Posted on 05/04/2002 7:45:25 PM PDT by Tomalak
America was founded by Christian Puritans, who had a deep aversion to idolatry, popery, and magic. The hardships and dangers of their predicament made them cling to their religion as the one thing that justified the perilous pilgrimage to the New World. And from time to time they would tremble before the thought that paganism lay not only around them, but within, where it was all the more dangerous because hidden from view. So began the trials of suspected witches and the vigilant denunciations of neighbors that tore the New England communities apart.
Constant immigration has diversified the religious inheritance of the United States. Nevertheless the country remained until recently predominantly Christian, with a continuing aversion to pagan cults and superstitions, and a trust in the Bible as the common inheritance of the Judeo-Christian faiths. Indeed the United States has been held together more effectively by its Bible culture than by its Constitution: for the Bible has shaped the language, the morality, and the aspirations of ordinary Americans and provided them with a common frame of reference. American patriotism is scarcely thinkable without the Judeo-Christian God as its Almighty Guardian, and it is hardly surprising to find that the outlying communities in America-many of them suspicious of the Constitution as a weapon used against them by urban liberals-cling to the Bible as their most trusted guide. Debates over school prayer, over creationism and the curriculum, over abortion and sex education, are not, in America, the halfhearted affairs they are in Europe. On the contrary, they are at the center of politics since they affect the deep-down loyalty of many Americans to the settlement under which they live.
Strange things are now happening to this religious inheritance. The Christian churches have clung to their congregations, but often at the cost of dividing and subdividing into ever more marginal sects, each striving to accommodate the eccentricities of some obstinate community of believers. Almost none of the old denominations retains any centralized authority that can control the doctrine, liturgy, or membership of its peripheral congregations, while new cults and new services spring up everywhere, as dormant religious passions ignite like forest fires. In Europe we observe the slow, steady decline in faith, and the gradual disappearance of human hopes behind a cloud of skepticism. In America, however, every loss of faith is met by a gain, as new religious practices rise in the places vacated by the old. That this should be happening now, in the age of scientific inquiry, is testimony to the strength of American society, which finds new sources of hope beneath the never-ending stream of disappointment. Nevertheless, these sources of hope make less and less reference to the Bible and the Judeo-Christian tradition and are more and more pagan in tone. That which the Pilgrim fathers found most horrendous- witchcraft-is the latest, and one of the most successful, among the pagan cults now colonizing America.
Of course the witches-devotees of "Wicca," as they like to say-strenuously argue that their faith has been traduced in the past, that it is older and deeper and more spiritual than Christianity, and that it was branded as evil only because it was seen as a threat to the "patriarchal" culture. And by way of proving the point they have cobbled together a very up-to- date and user-friendly version of goddess-worship, which answers so well to the spiritual hunger of modern Americans as to cast serious doubt on its antiquity. Their basic principle-"Harm none and do what you will"-is the gospel of liberalism dressed up as law, rather than the lack of it; their "covens" are in many cases vamped-up feminist circles, devoted to boosting the confidence of women downtrodden by men, or at any rate by their own image of men; their symbols-the pentagram, the altar, the nine- inch daggers or "athames," the long robes, and the leaping over flames-may have ancient precedents, but they come to the Wiccans from 19th-century charlatans like Eliphas Levi and Aleister Crowley, men who cannily judged the spiritual hunger of the new middle classes and thereby notched up women by the score. Indeed, as Philip G. Davis has shown (Goddess Unmasked: The Rise of Neo-pagan Feminist Spirituality), the Wiccan theology is derived not from the old forms of goddess-worship, but from the writings of 19th-century commentators like Johann Jacob Bachofen, who invented the notion of a lost matriarchal past in a work that is now entirely discredited.
Feeding a hunger
Still, religion will survive any amount of skeptical scholarship, and the Wiccans are no exception. They offer the commodity for which modern Americans are hungry-the conversion experience, the transition from dark to light, lost to found, outsider to insider. In comparison with this redemptive gift, other things are of no account. The covens have been spreading through the suburbs; even the military now recognizes the Wiccans as a "minority religion," with the right to hold rituals and classes for serving personnel. Weak though their doctrines may be from any intellectual or historical perspective, they are a triumph of applied anthropology. Feminism, environmentalism, and liberalism all come together in a religion that recognizes the goddess as the object of worship, the priestess as her representative, and the earth and its seasons as the source of sacred rites.
