modern pagan festivals

7/25/2019 Modern Pagan Festivals

1/24

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found athttp://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rfol20

Download by:[151.229.70.218] Date:28 October 2015, At: 06:3

Folklore

ISSN: 0015-587X (Print) 1469-8315 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rfol20

Modern Pagan Festivals: A Study in the Nature ofTradition

Ronald Hutton

To cite this article:Ronald Hutton (2008) Modern Pagan Festivals: A Study in the Nature of

Tradition, Folklore, 119:3, 251-273, DOI: 10.1080/00155870802352178

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00155870802352178

Published online: 03 Nov 2008.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 1719

View related articles

Citing articles: 3 View citing articles
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/citedby/10.1080/00155870802352178#tabModulehttp://www.tandfonline.com/doi/citedby/10.1080/00155870802352178#tabModulehttp://www.tandfonline.com/doi/mlt/10.1080/00155870802352178http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/mlt/10.1080/00155870802352178http://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=rfol20&page=instructionshttp://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?journalCode=rfol20&page=instructionshttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00155870802352178http://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080/00155870802352178http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rfol20http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rfol20


2/24

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Modern Pagan Festivals: A Study in theNature of Tradition

Ronald Hutton

Abstract

The cluster of recently appeared religions known as Paganism have developed,

over the past sixty years, a distinctive cycle of annual festivals, most of whichdraw on long historic roots but that are grouped together in a modern framework.No study has yet been made of the manner in which this cycle developed, andpotentially rich rewards may be gained from doing so. Such a project is a rareopportunity to study a religious festive tradition in the process of evolution, andalso to suggest features of the nature of tradition in modern societies, and themanner in which it is perceived by scholars in different disciplines.

Introduction

During the past thirty years, scholars have gradually become aware of theexistence, across the western world, of a rapidly growing complex of modernreligions organised under the label of Paganism. [1] Although they differ fromeach other in the nature of their deities, rites, and organisation, they have certaindefinitive features in common: most obviously, a veneration of the feminineprinciple of divinity as well as the masculine, a sense of an inherent sanctity inthe natural world, an ethic of responsible individual self-expression that rejectsconcepts of sin and salvation, and an identification with the pre-Christianreligions of Europe and the Near East. They are also more or less united by theobservation of a common pattern of eight annual seasonal festivals. The study offestivity is currently a focus of considerable interest among scholars of religion,society, and culture, in several different disciplines: it is, indeed, a phenomenonencountered in all, or virtually all, human cultures. The most comprehensive andconsidered definition of a festival, by a social scientist, seems to have been that of

Alessandro Falassi: a periodically recurrent, social occasion in which, through amultiplicity of forms and a series of co-ordinated events, participate directly orindirectly and to various degrees, all members of a whole community, united byethnic, linguistic, religious, historical bonds and sharing a worldview (1987, 2).This certainly fits the seasonal celebrations of modern Pagans, in all respects.Most scholars of religious festivity have to reckon with the fact that the particularrites they study have developed over relatively long periods of time, so that wecan observe their later and current forms, but have irrevocably lost much or all ofthe process by which they came into existence. In the case of modern Paganism,by contrast, it is possible to document virtually every detail of the way in whichan entire ritual calendar has developed. This provides a historian with an ideal

Folklore 119 (December 2008): 251273

ISSN 0015-587X print; 1469-8315 online/08/030251-23; Routledge Journals; Taylor & Francisq 2008 The Folklore Society

DOI: 10.1080/00155870802352178


3/24

case study through which to understand how the processes by which sacredand seasonal calendars, and festive traditions, can be produced within amodern society.

