Wiccan and Neo-Pagan thought and origins

Discussion in 'Religion Archives' started by Tht1Gy!, Sep 15, 2008.

  1. Tht1Gy! Life, The universe, and e... Registered Senior Member

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    A while ago, in another thread for pagan/wiccan folks to share ideas, a poster, Carcano kept trying to engage me in a debate about the origins of Wicca. I did not engage. Told him/her that it was not the right thread.

    Well, this would be that thread.

    Carcano, To some extent, you're right. We're making it up as we go along. Proudly.
    And yes, Gardner did his bit to revive information he found and mixed it with theosophy. I don't see a problem there. Of course he also tried to dogmatize and 'copyright' it as it were. There I do see a problem.
    Since then there have been those who studied european anthropology, e.g. the feminists, and found more info, esp. the stuff that had been suppressed by the church.

    I don't still don't see the problem.

    Myself, I mix many different traditions together with the concept of following my personal Tao, and come up with my beliefs.
    Why would it be more valid to follow a system entirely devised by folks who lived long ago and whom I've never met and am unable to judge their veracity and integrity.

    I much prefer to trust my own judgement, understanding, and connection to spirit.
     
    Last edited: Sep 15, 2008
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  3. Carcano Valued Senior Member

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    Now why would the Catholics try to suppress any feminine aspect of divinity?

    It was they who raised Mary from scriptural obscurity to Mother of God status.

    Her image is probably more prevalent in southern Europe than Jesus.
     
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  5. Tht1Gy! Life, The universe, and e... Registered Senior Member

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    Well, as I understand it, that was part of the usurpation of the the old religion, or the old ways. Meaning, while 'Pan' (and other horned god figures) was demonized into Satan, the goddess was sanitized, from a entity of fertility into the Virgin Mary. The easiest way to convert or replace a practice that had been observed since 24,000* BCE in one fashion or another was to adopt it. Turn an image that had wildness, and power into an image that was compliant and submissive to the will of Jehovah.

    *
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Willendorf
     
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  7. Simon Anders Valued Senior Member

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    Ah, but she was so damn perfect. She had a baby without having sex. You have to look at what the messages are for women and why so many men have whore/madonna complexes.
     
  8. Tht1Gy! Life, The universe, and e... Registered Senior Member

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    Hey Simon, welcome aboard! This should be fun.
    And to both of you**, Please feel free to invite anyone who can bring intelligent discourse, well-mannered debate and even respectful contention.

    Take lively debate, temper it with respect,* and we'll all get smarterer.

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    *Unless someone is being a real asshole. lol

    **Or anyone else for that matter.
     
    Last edited: Sep 16, 2008
  9. nova900 more spirituality,less dogma Registered Senior Member

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    I believe that was an attempt by the early Christians to replace Isis with Mary.The cult of Isis was far more widespread and popular than many theists today or even many historians will admit.She was the darling of the Roman Emperors.
    A pretty good unbiased study was done by R.E Witt in the 70's..."Isis in the Ancient World". It's available in tradepaperback.
     
  10. Carcano Valued Senior Member

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    We have to remember that Mary was famously immaculate only for an instant, while receiving and conceiving the divine spark of the Lord. Not by choice, and certainly not for the rest of her life, as evidenced by brothers of Jesus, one of whom (James) became the leader of the Jerusalem church after the death of Christ.

    Was she a powerless figure, submissive to the will of a male divinity? Not as her character was employed by the church, as an intermediary and also as a goddess of compassion.

    The feminine aspect lends itself to benevolence, whereas the male aspect lends itself to wrath.

    Nevertheless, it must be asked why immaculate conceptions were common devices for imparting an aura of purity. I believe it goes back to the spirit/matter dynamic.

    Sex is of the body, in fact it fuses one's sense of self rather tightly to matter...easy to get into, hard to get out of.

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    One of my favourite writers in the 80s, who later went on to be a very controversial Guru of sorts, explains here that the origin of 'sin' is inherently a turning away from spirit.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1L1eGFZT3oU
     
    Last edited: Sep 17, 2008
  11. Simon Anders Valued Senior Member

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    She was nice and emotional. Her greatness is that she gave birth to Jesus who was God's son and not really hers. She did what she was told.

    And any doubt about this can be seen in the ways woman have been held strictly to more passive roles in Catholic societies.


    Here's how one Catholic site defends the existence of brothers...

     
  12. Carcano Valued Senior Member

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    The perpetual virginity idea is one of those things that were dreamed up by Catholic theologians hundreds of years after the gospels were written.

    The new testament does not say cousins or step-brothers...it says brother.
     
  13. Simon Anders Valued Senior Member

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    I have been responding to this...

    So if it was Catholic theologians who did this and this idea was repeated by Catholic priests with the approval of the Vatican and thus believed in, at least officially by Catholics, well......
     
