Ronald Hutton vs The Witch of Endor

The main part of this post consists of a list, spanning over 400 years, of primary sources attesting to the use of the English word "Witch" (or in some cases an equivalent word in another European language) to refer to someone whose magical workings are beneficial to others, including especially persons who perform healing, mediumship, or divination, or who can provide protection against (and/or relief from) malefic magic ("curses").

Several of the works cited are inspired by the Biblical story of the so-called "Witch of Endor," who is portrayed as a medium/prophetess/necromancer. When Jerome wrote the Vulgate (Latin) version of the Bible he referred to her as "mulier habens pythonem in Aendor" at I Sam. 28:7. The modern Webster's Online Dictionary (here) tells us that a "pythoness" (the most direct rendering in English of "mulier habens pythonem") is:

1. A witch with powers of divination.[Wordnet]
2. (Greek mythology) the priestess of Apollo at Delphi who transmitted the oracles.[Wordnet]
3. The priestess who gave oracular answers at Delphi in Greece.[Websters]
4. Any woman supposed to have a spirit of divination; a sort of witch.[Websters].

The important thing about all four of these definitions above is that they have not so much as a whiff of maleficium about them. Even more importantly is the fact that pythoness unambiguously refers back to pre-Christian magico-religious practices and beliefs that were revered and respected by ancient Pagans and that played a central and highly prestigious role in their mainstream/traditional religious cults. Therefore the list below strongly argues against Ronald Hutton's claim that two of the primary characteristics of a Witch are that she is a person who (1) "cause[s] misfortune or injury to other humans", and (2) "earns general social disapproval, usually of a very strong kind". The list also argues against one of the secondary characteristics of Witches according to Hutton, namely that they perform their magic "from motives of malice and spite." (See Hutton 2004, Hutton 2011, and also: Ronald Hutton: Witches Are "Inherently Evil").

1. c. 1510 Jacob Cornelisz Van Oostsanen (1477-1533) "Saul bij Heks van Endor" (painting)
2. 1584 Reginald Scot (c. 1538 - 1599; In his Discoverie of Witchcraft Scot has multiple references to "white witches" and he also equates "witch" with "wise woman".
3. 1597 DAEMONOLOGIE by King James VI of Scotland (King James I of England) attests to the fact that not only "that Pythonisse that Saul consulted with", but also "these wise men of Pharaohs, that counterfeited Moyses miracles" and "Simon Magus in the new Testament" were at the time commonly thought of and referred to as Witches.
4. c. 1600 William Perkins (1558-1602) Perkins once delivered a sermon titled "The Good Witch Must Also Die."
5. 1635 Matthias Stom - "Saul en de heks van Endor" (painting)
6. 1649 "Divels Delusions" (account of the trial of John Palmer, et al, ) Two of those whose trial is recounted herein were at first thought to be "good witches", but were later convicted as "black witches." (see Wallace Notestein's 1909 A history of witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718, Appendix A.5.)
7. 1656 Thomas Ady's Candle in the Dark contains multiple references to "good witches", whom Ady explicitly equates with "cunning" persons, and whom Ady portrays as healers, soothsayers, and also as providing protection against curses.
8. 1688 "Saul e la pitonessa di Endor" by Salvator Rosa (painting)
9. 1702 Cotton Mather (1663-1728) Mather refers, matter-of-factly, to the "Witch of Endor" in his Magnalia Christi Americana, in Chapter XXVIII (on the life of Samuel Whiting). Mathers also refers to her as an "enchantress".
10. 1739 Georg Friedrich Händel SAUL An Oratorio; or Sacred Drama, words by Charles Jennens. The "Witch of Endor" appears as a character in Act Three, Scene Two.
11. 1754 Saulus Consulit Sagam An earlier engraving by Gerard Hoet was reproduced in Robert Goadley's An Illustration of the Holy Scriptures, by Notes and Exposition. This book was published in Sherborne, in 132 parts, between 1754 and 1759. "It also shows that representations of the Witch of Endor as attractive and young existed throughout the eighteenth century." (quoted from here) The caption that appears in Goadley's edition is multilingual and refers to the Witch as "Sagam", "Divineresse", "Tooveresse", "Zauberin", as well as simply "Witch" and also using her Hebrew appellation from the First Book of Samuel, בעלת אוב, baalath ob, "the mistress of the Obidiah or Pythonic spirit - one who had a familiar spirit, whom she could invoke when she pleased, and receive answers from him relative to futurity," according to Adam Clarke's commentary on the Whole Bible (1832).
12. c 1760 John Wesley in his commentary on Exodus 22:18, "Thous shalt not suffer a witch to live," portrays Witchcraft as a full-blown religious alternative to Christianity (albeit framed by a boilerplate Satanic gloss): "Witchcraft not only gives that honour to the devil which is due to God alone, but bids defiance to the divine providence, wages war with God's government, puts his work into the devil's hand expecting him to do good and evil." Wesley's focus is on malefic magic "whereby hurt shall be done to any person", but he also states plainly that "pretending to tell where goods lost or stolen may be found, is an iniquity punishable by the judge, and the second offence with death."
13. c. 1830 Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832; Scott wrote about "Agnes Simpson, or Sampson, called the Wise Wife of Keith ... seems to have been a kind of white witch, affecting to cure diseases by words and charms ..." Sampson was executed in 1591. See Letter IX in Collected Works, volume I)
14. 1866 Gustave Doré (1832-83) Saül et la sorcière d'En Dor (engraving).
15. 1895 Arden Holt's "Fancy Dresses Described; Or, What to Wear at Fancy Balls" includes (figure 48) a "White Witch" Fancy Dress. [found at sexywitch]
16. 1900 The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum, featuring two, count 'em two, Good Witches.
17. 1921 "Charming Little Witch" Halloween postcard from 1921 reads:
    
