-Caveat Lector-
>There are some scholars who claim that AIDs is caused by Paraffin on
apples, and others who believe the earth was created 6,000 years ago by
a big man living in the clouds.
>That in no way refutes the work of Raphael Patai, Merlin Stone or Marija
Gimbutas.
Is 'Merlin Stone' a pagan/Wiccan himself by any chance? His name certainly sounds like
he is. Whether ancient Greek/Roman sects survived the millennia is quite legitimate,
such as research into the Templars theology. However there are written records,
documents, sites, memoirs etc to work with. The wiccans have nil in the way of
evidence.
>It's a fine theory, but there is no evidence. No archaeologists have
dug up a 'witch temple' dating from then to now.
>Witches do not worship in temples. Some pagans worship in temples, but
not all pagans. Witches are pagans who do not.
But how do you know they didn't do so at some point during the last 2,000 years?
Religion has always been defined by the structures they build, and the texts they
write. The Wiccans have neither.
>No latin or greek books on the subject. Nil. Like all religions, the
adherents have blind faith, and this is one aspect of it.
The religion, and the faith people have in it, are quite different
things from scholarship about it.=20
>Murray's work draws mainly on testimony given to inquisitors by accused
witches who were tortured. She postulated that because testimony from so
many different individuals in different parts of Europe shared common
themes, there must be something to it. More likely is that the
inquisitors had a script of accusations which the tortured individuals
were all too ready to agree with.
>Murray's work has been discredited. So what? The point is not whether or
not she was correct, but that she predated Gardner. Ergo, Gardner did
not make it up. He built on the work of others.
I didn't say she has been 'discredited' but most scholars agree that her conclusions
are dubious. In any case, didn't Gardner claim he got most of his information from his
Grandmother? (I have his book somewhere, I never fully read it though.)
>The thing that gets me is that most wiccans (and I have known a few)
are just as ignorant and deluded as most fundamentalist Xtians.=20
>We are not discussing Wiccans or their beliefs. We are discussing the
work of the scholars who study them. It's a different subject.
I don't know what thread you are following, but this one was in response to the
document on wiccan pseudo-history, which is all about the beliefs of wiccans trying to
be passed off as legitimate history. I'm sure that 90% or more of the 'scholars' who
research this area are themselves Wiccan or assorted pagans, in the same way that most
people who bother to study the bible are Christians, Talmudic scholars tend to be
Jewish and so forth.
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