h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm not talking about big things. I'm talking about little carvings or figurines and the like. Even potshards.

--Cooper

okay, so how do you tell if something is wiccan in origin? a doll could be a doll, or it could be a voodoo doll. after 1000+ years of rot, how can one tell?

We're talking ceramics here. They can be remarkably well-preserved. And none of them are glaringly Goddess-oriented.

Some (notably Starhawk) point to certain figurines as Goddess symbols, but if you look objectively, they're really not.

--Cooper

Dandy. So the absence of evidence in this case is not only not evidence of absence, it's your evidence of presence?

I'm sorry, but the idea of a pure, palaeolithic religion in tune with nature and in harmony with the cosmos is hogwash. Environmentalism as an abstract concern is an entirely modern invention. If peoples past didn't gouge the landscape like those who came after it's because the _couldn't_, not because they _wouldn't_. And you only have to look at Stonehenge to know that they could.

People go on about how the Native Americans loved the land and respected the land and lived at one with it. That's as maybe, but they also raised vast monumental mounds, and hunted a dozen species into extinction without the aid of modern firearms.

Moreover, it wasn't a pretty time, or a sensitive time. If some loon came over the hill with a spear trying to take your stuff, you pounded his head in. Most goddess-cults recorded in history used a variant on the Killing of the King ritual to rejuvenate the dying year (chap called Frazer wrote twelve volumes on it). I don't believe that the various goddess-cults that may or may not have existed and/or inspired modern Wicca would have been any less willing to engage in blood sacrifice, since at the time there would not only have been nothing wrong with it, but it would have been expected of a religion.

Just look at some of the Mesopotamian goddess-cults. All the big ones - the ones that had their own cities rather than being consorts or subservient sisters - were dieties of death and blood and battle and sex. In fact, prior to the emergence of modern Wicca and neo-paganism, there's almost no mention _anywhere_ of a _nice_ goddess cult; rather like prior to Christianity there's not much mention of a nice god-cult.

I mean, obviously there's different scales of blood sacrifice. There's a big step between the annual killing of the king to the mass-execution/sacrifice of prisoners of war in the Meso-American Empires. There was apparently one culture in Bronze Age China that wiped itself out as a viable ethnic block through excess of human sacrifice (I don't know any more than that, this was one of those things your supervisor remembers half way through a supervision and you never quite remember to get the details).

So I'm not saying that the goddess cults of pre-Roman Europe were blood-soaked killers, exorting their laity to war and pillage to supply some more sacrifices if they didn't want to end up under the altar in a crouched position themselves, but the odds on them being bloodless pacifists are more than simply long.

But - and I want to be clear about this - I'm also not saying that Wicca is a bad religion, that modern Wicca uses blood-sacrifice, that Wiccans are evil whores of Beelzebub, or anything like that. Like all religions, if Wicca works for you, then great, more power to you, and it's certainly less scary than Scientology and more worthwhile than putting 'Jedi' on your census form.

What I would say, is be careful what you claim as history. If nothing else, remember that practically nothing kills the credibility of a valid religion like a bogus heritage.

The Prophet

Gosh - so many things.

> re: The Romans versus the Christians.

It wasn't a crime to be a Christian, it was a crime to refuse to worship the godhead of the Emperor. There was no active enforcement against Christians: what happened was that certain misguided fools ran up to the local law enforcement and said that they were Christian, and didn't believe in the godhead of the Emperor. At which point, they had to be taken into custody: Rome was a theocracy in that (minor) sense, and dissing the emporer was rebellion.

From their they were given three chances to save themselves. They were placed in front of a statue of the Emperor, with a small offering of milk provided for them. They had to place the milk on the base of the statue, and bow their head, and they would have walked away. Many did, some didn't. Those who didn't were killed in a variety of interesting ways - exactly like every other criminal at the time.

The burning alive of Christians to "light the streets" and suchlike is, as far as I can tell, just propoganda - I've not seen any reputable sources for it. Rome was a very free religious place, actually: far freer than it was after conversion to Christianity, and far freeer than any other theocracy you can think of. Fortunately, the early church created the "my body is a temple" teaching before too many people martyred themselves.

> "prior to Christianity there's not much mention of a nice god-cult."

I'm sure that's true.... for a certain value of "nice". Seriously, how is Christianity nicer than any other religion of the time?

It also wasn't a crime after the conversion _not_ to be a Christian in Roman society. You just weren't allowed to offer sacrifices, which pretty much stuffed anyone who wasn't a Christian.

And by 'nice', I mean happy-happy, life-affirming, don't-hurt-me-and-I-won't-hurt-you. And yes, Christianity is that in a lot of ways; it's just the various Churches that haven't been.

The Prophet.

Blimey, all these people burning and torturing each other. How can one live with a belief when one knows that people with the same beliefs have been responsible for the worst atrocities imaginable.

I sincerely hope it is all propaganda, I for one thank God I'm not religious. Not literally of course.

Hmm. happy-happy, life-affirming... Can I just mention Dionysus here?

I'm not convinced that there was much to pick between Christianity and other religions: it was better in some ways, and worse in others. If you're going to excuse some of the nastiness of christianity by blaming them on individual churches, then don't you have to do the same for other religions? A lot of the blood sacrifice stuff of others was non-essential if you looked at the holy texts and suchlike, for example: but as you say, it was a brutish time, so it got added in.

