Posted on 05/04/2002 7:45:25 PM PDT by Tomalak
America was founded by Christian Puritans, who had a deep aversion to idolatry, popery, and magic. The hardships and dangers of their predicament made them cling to their religion as the one thing that justified the perilous pilgrimage to the New World. And from time to time they would tremble before the thought that paganism lay not only around them, but within, where it was all the more dangerous because hidden from view. So began the trials of suspected witches and the vigilant denunciations of neighbors that tore the New England communities apart.
Constant immigration has diversified the religious inheritance of the United States. Nevertheless the country remained until recently predominantly Christian, with a continuing aversion to pagan cults and superstitions, and a trust in the Bible as the common inheritance of the Judeo-Christian faiths. Indeed the United States has been held together more effectively by its Bible culture than by its Constitution: for the Bible has shaped the language, the morality, and the aspirations of ordinary Americans and provided them with a common frame of reference. American patriotism is scarcely thinkable without the Judeo-Christian God as its Almighty Guardian, and it is hardly surprising to find that the outlying communities in America-many of them suspicious of the Constitution as a weapon used against them by urban liberals-cling to the Bible as their most trusted guide. Debates over school prayer, over creationism and the curriculum, over abortion and sex education, are not, in America, the halfhearted affairs they are in Europe. On the contrary, they are at the center of politics since they affect the deep-down loyalty of many Americans to the settlement under which they live.
Strange things are now happening to this religious inheritance. The Christian churches have clung to their congregations, but often at the cost of dividing and subdividing into ever more marginal sects, each striving to accommodate the eccentricities of some obstinate community of believers. Almost none of the old denominations retains any centralized authority that can control the doctrine, liturgy, or membership of its peripheral congregations, while new cults and new services spring up everywhere, as dormant religious passions ignite like forest fires. In Europe we observe the slow, steady decline in faith, and the gradual disappearance of human hopes behind a cloud of skepticism. In America, however, every loss of faith is met by a gain, as new religious practices rise in the places vacated by the old. That this should be happening now, in the age of scientific inquiry, is testimony to the strength of American society, which finds new sources of hope beneath the never-ending stream of disappointment. Nevertheless, these sources of hope make less and less reference to the Bible and the Judeo-Christian tradition and are more and more pagan in tone. That which the Pilgrim fathers found most horrendous- witchcraft-is the latest, and one of the most successful, among the pagan cults now colonizing America.
Of course the witches-devotees of "Wicca," as they like to say-strenuously argue that their faith has been traduced in the past, that it is older and deeper and more spiritual than Christianity, and that it was branded as evil only because it was seen as a threat to the "patriarchal" culture. And by way of proving the point they have cobbled together a very up-to- date and user-friendly version of goddess-worship, which answers so well to the spiritual hunger of modern Americans as to cast serious doubt on its antiquity. Their basic principle-"Harm none and do what you will"-is the gospel of liberalism dressed up as law, rather than the lack of it; their "covens" are in many cases vamped-up feminist circles, devoted to boosting the confidence of women downtrodden by men, or at any rate by their own image of men; their symbols-the pentagram, the altar, the nine- inch daggers or "athames," the long robes, and the leaping over flames-may have ancient precedents, but they come to the Wiccans from 19th-century charlatans like Eliphas Levi and Aleister Crowley, men who cannily judged the spiritual hunger of the new middle classes and thereby notched up women by the score. Indeed, as Philip G. Davis has shown (Goddess Unmasked: The Rise of Neo-pagan Feminist Spirituality), the Wiccan theology is derived not from the old forms of goddess-worship, but from the writings of 19th-century commentators like Johann Jacob Bachofen, who invented the notion of a lost matriarchal past in a work that is now entirely discredited.
Feeding a hunger
Still, religion will survive any amount of skeptical scholarship, and the Wiccans are no exception. They offer the commodity for which modern Americans are hungry-the conversion experience, the transition from dark to light, lost to found, outsider to insider. In comparison with this redemptive gift, other things are of no account. The covens have been spreading through the suburbs; even the military now recognizes the Wiccans as a "minority religion," with the right to hold rituals and classes for serving personnel. Weak though their doctrines may be from any intellectual or historical perspective, they are a triumph of applied anthropology. Feminism, environmentalism, and liberalism all come together in a religion that recognizes the goddess as the object of worship, the priestess as her representative, and the earth and its seasons as the source of sacred rites.
