DISTINCTIONS
by Otter and Emerge Recognition Zell
It seems to be plain to launch every trade of Witchcraft with an
explication that, no, Neo-Pagan Witches aren't Satanists. The Christian anti- God, Satan, has no place in Pagan pantheons, either mythologically or theologically. Lucidly and right, Satanism is the dark adjacent of Christianity, and Satan is energy other than the shared Id of Christendom.
Flat as a pancake today, Witchcraft is over and over again distorted by bodily muddled with Satanism. Regularly the word Witchcraft is hand-me-down to grant two wholly contrary phenomena: the staying power of ancient Paganism in one exacting, and the inversion of Christianity in another. Let us make it clear: a Satanist is a renegade Christian, who, in his sedition against the control of the church, worships Satan impressive than Christ. Such relations are at epoch called witches and warlocks in having mass appeal books and movies but they tolerate little to do with Pagan Witches.
Satanists, for one thing, interpret the Christian duality in the middle of good and evil;
Pagans do not. Satanists may wish to be in awe of evil impressive than good: but they tolerate incredibly bought the Christian world view".1
The word Pagan derives from the Latin paganus, meaning "peasant" or "authority dweller". It is glowing hands-on to resident (instinctive) pantheistic folk religions and peoples. The piece "Neo-Paganism" is hands-on to the there new beginning of ancient Pagan pious principles, amid the purity of all Animation and the be in awe of of Moral fiber. Latest Witchcraft has been a significant mechanism of the Neo-Pagan renewal to the same degree England repealed its anti-Witchcraft laws in 1951.The Divinity and the God of Witchcraft. The abundant traditions of Neo-Pagan Witchcraft tolerate few common theological precepts, but one of them is if truth be told the exaltation of the Moon Divinity, overfriendly highest ordinarily by her Roman name, Diana. She is alleged as manifesting in triple form: as Maiden, Mother and Crone. These triple aspects are proven respectively with the waxing, full, and fall back moons.
Witches encounter at Esbats every full moon, to sing and jump in Her moonlight, pot cakes and wine, and work magic to heal each other, their friends, and the Mop the floor with. Abundant modern Witches comber the universe of the Divinity noticeably, and see Her alike as Mother Mop the floor with and Mother Moral fiber.
Supreme traditions of Neo-Pagan Witchcraft alike goodness the Go around with of the Divinity in the form of the Horned God, who is seen as Member of the aristocracy of Nature as well as migratory chief of the Criminal world. The highest recognizable financial credit of the Horned God is the Greek Pan, goat-horned and goat-hooved, playing His panpipes, guzzling wine from His freely-flowing wineskin, and seducing nymphs in the plant. He is regarded as lusty and jovial, epitomizing masculine attributes of kind surprise, brother or fan. As the Divinity of Witchcraft is fully proven with the Moon, so the God is proven with the Sun. In this way He may be seen mythologically as the fan both of the Moon and of the Mop the floor with. Choice of His abundant epithets is
"Member of the aristocracy of Trade event". Apiece light casts its shadows, and the Member of the aristocracy of Bleak is the other case of the Member of the aristocracy of Trade event. Member of the aristocracy of the Criminal world is the nickname of the God in Winter a long time ago He goes enigma with the animals to hibernate. A few traditions had Him reserve with His brother as partner to the eternal Divinity.
Others, as in the Greek Hades, had a year-round God of the Criminal world, "The Imp."
It is essential to elaborate the pioneering relationship of Pan and the Imp, as Christianity has tended to bewilder the two, humanitarian surge to the ill-treatment that Pagans are Devil-worshipers equally some Pagan gods tolerate horns. Just the once and for all, the Christian Imp is not the God of the Witches! The genesis of the Imp comes from a assimilation of two concepts: Satan and Lucifer. The new meaning of the word satan is "arch-rival", and his enclosed space in the Bible represents an luck by complex apologists of the Old Tribute to account for the haughty critical deeds of a charitable God (such as the ill-treatment of Job) by attributing the actual stained work to a awkward spirit; the new "devil's sermonize". This specific was not not rushed evil until formerly the Persian overthrow introduced the Hebrews to the Zoroastrian dualism of Ahura-Mazda (the good God) vs. Ahriman (the evil God). This complex manifested in Christianity as Manichean dualism. The Manichean equation was harshly simple: God=Good; Devil=Evil. But it was not until the court 447 CE that the Upper house of Toledo affirmed the well-founded charisma of the Imp as an actual specific, time he was yet not study of as deeply manifesting in mortal form.
The Lucifer story is a mish-mashed retelling of the Canaanite myth about the drive out of Baal by Mot and the usurpation of Baal's throne by Athar, the god of the originate star. The new Hebrew name for Lucifer was helel ben shahar meaning "son of the day star" (the planet Venus). The name Lucifer ("light bearer"), a Romano-Etruscan nickname of the Sun God, was incorrectly hand-me-down a long time ago the Bible was crown translated voguish Latin.2
Several shadow gods or divine adversaries contributed to the authorities of the Imp, amid the Canaanite Moloch or Mot, the Egyptian Set or Suteck and the Roman Saturn.
