From: SL500000@brownvm.brown.edu (Robert Mathiesen)
Newsgroups: alt.magick
Subject: Re: Berkeley OTO and Wicca
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 07:46:02 EST
Organization: Brown University - Providence, Rhode Island  USA
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In article <1jvl7jINNbec@shelley.u.washington.edu>,
mimir@hardy.u.washington.edu (Al Billings) said:

>>A really nice piece of work on the origins of Witchcraft is
>>_Crafting the Art of Magic: A History of Modern Witchcraft 1939-1964_
>>Aidan Kelly, Llewellyn, 1991.
>
> The book is crap. He ignores evidence (since I know people questioned by
>him who told him things that contradict what he wrote) that doesn't fit
>his conclusions, his conclusions cannot be derived from the evidence, and
>the whole thing has more wholes than swiss cheese.

However, Kelly did find and correctly assess Gardner's manuscript "Ye
Bok of ye Art Magical" at Toronto, did correctly evaluate the material
from Weschcke's files and the Cardell's' pamphlet _Witch_ (1964), and
did show that the "Old Laws" are not all that old.  I, too, do not
wholly agree with Kelly's conclusions, but we differ chiefly on the
existence of a group before Gardner which was responsible for a manu-
script behind the Toronto manuscript (I think there is evidence for such
a group's having been formed about 1929).  --  We also have somewhat
different judgements of the influence of Gardner's own sexuality on
the theory and practice of magic within Gardner's witchcraft.  At least,
it is my impression that Kelly sees all that binding and scourging in an
essentially negative light, as irrelevant to the working of the magic
and as just an illegitimate insertion of Gardner's own sexual gratifi-
cation into the rituals of his witchcraft.  I, on the other hand, find
evidence that seems to me quite good for the utility of binding and/or
scourging in raising "power" (or whatever one chooses to call it), and
also that Gardner (or whoever first introduced all that binding and
scourging into the work of witchcraft, for Gardner was not the only
Englishman who has been reputed to be fond of these sexual practices)
managed to transcend his own gratification and create a legitimate reli-
gious theory and practice which employs these things.  It's chiefly an
ethical quarrel: I think that an ethically sound religious practice can
arise from ethically reprehensible sources or motives, whereas Kelly
seems less certain that this can be so  --  or perhaps only that it *was*
so in this particular case.  --  So don't throw the baby out with the
bathwater: Kelly's work on sources is very valuable, though the
historical and psychological assessment of the origins of Gardner's
witchcraft seem to me to be a bit less so.  --  One note of warning:
some of the texts are reproduced in hard-to-follow ways in Kelly's
published book, with paragraphs from different sources (written at
different times) merged by Kelly to create the appearance of a single
document.  The unpublished version is much better in this respect, but
unfortunately remains ... unpublished.  Sometimes it seems almost as if
Kelly was trying to weave these source documents together to create his
own Gardnerian Book of Shadows, instead of just providing materials for
historical study.  -- Robert

Robert Mathiesen, Brown University, SL500000@BROWNVM