-ish Miller (DJ Remark) seems to have wandered in from Clerks.

Zeke (Brad Arner), the tall, dark, and handsome one, works in —  wait for it — an occult-supply shop.

And in contrast to the conventional wisdom that says once a woman says “let’s just be friends,” any chance of romance is dead, Zeke’s long-time friend Beth (Kelly Rogers) genuinely wants him. With mobile features that register every emotional twinge, Rogers may have the most acting talent of the cast.

When Zeke leaves his old covenmates to join a Gardnerian group, the plot is set in motion.

The setting is northern Ohio, and the Gardnerian HPS is named Lady Circe. That may be an inside joke; if so, I did not find it all that funny. But maybe there was more than one Lady Circe in Ohio.

Or maybe we are in Cleveland, in which case The Drew Carey Show-with-pentagrams is still better than Charmed.

And in the end , each covener finds true love, or at least true lust, all in a setting where “Pagan” is the default setting — and that’s refreshing.

Order DVDs, read cast bios, view trailers and all the rest at the official website.

Some Recent Publications Available Online

Some recent publications in or related to Pagan Studies:

• The first issue of Goddess Thealogy: An International Journal for the Study of the Divine Feminine is available for download (PDF, 3.17 MB)

• Videos and PDF files of lectures from the “Demons in the Academy” session at the recent American Academy of Religion meeting are available at the Phoenix Academy website.

• With author Eric Steinhart’s permission, I have uploaded his series of posts on atheism and Wicca as one PDF file.

Wicca without “Woo”

I linked earlier to one of Eric Steinhart’s series of discussions and critiques of Wicca from a non-theistic philosophical perspective. Here is the last, apparently, on Wicca without the “woo”:

It’s probably not possible for Wicca to renounce the culture of woo.  But an atheistic nature-religion in the United States is possible.

Despite Steinhart’s perspective, however, his blogging annoyed some of the heavyweights at Freethoughtblogs.com, of which Camels with Hammers is part.

Having read a few of Eric’s contributions, I am disgusted. Prolix bafflegab, confusion, thinly veiled attempts to rationalize pagan mysticism, and just general longwinded bullshit. Why have you invited him here? He’s awful.

Woo indeed. Apparently Wicca comes under the heading of Things That May Not Be Discussed if you are a committed atheist. (Condemnation from the security of one’s armchair would be all right, I suppose.) If you take it seriously enough to discuss the possibility of an “atheistic nature religion,” you have become ideologically unclean.

Ironic, eh?

An Atheistic Critique of Wicca

Blogging atheist Eric Steinhart, writing at Daniel Fincke’s Camels with Hammers, turns his rhetorical guns on Wicca. He thinks that a “woo-free Wicca” might be tolerable.

There are a number of separate posts, and I have not read them all. But I get the impression that he is engaging with a very limited number of books, chosen more or less at random from the Llewellyn catalog, plus something by the late Stewart Farrar.

The irony is that there are indeed a huge number of books about Wicca, yet everyone calls it a religion of experience, “embodied religion,” and so forth. I am not sure that Steinhart gets that part. Has he been in circle? Has he experienced the fire and smoke and music of a large festival?

I don’t mean that either experience would “convert” him, nor should they. And he probably would respond that they merely activate different parts of the brain, which has nothing to do with all those imaginary gods, etc.

What interests me here too is that his postings provide another data point in the increasing role of contemporary Paganism — and Wicca (broadly defined) as its largest segment — as the new religious “other.”

What people like Steinhart have yet to work out is that the rhetorical starting points are different when talking about polytheism, animism, etc. than when talking about the scriptural religions.

 

Upcoming Gerald Gardner Documentary

A commenter asked about the documentary on Gerald Gardner in which Ronald Hutton is involved. Here is the announcement.

How long before it might be available outside Britain is a good question.

Who You Calling ‘Digressive’?

A review from the July 11-18, 2011, issue of The New Yorker. The Waterstons, in particular, should get more credit as early Pagan-friendly (or Pagan-inspiring) musicians.

‘The Magical Battle of Britain’

“The Battle of Britain” usually refers to the German bombing campaign during the summer of 1940, planned to lead into a seaborne invasion across the English Channel.

Gerald Gardner claimed that the “Southern Coven”  performed a ritual in the New Forest at Lammas 1940 against the threatened invasion. Based on my reading of the evidence, or lack thereof, I don’t think that this ritual took place as he described it.

Nevertheless, telling about the ritual fifteen years after it supposedly happened was part of his claim that Wicca was an indigenous British religion  that could repel the “foreign invader,” Christianity. (And if alive today, Gardner would probably add Islam as well to the list of invaders.)

Whereas we have only Gardner’s after-the-fact claim that the Lammas 1940 ritual occurred, another esoteric group was indeed fighting Nazi Germany on the astral plane—Dion Fortune’s Fraternity of the Inner Light.

“The Magical Battle of Britain,” by Dave Evans and David Sutton, is available at The Fortean Times.

The authors describe how Fortune’s group conceived of their magical battle, designed to strengthen British will power and stop the invasion, even if its effects are hard to quantify compared to those of the Royal Navy, the Royal Air Force, and the Army.

Some of her followers believe that the workings ruined her health, leading to her death a few years later.

And they quote a well-known scholar of esotericsm who comes to this conclusion:

Possibly such tales of magical warfare are simply one of the ways, as esoteric scholar Professor Wouter Hanegraaff describes, in “which magic­ians seek to legitimate magic to the wider society as well as to themselves” in the modern era.


TSA Fires Wiccan

Another strike against the so-called Transportation Safety Administration’s general bureaucratic ineptitude. Add religious discrimination to their list of ugly attitudes.

Judge: Let’s take the witchcraft out of it. If someone complains to you, he’s Jewish, and refers to a stereotype about his Judaism, go to mediation and work it out? Is that management’s response to that?

Lloyd: No. That would not be management’s response to that.

Judge: OK. But witchcraft takes it into a different thing? I guess. I guess witchcraft and Judaism are different in the sense that — what?

Lloyd: To be perfectly honest, sir, at the time, I wasn’t even — I didn’t know anything about witchcraft or Wiccanism. … I wasn’t even aware that Wiccanism was a recognized religion at the time. I had to research it afterwards.