The Hutton Thesis: "A very specific historical claim" (The Old Religion: Getting Beyond the Noise, Part Two)

"Modern pagan witchcraft had, after all, appeared as
a movement with a very specific historical claim."
[Ronald Hutton, Triumph of the Moon]

What was the "very specific historical claim" that Ronald Hutton claimed to have overthrown in Triumph of the Moon? Where in the 500 odd pages of that book does he name those who made this claim, and explain how it had come to be that those named had spoken authoritatively, monolithically, and specifically for the "movement" as a whole? Where does he provide us with the precise words with which this "very specific historical claim" was supposedly articulated by those who supposedly made it? Where does he provide an explanation for how "modern pagan witchcraft", unlike any other religion known to humankind, is capable of speaking with such a unified voice? No one can produce any such passages from Triumph of the Moon, because none exist.

In Part One of this series on The Old Religion: Getting Beyond the Noise, we saw that Charles Leland, Margaret Murray, and Gerald Gardner were not, in fact, at all "specific" when making their "historical claims" concerning the Old Religion. They were only as specific as the evidence, in their view, allowed. Specifically, they did not claim that the Old Religion was purely Celtic, or purely Northern European, or even purely European. In fact, they all explicitly acknowledged that it was none of those things. They did not claim that the Old Religion had remained unchanged since the Stone Age. In fact, they acknowledged that it had elements originating from a variety of historical periods, including the classical era, late-antiquity, the early Middle Ages, the High Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the early modern period, and also more recent times.

In sharp contrast to the reasoned and cautious, but nevertheless positive, views expressed by Leland, Murray, and Gardner on the subject of the Old Religion, Ronald Hutton loutishly declared that not only was there no correlation, none whatsoever, between modern and ancient Paganism, but that "any possibility of doubt" regarding this had been "swept away", and that anyone who dared to question this was caught in the "trap of fundamentalism." A more disgusting (and blatant) display of ideological hubris masquerading as "scholarship" is hard to imagine. This has been made all the more disheartening by the warm reception that the "Hutton thesis" has received among many Pagans.

It should be emphasized that Hutton could have taken a different path. He could have accepted the plain and obvious fact that there are many and various connections and correlations between ancient and modern Paganism, and then he could have argued that Leland, Murray, Gardner, & Co. had gotten these connections and correlations wrong. He could have argued, for example, that these relationships had been exaggerated, or perhaps they had been interpreted in ways that were simplistic, romantic, anachronistic, naively comparativist, etc. Hutton could then have endeavored to provide his own better documented and more intellectually rigorous narrative of the (often literally) tortuous history of Paganism's survival over the centuries. And he could have done all this while still (as Leland, Murray and Gardner had done) admitting to gaps in our knowledge and ambiguities in the evidence, that is, allowing for multiple interpretations where this is warranted, or even admitting that there are limitations to our ability to fully explain every aspect of Pagan history. But Hutton did no such thing. Instead, he falsely ascribed an absolutist position to others, while promoting his own absolutist position as the only possible alternative.

What, then, is this "absolutist position", this "Hutton thesis" that I am ascribing to Ronald Hutton? It is a very specific historical claim. What is it that I claim that Hutton claims in this thesis, in his own words?

"in the 1990s there broke a tidal wave of accumulating research which swept away not only any possibility of doubt regarding the lack of correlation between paganism and early modern witchcraft, but virtually the whole set of assumptions upon which both the original concept of the Old Religion and its later, evolved, American feminist version, had been based."

This thesis, as stated by Hutton above, makes one primary claim, and three subsidiary claims:

1. There is no correlation between modern Paganism and any form of Pagan religion that is more than a few hundred years old. It must be emphasized that Hutton himself explicitly states that his thesis is intended to exclude even so much as "suggesting that there might be some truth" in the notion of the Old Religion.
   
2. This primary historical claim (above) is supported by an overwhelming volume of recent research.
3. "Virtually" all of the underlying assumptions behind the original concept of the Old Religion (the conception of Leland, Murray, and Gardner) have also been thoroughly disproven.
4. "Virtually" all of the underlying assumptions behind the "American feminist version" of the notion of the Old Religion have also been thoroughly disproven

The most important thing to know about the Hutton thesis is that Ronald Hutton himself explicitly rejected it in his next major book-length publication on Pagan history following Triumph. That book is titled Witches, Druids and King Arthur, and the next post in this series will look more closely at Hutton's own admission that the "Hutton thesis" is wrong, and his explanations of how he came to be so completely wrong. But in the remainder of this post I want to recommend several sources that I consider to be far more worthy of attention than Hutton's prevarications in Witches, Druids and King Arthur.

(1) Gus diZerega recently (Fall 2010) wrote a series of posts for his blog on the subject of Theurgy. More specifically, these posts were focused on the recently completed Theurgicon 2010 conference in Berkeley California. In the Introduction to that multipart series, diZerega begins by pointing out some significant similarities between Wicca and late antique Theurgy, and then he states, "These similarities, along with some others, are the reason why some investigators of our history argue that Wicca's earliest major roots lie not in Celtic Britain or stone age Europe but in late Classical times."

In other words, diZerega is suggesting that there might, indeed, be some truth in the historical claim that modern Paganism has correlations with forms of Paganism that go back much further than a few centuries. Most importantly, diZerega emphasizes not only the connection between modern Paganism and late antique Theurgy, he also emphasizes the fact that, in his opinion, Theurgy itself was the culmination of an "unbroken line of thinking and practice extending back into the Paleolithic origins of human civilization." For more on diZerega's views on Theurgy and Wicca, I suggest starting here: Theurgicon and Pagan Neoplatonism I.

(2) Joscelyn Godwin's The Golden Thread: The Ageless Wisdom of the Western Mystery Traditions is a treasure trove of information about the stubborn survival of the ancient Pagan Mysteries as a living (and lived) religious tradition. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to describe it as a treasure map. Unfortunately, Godwin's presentation is somewhat jumbled, and, even worse, the author adopts a wavering attitude toward Christianity which is maddeningly inconsistent and unnecessarily ambiguous. But treasure maps are notorious for their imprecisions, and if the map gets you in the right general vicinity, then one should not complain if a little extra searching of one's own is still required in order to find the booty.

Here is an excerpt from Chapter 11, "The Pagan Renaissance":

"The new, Pagan imagination of the Renaissance worked on two levels, exoteric and esoteric. In the public domain there were new palaces and gardens, paintings, sculptures, decorative objects, prints and books, where were the antithesis of the Gothic cathedrals and of Medieval Christian art. No one could evade the influence of the new imaginal environment, and few would want to, for it openened the senses to the Eros of earthly beauty. All unknowingly, Europeans were become Platonists: for while mainstream Christianity spurned natural beauty and erotic attraction, Plato's philosophy embraced them, as the first sprouting of the wings on which the soul would eventually rise to the knowledge of intellectual beauty.

"In the more esoteric circles of the highly educated humanists, it was equally impossible to evade the seduction of classical philosophy and the challenge it posed to the Christian view of the world. As we ahve seen in chapter 1, [George Gemistos] Plethon's lineage of Pagan sages opened up a vision of the distant past .... The newly discovered texts of Hermes, Zoroaster, Plato, etc., set a thorny problem to those obliged to reconcile them with the Christian revelation."
[pp. 101-102]

(3) Nicolas Campion's History of Western Astrology, Volume II: The Medieval and Modern Worlds is yet another treasure map similar in many ways to Godwin's Golden Thread. Campion's book is far longer and meatier, and while its focus is ostensibly the subject of Astrology, it is really more of a history of applied Hermetic philosophy over the last 2000 years or so, with a special emphasis on Astrology (or, more precisely, on Cosmology).

