Are Witches "Pagan"? Part I

[Oh, man, I can smell the molotovs in my inbox over this one.]

As I've explored in previous posts, modern Witchcraft is a direct and deliberate descendant from modern Gnosticism. The evidence is accepted and the conclusion is inevitable. It goes like this;

- Modern Gnosticism really begins at the end of the 18th century as disaffected Roman and Anglo-Catholic clergy explore and embrace occultism, usually with a syncretic aesthetic of Freemasonry, Alchemy, and Catharism. These are the first individuals since Clement of Alexandria to identify themselves as Gnostics. Among them are the Johannites of 1804. We must bear in mind that the pieces on the board at this point are not only highly educated, literate figures but also literary figures – writers, clergymen, and academics. The Romantics are the paragons of their identification; the poet as hero, as sacrificial victim.

- Toward the end of the 19th century we see the establishment of an occult-oriented Gnostic church in France with a strong emphasis on direct experience (gnosis) of the Divine Feminine (Sophia). This church is very much in the mileu of Theosophy, Spiritualism, and similar movements. Again, this church is populated by readers and writers and clergy from old-school traditions; Catholics, Anglicans, and Orthodox priests and bishops who either got away with their dabblings or got in trouble for it. The Liberal Catholic Church is part of this venn diagram, too, with many overt Gnostics among their ranks. So we have dozens and dozens of seance-holding, spell-casting, tarot-reading, angel-invoking, seminary-graduating occultists wearing albs and chasubles and clerical collars while they talk about the Great Goddess.

- The Golden Dawn characters are by no degree outside this circle, and these guys are all literary figures – Celtic Revival as Occult Revival – who prize their role as poet above all else. One of these occult literati is of course bad-boy Aleister Crowley, who not only identifies himself with the Gnostic Church of France but co-opts its symbolism, language, regalia, and signature for his own various organizations. While his "Gnostic Mass" most definitely isn't the Gnostic Mass of authentic Eglise Gnostique Catholique, he invoked the EGC name in a very deliberate way. His understanding of his authority stemmed more from his association with Encausse and other real EGC bishops than revisionists (who claim he was always sold on his Magus of the New Aeon thing) would care to admit.

- Crowley initiated Gardner into the OTO and Crowley's version of the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica (possibly as early as 1939). The original Wiccan Third Degree and the Charge of the Goddess is pure Crowley. The first Gardnerian Wiccan coven was founded specifically as an OTO encampment and as a Gnostic Church. Now, while the authenticity of Crowley's status as an Independent Catholic Bishop is in serious doubt, Gardner's is not. As baffling as it is for some to understand the father of Wicca as having valid Apostolic Succession from the Roman Catholic Church, it's a fairly straight line. All these guys had been swapping creds for half a century by this point. So as of 1950-something, Wicca is at once Gnostic, Thelemic, and Apostolic. But of course, the only reason Gardner shows up on the radar of Pagan Studies is that he wrote (and read) books.

- But wait! Isn't Wicca the surviving indigenous stone age Goddess religion of Europe? [coughs].... [crickets]....

- Okay, one of the books Gardner read was Graves' The White Goddess. Poet as hero, as sacrificial victim. Goddess religion as a literary activity. No doubt Yeats (Mr. Celtic-Revival-Equals-Occult-Revival), The Romantics, Crowley, and those rebel don't-tell-the-Pope Napoleonic Johannite clergymen would agree.

- Well, I'll tell you who wouldn't agree. The prevailing paradigm of contemporary academic Pagan Studies, which wants to put the literate and literary Witchcraft and its later-20th-century offspring in the same category as African Tribal Religion, North Americann Shamanism, Santeria and Umbanda. An overtly Gnostic Restorationist religion-as-literary-movement (and one specifically tied to the languages of the British Isles) equated with pre-literate and exclusively oral cultures and customs from sub-Saharan Africa and South America.

Umm... no. Sorry guys.

More on this over the coming week, as I review three books worth reading (including one I vehemently disgree with) and question the appropriateness of the term pagan a) at all and b) as it relates to "Paganism".