philly goddessWrote:
First, I would like to thank you for your audience and Thought Criminal for inviting me.It is quite exciting to be here as I have never participated in a debate before now.



Let's Begin.



I oppose Thought Crimals position on Wicca NOT being "An ancient religion handed down throught the ages" as the resolution states. It is my complete opinion from reading various texts by many dissimilar authors that wicca is the survival, fragmented though it may be of an ancient pre-Christian religion.



I base my argument on the following assumptions:



!. My definite opinion through my studies thus far.



2. Wicca utilizes anciet ritual inner meaning, symbols, and mythology.



3. The simple notion that neither Gardener, nor Crowley created wicca.



4. Wicca is a branch of paganism, paganism is not new but in itself ancient; Therefore it must be truth that Witches(A practitioner of witchcraft) existed in that ancient world. That being truth than wicca is itself, ancient.



Thank you, Thought criminal may begin

philly goddessWrote:
Thank you Thought Criminal. I am also pleased you invited me as I have stated above.



Let me start by saying I am not a practioner of witchcraft. My view on this subject is completely objective and unabridged. Although Thought Criminal has given an an exceptional if not redundant hypothesis for his point of view, it is just that. A point of view. I stated that it was my opinion that Wicca is handed down through the ages, because this is a much debated topic in the pagan community. Opinion is very important to this case because there is no factual evidence for either side.




I find this interesting given the fact that I presented VOUMES of factual evidence in my last post.

The fact is, it's not a matter of opinion and the only people debating the matter are foolish neophytes and hangers-on who want to associate with Wicca but have no desire to learn what it is actually about.

I refer my readers, and Philly, again to the documents I have cited, many of which are the work of scholars from within the Wiccan community and are among the most highly respected members of that community.

In fact I encourage anyone wh may be compelled by this notion of it being a "matter of opinion" to go and read my last post again and then feel free to check the sources and indeed check the sources I will provide in this post.

This is not a matter of opinion, plain and simple and attempts to frame it as such are without any merit whatsoever and serve only as a wedge instrument for the rest of her argument.






The very fact That Gardener himself tried so very hard to disprove Crowely as one of the creators of wicca in itself, gives the resolution crediability.

No, it does not at all in fact. It clearly shows that he wanted to cover up his association and plagiarism so he could carry on with his assertions about the age of Wicca.




It was very obvious Gardener believed wicca was ancient.


This actually isn't nearly so obvious as people might think. Throughout his published works he makes several interesting references. One must understand the personality of Gardner and Crowley, and indeed the personality of the Occultist to fully appreciate how firmly ones tongue can be planted in cheek and how many layers of meaning a seemingly simple statement may hold.

I give a brief example.

"Witches are consummate leg-pullers; they are taught it as part of their stock in trade."

-Gerald Gardner, 1954


This seems to illuminte a passage in Witchcraft Today:

"The only man I could think of who could have invented the rites was the late Aleister Crowley...possibly he borrowed things from otehr cult writings, or more likely someone may have borrowed expressions from him..."

Given this and what we know now of the origins of the Book of Shadows, as illustrated in my previous post, it seems obvious Gardner is tipping his hat here.

But more on the ancient claims later.




Valiente must also have held this same belief, she tried very hard to keep the fraudulent origin of this book of shadows hidden.

For the same reasons Gardner did, namely to hide the sins and give legitimacy to the budding faith.



Although his methods may be questionable, his effort is not without notice. We must ask ourselves why a person who was dedicated to wicca felt it was so important that wicca be recognized as "old". The only summation I could come up with is that it is truth that, it is old.




Then forgive me for suggesting you are entriely too forgiving of human nature.

A much better reason would have been to lend legitimacy and credibility to a new religion and tapping into the romantic ideals so many had, and still have, regarding Witchcraft.

If Gardner has just said that he cobbled together some Crowley, some Golden Dawn, some Masonry, some John Dee and a helping of mythical (and false) ideas about ancient druids and made up a new religion out of it, how far do you expect it might have gone?

Likely as not it woul have ended up a curious footnote in the history of the late 1950's, if that.

By giving Wicca a history, he gave it mystery, power, perceived legitimacy and imbued it with a sense of romance in it's long standing struggle against suppression. These elements were crucial tools of proselytization.






I believe most people who are read on this issue do acknowledge Gardener was associated with Crowely.

Seeing as how I have provided direct evidence that he was, I wonder why this is even an issue anymore.



While my opponent might believe that will argue conspiracy of the catholic church I assure you I won't. I am not here to persecute a faith. Mostly I am not much of a conspiracist. Gardener very obviously based his own faith on many of the same principals that Crowely did.


I would hope that you recognize that Crowley himself invente many of the rites practiced by Thelema and the OTO, rites based not in ancient witch cults but in the work of Golden Dawn and other groups I have mentioned ad nauseum.


Is it fair to believe Crowely might also have believed Wicca was ancient?

No evidence exists to suggest he did.