Ste, how do you live with yor non-belief, when you know that people with the same non-belief have been responsible for equally horrendous atrocities?

I don't think you can compare the two Lucinda. For starters 'non-belief' seems to be a huge catch-all, covering too wide a spectrum of people. I was talking about when a people's religion, specific shared beliefs, is the root cause of persecution of others.

As is the term "christian" or "witch": both equally wide 'catch-all' categories.

I think we could go on forever, we'll just have to agree to disagree i think :¬)

prophet: you're still comparing wicca to goddess-cults, which is something it is not.

"People go on about how the Native Americans loved the land and respected the land and lived at one with it. That's as maybe, but they also raised vast monumental mounds, and hunted a dozen species into extinction without the aid of modern firearms."

Plains Indians were NOT responsible for the entire eradication of the buffalo, American government and commerce was. The fur trade and the railroad construction of the 1870's led demand for hides, topping at 1,500,000 by WHITE hunters in 1872 and a total of 3,000,000 over three years afterward were killed commercially. The fur trade reduced buffalo numbers by 60,000,000 in 100 years, until there were 1,000 left at the turn of the century. The natives in the area did not kill more than they needed, as 100 a YEAR could feed, clothe, and shelter an entire tribe. Instead we have characters like Thomas C. Nixon of Kansas who held the world record at killing 120 buffalo in 40 minutes. I suggest you brush up on your American history. What's more, in terms of environmentalism, Native Americans never practiced deforestation (in fact, only used trees that were already dead) and developed half the foodstuffs of the world. I dare you to find the remotest instance where Native Americans, even in their recent history, ever practiced the systematic rape of the land that the Europeans have.

"well... yes, that's true, but... i don't know. they EXISTED, they just weren't called wiccans.

but if they weren't CALLED wiccans, they weren't wiccans.

but they WERE wiccans, there just wasn't a name for it.

oh, now i've got me all confused..."

Well there is a tradition of withccraft that is indeed older than Gerald Gardener, but the system known as Wicca is his invention. SO these pre-Gardener witches were not Wiccan. Gardener used old tradition but he also added alot. The rule of three was probably one such invention by Gardener according to DOREEN VALIENTE.


"but you see my point, right? i have been wiccan since i was born, but i didn't know what wicca was until i was 14. so you see, it didn't have a name, but it existed"

This is a very common story amoung Pagans. Being Pagan before knowing that such a label existed. I think that is one of the many appeals of Paganism, that it can be a *natural* state.

I'm not saying absence of evidence is evidence of absence. A main Wiccan belief (if I get this wrong, tell me) is that there was a peaceful Goddess-oriented culture in Europe before the 'violent, male religions' (not a direct quote) came. Not only is there no evidence of this, there is evidence that a violent culture existed at the time, in the places where major movers in Wicca claim Goddess-worship was at its height.

It's like saying that I have an influenza infection after having just taken a positive streptococcus culture.

If the historical culture and the legendary culture were the same thing, Wicca would effectively be claiming an ancestry rooted in an ancient unremarkable violent religion.

--Cooper

Two things:

First, in defence of The Prophet, he didn't so much as mention the American bison.

Second, in regards to the Romans: laws changed dramatically with the Emperors. Nero, for example, actively hunted down Xians. Other Emperors instituted a don't-ask-don't-tell policy. It just depended. Similarly, some Xian Emperors didn't actively persecute pagans--they just looked the other way when pagan temples were ransacked. Other Xian Emperors declared pagan worship illegal. People devote their lives to the study of Roman attitudes toward Xianity. It's impossible to make a general statement of Roman law on the subject.

--Cooper

allright, zenmondo, you've got me on a technicality. so the wiccan system of beliefs didn't officially exist then. that still doesn't mean that there weren't those who had those beliefs.

cooper, even if there WAS a violent religion at the time, that doesn't mean that a peaceful one wasn't there as well. on the news, you don't hear about the kind young man who helps old ladies cross the street, you hear about the hooligan who carves his initials into little girls' faces. people don't remember good things, they remember the bad ones.

This is a semantical argument. In fact I agree with the original poster on one count. "Wicca" is a made-up word from this century. I don't know why Gardner and his followers chose to make up a new word to describe their renewal of a very ancient set of beliefs and practices, but I wasn't there so it wasn't up to me.

Nature-based religions naturally have a strong place for the feminine in their structure. They recognize and glorify the creative capacity of the female. They may not have a particular goddess which they esconce and put on pedestals, but they embrace feminity in a way that male-centered religions (like xtianity) do not. See Origin and Evolution of Religion by E. Washburn Hopkins. Published by Oxford University Press in 1923. Also The Worship of Nature by Sir James George Frazer. Published by AMS pres, 1976.

"This is a semantical argument. "

It was not my intention to argue over semantics. Wicca, as it is practiced today, may have some ancient elements, but overall it is a modern invention.

It may seem like I am arguing semantics when I say that practitioners of Witchcraft before Gardner were not Wiccan. I am not just saying that the label didn't exist, but the very *substance* is different. Gerald Gardner was an innovator and the practice of Wicca was his innovation. Though he borrowed elements from other mystery traditions, his creation was something *new*.

Wiccans are not neccisarily the inheritors of the practices of those who are described as being persecuted in this entry.