"The Triumph of the Moon"
I'm currently reading The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft, by Ronald Hutton. I finished chapter five last night, and so far the book is fascinating (though the small print is a bit scary at first). It's useful for getting insight into the various worldviews and structures that went into the creation of Wicca (at least Gardner's brand of it).
This sample from the end of chapter five ("Finding A High Magic") reminded me of a recent conversation with chronarchy:
The rituals of the Golden Dawn trained initiates to invoke deities and angels, but with the object neither of presenting them with praise and pleas nor of making them do the will of the person invoking; with neither, in short, of the customary aims of religion and magic. They encouraged the practitioners to empower themselves with incantation, within a ceremonial setting, so that they came to feel themselves combining with the divine forces concerned and becoming part of them. In the last analysis it did not matter to this work whether or not the entities concerned had any actual existence as long as the magician felt as if they did at the moment of working, and achieved the transforming visions and sensations which were the object of the process.
The chapter on structure (chapter four) was also interesting, for its description of the old secret societies (the Masons and such). I don't remember knowing before that "so mote it be" came directly from Masonic ritual. This chapter is also interesting for how much of this structure (e.g. degrees) that went into the original Wiccan mixture was tossed out by the solitaries and other egalitarian movements.
Too bad there are still people around who don't accept those "later" (70s-90s) movements as valid for anybody.
This sample from the end of chapter five ("Finding A High Magic") reminded me of a recent conversation with chronarchy:
The rituals of the Golden Dawn trained initiates to invoke deities and angels, but with the object neither of presenting them with praise and pleas nor of making them do the will of the person invoking; with neither, in short, of the customary aims of religion and magic. They encouraged the practitioners to empower themselves with incantation, within a ceremonial setting, so that they came to feel themselves combining with the divine forces concerned and becoming part of them. In the last analysis it did not matter to this work whether or not the entities concerned had any actual existence as long as the magician felt as if they did at the moment of working, and achieved the transforming visions and sensations which were the object of the process.
The chapter on structure (chapter four) was also interesting, for its description of the old secret societies (the Masons and such). I don't remember knowing before that "so mote it be" came directly from Masonic ritual. This chapter is also interesting for how much of this structure (e.g. degrees) that went into the original Wiccan mixture was tossed out by the solitaries and other egalitarian movements.
Too bad there are still people around who don't accept those "later" (70s-90s) movements as valid for anybody.