Forms of modern Paganism have now been the subject of a valuable amount ofscholarly attention, on both sides of the Atlantic, even though this study stillremains at a comparatively early stage and much more work is needed.The existing publications have tended to concentrate on pagan witchcraft, thelongest-established and best-known tradition, but even here they represent only afirst stage of the investigation that is needed for the international community ofscholarship fully to understand its nature and its context within the wider world(Luhrmann 1989; Onion 1995; Harvey 1997; Berger 1999; Greenwood 2000;Salomonsen 2002; Magliocco 2004; Bado-Fralick 2005; Johnston and Aloi 2007).They have usually included a consideration of the place of festivity in thetraditions concerned, and of the celebration of the eight points of the Pagan cycle.This consideration has, however, been focused upon the contemporarysignificance of the cycle and the manner in which celebrants experience it. Asthe authors have been sociologists, anthropologists, and experts in religiousstudies, this preoccupation is natural enough, and valuable in itself. Somevaluable attention has now been also paid to the history of modern Paganism orthe manner in which that Paganism uses history. The quantity of work has,however, been smaller, and much less of it has been produced by professionalscholars (Kelly 1991; Purkiss 1996; Hutton 1998; Heselton 2000, 2003; Clifton 2006;Adler 2007; Gibson 2007; Pearson 2007). Of the publications in this category, onlymy own has as yet taken any notice of the manner in which the festive cycle

developed, and then only briefly and in passing (Hutton 1998, 195, 2334, 2456and 248).This neglect is undeserved, because a proper investigation of the development

of the cycle has relevance to some of the most prominent current preoccupationsof several different disciplines, and especially folklore. It is a classic study ofthe invention of tradition, an area of critical interest to scholars ever since thepublication of Eric Hobsbawms and Terence Rangers pioneering work in 1983.In his introductory essay to that collection, Hobsbawm declared that the mostinteresting feature of this phenomenon was the use of ancient materials toconstruct invented traditions of a novel type for quite novel purposes (1983, 6).Modern Pagan festivals perfectly fit that description. Moreover, a study of them isa consideration of thenatureof tradition itself, especially in a modern society. Thisis a project that goes to the very roots of folklore studies: in 1891 Edwin Sidney

Hartland could declare that folklore is the science of tradition (1891, 11). Twoyears after that, and writing in this journal, Joseph Jacobs suggested that one of theprime objectives of folklorists should be to understand how a particular traditionoriginated, and how it developed and disseminated (1893, 237). Over a centurylater, Simon Bronner has restated the same theme, suggesting that a particularcontribution of folklore studies to the philosophy of tradition could be to integratecreativity and emergence into the idea of tradition (2000, 93). A study of modernPagan festivals permits exactly such an understanding, and integration, as Jacobsand Bronner recommended. It also has implications for a broader appreciation ofthe nature of modernity, and its relationship with older ideas and customs, and ofthe changing place of religion in western culture.

Ronald Hutton252


4/24

The Intellectual Roots of the Cycle

Four of the eight festivals of the modern Pagan ritual calendar consist of thecardinal points of the suns progress through the year: the solstices at midsummerand midwinter, and the equinoxes of spring and autumn. The four others arerepresented by the dates that commenced the seasons in traditional British andIrish culture: the first days of November, February, May, and August, or their eves.They are known, across the various traditions of modern Paganism, by variousdifferent names, reflecting the particular ancient cultures with which thetraditions concerned identify: for example, the winter solstice is known to paganwitches and to Pagans who follow Scandinavian models as Yule, to Druids asAlban Arthan, to some Pagans who follow an Anglo-Saxon model as the Mother

Night, to those influenced by classical Greek and Roman religion as Saturnalia,and so on. Nonetheless, they are generally observed as what Pagans collectivelyusually call the Wheel of the Year, stressing the cyclical nature of the cosmos,which is one of the themes of modern Pagan belief. It will be noticed that thefestivals concerned are not equally spaced throughout the year. They representtwo equal-armed crosses, imposed on each other in a slightly crooked pattern,some five weeks apart and some seven weeks apart. This is because the two sets offeasts do not just reflect two different natural systems, one solar and one lunar.They actually have two completely different points of origin, each associated witha different modern writer. The solar feasts are there because of Edward Williams,the quarter days because of Margaret Murray; and the relationship of both with anancient and modern pagan calendar now needs setting in context.

