Wicca, the thinking man's Scientology
See here - in comments, me and many of the usual cast of characters, giving a bit of gentle stick to the cloud-dancer crowd.
We used to have quite a few of these types hanging around while I was growing up, naturally (there's a proper Druids' circle halfway up the mountain behind my mum's house). Also this rather grim cult, who ran a pretty cool shop in the Deiniol Shopping Centre, where you could buy chess sets and small electric motors. They did not in general look too closely into the pages of the Mabinogion or the Book of Leinster, but I did, once, and I can exclusively reveal to D^2D readers that in fact, the Celts did not revere Swarovski crystals, did not use the elemental classification of Thales of Miletus, and in fact the main themes of Celtic mythology were
a) Murdering people and stealing their cows.
b) Passing out drunk and fantasising about war.
c) Aggravated sexual assault of one sort or another.
Makes me think I should revive Secret Society Blogging - not so much in America, but in Europe there were quite a few genuine attempts to revive the traditions of the pre-Roman tribes and concoct them into something resembling a religion. They more or less all ended up on the wrong side of the Second World War, though. Post war, modern Anglican theology has been surprisingly influential on Satanism; the more modern kind of actually existing Satanists will often accept (I think) Don Cupitt's definition of Satan as "a kind of state of being apart from God".
this book may be of more than a passing interest...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.amazon.com/Against-Modern-World-Traditionalism-Intellectual/dp/0195396014/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_2
The Woodland Folk, the Arts and Crafts movement, Social Capital etc? Europe ended up with Futurist Fascism, but it strikes me that it could easily have got Knitwear Fascism instead.
ReplyDeletebtw, bonus for EJH - I did a web search for "Kevin of the Teachers", and turned up a few chess blogs. Might be a different bloke, but caution advised.
ReplyDeleteThanks very much Av - that book looks very interesting.
ReplyDeleteEurope ended up with Futurist Fascism, but it strikes me that it could easily have got Knitwear Fascism instead.
ReplyDeleteOne of the many big faultines in Nazi Germany, wasn't it? Quite a lot of the Nazi utopian visions involved hearty farmers living in their rustic and gemutlich homes [built on the ruins of Kyiv] after a long day spent overseeing the happy-go-lucky forelock-tugging Slav labourers.
The whole tanks, radios and slave labour shtick was more of a necessary evil than the end goal.
Anyone for Thursday? Humbly submit localish pagan metallers Heidevolk doing Saksenland.
ReplyDeleteSomehow I just can't bring myself to find the Blood and Soil stuff very soothing, although the band were recently in a national newspaper claiming to take a dim view of any Nazi salutes that be proffered by the audience. (Which is to say, they not only have a policy on this, but they have occasion to use it. Which is either soothing or less so, according to taste.)
That's a bad habit at all.
ReplyDeleteRelevant to Knitwear Fascism: a letter quoted in "Alsos" by Samuel Goudsmit. The letter, dated a couple of months after the German defeat at Stalingrad, is from SS research chief Wolfram Sievers, administrative head of the Nazi bomb programme, to a Fraulein Piffl (really), also of the SS.
ReplyDelete"The Reichsfuhrer-SS [ie, Himmler] has learned that there is an old woman in Friesland who still retains knowledge of the knitting methods of the Vikings. You are therefore directed to interview her and record these methods.
Heil Hitler!
Sievers"
I would imagine that Fraulein Piffl, once she had convinced the interrogators that she wasn't taking the piss and really had been the Nazis' knitwear specialist, would have had an easier time than most at the Nuremberg trials.
ReplyDeleteWell, she'd certainly have had something to do to pass the time. Just so long as she remembered to not knit any swastikas.
ReplyDelete(I am unavoidably imagining a Nazi knitting pattern magazine)
Imagining?
ReplyDeleteSurely the point about Scientology is that it is a made up religion with one true way which is enforced by a church hierarchy and involves brainwashing by church people of new recruits.
ReplyDeleteWhereas in Wicca you brainwash yourself and there is no church hierarchy and it is rather more anarchich?
You are quite right about the fluffiness of it not agreeing with what evidence we have from the periods, let alone the lack of evidence that any such knowledge survived a generation or two beyond christianity's arrival.
Goudsmit's book is worth reading (and would I think make a very decent film), not least for its combination of very sincere hatred for German evils and bemusement at their moments of complete daffiness, such as the Piffl letter.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, the recent book on Operation Mincemeat, despite the framing in best journo writes a book style, brings out quite how bizarrely incompetent the Abwehr were. (I'm still not quite sure whether this was deliberate bet-hedging or not.)
