So, once again, I am coming across people sharing junk that isn’t true. Too many people in the pagan world think that they are ready to teach other people, when they haven’t begun to learn anything yet.
Magical truth is silenced in favour of “fake news”. It’s hard to know everything, but look out for bullshit and question things. Magic speaks her truth, but can no longer be heard for all the lies that are shouted over her.
Learn your own ignorance
I like to compare this situation to learning in Primary School, Secondary School and University. Take for example maths. In primary school, once you’ve learned your times tables and basic addition you tell yourself, “by Jove, I’ve got it! I can do maths! Go me!” You hit secondary school and learn about trigonometry, logarithms, differentiation and integration and you tell yourself, “Well maths has some difficult bits, but I get most of it!” Anyone who goes off to university and comes across polynomials?, ?binomials?, algorithmic complexity analysis??, ??imaginary numbers??, stochastic process and diffusion ??? and they say “my knowledge is, but a drop in the ocean.”
I keep finding the pagan community has loads of people who are at the primary school level of knowledge. They assume they know everything and end up trying to teach the world and make memes like the one I came across the other day. The one I will address below.
Others have incredible wisdom and insight that reflects a lifetime of study and practise. These are the people I want to listen to. However they don’t want to teach anything. They have learned their own ignorance and therefore dare not put themselves out there which is a huge shame.
A terribly inaccurate meme I saw
The following is a meme I recently saw shared. It’s full of bullshit, which shows it was written by someone who didn’t know anything. My response to the meme is below where I pretty much take apart every sentence. Some because they’re totally inaccurate and some because they are based on too many assumptions. I think one sentence was correct.
My Response
Nope. I’m sorry but I don’t bother to mince words and this might make me unpopular but hey at least people have the option to learn or choose willful ignorance. I approached them in a different order sorry about that, but I felt it built better.
Pagan
When Christianity became the dominant religion of the Roman empire, there was a rise of use of the word “pagani” (from which the modern word “pagan” is derived). What did they mean? They meant “of the folk”, rather than “of the state”. The pagans to which it referred had a religion that wasn’t the state religion (Christianity), it was the folk religion. That’s what the word means. It doesn’t steak any claims about nature or cosmology. Where the word originated, it was used with respect to people honouring deities, which could represent anything from nature to human aspects such as jealousy, beauty, music, drunkenness, etc. So to say “a pagan worships nature” is misleading, since sometimes the deities of pagans were embodiments of human nature rather than aspects of nature than like the sky or earth. (Consider how the Greek gods Gaia and Chronos were consider Titans and not modern deities at the time and how their place in Roman Cosmology was the same).
So early on “Pagan” literally just meant “not Christian”. While it would seem odd to classify Shinto and Hinduism under this umbrella since, where they are practiced they are very much the state religion. In fact the emperor of Japan ascends to his throne in a Shinto ritual. But they were still called “Pagan” by early Christian explorers and it remains an accepted term for Hinduism and Shintoism today. I don’t mind the “folk religion” definition.
The meme then steaks a claim. “All of these believe in both a god and goddess”??? ummm no. Just because something is a Pagan faith does not mean it has a god and goddess. Although many faiths with gods and goddess would be classified by Christians are pagan simply because it’s “not Christian” and has deities. Not every pagan religious philosophy feels the need to expresses specific genders for its symbols and even when it does this is not necessarily a significant part of the deity. Some have thousands of deities, some have deities which are a third gender.
The meme also claims that “everything is about balance”. Not everything is about balance. This is New Age BS that really comes out of a misunderstanding of a Daoist concept that was popular among Theosophists. It’s common for westerners to show up in foreign people’s lands talk to them about their religion, not really listen and then mansplain their own religion back to them without really having learned anything from them. The end result was the teachings of the New Age community. One of the most common beliefs held is that all religions are the same. If you think all religions are the same then you probably haven’t studied them in enough depth to discover what their differences are.
Witchcraft
Anyone who practices witchcraft is a witch. Meh. That definition isn’t really too helpful unless you already know what one of these words means. So it need not be said as part of a definition. Also it’s not that accurate either considering some people dabble and wouldn’t take it on as an identity.
There’s really no need to limit the characterisation of Witchcraft here. They claim it uses chants and incantations. Sometimes it does, sometimes it uses neither. I’ve done plenty of spells in plain English and they were witchcraft. If you saw the things that happened soon after you wouldn’t doubt it!
You don’t need to use tools. Common modern witches like to have things like wands, athames, chalices, talismans etc. But Witchcraft as a definition has been around for centuries. Just because something is done using tools in the modern day does mean it always was.
They also use aromatherapy? Give me a break. Show me where in the Papyri Graecae Magicae there’s a spell, which is aromatherapy. Yes incense is often used, but it’s not necessary for something to be Witchcraft. Also aromatherapy suggests using the smell to encourage healing in a patient most old forms of Witchcraft if there was incense this was an offering to the deity. Not something that would have a direct affect on the participants. This writer is an idiot. Some forms of Witchcraft have used herbs some did not. It’s not consistent enough to be used as part of the definition of the term Witch.
