Wicca is a bogus religion with all the solemn antiquity of Disco, and mainly of interest to white suburban morons who like to file nuisance lawsuits. So this was probably inevitable. But I think real pagans ought to be offended at having their name appropriated by such New Age gift shop trash.

Nor should Wiccans probably embrace the term pagan. The premier European example of an actual historical pagan was the Viking, who would have used Wiccans for rape practice. And the premier example of a modern European pagan was Heinrich Freaking Himmler and his Teutonic Knights. Are we going to have swastikas and SS lightning bolts in cemeteries, too?

#1 from Glen Wishard: "Wicca is a bogus religion with all the solemn antiquity of Disco, and mainly of interest to white suburban morons who like to file nuisance lawsuits."

Stepping lightly past the insults and negatives for a moment, my point is that one good reasons why Wiccans might like to file lawsuits is that they work, whereas in the face of religious prejudice, goodwill does not.

#1 from Glen Wishard: "But I think real pagans ought to be offended at having their name appropriated by such New Age gift shop trash."

I used the dubious term "pagan" because I think how people treat Wiccans is a good proxy for how they are likely to treat non-mainstream modern polytheists in general. Thus, someone who followed Asatru or Kemetic Orthodoxy, for two examples, would have an interest in seeing Wiccans fairly treated, even though neither of those religions has much to do with each other, and even less to do with Wicca.

Now, who do you regard as real pagans today, Glen Wishard? And are you hoping for them to do well, or when you think they ought to be offended with Wiccans, are you just playing "let's you and him fight"?

#1 from Glen Wishard: "Nor should Wiccans probably embrace the term pagan."

Some do, some don't. It's a label that's useful in some contexts and confusing in others.

#1 from Glen Wishard: "The premier European example of an actual historical pagan was the Viking, who would have used Wiccans for rape practice."

Premier, compared to, say, the Roman Empire, or the Delian League (alias Athens) ... why?

#1 from Glen Wishard: "And the premier example of a modern European pagan was Heinrich Freaking Himmler and his Teutonic Knights."

I don't think so. Those boys were doing other stuff entirely.

#1 from Glen Wishard: "Are we going to have swastikas and SS lightning bolts in cemeteries, too?"

No, but you do have Islamic crescents, and that means something at least as hostile, so why should pentacles be a problem?

And it is talked that America democratic country. Here in our Ukraine indeed democracy, all however who you

Asatru is officially recognized now as a religion in all traditionally Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland). (link)

Asatruars and Wiccans don't get on. Here's a long (but fast to load), brilliant and very familiar (to pagans) article on why, how and how badly they don't get on: The Pentagram and the Hammer (link)

But a win for religious freedom is a win for religious freedom.

AFAIK Modern "Wiccanism" was invented by an early 20th Century charlatan, spiritualist, and con man who was some sort of perv. Supposedly the basis for the Dashiell Hammett story "the Scorched Face."

Is it a legit religion? Well I suppose 12 people in Marin County worship giant killer radishes so by that standard why not?

One interesting fact: the number of Wiccans (a marginal and fairly fringe element) in the USMC outnumbers the number of Muslims.

I am all for equal recognition of religions no matter how lunatic or insane (up to a point). But at some point culture and heritage matter. This nation was not founded on the principles of Odin and Wotan. Much less Hunk-Ra.

To me this seems a proper matter for the courts. While I decry legalism in many areas of war-fighting, this to me seems a matter for the Judiciary and I personally would defer to their undoubtedly wiser judgment than mine.

Oh, and Glen Wishard: if you're going to insult Wicca, could you at least do a better job, as to dates?

If the problem with Wicca, compared to, say, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (founded 1830), is that Wicca is a more recent invention - the Wiccan Laws were produced in 1957. That means Wicca is older than Disco (though of more recent vintage than Joseph Smith's missing golden plates). You could still take a shot at Wicca for being as ancient as Sputnik (also 1957), if you just want a jab that doesn't make you look like you don't know what you're talking about.

If you really think antiquity does mean superiority in religion, fine, I'll go along with that - which means that Judaism is better founded than Christianity, Egyptian or Ancient Iraqi reconstructionist religion is focused on a sounder basis than Judaism, and anyone still worshiping little Venus figurines probably has us all beat. Does that work for you?

Here's the Wikipedia page of USVA emblems for headstones and markers. This being Wikipedia, I can't vouch for it, but I don't see any errors straight off. (link)

Which of these are unacceptable on the grounds that they are not ancient enough? Is The Church of World Messianity (founded in 1935) OK? How about the The Aaronic Order (founded in 1942)?

#5 from Jim Rockford: "Is it a legit religion? Well I suppose 12 people in Marin County worship giant killer radishes so by that standard why not?"

There's lots of good reasons for not recognizing a sign to be used on headstones. One if if people in that religion can't get their acts together, decide that they are all one religion, and agree what their sign is. That seems a practical test. If a religion can pass it, it's practical to recognize them. But if people in a religion are all at loggerheads then the government can't favor one faction against another, so it had best not support any.

By that test, there is no such religion as "pagan", but there is indeed such a religion as Wicca.

Wiccans mostly know who they are, as well as people in other religions do. They are all of one mind on what symbol they want. They can agree on things like little ritual kits to be sent off to soldiers so they can practice their religion in the field. So, they're real in a practical sense.

#5 from Jim Rockford: "I am all for equal recognition of religions no matter how lunatic or insane (up to a point). But at some point culture and heritage matter. This nation was not founded on the principles of Odin and Wotan. Much less Hunk-Ra."

Sure. So?

America is a Christian nation. So is Australia. I'm fine with that. For that matter, Christianity of one stripe is the state religion of the United Kingdom. I'm OK with that too.

But, and this returns me to the point of my post, the way the incentives are set up now, a reasonable attitude gets you nothing, while pronouncing yourself grievously wounded by everything under the sun, and suing over it, gets results.

Consequently Wiccans, and generally people of modern polytheistic religions, have been placed under a strong incentive plan to be lawsuit-happy whiners. Either that, or losers and quitters, willing to not have their dead buried as they wished. Those were the options, A or B.

I don't think that's a good thing.

Still, the military graves issue is resolved now, George W. Bush will be gone in a couple of years, and there is no reason to assume that a future American President will share his active prejudice against Wicca. (Other than George W. Bush, who that matters even cares about this?) So the glass is at least seven eighths full.

As a Wiccan, I'd be happy to answer any questions you all have, because it seems some of you are in great need of education before spouting off.

#11 from Jeff Medcalf: "As a Wiccan, I'd be happy to answer any questions you all have, because it seems some of you are in great need of education before spouting off."

Hi, Jeff, I'm very glad to have someone here who knows what they are talking about. Thanks for speaking up.

I know more about Wicca than some people, but really my perspective is straight Kemetic, with a friendly but not well-informed regard for Greek and Roman religion (just enough to follow Egyptian religious history into the syncretism of the Ptolemies, ending with Cleopatra VII), and Wicca is a far country. I "know" something about Wicca if I happened to read it in a book, end of story.

So speak right up and tell me what I'm saying that's all wrong. I will be grateful and not resentful.

This is one of the most interesting threads I've seen for a long time.

Are we to mock Wiccans because they have a silly iconography? Because they base their beliefs on attractive myths, not actual history? Because they smugly assume an inherent moral superiority over others?

That all sounds alot like the Chrisianity in which I was educated, and the Islam in which I currently live.

Every religion was invented at some point in history. Does a religion somehow become "true" if it manages to stick around long enough to create a fiction of continuity and universality? How then does it deal with - say - holy scriptures which cannot be altered yet, contradicts the contemporary heirarchy's dogma? (Rhet.)

If the Wiccans are making it up as they go along, at least they aren't burdened with such baggage.

All religion is whacky.

The only solution is religious freedom, and tolerance... or perpetual strife.

I thought that argument was settled a long, long time ago. What on earth was GWB doing?

I happen to agree that Wicca is as manufactured as Scientology (if less blatantly so), but this does not give the State a license to make a judgment as to who is a "real" religion and who is not. I don't wish to debate the merits of these, or any, religions in this forum as it simply doesn't matter and the courts have a Constitutional duty not to be drawing distinctions about the legitimacy of one religion versus another. As for me, when I kick off I hope to have "Bob" Dobbs inscribed on my tombstone.