    Though witches weird on Hallowe’en
    I must admit alarm me,
    I know a little witch like you
    Who never fails to charm me.

Ronald Hutton: Witches Are "Inherently Evil"

In 2004, Ronald Hutton published an article in which he "offered a definition of the traditional witch figure." ("Anthropological and Historical Approaches to Witchcraft", Historical Journal, vol. 47, 2004, 413–34.) At present this article is not available online, but there are plans to remedy that. In the meantime, Hutton has just come out with a new retrospective article (published in The Pomegranate journal, and available for download in pdf format at their website), in which he provides us with his own summary of his definition:

Traditionally, a witch uses apparently supernatural means to cause injury to other members of the same community; is inherently evil and not merely working for profit; operates in a tradition, by inheritance or initiation; and can be effectively opposed by counter-magic or physical punishment.

It must be emphasized that Hutton offers this not as merely a definition of the "witch figure" in the English speaking world, or just in Europe and/or the Christian world, but as a cross-cultural definition "which could hold up worldwide." Hutton also makes it clear that this definition is intended to be applicable not just to the modern world, but also to medieval and early modern European Christendom, as well as to pre-Christian societies of Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. In other words, this is Hutton's definition of the very essence of Witchcraft itself as a universal (or at least ubiquitous) phenomenon found in widely divergent human societies throughout the world today, and also found throughout human history going back at least thousands of years.

The problem, though, is that Hutton's definition of "the witch figure" is at odds with how the English word "witch" is actually used and has been used for centuries. Nor does Hutton's definition accurately reflect the usage of words like "Hexe", "Strega", "Bruja", "Sorcière", and so forth. Nor does Hutton's definition correspond to witchcraft-related and/or magical terminology found in any non-European languages, either. In all of these cases, the words in question are ambiguous with respect to whether or not the magic performed by the "Witch" (or Bruja, etc) is beneficial or harmful. In particular, all of these terms can be used to refer to people who perform magic (or, for the imagination impaired, "are thought to perform magic") to the following beneficial ends (this is only a partial list, many more examples of beneficial magic could be added):

• magical healing
• divination
• good weather
• successful harvest
• health of cattle
• financial success
• success in love
• mediumship (communication with the dead)
  
• spiritual blessings of various kinds
  
• protection from harmful magic

There is, however, one, and as far as I know only one, example of a term that is only used, and logically can only be used, to refer to someone who is intrinsically evil and who performs magic only in order to cause harm. With a little reflection, it should be obvious (but apparently is not) that this one word is the Latin word "malefica", which means, simply "evil-doer". The use of this term, a term that unambiguously refers to someone who must be intrinsically evil, to refer to magical practitioners generally is of course one the gifts that the Christian religion has bestowed upon humanity.

I have previously discussed the ambiguous meaning of "Witch" and other related terms in European languages in this earlier post: Good Witches, and in the specific case of the English word "Witch", I discuss how the use of this term to refer to practitioners of beneficial magic is documented in Thomas Ady's 1656 book Candle In The Dark in this post: "Shew me in all the scriptures where Witchcraft went without Idolatry".

"I discover as I grow older ...", Or, Buddhism as a youthful indiscretion (Buddhism Without Ironic Detachment, Part Two)

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"Cool is not a way of resisting authority but rather a way of exercising it -- of leading people who cannot otherwise be forced to follow."
[Dave Hickey's review of Cool Rules]

2. "... seeking to find an identity outside that of my own culture."

This is part two of a series of posts critiquing Stephen Batchelor's various attempts to remake Buddhism in an image more to his liking. The Gentle Reader is strongly encouraged to at least take a glance at the first post in this series before continuing below.

In his Treatise on Toleration (1763), Voltaire wrote that "When men do not have healthy notions of the Divinity, false ideas supplant them." Voltaire never made a secret of the fact that at the top of his list of "false ideas" concerning the divine was one set of ideas in particular: Christianity.

In the entry for "Religion" in his Philosophical Dictionary, Voltaire described a horrifying vision in which the bodies of all the victims of Christian violence (including millions of Native Americans) were piled up to form "abominable monuments to barbarism and fanaticism." Voltaire also included Judaism and Islam in his condemnation of faiths in which "zeal and religion [are] wretchedly transformed into fanaticism." But Voltaire was not opposed to religiosity altogether. He described himself as a Deist, and he asserted his own belief in a "supreme Intelligence", and he was an initiate in the mystical society of Freemasonry.

