humanity questions 1135 ct13

Witchcraft and Neo-Paganism

In the lesson on deep ecology, we saw that some of its adherents - convinced that the Judaeo-Christian tradition is largely responsible for our culture's destructive attitude toward nature - have turned to "paganism" as an antidote. The term comes from a Latin word meaning "country dweller" or "peasant." In the Dark and Middle Ages, as Catholic Christianity achieved firm control of European culture, it nearly succeeded in wiping out the old, pre-Christian religion that still worshipped the prehistoric Mother Goddess in some form. (Or, according to one theory, they co-opted the Goddess by turning her into the Virgin Mary.) Only in the remote rural areas did the Old Religion survive; hence it was "pagan."

The Church knew that it had to stamp out this dangerous enemy, and so it told everyone that it was not only false, but evil - the "horned god" of the hunt was really the Devil; the priestesses of the fertility goddess were witches. Hallowe'en, the pagan New Year, was a night that belonged to ghosts and evil spirits; celebrations of the spring equinox were just perversions of Easter; and so on - you get the idea. As the Church and its Siamese twin, the State, began to burn witches, the Old Religion had to go underground. People were taught to hate and fear witches for a number of reasons, most of which will be obvious if you think about it a bit:

· Paganism was a religion of the people, of the home and hearth; it was not an organized institution that could be used to control or brainwash people.

· It was a religion dominated by women, and that could not be tolerated in a patriarchal society run by men. Women who think for themselves?! Burn them! (And you only have to burn one per village - that will shut all the others up.)

· Paganism respected the natural world and thought of it as alive and sacred - such an attitude makes it harder to cut down the forests, drain the swamps, mine the hills. Paganism militates against emerging capitalism and a market economy.

· Pagans believe in equality, not hierarchy - how can you govern such people?

· Pagan practitioners mediate disputes, heal the sick, promote community spirit - and these were functions that large state- or church-sponsored institutions were trying take over, regulate and license, all with the purpose of making ordinary people more dependent on church and state and less dependent on one another.

And what the Church started, Hollywood finished (see photo).

Modern witches claim to represent an unbroken tradition going back to the Ice Ages, when prehistoric hunters invoked the Horned God and their wives gathered roots and berries with the blessing of the Earth Goddess. This is a bit silly, of course - all ideas and traditions change over time, even when they are not harrassed, suppressed and misrepresented by the powers-that-be. Neo-paganism or Wicca or whatever you want to call it is a modern phenomenon, but that doesn't matter much for the purposes of this course; we are concerned with today, and with why radical environmentalism finds so much to admire in witchcraft as it currently exists. Here are a few of the basic beliefs of witchcraft, keeping in mind that this religion has no scriptures, no required rituals, no creed - no two witches are exactly the same.

· The living earth is sacred, and is personified as a goddess (but don't think of Her as a female version of the Christian God; she is not a person' - she does not rule over life; she is life; all of us are Her). She has countless names: Astarte, Isis, Hecate, Aphrodite, Venus, Demeter, etc etc; she is the Virgin Mary just as much as she is that faceless prehistoric figure at the top of the previous page.

· Witches do not pray' or worship,' because there is no deity that we can ask to solve our problems for us; we are the goddess, so the responsibility is on our shoulders.

· Spells and magic are used - they are just methods for directing the flow of energy that runs through all things, just as science is - but they are never used to do evil; it is a basic belief in witchcraft that "whatever you do, comes back on you three times over." This is just another way of saying "what goes around comes around," and is the same as "karma."

And that's pretty much it. Witches celebrate (in various ways) a cycle of eight holidays that begins with the winter solstice and ends at Hallowe'en. The goddess is eternal, but her male counterpart, the horned god (often represented by the Sun) is born and dies every year. At Hallowe'en he descends into death, and the world grows dark and grey. At the winter solstice, the days begin to grow longer - a sign that the god has again been conceived in the womb of the goddess (and Jesus is born - coincidence?). On February 2 he quickens' - this is when one sees the first stirrings of spring in Europe; the birds begin to mate; note how close this is to Valentine's Day. At the spring solstice he emerges from the womb, and the world turns green again (and Jesus emerges from the tomb - another coincidence?). On May Day, he reaches sexual maturity as the crops are planted - he impregnates the Earth , who is both his wife and his mother, and even his daughter! At the summer solstice, he has reached full adulthood - the days are at the longest, the Sun is hottest. On August 1 he is middle-aged, and begins to reap the fruits of his labors - and the European harvest begins. At the fall equinox, he is getting old - the leaves begin to fall, the harvest is over, the world gets chillier. And on Hallowe'en he dies, and the whole cycle starts over - endlessly. In addition to this annual cycle, most witches also celebrate the new moon and the full moon - the Moon is a particular symbol of the goddess, as the sun is of the god. Many ecofeminists have embraced some form of witchcraft because they see it as a religion that is both "eco" and "feminist" - pretty obvious, eh? It stands as an antidote to Christianity, which is monolithic, patriarchal, rigid in its beliefs and practices, and the very epitome of domination and hierarchy.  Today we see a bitter controversy between the "spiritual ecofeminists" and the "political ecofeminists." Both agree that it is up to women to save the planet; but how to do it? Witchcraft may be emotionally satisfying and empowering, but how will dancing around a sacred bonfire at midnight on the summer solstice stop pollution, or heal the hole in the ozone layer? Political feminists worry that paganism, like any other religion, can be the opium of the people' - it can mesmerize you and cause you to forget about real problems in the real world. Spiritual ecofeminists reply that only by changing our minds and hearts - through identification with a living and sacred planet - can we raise enough energy to fight the corporations and governments. You can comment on this in the forum.