On About.com, I blogged today about How Important is a Prophet? It was in reaction to a blog post over at ModernGnosis which stated "Aleister Crowley is no more Thelema than Moses is Judaism. The prophet is not the core of the religion. They are merely the mouthpiece for God."
As a Wiccan, we don't have to deal with the issue of prophets. We merely have a founder, Gerald Gardner. We don't see him as a mouthpiece for the gods. But if you can, to a certain degree, dismiss a prophet, you can certainly dismiss a founder. So where does Gardner fit in today's Wicca?
As I state over at my About.com post, religions evolve beyond their founders and prophets. They may plant the seeds, but then the religion sprouts and grows, potentially in directions the founder never even imagined.
Is that a bad thing? I would say "no." Ideas are supposed to evolve. If they didn't, society would stagnate. But at the same time, we should be mindful of where we came from. We should remember why we thought Gardner's ideas were good in the first place, even as move on from some of them. If nothing else, it helps us to better understand why we currently embrace the beliefs that we do.
I am frequently asked "How can you accept a religion which was founded on such poor concepts of history?" This is particularly meaningful to me as a historian, and the answer is simple: I understand the reasons why Gardner claimed what he did. I also understand the reality of those claims, and I do not see the correction of historical fact as having much bearing on the religious aspects of Wicca.
Yes, my religion isn't ancient. We were never burned at the stake. So what? I never joined Wicca because of those things. Admitting those things doesn't make the existence of my gods any less true. It's like people who insist proving Genesis wrong proves that Christianity is wrong. Really? Admitting that there was no literal Garden of Eden disproves the existence of God and Jesus? How does that work?
How Important is the Word of a Founder?
1/03/2011 05:18:00 PM | personal views, Wicca | 2 comments »
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The arguments about the bible are between atheism and a particular kind of Christianity.
Specifically the kind that insists that the bible is the literal word of God. Incidentally this this the same kind of faith that holds that you probably should be burnt at the stake.
If genesis did not happen, then the very idea of original sin comes into question. And without original sin there is no need for a redeemer.
Not that the idea of redemption through the death of a god, who knew that death was but momentary, could really be considered any kind of sacrifice.
Hi Nightwind, it's been a few years since Timerift hasn't it?
Gardner is difficult, although his beliefs are just as hard to prove as the Bible, it seems people are far more ready to ignore his work as invalid because it lacks evidence. There is almost no faith in his version of Wicca. I think it has to do with how young the religion is. Because Wicca is so young, its practitioners feel the need to justify their faith more so by condoning false or questionable history.