.Here is a quote from Crowely's book Confessions, which I am only taking a small portion of due to what some consider the vulgarity of his writings.



"Their form is only sexual because the phenomena of reproduction are the most universally understood and pungently appreciated of all. I believe that when this position is generally accepted, mankind will be able to go back with a good conscience to ceremonial worship."



Again, this does not refer to Wicca. Unless you can provide me with a quote where Crowley clearly references a religion called Wicca or clearly references exact practices of Wiccans, such as worpshiop of the Horned God and Goddess, you only have a man talking about paleo-pagain practices and the practices of those like John Dee, Freemasons, Golden Dawn and all the others I have mentioned.




Crowely above uses the words "go back " . If he, the the man attributed by many as the creator of wicca speaks of ceremonial worship in the past tense, does it not concur that he also believed wicca to be old, or ancient. It is my belief that it does.



Again, ceremonial practice is not exclusive to Wicca. Not even close. Do you really think all ceremonial worship pracitces are associated with Wicca? Guess you'd better inform the Pope he's a neo-pagan then.




Gardener and Crowely are majors contributors to wicca and the reason this religion has been reintroduced to modern times. To call them creators of a faith that has clearly in their own minds is ancient is to demean it. Crowely and Gardener are no more than introducors of an old faith to the current era. nothing more, nothing less.



Again you have offered nothing in the way of evidence to even begin to call it a re-introduction at all.

Furthermore, how exactly does it demean the faith to tell the truth about it? How does it's age ACTUALLY impact the veracity of it's teachings? Many many Wiccans all over the world practice their faith quite dutifully in full recognition of the age of their religion and the circumstances under which it was founded and have no issues with that fact.

It strikes me that in the final accounting, what matters is whether or not the system works and what it brings to people, not it's age or lineage.





Can I give actual accounts of an mother teaching her daughter how to draw a circle, or to make a salve of herbs. No, I cannot.


That's surprising because many cultures and faiths have used sigil-like symbolism throughout the ages, so it is remarkably easy to come up with examples. Same with herbal remedies.

The problem you will encounter is in relating them to Wicca, because there is simply no evidence present to suggest that was ever the case. These practices come from thousands of very different folk traditions and early Abrahamic practices and to consider them part of a coherent tradition is simply without any basis at all, much less to consider them part of something called Wicca.


I assure you that if Criminal himself was a pagan in the times of persecution he would not have kept written records of his faith. To do so would be a death sentence to himself and his family. Instead, he would hand down the knowledge through word of mouth. They would practice in secret with those of a like mind with absolute trust.



Let's pay special attention here, because I think Philly fails to understand my point.

Let's say you are an ancient Wiccan (never mind for a second that you never existed, let's play a bit here) and you posess secret knowledge of your craft, knowledge which has run in an unbroken chain up to present times.

You have been caught by the Spanish Inquisition and now you are in prison. YOu refuse to recant and refuse to admit your wrongdoing. You hold out steadfastly under interrogation, never revealing your secrets.

Then they start the torture.

They could use the Heretics Fork on you.

The Heretic's Fork was a device used to make a prisoner's jailhouse experience all the crueler: it was arguably not an instrument of torture per se though it was undeniably very cruel.

The fork consisted of a short segment of iron, several inches long, with a two-tined fork at either end. Heretics who refused to recant their views were outfitted with the fork in the following manner: one end was jabbed underneath the chin, while the other end was firmly grounded above the breast. In addition to the dreadful pain, which obviously persisted around the clock, the positioning of the device kept the head at an uncomfortable angle and made sleep all but impossible. With a slight dose of black humor, the fork was typically engraved, "Abbiuro, " Italian for "I recant." That legend was, in fact, true: the prisoner had only to recant for the fork to be removed.


But let's say you hold out, you are after all a brave person and feeling the blessings of your Goddess you resist.

So they do something a little more drastic and sit you on the Judas Chair:





The Judas Chair was a pyramid-shaped seat. The victim was placed on top of it, with the point inserted into their anus or vagina, then very slowly lowered by ropes. The intended effect was to stretch the orifice over a long period of time, sort of a slow motion impalement.



Do you think you could resist THAT for very long? Do you really think you would be able to keep your secrets?

You do? Okay then. We'll move on and try the Pear of Anguish on you:





The Pear of Anguish is a torture instrument shaped like a pear, which was inserted in the victim's mouth, rectum or vagina. Upon insertion, the handle was turned, causing the leaves to slowly separate causing extreme pain and mutilation to the victim.



And if you really think you can resist that, there are hundreds of other methods at their disposal to get their confession out of you. It's not just pain that will get you to talk, it will be your totaly psychological breakdown. Your torturers will have all the time in world to hear your confession, while you only have time to await more pain and more confusion. Kept in dark dungeons, never knowing if it's day or night, being fed at odd hours and given the same meal every time to further your confusion. The torturer saps your will, he makes you understand that you are up against an inevitable fate. Your sense of reality begins to crumble and after weeks of almost no sleep, brutal torture, vicious interrogations and total breakdown of identity, you will crack.