Glenn says:

Wicca is a bogus religion

So true.

I was a Wiccan once. It was wonderful. The religious ceremonies often included near naked dancing girls. Lots of alcoholic beverages. A a certain joie de vivre.

Way more fun than your average religion.

That given, I'll take bogus religion every time.

Note: all religions start out as bogus. Few believers. Lots of derrision.

Fortunately this is America and we are not stuck with hand me downs. We can try new religions. Or make up our own.

I belonged to a group that had no fixed rituals for holidays. We made our own up brand new every time. Lots of fun.

These days I'm pretty much Jewish. It is what my first mate wanted. Although I must say she enjoyed being a Wiccan almost as much as I did.

#14 from Trustbutverify; "As for me, when I kick off I hope to have "Bob" Dobbs inscribed on my tombstone."

Do you have any children you'd rather not lose custody of?

Judge Recused in Subgenius Custody Case (link)
Update on SubGenius Custody Case (link)
SubGenius Mother Silenced by Activist Judge
(link)
It Is Happening Again
(link)
Subgenius Custody Case Continues (link)
Etc.

I do wish there were some way to express to Wishard, Rockford, et al, just how deeply silly they look to an atheist or an agnostic.

Well. There is, actually. Doesn't even involve profanity. But it's the sort of handgrenade that puts shrapnel into every Christian reading it, as well. So we'll pass on that for now.

(And really, one must wonder about people who object to what someone puts on their own gravestone.)

#2 David,

I think Glenn got you on the Himmler bit.

There was a very strong Teutonic Pagan undercurrent in Nazism.

Connections to the OTO. Plus lots of other interesting stuff. In terms of general categories the Nazis worshiped Kali.

BTW the Austrian Corporal was a big fan of Wagner's Gotterdammerung. Very pagan.

Just as with any other religious question you must seperate the good, the bad, the silly, the misguided, and the evil.

The polytheistic religions have a lot to offer. One gets to pick an attribute of the Maker that corresponds most closely to ones personality and interest.

In America we do that with schisms. Works out well. In the long run. Religion is forced to serve the people or go out of business.

The history of the Egyptian religions (ca 5,000 years ago) is quite interesting. As tribes were conquered by the Egyptian state their tribal gods were added as attributes of existing gods. When the match was not close enough new god forms were added.

It was the Egyptian way of ending tribalism. Cooption. You get conquered and your gods got worshiped by the state. Which is why the Jews were always so much trouble. Without an image of god they were very hard to coopt. Worse cooption would have meant destruction of the existing state religion. Most people have trouble with the formless void. They want to see something. Jews forbid visuals as part of worship. There was the WORD and that was it.

It was the trouble the Romans had with the Jews. No visuals. It is why the Romans had less trouble adopting Christianity. They gave up multiple aspects of the Maker for one. Not such a big jump.

I was joking with a Jewish friend once and said I considered Buddhism as a possible religious choice when my mate and I were starting a family. He and I agreed that the formless void is quite close to the Jewish concept of the Maker.

When you consider that for a long time Christianity was just another Jewish sect. you can observe how these things morph and change.

I've joked for a long time about making my own religion, that just happened to require absence of work on the first monday of every month. I figured if I could get a couple million people to sign up, we could all get 12 additional 3-day weekends.

Seriously though, how do we draw the line between religion and say "The Man Church" from "Married with Children"? Is there a fair way to legalize what people are allowed to beleive? And how do your prevent that one-in-a-million jerk from trying to get a new sign because he's an @$$.

If a group is willing to sue, and spend a lot of personal money just to change a grave stone, that's a preety good sign that they care enough to make the change.

"AFAIK Modern "Wiccanism" was invented by an early 20th Century charlatan, spiritualist, and con man who was some sort of perv."

Change the century, and this covers at least one of the "mainstream" religions.

I believe that every American has a right to serve the nation, kill the bad guys and be respected for it, Christian, Wiccan, Athiest, Straight, Gay... whatever. One of the early and most important distinctions of military is that it belongs to The People and not to a noble family or ruling party.

On West 10th street, in Manhattan, is a small Wiccan shop. I still recall their window display in the aftermath of 9-11. They are Americans too.

Ben

#18 from M. Simon: #2 David,

I think Glenn got you on the Himmler bit."

I think he didn't. And you didn't even make a reasonable case that he did. Hitler was as severe an atheist as a man can be; it comes out clearly in Hitler's Table Talk. And OTO (Ordo Templi Orientis, or Order of the Temple of the East, or the Order of Oriental Templars) is not Asatru. And in general, this is just a load on nonsense piled on top of nonsense.

And, you are flat making up your Egyptian history. The archeology of Ancient Egypt does not say what you say it does.

Which make your claim to know Wicca and its falsity as an insider worthless too. Only those who are genuine, who do not just make up any facts they like, can speak for those who are genuine and what they stand for.

George W. Bush knows that some religion is genuine, even though he has a blind, ignorant conviction that Wicca is not a religion. That's more wisdom than a man has who just makes up everything, and can't imagine the inner lives of those who don't.

#11 -

As a Wiccan also, thank you Jeff.

DB: "George W. Bush knows that some religion is genuine, even though he has a blind, ignorant conviction that Wicca is not a religion. That's more wisdom than a man has who just makes up everything, and can't imagine the inner lives of those who don't."

I don't even know what that means, and I mostly agree with you in this argument!

What does "genuine" in this context mean?

Inherent truth?
The religion that "fits me?" "Fits" the most people?
The religion that promotes the "best" moral code?
The religion with the oldest extant hierarchy?
The religion most successful at proselytizing.

When somebody says that Scientology is a "made up religion," I'm wondering what other kind of religion there is?

I think this thread thus far has illustrated that religion is better approached with humanity, tolerance and a good sense of humor than with judicial power.

In religion, it is often hard to decide who is serious, and how serious, and in what way, about what. Often people are more serious that they at first appear. (I have a rule of thumb that sacrifices and tattoos are serious.) It may be impossible for some people to speak about something they regard as holy, as supremely important, without softening it with a light touch as though it was a joke. And on the other hand, religious mysteries such as "secret women's business" have been made up cynically out of whole cloth and defended with grim, passionate intensity, simply to exploit laws protecting some religion such as native religion. The law is not a good instrument for dealing with the confusions that can result from this volatile half-thruth-y aspect of human nature. Only sex and love are worse.

It is not good to give a judge who make be prejudiced, who may be humorless, who may lack knowledge or sympathetic insight, the power to deprive others of precious goods such as the custody of their children, based on an opinion of their religion.

Which makes it all the more unfortunate when a combination of prejudice and misuse of bureaucratic, official power means that suing people is the only way to get important things done.

Incentives that strongly favor those who sue over those who would rather live and let live are bad.

David says:

The archeology of Ancient Egypt does not say what you say it does.

I must have read different archeology books than you did.

BTW I may have gone through my Wiccan period when the definitions were more fluid than they are today. Which I suppose proves your point. Wicca is an established (in the sense of a fixed core of principles and beliefs) religion.

#23 from Wastelandlive: DB: "George W. Bush knows that some religion is genuine, even though he has a blind, ignorant conviction that Wicca is not a religion. That's more wisdom than a man has who just makes up everything, and can't imagine the inner lives of those who don't."

I don't even know what that means, and I mostly agree with you in this argument!"

-

That tells me beyond doubt I botched explaining myself clearly - and if you were confused, I'm sure others were equally confused, but just too polite to say so. So thanks for that feedback.

#23 from Wastelandlive: "What does "genuine" in this context mean?

Inherent truth?
The religion that "fits me?" "Fits" the most people?
The religion that promotes the "best" moral code?
The religion with the oldest extant hierarchy?
The religion most successful at proselytizing."

On reflection, I guess different people would mean different things.

I was referring back to George W. Bush, whose bungling of this issue was the seed of this thread. I think he believes only his religion is true, but he has enough human sympathy (when not blinded by prejudice, as on Wicca) to appreciate that when others say nice things on the authority of their religions, they often mean it from the heart, the way he does when he speaks from his religion. They're not just making up whatever suits them at the moment.