Some say that at the very end of his life, though, the author of the Philosophical Dictionary, and the Treatise on Toleration, relented and converted to Christianity at the last possible moment. It could be true. Who knows? However I prefer the version in which when the priest begged him to renounce the Devil, Voltaire responded, "This is no time to start making new enemies." There is also the theory that his deathbed conversion really did occur, but that Voltaire meant it as a joke.

Regardless of what really happened during the final moments of Voltaire's life, it is well-known that many people go through a phase of freethinking and rebelliousness in their youth, only to become much more conservative and accommodating toward convention with age (often long before they reach their deathbeds). For example, in his 1997 essay "Deep Agnosticism", Stephen Batchelor described how, in his teens and 20s, he had embraced Buddhism in a youthful "act of defiance", but by the time he had reached the ripe old age of forty-something, had already done some serious rethinking:

I discover as I grow older a reconnection with the roots of my own culture. Maybe many of us of my generation were drawn to Buddhism as a kind of act of defiance, a kind of rebelliousness against what we viscerally disliked—often for rather naive, adolescent, and idealistic reasons—in our own culture and we saw Buddhism, or at least I saw Buddhism, as a kind of vindication of that dissent.

But as the years have gone by I’ve found that this denial of one’s roots, this denial of one’s cultural upbringing, is not actually possible to sustain. If one seeks to sustain it, one often ends up as a kind of mock Tibetan or pseudo-Japanese. Although I have tried to do that on occasion, dressing up in all of the appropriate regalia, more than that I feel it to be still seeking to find an identity outside that of my own culture.
[From "Deep Agnosticism: A Secular Vision of Dharma Practice", but Stephen Batchelor]

There is nothing much to be found in the way of original thought in Batchelor's potted story of headstrong youthful rebellion followed, with advancing age, by contrite reconciliation with "one's own" culture. In fact, it is right out of the fifteenth chapter of the Gospel according to Luke. There isn't even anything original in the specific story line of a young Western intellectual who diffidently samples the spiritual offerings of the East only to be drawn safely back to the warm, familiar embrace of a culture that is his not by choice, but by mere happenstance of birth.

And there is, if possible, even less originality in Batchelor's pseudo-Nietzschean rationalizing in which he posits a crude racial/cultural determinism, according to which it is an impossibility for a person of European blood to "sustain" the "denial of one's roots," that Batchelor believes must be involved for a Westerner to "believe" in Buddhism. Nor is there anything fresh and new about insisting that those foolish enough to make the attempt to think outside "one's own" culture, can only accomplish a mawkish theatrical display that goes no further than "dressing up in all the appropriate regalia," because no force can change the immutable, essential characteristics of the silly self-denying white actor underneath the ridiculous Asiatic costume.

Western intellectuals, writers, artists -- indeed anyone of sufficiently adventurous spirit -- had already been exploring "the East" for centuries by the time the 60's came along. For example a complete English translation of the Bhagavad Gita was first published in 1785, over two centuries before the publication of Batchelor's Buddhism Without Beliefs (first pubished in 1998, and in which he attempted to more fully develop his agnostical, later secular, and then finally atheistical, New Buddhist Dipsensenation, first announced to the world in "Deep Agnosticism").

Charles Wilkins' (1749-1836) English translation of the Bhagavad Gita was just part of a much larger project, never completed, to translate the entire Mahabharata. During his 16 years in India, Wilkins not only came out with his historical translation of the Gita (which was very popular, and was in turn translated into French and German), he also created the first Devanagari typeface (he was a typesetter by profession), served as official translator of Persian and Bengali for the East India Company, and helped establish the Asiatic Society of Bengal.

In 1879, Edwin Arnold published his groundbreaking The Light of Asia, a book length epic poem recounting the life of the Buddha. Arnold's book was a great literary and commercial success, and is still in print today. But Arnold did not at all limit himself to writing about Buddhism, and he helped to found, along with Anagarika Dharmapala, the Maha Bodhi Society, perhaps most well known for its work to protect and preserve Buddhist historical sites in India.

It is important to emphasize that the Western encounter with Eastern religions has been active and ongoing since well before Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, ruled over half of Europe. All during this now centuries long process of Westerners exploring the East, a wide variety of positions and dispositions have been staked out. Some have simply chosen to, in essence, "go native", as one might say of Charles Henry Allan Bennett, who not only converted to Buddhism but ordained as a Buddhist monk (sometime around 1901) and lived out the remainder of his life as Ananda Metteyya (he died in 1923). Others have attempted to fully embrace Eastern teachings while also experimenting with new and different ways of presenting and applying these teachings in the West (for example Dennis Philip Edward Lingwood, aka Sangharakshita, and his Friends of the Western Buddhist Order). Still others have chosen to xenophobically exaggerate what they have seen as the indelible "foreignness" of Buddhism, Hinduism, and everything "Eastern", and these have, therefore, insisted on either the necessity of rejecting "Asian" ideas altogether, or possibly (as with Batchelor) of slapping together heavily redacted New Dispensations meticulously purged of anything that might be rejected by the metaphysical immune system of the European psyche.


