{"id":2195,"date":"2010-12-19T21:48:57","date_gmt":"2010-12-20T04:48:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2195"},"modified":"2010-12-19T22:04:59","modified_gmt":"2010-12-20T05:04:59","slug":"on-misreading-triumph-of-the-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2195","title":{"rendered":"On Misreading ‘Triumph of the Moon’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>An earlier post of mine about writings on Wicca that lacked authority <\/a>generated some responses around the Pagan blogosphere.<\/p>\n

Some bloggers, however, simply do not understand scholarly writing. For instance, this<\/a>:<\/p>\n

For over a decade, Professor Ronald Hutton’s study on the history of Wicca, Triumph of the Moon<\/em>, has been considered by most Pagan scholars to have\u00a0closed the book on the issue of the survival of elements of Paganism from Pagan antiquity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let’s think about that. Edward Gibbons’ The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empir<\/a>e <\/em>is probably the one book on the topic that every educated person has at least heard of.<\/p>\n

It was published in installments between 1776 and 1789. It is a classic. By the blog writer’s standards, therefore, it should have “closed the book” on writing about ancient Rome.<\/p>\n

Yet new books on ancient Rome are published every year. How can that be?<\/p>\n

No topic is ever “closed.” Historical works\u2014which is how Prof. Hutton would describe Triumph\u2014<\/em>are not holy scriptures. New thinkers and new generations bring new scholarship and new interpretations.<\/p>\n

But what Hutton has done is establish a standard. Anyone who challenges his conclusions (and given that ten years have passed, he has challenged some of them himself, I expect) must do at least as much in-depth research as he has done. They can’t just snipe from the sidelines.<\/p>\n

Rhetoricians talk about “invented ethos<\/em>,” by which a speaker or writer displays their qualifications to engage a topic: I have studied such-and-such at this or that level. I have done such-and-such. I have experienced such-and-such. (“Invention” does not imply falsification in this context.)<\/p>\n

It is that level of ethos<\/em> I see lacking in his critics\u2014so far.<\/p>\n

Another problem, probably too big to tackle here, occurs when people approach a book like Triumph <\/em>looking for “right answers” or for information on which to base their personal religious practice.<\/p>\n

Oh, you can do that. “The reader constructs his own text,” as all the postmodernists say, sure. You can also use a Stradivarius violin for a canoe paddle.<\/p>\n

But I think one is better off reading a Triumph<\/em> as a history of ideas, a history of the ways that English people, in particular, thought about and constructed the idea of “witchcraft.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An earlier post of mine about writings on Wicca that lacked authority generated some responses around the Pagan blogosphere. Some bloggers, however, simply do not understand scholarly writing. For instance, this: For over a decade, Professor Ronald Hutton’s study on the history of Wicca, Triumph of the Moon, has been considered by most Pagan scholars […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[21,4,29],"class_list":["post-2195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-england","tag-scholarship","tag-witchcraft"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-zp","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":10422,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10422","url_meta":{"origin":2195,"position":0},"title":"A Festschrift for Ronald Hutton","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 28, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Magic and Witchery: Celebrating the Twentieth Anniversary of 'The Triumph of the Moon' will be published in September by Palgrave Macmillan. I love rolling the word Festschrift around, and if you are not used to it, this is what it means: \"In academia, a Festschrift\u00a0 (plural Festschriften) is a book\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/magic-and-witchery-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":13198,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13198","url_meta":{"origin":2195,"position":1},"title":"The First Wiccan Book Published in India","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 7, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"A little more than twenty years ago, in the preference to his landmark study of contemporary Pagan Witchcraft, The Triumph of the Moon, the historian Ronald Hutton wrote that \"the unique significance of pagan [sic] witchcraft to history is that it is the only religion which England has even given\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"India\"","block_context":{"text":"India","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=india"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/ANI-20221216115613-300x205.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":12980,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12980","url_meta":{"origin":2195,"position":2},"title":"How about Museum of Witchcraft Version 4.0?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 6, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"You can buy the former mill (built 1828) in Castletown, Isle of Man, that once housed housed Cecil Williamson and Gerald Gardner's \"Folklore Centre of Superstition and Witchcraft,\" whose name went through various permutations, even as its little restaurant went from being \"The Folklore Restaurant\" to \"The Witches' Kitchen.\" All\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Gerald Gardner\"","block_context":{"text":"Gerald Gardner","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=gerald-gardner"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tindle-web-prod.brightsites.co.uk\/tindle-static\/image\/2022\/06\/28\/11\/newFile.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tindle-web-prod.brightsites.co.uk\/tindle-static\/image\/2022\/06\/28\/11\/newFile.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/tindle-web-prod.brightsites.co.uk\/tindle-static\/image\/2022\/06\/28\/11\/newFile.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2405,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2405","url_meta":{"origin":2195,"position":3},"title":"The Pomegranate 12:1","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 26, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I have let weeks go by without mentioning the latest issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies! Here is the table of contents. All book reviews and article abstracts are free. Articles \"Franz S\u00e4ttler (Dr. Musallam) and the Twentieth-Century Cult of Adonism\" Hans Thomas Hakl \"Walk Like\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"scholarship\"","block_context":{"text":"scholarship","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=scholarship"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2207,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2207","url_meta":{"origin":2195,"position":4},"title":"A Failure of Theology?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 20, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I am not a theologian, nor do I play one on TV.* But as I watch the kerfuffle over Triumph of the Moon (still, after ten years!), I wonder what happened to Pagan theology. In the 1920s, Margaret Murray claimed that \"the Old Religion,\" a self-conscious underground Pagan cult(s), persisted\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2741,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2741","url_meta":{"origin":2195,"position":5},"title":"Ronald Hutton Responds to His Critics","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 6, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Even before his interview with Australian scholar\/blogger Caroline Tully, Ronald Hutton had written a lengthy article for The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies titled \"Writing the History of Witchcraft: A Personal View.\" It is now available as a free download from Equinox Publishing. In it, Professor Hutton discusses\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"books\"","block_context":{"text":"books","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=books"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2195"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2204,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2195\/revisions\/2204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}