It is tempting to regard the Wiccans in the same light as the other cults that have recently sprung up in America-the Branch Davidians, Heaven's Gate, the Moonies, the church of the notorious Rev. Jim Jones. There are, however, two important features that distinguish them. There is no leader or founder of the Wiccan cult; and there is no sacred text. Witchcraft is a religion without any structure of command and without any written law. True, there is an attempt to compensate in the use of antique and fustian language-"yclad," "mote," "hallowmas." But the religion recognizes no objective authority to which the worshipper must submit. On the contrary, it is a religion of "empowerment," to use the feminist word. Spells and brews, chants and talismans are all weapons in the hands of the individual Wiccan, who gains power over self and others through the manipulation of things. True, the Wiccan draws on mysterious cosmic forces; but the purpose of the spell and ritual is to join these forces to yourself-to amplify your own power and so achieve a kind of here-and-now redemption.
THE WICCAN'S POWERS
In this, at least, the Wiccans are close to the witches as they were once imagined. The witch was anathema to the Christian believer because she had arrogated to herself the powers that belong to the Almighty. Her spells were the antithesis of the sacred text-indeed, it was often thought that they consisted in reciting Biblical or liturgical texts backwards. For they were expressions of the individual will, rather than admonitions and counsels of a higher power. All the discipline of religion-which consists in obedience to the divine command and a day-to-day study of its meaning- was negated in the Puritan image of the witch, which is why witches were so greatly feared. They were the archetype of the liberated human being- the human being who had stepped free from the chains of morality and seized the world and its glories for herself.
For this very reason, however, witchcraft has a singular appeal to modern Americans, increasing numbers of whom are brought up without any knowledge of a sacred text and without the language and the concepts of the Judeo- Christian tradition. The idea that religion might be a matter of obedience and example strikes them as weird; the idea that it is a matter of the self and its empowerment connects immediately with the surrounding secular culture.
But why isn't feminism enough? Why the need for a Wiccan religion? What is added by religion that is absent from the politics of the group?
The answer is enchantment. Science has disenchanted the universe and deprived us of our place at its center. Human beings cannot live with this demoralized world. They need to see their environment as their tribal forebears saw it: as an enchanted place, which mysteriously returns our glance. The spell answers directly to this need, since it enables the witch to reanimate her universe. It gives supernatural power to a human being, and so rescues her from nature.
Rituals, spells, and incantations are deliberate defiances of reason. They place nonsense in the center of people's lives and ask them to unite in believing it. People on their own are nothing-victims of the natural world, and at the mercy of their own skepticism. People in a group, however, have a power that is more than the sum of their individual efforts. And the spell symbolizes this power. Alone you could not possibly believe in it, since alone you have only reason as your guide. Together, however, you can believe anything. In short, the Wiccans have rediscovered the phenomenon observed by the anthropologist Arnold van Gennep-the rite of passage, which purges the individual of his isolation and grants him membership in the tribe. The rite of passage works by summoning occult powers, by standing outside nature and against it, and by reassuring the individual that, absorbed into the community, he cannot be harmed.
And that is what is missing from modern life, and especially from life in the American city. The most important rite of passage in recent Western societies was marriage-the consecration before the community of a lifelong commitment. The collapse of marriage is not the result of feminism, but the cause of it. Without lasting marriages, women have no real guarantee of security, and no reason for trusting men. If men cannot be trusted, then women have to set up on their own. Feminism turns on the masculine realm and deconstructs it, representing it as a realm of lies, manipulation, and the brutal misuse of power. It thereby reassures women that they don't need men in any case. But it relies on rational arguments, sociological theories, and objective policies-so leaving the heart unconsoled. What is needed is a new form of membership, a new rite of passage, and a new lifelong commitment-hence a new form of nonsense. In other words, what is needed is witchcraft. This is surely why the Wiccans are expanding, even though they have neither a leader, nor a doctrine, nor a text.