Below is an excerpt from Kirk Little's excellent, in-depth review of Campion's book. The review is from the British online Astrology journal SkyScript.co.uk (link):

"From the outset, Campion states 'the central theme of my narrative is religious' (p. ix) and his introductory chapter nicely lay out the complex issues faced by the historian of astrology. Among those issues are the philosophical questions raised by the astrological world view concerning fate, free will and moral choice. The religious and philosophical issues, more than the social and political uses of astrology, constitute the major strands of his narrative thread and lend this book an intellectual heft lacking in other recent histories of astrology. Campion is quite concerned with historical continuity and often makes startling connections between groups of astrologers separated by both great distance and historical time. Take for instance, this passage on the Ghayat al-Hakim composed around 1000 AD by Moslem scholars in Andalucía:

Translated into Latin in 1256 by the Castilian monarch Alfonso the Wise, it was known in medieval Europe as the Picatrix, and was to be the key text of magical astrology until the seventeenth century. The Picatrix provided a direct line of transition for Islamic Hermeticism, and hence for Babylonian celestial deities, direct into the thirteenth century Christian West. (p. 66)

"Or this one concerning the 19th century occult writer Eliphas Lévi:

Lévi's astrology was embedded, even more than Ebenezer Sibly's, in the medieval system of magical relationships by which nature's secrets could be penetrated and manipulated. Lévi, following in the tradition of the esoteric Masons and illuminists of eighteenth century France, advocated practical magic in the style of Agrippa and the Picatrix… (pp. 223-4)

"Leaping across centuries and cultures, Campion hopes to demonstrate unifying themes and intellectual commitments, even if the actual uses of astrology are quite different."

(4) Finally, here is an excerpt from Angela Voss' 2006 biography Marsilio Ficino:

"Ficino played a major role in the 'rebirth' of classical learning we know as the Renaissance, through his commitment to the renewal of Platonic and Hermetic philosophies and his determination to integrate their metaphysics into Christianity, a marriage - however problematic - which revitalised religious and cultural life and placed a new emphasis on the capacity of the human soul to realise its innate divinity. The words of Hermes Trismegistus, "a great wonder, O Asclepius, is man!", reiterated by Giovani Pico della Mirandola in his Oration became the battle-cry of the era, in celebration of a new-found human dignity and intellectual prowess. Ficino and Pico's revival of 'pagan' ritual in the service of spiritual enlightenment was however doomed to provoke reactionary forces. In the 1490s the fanatical Dominican monk Girolamo Savonarola railed against both philosophers and astrologers, instigating a puritan regime in Florence. The Inquisition was gaining strength, and the Catholic Church was about to face its most serious challenges in the upheavals of the Reformation and the new scientific discoveries of Copernicus. But for a brief, golden period in the fifteenth-century Florence, the ancient Gods descended once more and inspired human creativity to unprecedented heights, summoned by the invitation of Marsilio Ficino ....

At the height of his career Ficino was at the centre of a circle of intellectuals in Florence known as the Platonic Academy, which included his patron Lorenzo de' Medici and many of the leading humanist thinkers of the day. Their aim was not ony to promote the perennial wisdom (prisca theologia) of the 'ancient theologians', but also to have a direct influence on the arts as an accessible way of bringing it to contemporary humanity. It has been suggested that Ficino himself provided the programme for Botticelli's Primavera, Birth of Venus and Minerva and the Centaur, and he certainly inspired a new generation of musicians who brought a Platonic imagination to bear on both theory and performance. Such geniuses as Leonardo da Vinci, Michaelangelo, John Dowland and Claudio Monteverdi all swam in the tide of the spiritual renewal instigated by Ficino.
[pp. 1-3]

The Old Religion: Getting Beyond the Noise

1. Part One: Two Myths
2. Part Two: "A very specific historical claim"
3. Part Three: The Recantations of Ronald Hutton
4. Part Four: "A Different World" (Recantations, Part Deux)
5. Part Five: More on "A Different World" (Recantations, Part Trois)
6. Part Six: Huttonian Triumphalism (Recantations, Part Quatre)
7. Part Seven: The Recantations of Ronald Hutton, The Final Episode [parts 5, 6 & 7 are not done yet]
   
8. Part Eight: 21st Century Pagans on the Old Religion
9. Part Nine: Coeval With Time [part 9 is still to come]

The Old Religion: Getting Beyond the Noise (Part One)

Introduction
There are two prevalent myths among Pagans that must be dispelled.

The first is the myth that "the Old Religion" refers to a single, homogeneous continuous tradition of Celtic and/or Northern European Paganism that has remained unchanged (and, in particular, unmixed with any "outside", that is non-Celtic and/or non-Northern European, influences) since the Stone Age.

The second is the myth that Ronald Hutton and other scholars have conclusively proven that Wicca, and modern Paganism generally, has no meaningful connection with the Pagan religions of the distant past. According to this myth, anyone today who continues to be dedicated to the proposition that we Pagans are followers of the Old Religion must either be (1) ignorant people who are unaware of the facts, or (2) "fundamentalists" who refuse to accept the facts.

The good news is that the vast majority of Pagans still believe, as Pagans have always believed, that our religious traditions are very old, even as old as humankind itself. For knowledge of the Gods is intrinsic to human nature, and this is why ancient Greco-Roman Pagans called belief in the Gods one of the "common conceptions" found universally in all human societies.

Before proceeding any further, though, let us first pause for a moment to make certain that there isn't a reverse-Straw-Man argument (which occurs when one falsely attributes a Straw Man argument to someone else) going on here. To that end, here is Ronald Hutton, in his own words, on pages 376-377 of Triumph of the Moon:

"Modern pagan witchcraft had, after all, appeared as a movement with a very specific historical claim, and sooner or later it had to make a relationship with current academic historiography in order to put itself into a more secure, durable, perspective. A first step in this direction had been taken by Margot Adler, as described [see excerpt below from p. 370], but although she suggested that the notion of the Old Religion should not be treated as literal fact, she still suggested that there might be some truth in it. A similar hedging was made by Vivianne Crowley in her book in 1989, which took note of criticisms of the Murray thesis but told readers that they could themselves be flawed; in the same year, by contrast, Tanya Luhrmann accepted the thesis as defunct. The decisive breakthrough was apparently made at a seminar convened at King's College London in December 1990 to discuss the comparisons and contrasts between Paganism and other varieties of religion. It was attended by several notable Wiccans, including Crowley, Leonora James, and Frederic Lamond, and a number of academics including myself, invited in my capacity as a historian of ancient paganisms. One of the most significant aspects of the occasion was the spectacle of one Wiccan after another speaking of the Murray thesis as a foundation myth, and of the Old Religion as a metaphor, in the manner of Margot Adler - but with yet greater sensitivity and erudition. As in America earlier, so now in Britain, Wiccans had broken out of the trap of fundamentalism which has often seemed to be the natural course of minority religions whose basic assumptions are questions by the wider scholarship (which was one major gateway for it to the national community) was dissolving.

