-Caveat Lector-
>I am clearly (to you at least) ignorant on these subjects because I
haven't read the 2 books you have pointed out.
You haven’t read much of anything, at least not in this field. You
haven’t even read what I say very closely. I recommended those two books
as a good place for the beginner to start. They certainly aren’t the
whole story. But they’re a good place to start.
>You have neatly tried to discredit all my questions by simply accusing
me of being ignorant.
I didn’t have to accuse you. You have demonstrated quite on your own
that you’re ignorant, at least about this field. That’s nothing to be
ashamed of. Everyone’s ignorant of something. But to willfully stay
ignorant is shameful. To pretend you are not ignorant is more shameful,
still.
>You fail to answer my questions however, such as:
>If modern Wicca is the direct incarnation of an old or ancient religion
(as it's adherent's claim), where is the evidence for this?
Like I said, you apparently don’t read what I say very closely. I told
you where to start looking it up. Go look it it up.
Personally, I’m not convinced one way or the other. A solid case can be
made either way. Some Wiccan traditions are quite obviously attempts at
reconstruction. Other traditions, especially hereditary traditions, we
can’t be so sure about. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,
ever. This is particularly true when we are investigating a crime,
particularly a capital crime. Witchcraft was a capital crime for
centuries. We can hardly expect its practitioners not to have hidden the
evidence. Written documents by primary sources about organized crime
are hard to come by, too. Does that mean there is no Mob?
>Are there any primary written sources to prove this? Your answer is no.
There are, as I have said repeatedly, some. However, they are not, in
and of themselves, sufficient to be conclusive. But I said that already.
You must have skimmed that page.
>Are there any historical artifacts which prove this?
Not beyond a shadow of a doubt, no. But we don’t have Jimmy Hoffa’s
body, either. Does that mean he didn’t die, or that he never lived?
Historical documents by primary sources that prove that the Norse
reached North America are sorely lacking, too. Nonetheless, artifacts at
l’Anse-aux-Meadows present conclusive evidence that they did.
>Is there any evidence of the existence of items so beloved of modern
Witches such as the Book of Shadows or the Athame knife, (snip) being
around before the 1950s? The answer is no.
That depends on who you believe. Some say yes. Some say no.
>which all witches are supposed to possess,
If you believe that all witches possess, or believe, the same thing(s),
you are sadly mistaken. These people are at least as varied in their
beliefs and practices as are Christians, Buddhists or Muslims. Some
witches never write anything down about witchcraft because, so they
claim, that’s how they were taught to survive. For the same reason, many
witches even today, intentionally use household utensils as Tools. It’s
easier to deny you are a witch if nothing in your house looks like
evidence.
>Previous religions are irrelevant if they do not provide a clear link
to the current Wiccan religion. You may have forgotten but the original
contention was that Wiccans are trying to pass off their modern religion
as an ancient religion with a long tradition.
The evidence is overwhelming: Wicca is contains elements of ancient
religion with a very, very long tradition. This is not in contention.
What is in contention is whether or not that tradition is unbroken.
We’ll probably never know. But then, we’re not entirely sure who shot
JFK, and that is within the living memory of nearly half of us.
History, especially the history of crime, is sketchy at best.
>These claims are bunk.
Perhaps they are. Perhaps they are not. I don’t know and neither do you.
The data so far are insufficient to reach a valid conclusion one way or
the other.
A solid case can be made that Christianity, as practiced today, has
little if anything in common with Christianity as practiced two thousand
years ago. An absolute case can be made that a considerable portion of
Christian dogma is based on hearsay, and a priori assumptions. Does that
make the rest of it bunk?
>The 'golden age' when women ruled the Earth and matriachy was
predominant is also, by the way, bunk.
You’re setting up a straw man here. You must be getting desperate. I
never once said there was a “ 'golden age' when women ruled the Earth
and matriachy was predominant.” Why? Because there was no such thing.
There certainly were, and still are, matriarchal societies, but that’s a
separate issue.
