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On 25 Feb,08, at 9:16 AM, Harry Roth wrote: > Daniel Harms wrote: > >> Regarding the Frosts >> – their beliefs are certainly outside the norm for Wicca. The >> Frosts themselves, however, are treated by many as Pagan elders, >> and often turn up at various pagan events and the like. >> > > They also get their invitations to speak revoked, as happened > recently, although that was on account of their being anti-gay. I > think many people have not even heard of this stance of theirs, > particularly because the greatest amount of its expression happened > in 1972, before a lot of them were even born. > Let me interject that I have known the Frosts since the late 1970s, gone out to dinner with them, stayed at their home, etc., and for a very brief time edited the Church of Wicca's old newsletter, Survival. They are delightful, generous, and funny people. At the same time, they sometimes like to push people's emotional buttons--the feud with the late Herman Slater, conducted through the letters columns in the magazine Green Egg, was typical. Since Slater was gay, they have then been labeled as "anti-gay," when I think it would be more accurate to say "anti-Herman." Likewise, they have been known to propose various practices in their writings just to see if people would try them out, such as "tantric" polyamoristic communal living -- something that they did not do themselves. They both have quite a bit of the Trickster archetype in them. One such practice was the ritualized preparation of a young woman for sexual intercourse through a graduated set of dildos, which has brought down decades of calumny on their heads. Let's note that their own daughter, Jo (a/k/a Bronwyn), who is now forty-something, said that nothing of the sort was done with her, and she remains on good terms with her parents. In fact, I never heard of anyone actually doing it. But people sure loved to excoriate them for even proposing it. I look back on that period as one when various writers were proposing alternative lifestyle experiments, often in the guise of fiction, such as Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land or pseudo-nonfiction, such as The Harrad Experiment. Many people in the American Craft community at the time responded with "Oh, it's just the Frosts proposing crazy stuff again." It took the satanic abuse hysteria to really spread the idea -- and some Pagans did buy into some of those wild accusations about intergenerational satanism, at least for a time. Actually, the Frosts' version of Wicca would be a valid topic for this list, as it tends more toward magic and thaumaturgy (Gavin's background) and Spiritualistic mediumship (Yvonne's) than towards religious Paganism. Although they started using the term Wicca in the 1960s, they are a long way from Gardnerian Wicca, holding more to the idea that all gods are human projections. No "hard polytheism" there, either. Chas Clifton --------------------------------------------------------------- "Letter from Hardscrabble Creek" -- a Pagan writer's blog http://www.chasclifton.com/blogger.html