That's limited wisdom, but it's some wisdom.

Ah. Sincere.

So... I take it that you think that HE thinks that Wiccans aren't sincere: just crazy kids looking for an excuse to run around naked on the Solstice?

Native Americans trying to smoke peyote on base must have really lodged in his craw.

Then again, if the rumors are true, maybe not.

Crazy world!

#25 from M. Simon: "David says:

The archeology of Ancient Egypt does not say what you say it does.

I must have read different archeology books than you did."

Indeed.

And your books evidently were not written by Hornung, Assmann, Baines, Quirke, or by anybody who counts for anything.

BTW David,

The pagan religious current in the Nazi regime is undeniable. Whether it took the specific form you mention is irrelevant. You point IMO is similar to arguing that only Catholics are Christians. From a certain point of view correct. From another point of view irrelevant.

#27 from Wastelandlive: "Ah. Sincere."

That's my best guess and what was on his mind. To the extent that he had a thought-through opinion at all. :/

One of the reasons I posted this thread is, from what I have seen of him, I like George W. Bush. I like Dick Cheney. I like the Bushes and the Cheneys, especially Mary Cheney, who makes an excellent impression. And if you like someone, it's tempting to look away and pretend not to see, when they do something discreditable or just deeply stupid.

I thought someone who likes George W. Bush should post and cop to this one, rather than hoping it slid by unnoticed.

Armed Liberal does something similar with liberal and Democrat idiocies from time to time. I respect that.

Mr. Blue:

Good for you, lad.

There are a number of different neopagan faiths; Wicca happens to be the one in the limelight because it's the largest, and therefore the one that is most likely to be encountered. It's hard to argue that Wicca isn't somewhat... how to say this respectfully? Whimsical. That colors a lot of the discussion about pagan issues.

Yet some of these neopagan faiths are very serious -- I've met followers of Asatru, for example, who learned to read Old Norse so that they could approach their foundational texts in the original. There aren't that many Christians these days who study Aramaic, or even Latin. Usually only the very most serious do that, and not all of them.

And even in the case of Wiccans, if they fought and died for our country, they're the best kind of American and due the respect we rightly offer to our martyrs.

If they would have wanted a pentacle over their grave, they should have it.

#1 from Glen Wishard: "And the premier example of a modern European pagan was Heinrich Freaking Himmler and his Teutonic Knights. Are we going to have swastikas and SS lightning bolts in cemeteries, too?"
N
o. The Nazis had pseudo-science in plenty. An authentic pagan religious tradition they did not have. They had no respect for such ancient relics. Nazism was radically hostile to and/or contemptuous of pretty much everything that was not itself.

By the way --

The argument that American traditions are basically Chrisitan and not pagan is one that Jefferson himself considered and rejected. He wrote a piece called Saxons, Constitutions, and a case of pious Fraud on the subject:

[F]or such the judges have usurped in their repeated decisions, that Christianity is a part of the common law. The proof of the contrary, which you have adduced, is incontrovertible; to wit, that the common law existed while the Anglo-Saxons were yet Pagans, at a time when they had never yet heard the name of Christ pronounced, or knew that such a character had ever existed.

It's fair to say that our legal traditions owe more to the Saxons, the Vikings and the Iroquios than to any specifically Christian tradition.

Fudge. Mouse slip in post #30.

Re: #31 from Grim - hi, thanks for the kind words, and we are entirely on the same page.

Grim: "I've met followers of Asatru, for example, who learned to read Old Norse so that they could approach their foundational texts in the original."

Yeah. These are the people who I most easily respect. They are self-disciplined and un-bluffable. They put in the time, money and effort to be so.

I can imagine all too easily the feelings of someone who was genuine listening to a judge deciding out of ignorance, prejudice and state power what was worthy or unworthy in his or her religion.

This is something we ought to keep the law out of.

But there's no way to do that when people needlessly create serious injustices that only recourse to courts can correct.

David,

We see lots of examples of religious cooption in all religions. The Christmas Tree is a perfect example. Easter is another. Since when was Ishtar a Christian concept? Local customs and gods coopted to further Christianity.

The Catholic Church's Saints are another example. The Saints get mixed up with former local dieties.

It would be very surprising if such things didn't happen in Egypt. For the same reasons. Easily enlarging the mass of believers with a minimum of resistance. In fact any historian who said such things didn't happen would be suspect.

The Jews concept of the universe was affected by their Babalonian captivity.

Such cultural trading goes on all the time.

The genius of the USA is that the government is meta to all this (ideally) so it stays out of the way of cultural trade.

However, it is easier for the government to handle 3 religions rather than 30 or 3,000. So the only way you can deal with that is to sue. The two forces are in conflict. Economic government vs. pluralistic government. Which is why government is such a blunt instrument. It is hard to find a set of rules that will be "fair" in all situations.

As to live and let live. Private cemetaries are less restrictive about religious symbols (actually some more, some less). So you can probably find a cemetary where you could be buried under the appropriate symbol. Even if your religion only has 1 member.

And on your own time you can practice any religion you choose as long as you avoid most felonies in the practice.

So I'd say there was plenty of live and let live in the country.

I have to admit I'm with Glen Wishard on having little patience with Wicca or Wiccans, but on the other hand, the first amendment doesn't read "Congress shall pass no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. . .unless the religion is silly."

#18 from M. Simon: "The history of the Egyptian religions (ca 5,000 years ago) is quite interesting. As tribes were conquered by the Egyptian state their tribal gods were added as attributes of existing gods. When the match was not close enough new god forms were added.

It was the Egyptian way of ending tribalism. Cooption. You get conquered and your gods got worshiped by the state. Which is why the Jews were always so much trouble. Without an image of god they were very hard to coopt. Worse cooption would have meant destruction of the existing state religion. Most people have trouble with the formless void. They want to see something. Jews forbid visuals as part of worship. There was the WORD and that was it."

-

#35 from M. Simon: "David,

We see lots of examples of religious cooption in all religions. The Christmas Tree is a perfect example. Easter is another. Since when was Ishtar a Christian concept? Local customs and gods coopted to further Christianity.

The Catholic Church's Saints are another example. The Saints get mixed up with former local dieties.

It would be very surprising if such things didn't happen in Egypt. For the same reasons. Easily enlarging the mass of believers with a minimum of resistance. In fact any historian who said such things didn't happen would be suspect."

-

M. Simon, you are making Ancient Egyptian history up, as you have done before. I called you on it then. I've called you on it again now. You are done like a dinner. You have got no authority for anything you are saying, and the books you claim to have read, if they exist, are worthless, or else you remember nothing of what they actually said.

Preemptively pronouncing "suspect" any Egyptologist or historian who doesn't support your whacky inventions - and that would be all of them - does not help you. You are in a hole. Stop digging.

As someone from the more (or less) reformed branches of protestantism, I do find it strange that public spaces sometimes seem to have more demonstrative displays of religion than the worship spaces of the churches I've attended.

I would be for less religious demonstration in public spaces.

I'm not as happy about the notion that the definition of religion is simply what any person believes. To that extent that we will have "Dell" symbols, pornography, dollar signs or whatever. I do think religion has some more defined meaning and I would say that a test of time is not irrelevant to that inquiry. Its somewhat demonstrated by how many pagan groups do cull the history and seek enrichment of their views from the past.

I don't want to be the line-drawer, though I do think the lines exist. Didn't Joseph Campbell draw a line between religion and mythology, that might be an interesting view since I don't think he was necessarily favorable to the religious side of the line (or at least the Judeo-Christian).

On the final hand, people who have died in the service of the country deserve the utmost deference in their closely-held views.

Grim: It's fair to say that our legal traditions owe more to the Saxons, the Vikings and the Iroquios than to any specifically Christian tradition.

I think you've given short shrift to the Presbyterian form of church government. The Scots will be quite upset.

I don't think so, PD. I believe I'm familiar with the argument you're mentioning -- that the "concentric circle" form of government the Presbyterian church uses is mirrored in the American local/state/Federal system.