  14. Simon Anders Valued Senior Member

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    Well, you have a male God in three parts, and while Mary is special she is a human. Everyday people have, because she is supposed to be nice and the world is a harsh place, given her a central place in their hearts, with provisos about her lack of sexual congress and so on.

    There is no Goddess counterpart to The Lord God.
    Eve gets made from Adam - thus nicely avoiding the odd thing that a Male God would have the females carry the babies if we are so much like him. (yes, this got pulled out of Judaism, and both traditions have problems with female deities and power)

    Priests are all male.
    The Pope is male.

    Males are the authority.
    Males are in charge, including being in charge of women's bodies.
    Catholicism is not unique in this among patriarchal religions, but it has doctrinal and habitual reasons for not wanting to know about female deities.

    The Catholic Church has tended to go after strong women who did not fit in traditional roles.

    Women in their place are holy, holy.
    In there place!

    It's a little like one of those mafia boyfriends. Man, do they talk you up, tell you how beautiful you are, how perfect...but man
    challenge your role....
    upside the head.
     
  15. nova900 more spirituality,less dogma Registered Senior Member

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    True enough, but not surprising at all since all three Abrahamic religions are built upon the ideas of the bronze age Hebrews who happened to be devout Patriarchs.
     
  16. Simon Anders Valued Senior Member

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    Me, I'm not surprised, just trying to assuage the surprise of others.
     
  17. Nasor Valued Senior Member

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    You seem to be making the very common mistake of believing that Mary's "immaculate conception" was her becoming pregnant with Jesus without having sex. The "immaculate conception" refers to the idea that Mary was conceived without Original Sin. The immaculate conception occurred when Mary's mother became pregnant with Mary. It doesn't have anything to do with the fact that she was a virgin when she gave birth to Jesus.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immaculate_Conception
     
  18. Medicine*Woman Jesus: Mythstory--Not History! Valued Senior Member

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    *************
    M*W: True, but let me add my 1.5 cents (inflation, you know): Of course, the 'devout patriarchs' created a dominant male god in their own image, and it was probably to control the masses, especially women. We know from ancient history that the patriarchy destroyed the matrilineal societies that lived peacefully in a nurturing culture who essentially created the gods who destroyed them. The patriarchy took over these societies with war (and rumors of war). The rest is history.
     
  19. Simon Anders Valued Senior Member

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    Might as well chime in since this is one of those rare moments I actually agree with MW.
     
  20. Medicine*Woman Jesus: Mythstory--Not History! Valued Senior Member

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    *************
    M*W: Thanks!
     
  21. Carcano Valued Senior Member

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    Well damn...theres another doctrine whipped up in the popular imagination, this time in England. Even Thomas Aquinas was doubtful of its veracity.

    Certainly has nothing to do with gospel writings.
     
  22. Hapsburg Hellenistic polytheist Valued Senior Member

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    On the issue of the origin of Wicca:
    It is not an "Old Religion" or anything like that. Wicca, or the organization that became the first Wiccan coven, is (at most) about 80 years old; probably originates in the 1920's, as many esoteric groups were forming around that time. A British group calling itself the New Forest Coven combined parts of Hermeticism (an old philosophy that greatly influenced Renaissance esoterica, and permeated 19th/20th century occultism), and some parts of the Druid revivalist movement, which never was very accurate to historical Druidism, because the ancient Druids never wrote things down, so clues to their practices are fragmentary at best. Even modern Celtic Reconstructionism is a rough attempt.

    In the 1940's, Gerald Gardner, who is as close to the religion's "Father" as we can get, reformed the New Forest Coven quite a bit; he knew it the information was fragmentary, so he grabbed eclectically from any source he could find: Hermeticism, Rosicrucianism, Aleister Crowley, British Folklore, Greek mythology, Egyptian mythology, and many others. In doing so, he built a new pagan religion centred on the practice of witchcraft, or folk magic. Witchcraft and ritual magic are still core to Wicca of any form, coven-based or not.

    Wicca, then as now, venerates a pair of deities which Gardner and the NFC believed to be the indigenous gods of the British Isles and possibly even Neolithic Europe, a Great Goddess and a Horned God, whose names Gardner never revealed publically. He may have borrowed the idea of such figures from Margaret Murray's (now disproven) academic works, or more likely, they might have been integral to the NFC before Gardner joined it. It is unknown; but what is certain is that Gardner published books about his religious experiences in good faith, starting in and around 1949-1954. Though originally a strictly initiatory, esoteric fertility cult, it has gradually become more conventionally neopagan, and Wicca is now a broad, rapidly growing religion, with a traditionalist wing, eclectic reformers, and every hue in between.
     
  23. Carcano Valued Senior Member

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    Amazingly, our only knowledge of this New Forest Coven comes entirely from Gardner's imagination...and nowhere else!
     

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