Ultimately, I agree with what you are trying to say -- the choice of
words is very much key to any academic discussion.
That said, I've been following this particular thread with great
interest. It can be said that Gardner was inspired by many things but
Crowley was probably chief among them at the time. However, to say that
the "Charge of the Goddess" is a plagiarism (or whatever term you
prefer) of the Gnostic Mass might be over-simplifying the issue. Doreen
Valiente stated that she rewrote parts of the Book of Shadows and
replaced various passages with her own verse. Mind you, Leland's
influence on one passage of the Charge is very obvious.
When it comes to ritual form though, I absolutely agree that the form is
very much true to Crowley's work ...
Thanks!
Pat Bellavance
Felicia wrote:
> Yes, but a fragment from Leland does not a "corpus" make when the rest
> of the Charge of the Goddess is a plagiarism of Aleister Crowley's
> Liber XV EGC Mass or, at best "borrowed from", without either
> attribution or intent to restore. Plus, the Gardnerian initiations
> are straight out of the OTO's Man of Earth initiations. So, if I were
> going to label "the corpus", I'd say it's decidedly Brit in origin
> unless one is discussing Crowley's influences, e.g., Theravada
> Buddhism via Bhikkhu Ananda Metteyya (Charles Henry Allan Bennett).
>
> My point being that we should be careful about our choice of words if
> this discussion group is to live up to any pretense of academic rigor.
>
> Felicia Swayne-Heidrick
>
>
> On Jan 31, 2008, at 8:12 AM, janet ifimust wrote:
>
>> Well, at the very least, there was some influence from Leland
>
>
> >> and, a most unfortunate thing for Ronald to say in my opinion -
> >> given the distinctly _un-_British nature of the Wiccan corpus!
> >> Ken R.
>
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