-Caveat Lector-
>Merlin
It’s from the Welsh, “Merddin,” who was a “derwydd,” or Druid.
According to Graves (White Goddess, p. 39), “An early Cornish poem
describes . . . the Druid Merddin . . .”
This should be distinguished from “merlin,” a small falcon (Falco
columbarius) of northern regions, which has predominantly dark plumage
and a black-striped tail. It is also called pigeon hawk. It’s name is
Middle English from Anglo-Norman “merilun,” from Old French
“esmerillon,” diminutive of “esmeril” of Germanic origin.
>You're quite right. I had never heard of this person before you
mentioned 'her'
This is the very best reason possible for you to not pass judgment on
her work, at least in public where people can call you on it.
>(and here was poor ignorant, historically illiterate I
You said it.
>thinking that Merlin was a man's name).
So are Lee, Dana, and Evelyn.
>Let me know what book/s has she written and I will look it up.
The best place to start with Stone is:
When God Was a Woman
ISBN: 015696158X
Try to get an edition with the original illustrations (i.e. not the
Barnes and Noble edition), as the archeological evidence she employs is
far more compelling when viewed than when described.
Then read:
Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe, 6500-3500 B.C. :
Myths, and Cult Images
by Marija Gimbutas
ISBN: 0520046552
>To be honest, she sounds like some sort of New Age fruitcake who knits
her own yoghurt and probably writes books making just as much sense. But
I'm just making assumptions.
Indeed you are, and with nothing whatsoever to base them on but her name
and subject matter. This indicates a profound lack intelligence on your
part. I’m not saying you don’t have any intelligence. You may. But you
certainly aren’t putting it to use.
Science is based on objectivity. If you can’t approach a new subject
with an open mind, you can’t possibly hope to learn anything. Minds, as
the saying goes, are like parachutes; they only work when open.
However, I must say, “knits her own yoghurt” is a great line. I fully
intend to expropriate it.
>I won't answer that, as I suspect you are being flippant.
Puns, on the other hand, are the lowest form of wit. Come now, you can
do better than that.
> What's my life got to do with anything?
It’s a prime example of how stories can be true without having been
written down. Alas, the vast, overwhelming majority, in fact virtually
all, stories are never written down. There isn’t enough paper.
>Yes, but similarly because something isn't written down makes it far
less likely to be true, just as something which is written down is more
likely to be true.
Prove it. Be specific. Cite references and their qv.
>OK then, what (in brief) physical evidence do they provide which I am
ignorant of?
Read the books I recommended. At the very least, look at the pictures.
>Do they have letters from one witch to another from anytime pre 1950?
Come now. Who would be stupid enough to commit to writing an admission
that they had committed a crime, particularly during the centuries long
period when that crime carried a death sentence.
>Have they found and translated some witches texts from middle ages or
ancient greece which provide a clear link to modern wiccans?
No. But then how could a text from the Middle Ages or ancient Greece
provide a clear link? An unbroken chain of texts could perhaps do this,
assuming they could all be proven valid, but isolated texts cannot. What
the texts from the Middle Ages and ancient Greece do provide is strong
circumstantial evidence. In modern courts of law, people are routinely
condemned to death with less evidence. Just because evidence is
circumstantial doesn’t make it less valid evidence. The proverbial
“smoking gun” itself is, by definition, circumstantial evidence.
>>The wiccans have nil in the way of evidence.
That you know about. But then you don’t know very much about the field
at all.
>This is nonsense. 'Maybe' there is evidence. I admit it's possible, but
I very much doubt it. I notice that you aren't exactly eager to provide
any of this evidence from your clearly greater knowledge of this subject
than us mere mortals. Please do enlighten us.
I recommended a couple books. You ignored me. I just did it again. Are
you going to ignore me again?
>There are no digs for wiccan artefacts because there are none.
How do you know if you refuse to even read the literature of the field?
>If you can stop criticizing me (for I've obviously struck a nerve)
perhaps you can point me to the error in my beliefs, rather than making
all osrts of wild assumptions.
I have, repeatedly. I will repeat. (1.) You are willfully ignorant. (2.)
You say you are not.
>Again, this 'Merlin Stone' sounds like a new age lunatic.
How do you know if you have never read her books? And why should we we
take seriously anything at all you say, since you repeatedly and
unashamedly prattle on about things that by your own admission you
haven’
t even bothered to investigate?
>At the very least she is presumably a pagan,
How do you know if you haven’t even read a single word she has written?
>and therefore far from objective.
No one is objective about religion. However, we are not talking about
religion. We are talking about the history of a religion’s practice and
the history of its practitioners. This is quite distinct from the
religion itself, it’s dogma and its rituals.
While, for example, there is much debate and no proof whatsoever that
Jesus even existed, no one who examined the historical record would deny
that Christianity existed.