It is tempting to regard the Wiccans in the same light as the other cults that have recently sprung up in America-the Branch Davidians, Heaven's Gate, the Moonies, the church of the notorious Rev. Jim Jones. There are, however, two important features that distinguish them. There is no leader or founder of the Wiccan cult; and there is no sacred text. Witchcraft is a religion without any structure of command and without any written law. True, there is an attempt to compensate in the use of antique and fustian language-"yclad," "mote," "hallowmas." But the religion recognizes no objective authority to which the worshipper must submit. On the contrary, it is a religion of "empowerment," to use the feminist word. Spells and brews, chants and talismans are all weapons in the hands of the individual Wiccan, who gains power over self and others through the manipulation of things. True, the Wiccan draws on mysterious cosmic forces; but the purpose of the spell and ritual is to join these forces to yourself-to amplify your own power and so achieve a kind of here-and-now redemption.
THE WICCAN'S POWERS
In this, at least, the Wiccans are close to the witches as they were once imagined. The witch was anathema to the Christian believer because she had arrogated to herself the powers that belong to the Almighty. Her spells were the antithesis of the sacred text-indeed, it was often thought that they consisted in reciting Biblical or liturgical texts backwards. For they were expressions of the individual will, rather than admonitions and counsels of a higher power. All the discipline of religion-which consists in obedience to the divine command and a day-to-day study of its meaning- was negated in the Puritan image of the witch, which is why witches were so greatly feared. They were the archetype of the liberated human being- the human being who had stepped free from the chains of morality and seized the world and its glories for herself.
For this very reason, however, witchcraft has a singular appeal to modern Americans, increasing numbers of whom are brought up without any knowledge of a sacred text and without the language and the concepts of the Judeo- Christian tradition. The idea that religion might be a matter of obedience and example strikes them as weird; the idea that it is a matter of the self and its empowerment connects immediately with the surrounding secular culture.
But why isn't feminism enough? Why the need for a Wiccan religion? What is added by religion that is absent from the politics of the group?
The answer is enchantment. Science has disenchanted the universe and deprived us of our place at its center. Human beings cannot live with this demoralized world. They need to see their environment as their tribal forebears saw it: as an enchanted place, which mysteriously returns our glance. The spell answers directly to this need, since it enables the witch to reanimate her universe. It gives supernatural power to a human being, and so rescues her from nature.
Rituals, spells, and incantations are deliberate defiances of reason. They place nonsense in the center of people's lives and ask them to unite in believing it. People on their own are nothing-victims of the natural world, and at the mercy of their own skepticism. People in a group, however, have a power that is more than the sum of their individual efforts. And the spell symbolizes this power. Alone you could not possibly believe in it, since alone you have only reason as your guide. Together, however, you can believe anything. In short, the Wiccans have rediscovered the phenomenon observed by the anthropologist Arnold van Gennep-the rite of passage, which purges the individual of his isolation and grants him membership in the tribe. The rite of passage works by summoning occult powers, by standing outside nature and against it, and by reassuring the individual that, absorbed into the community, he cannot be harmed.
And that is what is missing from modern life, and especially from life in the American city. The most important rite of passage in recent Western societies was marriage-the consecration before the community of a lifelong commitment. The collapse of marriage is not the result of feminism, but the cause of it. Without lasting marriages, women have no real guarantee of security, and no reason for trusting men. If men cannot be trusted, then women have to set up on their own. Feminism turns on the masculine realm and deconstructs it, representing it as a realm of lies, manipulation, and the brutal misuse of power. It thereby reassures women that they don't need men in any case. But it relies on rational arguments, sociological theories, and objective policies-so leaving the heart unconsoled. What is needed is a new form of membership, a new rite of passage, and a new lifelong commitment-hence a new form of nonsense. In other words, what is needed is witchcraft. This is surely why the Wiccans are expanding, even though they have neither a leader, nor a doctrine, nor a text.