What would be a more accurate definition. A witch is a term which designates a woman with power. The term implies that that power is supernatural in origin. We can appeal to how the word is used to see the ideas it might have conjured in people’s heads.
Throughout most of Christian Europe, witches have been banned. The practices of a Witch are made illegal in Hebrew society and so have been treated as the crime of heresy through most of Europe. A witch therefore during this time is someone who is contrary to the natural order and potentially diabolical.
The bible depicts a witch able to summon the dead in the story of the Witch of Endor. So again we have the association of supernatural power.
Outside of monotheistic society, in the Greek story the Odyssey, Odysseus meets Circe. Circe is someone who lives outside of normal civilisation, she is a child of the sun god and other mythological beings. It is said she was gifted with knowledge of pharmakon. This means drugs and enchantments so I think the English term potion is fitting. In the story she hides a (pharmakon) potion in some wine and taps a wand on some of the people to turn them into wolves and pigs. This would tend to indicate it was more than a simple drug, but had supernatural power.
So here we have a witch associated again with the wilderness rather than civilised law abiding society. She is entwined with Nature and capable of hexing people with potions and/or supernatural power.
In modern day people have attempted to reclaim the word Witch, saying it was only demonised for misogynistic purposes. Also many groups have both male and female witches.
If we throw away some of the negative connotations I believe an apt definition for Witch is a person who is connected with nature or the liminal places of wilderness rather than society through which they have supernatural power, enabling them to cause magical changes through the use of potions or the exercise of supernatural power.
Wicca
This is an old English word (pronounced like “Witcher”) it just means “witch”. It’s essentially the same word as “witch”, but from a time when spelling was different. In the 1950s it became popular when modern revival groups began calling themselves “Wiccens” and “Wiccans”. There was a publication that was popular around that time called “the Wiccan” which ensured the word entered popular usage. Some of those groups were Gardnerian / Alexandrian, but not all. Neither Gardner nor Saunders used the word Wiccan. They both referred to themselves as Witches. Many groups that did not have dual deities used the term Wicca. It is often used today to refer to Gardnerian and Alexandrian Witchcraft, which were derived from the triple deity of Thelema. Look up Doreen Valiente’s notes where she said Gardner was using loads of stuff from Aleister Crowley’s Gnostic Mass and she rewrote it with pagan inspired poetry. The dual deities are taken from the Gnostic mass ritual, which I guess in turn is taken from Crowley’s observation of Hindu Shaivite practice (so we can claim pagan origins there).
The erroneous meme above make reference to the Wheel of the Year which is a common theme in many modern “Wiccan” practices. Calling it “seasonal and celestial events” is probably the only accurate thing in this meme. The next sentence which says that they represent the birth, ascension and death of the sun god is a bit wrong. Many of the seasonal observations are actually from Victorian folk practices. See Ronald Hutton’s Stations of the Sun.
The term Wicca is often used in modern parlance in Britain to mean Gardnarian Witchcraft and Alexandrian Witchcraft but neither of them actually used that term. Both of these practice are derived from Thelema, which is in turn derived from Christian Masonry although there have been some pagan influences on the way.
Other than every single sentence that meme was really good.
Avoid this stuff!
How do we avoid this stuff. Well you can actually check what you’re reading. Some people find it very difficult to read. So I will recommend audiobooks and the odd podcast, but you need to really consider the quality of your sources. Like I said before University level reading is good at getting sources and showing just how small a drop in the ocean of knowledge you potentially have. Don’t just read it for the information. If you’re reading an authoritative source then remember where the information came from. A good source for a lot of this stuff is Ronald Hutton who traced a history of many topics of pagan interest in his books. He writes to university level so it’s not going to be an easy or ego flattering read, but it will challenge you to grow your knowledge and he cares about getting it right far more than a typical Llewellyn book.
Think really carefully if what you’re reading is like Raven vel Wizardon’s Complete Grimoire of Magic for the Learned Apprentice : 100 pages of real Hogwarts Magic and Diana Virtue’s guide to Angels of Light : 555 ways to ignore, deny and neglect dealing with anything negative then you’re probably not going to be challenged, you’re not going to grow spiritually.
What I see today is evidence that magic is for the elite. But frankly, that elite could include you, if you’re willing to devote the proper time to it. Magic is not easy to learn. Its practice is demanding and its teachings are hard to find. Its truths are constantly lost due to the pressure to make money in a capitalist society. Instead books are published which are for stroking egos rather than conveying secrets. In the past magic was hidden away in secret societies, now magic hides behind a wall of false information and self-help books. Magic needs us to discover its truth otherwise its truth will be lost to the next generation.