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Undervaluing Non-Harming: On Brendan Myers on the Wiccan Rede

Hey boys and girls, it's that time of year again! That's right, it's Pagan Values Blogging Month!!

So, what should we discuss? I've got a suggestion: lets discuss noted Pagan philosopher and author Brendan Myers' criticisms of the Wiccan Rede.

Myers' critique is based on his contention that the ethical stance of the Wiccan Rede amounts to what he calls "utilitarianism". In my opinion, Myers is wrong both about what the Wiccan Rede actually means, and about the nature of genuine Utilitarianism.

In a follow-up post to come soon I'll say more about the true philosophical import of "an it harm none", but for now here is Myers in his own words from a discussion he initiated in March of 2010 at MysticWicks on "Alternatives to the Wiccan Rede" (March 4, 2010) (scroll down for more links):

As some of you may know, I'm not a big fan of the Wiccan Rede. I see it as too utilitarian: this is a problem because some questions of right and wrong have nothing to do with benefit and harm. I also see it as too 'negative': it tells us what we should not do, but does not offer positive alternatives. It's an ethic of freedom, which is obviously a good thing, but the Rede doesn't teach anything about what our freedom is for.

My own preferred alternative is a system of heroic honour and classical civic virtue. But this is perhaps not the only alternative.

Anyone else out there find themselves unsatisfied with the Wiccan Rede? What alternatives do you prefer?

Last edited by BrendanMyers; March 4th, 2010 at 09:38 PM.

Other relevant links (writings on ethics by Brendan Myers available online):

• "Replying to Critics of 'Thinking Shall Replace Killing'" (April 2011)
• Thinking Shall Replace Killing (Feb. 2011)
• A community statement on religious sexual abuse (Although this was a collective effort, both the original and final drafts were by Myers. May 2010)
• Ethics & Values in Druidry (from the website of the The Order of Bards Ovates & Druids, ~2009?)
• Selfless actions and Pagan ethics (2009)
• How Beautiful Are They— Some thoughts on Ethics in Celtic and European Mythology (The Ninth Mount Haemus Lecture of The Order of Bards Ovates & Druids, 2008)
• Wild Hunt interview (2008)
• Announcing The First Pagan Sovereign State! (humorous piece, published in Witches Voice 2005)

Other (more or less) related posts on Pagan Ethics (with a special emphasis on Socratic ethics) from this blog:

• Wicca and ancient philosophy (Plato, the Stoics, and the Wiccan Rede)
• Wicca and ancient philosophy, Part Two
• The varieties of sceptical thought (five part series)
• "Socrates of all mortals is wisest."
• The religion of Socrates
• "Those that are most stubborn and unbending She assails...." (on Plato's Republic, the Goddess Fortune, Pagan history, and related subjects)
• Paganism has always been a magical religion (on Eros and Ethics)
• Socrates: still making people crazy after all these years
• "an inescapable network of mutuality"
• Thomas Taylor on the religion of Socrates

A Question for Ronald Hutton

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"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!"
[Gerald Gardner, The Meaning of Witchcraft, Chapter 1, "The Witch Cult in Britain"]

Here is the first paragraph of the new article by Ronald Hutton on Writing the History of Witchcraft: A Personal View:

Many religions have foundations myths or legends. Wicca, the most influential and numerous variety of Paganism in the late twentieth century, is unusual in that its foundation claim was bound up indissolubly with historical research. As most or all readers of The Pomegranate will know well, it was revealed to the public by Gerald Gardner, between 1951 and 1954, most notably by his book, Witchcraft Today. He claimed specifically that the Pagan witch religion into which he had been initiated was essentially the same as that which most scholars of the time believed had been practised by the victims of the European witch trials of the early modern period.

I have a simple question for Ronald Hutton: Where does Gerald Gardner say what you say he said?

Put another way: Professor Hutton, please tell us exactly what sources you rely upon for your specific historical claim that the "foundation claim" of Wicca is "bound up indissolubly with historical research."

The fact is that if one actually bothers to read Witchcraft Today (and while we're at it, lets throw in The Meaning of Witchcraft) and one seeks out those places where Gardner specifically discusses the historical influences on Wicca, you will find all of the following:

1. Gardner explicitly states that he does not know the relationship between Wicca and "what the Druids believed and taught":

"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"]

2. Gardner explicitly states that the members of the Wiccan religion do not claim to "know the origin of their cult.":

"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"]

3. Gardner concedes that at one time he had thought of Wicca as "directly descended from the Northern European culture of the Stone Age, uninfluenced by anything else." But then Gardner explicitly rejects that idea:

"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"]

4. Gardner speculates that among those who had "brought some new ideas into the cult" could be numbered Byzantine scholars, Rosicrucians, and Freemasons. Before that, Wicca had also been significantly influenced by Greco-Roman mystery religions. After ticking off all of these possible influences on Wicca, Gardner states nonchalantly: "but this is all guesswork on my part."