The context for Williamss work was the general British rediscovery of theancient Druids in the mid-eighteenth century (Hutton 2007, 1217 and 4158). [2]It was then that a mixture of excavation and fieldwork, mostly by WilliamStukeley, established once and for all that the great megalithic monuments ofBritain had been built by the pre-Roman natives of the island. Until then they hadbeen credited, variously, to the Vikings, the Romans, and the post-Roman British,the latter sometimes having the assistance of the wizard Merlin. Now all thesealternative candidates were swept away. What every educated European knewabout the ancient British was that their religious leaders had been called Druids.Most of Britains prehistoric stone structurescircles, avenues and rows of greatstones, and chambered tombshad by then been recognised (correctly) asceremonial monuments. It followed therefore that the Druids must have been theirdesigners and the priests who officiated at them. This shot Druids to centre-stage

in the British imagination, having hitherto been marginal and hazy figures. A racebegan to try to understand their beliefs and customs, and so recover a lost portionof the British national heritage. As the Welsh were the modern people in the islandmost obviously descended from the aboriginal Britons, there was a real hope thattheir early literature might prove to contain traces of Druidical teaching that hadsurvived the conversion to Christianity.

The person who proceeded to look hardest for these was a stonemason fromGlamorgan, the aforementioned Edward Williams, who took the nickname [3] ofIolo Morganwg, by which he is now better known (Morgan 1975; Jenkins 1997,2005; Hutton 2007, 1930, 5761 and 1602). When he realised that the survivingmanuscripts contained nothing demonstrably Druidic, he proceeded to forge the

Modern Pagan Festivals 253


5/24

missing evidence and pass it off as a scholarly discovery. As part of this work ofdeception, he had to devise a system of Druidic festivals, and did so by stagesbetween 1792 and 1826 (Owen 1792, xlvi; Williams 1848, 435). Iolo Morganwg hasrecently been made the subject of a major and wonderfully productive researchproject based at the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, and led byGeraint Jenkins (Jenkins 2005; Charnell-White 2007; Constantine 2007; Jenkins,Jones and Jones 2007). Almost the only aspect of his life and work that has notbeen covered by this is Iolos vision of ancient Druidry, and accordingly thedevelopment of its festive cycle has not been investigated either. The basis of itwas the greatest of all Britains prehistoric monuments: Stonehenge. As had beenappreciated since the writings of William Stukeley in the 1740s, this is clearlyaligned on the midsummer sunrise, which, since it was now credited to theDruids, meant that the cardinal points of the sun must have been sacred to them.Iolo accordingly invented a pattern of four great Druidic festivals, the solstices andequinoxes, to which he gave Welsh names relating to light: from midwinteronward, Alban Arthan (21 December), Alban Eilir (21 March), Alban Hefin(21 June), and Alban Elfed (23 September). It was only in the late nineteenthcentury that British scholars in general concluded that the megalithic monumentsbelong to the New Stone Age and the Druids to the Iron Age, almost threethousand years later, severing the link. This news took another hundred years toreach the general public. It was likewise only in the early twentieth century thatWelsh academics proved conclusively that Iolo had made up his Druidic system.They did so, moreover, in books published in Welsh, so that there are members ofthe English and American public, to this day, who still believe in it. Among those

who long retained such a belief were various orders of modern Druids inspired, atleast in part, by Iolos dream; and some of these celebrated rites inside Stonehengeat midsummer from 1912 onward (Hutton 2007, 64 75 and 174 93). In thismanner, one-half of the modern Pagan cycle was put into place.

The other half arrived by quite a different route. During the eighteenth century,most of the ruling elites of Europe came to lose a literal belief in magic andwitchcraft, as part of the process that came to be called the Enlightenment. As aresult, the death penalty for witchcraft was abolished in state after state. This gavethe liberal intellectuals of that century and the succeeding one a splendid stick withwhich to beat the established churches and hereditary aristocracies. If witchcrafthad been an illusion, then all those who had perished in the witch trials of thepreceding epoch had been the victims of bigotry and superstition, embodied in thetraditional figures and institutions of authority. One possible answer to this was

provided in the period of reaction after the Napoleonic Wars by two Germanscholars, Karl Jarcke and Franz Mone. They agreed that witchcraft did not exist, butdeclared that the victims of the witch trials had been pagans, surviving practitionersof the bloodthirsty and orgiastic religions of old Europe. As such, they had beenguilty of most of the atrocious behaviour that demonologists and witch-hunters hadassociated with the festive assemblies of witches, and so richly deserved theirpunishment and suppression (Jarcke 1828; Mone 1839). [4] This theory posed a realchallenge to the new generation of liberal reformers and revolutionaries, and theone who accepted it with the most gusto was the Frenchman Jules Michelet. He hadneither the time nor the means to challenge the reactionary theory from originalevidence, and so he simply subverted it. He declared that the people persecuted