What that leaves out is that this isn't the system the Founders set up -- the original Constitutional system set up not concentric circles of authority, but separate circles of authority. The Federal government had these powers, but the states had those. The concentric nature of the circles is a product of the 14th Amendment, and therefore of the Civil War.

Now, the Scots do deserve some credit -- the Declaration of Arbroath is a magnificient document, and has ringing echoes in our own Declaration of Independence. Set propter libertatum solummodo!

Um, an aside:

As the link says, it was not the Christian cross on the seal of Pomona but the Christian cross and an image of the Roman goddess Pomona on the seal of the County of Los Angeles.

Why Pomona? She's the goddess of fruitfulness. That would be for orange groves, for instance.

The seal has had other historical symbols: oil derricks, drafting triangle and calipers, a fish, a cow, etc.

Every child in Los Angeles schools studies the county's mission history, San Gabriel Arcangel being the first (1771).

The city itself began as El Pueblo de la Reyna de Los Angeles: (The Pueblo of the Queen of the Angels). Usually Nuestra Senora is included in the name: Our Lady, Queen of the Angels.

Awfully religiocentric. Or maybe that's just the history of the place.

/Aside

Hitler was as severe an atheist as a man can be; it comes out clearly in Hitler's Table Talk.

I guess it wasn't nice of Hitler to make fun of Himmler like that. Himmler was only trying to give his religion a false claim to antiquity, which is very important to bogus religions, and is my main reason for calling Wicca bogus.

You asked who I considered to be real pagans today. In its original meaning, I believe, "pagan" meant an unbaptized person. Since early Christians often did not seek baptism until they were near their deathbed, it was possible to be Christian and pagan both.

Greeks and Romans have been referred to pagans, but the term has little meaning when applied to pre-Christian people, since it would include everybody. "Pagan" meant someone who rejected or who had not yet accepted Christianity. Over the centuries, Jews and Muslims were dropped from the pagan roster, and paganism was restricted to people of esoteric or marginal religious beliefs.

So who are the real pagans? That depends on what the term means today, if it means anything, but the word has definitely been adopted by New Agers, who use it to denote a nature or goddess-worshipping religion that is 1) ancient, 2) based on a set of common principles, and 3) was very widespread before it was persecuted to near extinction.

Such a thing does not exist today, and never did exist in any Christian land. Some of the more honest practitioners, like the New Age Feminist mythologists, admit as much, but don't care.

As I pointed out before, of the pagan groups that early Christians faced after the Christianization of Western Europe, the Vikings were overwhelmingly the most important. To make sure everybody knew how important they were, they sacked and burned Paris and other European cities several times, and even invaded Christian North Africa. Himmler's neo-paganism leaned heavily on the Vikings, and there are people today who attempt to simulate their religion. At which point, we might as well call Dungeons and Dragons a religion.

Mr. Blue,

Despite being notionally on your side in this little dust-up (in that it doesn't matter to me what symbols you etch on your tombstone, other than that you have the right to do so) let me state in no uncertain terms that you are covering yourself in something other than glory, here, and are doing far more damage to your cause than you might think.

M. Simon's thesis of religious co-option, both in regards to Egyptian and Christian religions, is neither new, nor controversial, nor even particularly offensive unless you really have some particular axe to grind. If modern day Christians can get over the fact that Christmas is celebrated at solstice because of pre-existing pagan festivals, you might consider that practices and forms flowed from pagan to pagan, as well.

(And people wonder why I find this all tremendously silly. Seriously, people, look at yourselves!)

One of the problems in discussing Wicca is determining just which conception of Wicca is under discussion. I deeply respect a lot of the Asatruar, the Hellenic Reconstructionists, and other Pagans searching out and reconstructing pre-Abrahamic belief systems that have been largely destroyed in evidence, and often completely destroyed as living religions (hence the need to recreate them). There are Wiccan groups that are also reconstructionist.

Of course, Wicca is somewhat of a fringe religion as well, and any non-mainstream movement (including evangelical Christianity in its early days, homeschooling, the Libertarian Party, Republican journalists, or what have you) tends to attract ... odd people ... merely by dint of not being mainstream. People who don't fit with the mainstream adopt anything they think that they can fit in with, and then the non-mainstream movement tends to get tarred as being composed only or mostly of the odd people. The New Age (or, to be less charitable, Fluffy Bunny) Wiccan groups tend to fall happily into this category, as do the Dianic (very, very militant feminist as a foundational principle) groups.

I can point out just as many odd groups among Christians. I'll see your Fluffy Bunnies and raise you a Jehovah's Witness. And every religion has such groups. It's just that with the mainstream religions, the odd ones get treated as noise, where with the non-mainstream religions, they have a much larger proportional representation.

As to claims of age as a metric of "validity" in religion, let's lay that to rest right now. Wicca was founded in the 1950s by Gerald Gardner. It is a thoroughly modern creation. It was, and continues to be, deeply inspired both by pre-Christian European religions, particularly those of the northern Celts, and by Eastern religions such as Buddhism. I suppose for the "my religion is older than yours, and therefore more authentic" crowd, that's somehow dispositive. Many Wiccas used to (maybe still do) fall into this trap, inventing "traditions" on the fly and then arguing about whose is older and thus more authentic. Bah! The authenticity of religion is not in its age, but in how it speaks to you: anyone who has been in the presence of the Divine cannot be convinced that atheists have see everything the right way, nor can one who has experienced a goddess be convinced of a religion that only admits of gods, nor can one who has experienced Jesus as a living force be convinced that Christianity is anything other than perfectly valid.

By the way, for those who don't realize it, "Wicca" is equivalent in definitional scope to "Christianity", while "Pagan" is equivalent to "Abrahamic". That is, Wicca describes a set of religions with a common core doctrine, and many differences on non-core doctrines, while Pagan describes a broader set of religions. In actual fact, Pagan is far less definitive than Abrahamic, because all of the Abrahamic religions claim to worship the same god; they just have different conceptions of the nature of that god and of what makes a "legitimate" prophet. Pagans don't have nearly the same agreement on the nature of the divine. For some Pagans, gods are immanent, while for others gods are (or the god is) transcendent. For some Pagans, reality conforms to one's will, while for others reality is independent even of the will of the gods.

#12, David, I was not referring to you with my comment about uninformed people. I hope you didn't take it that way.

[As an aside, several years ago I read a book called Drawing Down the Moon, about the rise of New Age religions. One of the stories that interested me concerned a group of Ayn Rand Objectivists, who decided to set up an enclave like the one in Atlas Shrugged. But Atlas didn't shrug. Instead, they turned into a Wiccan-like cult. That was no accident, either - only a short few steps, in my opinion.]

In discussing these things, we seem to fall into the same say-nothingism that dominates First Amendment debate. Freedom means freedom from persecution and restraint - it emphatically does NOT mean that everybody's opinion is worthy of respect.

I don't have a problem calling a religion bogus, either. (Do you hear me, Commodore Hubbard? Of course you can't hear me, you goofy dead son of a bitch.) Anybody can make up a church, that doesn't make it a religion.

Esperanto, for example, is a contrived language. It can be used like any real language, and adherents can argue its superiority to real languages. Real languages, however, grow out of the historical experiences of real people, and against that Esperanto remains as fake as a cardboard tree.

The problem I have with concepts like Asatru is that they borrow a belief system that developed to suit the needs of an utterly alien culture. You would think them silly if they decided to dress up like pilgrims or pirates just because they liked the clothes. If your religion is less serious than your fashion sense, you're a faker.

That said, I don't really have a problem with Wiccans and others having their own symbols. It certainly does not detract from a national cemetery, which cannot be so demeaned for reasons which Lincoln explained. However, it seems that many adherents of these so-called religions are mainly interested in using them to annoy the rest of us with silly demands for recognition. I recently read about a death row prisoner, a follower of Asatru, who complained that the prison was not allowing him religious paraphernalia, including a sword. They let him have a cardboard sword, but apparently some guard stole it. And so on. (When I was a kid I knew people who existed only to annoy; they were called punk rockers. Those guys I actually liked.)

Finally, I won't concede David Blue's point that Wicca is senior to Disco. Donna Summer was born in 1948, boys and girls. That's not the voice of the goddess that's calling from the collective unconscious - it's Funkytown!