"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 cannot 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 10, "What Are Witches?"]

5. After Witchcraft Today, Gardner came out with The Meaning of Witchcraft, first published in 1959, in which he relays 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"]

6. In Chapter XIII of The Meaning of Witchcraft, Gardner states that he is only interested in the "kinds of paganism ... which may have had some influence on the witch cult." Gardner then names three such sources of influence in particular: (1) "Druidism, the religion of the Celts", (2) "the religion of the Great Mother Goddess or the old Hunting God", and (3) "the Mystery Cults of the ancient world". See page 170 of the 2004 Weiser edition.

7. Continuing on from the above, Gardner (on page 171) focuses in on those mysterious "Mystery Cults" and asks, "have we any way of ascertaining what the Mysteries taught?" To which he immediately provides the answer:

"Fortunately, we have. In the fourth century A.D., when paganism was engaged in a fierce struggle with the new creed of Christianity, Sallustius, who was a close personal friend of the Emperor Julian (called the Apostate because he tried to restore the old religion), wrote a treatise called Peri Theon kai Kosmou, About the Gods and the World. It is probable that this treatise was a kind of manifesto of the highest type of paganism prevailing at that time, and it is evident that its author was an initiate of the Mysteries .... "

8. The closest thing to a "specific historical claim" that Gardner ever makes about the roots of Wicca is precisely this theme of "the Mystery Cults of the ancient world." In fact, a few pages later, Gardner says this about Sallustius' On the nature of the Gods and the Cosmos:

"Now the thing that will, I think, strike most the consciousness of the reader who is well versed in the teaching of the higher type of spiritualist and occult circles generally is not the antiquity of this teaching of Sallustius, but its startling modernity. It might have been spoken yesterday. Further, it might have been spoken at a witch meeting, at any time, as a general statement of their creed .... [T]he spirit of his teaching, the spirit of the Mysteries of his day, which is also the spirit of the beliefs of the witch cult, is timeless."
[p. 174]

Anyone (genuinely) interested in looking for the (actual) roots of Gerald Gardner's Wicca (or at least knowing what Gardner actually says about those roots), would be well advised to think long and hard on these eight points.

Interested readers are strongly encouraged to directly consult the primary sources:
Witchcraft Today
The Meaning of Witchcraft

What Is Paganism? Some Reliable Sources

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Modern Scholars on Ancient Paganism

Below are brief overviews of five major works on historical Paganism by contemporary scholars. In the next post there will be five more. Each of these ten books provides a wealth of information and insight that will greatly assist anyone interested in a better understanding of what the word "Pagan" actually means, by way of understanding those who were the first to be called "Pagans". Some of these selections are more challenging than others, and they tend to become more difficult as one goes down the list.

1. Religions of the Ancient World edited by Sarah Iles Johnston
2. The Christians as the Romans Saw Them by Robert Louis Wilken
3. The Morality of Happiness by Julia Annas
4. Religion in the Roman Empire by James B. Rives
5. Arabia and the Arabs: From the Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam by Robert G. Hoyland
6. Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis: Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture by Walter Burkert
7. Religion in Late Roman Britain by Dorothy Watts
8. Athenian Religion: A History by Robert Parker
9. Prayer, Magic, and the Stars in the Ancient and Late Antique World, edited by Scott Noegel, Joel Walker, and Brannon Wheeler
10. Ritual Texts for the Afterlife: Orpheus and the Bacchic Gold Tablets By Fritz Graf, Sarah Iles Johnston

1.  Religions of the Ancient World edited by Sarah Iles Johnston.

Sarah Iles Johnston

This anthology consists of standalone chapters written by scholars who are experts in the areas they write on, but the chapters are intended for a general (intelligent and curious) audience. Topics include: "What is ancient mediterranean religion?", by Fritz Graf; "Monotheism and Polytheism", by Jan Assmann; "Religions in contact" by John Scheid; and separate chapters on "Mysteries" and "Magic" by Sarah Iles Johnston. Also includes separate chapters on specific cultures including Egypt (Jan Assmann and David Frankfurter); Mesopotamia (by Paul-Alain Beaulieu); Israel (John J. Collins); Etruria (Oliver de Cazanove), and more.