Ronald Hutton254


6/24

as witches had indeed been pagans. Rather than practitioners of a disgustingreligion, however, in his imagination this became one that loved the natural world,and human liberty and self-expression. It was a rallying-point for ordinary peopleopposed to the main oppressors of medieval society: the feudal aristocracy and theChristian Church (Michelet 1862; see Hutton 1998, 13740). By the end of thenineteenth century, this belief was well established on both sides of the Atlantic.Scholars who were expert in the records of the witch trials recognised it asuntenable, but specialists in other areas of history, and in other disciplines, oftentook it up (Hutton 1998, 14050). The one who tried hardest to match it to actualevidence was the British archaeologist Margaret Murray, who, between the 1910sand 1950s, did her best to build up a complete picture of the religion that had beencalled witchcraft (Hutton 1998, 194201). Her working methods in doing so haverecently been given attention (Simpson 1994; Oates and Wood 1998; Hutton 1998,194201); no sustained consideration, however, has been accorded to the way inwhich she constructed its festivals.

She declared the most important to have been the four quarter days that openedthe seasons, which she felt to have been very appropriate for a surviving ancientreligion rooted in the cycle of the agricultural year. In addition, she concluded thatlesser assemblies were held at the solstices, which she asserted to have been feastsbrought in later by sun-worshipping invaders. This conformed to the view ofprehistory that predominated in Britain at the time, having been propagated byscholars such as Max Muller, Sir William Boyd-Dawkins, and Sir John Rhys, and isnow more or less completely abandoned. It depended on the idea of an earth-worshipping Neolithic religion that had been overthrown or absorbed by a new

cult of the sun brought in by bronze-using Aryan invaders from the East. Sheexplicitly stated that British witches had never celebrated the equinoxes, althoughshe might be read as implying by this that some on the Continent could have doneso (Murray 1921, 109). On examining the sources used by Murray herself, let alonea larger body of original evidence, it is clear that most people accused of witchcraftdid not specify any calendar dates as being regularly used for their assemblies toworship the Devil. Those that did specify named a wide range of them, includingone or two of the quarter days, either of the solstices but not both, and (just asfrequently) Christian feasts such as Easter or saints days. Only one, in fact, out ofthe thousands whose detailed trial records have survived from across Europestated that she and her comrades had met on the four quarter days. This was IsobelSmyth, tried at Forfar, Scotland, in 1661. Nobody else accused in the whole greatScottish hunt of 1661, let alone at any other time and place, seems to have done so

(Murray 1921, 10911; cf. Maxwell-Stuart 2006). The fact that Margaret Murrayused this single case as the peg on which to hang a major aspect of an entireassumed religion fits in with her usual methods when writing on witchcraft.

The Appearance of the Cycle

Margaret Murrays interpretation of the witch trials is now rejected by allacademic historians. Nonetheless, detailed studies of the early modern witch huntlargely fell into abeyance during the time in which she was writing. As a result, bythe 1940s and 1950s her account of it was accepted as correct by a greatmany people, both inside and outside the world of professional scholarship



7/24

(Hutton 1998, 199 200, 272 8 and 377 80). In other words, her portrait of a nativesystem of ancient festivity, spanning Western Europe, was at its most influentialjust as Iolo Morganwgs system was losing credibility. One of those who believedit completely was a colleague of hers in The Folklore Society, a retired colonial civilservant called Gerald Gardner. He is central to our story because it was he whorevealed to the world the existence of Wicca, or pagan witchcraft, the oldestrecorded and most enduring variety of modern Paganism and the template formost of the rest. It has often been suggested that Gardner himself developedWicca, with an unknown amount of help from friends and collaborators. This is atpresent impossible to verify and may always remain so. What is certain is thatthere is no definite evidence for its existence before his involvement in it, andthat he was its first and greatest publicist (Hutton 1998, 20552 and 36986;Heselton 2000, 2003).

