Witches (And Wiccans) Are Still Hunted

http://www.aolnews.com/2011/02/04/catholic-church-issues-guide-on-how-to-convert-witches/


http://www.cts-online.org.uk/acatalog/info_Ex35.html

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/damianthompson/100074609/how-to-convert-witches-to-catholicism/

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1353517/Catholic-Church-issues-guide-convert-Harry-Potter-witches-Christianity.html


This struck me on a personal level, though I myself am not a Wiccan. Having at least two friends, probably more, that are self identified adherents of Wicca makes me concerned that they may be approached with this guide issued by the Catholic Church’s publishers in the U.K called Wicca and Witchcraft: Understanding the Dangers. However unlikely it seems, since by what we know, it would be propagated more in Europe than America, I think it’s important that Wiccans are aware of this and the relevant points of this issue.

The author, allegedly a former Wiccan, now converted to Catholicism, insists that 70% of Wiccans are just women searching for some kind of spirituality. This already seems to paint every Wiccan with a broad sexual brush. Not to mention this is from her own perspective as a former female Wiccan, so it already smacks of selective bias on her part. Her intent is supposedly to help parents and friends of Wiccans to evangelize them at public places, but her target is women like herself that she thinks are just starved for real spiritual experiences. I can’t speak for my Wiccan friends, they can do that well enough themselves; but to say that they are searching for spirituality in the wrong place seems a bit ironic with all the renewed interest in Catholic exorcism practices with movies like The Rite and a remake of The Exorcist. Catholicism has not been exactly friendly towards mysticism in its general sense. The only permissible forms seem to be isolated people, many who were accused of heresy, such as Meister Eckhart and Origen. For any Catholic to start pointing fingers at Wicca as the problem seems to forget that Catholic churches are, by my memory, losing adherents to Pentecostal and non denominational churches, as well as the obviously familiar but more inclusive Episcopal Church. Inner conflicts within the Christian tradition should be your prime concern for why people are leaving for Wicca and the like, not the other religions which you think you understand but may not.

There is some attempt to alter what might be seen as unseemly phrasing of the text’s mission of a modern day, less violent, equivalent of the Malleus Maleficarum; Hammer of the Wicked or more commonly translated as the Witch’s Hammer, a guide published in the 15th century by Heinrich Kramer, a Catholic inquisitor. The author suggests that since Wiccans are on what she believes to be a genuine spiritual quest, that journey should be viewed as common ground to make a Wiccan think about conversion. I don’t see how this former Wiccan gets the idea that Wicca is somehow so flexible as to make a person just flip flop between being a Christian and pagan because of persuasive anecdotes or spiritual experiences. A lot of this boils down to the individual’s disposition. If they think Jesus Christ is explicitly talking to them in some spiritual vision, that doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily decide to surrender their life to him. In fact one could argue that simply having a vision of Jesus, recognizing his divinity, or seeing the value in his teachings does not make for persuading a Wiccan to exclusively worship the God that Jesus supposedly claimed to be. In fact, they could be said to just as easily use the very inclusive nature of Wicca to incorporate Jesus into the general pantheon as a wise and powerful deity, but one among many.

Part of the reason people find Wicca a genuine threat to Christianity is a concern that Wicca has been predicted multiple times to be one of the highest growing faiths in America, though this guide seems to extend that prediction to many religiously diverse areas, such as Britain to some extent. The main prognosis is something to the effect that Wicca will become the 3rd largest religion in America by 2012, but even one of my Wiccan friends seems not to care from what I discerned (which might not be much). This seems to have a connection in that there is some concern that people are growing further from the church as times get worse and worse. Though I wonder why they’d even bother if all they may end up doing is making Jesus part of a Wiccan’s pantheon and not by any logical necessity convincing them that they should become strict monotheists instead.

