I've been to a few Pagan Prides and at different points on my spiritual journey practised Wicca and Asatru, and I've stayed in touch with some of my contacts from those years. Fwiw, I don't like the "it would be wise not to get in the way" comment, which seems designed to add a frisson of threat to what is in fact a very joyful event that never seemed to attract any confrontation the times I attended. Likewise the description of Jeanette Ellis, with added body image issues. And the "passing tests and obeying priests" thing is overstated - "tests" tend to be largely symbolic, and most pagans IME are far too much individualists to obey anyone much. Leaders who get too captivated by the authority of titles like "High Priestess" don't tend to last, from what I've seen.
The idea that Harry Potter has anything to do with paganism is frankly ludicrous and usually only seriously espoused by the most rabid sort of fundamentalist Christians. Magic is shown as a tool that can be used positively or negatively, but its concept of what magic actually is descends from mainstream medieval and Renaissance literature, as far as I can see, and therefore has more to do with Christianity than anything else (sometimes Classical paganism as mediated through Christianity). I didn't recognise anything neopagan in the books.
LotR probably does resonate with pagans, but that's simply because Tolkien was a scholar of periods when paganism was still historically active in Europe and made use of that knowledge in his worldbuilding. I don't think it's anything more than a resonance. Lewis resonates in a similar way for some pagans for the same reason, although his Christian allegory is more obtrusive, which spoils the reading experience for a lot of them.
On the plus side, with Pagan Pride, OBOD, the Pagan Federation and Ron Hutton, the author does seem to have made an effort to talk to some of the more respected names and organisations. The information he got from OBOD and PF is slightly skewed - Asatruar, for instance, would not necessarily agree that there is a divine force inherent in nature or that nature is to be revered - but that's a known issue between Asatruar and neopagan umbrella groups, and not something I'd expect a newbie to pick up on immediately. And he does at least recognise that witchcraft, Wicca and paganism are not identical.
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regna
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-23 10:14 am (UTC)The idea that Harry Potter has anything to do with paganism is frankly ludicrous and usually only seriously espoused by the most rabid sort of fundamentalist Christians. Magic is shown as a tool that can be used positively or negatively, but its concept of what magic actually is descends from mainstream medieval and Renaissance literature, as far as I can see, and therefore has more to do with Christianity than anything else (sometimes Classical paganism as mediated through Christianity). I didn't recognise anything neopagan in the books.
LotR probably does resonate with pagans, but that's simply because Tolkien was a scholar of periods when paganism was still historically active in Europe and made use of that knowledge in his worldbuilding. I don't think it's anything more than a resonance. Lewis resonates in a similar way for some pagans for the same reason, although his Christian allegory is more obtrusive, which spoils the reading experience for a lot of them.
On the plus side, with Pagan Pride, OBOD, the Pagan Federation and Ron Hutton, the author does seem to have made an effort to talk to some of the more respected names and organisations. The information he got from OBOD and PF is slightly skewed - Asatruar, for instance, would not necessarily agree that there is a divine force inherent in nature or that nature is to be revered - but that's a known issue between Asatruar and neopagan umbrella groups, and not something I'd expect a newbie to pick up on immediately. And he does at least recognise that witchcraft, Wicca and paganism are not identical.