[AppyPappy]

A Wiccan once told me "Half the people who call themselves Wiccans aren't really Wiccans".

[Da_Shrimp]

Wiccan adage, "Do what thou wilt,"

Hmm... inaccurate. Actually, it's 'An' it harm none do what you will'.

[FormerLib]

>>>I was hardly surprised when the Episcopalian chaplain took umbrage at my willingness to leave the Wiccans to their own devices without the benefit of formal university recognition. She pointed out...<<<

Ahem. I believe I've discovered the problem here.

[rdf]

Great post.

Peter Wood's essays are razor sharp.

Richard F.

[Cincinatus]

"How do you know that she is a witch?"

[What about Bob?]

Confused, deluded, and generally dim, they gathered themselves like iron filings on the magnetic pole of campus nuttiness and they are content to stay there. Self-identification of fools is probably a good thing, at least in universities.

What a great line. Flowery, scathing prose like this is all too rare.

[Cu Roi]

I have found, for example, that many campus clergy are ready to accept the Wiccan adage, "Do what thou wilt," which was invented in 1904 by a British libertine named Aleister Crowley ("Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.") as an ethical injunction to be set beside The Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule.

One would expect a university provost to get his facts straight. What the Wiccans say is this: "An ye harm none, do what ye will", which is often stated as "Do what thou wilt, and ye harm none". This, of course is very different from Crowley's worldview, where the individual is free to do whatever he wants without any concern for the well-being of others. By quoting only the first half of the witches' credo he gives the appearance that they are in agreement with Crowley, but if he actually left his comfort zone once in a while he might see that there is a huge gulf between the two.

[Hacksaw]

Expect this thread to fill up with the usual LP suspects brimming with wrath.

[Don Myers]

This article does not surprise me when I think about the general immorality and secular life that exists on our campuses. Everything ties in.

[BikerNYC]

To find the students who are religiously serious, one heads off campus to congregations such as the evangelical Park Street Church.

"Serious" is in the eye of the beholder.

[Young&Right]

I see there has been a lot of "multiculturalization" going on here, even on this site, and I have to tell you that it makes me sick. How can you people defend pagans? Paganism is based on ancient practices of human sacrifice, idol worship, and deviant sexuality. There may be a school of "neo-paganism" or whatever, but those roots are inextricably bound to the beginnings. Paganism works hand in hand (to use the polite term) w/ the "homosexual revolution" and the forces of socialism. These people are deviants. The only true way is Jesus Christ. All these people are going to burn in hell.

[A.J.Armitage]

Let me ask any Wiccans here: how do you deal with the fact that your religion claims to have been around since time immemorial, and pretty much bases its claim to truth on that contention, but was actually invented in the 1950s?

While I'm at it, how do you other pagans have any idea whether or not you've gotten the "old formula" right, given that all you've got is some sketchy ancient sources? I once saw a site for a few dozen people reviving Roman paganism, and they'd have an easier time, but most of you seem to go in for Celts or people like that.

[RnMomof7]

We are a fallen Nation

[Salvation]

Read This Present Darkness by Perretti. Really scary, and yes, it is happening.