The book can be purchased for a bit over $3 at the second link listed, but that only shows how tiny it probably is or how little the writer was concerned for any manner of profit from the work she put into it. Though if it’s really as small as the price indicates, she could’ve done this over a week at her lunch break in her real job, assuming it’s anything relatively taxing on her time. All in all, this is more amusing than a genuine concern of mine, since people have been warning about the dangers of the occult and witchcraft, Wicca conflated and equated with the former two, for decades since the 50s at the earliest, though possibly around the earliest times when immigrants with very eclectic faiths came to America. If someone engages you, at the very least listen, but don’t take them so seriously as to be sucked into something that only seems to push more people into these faiths than pull them away. Until next week, Namaste and aloha.

Faithful Nation or Nation of Faiths?

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/10/05/most-tea-partiers-call-america-a-christian-nation-study-finds/

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/10/02/britain-recognizes-druidry-as-religion-for-first-time-gives-it-charitable-status/

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/10/07/my-take-so-who-are-the-druids-anyway

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1317490/Druids-official-religion-Stones-Praise-come.html

With the recognition of Druidism/Druidry (?) as a religion in the UK and a generally good response from many people, one wonders how the U.S would feel in a similar situation. It has only been a little over 20 years since Dettmer v. Landon, where a Wiccan practitioner was agreed to have had his 1st Amendment rights violated. Wicca was officially recognized to be a religion and thus protected in free exercise, even in prisons, including the use of ritual objects. And it’s been only 3 years since the family of Patrick Stewart, a Wiccan soldier killed in action, was granted a Wiccan pentacle on his gravestone, since the U.S Army hadn’t recognized Wicca as a religion worthy of recognition by the Army in practically 20 years. I can’t imagine why; except that the army also discriminates against homosexuals, so why should I have been surprised at this? As I said two weeks ago, Wicca is quite possibly one of the highest growing movements in the U.S., so frankly, I am happy that the UK is making more progress, especially considering Druidry’s no doubt higher demographics across the sea. There is of course a strain of thought even in England that appears to regard giving Druidism the status of religion as a pandering to New Age thinking or other arguments suggesting that tolerance and acceptance are exactly the same in legal terms (p.s., they’re not). The critic of Druidism’s status as a religion also makes a questionable assessment of what is considered a religion by trying to say that because Druidry doesn’t have a shared set of beliefs it isn’t a religion, but a fringe cult. It’s hard to imagine that even in England there exists a similar, though not necessarily as strong, current of thought that suggests that without Christianity there would be no cause for moral behavior.

I remember reading a book for a class on New Atheism by David Bentley Hart, an Eastern Orthodox scholar, who noted that many of the claims about Christianity in the Middle Ages and prior are misrepresented. His scholarship was indeed correct from what I could determine, but his claim that we have to acknowledge Christianity’s place in history, even if we are becoming post Christian, I can only tentatively agree with. Any involvement of Christianity in culture and history should properly be viewed, even in a Christian perspective as a matter of fortune, not of providence. Any involvement of God’s will in relation to Christianity’s existence would be moreso related to its survival, not its precedence in the “fleshly kingdoms”.

The very notion of a Christian nation is something I’ve spoken of before, though it has been months no doubt. Jon Meacham’s argument still stands as a strong Christian argument against the notion that America is a Christian nation, and honestly the very idea would no doubt strike even the Protestant arbiter Luther as blasphemous. The idea that God would favor any kingdom or nation on earth is preposterous on the grounds that in the Gospels, Jesus himself called to bring together all the nations of the world, all people, Gentile or Jew, male or female, high or low class, even those regarded as heretics like the Samaritans. Not to mention he said the kingdom of heaven is not of this earth, so that’s another nail in the coffin.

If the Religious Right that persists today, even through my own generation, disappointingly, got its way, they’d probably have legislation to discriminate against virtually any religion that wasn’t derived from the Abrahamic tradition, though it’s doubtful if they’d even allow Islam to exist with the climate that surrounds anything related to Muslim activities in America, faith based or otherwise. It’s always heartening to hear Christians reflecting tolerance towards even those that in their religion’s perspective are condemned to hell unless they shift their faith towards a God that is both three and one (however that works) while ironically in many areas of Wicca, the God and Goddess are practically two in one. I’m especially curious about what will happen with the future possibility of a Wiccan Senator or even a Wiccan President/Vice President. How long will it take? Will I even be alive when it’s a possibility? Will I even be aware of it unless I’m told by someone else? And when will it be an insignificant issue about what faith the person is as opposed to whether they stand for basic democratic “American” ideals that people can admire and respect even if they both aren’t going to heaven? Hopefully, before I’m as old as my parents. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

Christine O'Donnell and the 14th Dalai Lama?

