Paganism and History

The purpose of this essay is not to discuss the history of paganism per se, but to discuss the relationship between modern pagan practice and the history of paganism.  As most of you are probably aware, there is a tendency among certain pagans to claim that their particular path has been handed down to them through the centuries; for instance, Gerald Gardner’s assertion that wicca is the religion of the witches from the time of the witch hunts, right back to a primitive goddess religion.  Opposite to this position are those who attempt to recreate the religion of ancient peoples as they would have been practiced hundreds and thousands of years ago.  To complicate matters further, there are, of course, overlaps between these two groups.

Wicca is a prime example of a modern religion for which some claim an ancient heritage, not helped by Margaret Murray’s totally erroneous work entitled ‘The Witch Cult in Western Europe’.  According to this belief Wicca is the ancient religion of the British Isles (and other places), that has come down to us in a more or less unaltered form.  The fact that Wicca actually draws on, among other things, Crowley, hermetics, rosicrucianism, freemasonry and folklore is not my point here.  What I am interested in are the reasons why there is this apparent need to claim an ancient lineage for one’s beliefs.  In other words, what purpose does this false history serve?

It is also to easier to see why the founders of a religious belief would claim this lineage than those who come later.  For instance, Gardner and Sanders both claiming Wiccan lineages stretching back in time can quite easily be seen as an attempt to increase the validity of that belief, particularly in a time when society was more hostile to such beliefs than it is now.  However, this does not explain the continued belief in these foundation myths.  Moreover, as no creditable historical research provides evidence for these myths, one must surely have very good reasons for still holding onto them.  In my opinion this is also all the more extraordinary given that paganism is a path, or rather group of paths, that actively encourages thinking for oneself as opposed to unquestioning obedience to any given doctrine. 

On the basis of this it could be tempting to say that those who still believe in these foundation myths are an ever increasing minority, however, given that there are still authors about who insist on peddling this false history, this does not appear to be the case.  An example of this is Buckland’s ‘Scottish Witchcraft’ (reviewed in issue 6 of this magazine), although this is sadly not an isolated case.  In this book Buckland fabricates an entire ‘ancient’ religion that anyone with any knowledge of Scottish history would be able to refute, but why, and why do people read it?  I will return to these questions later.

One the other hand, there are those who attempt to recreate the belief systems of ancient people, such as the Celts.  This reconstructionism is particularly problematic given the minimal written evidence from these periods and places.  Simply put, in order to recreate an ancient belief, you need to know what that ancient belief was.  For the most part however, we do not know this.  Also, in the case of the Celts, there is growing evidence that there was not actually a coherent ‘Celtic’ people or culture, thus rendering the historical existence of a ‘Celtic’ religion even more problematic.

This is not to question the validity of following an ancient religion; but to argue that there is often insufficient information to do so, especially when attempting to follow the religion of an illiterate society.  For instance, regarding Celtic society the only contemporaneous writing comes from a handful of Classical authors, whilst even the insular texts were written down several centuries after the time they are said to come from.  This provides enough of a problem for the historian, let alone someone attempting to recreate a religious belief.  To exemplify my point: the majority of modern druids wear white for rituals, however there is only one reference to actual Druids wearing white cloaks, which comes from Pliny’s Natural History when he is describing the ritual for harvesting mistletoe.  Given that Pliny also comments that mistletoe was a most sacred plant to the Druids it is plausible that the Druids only used white robes when harvesting it and used different colours for other purposes; however, the point is that we do not know either way.  In a similarly vein, there are many people who claim that various local, seasonal festivals that take place throughout the country are vestiges from a pagan past, however further investigation often reveals that the festivals have only been occurring for a few hundred years and are not pagan in origin.  This obviously creates a host of pitfalls when attempting to recreate an ancient religion, so why do people do it?

I believe that both foundation mythologies and Reconstructionism are followed in no small part because of romanticism.  However, this is not the romanticism of the nineteenth century romantics who wanted to take the good parts from the past and make them relevant for modern society; rather it seems to be a naïve romanticism that sees everything ancient as inherently good.  Whereas true romanticism only looks backwards in order to be better placed to look forward, naïve romanticism only looks backwards.  This romanticism is also naïve in that it often looks back to an idealised and stylised halcyon past that never actually existed.  I think this is, in part, an escape attempt from modern living; some people want to ‘return’ to this mythic past with all its supposed virtues, and are perhaps therefore able to ignore all the historical problems with that supposed past.  With Reconstructionism I think the situation is more complicated; in this case it is possible to be looking back in order to better be able to look forward, however, the problem here lies with the sources and the manner in which they are used. 

I will, therefore, end on plea that people retain (or in some cases, gain) a healthy degree of scepticism regarding the history of paganism, especially as it is presented by certain authors (mentioning no names!), and that people will also have a more realistic view of everyday life from two thousand plus years ago.