Freddy, I disagree that most of what we know about the Celts is conjecture, and would suggest that you actually read (choose any book, or the urls I posted earlier) more about their culture. While you seem to filter most of your knowledge through what the ancient Greeks thought about particular cultures, you might expand your knowledge by studying other sources. Certainly the Brehon laws, some of which I quoted earlier, reveal an advanced culture. I am not sure that the ability to write is always the only sign of civilization, but the sources I have documented show a progression of ancient Irish WRITTEN languages, not the folkloric drivel which you condescendingly assume.
Incidentally, the Spanish Inquisition was one of several. The first one, from several histories I have read, was with the Catharsists in 1184. While the Spanish Inquisition started in what is now Spain, and spread to southern France, there was also the Roman Inquisition, and the general Inquisition across Europe, which according to YOUR source, Robbins in "The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology", gives a conservative estimate of 200,000 people tortured and killed. Robbins, incidentally, asserts like many other scholars, that the Catholic Church demonized people for its own purposes. I think we need to remember, as well, that Satanism is a negative offshoot of Christianity, and has nothing to do with the medieval persecution of innocent victims, or with modern wicca either.
Before 1350, witchcraft primarily meant sorcery, a survival
of common superstitions - pagan only insofar as the beliefs
antedated Christianity, never pagan in the sense of an organized
survival opposition to Christianity or of some pre-Christian
religion. Sorcery or magic is world-wide and world-old; it
is simply the attempt to control nature in man's own interests;
it is the forerunner of religion before priests appropriated
tribal lore for themselves.
"The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology",
-- Rossell Hope Robbins
It is really hard for me to understand where you get your ideas about Christianity being a positive religion for women. In my recent discussions, I quoted urls with numerous quotes from the Bible regarding the negative way in which women are perceived. Anyone with any curiosity at all about the cruel ways women were tortured by Christians during the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance can quickly do a web search and find the graphic, original art from the time. Christianity is a male-dominated religion, and in our mostly Christian America women are the victims of domestic violence in about 50% of marriages. As you may recall, the Catholic Church is more than reluctant to induct women into the priesthood. I also notice that you did not respond to my comment about the Vatican recently admitting complicity with the Nazis in France during World War II. While I have no problems with anyone's religious beliefs, or the comfort they provide, I do not think it is accurate to claim that Christianity has been a totally positive force in history, and certainly not for women and women's rights!!!
I do have trouble understanding what all of the fear is about with female-centered, or goddess, religions. Paganism is not synonymous with evil. Here is a quote from the modern "witch" Starhawk, who is incidentally on the faculty of a Catholic university because she is teaching spirituality as the Jesuits perceive it:
From earliest times,i women have been witches, wicce, "wise ones"-priestesses, diviners, midwives,
poets, healers, and singers of songs of power. Woman-centered culture, based on the worship of the Great
Goddess, underlies the beginnings of all civilization. Mother Goddess was carved on the walls of paleolithic caves,
and painted in the shrines of the earliest cities, those of the Anatolian plateau. For her were raised the giant stone
circles, the henges of the British Isles, the dolmens and cromlechs of the later Celtic countries, and for her the great
passage graves of Ireland were dug. In her honor, sacred dancers leaped the bulls in Crete and composed lyric
hymns within the colleges of the holy isles of the Mediterranean. Her mysteries were celebrated in secret rites at
Eleusis, and her initiates included some of the finest minds of Greece. Her priestesses discovered and tested the
healing herbs and learned the secrets of the human mind and body that allowed them to ease the pain of childbirth, to
heal wounds and cure diseases, and to explore the realm of dreams and the unconscious. Their knowledge of nature
enabled them to tame sheep and cattle, to breed wheat and corn from grasses and weeds, to forge ceramics from
mud and metal from rock, and to track the movements of moon, stars, and sun. Witchcraft, "the craft of the wise," is
the last remnant in the west of the time of women's strength and power. Through the dark ages of persecution, the
covens of Europe preserved what is left of the mythology, rituals, and knowledge of the ancient matricentric
(mothercentered) times. The great centers of worship in Anatolia, Malta, Iberia, Brittany, and Sumeria are now only
silent stones and works of art we can but dimly understand. Of the mysteries of Eleusis, we have literary hints; the
poems of Sappho survive only in fragments. The great collections of early literature and science were destroyed by
patriarchal forces-the library of Alexandria burnt by Caesar, Charlemagne's collection of lore burnt by his son Louis
"the Pious," who was offended at its "paganism." But the craft remains, in spite of all efforts to stamp it out, as a living
tradition of Goddess-centered worship that traces its roots back to the time before the triumph of patriarchy. The old
religion of witchcraft before the advent of Christianity, was an earth-centered, nature-oriented worship that
venerated the Goddess, the source of life, as well as her son-lover-consort, who was seen as the Horned God of the
hunt and animal life. Earth, air, water, fire, streams, seas, wells, beasts, trees, grain, the planets, sun, and most of all,
the moon, were seen as aspects of deity. On the great seasonal festivals-the solstices and equinoxes, and the eves of
May, August, November, and February,-all the countryside would gather to light huge bonfires, feast, dance, sing,
and perform the rituals that assured abundance throughout the year. When Christianity first began to spread, the
country people held to the old ways, and for hundreds of years the two faiths coexisted quite peacefully. Many
people followed both religions, and country priests in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were frequently upbraided
by church authorities for dressing in skins and leading the dance at the pagan festivals. But in the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries, the church began persecution of witches, as well as Jews and "heretical" thinkers. Pope
Innocent the VIII, with his Bull of 1484, intensified a campaign of torture and death that would take the lives of an
estimated 9 million people, perhaps 80 percent of whom were women. The vast majority of victims were not coven
members or even necessarily witches. They were old widows whose property was coveted by someone else, young
children with "witch blood," midwives who furnished the major competition to the male-dominated medical
profession, free-thinkers who asked the wrong questions. An enormous campaign of propaganda accompanied the
witch trials as well. Witches were said to have sold their souls to the devil, to practice obscene and disgusting rites,
to blight crops and murder children. In many areas, the witches did worship a Horned God as the spirit of the hunt,
of animal life and vitality, a concept far from the power of evil that was the Christian devil. Witches were free and
open about sexuality-but their rites were "obscene" only to those who viewed the human body itself as filthy and evil.
