A historian's critique of popular conceptions of witchcraft(athenaeumreview.org)
athenaeumreview.org
A historian's critique of popular conceptions of witchcraft
https://athenaeumreview.org/essay/managing-our-darkest-hatreds/
35 comments
I heard it put this way: neo-paganism is 99% neo 1% pagan.
And reconstruction is about 50-50, because they do their best but archeology honestly doesn't know the answers.
I have a strong opinion that Indo-European polythiestic religions have a common mythical and structural framework. So it would be easier to revive any of them by studying and borrowing back from the vast sample of such religions
They have commonality of roots but they barely resemble each other.
To give an example, Dis Pater, Jupiter, Deus, Zeus, and possibly Tiw are variations of the same name and identity after many centuries of divergence.
To give an example, Dis Pater, Jupiter, Deus, Zeus, and possibly Tiw are variations of the same name and identity after many centuries of divergence.
> I welcome the idea of learning from the past rather than imposing romantic fantasies over it, but that doesn't mean the past is where everything of value resides. If you think religions relate to real things, rather than purely being a human construct, then those things have agency of their own, and exist in the present day. Authenticity, then, becomes about the strength of connection.
I see them as instructive in inducing certain mind states, similar to mindfulness, that allow one to perceive reality through a different lens. You will see angels and demons when ingesting psychedelics, that take on attributes of your own psyche.
I see them as instructive in inducing certain mind states, similar to mindfulness, that allow one to perceive reality through a different lens. You will see angels and demons when ingesting psychedelics, that take on attributes of your own psyche.
One of my favorite posts on such matters is Ortberg’s listicle “ Reasons I Would Not Have Been Burned As A Witch In The Early Modern Era No Matter What I Would Like To Believe About Myself And Would Have In Fact Been Among The Witch-Burners”:
I would have named names, too. And I’d have been especially good at intuiting what names my interrogators wanted to hear (they would not have to torture or even threaten to torture me) – sharp-tongued gossips and independent-minded widows and all kinds of people who get described as “unruly” in modern academic essays. Throw them under the god damn Witch Bus. Does it disappoint you to hear this? I never asked you to have faith in me, Goody Watson.
http://the-toast.net/2016/02/09/reasons-i-would-not-have-bee...
I would have named names, too. And I’d have been especially good at intuiting what names my interrogators wanted to hear (they would not have to torture or even threaten to torture me) – sharp-tongued gossips and independent-minded widows and all kinds of people who get described as “unruly” in modern academic essays. Throw them under the god damn Witch Bus. Does it disappoint you to hear this? I never asked you to have faith in me, Goody Watson.
http://the-toast.net/2016/02/09/reasons-i-would-not-have-bee...
So what is the utility of this article? It reads a lot like a sarcastic put-down of a group of people the author considers naive. I agree that modern witchcratf sounds naive and a bit silly, but haven't we had enough of internet put-downs of entire groups of people?
The author clearly has some valuable historical knowledge. She could have tried to engage with the targets of her snark, and help them see the errors of their ways. Instead, she addresses some third party that she invites to share in on the joke, that is on those dumb people who think medieval witches were pagan, etc. That just borders on an invitation to online bullying, and it's just wrong.
The author clearly has some valuable historical knowledge. She could have tried to engage with the targets of her snark, and help them see the errors of their ways. Instead, she addresses some third party that she invites to share in on the joke, that is on those dumb people who think medieval witches were pagan, etc. That just borders on an invitation to online bullying, and it's just wrong.
Though not quite on point with TFA, to anyone interested in this type of stuff I highly recommend The Secret History of Western Esotericism podcast[0].
[0] https://shwep.net/
[0] https://shwep.net/
I am a subscriber! And, for the readers, try Wouter Hanugraff's "western esoterism: a guide for the perplexed".
We are truly lucky to have such great scholarship
We are truly lucky to have such great scholarship
>> Many modern witches style themselves as goddess-worshippers, but in medieval and early modern witchcraft spells, the Virgin Mary plays a much bigger role. She is referenced far more often than any goddess.
I believe the Virgin Mary is considered to be an aspect of the goddess, like other female deities and divine figures: Aphrodite, Ishtar, Freya, Bast, Kali, etc. In that sense, there is no incongruity.
I believe the Virgin Mary is considered to be an aspect of the goddess, like other female deities and divine figures: Aphrodite, Ishtar, Freya, Bast, Kali, etc. In that sense, there is no incongruity.
Because Catholicism isn't really Christian before Trent. The whole point of the article is that magic was conjoined to Catholicism not opposed to it. Saints are small gods. What it doesnt discuss is the way Erasmus and Luther and Calvin and ultimately the church itself reformulated Christianity in the process starting the witch trials.