#46 Glen:

In discussing these things, we seem to fall into the same say-nothingism that dominates First Amendment debate. Freedom means freedom from persecution and restraint - it emphatically does NOT mean that everybody's opinion is worthy of respect.

But one of the positively established ways to protect that, enshrined by the courts, means that the government cannot favor one religion over another, which is what happens when you allow one symbol and not another. It certainly doesn't mean you can deny one just because you think it's silly. I reject the very notion that you or the government have any authority or standing to make such a determination.

The problem I have with concepts like Asatru is that they borrow a belief system that developed to suit the needs of an utterly alien culture.

And if that matters in any meaningful sense, that means that it will die out. Why would you even bother wasting time arguing about that, if that's really your conviction?

The problem I have with concepts like Asatru is that they borrow a belief system that developed to suit the needs of an utterly alien culture.

I'll point out again that our legal system owes more to the Vikings than it does to almost anyone else except the Anglo-Saxons, who were just the sea-going Germanic warriors of an earlier period. Far from alien, followers of things like Asatru will find deep resonance in numerous aspects of American life: Yuletide celebrations, the law, the popularity of the Lord of the Rings (and its derivatives) in our culture, the periodic performances of Wagner's operas, and so on.

For that matter, I've known some several Marines who were Asatruar. Far from seeming alien to Marine Corps culture, Thor and Odin fit right in.

No wonder, if George W. Bush will lost with next elections. Every new day he loses new voices

The authenticity of religion is not in its age, but in how it speaks to you -

Jeff, I have to totally disagree with you there. Many things can speak to people, including schizophrenic cranial voices. Some people are ridiculously easy to "speak to", and every new thing that comes along speaks to them.

It's true that you can't compare religions by comparing their ages - though I note that many Muslims argue that Islam is superior because it is younger than Judaism or Christianity, and is therefore the New and Improved Word of God.

But I'm sure Darwin would agree with me that old things exist because they have survived for a very long time, meeting challenges, absorbing experience, and adapting to changes in environment. They reflect an accumulation of wisdom that cannot be fully appreciated by any single individual, or communicated by any personal revelation.

Our rejection of human experience in favor of solipsism, faddism, and mindless rebellion is a serious problem that goes far beyond religion. Credulity is no damn joke these days. Because of this we are about to spend endless trillions of dollars to "fight" carbon dioxide; or rather, to pretend to fight it.

In a like manner did Caligula declare war on Neptune.

Marcus: the government cannot favor one religion over another

But that requires the government to decide what is a religion. I believe Glenn might agree that communism is a religion. What would that recognition ear? Does that mean a properly sensitive Christmas display should incorporate pictures of Marx?

#41 from old maltese: "Um, an aside:

As the link says, it was not the Christian cross on the seal of Pomona but the Christian cross and an image of the Roman goddess Pomona on the seal of the County of Los Angeles."

Augh! What a goof - and I didn't see it till you said it! It's the the County of Los Angeles California seal, as it says in large black letters on white, not what I'd begun to think of as "that Pomona seal".

Thanks, old maltese. I'll edit the post to remove the misinformation and correctly identify the relevant seal.

Glen,

By your argument, Christianity was a freaky Jewish cult, and not an authentic religion, until when, exactly?

Sorry, I can't buy that one. If the age of a belief and its survival over time is indicative of its wisdom, then certainly Wicca, which draws in large part from Neolithic ideas, is wiser than more recent religions like Christianity. But that is a bunk argument: you might as well argue that the concept that the Earth is the center of the universe is a wiser belief than that the Earth orbits the Sun, because the idea is older. Of course, there's a difference there, too: you can disprove the hypothesis that the Sun orbits the Earth. You cannot disprove either the Wiccan or the Christian concept of divinity.

Actually, let me modify that last statement. You can, theoretically, disprove the Wiccan concept of divinity, but not the Christian concept of divinity. Science concerns itself only with natural explanations for natural phenomena. Since the Wiccan concept of divinity includes god as immanent (and as such as a part of nature), it could theoretically be disproved. Christianity conceives of god as transcendent, outside of nature, and thus the Christian concept of divinity is not subject to scientific analysis in any meaningful sense (though some doctrinal claims would, of course, be scientifically testable).

I agree with you, as it happens, about faddism and uncritical acceptance of stupid crap. Our rejection of reason and rationality as a culture is a primary cause, IMHO, of our decline in cultural confidence and coherence. However, I find just as much of that faddism and stupidity in Christians as I do in Wiccans, and note that more of the global warming fetishists are likely Christian than Wiccan, just by sheer weight of numbers in society.

None of the problems with faddism and mindless rebellion indicts Wicca per se, though certainly (as I noted before) a lot of mindless rebels will seek out non-mainstream religions to attach to in a search for belonging, and that means that a lot of mindless rebels end up as Wiccans. Again, by weight of numbers (though probably not as a percentage), you get way more of that from Christians than from Wiccans.

As a societal issue (as opposed to a personal one), separation of Church from State is critically necessary to the preservation of a society both free and peaceful. The only meaningful questions to ask in such a society are whether a given religion is coercive, violent or fraudulent in practice; the content of a religions doctrines are meaningless questions, because doctrine does not need to be addressed in order to decide whether a religion is harmful to society or not.

By the way, that last is one of the reasons why I oppose the ACLU's constant war on religion, at least on mainstream non-Muslim religions. The ACLU's position takes "freedom from" religion to an extreme, and treats us all as children in the process. Similarly, Glen's position treats us as children, unable to separate religion from politics. I find both notions distasteful at the least.

#43 from Marcus Vitruvius: "Mr. Blue,

Despite being notionally on your side in this little dust-up (in that it doesn't matter to me what symbols you etch on your tombstone, other than that you have the right to do so) let me state in no uncertain terms that you are covering yourself in something other than glory, here, and are doing far more damage to your cause than you might think."

I'm sorry to hear it.

You would do me more of a favor, though, to point to any source that supports what you think is right, that to tell me how much I'm harming my cause and covering myself with un-glory by sticking to my guns on this.

#43 from Marcus Vitruvius: "M. Simon's thesis of religious co-option, both in regards to Egyptian and Christian religions, is neither new, nor controversial, nor even particularly offensive unless you really have some particular axe to grind."

If it's not new, why not point to some of the books?

It's certainly not controversial in the sense of being a hot topic of discussion in journals such as KMT.

Again, if you think my facts are wrong, you will do me more of a favor to point me to better authorities than to raise implications of axe-grinding.

#43 from Marcus Vitruvius: "If modern day Christians can get over the fact that Christmas is celebrated at solstice because of pre-existing pagan festivals, you might consider that practices and forms flowed from pagan to pagan, as well."

I go as far as anybody serious in arguing for Ancient Egyptian religion as a product of Eastern Mediterranean mixing and not pure African isolation. I don't have to "get over" a taboo on considering that, it is my position.

My objection is to making stuff up, not because what is make up conflicts with any dogma I hold, but out of respect for truth, convenient or not.

There is a layer of facts about religion (as opposed to within the myths of religion), of Egyptology, of archeology, of history, that ought to be respected, and a layer of probability built on that which is the business of the relevant scholars and ought also to be taken with reasonable seriousness.

If, having read and thought seriously (and in the ideal case having gone on digs yourself and looked at everything with your own eyes), you find yourself obliged to depart from the scholarly consensus, fine, say so.

But don't just make up any story that suits your sense of how the world works or ought to work, and present it as though it was the history of Ancient Egypt (or anywhere else). Or, if you do, it is reasonable for a person who knows that this is not right to call you on it.

Don't talk as though we had all sorts of information about ancient history that we don't have and that the real scholars are very careful to say they don't have, or if you do, expect to be called on it - especially when you persist after being given earlier chances to back off.

#43 from Marcus Vitruvius: "(And people wonder why I find this all tremendously silly. Seriously, people, look at yourselves!)"

I don't find respect for truth silly.

And I don't see how we can have good discussions about religion in the public square, fair treatment of different religions and so on, unless on the basis of respect for a shell of facts around religion: how many Wiccans there are, when their Wiccan Laws were announced, and things like that. You shouldn't invent meta-religious facts.