As Johnston notes in her Introduction, whereas modern westerners take it for granted that, at least in theory, we have a wide variety of religious alternatives to choose from if we are so inclined,

Only relatively recently, however, have scholars recognized the extent to which ancient peoples, as well, were exposed to a diversity of religions, both indigenous and imported -- or even, indeed, acknowledged that ancient peoples were exposed to a diversity of cultural influences of any kind. The historical reasons for this failure [until recently -- on the part of modern scholarship] are political and ideological, as well as intellectual, among which three are especially interesting, as Walter Burkert and other scholars have shown (see esp. Burkert, The Orientalizing Revolution). First, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, following a long period during which scholars of the Bible and of classical antiquity had taken cultural interaction in the ancient Mediterranean for granted, the boundaries between academic fields were redrawn in universities, and what we now callclassics and theology strove to assert themselves as independent entities. As they did so, each one naturally stressed the grandeur and achievements of the cultures it represented -- respectively, ancient Greece and Rome, and the ancient Near East.Second, at about the same time, Romantic nationalism developed. In their desire to show that particular myths, literatures, and forms of religion could be tied to particular ancient cultures that served as models for contemporary nation-states, Romantic nationalists not only discouraged any assumption of cross-cutural influences within the ancient Mediterranean, but also brought new energy to the old quest of tracking the specific, discrete origins of each cultures practices and ideas. Finally, and also at about the same time, notions about a lost "pre-language," shared by the Greeks, Romans, Germans, and other "Aryan" peoples -- but not by the Semites -- crystallized into the proposal for the language we now cal "Indo-European."
[p. viii]

I have written previously in this blog about this treasure trove of a book in these two posts:
Monotheistic Robots of Doom, Part Deux
Paganism is not a European religion, Part Deux

2. The Christians as the Romans Saw Them, by Robert Louis Wilken

A modern day Christian theologian takes a startlingly honest look at how ancient Pagans viewed the new religion of Christianity and its early followers. If you read this book with the right frame of mind it is a textbook of anti-apologetics. In fact, the Japanese translation of the book has sold well primarily due to its popularity among people in Japan who are adamantly opposed to the spread of Christianity in their country (Japan has so far proven admirably resistant to the blood cult of Jebus, thank the Gods). Wilken gives surprisingly good summaries of the main criticisms leveled at the Christians by Celsus, Porphyry and Julian. Sometimes you have to filter out the predictable bullshit, though, like Wilken's idiotic claim that Christians engaged Pagans in a "dialogue" concerning their differences, when in fact the Christians were only interested in murdering their opponents and burning their writings.

Here is a very positive review from a perspective sympathetic to ancient Paganism.
And here is another positive review from a rather different perspective, published in the Christian journal Theology Today.
Another Christian review of the book, this one published by the Associated Baptist Press.
And yet another Christian review (from the jollyblogger blog).
Finally, here is a blog post on Robert Louis Wilken by the always interesting Arturo Vasquez (this is based on a talk that Wilken gave at Notre Dame in 2009 on the topic of "Reading St. Augustine in the 21st Century").


3. The Morality of Happiness by Julia Annas

My favorite go-to source on the subject of Pagan Ethics is a big, fat book with the very catchy title of The Morality of Happiness, by Julia Annas, Regents Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona.

The main point of the book, and the reason behind its catchy title, is to present to a broad, albeit intelligent and motivated, audience (without assuming much, or even any, previous study of classical philosophy) the ancient Pagan approach to ethics. This classical approach, very widely held among Pagans in the Greco-Roman world, was based on the Greek concept of eudaimonia (εὐδαιμονία), which literally means "good spirit", but which can also be translated simply as happiness. That is to say, eudaimonism refers to "happiness-based" ethics.

But is it possible to base an ethical philosophy on the simple human desire to be happy? Not only is this possible, but the greatest philosophers of the ancient Pagan world were close to unanimous in their view that this was the only proper basis for ethics. This attitude is in turn based on the (happy) assumption that human beings are naturally drawn to what is good (agathos, ἀγαθός) and beautiful (kalos, καλός). Therefore, in order to act ethically (that is, in order to live well), human beings need only act in accordance with our true nature.

The great strength of eudaimonistic ethics is that it seeks to work with human nature rather than against it. The three great difficulties of eudaimonism, however, are (1) discovering what this "true" nature of ours really is, (2) demonstrating that this nature is genuinely "good", and doing so in a way that is convincing enough so that we can be genuinely confident that acting in accordance with our true nature is the same as living well, and (3) explaining how it is that we do not already act in accordance with Nature.

Here are several relevant links:

• Review of Morality of Happiness from the Bryn Mawr Classical Review
• Julia Annas on "Ancient scepticism and ancient religion" (to be published in 2012, but already available online)
• Julia Annas on "Being Virtuous and Doing the Right Thing" (article from 2004)
• Platonic Ethics Old and New  (1999)
• Comments on Platonic Ethics Old and New by Tim O'Keefe from 2003 (more on O'Keefe here)
• Hellenistic Philosophy of Mind  (1992)
• An Introduction to Plato's Republic (1981)

4. Religion in the Roman Empire by James B. Rives

This is an excellent overview of the truly vast subject of Roman Paganism. While Rives for the most part avoids the term "Pagan", he explains in the Introduction to the book that his use of the word "Religion" as opposed to "Religions" in the book's title is deliberate and is meant to convey Rives' own contention that to speak of "religions" in this context "is fundamentally misleading." Rives then goes on to say that

"The diversity of religion in the Roman world was not that of separate and distinct 'religions,' each with its own set of core beliefs adn principles and its particular scriptures, clergy, shrines, rituals, and customs .... on a fundamental level the various religious traditions of the empire had more similarities than differences. As a result, when people from one tradition were confronted with another, they often found much that was familiar and immediately understandable, and tended to treat what was unfamiliar simply as a local peculiarity. In short, the impression we get from the sources is that people thought not so much in terms of 'different religions,' as we might today, but simply of varying local customs with regard to the Gods."
[pp. 5-6]

A while back I wrote three posts consisting mostly of excerpts from a paper by Rives on the subject of "Christian Expansion and Christian Ideology": Part One (Exclusivity); Part Two (Homogeneity); and Part Three (Totalization).