>Good for you. Care to share some of your knowledge around? BTW does
your 'research' involve reading a whole lot of books by Wiccans out to
make a fast buck from the gullible?
I’ve read some. They’re an important part of the historiography. I also
watch the TV news, even though it rife with lies and distortions,
because I want to know what it is that people believe is the truth. What
people believe is the truth is as important to the historiagrapher, the
anthropologist, the sociologist, the psychologist, and the chronicler,
as is the actual truth itself. In fact, the degree of variance between
the truth and what people believe is the truth is by far and away the
single most important factor in human politics. Precise knowledge of
that degree what allows the cryptocracy to exert its rule. It is
primarily our own ignorance that keeps us in thrall.
I’ve also read a a great deal of anti-pagan propaganda that was written
by Christians out to make a fast buck from the gullible. It, too, is
part of the story.
>Care to name a few religions which have left no writings and no
structures?
One will suffice. It is the single most long lasting religion. Worship
of the great cave bear has been demonstrated by Carbon 14 (and other)
dating to have persisted virtually unchanged for over four hundred
thousand years. A case can be made that remnants of this religion are
still in practice by the Ainu today. I’m not so sure about that. But
even if, as others say, that it has died out, it was nevertheless around
for a very, very long time. Its practitioners had no written
language. If they built structures, we have no evidence. They did,
however, build alters, leave grave goods and perform rituals. These
rituals apparently involved abstract symbolism, sympathetic magic and
some belief in an afterlife. These are the defining traits of religion.
>Polytheism isn't the subject.
But it is. Wicca is a polytheistic religion, on of many, and as such,
part of a tradition which dates back to preliterate times and continues
vigorously to this day. There are at least a billion polytheists on the
planet today. The greatest concentration is in south Asia, but they live
on every continent.
Whether modern Wicca is a tradition that has been handed down and
practiced continuously is debatable. A case can certainly be made that
it is a revival. As yet, we can’t be sure, one way or the other. The
research necessary to reach a valid conclusion is still ongoing. This is
further complicated because Wiccans believe a variety of things. Not all
Wiccans believe the same things, though their beliefs do overlap. In
this they are much like Christians or Muslims. Can you tell Shia from
Sunni? How about Catholics from Orthodox? Baptists from Methodists? Are
Mormons “really” Christians? And what about Pentecostalism? Dogma aside,
Pentecostalist worship looks to me a hell of a lot more like Voudon or
Santaria than it does like the church were I grew up, especially when
they start flopping on the floor and speaking in tongues. They look
exactly like they’re being “ridden by Loas.” Like Voudon or Santaria,
Pentecostalism is direct, personal and experiential. I grew up
Presbyterian. We were taught that thinking about God and behaving in
certain manners was way to go and that feeling the “Holy Spirit” was
pretty much incidental.
The extraordinary variation, and numerous overlaps of all these various
religions is confusing to any but a serious scholar. Thus also is Wicca,
and Wicca is but one branch of paganism. It would more accurate to
describe it as a grouping of branches. Some show striking differences
between each other. Others are nearly identical.
The Gardnerian Trad. was most definitely founded by Gardner. But were
the Dianic Trad. or the Faery Trad. or any of the numerous others?
Probably not. Though some elements are basically the same, that in no
way proves derivation. It could just as easily be the result of
derivation from a mutual source. Both Lutheranism and Methodism
demonstrably evolved from Catholicism. They have overlapping dogma and
practice. But are Lutherans and methodists Catholic? Hardly. Nor are
they each other. There are some minor elements of Faery Trad. that bear
a more than striking resemblance the the practice of the Yezidis. Does
this mean that Faery Trad derives from Yezidis? Hardly.
>most, if not all, of the researchers and writers in a certain field
are followers of a particular dogma which will affect what they write.
Indeed, yourself included. But we must take care not to judge people
writings by their content, but by how well that content correlates with
the empirical data.
>I wasn't aware they had tape recorders back in the middle ages to
preserve this 'oral history'.
Oral history takes place in the present. It’s subject matter is the
past.
>Ethnologists will tell you that oral history is very misleading and
while you may assume it is reliable,
It CAN be unreliable. That’s different. You are assuming this means that
it IS unreliable. That’s bogus logic. It certainly should never be
viewed as conclusive sans corroboration. The Dogan account of Sirius B
comes to mind. Nevertheless, oral history does provide a window into the
past. In some cases it provides the only window into the past. Sometimes
corroboration must wait. The oral history of the Hemmings clan, for
example, long claimed partial descent from Thomas Jefferson. After
generations of often arbitrary dismissal, these claims are now being
reconsidered in a new light due to recent DNA analysis. It turns out the
Hemmings were telling the truth all along.
> Her research is larely statistical. You can make of it what you will.
