Medieval Wiccans
Monday October 29, 2007
Usually, I find long-winded "histories" of the ancient Wiccans of yore quite frustrating...but this one is so bad, I just had to give in and laugh myself silly. This has to be the ultimate warning to reporters to double-check anything an interviewee tells you. Among the things you never knew because they were never true:
"The confusion actually begins by classifying Wicca as a religion, which it is not. "
"the Roman Catholic church developed several Christian holidays to coincide or replace the Roman and Wiccan holidays."
"In medieval times, Wiccans were mostly poor and lived on lands owned by wealthy lords."
"ancient Wiccans or Pagans dressed in costumes and lit candles in carved-out gourds to make the spirits of their loves ones feel welcome."
Fortunately, the commenters were quick to set the historical record straight, but I can't help wondering what it is these reporters have against the Google.
Comments
Oh dear, that is really bad! Fortunately I wrote a blogpost a couple of years ago with a brief potted history of witchcraft, to offset that sort of nonsense, and it is my most popular blogpost!
Thanks, Yvonne, very interesting.
That was pretty horrible. At least there were no references to Wiccan Reeds or Sam Hain, the Celtic god of death
Patti
Yeah, good old Sam Hain is taking quite a beating this year…
You state
“the Roman Catholic church developed several Christian holidays to coincide or replace the Roman and Wiccan holidays.”
is untrue.
This could be very much argued. I believe that it is somewhat true. I don’t think they necessarily wanted to replace our holidays, but they wanted to persuade people to start more “accepted” rituals by the church on our holidays. The Craft was around long before Christ, therefore many practitioners (I am one) feel that these were our days first. I know that main-stream Wicca came about not to long ago, but the basics for the religion were established long ago as they are based on the Earth’s natural progression throughout the year.
I respect your opinion and will even acknowledge that in one way you are very much right. However, it is my belief and understanding that long before the Christian holidays were established we (those who practice the Craft) must have been celebrating the turn of the seasons or there would have been no mention of our rituals and practices in the Old Testament. It seems to many that the placement of certain Christian holidays on the calendar are too close to be coincidence.
I’m not disputing that the Church made convenient use of existin g festivals. It is, however, not intellectually hionest to characterize early pagans as “Wiccans.” The concept of a universal pagan religion is a modern, not ancient idea. Each locality would have its own local gods, rituals, priests, as well as worship of more widespread gods - but they did not all worship alike, and there isn’t much in what they practiced that was similar to Wicca.
Even the timing of the festivals varied a lot more than people assume. It’s also somewhat unfair to characterize the church at the time as a monolith- at the time Christian holidays were beginning to coincide with pagan ones, the Church was not terribly powerful in Europe. In fact, before all the moral panicking set in, it was not at all unusual for people to be both pagan and Christian at the same time. In many cases, it was pagan pressure, not Church decision, that influenced holiday timing. Halloween (All Hallows), for example, was always celebrated in the spring, but was eventually settled to coincide with local custom. The idea that the Church conducted a campaign to eradicate paganism by borrowing its holidays is completely erroneous.* For the most part, it took almost a thousand years for the Churches to all agree amongst themselves when to celebrate certain days, let alone worry about what the pagans were doing.
*The only exception being Christmas, which was instituted while paganism was still the dominant religion(s). The decision in this case could be likened to modern churches holding ‘harvest parties’ for Christians to avoid the evil occult Halloween.
About the holidays, I am not debating what you are saying but I am shocked. The literature that’s out there. Even by respected Wiccan/Pagan authors all seem to agree that the church borrowed or redesigned existing religious observances to help convert people. If this is not true than alot of us, espescially solitaries like me, have been grossly misinformed. Did the Christian depiction of the Devil as a Horned Beast really come from other peoples portrayal of “God” or is that a lie too?
The church, the roman church, in Mexico and to all American cultures that had Astronomy/religous festivities were modified/destroyed so they could/would follow “their” oficial cult. The principle is the same in origin, but instead of looking in what do we have in common, we tend to look in what we have different. Wiccan, Toltec, Essene, there is only one, or we are all a big WE?
It is Truly refreshing to see you have set the record straight Jennifer, For it clears much debris from uncredibility and misinformation of the hardliners and misinformed parties among the Wiccan societies .
Mesoamerican religions as Francisco quoted left monumental evidence of their vast empires of religious prominence and deep rooted tribal mysticsisms, Only to be thwarted by genocidal ignorance.
As their brethren of the North Americas the Ojibwe,Sioux,Cree,Blackfoot and their vastly differing Pantheons who without the temples and rich tapestries of stone clung to their nomadic Religious pan-nationalist Tribal Cultures ,Thus denotes the first and essentially the final part of your evidence in a (Red Road light) and that is the systematic ignorance of any Pagan religious societies by Ancient European imperialism followed with the ethnic cleansing of entire unpassive resistant tribal pan-nationalist societies and the manipulation of passive ones to decimate oral religious systems .
Of which suffered the fate that small minorities of influence in the wiccan community based their theories upon in ancient Europe and thankfully was discovered by your post that the truth of fact based disintegration of paganism was simply a work in regress cluttered by Church bickering not the dramatic overthrow of an enigmatic slew of tribal cultures by Imperialism .This could be followed by the unique systems of quasi tribal pantheons enmeshed with Catholiscism such as Santeria ,Palo Mayombe and Maengen Manido .
Footnote (Slavery was suffered by the American Indians until the ruthless trade took to Africans and other tribal peoples forced into the dehumanization process of colonialist America .)
In essence this self identity crisis cut deep into the truth of misidentity inspired by the humbled restraint suffered by the Tribal Americas after a hundred years of defeated uprisings. This i feel of which must have bore some semblance of idealism painting the wealthy parliament, Capitol Hill and the Mexican Catholic church into Wealthy Landowners.
In essence the idea of overshadowing the poor humbled American Indians into Wiccans and the Ghostdances into costumed celtic ceremonies where carving buffalo became the gourd and the community meal rites another celebration exemplified by traditional fire not just for warmth and cooking but also for ritual .
I hope i made a connection of the inspiration to see the forest behind the trees in this matter ?
Mee-gwetch Elias CW G.S.S.O.M.S
Don’t be too surprised, it’s an incredibly common idea…there are so many things people take for granted as historical fact that are either untrue or grossly exaggerated. The horned thing is another yes/no/maybe issue, it’s really a matter of the chicken or the egg. Yes, the horned deities were definitely identified as devils, but not because of anything deliberate. What some pagan authors tend to miss is the horned gods often had a sinister aspect independant of church influence- so again, this is more of a societal attitude than anything the Church specifically set out to do.