Cat on Nostr: Wicca, Druidry, and Thelema all sprung from an organization called the Hermetic Order ...
Wicca, Druidry, and Thelema all sprung from an organization called the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and it's shocking to see some folks not know this.
There are zero neopagan traditions (in the USA) that were not influenced in some way by the Western Esoteric tradition. Some people aren't going to like that statement, but no matter how purely reconstructionist or authentic a practice is created now, the roots of this entire movement trace back to those Masonic lodges in the early 20th century. Neopaganism would not be what it is today if they didn't make the idea popular and commission translations of some of those early texts.
Now, I'm not saying we owe them gratitude or honor or something, most of these guys were rich, bigoted assholes, not to mention nationalists, but it's important to know history so it's not repeated. So we don't get these fancy ideas in our head that we're practicing some unbroken tradition passed down for millennia and end up with a Gerald Gardener version 2.0. His dethroning and exposure as a fraud tore the pagan community apart, let's not do that again.
#Paganism
There are zero neopagan traditions (in the USA) that were not influenced in some way by the Western Esoteric tradition. Some people aren't going to like that statement, but no matter how purely reconstructionist or authentic a practice is created now, the roots of this entire movement trace back to those Masonic lodges in the early 20th century. Neopaganism would not be what it is today if they didn't make the idea popular and commission translations of some of those early texts.
Now, I'm not saying we owe them gratitude or honor or something, most of these guys were rich, bigoted assholes, not to mention nationalists, but it's important to know history so it's not repeated. So we don't get these fancy ideas in our head that we're practicing some unbroken tradition passed down for millennia and end up with a Gerald Gardener version 2.0. His dethroning and exposure as a fraud tore the pagan community apart, let's not do that again.
#Paganism