It was hardly a moment too soon, for in the 1990s there broke a tidal wave of accumulating research which swept away not only any possibility of doubt regarding the lack of correlation between paganism and early modern witchcraft, but virtually the whole set of assumptions upon which both the original concept of the Old Religion and its later, evolved, American feminist version, had been based. [pp. 376-377]

And here is an excerpt from Hutton's earlier description of Adler's Drawing Down the Moon, to which he refers back (as noted) in the above excerpt:

"[Margot Adler, in her Drawing Down the Moon] celebrated the power and utility of myth but also drew a firm distinction between myth and reality. She recognized that Wicca had probably been built upon a pseudo-history, and then suggested that this was normal for the development of religious traditions and that Wiccans deserved credit for the fact they were increasingly conscious of this without losing a sense of the viability of their actual experience of the divine." [p. 370]

This leaves no room for doubt about either (1) the extremist position (a position that, as will be shown below, does turn out to be a real Straw Man) that Ronald Hutton projects onto others and that he claims to have vanquished, or about (2) the genuinely extremist position that Ronald Hutton was himself explicitly championing in Triumph of the Moon.

In line with the considerations laid out above, the rest of this series, after this Introduction, will consist of four sections (although at least one of these "sections" will have more than one post in it). The first section (the post you are reading right now) will reveal the true nature of the "continuous tradition" Straw Man by showing what Charles Godfrey Leland, Margaret Murray, and Gerald Gardner all said, in their own words, about the Old Religion. The second section (which so far has two sections, here and here, but there are more to come) will deconstruct the false claim that Ronald Hutton & Co. have vanquished the notion of the Old Religion, by showing what Ronald Hutton has actually said on this subject, in his own words. In the third section (one post here) will be presented several examples of 21st Pagans who continue to identify themselves as adherents of the Old Religion. And the fourth and final section (still to come!) will present examples of how ancient Pagans already saw themselves as adherents of an even more ancient religious traditions coeval with the human race.

The "continuous tradition" Straw Man: What Leland, Murray, and Gardner actually said
The three most important figures associated with the concept of the Old Religion are Charles Godfrey Leland, Margaret Murray, and Gerald Gardner. It is quite easy to show that these three never proposed anything like the "fundamentalist" Straw Man argument that one hears so much about from Ronald Hutton and his ilk. But please don't take my word for it.

First up, we have Charles Godfrey Leland (1824-1903). The man had a way with words. It was his idea, or so it is said (and so he himself claimed), to recast the anti-slavery cause as a movement for "Emancipation" rather than for "Abolition". He was also the first to use the term "holy roller" to refer to the more exuberant forms of worship found among certain Christian sects. And he was also the first person to use the English phrase "Old Religion." The following is an excerpt from Leland's "Etruscan Roman Remains", pages 1-3 in the 2007 Cosimo Classics edition, the full text of which is available at sacred-texts.com (the book was first published in 1892):

THERE is in Northern Italy a mountain district known as La Romagna Toscana, the inhabitants of which speak a rude form of the Bolognese dialect. These Romagnoli are manifestly a very ancient race, and appear to have preserved traditions and observances little changed from an incredibly early time. It has been a question of late years whether the Bolognese are of Etrurian origin, and it seems to have been generally decided that they are not. With this I have nothing whatever to do. They were probably there before the Etruscans. But the latter at one time held all Italy, and it is very likely that they left in remote districts those traces of their culture to which this book refers. The name Romagna is applied to their district because it once formed part of the Papal or Roman dominion, and it is not to be confounded with La Romagna proper. Roughly speaking, the region to which I refer may be described as lying between Forli and Ravenna. Among these people, stregeria, or witchcraft--or, as I have heard it called, "la vecchia religione" (or "the old religion")--exists to a degree which would even astonish many Italians. This stregeria, or old religion, is something more than a sorcery, and something less than a faith. It consists in remains of a mythology of spirits, the principal of whom preserve the names and attributes of the old Etruscan gods, such as Tinia, or Jupiter, Faflon, or Bacchus, and Teramo (in Etruscan Turms), or Mercury. With these there still exist, in a few memories, the most ancient Roman rural deities, such as Silvanus, Palus, Pan, and the Fauns. To all of these invocations or prayers in rude metrical form are still addressed, or are at least preserved, and there are many stories current regarding them. All of these names, with their attributes, descriptions of spirits or gods, invocations and legends, will be found in this work.

Closely allied to the belief in these old deities, is a vast mass of curious tradition, such as that there is a spirit of every element or thing created, as for instance of every plant and mineral, and a guardian or leading spirit of all animals; or, as in the case of silkworms, two--one good and one evil. Also that sorcerers and witches are sometimes born again in their descendants; that all kinds of goblins, brownies, red-caps and three-inch mannikins, haunt forests, rocks, ruined towers, firesides and kitchens, or cellars, where they alternately madden or delight the maids--in short, all of that quaint company of familiar spirits which are boldly claimed as being of Northern birth by German archæologists, but which investigation indicates to have been thoroughly at home in Italy while Rome was as yet young, or, it may be, unbuilt. Whether this "lore" be Teutonic or Italian, or due to a common Aryan or Asian origin, or whether, as the new school teaches, it "growed" of itself, like Topsy, spontaneously and sporadically everywhere, I will not pretend to determine; suffice to say that I shall be satisfied should my collection prove to be of any value to those who take it on themselves to settle the higher question.

Connected in turn with these beliefs in folletti, or minor spirits, and their attendant observances and traditions, are vast numbers of magical cures with appropriate incantations, spells, and ceremonies, to attract love, to remove all evil influences or bring certain things to pass; to win in gaming, to evoke spirits, to insure good crops or a traveller's happy return, and to effect divination or deviltry in many curious ways--all being ancient, as shown by allusions in classical writers to whom these spells were known. And I believe that in some cases what I have gathered and given will possibly be found to supply much that is missing in earlier authors--sit verbo venia.

Many peasants in the Romagna Toscana are familiar with scores of these spells, but the skilled repetition and execution of them is in the hands of certain cryptic witches, and a few obscure wizards who belong to mystic families, in which the occult art is preserved from generation to generation, under jealous fear of priests, cultured people, and all powers that be, just as gypsies and tramps deeply distrust everything that is not "on the road," or all "honest folk," so that it is no exaggeration to declare that "travellers" have no confidence or faith in the truth of any man, until they have caught him telling a few lies. As it indeed befell me myself once in Bath, where it was declared in a large gypsy encampment that I must be either Romany or of Romany blood, because I was the biggest liar they had ever met--the lie in this case having been an arrogant and boastful, yet true, assertion on my part, that though penniless at the moment to stand treat, I had, at home, twenty-four gold sovereigns, eighteen shillings in silver, and twopence in bronze. "And I don't believe," added the gypsy, "that he had a d----d sixpence to his name. But he's all right." So these travellers on the darkened road of sorcery soon recognised in the holder of the Black Stone of the Voodoo, the pupil of the Red Indian medaolin, and the gypsy rye (and one who had, moreover, his pocket always full of fetishes in little red bags)--a man who was worthy of confidence--none the less so since he was not ungenerous of pounds of coffee, small bottles of rum, cigars, and other minor requisites which greatly promote conviviality and mutual understanding in wisdom. Among these priestesses of the hidden spell an elder dame has generally in hand some younger girl whom she instructs, firstly in the art of bewitching or injuring enemies, and secondly in the more important processes of annulling or unbinding the spells of others, or causing mutual love and conferring luck. And here I may observe that many of the items given in this book are so jealously guarded as secrets, that, as I was assured, unless one was in the confidence of those who possess such lore, he might seek it in vain. Also that a great portion has become so nearly extinct that it is now in articulo mortis, vel in extremis, while other details are however still generally known.