I gotta say I don't get the article.
The paragraph with the quote by Dakota Bracciale about witchcraft being practiced by people who were outliers -- may or may not be true. But how does this claim impunity for magical attacks, as the author states? Some witchcraft was practiced by rich and famous people -- they wrote about it in books -- and some of them attacked people magically (or tried to depending on what you believe). What does being an outsider have to do with launching magical attacks? Does this parse through the bit about being arbiter of their own justice? It seems a bit presumptuous -- what do attacks necessarily have to do with justice?
Say I substitute Christian in for witch. "I will argue that modern [evangelical Christians in the US] are themselves prodcuts of the very globalized, commercial, urban and anywhere culture which they set out to resist, because rather than reacting against those trends, they are turning what might once have been a genuinely radical alternative into another form of self-care." I'd stand by that sentence.
One of the primary problems with the article is conflating Pagans who are pagan as a primary religious affiliation, goddess-worshippers, people dabbling in planetary magick, people who just want to make a nice herbal face cream that reminds themselves of some idealised quality, Wiccans, people who decorate with crystals (she doesn't even mention crystals!! Big business, folks!), etc. Moreover, I don't understand her wish to distinguish "spells" from "prayer". Yep, they're meant to do the same thing: concentrate the will and the heart on something. She seemingly admits that with her hail Mary give me a parking spot riff (which I too have used!). So why does she think this conflation of spell and prayer is going to upset the Oracle of Los Angeles?
It seems to me that the author simply doesn't know a lot about modern witchery and its variety. One internet witchy guru I've read talks reasonably often about "the queer witch Jesus"; the intertwining of Christianity and heterodox/local/pagan/witchy habits and belief systems is unavoidable to anyone with even a cursory knowledge of European beliefs and fairy tales. The author's portrayal of modern witches as denying this intertwining is simply ignorant.
And then there's the bit saying, witches historically didn't practice sisterhood, because other women accused them of being witches (? non sequitur). Follow it up with the claim that it's seers and healers who most often accuse other women of witchcraft. Ok. Could be true, could be false. Then "Any professional woman will understand that she and not her male colleague is likely to be the subject of accusations from below." I'm an almost 40 year old professional woman. This is news to me; I haven't really seen any accusations from below other than "she/he is an ineffective manager" and "he slept with that undergrad," which was true and also ignored by everyone ever. What am I going to be accused of? Ah -- like Hillary Clinton, I'll be accused of killing Vince Foster. The beginning of the paragraph though implies I should be accused of killing Vince Foster by a seer or healer. Hm. And then we swing to, "by contrast [...], the medieval Green Knight -- despite his appearance -- is not a baddie or an evil overlord." Where did the Green Knight come from?! How do we then get to Beowulf in the next sentence?! One paragraph that claims feminist solidarity is a joke among medieval witches that careens through Vince Foster to Beowulf without any argument made? Where is the editor for this thing????!!!! This is reading like one of the more poorly-written student papers I've graded -- use enough big words in grammatically-correct configurations and surely someone will think you're eloquent and/or actually making a point. It works fine if the essay is graded by machine [1].
I give up.
If anyone understands how Beowulf and Vince Foster relate to feminist solidarity, let me know.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20834379
The paragraph with the quote by Dakota Bracciale about witchcraft being practiced by people who were outliers -- may or may not be true. But how does this claim impunity for magical attacks, as the author states? Some witchcraft was practiced by rich and famous people -- they wrote about it in books -- and some of them attacked people magically (or tried to depending on what you believe). What does being an outsider have to do with launching magical attacks? Does this parse through the bit about being arbiter of their own justice? It seems a bit presumptuous -- what do attacks necessarily have to do with justice?
Say I substitute Christian in for witch. "I will argue that modern [evangelical Christians in the US] are themselves prodcuts of the very globalized, commercial, urban and anywhere culture which they set out to resist, because rather than reacting against those trends, they are turning what might once have been a genuinely radical alternative into another form of self-care." I'd stand by that sentence.
One of the primary problems with the article is conflating Pagans who are pagan as a primary religious affiliation, goddess-worshippers, people dabbling in planetary magick, people who just want to make a nice herbal face cream that reminds themselves of some idealised quality, Wiccans, people who decorate with crystals (she doesn't even mention crystals!! Big business, folks!), etc. Moreover, I don't understand her wish to distinguish "spells" from "prayer". Yep, they're meant to do the same thing: concentrate the will and the heart on something. She seemingly admits that with her hail Mary give me a parking spot riff (which I too have used!). So why does she think this conflation of spell and prayer is going to upset the Oracle of Los Angeles?
