Month: August 2021

If one supports a law or government policy, one can be presumed to support the associated consequences. It is not clear why one would desire a certain law to go into effect if they did not desire its consequences to follow. Expressing dissatisfaction with unexpected consequences could be consistent with support for a policy, as when one’s support wavers when once unexpected but undesirable effects come to light. Nevertheless, desire for expected outcomes can be readily inferred from desire for the policy that will cause them.

Capital punishment provides a straightforward example of support for both a law and its consequences. If one supports capital punishment, one then supports the resulting deaths. One may believe that those people justly convicted and sentenced deserve to die, or one may believe that the ultimate consequence is an acceptable cost for deterring others from crime. Without such an attitude toward death, one’s support for capital punishment would be incoherent. While it would be consistent for a supporter of capital punishment to desire that no one is mistakenly executed, they have nevertheless found desirable the execution of at least some people.

When considering rectification of historic social injustice, a person who supports only gradual change must also support the consequences of sustaining injustice. If a person believes social injustice is wrong and should be corrected but not immediately, they have implicitly accepted the resulting limitations on the life and well-being of the the disadvantaged group. Arguing for gradual change or maintaining a status quo of injustice implicitly argues that the oppressed accept the limitations on their health, wealth, and well-being in order not to discomfort the privileged.

Requiring gradual change to rectify social injustice places an unequal value on the lives of the disadvantaged and the privileged. Members of disadvantaged groups face shorter lifespans due to bias in healthcare, hiring, and education. If a welfare program’s food assistance does not allow for a family to buy fresh fruits and vegetables, or not enough of any food, people who rely on that program will suffer the effects of hunger. When the disruption of generational wealth places most of a population at an economic disadvantage, members of that group will more often suffer the effects of hunger. As long as the structure of social institutions maintains this situation, human lives will be shorter and more painful. Webs of disadvantage like this one render social institutions as a whole prejudiced against disadvantaged groups.

If one understands that support for a law entails support for its known consequences, one must also recognize a shared culpability when those consequences manifest. When members of a privileged group reject the discomfort of negotiating new boundaries or receiving less undeserved deference, they express a disregard for human life. They bear moral responsibility for the lives lost to that disregard. Instead, members of privileged groups should study the dynamics of injustice in their society, forsake their privilege at every opportunity, and demand immediate rectification. Asking people to wait means asking them to die.

Daily meditation anchors a spiritual practice irrespective of one’s tradition. Reserving time to cultivate calm, focused awareness provides space to release tension, investigate emotions, and observe the passing of thought and sensation. Mindfulness contributes to living skillfully as well as the practice of witchcraft and ceremonial magic. Cultivating mindfulness of the body, mind, and emotions enables one to choose their reactions rather than be driven by impulses and habits. A daily habit teaches the discipline needed prepare rituals, practice regular devotions, and observe celestial cycles. By taking time to sit still and observe, one learns to recognize their inner voice and distinguish mystical insight from self-deception.

Pagan traditions reconstructed from pre-Christian Europe lack any instructions in developing focused awareness. In fairness, the traditions of Celtic and Germanic pagans are largely lost, with no trace whatsover of daily observances. On the other hand, practices that train concentration, choiceless awareness, and visualization appear in later European occult traditions such as Rosicrucianism, and Christian asceticism embraces devoted and solitary contemplation exemplified by the anchorites. Theosophy introduced meditation practices appropriated from Buddhist and Yogic traditions, but Theosophy, and the New Age movement that replaces it today, distorted those traditions heavily to capitalize on colonialist fascination with “the exotic.” If a contemporary Pagan wants to develop a meditation practice not informed by Christianity or cultural appropriation, they have few options.

Buddhist traditions contain many forms of meditation, but the form given in the Mahasatipatthana Sutta serves as the foundation for many of them. The Buddha and those who hold his lineage saw value in teaching meditation alongside metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. As a missionary tradition, Buddhists have been active in spreading the Dharma and its practices. While one can be born into a family of Buddhists, one may declare themselves a Buddhist by taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. While some Buddhist lineages have deep ties to their home region or maintain elements of a mystery tradition, many Buddhist lineages have freely offered instruction in meditation. The Zen tradition in particular arises in China, the result of Buddhist missionary travel from India, and spreads from there to Korea and Japan. As such, Buddhism offers the means and instruction for anyone who wants to develop a regular meditation practice, even Pagans.