Also, here is a review of the book at BMCR, and here is another review at the rogueclassicism blog. And below is an excerpt from a review by Ursus at the Roman Reconstructionist website UNRV.com:

Rives offers the viewer some interesting ways of looking at polytheism. He divides polytheistic reality into several layers - cult, myth, art and philosophy - and looks at each one in turn. He explores how polytheism was experienced by individuals, households, private organizations and city-states. He documents the mobility of both worshipers and deities themselves under the aegis of the Pax Romana. Rives showcases some of the off color religious options in the classical world, such as esoteric mystical sects and freelance magicians. Finally, he looks at sources of authority in the classical world and how they imposed themselves (or not, as the case may be) on society.

Rives correctly assesses that polytheism was, by and large, a social and cultural experience, rather than an individual experience. Religion was something experienced by families, tribes or city-states and was integral to daily life, not separate from it. The religious authorities in the classical world were also, by and large, the same socio-economic elite who directed civil matters (exceptions, such as the Druids with their authority stemming from mastery of arcane lore, were treated with suspicion). Religion was therefore participating in communal life, and placating those powers thought to preside over communal life. While there were cults with different presumptions, they always operated either parallel to the civic cults or on the fringes, never quite replacing civic religion. The scope and practice of religion in the classical world was therefore entirely different from what modern Westerners experience today.

Rives writes for a general audience and is a delight to read. Those with little exposure to classical religion should be able to easily follow this clearly written and highly organized work. He offers no pre-conceptions about either polytheism or monotheism and writes with complete academic objectivity, something all too often rare in religious commentary. Aiding the work is an extended bibliography, glossary, maps, illustrations and topical inserts. This work is highly recommended for those wishing to acquaint themselves with classical religion.

5. Arabia and the Arabs: From the Bronze Age to the Coming of Islam by Robert G. Hoyland

Hoyland's book is included here primarily because of the chapter devoted to "Religion", which is nearly 30 pages long. Here is an excerpt:

In monotheism the sacred is concentrated in one omnipotent and omniscient entity, whereas in polytheism it is diffused over a wide range of beings, places, objects, practices and human personnel. In reality there is both seepage in most monotheisms, with saints and shrines and the like tending to proliferate, and some telescoping on the part of many polytheisms, with one God often being preferred over the others. But the difference between the two is real and substantial.

Firstly, in pre-modern societies that had not secularised public life and relegated religion to the private domain, monotheism is by nature intolerant and intransigent. For there to be only one true God all the other must be impotent frauds, and those who worship them are not just in error, but damned, and should be fought or at the very least shunned. If you believe in many Gods however, there is no reason to be hostile to Gods not your own, nor any bar to paying them and their faithful your respects. "When you enter a village, swear by its Gods" as the old Arabian proverb goes.

Second, the words of a unique omnipotent God must needs be the absolute Truth, in the light of which its recipients should therefore regulate their lives and interpret their world. Polytheism, on the other hand, is neither so unitary nor so coherent. It is rather a variegated worldview, one capable of eliciting a rich and subtle range of meanings from a multi-faceted reality, one desirous of understanding and influencing the many and varied ways the natural world impinges upon us . . . .

[T]he sophisticated civilization of south Arabia had the most developed pantheon in Arabia with the names of over one hundred deities featuring in the surviving inscriptions, though many of these probably represent different aspects of manifestations of the same God. 'Athtar almost always occupies first place in lists and his cult was spread throughout the region. Moreover, in one text we find a worshipper thanking another God for "interceding on his behalf with 'Athtar", confirming that he enjoyed a certain primacy . . . .

The patron diety (shym) of a people was of more immediate significance in south Arabia than the remoter figure of 'Athtar. The four principle peoples had as their patrons Almaqah (Sabeans), Wadd (Minaeans), 'Amm (Qatabanians) and Sayin (Hadramites), and each people was collectively termed the "children" of their respective patron deity. The last would be characterised as the "lord" of the shrine that served as the cultic centre for his people (e.g. "Almaqah lord of Awwam", the principle temple in Marib) . . . .

In less complex societies than south Arabia the pantheon might be much smaller and the patron deity might assume a particularly prominent place. Thus the inhabitants of the fertile oasis of Dedan turned to Dhu Ghaba, "the master of the grove", for their needs and rarely to any other. The Minaean God Wadd appears in a few inscriptions, but these are presumably attributable to the Minaean colony that ran trade operations in the oasis. Then there is Kutba (or Aktab), God of writing, who is probably related to a Babylonian scribal deity, perhaps brought to northwest Arabia by the Babylonian monarch Nabonidus. But other Gods are mentioned no more than once or twice, probably invoked by travellers passing through rather than native worshippers.