It seems to me that the author simply doesn't know a lot about modern witchery and its variety. One internet witchy guru I've read talks reasonably often about "the queer witch Jesus"; the intertwining of Christianity and heterodox/local/pagan/witchy habits and belief systems is unavoidable to anyone with even a cursory knowledge of European beliefs and fairy tales. The author's portrayal of modern witches as denying this intertwining is simply ignorant.
And then there's the bit saying, witches historically didn't practice sisterhood, because other women accused them of being witches (? non sequitur). Follow it up with the claim that it's seers and healers who most often accuse other women of witchcraft. Ok. Could be true, could be false. Then "Any professional woman will understand that she and not her male colleague is likely to be the subject of accusations from below." I'm an almost 40 year old professional woman. This is news to me; I haven't really seen any accusations from below other than "she/he is an ineffective manager" and "he slept with that undergrad," which was true and also ignored by everyone ever. What am I going to be accused of? Ah -- like Hillary Clinton, I'll be accused of killing Vince Foster. The beginning of the paragraph though implies I should be accused of killing Vince Foster by a seer or healer. Hm. And then we swing to, "by contrast [...], the medieval Green Knight -- despite his appearance -- is not a baddie or an evil overlord." Where did the Green Knight come from?! How do we then get to Beowulf in the next sentence?! One paragraph that claims feminist solidarity is a joke among medieval witches that careens through Vince Foster to Beowulf without any argument made? Where is the editor for this thing????!!!! This is reading like one of the more poorly-written student papers I've graded -- use enough big words in grammatically-correct configurations and surely someone will think you're eloquent and/or actually making a point. It works fine if the essay is graded by machine [1].
I give up.
If anyone understands how Beowulf and Vince Foster relate to feminist solidarity, let me know.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20834379
I fought very hard through that same paragraph as you did, and finally think I figured it out.
The author is upset that modern witches are appropriating from Christianity the "Good vs. Evil" narrative. Calling Trump evil, or saying Hillary is in a satanic cult is equally lacking in sophistication in the authors view.
Pre-Christian paganism, was able to practice religion without framing everything in a binary Good vs Evil debate, and that appears to have been lost in the modern movement. The Green Knight and the Beowulf example are magical forces more closely resembling forces of nature, rather than evils that must be overcome.
Apologies if I am misrepresenting the argument. In my opinion the 'women hating women' element in the authors piece was not central to the argument they were making in this paragraph, and would have fit better in other places further down the essay.
The author is upset that modern witches are appropriating from Christianity the "Good vs. Evil" narrative. Calling Trump evil, or saying Hillary is in a satanic cult is equally lacking in sophistication in the authors view.
Pre-Christian paganism, was able to practice religion without framing everything in a binary Good vs Evil debate, and that appears to have been lost in the modern movement. The Green Knight and the Beowulf example are magical forces more closely resembling forces of nature, rather than evils that must be overcome.
Apologies if I am misrepresenting the argument. In my opinion the 'women hating women' element in the authors piece was not central to the argument they were making in this paragraph, and would have fit better in other places further down the essay.
[deleted]
I have no love lost for new-age fraudsters peddling magical nonsense, but it still feels a tad cowardly to focus your ire on modern self-styled witches for espousing ahistorical belief structures that recycle old material in ways that are at odds with historical fact but is more palatable to the modern masses when, across the country, there are protestant megachurches doing precisely the same thing but with orders of magnitude more adherents and orders of magnitude more political influence.
Please don't take HN threads into religious flamewar. We don't want that here.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I didn’t read any ire there. Seemed to be a fascinating exploration of history loosely on the theme of ‘wiccans have got a lot of things wrong’
This is still a phenomenon worth examining. How is this cowardly? The author can’t do anything about the IRS. What else is there to say about megachurches that hasn’t been said?
I didn't say anything about the IRS and I didn't say the phenomena should be ignored. I think that the most impactful manifestations of the phenomenon should be the focus of study, on account of being the most impactful.
Cowardice seems likely when somebody ignores the high impact manifestation that enjoys popular support, choosing instead to lampoon the low impact fringe manifestation.
Cowardice seems likely when somebody ignores the high impact manifestation that enjoys popular support, choosing instead to lampoon the low impact fringe manifestation.
Could just be "this is in my ballpark, that is not".
Also going against contemporary American megachurch Christianity would require a very different kind of focus and approach. There are deep subtleties to it on a sociological perspective that are far more interesting than its extreme fish-in-a-barrel status theologically. Maybe that doesn't interest the author?