Gardner was also a high-ranking member of the most prominent of the modernDruid orders that held public ceremonies at Stonehenge, the Universal Bond,although latterly he was not very impressed by it. Apart from any otherconsideration, he was sufficiently up to date with current scholarship to be awareof the discrediting of Iolo Morganwg. On 6 November 1951, the year in which heproclaimed the existence of Wicca, he summed up his own Druid orders rites to abusiness partner as just what sentimental folk would invent in the eighteenthcentury (Williamson Papers). On the other hand, he not only believed thatMargaret Murrays portrait of early modern witchcraft was absolutely accurate,but declared Wicca to have been that very religion, which had survived the witchhunts in secret until the present day. Murray wrote a supportive preface to the

book in which he did so (Gardner 1954). Her influence is amply borne out bythe earliest surviving Wiccan liturgy, a manuscript compiled by Gardner andlabelled Ye Bok of ye Art Magical, which dates from some point in the 1940s,more probably from the second half of the decade. [5] In that period the mainDruidic seasonal ceremonies were all at midsummer. By contrast, the seasonalwitches sabbats in Ye Bok are based firmly on the descriptions given by Murray(Ye Bok, 27188; Murray 1921, 12431; 1933, 10919). They are scheduled forher four quarter days, and the activities prescribed are essentially thosereconstructed in Murrays books from the descriptions of witches assembliesgiven by demonologists and the confessions extracted from those accused ofwitchcraft. The emphasis is, accordingly, on dancing, feasting, games, songs orchants, and spell-casting, rather than on seasonal rites as such, in which thewitches of the early modern imagination had shown no interest. The ritual space is

approached in a processional dance, riding brooms and carrying a phallic wand,as Murray portrayed her witches as having done. Among the dances prescribedfor Gardners witches is one from Italy to which she drew particular attentionlavoltawhich allowed couples to dance together (Ye Bok, 278; Murray 1921, 135).Murray had provided no lyrics for the songs or chants allegedly used by witches attheir gatherings. Those prescribed for the festivals in Ye Bok are all taken fromexisting published sources easily accessible to Gardner: a verse of Kipling,quotations or paraphrases from published works of Aleister Crowley, andan invocation from a thirteenth-century French miracle play, reproduced in twowell-known textbooks on magic published in 1931 and 1948 (Hutton 1998, 2312and forthcoming [b]).

Ronald Hutton256


8/24

Margaret Murray had not given much prominence to the seasonal festivals inher reconstruction of her imagined witch religion, and neither did Ye Bok; theyoccupy just 15 pages, in large handwriting, out of 288 in the manuscript. The mainemphasis in the latter is firmly on operative magic. The fact that the verse ofKipling is used in two successive festivals, and that a piece of Crowleys work thatappears in one is also employed in an invocation a few pages earlier in themanuscript, indicates a considerable economy, or haste, of composition. The ritesthat specifically recognise the season are all very brief and simple. Nonetheless,they already embody characteristics that mark them out as part of a viable, andhighly distinctive, religion. The early modern demonologists had stated that thecentral act of a witches festival was to adore the Devil as their god and master.Murray had turned this into the adoration of a high priest, personifying a paganhorned god who was the main deity of her reconstructed witch cult; she held thatthe Christian Devil was simply a misrepresentation of this deity, once veneratedthroughout the ancient pagan world. Gardners seasonal rites, from the beginning,included such a god, but also gave equal emphasis to a high priestess,personifying a goddess. They formed a divine couple who were intrinsicallylinked to the annual cycle of winter and summer in temperate latitudes, the godpredominating during the cold-season festivals and being associated with deathand rebirth, and the goddess during the warm-season pair and being associatedwith life and fertility. This concept of ancient paganism as being based on aduotheism of a female and a male deity, who between them create and sustain theworld, had a long history by the 1940s. It had been found in the writings ofscholars of religionof whom the best known was the French revolutionary

ideologue Charles Dupuissince the eighteenth century (Dupuis 1795; Hugues1785; Knight 1786). Gardners witches also had existing models for a witchesgoddess, of which the most obvious is the one in the pagan gospel allegedlyused by Italian witches and published by the American, Charles Godfrey Leland,in 1899. Most, if not all, scholars at the present time doubt very strongly thatLelands text was the work of a genuine religion; it seems to have been anotherproduct of the nineteenth-century desire to imagine a traditional folk religionopposed to Christianity (Leland 1998; Hutton 1998, 1418). The author or authorsof Ye Bok of ye Art Magical had certainly read Lelands book, because a passagefrom the latter is paraphrased as a key part of the liturgy in Ye Bok (pp. 2638).A still more obvious source of the goddess who appears in Ye Bok, however, liesin the sensual and ecstatic female divinities who feature prominently in thewritings of Aleister Crowley. Gardner had a personal relationship with Crowley,