Frankly, I think religious issues involve two separate issues that are being conflated.

The first is that the government should not (except in the most dire of circumstances) interfere with people's practice of their religion. This is not merely a religious right, but a right to think freely about anything. Nobody has said Wiccans shouldn't think what they think.

The second issue is the establishment or promotion of religion. Here we are talking about the distribution of government benefits, not freedom from state coercion. A prisoner claims to be a pantheist who can only eat raw food, so he wants a special diet and by the way, the prison makes a chaplain available, so he wants his own religious leader. The school is teaching Darwin, so it should allow a Scientology lecture. Same with the pentacles in the military cemeteries.

I think the government reasonably responds to the promotion problem by distributing public benefits to a reasonable group of religions -- not necessarily all religions.

#55 from PD Shaw: "The second issue is the establishment or promotion of religion."

I agree that in a sense, the symbol on a military headstone can be seen as a government benefit, and a sort of promotion of religion.

The secular benefit conferred by the state in this case is a piece of good reputation for the religion upheld by the soldier that lies there.

That individual gave serious evidence that whatever an outsider might make of their religion, to them it was consistent with patriotic service. And because of the symbol on the headstone, others can see that evidence.

Should this benefit, the ability to make one's grave a testimony to the compatibility of ones religion with patriotism, be conferred on adherents of many religions and not on Wiccans? Should it be OK for the stones to say "I, a Christian, served and gave my all" and "I, a Jew, served and gave my all" and "I, a Sikh, served and gave my all" but not OK for the stones to say "I, a Wiccan, served and gave my all"?

I think including the pentacle on the list of approved religious symbols removes an injustice.

#55 from PD Shaw: "I think the government reasonably responds to the promotion problem by distributing public benefits to a reasonable group of religions -- not necessarily all religions."

I agree.

But how unreasonable do you have to be to be excluded legitimately from the benefit of an appropriate military headstone?

I haven't noticed Wiccans flying planes into buildings, strapping on suicide belts or cutting heads.

One of the things I dislike about George W. Bush's attitude in all this is that he's been on hand-holding terms with the Saudis, which means the Wahhabis, the whole time. If you're oil-rich, evidently you get respect for your religion even if you are hip-deep in terrorism and global hostilities against America and its allies. If you're just ordinary folks at home, with no special wealth or reason why people would be gut-scared to speak ill of you, you can get the brunt of religious prejudice, even if you have no record of hostile acts. I don't think that's fair.

Re: #45 from Jeff Medcalf - Thanks. I didn't take what you said the wrong way. I'm just making clear my respect for those who know what they are talking about.

#51 from PD Shaw: Marcus: the government cannot favor one religion over another

But that requires the government to decide what is a religion. I believe Glenn might agree that communism is a religion. What would that recognition ear? Does that mean a properly sensitive Christmas display should incorporate pictures of Marx?

-

I have no problem with the government supporting explicitly Christan Christmas celebrations, and not bothering to do anything like that for any other religion.

Nobody should be jealous of Christmas, unless they are completely lawsuit-happy.

But, what makes people so quick to sue?

Do you agree with me that when other religions are needlessly slighted, when goodwill and a live and let attitude provide no remedies, and when lawsuits work, people are in effect being taught that the solution is to make a court case out of everything?

IMHO this is a proper use of the courts. Everyone can point to established, well known religions with many adherents.

But what about Santeria? Killer Radishes? UFO-worshippers (other than L Ron)??

For that, IMHO, we should leave that to the courts. They have their place in disputes like this.

#37 David,

You have got no authority for anything you are saying, and the books you claim to have read, if they exist, are worthless, or else you remember nothing of what they actually said.

Preemptively pronouncing "suspect" any Egyptologist or historian who doesn't support your whacky inventions - and that would be all of them - does not help you. You are in a hole. Stop digging.

So Ishtar IS a Christian concept. Who knew?

Mr Blue, #54,

I can't actually figure out what it is you're arguing against, as far as M. Simon and I are concerned. At first, I thought it was the whole idea of syncretism in ancient Egypt. (Or, to use M. Simon's term, co-option.) In that case, I'd wonder if you're offended by the whole notion of syncretism and thought thtat it never happened anywhere, or if you acknowledged it everywhere except Egypt... and why.

But then you went on to say, I think, that you're perfectly fine with Egypt being part of cultural exchange and being embedded in the overall cultural matrix.

So as I said, I can't figure out what you're going on about.

Of course, it doesn't help that you won't calm down and speak rationally about the subject, choosing instead to call everyone who speaks on the subject a liar, and accusing them of making things up (apparently, just to spite you.) And honestly, I don't need or want to give you a remedial course in the differences between people lying, people being mistaken, and people just holding different but reasonable beliefs.

That, Mr. Blue, is why you are doing more damage to your cause than you might expect. Just because you're touchy and emotionally close to a subject doesn't give you leave to go calling everyone else a liar.

By your argument, Christianity was a freaky Jewish cult, and not an authentic religion, until when, exactly?

Well, as near to exactitude as anyone can get, it would have been 49 AD. That was the year that Paul of Tarsus went to Jerusalem and met the surviving Apostles and James the brother of Jesus, and they decided that Christianity would no longer remain a minority Jewish sect. Not that they were "freaky" before that - they had in fact been faithfully observing Jewish law.

#60 from Jim Rockford: "IMHO this is a proper use of the courts. Everyone can point to established, well known religions with many adherents.

But what about Santeria? Killer Radishes? UFO-worshippers (other than L Ron)??

For that, IMHO, we should leave that to the courts. They have their place in disputes like this."

Ultimately I agree. There is no final alternative to taking a dispute like this to court. But I don't think there should have been a dispute.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas once said that the same people complaining that the court was imposing itself (probably the case he meant was Bush vs. Gore) were those were bringing lawsuits in the first place, requiring it to get involved. That was true, and a good point. If you don't want the courts to get involved in an issue, don't force them to get involved.

Conservatives have long complained about religious litigation. However, George W. Bush, a religious conservative (by presidential standards) in effect needlessly and stubbornly maintained a point of religious injustice that proved beyond remedy from any quarter but the courts.

I think Justice Thomas' point is just as sharp pressed the other way. If you don't want people to sue you, don't make them do so.

Re: #62 from Marcus Vitruvius:

Your accusations of emotionality and so on are without foundation.

By explaining that what I want is not adherence to any dogma but rather historical precision, I hoped I would stop this argument being a problem, and stop it causing ill-feeling.

But since that was my goal, it looks like I'm the one that's in the hole and should stop digging. From my point of view, it is counterproductive to add anything.

re: #63

Glen,

Let's see, there are at least two ways to take that. Depending on how you count Christ's birth and my memory of how old he was supposed to be at his crucifixion, I believe that would be 17 or 21 years. In either case, that's well beyond the 55 or so years since Wicca was founded. (So I'm too lazy to go look it up. Sue me. No riff on David Blue's point intended.)

The second way is to see it as not a function of time, but a function of a church (really, a Church; that is, a body of believers) separate from Christ's immediate flock and direct leadership. Again you can count that as dating from the 1960s initiation of Alex Sanders, from his late 1960's/early 1970's break with Gerald Gardner, from the priesthood of Stewart Farrar (who initiated his wife Janet, who initiated the priest, who initiated the priestess who initiated me) after leaving Alex Sanders' coven in the mid-1970's (the date I would pick), or from the rise of Wiccan traditions not directly related to Gardner by the late 1970s. In any case, there's at least 30 years there since any possibility of a cult of Gerald Gardner was made moot, assuming one ever existed, and Wicca became a real religion by your apparent definition.

So I suppose the only thing I can suggest is that it would be reasonable for you to decide that Wicca as a whole, and in particular certain more political or more stupid branches of the religion, are not meaningfully religions. It's just that I and pretty much every other Wiccan and for that matter a lot of non-Wiccans will have to mock you, unless you've got a better differentiation between a freaky cult and a real religion than you've shown so far.

... a better differentiation between a freaky cult and a real religion than you've shown so far.