Also going against contemporary American megachurch Christianity would require a very different kind of focus and approach. There are deep subtleties to it on a sociological perspective that are far more interesting than its extreme fish-in-a-barrel status theologically. Maybe that doesn't interest the author?
Maybe you're right. The impression I got was that the author picked a soft easy target, but maybe that's an uncharitable take.
> Also going against contemporary American megachurch Christianity would require a very different kind of focus and approach
I'm not sure I agree with that though. The same method, pointing out conflict between modern espoused belief and historical reality, seems like it would be equally effective against both.
> Also going against contemporary American megachurch Christianity would require a very different kind of focus and approach
I'm not sure I agree with that though. The same method, pointing out conflict between modern espoused belief and historical reality, seems like it would be equally effective against both.
It is uncharitable. A lot of writing intended for very broad audiences surfaces on Hacker News. Writing intended for much smaller audiences also makes the front page from time to time. This is one of those times.
https://athenaeumreview.org/contributor/diane-purkiss/
Diane Purkiss is Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford, and fellow and tutor at Keble College. She holds a doctoral degree from Merton College Oxford, and an honours degree in English and History from the University of Queensland. She has published widely on the English Civil War, and on witchcraft and the supernatural in the early modern period.
She's writing about popular misconceptions relevant to her own specialty. She has no special background to bring to bear on contemporary American megachurch Christianity.
Her critique was published in the Athenaeum Review, "a new journal of arts and ideas for the general educated reader."
https://athenaeumreview.org/issues/
https://athenaeumreview.org/contributor/diane-purkiss/
Diane Purkiss is Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford, and fellow and tutor at Keble College. She holds a doctoral degree from Merton College Oxford, and an honours degree in English and History from the University of Queensland. She has published widely on the English Civil War, and on witchcraft and the supernatural in the early modern period.
She's writing about popular misconceptions relevant to her own specialty. She has no special background to bring to bear on contemporary American megachurch Christianity.
Her critique was published in the Athenaeum Review, "a new journal of arts and ideas for the general educated reader."
https://athenaeumreview.org/issues/
It's really not. Christianity is a rather uniquely vulnerable religion to getting rationalist holes poked in it because of its insistence on factual historicality of a particular set of events[1], and megachurch Christianity is a deeply weird, heretical offshoot that barely follows mainline Christianity, and it looks like you could blow barn-sized holes in it with a peashooter, because it's held together with ignorance and baling wire. You will note though, exactly how much historical impact this kind of attack has had, namely none.
Basically what you've got here is a cultural phenomenon dressed up as a religious one, borrowing some religious functions, taking over the public role of religion. But its foundations have a lot more to do with ingroup identity, shibboleths and the peculiar American take on the protestant work ethic. Trying to understand it theologically just hits a blank wall. You have to understand it as sociology.
([1] Other religions not of the same lineage shrug off this class of attacks. Disprove Shinto? Disprove what? It makes no historical claims.)
Basically what you've got here is a cultural phenomenon dressed up as a religious one, borrowing some religious functions, taking over the public role of religion. But its foundations have a lot more to do with ingroup identity, shibboleths and the peculiar American take on the protestant work ethic. Trying to understand it theologically just hits a blank wall. You have to understand it as sociology.
([1] Other religions not of the same lineage shrug off this class of attacks. Disprove Shinto? Disprove what? It makes no historical claims.)
Christianity does not require insistence on "factual historicality of a particular set of events", or at least not disprovable ones. That's mostly a Western phenomena, to which American protestants seem particularly prone to the most extreme version of.
I think you can ultimately thank Thomas Aquinas for this movement. He was quite fond of a rational basis for God and repackaged the works of Aristotle for this end. But of course once you start down the road of adding rationalism to your religion then the whole mysticism of it can start to stand out to some. So some people started thinking it must be all literal and totally rational...
Eastern Orthodox Christianity still has no truck with that rationalism nonsense.
I think you can ultimately thank Thomas Aquinas for this movement. He was quite fond of a rational basis for God and repackaged the works of Aristotle for this end. But of course once you start down the road of adding rationalism to your religion then the whole mysticism of it can start to stand out to some. So some people started thinking it must be all literal and totally rational...
Eastern Orthodox Christianity still has no truck with that rationalism nonsense.
1 Corinthians 15:14 (and context): "if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith"
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+1...
Yes, there are recognizably Christian subgroups that disavow all historical claims (and reinterpret Paul accordingly), but mainstream Christianity has always affirmed the bodily resurrection of Jesus and that (per Paul) this is essential to Christianity ... long before Aquinas.