On the other hand, a cult that spreads so quickly, and that has so little substance when it comes to answering the great metaphysical questions, is ripe for takeover by the real witches. Strong personalities like Aleister Crowley preyed on the vulnerable loners who had lost their religion but not their religious need, and who wanted to throw themselves beneath the juggernaut of some crushing ego. Modern America has seen the emergence of these leaders-Koresh and Jones being symptomatic. And it has discovered that their promise of a new life is also a death threat. For the moment, the Wiccans speak only of peace and love and finding oneself. But without a doctrine or a text to protect them, they may soon find themselves opening the door to the Devil. Those old Puritans were wrong about many things; but they were not entirely wrong about witchcraft.
I disagree. Their disdain for fundamental rights arises out of their rejection of the God who gave all men those rights.
Conversely, the foundation of the American Republic is the belief in that very thing.
The beliefs of a man or a nation have consequences in how they live out their public life.
I partially agree. I will add that it is just plain stupid. Many of these so-called "pagans" don't have the slightest clue about the mythology, literature or history of these matters. See my FR profle and the thread Ethereal Explorations for some of my views on the Wicca stupidity.
A lot of these people have been watching too much television and live in a 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' fantasy world and don't have a real life of their own to live.
Here is a previous exchange I had with a "Wiccan" idiot:
They believe in the old gods like the Earth Mother and the Horned God of the hunt.
Like Baphomet or Pan?
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There is no Satan in Wicca...
There is Hecate and a whole assortment of devils. Satan is an entirely pagan entity. "Wicca" is a pagan religion...
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Set, Satan, and Shaitan are the same. "Satan" is a Hebrew word for the pagan Egyptian Set. Satan, Shaitan, Set or Seth ("Set-hn" as spoken in the ancient Hebrew) is a pagan entity, the "adversary" of Judaic theology. (A "pagan" is anyone not Judaic, Christian or Muslim.)
The Egyptian priest Manetho associated the Jews with the Hyksos and Moses with the Egyptian priest Osarsiph. It was at this time that the belief the Jews worshipped an ass – an animal holy to the Egyptian god Set was established. Both the Jews and the pagan Egyptians used the labels (i.e., Satan, Set, Seth, or "Set-hn" as spoken in the ancient Hebrew) to defame each other. How fitting that amidst this epic struggle and bloody conflict, the entity known as Satan was born into the World. Such conflict continued through the Maccabean period (with Antiochus Epiphanes), and continues into modern times on several fronts.
There is a recurring theme that alludes to the hostility between the pagan Egyptians and the Judaic. Often it is claimed by the Neo-Pagans that Satan is only found in Christianity. How can this be if Satan is undeniably a Hebrew word adapted from the name of the pagan Egyptian god Set? The Jewish synod of rabbinical authority will deny that Satan even exists. How do they reconcile that with the fact that it is a Hebrew word?
The point is that in avoiding their true pagan roots, the Neo-Pagans are participating inadvertently in a Judaic word-fetishism. This should give some of the Judaic/Christian community cause for reflection and cooperation.
Food for thought...
From Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan:
Part III. Of a Christian Commonwealth. Chap. xxxviii. Of Eternal Life, Hell, Salvation, and Redemption.[12] And first, for the tormentors, we have their nature and properties exactly and properly delivered by the names of the Enemy (or Satan), the Accuser (or Diabolus), the Destroyer (or Abaddon). Which significant names (Satan, Devil, Abaddon) set not forth to us any individual person, as proper names do, but only an office or quality, and are therefore appellatives, which ought not to have been left untranslated (as they are in the Latin and modern Bibles), because thereby they seem to be the proper names of demons, and men are the more easily seduced to believe the doctrine of devils, which at that time was the religion of the Gentiles, and contrary to that of Moses, and of Christ.