What there was, was not a matriarchal “golden age,” but an age when
partnership and not domination was the dominant social paradigm. The
ubiquity of egalitarian grave goods and the complete lack of weapons and
fortifications, combined with the numerous remarkable advances in
mathematics, agriculture, astronomy, metallurgy and architecture,
certainly could be interpreted as a golden age, at least compared to
today. Read up on the “Beaker People.” There’s also a good social
history of the era in a book by Riane Eisler, called “The Chalice and
the Blade: Our History, Our Future,” ISBN 084466734X.
> It is part of the mythology of Wiccans,
Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe it is part of the “mythology” of some Wiccans
but not of others. We certainly can’t tell from your research. Cite a
reference for this. Include ISBN and page number. Or stop attributing
some half digested hearsay to a whole class of people when it clearly
belongs, at most, to a subset.
>I will check out the books you have mentioned, however I am not
expecting any great scholarship.
Nor I of you. It would appear to be out of character. But if you do, and
you care to discuss them point by point, please raise this subject
again. I certainly don’t believe everything either of them say. But then
I don’t believe everything anybody says. On the whole, though, both
authors make a solid case for religious beliefs and practices currently
attributed to witches, having a very long history indeed. As for the
tradition being unbroken, that’s another matter. That can, I feel,
never be proven because, by its very nature, it involves a secretive,
underground existence not unlike that of organized crime.
>We can hypothesize about various religions and their possible link to
modern witchcraft (Animism, Druidism, Greek and Roman Gods, Traditional
religions, Pre-historic religions etc.). But it is all hypothesis. If
there is some clear link please spell it out.
There are numerous links, some clearer than others. Whether they
demonstrate an *unbroken* tradition is what is unclear.
>Don't ask me to go and get a degree in the subject,
I’m not. I’m asking you to not act like you have a degree when you do
not.
>don't become derogatory (which is a good sign that you have no
argument) but enlighten us on the pre-mid 1950s origins of Witchcraft.
I’m not being derogatory. I’m giving you sound advice, because I’m
trying to help help you not look like a fool. Stop flaunting your
ignorance or stop expecting to be taken seriously, at least on this
subject. You can’t have it both ways.
I’m not saying that you aren’t a nice guy. You may very well be. You may
even know a great deal about any number of other subjects. But about
this one you do not. Don’t try to fake it.
>The vast majority of humanity was illiterate prior to the 19th century,
male and female.
What’s more, literacy was a class privilege. The literate classes not
only failed to write about the folk religions of the peasantry, they
failed to write about peasants at all. For centuries, we know virtually
nothing about the life of common people, at least from the written
record. We must rely of oral history, archeology and the occasional
literary allusion to fill in the gaps.
>Popular novels, children's books, poetry, private letters, all were
flowing around the globe but no one bothered to write down anything
about the wiccans.
Nor do we find people confessing to murder in their personal
correspondence. Again, witchcraft was a crime. Only fools confess to
crimes. What’s more, it was for the most part a crime committed by
people who were illiterate.
>Considering there were people writing things (real or imagined) about
groups like the Masons, the Illuminati, all manner of secret and
revolutionary societies, isn't it strange that none mentioned Wicca?
Perhaps you are confused by the name. The name “Wicca” may well have
been only returned to mass usage in recent times. It was clearly in use
in pre-medieval times. There was even, for a while, a political entity
in south-central Britain called “Saxe-Wicce.” But as the the political
dominance of the Church of Rome arose, it became the custom to call
these people “witches,” “heathens,” etc.
>Which tends to show how unreliable the Bible is asa historical
document, rather than how reliable oral sources are.
There is no such thing as a wholly accurate historical document. Even
those that are completely true as to what they include, omit.
>There are no written Wiccan documents before the 20th century.
That’s debatable. I tend to agree, though to a certain extent, it’s a
matter of definition. Is a document about “witchcraft” a document about
“Wicca”? That’s clearly a key element in the debate.
However, that there exist documents *about* what is now called Wicca is
beyond doubt.
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