Next to take the stand is Margaret Alice Murray (1863-1963), the woman behind the "Murray thesis" to which Ronald Hutton refers in the passage from Triumph of the Moon quoted in the Introduction to this post. What was this "thesis"? Let's let professor Murray speak for herself (this is from the opening of Chapter 1 of The Witch Cult in Western Europe, (the full text is available at sacred-texts.com). The book was first published in 1921:

OF the ancient religion of pre-Christian Britain there are few written records, but it is contrary to all experience that a cult should die out and leave no trace immediately on the introduction of a new religion. The so-called conversion of Britain meant the conversion of the rulers only; the mass of the people continued to follow their ancient customs and beliefs with a veneer of Christian rites. The centuries brought a deepening of Christianity which, introduced from above, gradually penetrated downwards through one class after another. During this process the laws against the practice of certain heathen rites became more strict as Christianity grew in power, the Church tried her strength against 'witches' in high places and was victorious, and in the fifteenth century open war was declared against the last remains of heathenism in the famous Bull of Innocent VIII.

This heathenism was practised only in certain places and among certain classes of the community. In other places the ancient ritual was either adopted into, or tolerated by, the Church; and the Maypole dances and other rustic festivities remained as survivals of the rites of the early cult.

Whether the religion which survived as the witch cult was the same as the religion of the Druids, or whether it belonged to a still earlier stratum, is not clear. Though the descriptions, of classical authors are rather too vague and scanty to settle such a point, sufficient remains to show that a fertility cult did once exist in these islands, akin to similar cults in the ancient world. Such rites would not he suppressed by the tribes who entered Great Britain after the withdrawal of the Romans; a continuance of the cult may therefore be expected among the people whom the Christian missionaries laboured to convert.

As the early historical records of these islands were made by Christian ecclesiastics, allowance must be made for the religious bias of the writers, which caused them to make Christianity appear as the only religion existing at the time. But though the historical records are silent on the subject the laws and enactments of the different communities, whether lay or ecclesiastical, retain very definite evidence of the continuance of the ancient cults.

In this connexion the dates of the conversion of England are instructive, The following table gives the principal dates:

597-604. Augustine's mission. London still heathen. Conversion of Æthelbert, King of Kent. After Æthelbert's death Christianity suffered a reverse.

604. Conversion of the King of the East Saxons, whose successor lapsed.

627. Conversion of the King of Northumbria.

628. Conversion of the King of East Anglia.

631-651. Aidan's missions.

635. Conversion of the King of Wessex.

653. Conversion of the King of Mercia.

654. Re-conversion of the King of the East Saxons.

681. Conversion of the King of the South Saxons.

An influx of heathenism occurred on two later occasions in the ninth century there was an invasion by the heathen Danes under Guthrum; and in the eleventh century the heathen king Cnut led his hordes to victory. As in the case of the Saxon kings of the seventh century, Guthrum and Cnut were converted and the tribes followed their leaders' example, professed Christianity, and were baptized.

But it cannot be imagined that these wholesale conversions were more than nominal in most cases, though the king's religion was outwardly the tribe's religion. If, as happened among the East Saxons, the king forsook his old gods, returned to them again, and finally forsook them altogether, the tribe followed his lead, and, in public at least, worshipped Christ, Odin, or any other deity whom the king favoured for the moment; but there can be hardly any doubt that in private the mass of the people adhered to the old religion to which they were accustomed. This tribal conversion is clearly marked when a heathen king married a Christian queen, or vice. versa; and it must also be noted that a king never changed his religion without careful consultation with his chief men. An example of the two religions existing side by side is found in the account of Redwald, King of the East Saxons, who 'in the same temple had an altar to sacrifice to Christ, and another small one to offer victims to devils'.

Last but, at least in my opinion, not least, comes Gerald Brousseau Gardner (1884-1964). I have already said quite a bit in this blog recently about Gerald Gardner and his writings (see links at the bottom of this post or look for posts tagged "wicca" within this blog). Here I will give several short quotes, from his book Witchcraft Today (the full text of which is freely available on teh interwebs). The book was first published in 1954:

"If we only knew really what the Druids believed and taught, whether there was only one form of belief and whether they had various sects among them, it would be easier to say whether there was any connection or not with witchcraft. The latter may have been purely orthodox, thought of as extremely high or ultra low in type, the fanciful religion of a lot of women, a vile heresy, or simply the religion of the natives that no decent person might have anything to do with. It is quite possible that it was several of these things at different times and in different parts of the country."
[Witchcraft Today, from Chapter 2, "There have been Witches in all Ages"]

"The witches do not know the origin of their cult. My own theory is, as I said before, that it is a Stone Age cult of the matriarchal times, when woman was the chief; at a later time man's god became dominant, but the woman's cult, because of the magical secrets, continued as a distinct order. The chief priest of the man's god would at times come to their meetings and take the chief place; when he was absent, the chief priestess was his deputy."
[Witchcraft Today, Chapter 3, "Witch Beliefs"]

"I fancy that certain practices, such as the use of the circle to keep the power in, were local inventions, derived from the use of the Druid or pre-Druid circle. At one time I believed the whole cult was directly descended from the Northern European culture of the Stone Age, uninfluenced by anything else; but I now think that it was influenced by the Greek and Roman mysteries which originally may have come from Egypt. But while it is fascinating to consider the cult existing in direct descent from ancient Egypt, we must take into account the other possibilities.
[Witchcraft Today, Chapter 4, "Witch Practices"]

"In ancient times probably many magicians, amongst the scholars and learned men, before and during the fall of Byzantium, came West and many may have made contact with the cult; also men who read forbidden books would be apt to come to the only places where they could meet people with free minds, the houses of the witches. Later Rosicrucians and Freemasons might have attended. They might not have known that their hosts were witches in all cases, though they would have known there were places where they might discuss things reasonably without fear of being tortured and burnt.

"There are resemblances to Freemasonry in certain parts of the rites which I think can-not be due to chance, so I think the one influenced the other. And it is probable that all these people may have brought some new ideas into the cult; but I think the only great changes were made in Roman times when contact was made with the mysteries, although this is all guesswork on my part. I can only judge on the evidence I can find.
[Witchcraft Today, Chapter 9, "What Are Witches?"]

And here is a very brief excerpt from The Meaning of Witchcraft, first published in 1959, in which Gardner is relaying one of the very first descriptions of the doings of the Witch Cult that he had been given, first hand, once he had "got 'inside'":

"You know what happens at our meetings? There is the little religious ceremony, the greeting of the Old Gods, then any business which has to be talked over, or perhaps someone wants to do a rite for some purpose; next there is a little feast and a dance; then you have to hurry for the last bus home!"
[The Meaning of Witchcraft, Chapter 1, "The Witch Cult in Britain"]

Conclusions (for Part One)
Leland, Murray, and Gardner never advocated anything that could be remotely considered as fundamentalist, or ahistorical (much less anti-historical). Their claims about the survival of Pagan beliefs and practice were measured, nuanced and based on evidence. They freely admitted to doubts and uncertainties. They never demanded that their conclusions be accepted dogmatically. Rather they presented their ideas, along with their evidence and their reasoning, for public discussion.

