This for me will be called magical history, biography, and memoir, and then subdivided later, of course. I would like to eventually get as many books of that description, at least as the Christian memoirs I’ve read that were actually good, you know. (Christian memoir used to be one of my favorite books, far more so than theology, although I didn’t realize that I wasn’t really helping the consensus Christians by trying to be both one of them, and not crazy, right.) It’s at least as useful as the Celtic archeological history—although that can be quite suggestive and good. At its worst though, it’s chess—it’s paradigms seen through paradigms seen through bronze mirrors, you know—instead of addressing the differences and unities of Celtic culture, say, the one might for Western culture—the American reading a French novel, you know: America and France are occasionally quite close and often rather separate, but one does not take this to mean that “Western culture does not exist”, merely that it is an abstraction, a lens that has some accuracy…. You could do it with anything, “Pagan” and “Christian”—older adults tell very romantic stories of their stoic grandparents in the 20s, and perhaps it is true and it is merely that they themselves have lost the knack, complaining bitterly over a rented car they have to use for a week, or maybe the story is exaggerated, and surely having and losing is not all excellence—some people make money during panics, and it would be worse if the panic were total…. Some people do very well…. But then, life is not ALL excellence, sometimes we have and we lose, and probably the story is based on something. Maybe if the grandfather had been a Druid he’d have been much the same…. But yeah: there are these differences between different Celtic countries or different Western countries, but it takes a real nerd, the mean kind, to say, not even with a concrete example or something, but just with paradigms about paradigms about paradigms, that, “there were no Celts”, you know…. It’s just as childish, in its own special way, as the most juvenile Irish-American Celtic fantasism about Merlin just being any old white man without anything Celtic about him, whatever, you know. Like any old man from the 1880s is Merlin, for some people.

But yeah, it’s a decent book, “Witch-Cult”, in that it said that there were witches and that they weren’t harpies who drank the blood of Christian virgins or butchered babies and roasted them alive, or whatever the rumors were, right…. I do think that there was no “pure” witch cult in the Middle Ages, with zero adaptation and partial Christianization, but then, the “purity” of one’s ideas is not desirable…. But yeah: I read this book, not all the way through, but I began it, when I hardly read at all, and what little help I got I got from this book, and it would have well—oh, it would have been better—if I had kept reading, you know…. I don’t know how else to say it, you know. Just that there was a real religion out there, and that it wasn’t about cartoon villains, but old Gods….

…. It does sound like during the centuries of violent persecution, (even), there were some overlapping ideas or tendencies between loyal church-goer and witch: the apparent (and indeed possible) preponderance of the male god among the witches; the willingness of the witches to become martyrs, to suffer, and indeed, be loyal unto death. It is of course possible, and I once I believe in error, saw this simply as one tendency imposing its will upon another sort by force: persecution and death makes people turn to a male protector-god, perhaps; the Christians desire to hear stories of sacrifice and death, and so they create them. (Of course, it does APPEAR this way, and perhaps on a superficial way that is how it is: I heard a man preach today and talk about, as an example of something quite distinct from Christian love, “conversion by concussion”, and I thought that a fine phrase. That is indeed what many of them put stock by, though not all of them.) But I believe now it is not ~really~ so: it is that it was the same astrological age for both witch and loyal church-goer, you know. The stars were in the same places. Put another way, before the Christians could press their story down upon the world, whether the world was willing or no—and I suppose, sure, that that is what happened on a ~superficial~ level—that they had to fall under a certain influence, which they then chose to respond to, in a certain way, and then, those others responded to what was transmitted to them, as they willed, etc.

…. But yeah, it’s certainly funny how people who ignore the whole story assume that paganism/magic was swiftly and easily shed and slipped off, perhaps in a few years or a decade or two, instead of slowly and stubbornly bludgeoned and strangled over many centuries, you know. Because after all, the academy, from which, I mean, you’d think that Paul was the apostle of Plato, from how Christians relate to witches, you know, and to their wives, but yeah: the academy has that bias of at least needing to ignore life, mere life, the life of the world, and not the strange turnings of strategy, you know. And I mean, to everything its place, but for a long fucking time that obviously wasn’t the dominant idea, exactly, now was it? (Ie, “To everything its place”).