N. T. Wright's "The Resurrection of the Son of God" is a very good read on this.
Yes, there are recognizably Christian subgroups that disavow all historical claims (and reinterpret Paul accordingly), but mainstream Christianity has always affirmed the bodily resurrection of Jesus and that (per Paul) this is essential to Christianity ... long before Aquinas.
N. T. Wright's "The Resurrection of the Son of God" is a very good read on this.
See my caveat that excludes facts that can't be disproven. An historical miracle cannot be disproven short of using a time machine.
Orthodox Christianity is also not so hung up on the bible and focuses a lot more on the Gospels.
And the Philokalia, which most Westerners seem to be unaware of.
It's been tried. It doesn't work. It doesn't change the minds of Christian believers, just as pointing out the lack of evidence for the Burning Times doesn't change the minds of feminist Wiccans.
People don't follow religions because they're true. They follow them because they offer narratives and social interactions they personally find compelling.
Understanding the social interactions - they're not always obvious - might do more to make religions less appealing than yet another unsuccessful attempt to debunk the core narrative.
People don't follow religions because they're true. They follow them because they offer narratives and social interactions they personally find compelling.
Understanding the social interactions - they're not always obvious - might do more to make religions less appealing than yet another unsuccessful attempt to debunk the core narrative.
Arguably, modern "fundamentalism" of many religious forms is a reaction movement that says "if we cannot have both science and religion, let us abandon science". It's something people back as recently as the Elizabethan era would have disagreed with as heretical theologically. How could God be so untrue that the search for truth had to be abandoned?
It is certainly telling you never mentioned the IRS.
The problem with this article is that it seems to cherry pick the easiest examples of pagan identity to criticize and then simply rebukes them by pithy aphorism.
This makes it an extremely uninformed article. The mainstream witchcraft (i.e. wiccan) movements stem from Gerald Gardner's attempt to reconstruct Italian and British witchcraft traditions and turn it into something acceptable for modern audiences. Both his specific reconstructions and the problems with them have been well documented (see his own books and those of Valiente).
In many way what happened with modern witchcraft is similar to what happened with modern Yoga traditions (see Mark Singleton's book the Making of Modern Yoga), in that a few people tried to create mass marketable phenomenon by taking some old traditions and then creating a consumable package. Obviously this often comes with overstated claims considering the guru, authenticity, etc. Then it also creates identity movements where people create an identity around their new belief system.
As far as what various pagans did in the Roman empire and how many of those traditions were gradually eradicated by Christianity, some of those things are well documented and some are not, partially because of the presence of many non-recorded mystery traditions in ancient Rome.
As far as people choosing a "pagan" identity as a reactionary counter culture vis-a-vis a perceived mainstream Christianity that also clearly exists where Christianity is mainstream. In various forms it seems to have merged with other reactionary version of feminism.
This makes it an extremely uninformed article. The mainstream witchcraft (i.e. wiccan) movements stem from Gerald Gardner's attempt to reconstruct Italian and British witchcraft traditions and turn it into something acceptable for modern audiences. Both his specific reconstructions and the problems with them have been well documented (see his own books and those of Valiente).
In many way what happened with modern witchcraft is similar to what happened with modern Yoga traditions (see Mark Singleton's book the Making of Modern Yoga), in that a few people tried to create mass marketable phenomenon by taking some old traditions and then creating a consumable package. Obviously this often comes with overstated claims considering the guru, authenticity, etc. Then it also creates identity movements where people create an identity around their new belief system.
As far as what various pagans did in the Roman empire and how many of those traditions were gradually eradicated by Christianity, some of those things are well documented and some are not, partially because of the presence of many non-recorded mystery traditions in ancient Rome.
As far as people choosing a "pagan" identity as a reactionary counter culture vis-a-vis a perceived mainstream Christianity that also clearly exists where Christianity is mainstream. In various forms it seems to have merged with other reactionary version of feminism.
[deleted]
What I find most interesting is the avoidance of any mention of drugs. It’s a rather large omission from a historical perspective.
There's room out there too for grimoire traditionalists, cunning-man revivalists, catholic folk-magic, brujeria, santeria, pagan historical reconstructionists, and any number of other detailed traditions that aren't Wiccan. And that's fine too.
I welcome the idea of learning from the past rather than imposing romantic fantasies over it, but that doesn't mean the past is where everything of value resides. If you think religions relate to real things, rather than purely being a human construct, then those things have agency of their own, and exist in the present day. Authenticity, then, becomes about the strength of connection.