It is inevitable. Anyone in the business will tell you it is impossible to resist torture provided your enemy has time on his side. They train the army this way, to resist as long as possible but to know there is a point one can no longer resist.

Some choice quotes on the subject of torture:

"As the gap between the 'I' and the 'me' deepens, dissociation and alienation increase. The subject that, under torture, was forced into the position of pure object has lost his or her sense of interiority, intimacy, and privacy. Time is experienced now, in the present only, and perspectivethat which allows for a sense of relativityis foreclosed. Thoughts and dreams attack the mind and invade the body as if the protective skin that normally contains our thoughts, gives us space to breathe in between the thought and the thing being thought about, and separates between inside and outside, past and present, me and you, was lost."

- Beatrice Patsalides Phd, Ethics of the Unspeakable: Torture Survivors in Psychoanalytic Treatment


"Torture is an obscenity in that it joins what is most private with what is most public. Torture entails all the isolation and extreme solitude of privacy with none of the usual security embodied therein ... Torture entails at the same time all the self exposure of the utterly public with none of its possibilities for camaraderie or shared experience. (The presence of an all powerful other with whom to merge, without the security of the other's benign intentions.)

- Shirley Spitz Phd, The Psychology of Torture


"Pain is also unsharable in that it is resistant to language ... All our interior states of consciousness: emotional, perceptual, cognitive and somatic can be described as having an object in the external world ... This affirms our capacity to move beyond the boundaries of our body into the external, sharable world. This is the space in which we interact and communicate with our environment. But when we explore the interior state of physical pain we find that there is no object "out there"no external, referential content. Pain is not of, or for, anything. Pain is. And it draws us away from the space of interaction, the sharable world, inwards. It draws us into the boundaries of our body."

- Shirley Spitz Phd, The Psychology of Torture


"The purpose of all coercive techniques is to induce psychological regression in the subject by bringing a superior outside force to bear on his will to resist. Regression is basically a loss of autonomy, a reversion to an earlier behavioral level. As the subject regresses, his learned personality traits fall away in reverse chronological order. He begins to lose the capacity to carry out the highest creative activities, to deal with complex situations, or to cope with stressful interpersonal relationships or repeated frustrations."


- CIA Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual



Given all of the above, how likely do you think it is that out of the countless people tried under the Inquisitional Courts, not a single one broke and spilled even the slightest hint of Wicca or even Wicca-like practice?

The answer of course is that it isn't likely at all. It's actually completely defies any kind of rationality to assume that even one person, never mind thousands, could resist these means.

However, if Philly would like to continue making the case I welcome her providing reference to testimony that supports this. Between you and I, gentle reader, I already know there is none but she is welcome to see for herself.







Finally it is true that ravenwolf is an author that sparks controvere. It is believed by many that she does not present the true face of the religion, and her writings are geared toward the teen rise of "Pop Magick". she states in her quote that Thought criminal used in the above post,



"Wicca, as you practice the religion today, is a new religion, barely fifty years old. The techniques you use at present are not entirely what your elders practiced even thirty years ago. Of course, threads of 'what was' weave through the tapestry of 'what is now.' ...in no way can we replicate to perfection the precise circumstances of environment, society, culture, religion and magick a hundred years ago, or a thousand. Why would we want to ? The idea is to go forward with the knowledge of the past, tempered by the tools of our own age."



- Silver RavenWolf



Ravenwolf's personal philosophy is obvious. she does seem to contradict herself though. She attributes wicca as being new, yet she also states. "'what was' weave through the tapestry of 'what is now.'". A metaphor of cloth. If wicca were a quilt, could it have been weaved without the ancient pagan practices it is based on? No, I contend that those ancient practices are the very fiber of wicca. Without those practices wicca simply would not exist.





Thank you so much for pointing out exactly what I had hoped you would point out.

Ravenwolf is indeed considered a "pop Wiccan" and is regarded by serious practitioners as pretty much a populist neophyte looking to make a buck selling books to teenagers. Her name is almost synonomous with the degrogatroy "fluff bunny" stereotype of Wicca.

Which is precisely why her comments here have so much impact, because EVEN someone who is largely considered a profiteer and an amateur is forced to acknowledge that Wicca is a modern invention.

What motives might she have for admitting this besides the glaring truth of it? None. For all her flaws, this is a moment which at least shows Ravenwolf is willing to be intellectually honest with us all when faced with overwhelming factual evidence.

As for your "quilt" I have already dealt with this notion several times and demonstrated that the sources of these practices are quite well accounted for by more contemporary sources and sources which have NOTHING to do with anything resembling Wicca or indeed paganism in general.

To continue suggesting these things you will have to actually provide some kind of documentation which supports the notion that these practices are anything other than I have already categorized them. Failing that, you simply have no case.





Thank you for your audience, Thought Criminal may continue.