…. But yeah, time changes all things. Things were different in previous centuries—the craft was more hierarchical, old-fashioned. Even in the 20s life was different—people would write books with quotes in French and not translate them. And you can’t tell me that nobody existed back then who understood English better than French in the English-speaking world, you know. They were just…. You’ll forgive me if I say that they were just crazy back then. It wasn’t some Parisian who was going to get upset by us using English in one of our Anglophone books, you know. But someone would have been offended. Some great man, I suspect….

…. I find it very, very curious, that the “Devil”—that is, the God, or perhaps the High Priest—is described in the trial testimony almost always as having black clothes, or, more commonly, as simply being (to dispense with odd spelling and shit) as a “black man”—these being the years of the Atlantic slave trade…. Of course, usage was different then, in say Shakespeare, Caucasians of slightly darker complexion—perhaps more of a tanned or Mediterranean look—are sometimes described as “dark”, or I guess, even “black”—and such things and even people were often associated with what in the 50s and 60s and early 70s was rock, and what in the new wave years to the present is hip-hop, you know…. They were gods from Europe, of course, but really Anglicanism and Catholicism and the established churches, that was the “white way”, you know—the way of whiteness; the devil was a mickle black man, you know….

(I’m pretty sure mickle is a ghetto-spelling version of ‘very’, right: it’s like an intensifier with a drink in its hand, basically….)

…. But yeah: the witches were like, reverse colorists—they didn’t want their leaders to be blond…. Or to wear pastels. 😎 (Ie, like, white-yellow, you know. That would be a sartorial no-no for the witch king….)

…. Torture was basically routine police/trial procedure in the Middle Ages, and the standard belief was basically that God did to witches (and Jews and heretics and so on) in the afterlife what the Church did on earth. Kinda makes the new age belief “there is no judgment with God; if someone judges you it’s yourself” seem pretty reliable, right…. Though of course the majority of people try not to choose between the two, basically.

…. And yeah, I would never want to de-emphasize, intentionally, Native suffering, but even that Native history book I read talked about how colonialism’s “trial run” so to speak, was basically launched against people like witches and the Irish and so on…. It’s like they were the beta testers, or something….

And I really don’t get what people mean (other than it’s them stating their materialist-skeptic creds) when they say they ‘all this has been disproved’, and so on, right. Did people not die? And whatever happened was certainly about gender and religion—some guys wanted to persecute away certain gender expressions, and certain religious ideas or forms…. Some opportunism went along with it, which makes sense; it’s almost a rule that when the collective ego tries to seize power, the personal ego tries to seize the bag of loot, right…. In principle, it’s not so different from how in the Nazi decades, some Nazis couldn’t have cared less about anti-Semitism; they just wanted to loot Europe, right…. But then, other Nazis were ready and willing to sacrifice for Hitler and his “historic mission” or whatever….

Again, I hope that isn’t like trying to win at Oppression Monopoly, right. ~Ok, now I own all three 1500s Oppression properties; time to build some hotels!….

But yeah: do you remember when MLK was in jail one time, and he asked his jailers how much money they made and they told him and he was like, Man, you guys should be marching with us, not locking us up…. “Drum Major Instinct”, he called that essay. Which isn’t to say that all millionaires are part of the problem, or even all cops, although I’d rather be a millionaire than a cop, and maybe not having that sentiment is the “drum major instinct”, right….

But yeah, sometimes straight white men are the problem because they refuse to see themselves as having one put on past them, ~by the system~, right. (shrugs) Sometimes that’s the problem. Doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to sell your future to a victim mentality, either, right.

But anyway….

…. “…. So will my soul never return to heaven.” WOW, so dramatic…. I feel like this is like, Blair Waldorf or something, you know, like…. (laughs) I mean, I realize that back when Christians murdered people and ate them, basically, “Heaven” must have seemed like the very place you did NOT want to be, right, but, (laughs), (laughs), (sighs) Jesus: we are just never getting back together. Like, ever. Like: this is exhausting. (and into chorus)

So dramatic. It’s hard not to be like, smug, you know. Like a smug liberal, right.