Of the three, the only one who spoke as a practitioner of and advocate for the Old Religion was Gerald Gardner. He explicitly acknowledged that Wicca had elements from a variety of historical periods and from many different cultures, and he openly stated that he could not be certain how much each of the different streams of influence should be weighted.

In Triumph of the Moon, on the other hand, Ronald Hutton aggressively promoted an absolutist position. He hectored prominent Pagans who took more nuanced positions, explicitly attacking them for "hedging", for so much as "suggesting that there might be some truth" to the notion of the Old Religion. Simultaneously, Hutton praised those who dutifully, and without nuance, recanted their past errors and proclaimed "the Murray thesis ... defunct." But as will be seen in the next part of this series (and as is well known to anyone who has actually followed his writings subsequent to Triumph), professor Hutton was guilty of pre-mature self-congratulation when he crowed that a "tidal wave of accumulating research" had "swept away ... any possibility of doubt regarding the lack of correlation between paganism and early modern witchcraft."

[The remaining three sections outlined in the Introduction to this post will appear in future installments.]


Modern Paganism and the Ancient Mysteries:

1. Part One: Sallustius, Gardner & Wicca: "A general statement of their creed."
2. Part Two: Gerald Gardner, Sallustius, and the Problem of Evil
3. Part Three: Gerald Gardner, Sallustius, and Reincarnation
4. Part Four: "Divested of their garments"
   

Ronald Hutton and Reincarnation:

1. Part One: Dion Fortune, Ronald Hutton, Wicca & Reincarnation
2. Part Two: Ronald Hutton, Tertullian, John Italos, Anna Comnena & Reincarnation
3. Part Three: Ronald Hutton, Reincarnation & the Renaissance
4. Part Four: "Renaissance & Rebirth: Reincarnation in early modern Italian kabbalah"
5. Part Five: Ronald Hutton,Vergil, Ovid & GradeSaver.Com
6. Part Six: Ronald Hutton, Voltaire, and Metempsychosis
7. Part Seven: Erotic Metempsychosis

The Old Religion: Getting Beyond the Noise

1. Part One: Two Myths
2. Part Two: "A very specific historical claim"
3. Part Three: The Recantations of Ronald Hutton
4. Part Four: "A Different World" (Recantations, Part Deux)
5. Part Five: More on "A Different World" (Recantations, Part Trois)
6. Part Six: Huttonian Triumphalism (Recantations, Part Quatre)
7. Part Seven: The Recantation of Ronald Hutton, The Final Episode [parts 5, 6 & 7 are not done yet]
   
8. Part Eight: 21st Century Pagans on the Old Religion
9. Part Nine: Coeval With Time [part 9 is still to come]
   

"Divested of their garments." (Modern Paganism & The Ancient Mysteries, Part Four)

"I fancy that certain practices, such as the use of the circle to keep the power in, were local inventions, derived from the use of the Druid or pre-Druid circle. At one time I believed the whole cult was directly descended from the Northern European culture of the Stone Age, uninfluenced by anything else; but I now think that it was influenced by the Greek and Roman mysteries which originally may have come from Egypt. But while it is fascinating to consider the cult existing in direct descent from ancient Egypt, we must take into account the other possibilities."
[Gerald Gardner, Witchcraft Today, Chapter 4, "Witches Practices"]

Introduction
How strong of an influence was classical Greco-Roman Paganism, and the ancient Mystery Religions in particular, on Gerald Gardner's Wicca? In this Fourth Part of the series Modern Paganism and the Ancient Mysteries, we'll look at a particular passage in Gardner's book Witchcraft Today in which he talks about ancient Rites of Initiation while also referring to a number of ancient philosophers (whom Gardner associates with the Mysteries) from Thales (born c. 624 BC) to Proclus (died 485 AD) spanning more than a millennium. But before getting to that passage, let's first set the scene.

(In what follows I will not be giving page numbers in Witchcraft Today, both because there have been many editions over the years, and also because it is freely available for download on teh interwebs, so you can easily search the text electromagically.)

Gardner begins Witchcraft Today (in the Forward) with an attempt to explain to the reader the intrinsic difficulties of writing openly about an Initiatory religious tradition like Wicca. Even those Witches, according to Gardner, who were eager to clear their religion from slander and misperceptions nevertheless had impressed upon Gardner the need to remember that "there are certain secrets that you mustn't give away." He also tells us that there had transpired "some argument as to exactly what I must not reveal."

Such secrecy can easily arouse suspicion and hostility, and to those who are already suspicious and hostile it can be perceived as validating their fears. Gardner seeks to overcome this, at least somewhat, by reminding his readers (or, in the case of the grossly uneducated, by informing them for the first time) that the same kind of "secretiveness" (as it appears to the literally uninitiated) found in Wicca was a quite normal part of the religious scene of the classical world. Gardner quotes from the 2nd century Platonic philosopher Apuleius:

"who wrote a long account of his own initiation into the mysteries in cryptic language, saying: 'I have told you things of which, although you have heard them, you cannot know the meaning.'"

Direct references to the classical Paganism, and to the Mystery Religions in particular, are found frequently in Witchcraft Today (as well as in the sequel, The Meaning of Witchcraft). In fact, two full chapters of Witchcraft Today are devoted explicitly to the Mysteries. In this post, I will be focussing on one of those chapters, "The Witches and the Mysteries".

"Mysteries as orgies"?
Gardner begins that chapter by stating (echoing the sentiment expressed in the quote at the top of this post, which is from an earlier chapter):

"I had always believed that witches belonged to an independent Stone Age cult whose rites were a mixture of superstition and reality and had no connection with any other system."

He then tells us that his first doubts on this subject began to form during a trip to New Orleans where he noticed elements of "European witchcraft" in Voodoo. Then during a subsequent trip to Pompeii, at the Villa of the Mysteries, he again noticed a "great resemblance to the cult."

From that point on Gardner provides his own broad overview of the Mystery Religions of the classical world, relying heavily on the writings of Vittorio Macchioro. I hope to return in a later post to this overview in more detail, but what is really important for the present discussion is that Gardner uses this presentation to promote his contention that all of the ancient Mysteries shared "some inner secret", and that the overall impact of the Mysteries on society as a whole, and on the individuals who underwent initiation, was positive.

The shared "inner secret" of the Mysteries is this: (and here Gardner is quoting Macchioro):

"'The mystery is a special form of religion which existed amongst all ancient peoples, and among primitive peoples still preserves very considerable importance. Its essence is the mystic palingenesis, that is to say, a regeneration brought about by suggestion. In its most perfect stage this palingenesis is a veritable substitution of personality: the man is invested with the personality of a god, a hero or an ancestor, repeating and reproducing the gestures and actions attributed to him by tradition.'"

Gardner argues that this inner secret of palingenesis (which was also closely tied to the concept of metempsychosis) was originally limited to guaranteeing that the Initiate would enjoy "happiness after death", and, according to Gardner, Initiation into the Mysteries was, therefore, at first "a purely magical ceremony." Later though, the Mysteries "acquired a spiritual and moral content." This, again according to Gardner, was primarily due to the influence of Orphism which "took a lofty moral and spiritual significance and exercised great influence on lofty souls such as Heraclitus, Pindar and Plato." In particular, Gardner claims that the influence of Orphism transformed the "rural cult at Eleusis" by "adding the element of redemption."

