Funny, I like Hutton and Luhrman too.
One of the questions that I would pose to you is whether you were a
practitioner or an anthropologist first? I think that (possibly
chicken vs egg) question might give you a starting point.
I know for me, I became an Erisian before I began to study
anthropology, and one of the first books I read was Hutton's
"Triumph". For me it was interesting to read a lot of the criticisms
of modern Paganism and how much it differed from traditional craft
practice, but when I ran excitedly to show some of my pagan-y (and
fluffy, now that I think about it) friends, they got their cloaks all
in a bunch. I've noticed since then similar reactions from a good
deal of pagans to that information (although there seems to be
differing levels of resistance along tradition lines, interestingly
enough. Dischordians and more formalized practitioners like those in
the OTO seem to be less threatened by it then Heathens or Neo-Wiccans
and the like). Pagans face a lot of criticisms from society, even
now, and they don't take kindly to discrediting information they
can't just shrug off as religious zealotry.
I wouldn't let it bug me. Books like yours have a way of finding
themselves in the hands of people who will be able to appreciate it.
The ones who can't handle the truth, as it were, won't change their
minds no matter what, just like the Christian zealots who spend their
summers in the Badlands looking for human tracks that date the same
as dinosaur footprints. For them, Faith trumps everything, even Fact.
On Jun 13, 2008, at 2:13 AM, David and Jasmine wrote:
> Just a bit of soul searching in the light of responses to my book.
>
> Not a particularly in depth set of thoughts here, more just a
> mulling over ideas.
>
> I recently wrote a book on the history of the Pagan revival in a
> history of ideas approach ie how the images associated with
> witchcraft developed into the modern array of representations we
> see in today's pagan revival. Being out there with public
> responses and main stream media interviews etc is somewhat new to
> me in this respect and I am trying to come to terms with it
> professionally and personally.
> I've had a rather large burst of commentary of 3 kinds. Firstly
> I've had a lot of the "this is so fantastic and so needed to be
> written and is fair to all sides" response from
> reconstructionists. Secondly I've had a lot perjorative "this is
> evil approach your just like the b--tch Tania Luhrman" from the
> more new agey and feminist oriented neo-Pagans. (Indeed I've been
> pejoratively linked to Tania Lurhman, Ronald Hutton and Talcott
> Parson's in this. Funnily enough I really like Hutton and
> Luhrman). Finally, I've had a few local initiated Alexandrian and
> Gardnerian Wiccan's have generally come up to me and said something
> along the lines of I agree with this but really disagreed with that
> and wanted a discussion with me on it whcih I am more than happy to
> do. I had a lot of really informative and entertaining to and fro
> debates this way lately. (I've also had a range of responses from
> Christians of the informed intellectual kind to rather right wing
> manichaen diatribes about Satanism.)
>
> This had me thinking about my own predilections and how this
> emerges in my writing. I strongly lean towards reconstructionism
> as a practitioner and to be soul searchingly honest a lot of this
> comes about socially through loving the gatherings and having
> these fantastic in depths discussions on Saxon, Greek or what have
> you history with people I find I see ideologically, historically
> and culturally very eye to eye with. Conversely, I tend to find
> myself feeling very irritated and tired at more fluffy gatherings
> where I can't help myself but start picking holes in the historical
> representations and becoming very wearied by primma donna
> posturing, a lot of blatant fabrications personally and
> collectively and a somewhat reactionary response to the sue of
> supernaturalism in social game playing which personally brings up
> scars from a pentecostal/fundamentalist upbringing I would rather
> not revisit. I've found, personally, the local traditionalist
> initiated wiccans and reconstructionists seem to be much less prone
> to the more negative aspects of pagan gatherings I've participated
> in. Of course this largely group and personality dependent as
> there are plenty of strange recons and trad' wiccans out there I've
> just been fortunate enough to not have much to do with them.
> This kind of personal influence is something I've seen very
> strongly in works, particularly anthropologically studies. It
> reminds me of Julie Stephen's commentary on the 60's about the
> reluctance of people to discuss or bring up negative issues of
> serious critique of events which connected with people
> emotionally. This is something I've long found frustrating in
> contemporary Pagan studies where you'll get lines like "People are
> free to play with the past as they will to make empowering
> narratives" and not dealing with the experience of being stuck in a
> room with a bunch of pathological liars on supreme supernaturalist
> ego trips. Its interesting reflecting on the way i do the same
> thing albeit with a different community and what that means in
> tersm of trying to engage in research. I don't think the whole
> dissolution of the etic/emic divide and giving up on historical
> objectivity all together is a resolution to this but a reflective
> theoretical approach to one's own analysis is quite beneficial. I
> quite admire Dianne Purkiss in this regard as I think she does it
> exceedingly well.
>
> Its funny though on an odd note I was engaged (outside of my work
> activities) assisting a friend doing medieval classes at schools
> (ie have all my Armour on and do some metal weapon displays etc and
> talk about medieval law and punishment etc) and a heathen friend of
> mine starts off with a long speach about our heathen ancestry and
> so on leading to some comments hovering on the border of racism
> regarding the English and non-English students about their ancestry
> etc and then thanked me as Dr David Waldron and I instantly had the
> thought something along the lines of "Sh-te what have you just
> professionally associated me with!!@!"
>
> Anyway to cut to the chase I was wondering if people had any
> insights on this sort of thing and your own experiences with
> differentiating between your academic and practitioners hat and
> your own biases and even dealing with being a author who gets a lot
> of people of facebook and email sending you many many commentaries
> etc good and bad etc.
>
> Cheers
> David
|