(Blair) “…. So will my soul never return to heaven.” (beat) SAY IT.
(Blair’s Minion) (does glance at some other minion)
(Minion B looks back at Minion A)
(beat)
(CHUCK BASS) Well, this has all been rather precious. But I have to go. Attend to some, business.

😹

(laughs) There are certainly different ages of time in witchcraft. It’s not a “revealed religion”—you don’t promise that it never changes, right….

…. But yeah, in one sense it’s admirable to be able to plan ahead and commit to do something definitely for like seven years, you know, as opposed to like—until you click seven click-bait ads, and forget everything…. And I do think that that kinda non-specific once-born ignorance, of like “Gossip Girl” people, where you don’t know fucking shit about the first thing about anything, right…. Although it’s funny, because back in the candle-light era or whatever, the Protestant Middle Ages or whatever, I mean, people Literally, ~could not~ read a book, right; they couldn’t have read, “A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning”, you know: and they do come off as Incredibly Naive, you know, the witches as well as the Christians; and the leaders of society were incredibly abusive back then, and people were accustomed to it, down to the least…. But yeah, I’m a fearful person, but I don’t see the point in making a legalistic relationship with a god, right: like a contract, and it’s all exact with no room for error…. I mean, that just seems like a terrible way to live your life, right. “If I don’t get into that apartment on the Upper East Side: I’m not going to be happy…. So You Have The Right To Take From Me, And You Will Give To Me….” It’s like, relax, bitch: if you don’t get it, you get something better. I do think that the Nazarene was right about contracts—even though the church used the Nicene Creed as a sort of contract, and loved to make everything about lawyers, laws, and loyalty, in all of the established churches—you know, it’s like…. (thumps chest) I swear I will deliver the goods, If I don’t: you can eat me—because, I. Always. Win!!!!

You know, grow up, okay. Thanks. 👌

…. But yeah, very strange and naive stuff in old times—very weird and not in a good way, right. And very rough…. Lots of weird shit in the 1600s, just in general, right. Although nowadays we’re trying to remove all the fish from the oceans and replace them with plastic debris—in effect, right. But yeah, there’s a reason why in witchcraft there’s no promise to copy the men of old times: and anyway, Crowley and Gardner are the men of old times that people still care about, whereas for many a biblical scholar, they’d be proof that these are the last days of planet Earth, right—therefore, a nice of fillet of fish and a plastic bottle of Coke, right. Contemporary normality has by no means proved itself sane, right.

But yeah, plenty of weird shit in the 1600s or whenever—just in general, really.

…. The Christian perspective, or whatever, on this sort of thing is always funny: if you disagree with me about which farmer sells the best milk, then in your life, Christianity has totally disappeared; Christianity never happened for you, because you disagree with me.

The truth is more that Christian influence is basically inescapable, but simply not necessarily desirable, you know.

…. When the witch cult is described as a ‘fertility religion’, I wonder how much of this is: (a) the inevitable result of perceiving divinity in the material world, (b) the inevitable result of simple people having a simple religion, especially in the case of those who reject persecution’s assimilation, although to be perfectly frank, a Christian with a minimum of very common and perfectly conventional mendacity (love songs, etc.) can accomplish something very similar, and (c) the particular result of the paranoia of the persecutors and the comparison thinking of the scholars, right.

Which isn’t to say there isn’t a witch-religion sort of fertility; I suppose we might deploy the terms licit and illicit, although I don’t doubt but that different people would use them differently!

…. “Those on the contrary, that have done no evil, are beaten and punished.”

OMG. 😹

Like, I don’t know if that’s true or not—I mean, it’s sorta possible, on the analogy of rap, basically: “people say we’re epithets; let’s just be epithets”—but it’s definitely Funny, OMG. 😂

Ah….

Ah, the Middle Ages. Right? The Middle Rages, right: that was a book I heard of once….

