Rethinking Murray

[Starlock]

With the various podcasts I listen to, I was directed by one of them to this site (not for what I'm going to show you, but.. meh). Suffice it to say that initially when I read the front page and that little column on the right I reflexively chortled and thought, "yeah... this guy is another one of those morons who believes the ancient origins BS."

Then I actually bothered to read through some of what he was saying and found it intriguing enough to ask some questions. So here's a good question. How many of you, when hearing that Murray's theories were debunked, actually looked at who did the debunking and the specific works that debunked her thesis? Or did you take it on faith since it was the common consesus of both non-scholars and scholars? Was there anybody, scholastically, who tried to support Murray's theories? Give it a fair chance? In short, was there an academic bias against her ideas such that they were prematurely or unfairly debunked?

That's what the author of this website asks. And honestly, I'm not so sure of the answer and probably won't ever be. Answers to historic questions are only as good as the information available at the time and we all know history is written by the winners. If there was any evidence of Pagan vestiges (label it Witchcraft or otherwise) that held out to the modern day, chances are good that evidence would be fragmented and hard to find (or hidden in plain sight). So hard to find that one might question if one is connecting dots where there are not actually any connections... seeing what one wants to see. At any rate, perhaps the question of origins is not as one-sided as many of us have been lead to believe? Or perhaps this author really is full of crap?

I don't know. A case can be made that any new thing is built upon old ideas, but was there an actual link here (and if so, what is the nature of it) or is this yet another attempt to see what isn't there? I haven't have time to read the entirety of this person's analysis as it is very long and requires much consideration. I think you all would be interested in it, so I'm posting up the link. I would very much be interested in hearing your reactions to this piece and am posting this (for the moment) only in PFRC because the people I am interested in hearing from first are HERE. Given the length of the writing, it might be nice if you'd post your intention to read through it and give it some thought; I don't expect good responses today or even by Monday. I'm going to take a closer look at his writings myself.

Here is the Main Page
The articles you should specifically look at are:
Collars and Scholars
and
Erasing History: How Witchcraft Vanished

Other articles in the Scholarship section are also of relevance, but these two are more than enough to chug through by themselves.

So is this complete nonsense or is there something to this guy?  

[TatteredAngel]

My first reaction is to wonder why the writing is so focused on the inquisition and forward. I don't actually hear anybody saying "The scholars insist Witchcraft was something "invented" by the Inquisition." That's clearly not correct. The earliest formal medieval inquisition didn't take place until the 1100s, I believe, and clearly the concept of witchcraft was alive before then.

The problem I still see, though, is this focus on one word, and legitimizing that one word to mean something that it may well not be. Witchcraft was not, and still is not, a nice neat unified thing. The reason we view witchcraft in historical terms through Christianity is that the writing we have are primarily Christian. Everything else is archaeology. And that's fine, and I'm certainly not saying it's impossible anything from ancient times survived, but we'd better tread very carefully when trying to make those assertions.

And it always comes back to the word witch. People focus on that so narrowly that they miss out on all sorts of other references to what we today might call witchcraft. I hear all sorts of contentions over Old English wicce, but who's heard anyone trying to legitimize the use of galdere, which is sorcerer, or looking at its historical connotations? Where's all of the looking at the written sources on what the church did or did not consider witchcraft? I've personally been surprised by what I find in that respect. I feel like a lot of the arguments I see blindside themselves, is all. They're so narrowly focused on trying to make one thing work that they end up with a much weaker argument because of it.  

[Triste-chan]

Haven't read it, and won't be able to tonight, but just looking at this paragraph:

Quote:

There is a curious fact about books on the history of Witchcraft. Regardless of what it says on the dust jacket, most of them are not really about the history of Witchcraft. They have little or nothing to say about Witches, or about the beliefs, practices, customs, or rites of Witches. The vast majority of these books are actually about Witch trials, or about the theological speculations of Medieval clergy. In fact, many of these studies claim there never were any Witches at all, and, therefore, no Witchcraft; which means, in the view of those scholars, a history of Witchcraft cannot be written, since there’s nothing to write about.

A scholar has every right to believe that witchcraft doesn't work, but I've never in my life heard of a scholar who has claimed that the practice of withcraft never existed. Already I get the feeling that this person is a nitwit.  

[Triste-chan]

Still haven't read it all, but what I'm seeing is that she (he, whatever) considers folk superstition a category of witchcraft. That's a bit of a stretch, but whatever, because I'm pretty sure Murray's claims were a bit more than 'there were superstitious people in the Middle Ages.'  

[Starlock]

Triste-chan

Still haven't read it all, but what I'm seeing is that she (he, whatever) considers folk superstition a category of witchcraft. That's a bit of a stretch, but whatever, because I'm pretty sure Murray's claims were a bit more than 'there were superstitious people in the Middle Ages.'

Indeed. Her claims are very specific and provide some very specific details. I've through her work, but much of what she uses for citations are in foreign languages so it was difficult to really tease apart her thesis using the reference I had as I can't read it. It could be that Murray's failing is that she does try to read in too much detail and focus down on something too specific with how she used her terminology. There were (and are) undoubtedly Pagan remnants that survived to modern day in the form of things like Christmas trees and Easter eggs; but anything more than folk vestiges?

It's interesting the lines this author is trying to draw, but as I questioned in the original post... if you want to connect the dots between fragments of information you can, even if there is no actual relationship. confused  

[Kalyani Srijoi]

Starlock

Triste-chan

Still haven't read it all, but what I'm seeing is that she (he, whatever) considers folk superstition a category of witchcraft. That's a bit of a stretch, but whatever, because I'm pretty sure Murray's claims were a bit more than 'there were superstitious people in the Middle Ages.'

Indeed. Her claims are very specific and provide some very specific details. I've through her work, but much of what she uses for citations are in foreign languages so it was difficult to really tease apart her thesis using the reference I had as I can't read it. It could be that Murray's failing is that she does try to read in too much detail and focus down on something too specific with how she used her terminology. There were (and are) undoubtedly Pagan remnants that survived to modern day in the form of things like Christmas trees and Easter eggs; but anything more than folk vestiges?

It's interesting the lines this author is trying to draw, but as I questioned in the original post... if you want to connect the dots between fragments of information you can, even if there is no actual relationship. confused

I guess it depends on what you define as paganism, really.

Christmas trees and easter eggs aren't really 'pagan' any more than they are 'Christian.' They're social customs that happened to be practiced by pagan people. Now, they may have had reasons behind them that related to pagan deities, but take that away and they aren't really pagan any more, are they.  

[Starlock]

Kalyani Srijoi

I guess it depends on what you define as paganism, really.

Christmas trees and easter eggs aren't really 'pagan' any more than they are 'Christian.' They're social customs that happened to be practiced by pagan people. Now, they may have had reasons behind them that related to pagan deities, but take that away and they aren't really pagan any more, are they.

Perhaps it shows that things aren't as cut and dry as we might often like them to be. It could be said that all innovations are built upon previous foundations; so in that sense, all of modern civilization can be 'traced' to Pagan roots. I'm not sure what meaning there is in making that statement though, except perhaps apprechiating the contributions of our ancestors.

One of the problems I sometimes have with Neopagan antiquity claims is that claims to antiquity is a common tactic used by new religious movements to validate themselves. Maybe instead of asking ourselves whether or not we have ancient roots we should ask ourselves why we want to believe we have ancient roots? Why is that longer time span so important?