The absence of a mystical tradition deprives Paganism of more than techniques. Traditions that include meditation also incorporate practical insights into their metaphysics, epistemology, and theology. Rich models of consciousness and lucid phenomenology originate in the wisdom derived from the experience of meditation. Buddhist sutras contain descriptions of successive stages of realization leading from initial concentration to deep investigation of experience. Literature on the cultivation of elevated states helps deepen one’s practice by providing techniques and analytic frameworks. While we all must walk our path, our way is easier when we can follow the tracks of those who have gone before.

In order to mobilize the working class against itself, the owner class offers significant privileges for workers who agree to enforce owner class interests. Police forces, military personnel, and other security forces bring order to society by enforcing a law crafted by the owner class. Workers in these professions compose a martial class, a identity group clustered around the essential function they serve in society. Their fellow workers are often the targets of enforcement because the law regulates the behavior of workers more extensively than the behavior of the owner class. In particular, the owner class employs these forces when the working class organizes to advance their class interests.

The legal system pits the martial class against the working class by focusing efforts on crimes committed by the working class and ignoring crimes committed by the owner class. The disparity becomes evident when comparing the relative impact of property theft as opposed to wage theft. The owner class deprives the working class of far more money in wages than property stolen, but wage theft is not the focus of any police activity.

Since the martial class often stands between the owner class and the working class during moments of class struggle, the martial class bears the brunt of actions often directed toward the owner class. The owner class exploits the martial class by using them as a bulwark against collective action of workers. While the martial class enjoys additional privilege associated with their work, they risk their health and standing in the community by serving their occupation. The intra-class divide deepens as the martial class forms a distinct identity that supersedes other identities or communities, directly pitting members of the martial class against their communities.

Nevertheless, the martial class must be judged as class traitors when they blame the working class, not the owner class, for the risks associated with their occupation. When the working class rallies to end exploitation, the martial class works to end the demonstration and discourage further action. They ensure that the owner class can ignore the demonstration while the martial class forces the workers to abandon the struggle. Despite sharing in oppression by the owner class, the martial class silences their fellow workers so that the owner class can continue growing wealthy through exploitation.

Since the mission of the martial class is framed as enforcing the law, the martial class identify as protectors of society as a whole. The owner class maintains some working class support for the martial class by promoting this protector narrative. However, the laws governing property and criminal behavior are arranged to benefit the owner class, so the martial class advances their interests by enforcing those laws. Where the members of the martial class accept this narrative, they commit to seeing the rest of the working class as threats to the stability of society and therefore just targets of violence.

Framing the mission of the martial class as a sacred duty to society motivates extreme responses to defiance of the law. As protectors of society the martial class frames themselves as a public service and bulwark against disorder. In this framing extreme measures to punish criminals or suppress organized demonstrations are justified in the same way that one would justify self-defense or defending one’s community from outside invaders. Supportive members of the working class, especially professionals already aligned with the owner class, ignore the martial class’s violence because they take it as an assurance that their interests will be protected just as fiercely even though this is rarely the case.

With the worker class divided among professionals, martial occupations, and privileged identity groups, the owner class has many potential allies against the remaining workers. Professionals empower the owner class through soft power, political, social, and artistic support for nationalist capitalism. The martial class directly supports the owner class by providing hard power in the form of security and suppression of dissent. A worker who begins to understand their position must also confront a fragmented social environment where many natural allies have already been suborned. Effective resistance requires building alliances among others who recognize their situation due to critical reflection or experience with systematic disadvantage. The power of the working class will remain limited unless we can overcome divides that uphold the power of the owner class.

 

In The Meaning of Witchcraft Gerald Gardner offers a historical narrative constructed from select facts arranged in a web of interpretation woven by Margaret Murray. Despite being initiated by a coven whose lineage stretched back to pre-Christian Britain, Gardner does not relate a history handed down through that tradition. His claims largely rest of the fact of the coven’s existence as demonstrations that his narrative enjoys support from both Murray’s folklore scholarship and direct evidence.

Gardner begins the witchcraft story in prehistoric Old Stone Age spirituality as interpreted from cave drawings in Europe. Hunting tactics accompanied by superstitions connected to success eventually yield formalized ritual and an individual specializing in the ritual performance. As needs transitioned from hunting to herding to farming, the ritual specialists transitions from shaman to priest to witch. Witchcraft is then humanity’s oldest religion and magical practice, stemming from a time in without that distinction.