The Nabataeans were similarly loyal to Dushara, "the master of the Shara", the mountain range encompassing their capital Petra, and "the God of our lord ... the king of the Nabataeans". At Petra itself the only very popular deity was al-'Uzza, "the mighty Goddess", who is celebrated both in texts and and in artistic representations. However the Nabataeans were rulers of a kingdom, and in the territories they controlled many other deities were worshipped, such as Hubal and Manat in Hijaz, and Allat in the Hawran and the Syrian desert.

Moreover, as international merchants, they were exposed to many foreign influences, and it is not therefore surprising top find that the cult of the Egyptian Goddess Isis was widespread in Nabataea . . . .

Palmyra was a special case, for it possessed a very cosmopolitan population, many members of which had brought their Gods with them, and by virtue of its location had long been exposed to a number of different cultures, which had left their mark on its religious life. Hence a great diversity of deities jostle for position in the city's epigraphic record. The best documented cult, since AD 32 at least, was that of the divine triad Bel, Yahribol and Aglibol. Bel emerged as a supreme God, while Yahribol, an ancestral deity of the oasis, and Aglibol, a deity of a north Syrian immigrant community, became his acolytes. However, Bel continued to associate with other divinities, such as the sun God Shamash and in particular his female partner Herta. We also hear of the ancient Canannite/Phoenician deity Ba'alshamin, the Arab Goddess Allat, the Mesopotamian deity Nergal and so on.
[Robert G. Hoyland, Arabia and the Arabs, pp. 139-142]

"They'll wash your troubles away." Gil Scott Heron in memoriam

Ever feel kinda of down and out and don't know just what to do?
Livin' all of your days in darkness, let the sun shine through
Ever feel that somehow, somewhere you lost your way?
And if you don't get help you won't make it through the day?
You could call on Lady Day!
You could call on John Coltrane!
They'll wash your troubles, your troubles away

Plastic people with plastic minds on their way to plastic homes
There's no beginning, there ain't no ending
just on and on and on and on and...
It's all because we're so afraid to say that we're alone
until our hero rides in, rides in on his saxophone
You could call on Lady Day!
You could call on John Coltrane!
They'll wash your troubles, your troubles away

Why only mock some Christians, but not the rest?

"Thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.
So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot,
I will spue thee out of my mouth."

[The following intemperate rant was in large part inspired by a far more thoughtful and compassionate post at Sightless Among Miracles.]

There are fools, and then there are fools. We often hear about how Christians today should be more like the early Christians. Well, the early Christians were a bunch of intolerant superstitious antisocial violence-prone easily-led morons who were sure that Jebus was returning any day now. They were obsessed with prophecies about the exact time of his return, and with trying to discern "the signs" that presaged that return. They couldn't wait for their Zombie God to come back and take them all away from the awful, sinful world they hated living in, and that, for the most part, hated them in return and would be glad to see them gone.

Well, there is a group of Christians today who have truly returned to the roots of their faith. These are the followers of Harold Camping. But the fact is that even though they are closer to "original" Christianity than most of the other 2+ billion Christians alive today, those who believed Camping's prediction that the Rapture would occur on May 21st (with Judgement Day to follow on soon after), in truth hold to beliefs that are no less laughable than all the Zombie Jesus worshippers who mindlessly accept the whole "He Is Risen" bullshit every year on Chocolate Bunny Day. All Christians believe in the Second Coming, even if they quibble over the details and the timing. They have been waiting a long time now. Just how fucking stupid are they?

The Camping followers at least have the great virtue of actually taking their beliefs to heart, rather than just pretending to believe. In Revelations 3:15-16 we read: "Thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth." Well, the Camping crowd doesn't have to worry about being "spued" out of God's mouth. But what about the rest of those who consider themselves Christians?

(I think the thing that boggles my mind the most is the way that many of the same people who suddenly became all earnestly thoughtful, conflicted, and hand-wringy over the deep sixing of Osama bin Laden were among the most wantonly gleeful and mean-spirited in their mockery of the Ratpurean wannabes.)

But my real point, as the title of this post makes clear, is that the entire blood cult of Jebus is deserving of the same level of ridicule as that directed at the tiny handful of people who actually believe the crap in the Bible. Those who are only willing to heap scorn on a tiny, powerless handful, and then only when their favorite media icons and thought-leaders signal that it's OK, should really just shut the fuck up.

Theological postscript: For the most part, Pagans do not believe that the Universe has a beginning or an end. This is one of those things that Pagans, Buddhist, and Hindus have in common. In fact, the idea that time, and/or "the world" can have either a beginning or an end has been an object of ridicule since antiquity.

75% of Egyptians support the Muslim Brotherhood. Have a nice day.

The following are taken from the new Pew report on the results of their most recent polling in Egypt.