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/22/gop-candidates-witchcraft-dabbling-worries-wiccan/






http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/23/review-the-14th-dalai-lama-a-manga-biography/

Again, I’m trying a split topic blog like I did last week. Firstly, we have the questionable conflation of Satanists with Wiccans, witches and other pagans of various stripes by GOP candidate Christine O’Donnell. Not that she doesn’t have other controversial claims, but this one is especially relevant with the consideration that the general term “pagan” applies to at least a quarter of a million people in the U.S. alone, according to Selena Fox, head of Circle Sanctuary, which associates with pagans across the world. The demographic numbers for self identifying pagans allegedly ranges from 500,000 to a million in the U.S. alone. I’m reminded of a prediction by a writer of a questionable work on Wicca and its supposed evil beliefs, Steve Wohlberg, that Wicca would be the third largest religion in the world by 2012. If that’s the case, then it’s true what Rev. Fox (yes, that’s the title apparently) says: we need to further educate people about pagans and how the vast majority are not crazies who kill animals and drink blood.

The political implications are not nearly as relevant, since most people would forgive O’Donnell for past teenage mistakes. The problem is how seriously someone would take her claim that she both “dabbled in witchcraft” and “dated a Satanist”, potentially confusing people into equating the two, when they are pretty distinct systems, holding clearly different perspectives on divinity as well as ethics in particular. The whole notion of a Left Hand Path originates in Satanic thought, whereas Pagan thought is commonly an attempt in some way to return to one’s cultural roots. This is especially true for Pagan Reconstructionism, which attempts to derive the ancient religious practices and create structures based around them to bring the pre modern practices into the modern world. I only hope that this article and the issues it has brought up become more widespread knowledge. This is especially so for those attempts of another GOP member, Bob Barr of Georgia, to illegalize Wicca in the military twice, both times failing. It’s a great accomplishment that America recognizes the diverse, but also remarkably aligned pagan tradition, represented on veteran graves by the pentacle symbol, not to be confused with the pentagram, which is a reversed pentacle, associated with Satanists and Wiccans alike, but in reality only used by Satanists commonly. Here’s to the future of paganism in one way or another, since people will always look back to the past for virtually any religious significance, be it the more mainstream religious texts or the archaeological history that is rooted in many pagan faiths. They’re both just as valid, even if sometimes people fill in the gaps with their own ideas. But that’s how religion is, an ever evolving story.

Onto more bright things, there is a manga adaptation by Tetsu Saiwai of the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso’s life that I may consider purchasing. It reminds me of the collection of Buddha manga by Osamu Tezuka I’ve had sitting in my bookcase for at least a year now. I want to reread them eventually, to remind myself of what really made me like them. Historical accuracy, the legends that are injected, and the potential misunderstandings about Buddhism that people could draw from it aside, the graphic novels are astounding. I would probably spend nearly an hour sometimes without even realizing it just reading through half of a novel, if not an entire novel in one sitting. The art is presented in such a way that you feel like a kid, but the subject material isn’t exactly something a kid could really appreciate. There’s death, tragedy, a lot of really serious scenes, and literally a lifetime of a single man encompassed in 8 graphic novels, thousands and thousands of pages no doubt. With Tenzin Gyatso as a subject, the adaptation will no doubt be a shorter series. But from what I’ve read, it presents a perspective on the man’s life that will make you want to read more into his thoughts about life, and Tibetan Buddhism’s perspective as related to other Buddhist sects that exist in Asia. The book releases September 28th and I imagine Amazon will be the place to pre order or order it when it arrives in stores and in publication lists. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.