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[from http://www.oakgrove.org/GreenPages/bos/1535.txt ]
1535
Subject: Modern Wiccan Concepts based in Literary Satanism
By: Diane Vera
As I pointed out to Warren Grant in the PAGAN echo recently, Cha
rles
G. Leland mentions Michelet in the Appendix to _Aradia:_
_Gospel_of_the_Witches_: "Now be it observed, that every leading
point which forms the plot or centre of this _Vangel_ [...] ha
d
been told or written out for me in fragments by Maddalena (not t
o
mention other authorities), even as it had been chronicled by Ho
rst
or Michelet" (pp.101-102, 1974 Weiser paperback edition).
.
In _A_History_of_Witchcraft_, Jeffrey B. Russell writes:
"Michelet's argument that witchcraft was a form of social protes
t
was adapted later by Marxists; his argument that it was based on
a
fertility cult was adopted by anthropologists at the turn of the
century, influenig Sir James Frazer's _Golden_Bough_, Jessie
Weston's _From_Ritual_to_Romance_, Magaret Murray's _Witch-
Cult_in_Western_Europe_, and indirectly T.S. Eliot's
_The_Waste_Land_" (_A_History_of_Witchcraft_, p.133).
.
Russell states further: "Neopagan witchcraft has roots in the
tradition of Michelet, who argued that European witchcraft was t
he
survival of an ancient religion. This idea influenced Sir James
Frazer and a number of other anthropologists and writers in the
late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The publication of
Charles Leland's _Aradia_ in 1899 was an important step in the
evolution of the new religion of witchcraft. [...] The doctr
ines
and practices of the witches as reported by Leland are a melange
of
sorcery, medieval heresy, witch-craze concepts, and political
radicalism, and Leland reports ingenuously that this is just wha
t he
expected, since it fitted with what he had read in Michelet"
(Russell, p.148).
.
As far as I know, it's possible that Michelet's influence on Gar
dner
was only indirect, via the other above-named writers. This woul
d
not invalidate my point, which is that Michelet played a key rol
e in
the development of the ideas in question.
.
Michelet has had a more direct influence on feminist Goddess
religion than on Wicca proper. Michelet's _La_Sorciere_
(_Satanism_and_Witchcraft_) is listed in the bibliography of
_Woman,_Church,_and_State_ by Matilda Gage (19th-century Women's
Suffrage leader and the founder of pre-Wiccan feminist Goddess
religion) and, more recently, in _Witches,_Midwives,_and_Nurses:
_
_A_History_of_Women_Healers_ by Barbara Ehrenreich and Dierdre
English (1973).
.
In my opinion, Michelet's most important contribution to both Wi
cca
and feminist Goddess religion was that, as far as I know, he was
the
first well-known writer (in recent centuries, anyway) to use the
word "Witch" (capital W) with its present-day positive connotati
ons
of healing and opposition to tyranny.
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