[13] And because by the Enemy, the Accuser, and Destroyer, is meant the enemy of them that shall be in the kingdom of God, therefore if the kingdom of God after the resurrection be upon the earth (as in the former Chapter I have shewn by Scripture it seems to be), the Enemy and his kingdom must be on earth also. For so also was it in the time before the Jews had deposed God. For God's kingdom was in Palestine, and the nations round about were the kingdoms of the Enemy; and consequently, by Satan is meant any earthly enemy of the Church.
Part IV. Of the Kingdom of Darkness. Chap. xlvii. Of the Benefit that proceedeth from such Darkness.
[21] For from the time that the Bishop of Rome had gotten to be acknowledged for bishop universal, by pretense of successsion to St. Peter, their whole hiearchy (or kingdom of darkness) may be compared to the kingdom of fairies (that is, to the old wives' fables in England, concerning ghosts and spirits and the feats they play in the night). And if a man consider the original of this great ecclesiastical dominion, he will easily percieve that the Papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof. For so did the Papacy start up on a sudden out of the ruins of that heathen empire.
[23] The fairies, in what nation soever they converse, have but one universal king, which some poets of ours call King Oberon; but the Scripture calls Beelzebub, prince of demons. The ecclesiastics likewise, in whose dominions soever they be found, acknowledge but one universal king, the Pope.
The Sun and Bacchus are Apollo and Dionysus, two gods, or two aspects of religious experience of the ancient Greeks, and their juxtaposition is of some importance, a statement of belief in the duality of human nature, symbolized by Apollo as the light of reason and Dionysus as the underground power of emotion…
"Wicca" is a religion of stupidity and psychotic superstition. Most of it is stolen from other pagan mythoi, including those of pagan Greece and pagan Egypt...
Are we talkin' "worldwide intolerance" including the U.S.A.?
That's funny.
So, in your scenario, when the 'moderates' have killed all the 'hotheads', and the only ones left are those like yourself with no basis in God-given law, on what are you going to base your new set of rules for mankind to live by?
Are you going to make it up on the spot? There were several societies who tried that unsuccessfully in the last century...in fact, they did it EXACTLY as you are proposing...the most notorious was known as the Soviet Union.
Less so, but we've had our moments.
But ours is much less pronounced, I admit.
Ah, the mythical 'separation of Church and State'. And you find that where in the Constitution?
In fact, my copy simply forbids the government from setting up a state religion. Unfortunately, that is exactly what the liberals have done.
The only thing the libs want totally outside of government is Christianity.
Good God, can't you get anything straight. First it is the mysterious Catholic founding of Virginia, which has somehow escaped the knowledge of historians. Now you complain that the greatest popular writer in English of his era on the subject of religion, from a Catholic perspective, should not write on religion, but 'should stick to topics he knows'. He was a contemporary of Cardinal Newman, the convert from Episcopalianism to Catholicism, who was a better writer, but who wrote for the intelligentsia.
One or two more of these, and I will start to doubt anything you post, without linked proof.
Being an Atheist that has nothing but scorn for "superstition and 3 day old corpses walking" I detect a disconnect in your reaction. Tell me, what is your knowledge of "Paganism" beyond "some of my best friends are". How are you more “enlightened” than the author of the article?
HUH?? Ooo-Kay...
Islam, Wicca, and even Secularism Humanism for that matter, operate and worship under the good graces and tolerance of a Christian taught and inspired "tolerance" whether you and others concede this point or not...
What is puzzling is that you do not understand that civil behavior is almost entirely dependent on a correct moral and religious upbringing. It is the lack of this upbringing which is filling our society with sociopathic criminals.
Sorry to disappoint, but if you read the founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson makes the point that the country was born to satisfy any manner of Deism, or even a complete absence of Deistic belief.
Maybe you don't like it. Maybe I don't. Tough. It's (partly) why the country was created.
The question is not how you turned out, it is how the great majority turn out. It is a fact that there are hardly any militant atheists on the earth, although there are plenty of agnostics, and even more who don't bother to think about 'First Things'. So it is clear that there is a great deal of evidence that most people do not function intellectually as you do, so your individual story is not of signifigance in analyzing social policies.
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