Re: VMs: Re: Strega, Grigori, four seasons, four stars etc...

[Nick Pelling <nickpelling@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Dana,

At 19:39 27/08/2004 -0700, Dana Scott wrote:
> I find the "Wheel of the Solar Year" to be of some interest here due to its
> similarity to f68r2.
>
> http://www.gothicimage.co.uk/books/sacredcelebs1.html

To be honest, I'm more than a little suspicious about the authenticity of 
Wicca's Sabbats (as opposed to Stregheria's Treguendas) in the VMs' 
time-frame. The only person I've found so far specifically discussing this 
issue is Robin Artisson, who views Sabbats simply as a neopaganist (ie 20th 
century "reconstructionist") addition to the Gardnerian Wicca canon:-

        http://www.angelfire.com/wv/clanndroen/essay.html

        HOLYDAYS

        The Wiccan calendar is divided into eight Sabbats, or Holydays?
        the four Celtic Festivals, the two solstices, and the two equinoxes.

        Unfortunately, this is a very modern development. The Celts, for
        instance, did not observe the Solstices or equinoxes in pre-christian
        times. There is every evidence to suggest that the native Britons,
        (who far preceded the Celts? coming to the Isles) did, but the
        Ancient Celts did not have an eight-fold calendar. They didn?t even
        have four seasons?only a Summer and a Winter. Gerald Gardner,
        again, influenced by other occultists, especially, in this case, by
        the romantic ?revivalist? druids of England, brought this invented
        ?eight sabbat? concept into Wicca.

        In Traditional Witchcraft, the Holy Days that are celebrated are
        different from region to region, and from Tradition to tradition,
        and from person to person. An agriculture-based tradition may
        follow tides of planting and harvesting, and celerate harvest
        festivals, while another tradition may celebrate solar tides. Point
        is, the holy days are always timed by tides of nature, and are
        different depending on where you go. The four old Celtic dates
        of Samhain, Bealtain, etc, may still be followed in some places,
        but if they are, the solstices and equinoxes tend not to be.

Artisson's position seems to be that older Celtic pagan traditions did not 
use an eight-fold division of the year anything like either the stregheria 
tradition or the modern Wicca tradition: my conclusion is that if the VMs' 
diagrams are representing some kind of eight-period wheel of the year, then 
it is most likely a calendar based on Italian stregheria and agricultural 
practices, and not one based in a Celtic pagan tradition.

BTW, according to William Eamon, early modern books of secrets often 
fetishised peasant knowledge (later to be echoed in Rousseau's "noble 
savage", I guess) as being in touch with nature, and therefore somehow more 
vibrant and "real" than the book learning of the ancients.

Cheers, .....Nick Pelling..... 


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