On the other hand, a cult that spreads so quickly, and that has so little substance when it comes to answering the great metaphysical questions, is ripe for takeover by the real witches. Strong personalities like Aleister Crowley preyed on the vulnerable loners who had lost their religion but not their religious need, and who wanted to throw themselves beneath the juggernaut of some crushing ego. Modern America has seen the emergence of these leaders-Koresh and Jones being symptomatic. And it has discovered that their promise of a new life is also a death threat. For the moment, the Wiccans speak only of peace and love and finding oneself. But without a doctrine or a text to protect them, they may soon find themselves opening the door to the Devil. Those old Puritans were wrong about many things; but they were not entirely wrong about witchcraft.
"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." --Thomas Jefferson, 1781
And intolerant ones at that. It's interesting to note that many who fled religious-based persecution in England, ended up practicing their own religious persecution once they established their own colony/beachhead in the New World. Rhode Island (via Roger Williams) was perhaps the first colony/region to extend *real* religous freedom to people who did not necessarily acknowledge/practice the religion of the colony.
Fantasy and paganism are not necessarily always and immediately evil, as you seem to assume. There were virtuous pagans, such as the Roman Cicero. But Cicero have access to Christianity and then reject it, as many people do today.
Some wiccans are probably well-meaning and on balance more good than evil. But dabbling in that sort of thing can be very dangerous, and it can certainly turn into evil by degrees.
Whatever contempt I have for Wicca, I don't have that same dislike for individual Wiccans. Most of them are pretty dim and silly people, looking for a meaning that in fact only Christ can give them. I do find the general sense that people somehow believe Wicca to be worthy of the respect you would give to Buddhism or Judaism worrying though. Wicca is not a serious faith, and it is a loathesome doctrine so far as it exists at all. More to the point, it is a cynical attempt to cash in on the desires of rather unhappy young women to exert some sort of supernatural control over their lives.
"Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy." --H.L. Mencken
As for the terrible rise of neo-paganism, some of my best friends are pagans, no big deal. Instead of decrying all this supposed evil these people need to be asking themselves why people are fleeing Christianity in droves.
Chesterson should stick to topics he knows. When one stops believing in God they turn to believing in themselves. At least some do. Like everything else in this world gross generalizations will be wrong more often than they're right. With 6 billion people on the planet predicting the hows, whys and results of any individual thought within any individual person is an excercise in foolishness.
>>Yes, it's a good analysis. As Chesterton and others have >>said, if you stop believing in God, you do not end up >>believing in nothing, but in anything. People desperately >>need some kind of magic, transcendence, higher meaning, >>or imaginative richness in their lives. If they lack the >>gift of real religion they may turn to harmful >>substitutes.
Of course, you (and Chesterton) were only speaking for yourselves (not all of humanity). Not all of us are so weak as to be unable to accept a vast world of uncertainty. We aren't all "desperate" for an explanation of the "big questions" of life. Those who are "desperate" to fulfill such a void will do so according to their upbringing. If you're born a Muslim AND you are an individual incapable of dealing with uncertainty, you will calm that uncertainty by believing in the Muslim religion your parents bring you up in. Ditto for Christianity, Judaism, etc. Sure, adult-conversions do occur, but (by-and-large) people who need an explanation for the uncertainties of life end up using the (religious) explanation their parents gave them.
>>General concern for your fellow man and your culture >>and society? If you only care about your immediate >>family, why post on a political board at all?
You sound like a "greater good" liberal. But, I'll humor you.
Care about what? I only care if it negatively impacts society. Otherwise, the religious practices/observances of others does not concern me in the least. Should I care what/who/how people worship if it does not impact society?
Rubbish. Chesterton said that if people don't believe in God they believe in anything. He was not talking about me or himself. He was talking about everyone. Now either he was right or he was wrong, but he was making general claims.
Well, I agree with you. And here is the crunch. Does it make a positive impact on society to have witchcraft revered as some sort of realistic, respectable doctrine? To have Wiccans honestly (in their mind) describe their cult as some sort of morally based ideal? I think it is in society's interest that such people be countered. Surely you agree that Christianity must be supreme above pagan, immoral superstition?
>>That's because the "fled religious persecution" line >>about the colonists is 100% BS. They were looking to >>establish single religion zones.
I don't know what their intentions were ... so I can't judge whether their reasons were genuine or not. All I can judge is the historical reality of what the colonies became ... and it was not *true* religious freedom. For example, people were often forced to pay the salaries of clergy belonging to the colony-approved religion. And you were considered lucky to not be harrassed for acknowledging a religion/denomination not recognized by the colony.
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