Throughout this section of Witchcraft Today, in which there are long passages quoted straight from Macchioro's little guidebook "The Villa of the Mysteries at Pompei", Gardner is striving to promote a positive view of the ancient Mysteries that is twofold. On the one hand, the Mysteries promoted human happiness both here and hereafter, and also included an ecstatic element that was essential. On the other hand, the regeneration wrought by the Mysteries led not only to greater happiness, but to a moral and spiritual advancement as well.

More specifically, one of Gardner's objectives in his overview of the Mysteries is to defend these ancient Pagan institutions against misrepresentations and misunderstandings, including slanders arising from followers of the Jesus cult:

"Christian writers were accustomed to speak of these mysteries as orgies, and Chesterton, speaking of the Bacchae of Euripides, says: 'Nowadays, imagine the Premier going off with the Archbishop of Canterbury to dance with unknown fair ones on Hampstead Heath.'"

G.K. Chesterton was merely echoing the ancient, and infamous, condemnation of Clement of Alexandria (150 - c.215 Anno Deceptoris):

"And what if I go over the mysteries? I will not divulge them in mockery, as they say Alcibiades did, but I will expose right well by the word of truth the sorcery hidden in them; and those so-called gods of yours, whose are the mystic rites, I shall display, as it were, on the stage of life, to the spectators of truth. The bacchanals hold their orgies in honour of the frenzied Dionysus, celebrating their sacred frenzy by the eating of raw flesh, and go through the distribution of the parts of butchered victims, crowned with snakes, shrieking out the name of that Eva by whom error came into the world. The symbol of the Bacchic orgies is a consecrated serpent. Moreover, according to the strict interpretation of the Hebrew term, the name Hevia, aspirated, signifies a female serpent.

"Demeter and Proserpine have become the heroines of a mystic drama; and their wanderings, and seizure, and grief, Eleusis celebrates by torchlight processions. I think that the derivation of orgies and mysteries ought to be traced, the former to the wrath (orgh) of Demeter against Zeus, the latter to the nefarious wickedness (musos) relating to Dionysus; but if from Myus of Attica, who Pollodorus says was killed in hunting--no matter, I don't grudge your mysteries the glory of funeral honours. You may understand mysteria in another way, as mytheria (hunting fables), the letters of the two words being interchanged; for certainly fables of this sort hunt after the most barbarous of the Thracians, the most senseless of the Phrygians, and the superstitious among the Greeks.

"Perish, then, the man who was the author of this imposture among men, be he Dardanus, who taught the mysteries of the mother of the gods, or Eetion, who instituted the orgies and mysteries of the Samothracians, or that Phrygian Midas who, having learned the cunning imposture from Odrysus, communicated it to his subjects. For I will never be persuaded by that Cyprian Islander Cinyras, who dared to bring forth from night to the light of day the lewd orgies of Aphrodite in his eagerness to deify a strumpet of his own country. Others say that Melampus the son of Amythaon imported the festivals of Ceres from Egypt into Greece, celebrating her grief in song.

"These I would instance as the prime authors of evil, the parents of impious fables and of deadly superstition, who sowed in human life that seed of evil and ruin--the mysteries."
[Exhortation to the Heathen]

"A vanished Britain"
In defense of the ancient Pagan Mysteries against Christian slanders, Gardner points out that "when we find that the greatest and best men of the ancient world belonged to the initiates, we may be sure the mysteries were not just orgies." A little further on, Gardner elaborates on this point:

"[I]n their true state I think the mysteries were really good. Porphyry, Iamblicus, Synesius, all refer to them and their objects and revelations. 'Of what the disease of the spirit consists, from what cause it is dulled, how it can be clarified, may be learned from their philosophy. For by the lustrations of the mysteries the soul becomes liberated and passes into a divine condition of being, hence disciplines willingly endured become of far greater utility for purification,' says Plato.

He continues: 'On entering the interior part of the Temple, unmoved and guarded by the sacred rites, they genuinely receive into their bosoms divine illumination, and divested of their garments they participate of the divine nature.' The same method takes place in the speculation of Thales: see Proclus on the theology of Plato, vol. i, and Ede anima ae daemona, Stobaeus, Dr. Warbarton's trans.: 'The mind is affected and agitated in death, just as it is in initiation into the mysteries, and word answers to word, as well as thing to thing; for to die, to be initiated, is the same; with hymns, dances and sublime and sacred knowledge, crowned and triumphant they walk the regions of the blessed.'

But it was also said: 'The rites are not equally good for all; there are many more Thyrsus-bearers than Bacchic souls. Many have the fire indeed, without the power to discover it': that is, 'All are not true initiates.' 'Who can question the extraordinary power of woman over man? Whether questioned or reasoned about, it always remains the irresistible factor of life. This power is a divine gift and therefore induces more than merely sex attraction. With any woman, young, beautiful and vivacious, her influence for good or evil is overwhelming. When moved by high principle and purpose, womankind can elevate and ennoble man.' - A Suggestive Inquiry, etc., by A.J. Attwood [Gardner's attribution in the original]

The full title of the work Gardner has borrowed from most heavily in the above three paragraphs is A Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery With a Dissertation on the More Celebrated of the Alchemical Philosophers, being an attempt towards the recovery of the ancient experiment of Nature by Mary Anne Atwood. In fact, passages from that book are scattered, unattributed or misattributed, throughout the above, although the last several sentences of the final paragraph, which Gardner does attribute to Atwood, are not actually found in her book.

Suggestive Inquiry was first published in London in 1850, and while never a bestseller, the book has enjoyed a certain positive notoriety ever since. It's author has been hailed as not just a great Alchemical "adept", but even as "the last one". It has also been said that "The Atwood material is very important for the study of a vanished Britain, when Neo-Platonism and High Ideas influenced the nation. But, as Mrs. Atwood says, they went in for power and threw their spiritual heritage out the window." [These quotes can be found at the Mary Anne Atwood archive website, maintained by Brown University here.]

Adding, significantly, to the mystique surrounding Atwood's Suggestive Inquiry is the fact that soon after it's first publication, the author experienced a sudden change of heart and attempted, and nearly succeeded in the attempt, to destroy all copies. When it was reissued in Belfast in 1918, it had acquired a new and extensive (60+ pages) Introduction by Walter Leslie Wilmshurst, who was eager to draw the reader's attention to the "strange history" of the book:

"This is the reissue of a book with a strange history; a book moreover not only entirely unknown, for reasons that will presently appear, to all but the meagrest minority, but one treating of a subject hitherto excluded from consideration by exponents of conventional learning. Whether even now men devoted professionally or otherwise to philosophy, divinity or science will give it the least attention is problematical. Be that as it may, it is believed that among those to hwom the book and its subject matter will be new there will be not a few who will accord it at least an interested and respectful notice, whilst many others who are already aware of the book's existence and the general tenor of its theme will welcome its re-issue and the fact that after nearly seventy years of suppression it now becomes generally accessible." [p. 1]

Wilmshurst takes his time getting to the details of how the book was "suppressed". First he wants to tell us about Thomas South, the father of Mary Anne (Atwood was her married name): "a gentleman of leisure and certain means, a scholar and somewhat of a recluse, and the possessor of an exceptionally fine specialized library of classical, philosophical and metaphysical works, many of them old, rare and foreign editions, collected in days when such books were more easily procurable than now." In this private library, South and his daughter carried out far ranging researches into "the writings of the Platonists, the medieval and subsequent Alchemical Philosophers, and the myths and mythology of Greece and Rome." To what end? Why, to study "the ultimate nature of the human soul, the spiritual potentialities latently present in man, and the science of rectification of man from the the imperfect state in which he now finds himself to perfection and integrity in spiritual order." In other words, "the subject of the Mysteries of antiquity." [pp. 1-2]