Obviously you and others here know more about Wicca than I do. My experience is mainly with mythologizing Barbara Walker types - whom I regard as bigots, historical idiots, and utterly shameless spiritual and intellectual frauds; not one whit above people who sell magic plastic crystals. I will gladly concede that such persons represent only themselves and not the whole.

Let's project Wicca into the future then, centuries from now. Will it still be around? Judaism and Christianity are still around now not because of ingenious theology or Talmudic argument, but because they took root and found expression in ordinary life. To the extent that Wicca has that potential, it will survive. To the extent that it retreats into fantasy and nuisance politics, it will not.

Oh boy, is this a hot subject or what?

After having done a little reading...

I had never paid attention to Heinrich Himmler, because (a) he couldn't fight worth a darn, so as an individual he is not too interesting from the point of view of military history, and (b) he is not an interesting guy from the point of view of religious history. He was a failure and a nutcase. Nobody seems to trace themselves back to him.

That was not inevitable from the failure of National Socialism.

Heidegger remains important in philosophy, and his Nazi collaboration is an awkward problem. The bottom line is, he was good. It's not so easy to reject him for reasons purely internal to the discipline of philosophy.

Himmler doesn't have that in-tradition authenticity going for him. As a "pagan" he has unsatisfactory oddities, like declaring his life-long allegiance to Christianity. (Of course, he was no more a desirable Christian than he was a desirable pagan.) Also, he persecuted other pagans.

Thus Himmler is easy to "read out of the family".

To call Himmler "the premier example of a modern European pagan" is inaccurate. That's not how pagans saw him, see him, or are ever likely to see him. He can only be emblematic of all modern pagans from the point of view of anti-pagan advocacy, but never from the point of view of understanding actual religions.

What passes for "Wicca" is by no means ancient, deriving in large part from the Woodcraft League of America about a century ago.

That Mr. Seton of Boy Scout fame was (unintentionally) the source of such piffle is disappointing to this Eagle Scout, but so be it.

"Wicca" is a religion. So (these days) is "organic." The two are linked by worship of creation, rather than the Creator, and characterised by a dedication to minutiae in a sadly misguided effort to please the "earth spirits" or "nature gods," or is it "Gaia," or maybe that tree over there.

Yes, I am mocking it all. It is primitivist, and (quite frankly) unworthy of civilised folk. Therefore undeserving of respect or official recognition, in contrast to Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism or Islam.

Wicca, like Hollywood Cabbalism, is what I call New Age "McSpirituality." I mean that in the sense of McMuffins, or McNuggets, or McRibs. It is the spiritual equivalent of junk food: quick, easy, tasty, and temporarily satisfying but ultimately empty. Empty because it requires no discipline, no adaptation to or accomodation of a community of believers, no change in oneself, no pesky little rules of morality. Empty because it has no real history no real tradition no great philosophical or theological minds behind it (all of which--for you atheists equating the silliness of Wicca with all religions--the great monotheistic religions do have). Having said all that, though, if enough people want to call their McSprituality a religion, the federal government is constitutionally forbidden from either coopting it as an official "Church of America" or prohibiting its free exercise. Having the symbol of your religion (however ridiculous it may be) seems to me to be covered under the free exercise clause. The problem with freedom of speech is that you have to listen to stupid and/or vile speech sometimes. The problem with freedom of religion is that stupid and/or shallow religions will be practiced. Both are worth the price.

Oops. I meant "having the symbol of your religion (however ridiculous it may be) on your grave"

Being a Solitary, I'll leave the explications of Wicca and the Wiccan church in the eminently capable hands of Jeff Medcalf, but I'd like to address AL's post and some of the points made here.

We can argue all day and into the night about the origins this religion or that one, where a particular tenet or belief came from and how many hands it passed through on its way to the present day, etc. That's all quite interesting and can spark some ... lively ... discussion, but it's largely irrelevant to the topic.

What makes a religion a religion is, essentially, faith in a 'higher power.' (Not an ideal term, but it will have to do for now). Different religions will perceive that power differently, see it as single or multiple, ascribe it different motivations, attributes, even different levels of sentience and involvement in mundane affairs. Everything else (ie, the religion) is just the trappings and other outward manifestations of that faith.

The difficulty then arises in determining whether a given faith -- and, by extension, a given religion -- is genuine. There are some (atheists) who believe all people with faith are either con artists or weak-minded, therefore no faith can be genuine. Then there are religious bigots (George Bush, Bart Hall, Fred) who believe only particular faiths can be genuine.

Ideally (and, arguably, constitutionally), the 'genuineness' of a religion should be irrelevant to govenment functioning and the government should have no place in making that determination. But, since government has arrogated to itself the power to bestow privileges and benefits on religions it deems genuine, and has never really articulated in any clear, consistent way how such a determination should be made, we've come to this pass.

There are two things which mark a genuine religion apart from a cult, and both of them spring from faith, manifested as dedication. Both have also been articulated earlier in this thread (notably by David Blue and Jeff Medcalf), but I'll mention them again. One is the faith of the religion's adherents outlasting its founder. The second is the religion's adherents remaining true to their faith even when that means suffering discomfort, difficulty, possibly even physical danger. Both of these describe Wicca.

By the by, despite some moderately stiff competition, I was going to award Bart Hall the most spectacularly ignorant post in this thread, but then Fred came in with a late entry and took it hands down.

Oh? Why don't you share your wisdom O wise Achillea and explain my ignorance?

re: #74

You conflate a set of Wiccans (I tend to call them Fluffy Bunny Wiccans) with the whole, ignoring that there are rigid theological schools of thought and real religious scholarship (see Vivianne Crowley, for instance) in Wicca and in Paganism in general. There are two possible explanations for this: you are ignorant, or you are disingenuous and bigoted. Achillea was being generous, and assuming ignorance. Given your statements about supporting free exercise regardless of your personal opinion, that is a reasonable assumption to make, and was the one I made as well.

Let's not overplay the religious bigotry card here. Bush said he didn't think Wicca was a religion. He never said that his was the only religion. Note Bush's comments on Islam, which are perhaps a bit more "progressive" than Dave Blue's.

OK, my ex brother in law was a Wiccan, called himself a "high priest." No doubt he went to one of those great Wiccan seminaries and studied all those great Wiccan philosophers and theologians. While it's true I haven't met every Wiccan, every one I have met has been an adolescent (of whatever age) who wanted to shock the bourgoisie.

As for Vivianne Crowley, I haven't read much, but the following quote from her university's website:

She posits that, for some, Wicca may be primarily a form of therapeutic process, and that, once healed, these people will move on. For others, Witchcraft is a belief and place where ongoing, post-healing self-actualization needs are being met.

sure sounds like shallow, self-absorbed New Aginess to me. Note the emphasis on "self-actualization" "therapeutic process" "needs" of the self. I don't doubt there are some, perhaps even some very intelligent, people who take this stuff seriously, but a Wiccan Augustine? Aquinas? Kierkegaard? Maimonedes? Avicenna? Buber? I don't think so. I'm also deeply suspicious of any "religion" that emphasizes "therapeutic" "self-actualization." And I have to agree with that other "ignoramus" Bart Hall that polytheism is understandable in a pre-modern age that required individual gods as causes. It is untenable in the modern era. Even in the ancient world, some of the greatest philosophers' thought led toward, if it didn't affirm, monotheism (Zoroaster, Plato's realm of Ideas, Aristotle's unmoved mover, even Virgil's Jupiter has many attributes of a monotheistic God). If all that makes me a bigot, then I guess I have to plead guilty. If it makes me ignorant, then I guess I have to plead guilty to that. But those are pretty ideosyncratic definitions of ignorance and bigotry.

To call Himmler "the premier example of a modern European pagan" is inaccurate.

Remind me to never use hyperbole for humorous effect around pagans again. You guys are worse than Methodists.

And now it truly gets ugly.