While Gardner then frames adherents to Old Religion as holdouts against Christian conversion and eventual victims of “the Burning Times,” his account of what a witch does and why they do it remains rooted in this primitivist framework. As such Gardnerian Wicca anchors itself in times much older than Celtic or Germanic pagan cultures that give form to some traditions of modern witchcraft. The gods of Angles, the Saxons, and the Britons feature only as expressions of the primordial god and goddess. Gardner gives witchcraft an anthropological narrative rather than a strictly historical one.

An anthropological turn places witchcraft closer to an area of expertise in which Gardner can boast authentic credentials. During his colonial service, Gardner had extensive contact with tribal peoples in Southeast Asia and wrote some of the first reports on their traditions and legends about weaponry. Although he had no formal training, Gardner’s work was well received by the scholarly community. His interest in both weapons and superstitions about weapons likely brought Gardner a number of stories about magic, hunting, and ritual. Wicca’s embrace of animism, karma, and reincarnation all reflect a distillation of the cultures where Gardner spent his time abroad.

Once the primitivist framework becomes clear, Gardner’s claims about historical witchcraft need only explain how the thread from the Old Stone Age comes to the present day. Where Margaret Murry’s witch cult hypothesis begins in Pagan Europe, Gardner moves the Old Religion to an even earlier time, rendering it the Oldest Religion instead. As such, the Gardnerian framework rests on two principle claims.

1. Witchcraft originates in primitive spiritual and magical practices.
2. These practices have been handed down in unbroken lineages since prehistoric times.

The second claim strains credulity unless one admits that the practices change over time, potentially so much that the members of a later generation do not recognize an older generation as the same tradition despite shared lineage. On a weak interpretation of that thesis, all human traditions stem from the practices of our primitive ancestors, continually changing, differentiating, and converging as humanity itself does. Witchcraft would then have nothing remarkable about it as all religious traditions could claim the same lineage.

A stronger interpretation of the first claim recalls the Witch Cult Hypothesis as framed by Margaret Murray, a source explicitly acknowledged by Gardner as support for his claims. Murray does not locate her Old Religion in a strictly primitive context, claiming only that witches practiced an ancient fertility cult. The Dianic rites that Murray imagined could have belonged to a Hellenistic or Celtic pagan cult centered on a goddess rendered nameless by secrecy but belonging to historical times rather than prehistory. Gardner then reaches further backward in time, possibly to bring his religion closer to something he understood more clearly, the beliefs of tribal peoples he studied and documented. In other words Gardner may have understood the first thesis as identical to a more specific claim.

1a. Witchcraft originates in spiritual and magical practices of indigenous peoples of Southeast Asia.

The conflation of indigenous peoples with prehistorical humanity generally reflects an interpretive lens generally accepted in Gardner’s time but no longer. Scholars now largely reject the framework of a single path of development from primitive conditions to modern civilization as an imperialist bias not supported by evidence. This mistaken belief does require some framework for identifying beliefs succinctly ancient to be part of the primitive witchcraft lineage. Both Murray and Gardner rely on the same additional thesis to account for knowledge about surviving and original witches.

3. The Old/Oldest Religion beliefs and rituals can be known by analysis of rural folk stories, superstitions, and rituals.

The third thesis turns out to be the most important since the epistemic status of all other conclusions rest on it. Without a reliable method to trace the secret tradition and recognize its continued presence, there is no evidence for the other claims. To the detriment of both Gardner and Murray, scholars have failed to find such support. As noted by other scholars, Murray cites customs as evidence of ancient rites without sufficient research to uncover the recency of the practice. Murray interprets her evidence based on her own understanding of rural folk traditions rather than documented evidence or self-report from the people who lived those traditions.

Contemporary folklorists generally agree that theories regarding ancient customs preserved among uneducated rural peoples align better with prejudices of the academic community than available evidence. Many of Murray’s specific claims regarding folk customs contradict available evidence. While the Witch Cult hypothesis remains well known among popular audiences, scholars have rejected it and the methods that brought it into being as unreliable. Gardner offers only one piece of evidence beyond Murray insofar as he claimed to be have been initiated by a surviving witch coven. Historians have likewise rejected Gardner’s claims about the coven as fabrications, a story to frame the founding myth of his new “old religion.” In the absence of any reliable support, Gardner’s second thesis may be safely rejected.

Only the first thesis remains plausible, but it only allows us to conclude that Wicca is connected to an authentic experience of the divine that spans the human condition. Such a thesis would be true of all modern religions, so Wicca is not distinct in that way. While one should then see Wicca as equivalent in authenticity to religious traditions with a longer historical legacy.