After pursuing these studies together as "intellectual equals" and even "intellectual comrades" there came a time (~1849) when father and daughter resolved to prepare their own separate works in which the "matured conclusions from [their] long researches into Hermetism" could be presented to the world "crystallized into writing." The father would write in poetry, the daughter in prose:

"With the concurrence of the other members of the household it was agreed that the two should segregate themselves from the normal family life and duties, and devote themselves exclusively to their tasks. The father occupied one room and proceeded with his poem, one intended to be a lengthy epic of the Hermetic subject; the daughter occupied another and compiled the present volume [Suggestive Inquiry ...] from the expository standpoint, evidencing her theory by frequent references to the authorities and text-books." [p. 6]

So far, so good. But now the plot thickens, and darkens:

"The daughter was the first to complete her labours, considerable as they must needs have been. Such was his confidence in his daughter's capacity, the father did not trouble to look at her manuscript or even proof-prints of it when they came to hand. The volume was printed at Mr. South's cost and was issued, as before stated, in 1850. A few copies -- something under one hundred in all -- had been either sent to public libraries or sold to purchasers, when the further issue of the book was abruptly stopped by Mr. South. The entire residue of the edition was called in, under considerable protest from the publisher and at a cost of £250 to Mr. South, and was brought from London to Gosport. There, upon the lawn of Bury House, the volumes, along with the uncompleted manuscript of Mr. South's poem were stacked and a bonfire was made of them. Of the poem nothing now remains save some twelve lines the daughter had quoted in her own prose work and to be found on p. 57 of the present edition. The return of the outstanding copies of the book was gradually secured as far as possible, the authoress continuing for years afterwards to buy in any copy that came upon the market and often paying as much as ten guineas for it. Of those so bought in some were destroyed; a few she retained for her private use or that of her most intimate and understanding friends." [p. 6]

Now we know the what, but what was the why? Wilmshurst provides us with two different reasons behind the "suppression". First we are told that Mr. South was concerned that too much sacred knowledge had been irresponsibly, in hindsight, revealed to a world that was too profane to receive it: "They felt themselves to be, as the authoress herself explained many years afterwards, not simple exponents of a recondite philosophy, but betrayers of a sacred secret ... They felt the only way to avoid the penalty of such a betrayal was to destroy their handiwork entirely." [p. 7]

To anyone familiar with the ancient Mysteries, this reasoning is, at least as far as general principles go, both familiar and appropriate. After all, those who took Initiation at Eleusis (etc) were bound by the strictest oaths of secrecy. The efficiency/ruthlessness with which these oaths were enforced is made plain by the dearth today of any specific knowledge of any of the inner secrets of those ancient Mystery Rites. "But," Wilmshurst informs us, "coupled with this reason there was another."

"The normal devout-mindedness of Mr. South experienced a change just at this time. It will be recalled that the period was one of great religious unrest and ferment. Whether or not Mr. South became caught up by the current of contemporary Evangelical Revival, his religious life became suddenly and strangely quickened. The fire of 'conversion' came upon him, and his outlook upon certain things was opened in a way that caused him to see them in a different relationship. Especially he was prompted to re-consider the Hermetic subject in its relation to Christian soteriology."[pp.8-9]

Wilmshurst insists, perhaps a bit too insistently, that Thomas South did not turn against things Hermetic in favor of things Christian. In fact, though, by going out of his way to broadly refer to the "Evangelical Revival" of the times, Wilmshurst must realize that he calls his own protestations into question. This was, after all, the period that gave us Thomas Darby, the Anglo-Irish preacher whose "dispensationalist" teachings form the basis of the "end-time" ravings that are the mainstay of contemporary televangelism and Pentecostalism.

While it is common to think of the revivalist movement of the mid 19th century as isolated to the United States (this was the period when Charles Godfrey Leland coined the term "holy roller", in reference to the ecstatic worship style of "holiness" Methodists in Pennsylvania), in reality this was a far broader movement, as the cases of the Plymouth Brethren, The Free Church of England, Thomas Darby, Charles Henry Mackintosh, etc., clearly demonstrate.

It is also clear that Mary Anne Atwood, through her own actions, saw to it that not only were copies of her book preserved, but that it continued to be read by a small circle of her friends and admirers (including a copy given to Anna Kingsford in 1886). This strongly implies that whatever "conversion" the father had experienced was not fully shared by the daughter. Wilmshurst tells us, and it is painful to read: "Although her will and reason had entirely concurred in the suppression of the book, she admitted in the after years that she had felt acutely the destruction of her intellectual offspring, that at the time it had been a crushing sorrow to her and had left her in a sense a broken woman."

Wilmshurst goes on to tell us of the friend who became the legatee of Mary Anne Atwood's writings, Madame Isabelle de Steiger, who was responsible for the posthumous re-issue of Suggestive Inquiry in 1918.

The story told above by Wilmshurst is corroborated by the following "Biographical/Historical note" found at the Mary Atwood Papers Archive website (at Brown University):

"Born in 1817, the daughter of Thomas South, Mary Anne Atwood would author two books. In 1846 she published (under a pen name) Early Magnetism, in its Higher Relation to Humanity as Veiled in the Poets and the Prophets. In 1850, under her maiden name, M.A. South, she published A Suggestive Enquiry into the Hermetic Mystery, a book which put forth an early statement of the theory that the true goal of alchemy was spiritual perfection. A short time later Mrs. Atwood regretted publication of this work, fearing she had revealed too much of matters that would be better kept secret. She subsequently bought up as many copies of the book as possible and destroyed them. Nevertheless, a few copies survived and in 1918, some years after her death, a new edition of the work was brought out, with an introduction by Walter Leslie Wilmshurst and memorabilia of Mrs. Atwood. A further printing appeared in 1920, but the book remained a scarce one until 1960 when it was again reprinted from the Wilmshurst edition by Julian Press, New York.

"On both of the above works Mrs. Atwood collaborated with her father and after his death she wrote nothing more for publication. In 1859 she married Alban Thomas Atwood, vicar of Leake, Yorkshire. They had no children. Alban Atwood died in 1883. Mary Anne Atwood lived out her life at Knayton Lodge, Thirsk [England]. She died on April 13, 1910. Her last words were: "I cannot find my center of gravity."

"Divested of their garments"
The story of Mary Anne Atwood and her Suggestive Inquiry helps us to understand two things about the relationship between Wicca and the ancient Mysteries. First of all, both Gardner's attraction to the Mysteries, and his conviction that the writings of the ancient Pagan philosophers provide us with significant insights into those Mysteries, were very far from being unique or newfangled ideas by the time the mid-twentieth century came rolling around. In fact, these ideas had a long, and prestigious history, both in Europe generally, and in Britain in particular.

Secondly, the sad and strange tale of the "suppression" of Atwood's book tells us, if somehow we were 'til now unaware, of the ongoing tension between Christianity and the Mysteries. This tension demands (still today) some resolution (in the form of an attitude adopted toward Christianity) from all those who stray too deeply into the embrace of the Hermetic science. The easiest, and most common, resolution is to at the very least feign acceptance of the supremacy, or at least the primacy, of Christianity. Even into the nineteenth century both societal pressures and the law itself demanded that there be no explicit breach with the Jesus cult. Where Gerald Gardner did make a truly unique contribution to the history of Paganism was in his explicit, public proclamation of a non-Christian religious tradition, and one that was most emphatically not a new religion. Divested of their Christianizing garments, one could say, with the publication of Witchcraft Today, the ancient Mysteries, aka the Old Religion, could once again openly proclaim the true nature of the Divine, but, in accordance with ancient tradition, without revealing "certain secrets that you mustn't give away."