Well, Crowley is an academic, and is going to talk like one. I suggest "Wicca: The Old Religion in the New Age" (from the late 1980s) as an excellent academic work on Wicca. Wicca itself does not have an Aquinas or a Maimonades yet — it is a fairly young religion, after all, and at this point in Christianity's history, there was also no Aquinas, etc. On the other hand, Pagans have a number of quite notable philosophers, including the classical Greek and Roman (prior to about 200AD, anyway) philosophers by and large. Another interesting book if you are interested, not about Wicca per se but about polytheism, is "A World Full of Gods" by John Michael Greer (not the Hopkins book of the same name). You might also try reading the writings of Janet and Stewart Farrar, Gavin Bone, or Ray Buckland.

One problem in making this statement about philosophers, though, is how meaningless it is to Wiccans. Religions, broadly, fall into two categories in terms of gnosis: "sky religions" like the Abrahamic religions (excluding mystics like the Kabbalists or the Quakers), Zoroastrianism, Hellenism or Confucianism are "thinking" religions, where knowledge of the divine comes from reason and observation; "earth religions" like Wicca, the American Indian religions, or Buddhism are "experiential" religions, where knowledge of the divine comes from direct experience of or striving towards divinity. Sky religions care about what their adherents believe; earth religions care about what their adherents do.

This tends to lead sky religions (including the Greeks and, to a lesser extent, the Romans) to produce philosophers, and the earth religions to produce artists. This is, in fact, one of the reasons why the fluffy bunny varieties of Wicca are so attractive to Leftists and poseurs, and why I think Fred's experience, for example, is sadly more typical than not (at least of American Wicca). In any event, the point I was originally getting to is that Wiccans, in general, are not particularly interested in religious philosophy or in enumerated theology. For that reason, even after time passes (and assuming that Wicca still exists as a meaningful set of identifiable beliefs), it is unlikely that Wicca will produce many philosophers in the mold of, say, Avicenna.

This tendency to attract kooks also creates another problem for traditionalists, in that people who are searching for a New Age religion as a therapy or an escapism (and there are quite a few of those) are typically taking bits and pieces of other religions (like Kabbalah, chakras, American aboriginal elements, West African Yoruban elements, political activism as religion, and so on) and sticking them together and calling them Wicca. I am more of a traditionalist in that sense, closer to the Gardnerian/Alexandrian view. In actual fact, I suspect most of my thought-out positions (political or religious) would be anathema to most Wiccans of the more eclectic bent.

#76 from PD Shaw: "Let's not overplay the religious bigotry card here. Bush said he didn't think Wicca was a religion. He never said that his was the only religion."

That's true.

I see George W. Bush as a good guy, with flaws; and in that context I would see him as religion-friendly, with an unfortunate exception.

#76 from PD Shaw: "Note Bush's comments on Islam, which are perhaps a bit more "progressive" than Dave Blue's."

That's true too.

#71 from Fred: "The problem with freedom of speech is that you have to listen to stupid and/or vile speech sometimes. The problem with freedom of religion is that stupid and/or shallow religions will be practiced. Both are worth the price."

While Fred is concerned about some religions being inferior (but he still supports freedom of religion), I am concerned about some religions being dangerous in a secular, this-worldly sense (but I still support freedom of religion).

I'm convinced that the free market in religion is the solution. When anyone can change their religion at any time and for any reason without any adverse consequences, religious authorities have to change unreasonable dogmas to be more reasonable, or else lose adherents. But, when there are penalties for apostasy, the free market is less able to soften a religion, and that's one of the indications that a religion may remain dangerous.

From this point of view, Islam, which has proved it is dangerous in a secular, this-worldly sense, and which inclines to ending the free market in religion rather that alter itself to conform to it, is a problem. But of course those Islamic headstones have to stay where they are.

From this point of view, Wicca is not a problem at all. It's a harmless faith that will thrive or fail in a free market, and whose adherents have an obvious interest in the maintenance of freedom of religion. And of course those Wiccan headstones have to stay where they are also.

#78 from Glen Wishard: "Remind me to never use hyperbole for humorous effect around pagans again. You guys are worse than Methodists."

Remember: never use hyperbole for humorous effect around pagans again. Us guys are worse than Methodists.

However nonsensical Wicca may be, it is no more (or less) nonsensical than most of the major tenents of Christianity, e.g., that God created us in His image, that Jesus Christ was sent by God (and is Himself, at the same time, God, but not a different God) to die for our sins, and that He then rose from the dead, that if we are good we go to heaven and if we are bad we go to hell. How anyone who believe all that can denounce Wicca is beyond me.

mark, it's like how someone can fly in their private jet to a rally against burning fossil fuels, or can simultaneously hold in their minds that we don't have enough troops in Iraq to win, we cannot send more troops, and they (those holding these views) are not working for our defeat. Some things are just matters of faith: you believe them in some sense because they are absurd, and professing the absurdity is a mark of belonging. All dogmas, religious or not, have a certain amount of required cognitive dissonance, of belief for belief's sake.

I also think that nothing is to be expected from Wiccans as philosophers, but for a different reason than Jeff Medcalf gives.

Ancient Egyptian religion was emphatically a "sky religion" in Jeff Medcalf's terms, yet Ancient Egypt's contribution to philosophy was negligible. I think this is because Pharaoh was the sole ultimate initiate of the sun-god (and the ultimate giver of satisfactory offerings to the gods). Nobody else was in a position even to attempt to make final statements on how everything fits together. I don't see how you could start to do synoptic philosophy without challenging Pharaoh's role as the only one who knew all the final secrets.

I don't know the source, but consider this story:

An ancient Athenian was once asked where his altars of Zeus, Herkios and Agathos Daemon were located. His answer was to give the address of his home, adding that: ".... and I am worshiping there as my ancestors have before me".

That would be quite characteristic of the Greeks. The state cult, revering the protective god of the polis, was important, but home worship was even more important. (And Roman religion too supplemented the state cult with vital home and tribal level religion, again unlike Egypt where the religious practice of the common people had no formal standing, except in processions and festivals.)

From the point of view of liberating man's potential for philosophical creativity, the Greek model proved itself uniquely superior, and the Egyptian model proved itself worthless. (And yes I am fine with some religions being inferior and some superior in specific ways. One should try to be dispassionate about this, rather than needing to say all are equal in every way to spare people's tender feelings.)

So, is the Wiccan model, with small numbers of top level initiates, and lineage as an important idea, going to produce a feast of philosophy? I don't think so.

It's more reasonable to hope that Wiccans may make a strong contribution to the arts. There's already been at least one pagan movie masterpiece: Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth (El Laberinto Del Fauno) (2006). You couldn't ask for anything more pagan or more edifying.

There's more than one way for religion to be of benefit to society.

#83 from mark: "How anyone who believe all that can denounce Wicca is beyond me."

That sword cuts in two directions. One of my Christian friends got hassled over his Christian beliefs by a "pagan" who, like many "pagans" didn't know what his religion actually was or what god(s) if any he counted on, and who had a kind of random pile of popular and pseudo-Buddhist beliefs - including incarnation. So, my friend started to inquire about the incarnations the "enlightened one" expected to experience. Do you think you can be reincarnated as a dog? How about a cat? How about a bird? How about a beetle? How can you believe you may be a cockroach in your next life, and mock me for believing in heaven?

Good point.

I think there's a large place for easy-going mutual tolerance in matters of religion.

Which leads me back to my point about the undesirability of incentives to lawyer up, except that this is a point few people other than me seem to find interesting.

Actually, I find it interesting. I also find it interesting that there is a strong incentive towards violence and rabble rousing in how we treat religions. It's just that you've made the point well enough that I didn't feel the need to comment.

Re #87 from Jeff Medcalf: Fair enough. And I beat that one to death.

We'll discuss the unfortunate privileging of violence and rabble-rousing in religion another time. It's an important topic.

I think it also relates to what Fred and may others on our nations see as "the great monotheistic religions". It seems like you can get away with murder - literally - if you play the "ethical monotheism" card in combination with the "exotic other" card ... but now I'm drifting way off topic for this thread.

Isn't this all a lot simpler than some people are trying to make it?

These people who have pagan symbols on their memorials in military cemeteries presumably died in the service of their country, if not actually fighting for it. Doesn't that give them (or their relatives) the right to put any symbol on their memorials that they damn well like?

Re: #89 from Fletcher Christian...

If only William Jefferson Clinton and George Walker Bush had seen it that way, everything would have been fine.