ReplyDeleteFortunately for Frl. Piffl, if she was still trying to understand the old girl's Plattdeutsch in 1945 she'd have ended up in the British sector, probably as a knitting correspondent on one of the (British-subsidised) Axel Springer Verlag papers.
ReplyDeleteHenry Ford was an early case of the incoherence between fascism's rural fantasies and its obsession with modernity - a while ago the Grauniad republished their report on a speech he gave to a group of MPs in about 1914, in which "the great mechanic" asked why the British did not farm*.
Somehow I just can't bring myself to find the Blood and Soil stuff very soothing
I wonder why that would be?
Meanwhile, TML in honour of hair metal's role in winning the cold war.
Somehow I just can't bring myself to find the Blood and Soil stuff very soothing
ReplyDeleteSurely one for Jamie's rotating title bar idea?
(Fortunately for Frl. Piffl, if she was still trying to understand the old girl's Plattdeutsch in 1945...
ReplyDeleteFrisian isn't a flavour of Plattdeutsch under even the most permissive interpretation of "Plattdeutsch". Unless it was Ostfriesland (in Germany), where they long ago stopped speaking Frisian in favour of Platt.)
the relationship between the arts&crafts movement and modernism is that, well, they're not so much opposites as joined a the hip: in the practical and decorative arts, the A&C motto "truth to the material" pretty much jumped straight over to the bauhaus et al (they just applied it to modern rather than traditional materials); on the continent wagner -- who was as bonkers a medievalist as the marxist william morris -- was a huge inspiration for the arts-for-arts-sake crowd; again they basically switched from trad material (myth) to modern (freud or whatever)
ReplyDeleteSurely the point about Scientology is that it is a made up religion...
ReplyDeleteIs this a tautology here? I've been cursed out a fair bit recently for saying that the major religions are surely just Scientology with a bit of pedigree, but I'm not convinced that having, say, Thomas Aquinas onside makes Christianity less silly than wicca.
The back-and-forth between genteel Green Man paganism and Anglicanism going back to the 1700s, contemporaneous to the appropriation and reimagining of "Celtic" culture while what little remained of it was being busily suppressed.
ReplyDelete(William Stukeley, whose slightly bizarre life became an academic interest of mine, regarded the Anglican clergy as the true inheritors of the druidic tradition.)
How far back do you reckon the idea of the Green Man can be traced? I'm going for "not very", i.e. less than a century.
ReplyDeleteProbably depends what you mean by the "green man" -- there's churches with medieval ceiling carvings of a figure known as the green man (there's a nice section in roger deakin's wildwood -- or possibly the successor book -- where he hunts some of them out
ReplyDeleteI mean the idea that those heads should be referred to as the Green Man, with a capital G and a capital M. The heads are ancient - well, medieval - but the idea that what they represent is the Green Man is pretty modern, I believe; certainly much later than nick s's 1700s.
ReplyDeleteAh yes, probably. The wikipedia article on Wood Woses is interesting.
ReplyDeleteYou'd have to explain all those pubs, too.
ReplyDeleteQ-What's the difference between a religion and a cult?
ReplyDeleteA-Time.
Most of philosophy is complex structure built on false premises but the structures are complex and complexity is reassuring. Dualism is transubstantiation but the faithful call themselves atheists. Go figure.
Philosophical "objects" are next of kin to Financial "Products." Interesting study for historians of language. "All that is solid melts into air" and...
Most attacks on religion are in the name of "meaning" and "truth". Go figure.
Democratic principles state "all men are created equal". Is that "true"? No. Is it logical that in the name of long term stability and peace that human society be organized along this falsity? Yes.
But Science!?
We need more facts! Onward to the facts!! Facts are eternal!! Look! A fact! We're saved! We're saved!!
Awesome.
Given a choice as founding text for a democracy of the Bible, the US Constitution and the complete works of William Shakespeare, I'd choose Shakespeare. All nothing more that a place to hang your hat and coat, to give structure to absurdity, but no one defends Billy as TRUTH!!
And the level of conversation would be greatly improved. That would be nice
Lady Raglan published her book identifying (or inventing) the Green Man in 1939. I don't know who would know or how you could find out, but I wonder how many of the pubs are older than that. (The one on Summerisle isn't.)
ReplyDeleteRonald Hutton published a very good book on all these "traditions", so that would be a good place to start if you're really interested.
ReplyDelete