I'll end this post by providing a closer look at some of the sources scrambled together in those three paragraphs in Witchcraft Today quoted somewhere above. The first three are from Atwood's book, the fourth is from Thomas Taylor's translation of Proclus' Theology of Plato.

1. From Suggestive Inquiry [p. 188]
The Neoplatonists wrote largely of the Theurgical art; many books are quoted by St. Augustine and his contemporaries which are not transmitted, but were destroyed probably through sectarian malice and shortsighted policy of the later Roman government, which tolerated nothing but luxury and arms. Yet sufficient remains to evince the nature of the Mysteries, since, besides those before named -- Plotinus, Proclus, Porphyry, Synesius, and Iamblichus especially -- all refer to them, declaring also the objects and revelations. And in what the disease of the Spirit consists, and from what cause it falsifies and is dulled, and how it becomes clarified and defecated, and restored to its innate simplicity, may be learned in part from their philosophy; for by the lustrations in the Mysteries, as they describe, the soul becomes liberated and passes into a divine condition of being.


2. From Suggestive Inquiry [p. 191]
And the extremity of all evil in this life consists, according to the ancients, in not perceiving the present evil and how much human nature stands in need of amelioration; and this is a part of that two-fold ignorance which Plato execrates, which being ignorant that it is ignorant has no desire to emerge, but may be compared to a body all over indurated by diseases, which, being no longer tormented with pain, is neither anxious to be cured. But he who lives in the consciousness of something better will meditate improvement , and desire is the first requisite; indeed, without desire on our part, art will labor for us in vain, since Will is the greatest part of purgation. And through the means of this, says Synesius, both our deeds and discourses extend their hands to assist us in our assent; but this being taken away the soul is deprived of every purifying machine because destitute of assent, which is the greatest pledge of reconciliation. Hence disciplines willingly endured become of far greater utility, while they oppose vexation of evil and banish the love of stupid pleasure from the soul.

3. From Suggestive Inquiry [pp. 262-263]
But in the sensible world the circulation of things is altogether different; for though this has been proved also to be an outbirth from the same universal center, yet the equilibrium of being is broken everywhere at the circumference for manifestation; one thing does not subsist by another, but each part or individual remains alone in contrariety of conscience; nor does the devious wheel of life obey her axle any more, until returning into it, she perceives her error and the transgression that was made in self-will, for the sake of this experience, from the great Law of Light, from plenitude of Power, from immortal Harmony, and that high Exemplar which is before all things, and the Final Cause of all; which seeing only is seen, and understanding is understood by him, who having a sight like that of Lynceus, penetrating all centers, discovers himself in That finally which is the source of all; and passing from himself to That, transcending, attains the end of his progression.

Ille deum vitam accipiet, divisque videbit
Permixtos heroas, et ipse videbitur illis

And this was the consummation of the Mysteries, the ground of the Hermetic philosophy, prolific in supernatural increase, transmutations and magical effects. And thus it is said to be lawful for the Vital Spirit to descend and ascend in successive circulations until she terminated her flight in the Principle of things. And this was the life of the gods and of divine happy men, who rising in voluntary abnegation above the evil and sensual habitude of this life and many sufferings to which body is allied, obtained together with a liberation from these, a foretaste simple, beatific, and secure, of the life which is eternal; when, by exciting the divine virtue within, they became simultaneously elevated, and proceeding through Intellect to Wisdom, they arrived at the First Principle; and again descending thence, increasing in divine virtue by each ascent, until the total life was irradiated from the ample recess of light.

Tunc ire ad mundum archetypum saepe atque redire
Cunctarumque patrem rerum spectare licebit

Cujus tunc Co-operator effectus potest Omnia. But there are many degrees of Divine illumination; nor were the rites of Eleusis found to be equally efficacious for all; since the souls are not of equal capacity or bias towards intellectual education: but as philosophers agree that preceding initiations are preparatory to those in a subsequent order, so the possession of the best habits of thought in this life, and natural inclination, render the Spirit better adapted to sublime. Plato, accordingly, cites the records of the Mysteries, to witness that there are many more thrysus bearers than Bacchic souls; which is to say, that many had the fire indeed, and were able even to perceive it, who were without the power to discover and draw it forth to manifestation. For, in the thrysus, Prometheus is fabled to have concealed the fire he stole from heaven; but Bacchus, persisting through the whole course of life allotted, returned,. As the orphic verse denotes him, triumphant, and appearing in splendour to mortals.

Bacchus, ipse totus igneus et fulgidus apparet, qui nudis oculis tolerari non posset.

So Osiris appeared in shining garments, as Apollo, all over radiant; so Socrates, in his mighty genius once freed, in ecstasy shone forth, as it is related, to the beholders, more dazzling than the luciferous wheel of the meridian sun, diffusing itself from the freed center outwardly center outwardly until it moved the dark circumference of sense itself (31).

So Orpheus, and so divine Achilles shone refulgent in his armour; and Jason, on his return from Colchis, with the Golden Fleece.
[Atwood's footnote #31: (31) Agrippa Occult Phil., Book 3, where are given several notable examples in ths kind; and Apuleius on the Demon of Socrates.]

4. Proclus, On the Theology of Plato, Chapter III, Thomas Taylor translation [p. 9]
"Indeed, Socrates in the [First] Alcibiades rightly observes, that the soul entering into herself will behold all other things, and deity itself. For verging to her own union, and to the centre of all life, laying aside multitude, and the variety of the all manifold powers which she contains, she ascends to the highest watch-tower of beings. And as in the most holy of mysteries, they say, that the mystics at first meet with the multiform, and many shaped genera, which are hurled forth before the Gods, but on entering the interior parts of the temple, unmoved, and guarded by the mystic rites, they genuinely received in their bosom divine illumination, and divested of their garments, as they would say, participate of a divine nature;-- the same mode, as it appears to me, takes place in the speculation of wholes. For the soul when looking at things
[p. 9]

Modern Paganism and the Ancient Mysteries:

1. Part One: Sallustius, Gardner & Wicca: "A general statement of their creed."
2. Part Two: Gerald Gardner, Sallustius, and the Problem of Evil
3. Part Three: Gerald Gardner, Sallustius, and Reincarnation
4. Part Four: "Divested of their garments"
   

First phase of the new version of Sallustius completed

For much of the last week I have been working on a revised online version of Gilbert Murray's translation of Sallustius' On the Gods and the Cosmos. The first phase of that work is now completed. Here is a link to it: On the Gods and the Cosmos.

To my knowledge, the text is now free of typographical errors and also of misleading monotheizing wordings that needlessly mar Murray's translation in several places. All of these changes are described and justified in the endnotes.

The next step will be to add footnotes to each of the 21 sections of Sallustius' Pagan Manifesto. These footnotes will be gathered from both Gilbert Murray and from A.D. Nock's edition of Sallustius and who knows where else.

I'm also working on a future post titled "Who was Sallustius?", as well as the next installment for the series on Modern Paganism and the Ancient Mysteries .....