Questioning or disbelieving any of the slander was itself considered proof of witchcraft or heresy, and the falsehoods
that for hundreds of years could not be openly challenged had their effect. Even today, the word wl'tch is often
automatically associated with "evil." With the age of reason in the eighteenth century, belief in witches, as in all things
psychic and supernatural, began to fade. The craft as a religion was forgotten; all that remained were the wild stories
of broomstick flights, magic potions, and the summoning of spectral beings. Memory of the true craft faded
everywhere except within the hidden covens. With it, went the memory of women's heritage and history, of our
ancient roles as leaders, teachers, healers, seers. Lost, also, was the conception of the Great Spirit, as manifest in
nature, in life, in woman. Mother Goddess slept, leaving the world to the less than gentle rule of the God-Father. The
Goddess has at last stirred from sleep, and women are reawakening to our ancient power. The feminist movement,
which began as a political, economic, and social struggle, is opening to a spiritual dimension. In the process, many
women are discovering the old religion, reclaiming the word wl'tch and, with it, some of our lost culture. Witchcraft,
today, is a kaleidoscope of diverse traditions, rituals, theologies, and structures. But underneath the varying forms is
a basic orientation common to all the craft. The outer forms of religion-the particular words said, the signs made, the
names used-are less important to us than the inner forms, which cannot be defined or described but must be felt and
intuited.
The craft is earth religion, and our basic orientation is to the earth, to life, to nature. There is no dichotomy between
spirit and flesh, no split between Godhead and the world. The Goddess is manifest in the world; she brings life into
being, is nature, is flesh. Union is not sought outside the world in some heavenly sphere or through dissolution of the
self into the void beyond the senses. Spiritual union is found in life, within nature, passion, sensuality-through being
fully human, fully one's self. Our great symbol for the Goddess is the moon, whose three aspects reflect the three
stages in women's lives and whose cycles of waxing and waning coincide with women's menstrual cycles. As the new
moon or crescent, she is the Maiden, the Virgin-not chaste, but belonging to herself alone, not bound to any man.
She is the wild child, lady of the woods, the huntress, free and untamed-Artemis, Kore, Aradia, Nimue. White is her
color. As the full moon, she is the mature woman, the sexual being, the mother and nurturer, giver of life, fertility,
grain, offspring, potency, joy-Tana, Demeter, Diana, Ceres, Mari. Her colors are the red of blood and the green of
growth. As waning or dark moon, she is the old woman, past menopause, the hag or crone that is ripe with wisdom,
patroness of secrets, prophecy, divination, inspiration, power-Hecate, Ceridwen, Kati, Anna. Her color is the black
of night. The Goddess is also earth-Mother Earth, who sustains all growing things, who is the body, our bones and
cells. She is air-the winds that move in the trees and over the waves, breath. She is the fire of the hearth, of the
blazing bonfire and the fuming volcano; the power of transformation and change. And she is water-the sea, original
source of life; the rivers, streams, lakes and wells; the blood that flows in the rivers of our veins. She is mare, cow,
cat, owl, crane, flower, tree, apple, seed, lion, sow, stone, woman. She is found in the world around us, in the cycles
and seasons of nature, and in mind, body, spirit, and emotions within each of us. Thou art Goddess. I am Goddess.
All that lives (and all that is, lives), all that serves life, is Goddess. Because witches are oriented to earth and to life,
we value spiritual qualities that I feel are especially important to women, who have for so long been conditioned to
be passive, submissive and weak. The craft values independence, personal strength, self-not petty selfishness but that
deep core of strength within that makes us each a unique child of the Goddess. The craft has no dogma to stifle
thought, no set of doctrines that have to be believed. Where authority exists, within covens, it is always coupled with
the freedom every covener has, to leave at any time. When self is valued-in ourselves-we can see that self is
everywhere. Passion and emotion-that give depth and color and meaning to human life-are also valued. Witches
strive to be in touch with feelings, even if they are sometimes painful, because the joy and pleasure and ecstasy
available to a fully alive person make it worth occasional suffering. So-called negative emotion-anger-is valued as
well, as a sign that something is wrong and that action needs to be taken. Witches prefer to handle anger by taking
action and making changes rather than by detaching ourselves from our feelings in order to reach some nebulous,
"higher" state. Most of all, the craft values love. The Goddess' only law is "Love unto all beings." But the love we
value is not the airy flower power of the hippies or the formless, abstracted agape of the early Christians. It is
passionate, sensual, personal love, eros, falling in love, mother-child love, the love of one unique human being for
other individuals, with all their personal traits and idiosyncrasies. Love is not something that can be radiated out in
solitary meditation-it manifests itself in relationships and interractions with other people. It is often said "You cannot
be a witch alone"-because to be a witch is to be a lover, a lover of the Goddess, and a lover of other human beings. |