…. But yeah, I guess this is what that tarot guide meant by “medieval mischief”, you know: you get exposed to the Middle Ages by your church or school or parents, you think of the rules of intellect or the unyielding codes of morality, right—maybe if you’re a history geek you think of the kings and the bombastic swordsmen and castles, right…. But the other part of the Middle Ages is, you’re a peasant in some shit village, and then the important people show up with the list of things you’re to do today, (written in Latin, obviously), as determined by the important people and the rules of intellect and the unyielding codes of morality, right: but then you see the Devil in the form of great black dog, and take that as the sign to shove the bullying fucker and urinate on his list of pompous shit, and then you and everybody runs off into the woods before the king’s swordsmen can show up and sword you, right….

(shrugs) Again, although this is not as black/white 100% wrong as moderns usually assume, but it was, it seems to be, a very naive time, not least for the general population, (although the philosophers and legalists could also be naive, in a labyrinthine Byzantine sort of way, right: if you didn’t have the good fortune to live in a village where you had the correct party line preached for you to duly toe, no matter what anybody ever told you, right—why, then then you just couldn’t be a good person, right….), and that naivety—you know, Oh! (slaps forehead) So it’s really that there’s a good god named the DEVIL, and a bad god names CHRIST! Alright! I’ve got it all figured out now! (does a little jig)~ you know: that naivety can be incredibly limiting, right….

But yeah: the old saying is “nothing in excess”, and for many centuries it was imagined that moralism was like, the one proper thing to have in excess, right.

And yeah: you’ll notice if you care to that I don’t go in for conventions and the proper ideas accepted uncritically: so yeah—the Reformation did NOT end the Middle Ages, you know. It just initiated a period of heightened instability and religious wars that lasted until the beginnings of post-medieval philosophy (“modern” philosophy, if philosophers strike anyone as being “modern”—whatever that even means, in the first place, right), and, more concretely, the rise of modern legal systems and state secularism, and all that. Until THAT transition took place, the only change was blood in streets and instability in the states, and rather more work for medieval torturers than before, you know…. It’s just so convenient to think of the Middles Ages as the Monolithic Catholic Time, that began with the Fall of Rome and ended with Luther, but it’s an extremely unfaithful abstraction, you know. There’s never really a monolithic anything. In the early Middle Ages, there’s still widespread pre-Catholic belief in many parts of Europe, although it is true that Eventually, all truly PRE-Catholic consciousness in Europe, even among dissenters and fringe types, was eventually phased out over time: but it didn’t happen in 476 or 500 or something. And on the other end, long before 1517, and obviously before society became truly post-medieval, there were rationalist and philosophical counter-points to Catholic groupthink almost as soon as the truly early Middle Ages were over and the Catholics started to have visible achievements to brag about, right…. And then pretty soon after that, yeah, the abortive (lol) rebellions that would have been Protestant rebels if they hadn’t ended up being basically dead rebels, right….

But yeah, the medieval Catholics strung people up, and the early Protestants of I guess the Transitional Middle Ages strung people up, but there were also people who just didn’t care, you know—about anything, and didn’t feel enamored every single day of the people who were crushing them (“more weight!” ~”The Crucible”), and although they didn’t have an especially elevated civilization or necessarily even a very unique culture: but yeah, they had quite a few spirited statements to make with their minds and bodies, you know. They didn’t always have the intellectual training or resources for uniqueness or whatever: but they did have the bravery to live their own life according to their feelings and understanding, certainly.

…. Anyway.

(but with a slight swagger) “For some reason I can’t explain:
I know Saint Peter won’t call my name….”

…. As to whether so famous a rebel as Joan of Arc considered herself the devil’s girl or whatever, or whether that was slander—that I think I cannot say.

Although I can believe that the fairies were (or are, although they’d be very local, and not the same from one continent, or perhaps hillock, to another) spirits of an ancient race, almost the original humans, and a people with great knowledge of nature and healing, as well as a whole different view of what customs were permitted, you know.

…. And yeah: scholars sure used to be pretty precious about not translating shit, right. It’s like they assumed that you had all wisdom and all knowledge and all power, and had the world’s knowledge entire, except for their book, right.

…. Fascination with names, you know: the pedant’s report on names. Witches liked to call their kids Anne; and when the sun started to go down, 🥱, sometimes, 🥱, they’d go a-sleep….

