Dear all
'...incredulity concerning [witchcraft's] organisation and the far
reaching claims made in Dr Murray's later books is certainly justified.
Nevertheless the pendulum may have swung too far . . .
there is abundant archeological evidence for the long life of
many ritual practices, and there are a number of recent folk customs
that can reasonably be interpreted as survivals of fertility rites. '
- Ralph Merrifield, AOM&R
Ie the rejection of MM's thesis is perhaps misinterpreted as saying that
there
was no witchcraft before gardner's wicca. When I thought it was the theory
about
the organisation of covens that she got so wrong??
MM's reputation as a Egyptologist is still, AFAIK, pretty much intact.
She made a number of discoveries of enormous significance -
A pioneer amongst women academics - without whom many highly significant
practices of the ancient egyptians would have been lost forever.
So not sure you should cringe -
Her interest in british folklore was probably something she picked up
from her teacher 'flinders petrie - so its perhaps of its time when scholars
were all looking for parallels with the Osiris 'fertility' cult -
which is probably what she thought had somehow survived in europe??
I wonder if she gets more flak for her failures than her male colleagues??
'love and do what you will'
mogg
Ps: when forced to retire at 75 she walked out of ucl never to return
- so no orderly handover to her female successor -
the most cringemaking thing she did was to trash all of Petrie's field notes
for
the excavation of Ombos - quite a disastor for prehistorians but not
untypical of scholars of that generation.
: ) .....................................: )
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-----Original Message-----
From: Society for The Academic Study of Magic
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of jacqueline
simpson
Sent: 16 January 2006 16:20
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Folklore
Hi, Caroline,
Yes, I did indeed write on Murray, in "Folklore" 1994,
article called 'Margaret Murray: Who believed her, and
why'. A pretty scathing analysis. The background was
that some two or three years before then we'd planned
a conference on 'Women Folklorists of 19th C Britain',
and l'd said 'I'll do MM -- It's time we stopped
cringing in shame every time she's mentioned, and had
another look at her work.' I had fully expected my
paper would be along the lines of, 'Well, we can now
see that her witchcraft theories are nonsense, but in
view of the evidence available in her time, she can be
praised for this, or that, or the other ....' The
usual situation when dealing with writers three
generations back. Instead, once I reread her I was
totally shocked by the abysmally low standards of her
research, the illogic of her arguments, and the
mishandling (even suppression) of material.
So my conference paper was pretty sharp. I also
realised that (perhals because of the FLS's
embarrassment at ever having had MM as president), no
British folklorist had done any work on witchcraft
since the 1950s, whereas the social historians were
getting deep into the subject. So when I became
Presidemt myself, I devoted one of my Presidential
Lectures to a survey of present state of knowledge on
the topic (folk traditional beliefs about witches I
mean, not the Gardnerian system and its offshoots). I
am still interested, but others are more expert ---
e..g. James Sharpe for England, Christina Larner for
Scotland.
Jacqueline
--- Caroline Tully <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >>If you're interested in the ways that Neo-paganism
> has drawn on folklore
> materials, have you read Hutton's "Triumph of the
> Moon" yet? It's more
> recent than his "Stations of the Sun" and has a
> whole section on this topic,
> plus much else that is of top-grade interest. For
> folklore in itself, of
> course, the reading list would be huge, even for
> Britain alone.
> Jacqueline<<
>
>
> Hi Jaqueline, yes I have read "Triumph of the
> Moon"and in fact I really love
> it - I rather love Hutton - I'm a terrible groupie
> like that. I do need to
> read it again, although I have re-read parts of it.
> I recall though, that it
> was while reading a chapter, the last chapter I
> think, in "Stations of the
> Sun" however that I got interested in the
> possibility of academics looking
> at the use of folklore by Neo-Pagans, such as Gerald
> Gardner, who I know was
> a member of the Folklore Society.
>
> I've read your work as well, I'm sure... Didn't you
> write on Margaret
> Murray? I see in the current Pomegranate journal
> that Catherine Noble has
> written on Murray, but I was sure I'd read something
> not long ago on Murray
> by you. Hmmm. .:shrug:.
>
>
> ~Caroline.
>
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