Judeo-Christian theologians placed all Pagan gods and goddesses in an arch-rival position to Yahweh, the god of Israel, who, as a monotheistic deity, cannot pot a pantheon. This is a inscrutable cultural assessment from Pagan pantheons and polytheistic peoples who co-existed together, whether or not in settlement. Whichever to the same degree unhindered sexuality, distinctively for females, was inflexible by Judeo-Christianity as evil, Pagan gods and goddesses who were distinctively sexual or sensual garnered the new sect's nearby enmity. Pan (who instills warning) and Dionysus were neither evil nor arch-rival deities, but equally of their rowdy festivities the Imp acquired Pan's horns and hooves and Dionysus'
incomprehensibly mad and bibulous caring. This immutable equation of the Pagan Horned God with Satan was not regular, nonetheless, until the court 1486, a long time ago the Dominicans Kramer and Sprenger published the Malleus Malificarum, or
"Murder of the Witches", wherein they gave the crown physical testify of the Imp as he is ordinarily depicted today, declaring that this was the god worshiped by ancestors they reception to have "witches", thereby justifying the centuries of brutal ill-treatment inflicted upon ancestors who clung attentively to their be in awe of of the untouchable gods.
Witchcraft and Shamanism Witches were the shamans, or action men and women, of the tribal Celtic peoples of Europe, and they functioned in the extremely path as shamans of any other tribal culture, be it American Indians, Africans, or Australian Aborigines. In fact, and in established tradition, shamans are yet ordinarily referred to as "Witch Doctors".
Shamans are specialists in herbal lore, and the Witches of Pagan Europe were no exclusion. Prevalently, but not exclusively, women, they specialized herbal action, midwifery, threat, spellcasting, and advice-giving. Regularly cause to be in by yourself out in the plant, Witches lived switch to Moral fiber, and similar in temperament to Her cycles. Their area grew not merely yield, but alike abundant kinds of herbs, amid ancestors admired for their therapeutic, sedative and hallucinogenic properties. In a daytime of time a long time ago good Christian folk maintained merely ancestors domestic animals that may well be not rushed "livestock" (i.e., useful to humans), Witches over and over again set aside foolish animal pets: foxes, ferrets, owls, ravens and of course, the all-pervading cats. Such became overfriendly, appropriately heaps, as familiars. In the function of Witches came to be aggrieved, so did these recognizable animals, and the inflexible vicious circle, irritation and high priority of millions of cats that accompanied the Witch burnings begat the unpleasant Black Endemic that in shreds Europe in the 14th century, for the cats had set aside the rat populations under ascertain, and it was rat vermin that were the mover of the bubonic endemic bacillus. "The Passionate Times". It is mournfully indigestible that, time the practitioners of Witchcraft tolerate historically suffered real abuse and ill-treatment, the Witch has by some means continued to be distorted as the wrongdoer. Christianity did not become the world's established religion by calm salvation, but by the sword and lay bets. As the legions of Caesar had imitation the Roman Culture boss the dead bodies of inestimable tribal peoples of Europe, so did its successor, the Dutiful Roman Culture, halt the tradition. Declaring them
"heresies", agents of the Dutiful Post-mortem sought after out and cold-bloodedly exterminated every religion, compartment or tradition that would not alteration to "The One Properly Defensible And Wholly Way". Witches, nonetheless, lived outskirts of any group pious type and were on the whole unseen until the 13th century, a long time ago the Cathedral had finally gained heaps power to arrangement with grass-roots Paganism. "In the 13th century the Cathedral opened its expanded suffering with Paganism in Europe by declaring "Witchcraft' to be a "compartment and heretical. It was not til the 14th century that the two religions came to grips... In 1324 the bishop of Ossory tried Dame Alice Kyteler in his ecclesiastical court for the wrongdoing of worshipping a deity other than the Christian God...
"The 15th century path the crown great victories of the Cathedral. Beginning with the trials in Lorraine in 1408, the Cathedral stimulated gleefully against Joan of Arc and her associates in 1431, against Gilles de Rais and his coven in 1440, and against the Witches of Brescia in 1457. Towards the end of the century the Christian power was so deep-rooted that the Cathedral felt the time had come for an group punch, and in 1484 Pope Unpolluted VIII published his Bull against
"Witches.' All candid the 16th and 17th centuries the battle raged. The Pagans fought a valiant, time losing, differ against a untiring and soil
enemy; every inch of the realm was disputed, but the Christian regulations of obtaining bring in boss the rulers and law-givers was irresistible. Vae victis ["woe to the dominated"] was alike the regulations of the Christians, and we see the priests of the Papacy gloating boss the thousands they had consigned to the combustion point the ministers of the Reformed Churches hounded on the administrators of the law to accuse the "devil worshipers.' Seeing that may well tolerate been the approach with which ancestors sorry losses regarded the vaunted God of Wonderful, the Prince of Direction, whose votaries condemned them to irritation and death? Seeing that consideration that they clung to their old expectation, and died in hurting unthinkable impressive than reject their God".3 It basic alike be hurtful out that the court recorders at the Witch trials were explicitly instructed that, anything gods or goddesses the accused actually claimed to be in awe of, what went voguish the total was "Satan" or "The Imp".
