In the preceding blogs in this history series, I have been describing what was happening with the Craft movement in the US up to the early 1970s. There is one more installment I need to present, on “Witchcraft in the Heartland,” but it is being vetted by some friends, including Orion Foxwood, since I am unsure about the details for some of the groups discussed. I needed to describe what was happening outside of California in the early 1970s, because many of those groups figure directly or … [Read more...]
A History of the Craft in America: California and Councils, 1967 to 1973, Part I
January 25, 2013 By 4 Comments
Taking Responsibility for Feelings
December 23, 2012 By 11 Comments
I see that an all-male court in Iowa has ruled that an employer can fire a woman merely because he finds her attractive. That is, the woman lost a suit for wrongful termination, and the court has allowed yet another form of discrimination against women. The dentist who fired her argued that he was defending family values because she was a threat to his marriage. Maybe the guy is not an Evangelical Christian. Maybe it's unfair to think he is--but unfortunately he sounds like one, and if he is … [Read more...]
Before the Gardnerians: Introducing the Magus
October 11, 2012 By 9 Comments
[This begins the first chapter of my forthcoming A Tapestry of Witches: A History of the Craft in America, Vol. I. The book itself will have much prefatory material explaining how, why, and what I am covering. Here I am going to just jump right into the stories.] Certainly there were people called Witches, or who called themselves Witches, in America before the arrival of Gardnerian Wicca in 1963. Sometimes the term meant merely people who practiced some sort of folk magic or had usable … [Read more...]
Last Day of the Mysteries / Preview of a New History
October 8, 2012 By 2 Comments
Boedromion 23: The final events at Eleusis included the rite of the Plemochoai, top-shaped vases, which were tipped over, one toward the east, the other toward the west, just about at sunset, to pour a libation down into the earth, perhaps into a chasm (See Athenaios 11.496.) It was probably also on this last day, and perhaps as part of the same ritual, that "looking up to the sky they cried `Rain!' and looking down at the earth they cried `Grow!'" (Given by Proklos on Plato's Timaeus, p. … [Read more...]
The Three-Dimensional Structure of the Pagan Movement
July 17, 2012 By 3 Comments
In writing about the history of the Craft, I have been often perplexed about how to tell a story in which everything is related to everything else, and it all seems to be happening at the same time. Iit took me quite a while to realize that an adequate description of the movement requires a three-dimensional map, much like a tapestry. The first dimension is chronological, describing how groups evolved and proliferated over time. This dimension includes description of the “Traditions” with … [Read more...]
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