She also determined that the stories of witches being found to have a
3rd nipple were not as unlikely as you might think, as apparently a 3rd
nipple is not all that uncommon (statistics became available during the
widespread use of Conscription during WW I).
Not everything Murray said has been discredited, but her basic
methodology was deeply flawed. Methodology has evolved considerably
since her time. What’s more, it is not valid to judge an entire field on
the basis of a single scholar.
>I think it is relevant. Did he or didn't he? You are the expert, am I
right or wrong? My granny used to tell me all sorts of crazy things, but
I didn't write a book about them.
It doesn’t matter whether Gardner passed it on, synthesized the work of
others or made it up out of whole cloth. What matters is the chronology
of publication. It is specious to say Wicca got its start with Gardner
because other publications on the subject predate him.
>Well you seem to be so impressed by this 'Merlin Stone's' historical
works, it seems to me (looking in from the outside) that it is just as
silly as Christians who write books where they claim to have found and
photographed Noah's Ark or the Holy Grail.
(1.) How do you know if you never read it?
(2.) Christians are not the only ones to claim they have found and
photographed Noah’s Ark or the Holy Grail.
>I don't have trouble. You just have to remember the motivations of
people making statements.
That’s not the only determining factor. Again, content must be judged,
not from (alleged) motivation, but by degree of correlation to the
empirical data.
>Yes, I am sure. If I spent a lot of time in new age bookshops and was
familiar with all these great authorities you quote, I would probably be
doubly sure.
Where you should spend some time first, is the public library. You
should also stop thinking, and especially saying in public, that you are
“sure” about things about which you are most obviously guessing. It
makes you look really, really dumb.
>As it happens it wpould be a correct guess. Who is going to devote
years of their life to writing a book on religion that isn't extremely
pro or anti the religion in question?
Neutral scholarship does exist, but it’s rare. The most neutral
scholarship on this subject is that which turns up tangentially in the
literature of other fields. Archeology, for example, sheds neutral light
on the history of religion that no work on religion itself could hope
for.
>Atheists are worse than most bible bashers at studying religion. I know
a guy from the Atheist Society here in Melbourne, every week he talks
about Jesus, about Mithra, about Ahura-Mazda and how they are all linked
etc. He knows all these obscure religious sects, texts, scholars,
doctrines etc.
How on earth does that make him “worse”? If anything, it makes him
better. At least he has bothered to read up on his subject before he ran
off at the mouth.
In point of fact, they are linked. Even a cursory perusal of their
histories makes this abundantly clear to all but the dogma besotted.
>And we're back onto the personal abuse. Really, if your knowledge of
this subject is so weak you can't even provide some evidence, maybe you
should spend more time reading all these reputable scholars and not
sending such fractured emails.
I showed you where to start finding that evidence. Obviously you haven’t
bothered to pursue it. Ergo, you’re a dilettante. Nothing personal. I
just call ‘em like I see ‘em. It doesn’t mean that you aren’t a nice
guy. You may be. But a scholar you ain’t.
>Nessie is a feminine name, it ends in a 'ie'.
I can be. But it can also be what is called the “affectionate
diminutive.” Perhaps my “real” name is Ness, and people have called me
“nessie” all my life. Perhaps my “real” name is “Nesci,” and I spell it
“nessie” just to be obstreperous. Maybe my name has nothing to do with
the “n” word and I chose a pseudonym that also denotes a creature that
is impossible to capture because being impossible to capture is a trait
I value highly.
You’ll never know because I ain’t telling. Know this though, I choose to
use a pseudonym at all because I fear for my life. My writing brings me
death threats sometimes. I don’t want to be the next Alan Berg. A
pseudonym makes it all that more difficult for one of the people I bad
mouth in my column to hunt me down and kill me. And yes, they do things
like that sometimes. I would prefer to avoid it. If it does happen, I
don’t intend to die alone.
>struck a nerve
Indeed. I’m fed up to here with hearing personal friends of mine bad
mouthed by people who don’t even know them. I know some of these people.
They’re nice people. They believe some things that I don’t, and vice
versa, but that’s true about everybody else too. What a dreary, static
world it would be if we all believed only the same things.
Besides, this is a topic I like to go on about because it happens to be
I happen to have read up on. That’s a lot more than you can say. A
great many subjects come up here about which I know nothing. About them,
you may have noticed, I tend to shut up. At most I ask questions.
>However, none of this alters the fact that, with the exception of a
few hapy co-incidences, the types of cures offered by 'Wise Women'
etc., consisted mainly of prayers, invoking of angels or devils,
talismans, potions with no beneficial effect, strange rituals (animal
sacrifice, burying potatoes in the light of the moon, unlikely
aphrodisiacs) etc.
References, please. Cite ISBNs and page numbers. Let’s at least try to
maintain an acceptable level of scholarship here. Otherwise, we're just
wasting our time.
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