And what consideration if some of ancestors who had come to adopt the Biblical history educated them by the missionaries, monks and priests of the successful expectation, achieve that the story must tolerate gotten it approximate somehow? That if introduce had strictly been a sedition in illusion, it was without blemish manifest that the bash into had not been the God of love and regulate, as his propagandists claimed, but impressive a God of contemptibility and evil; of war and severity, ire and enmity. (This had, in fact, been an old Gnostic tradition.)
The pardon insinuation was that the bested Lucifer must tolerate been the good guy, and bound to be abundant must tolerate swarmed to his responsibility in this belief. Moment true adherents of the Old Religions if truth be told knew better, and continued their expectation precisely strong from Christianity, introduce were bound to be, afterward as now, abundant accidental relations who were right too sea green or too unschooled to rise the Christian mode what time it became regular. And therefore did Satanism as a belief and a practice come voguish bodily, spawned by the Cathedral, and every time to be lock up together with it in a irredeemable stroke of everyday lack of sympathy.
Whether or not the aggrieved peasantry who came to adjacent with Satan against their oppressors study of themselves as "Witches", the Cathedral and the company of the Dutiful Post-mortem if truth be told proven them as such: "The indicate and centre of the persec-ution of Witches was that they were Satanists, that they had rejected the dedicated God and explicit their responsibility to his arch-opponent, and that in their "sabbaths' or meetings they worshipped the chief of evil, carnality and foulness. A few of ancestors accused as Witches do tinkle to tolerate unavailable the Imp for their god, worshipping him as an out-and-out nemesis of the Christian God, boss whom he would eventually getting. They looked to Satan for power and thrill in this world and for a soft entrance in the bordering, and they vilified Christ as a runaway and a raid, who had finished promises which he did not apart from, and who had gone out cold to last in illusion point Satan remained with his hold back on earth".4 "The Witches and sorcerers of prematurely epoch were a lengthily circulated class who had retained the beliefs and traditions of heathenism with all its approve and romance and charm of the forbidden... in their outline every one who was subjugated or laid up either by the stick to or the church. They were treated with vague contemptibility, in highest luggage decrease than beasts of impact, for they were annoyed in all their approach, not at intervals for retaliation, but typically by custom, and they revenged themselves by secret orgies and academic devil- be in awe of, and occult ties, and stupendous sins, or what they academic were such. I can sternly conceive: what no writer seems to tolerate considered: that introduce must tolerate been an massive satisfaction in subject or humanitarian one's self to the devil, or to any power which was at war with their oppressors. So they went by night, at the full moon, and sacrificed to Diana, or "complex on' to Satan, and they danced and rebelled. It is very well estimate noting that we tolerate all our accounts of sorcerers and heretics from Catholic priests, who had every of time justification for misrepresenting them, and did so. In the deep source of ancient Witchcraft yet existing in Italy, introduce is not extensively anti-Christianity, but a great arrangement of prematurely heathenism. Diana, not Satan, is yet the real manage of the Witches".5
Back Witchcraft is yet little inherent by the total mutual, whose images are fashioned intensely by the having mass appeal media, Witches halt to be easy targets for ill-treatment. It must be remembered that, in the prior episodes of Witchcraft ill-treatment clutter, it was the Witches who were the losses, not the Christians.
Witches, and ancestors conveniently accused of bodily Witches, died by the millions all through the brutal centuries of the holocaust they remember as "The Passionate Times". They do not wish to repeat that phenomenon today.6
Remarks and References:
1. Jong, Erica, Witches (New American Documents, New York,1981) p. 52
2. Zell, Emerge Recognition, "The Member of the aristocracy of Trade event", Wet Egg, Vol. XXI, No. 82; Aug. 1,
1988 (POB 1542, Ukiah, CA 95482) p. 12
3. Murray, Margaret, The God of the Witches (Oxford Univ. Quiz, NY, 1931)
pp. 21-22
4. Cavendish, Richard, "Satanism", List of Man, Story and Magic, Vol.
18 (Marshall Cavendish, NY, 1970) p. 2479
5. Leland, Charles Godfrey, Tradition of Florence, (David Nutt, London, 1896)
Guiley, Rosemary, List of Witches and Witchcraft (Information on Gnash, NY,
1989)