…. But yeah: if Deepak Chopra had been a medieval European witch, he’d have written a book called: “Hell: The Next Phase of Your Soul’s Evolution”, right….

What’s the old saw, about how a diplomat is a man who could tell you that you’re going to hell, in a way that would make you anticipate the journey? lol.

…. Some of the stuff about Joan of Arc is weird. On the one hand, it is not really improbable at all that a rebel rising up from the bottom of a country being ill-used by foreigners would want to “break the rules” of religion, you know: that much bitterness and rage, the stuff you’d be dealing with in that condition, doesn’t lend itself to heart-warming family comedies about the Catholic experience, you know. Perhaps there were some elements of spiritualism or nature folklore, and perhaps some aspects of those things might have been similar or, I don’t know, analogous in the abstract, to something a Roman legionnaire might have found when the tribes got restive. It is true that Europe wasn’t really “civilized” at that point, especially on the bottom, although to imagine that the centuries had gone by without leaving a mark is credulous, you know. Indeed, to imagine that any conspiracy so bold could have even been imagined—even an affair restricted more or less tightly as a headquarters conspiracy, right, (because, if it wasn’t a consensus-mass-movement—and it wasn’t that, obviously—the other thing to do to not get murdered immediately would be to keep it a very great secret, you know)—to imagine that even as a conspiracy at that place and time, that anybody imagined to substitute the one religion for the other, right, is frankly outrageous and quite incredible, you know…. There would have been discontent, and the breaking of rules, but even the most foolhardy rebel would have known some caution, or else, if he had a death-wish, then the co-conspirators would have taught him caution, right…. It would have been a delicate balancing act between satisfying the sorta blood lust and desire to see norms unseated, and…. I don’t know: simply committing suicide, right. Because if there HAD really been a ~complete plot~ and not just a rebel and a tide of opinion for rebellion and instances of rule-breaking: if there had been this complete Passover Plot or whatever (just to use a weird phrase, right) and Joan was trying to be Gerald Gardner 500 years too early, right: it’s like, secrets have a way of getting out, and then it would have ended with some crazy French peasant sneaking into Joan’s tent with an axe, and claiming God’s justice on her in the name of French honor or something. It wouldn’t have ended with only the English calling her a witch, if they had had a death wish, right. Even say—Charles Stewart Parnell, the Irish nationalist politician, got thrown out from the heights of power, right out on his ass, and at least half of Ireland itself was against him, some of whom at least, probably considered themselves pretty nationalistic, because he had an ~affair~, you know: 450 years later, right. Well, actually affairs were ~especially~ scary to people in the 1890s, for some reason, you know. But it wasn’t revealed that he was replacing Catholicism with Druidism, you know. If Joan of Arc had started whispering to people about, I don’t know, some crazy thing: Jesus out, Diana in—instead of spiritualism and nature folklore, and blood lust: especially blood lust, right~ tell your polite friends not to bring their J.S. Bach CDs in anymore, right, (obviously you understand what I’m driving at, right)—like, the third time that the headquarters conspirators would have met, some wild priest or fucking meatmonger or butcher would have broken it up—enthusiastically, you know. They wouldn’t have followed her into battle against fucking anybody, right; she would have been an embarrassment.

Yeah.

…. But yeah: incidentally, the other side of the ledger is, that the way in which Christianity kept itself in power as the universally beloved religion in those years, right—I love Jesus! He’s like my Big Brother! I love Big Brother, er, I mean: Jesus!—doesn’t leave one’s heart bursting at the seams with joy, you know.

…. Yes…. Well, life is weird, sometimes, children….

Let’s go watch propaganda, for a while. We can return to the other things later. “Nothing in excess….”….

A bit dry... ( )

While Margaret Murray's book is classic research into the witch trials of the middle ages and their connection to pre-Christian pagan religion is historically important as a Wiccan/Neopagan foundation document, the books research and theory is somewhat flimsy in the light of hard historical fact. In the book, it states that many of those killed during the witch trails were actually part of various witch-cults. This conclusion has been refuted by other scalars and researchers time and time again. ( )

Even though it's been debunked by modern scholars, this is valuable for the insight into where Gardner got his original historical influences. ( )