treating him as a mentor, in the period during which Ye Bok was most probablycompiled. It can be no coincidence that the goddess in Ye Bok is most ofteninvoked, or speaks, in Crowleys own words. [6] Nonetheless, it was novel to findboth god and goddess together, as equals, at the centre of the religion of witchcraft.This automatically gave Wicca a feminist appeal that was to serve it well in laterdecades: mirrored in the leadership of each group, or coven, by a high priestesssupported by a high priest.

The other significant addition came in the November Eve, or Halloween, rite,and dealt with the essential religious problem of the fate of the human soul.The text that expressed this was, according to somebody who knew Gardner verywell and worked with him as his high priestess, written by Gardner himself. [7]



9/24

It promised that those who found favour with the god of Wicca would undergoreincarnation into better bodies than before and at a time when those who hadbeen dearest to them in a previous life would be reborn again with them (Ye Bok,

2725). To those who love the present world, it is a remarkably comforting visionof the future. It is also a somewhat unusual one, and was, beyond any doubt,Gerald Gardners own, because he had made it the central theme of his first novel,written at the end of the 1930s before he claimed ever to have heard of Wicca(Gardner 1939). Here we are provided with a rare, and important, insight into thepersonal influence that Gardner exerted over the creation or development ofWicca itself. More important, it may be seen that, although the first modern Paganseasonal rites were short, scrappy, and largely a plagiaristic pastiche, they alreadycontained a quite distinctive theology of divinity and of an afterlife. They had,arguably, addressed the two most important needs of a religion: to providesuperhuman beings with whom humans may form respectful relationships and toprovide some reassurance of the survival of the human soul after death.

The Evolution and Diffusion of the Cycle

By the early 1950s, it is possible to observe the Wiccan festive calendar in theprocess of further development. In 1953, Gardner initiated a woman withremarkable powers of liturgical and poetic composition, Doreen Valiente. By thisdate, his group had started to celebrate the solstices as well as the quarter days.It may well be that Valientes appearance was itself the occasion for this, as sheconcealed her membership of a witch religion from her family by claiming that she

had joined the more familiar and respectable modern Druids. They, of course,observed the solar feasts (Valiente 1989, 40). It is a sign of how new the observationof these seems to have been in Wicca that, at the very first midwinter that Valientecelebrated as a Wiccan, there was no liturgy for the occasion. Gardner thereforeasked her to write one, a few hours before the celebration was due. WhereasGardner, or his initiators, generally took complete sections from existing sources,with some paraphrasing, Valiente used existing texts only as starting points andthen wrote what were effectively new compositions, which only faintly echoed theoriginals. Thus, as a starting point for her first such creation, she took two ofthe prayers from Alexander Carmichaels famous collection of Hebridean folklore,Carmina Gadelica. What she produced was a powerful invocation to the Wiccangoddess, which immediately became the central component of the enduringseasonal rite (Farrar and Farrar 1981, 148). Gardner was so pleased with it, indeed,

that he put it straight into the book he was writing on Wicca at that time, as anexample of the seasonal liturgy of his religion. It was the only extract from thatliturgy to feature in the book concerned,Witchcraft Today, which was published in1954, and was the main work that revealed Wicca to the world at large (Gardner1954, 212). This was surely because Valientes invocation was both a fine piece ofwriting and almost the only one of the texts prescribed for festivals by that datewhich an astute reader would not recognise as taken from an existing source.Encouraged by this success, Valiente went on to compose matching invocationsfor the summer solstice and the equinoxes, sometimes, again, drawing on phrasesin Carmina Gadelica for inspiration (Farrar and Farrar 1981, 729, 93101 and11620). The equinoxes seem to have been adopted into the Wiccan calendar after

Ronald Hutton258


10/24

Witchcraft Today went to press in 1954, because that book only mentions the quarterdays and solstices as witch festivals (Gardner 1954, 130).

Gardner himself remained very resistant to the idea of giving the solar feasts thefull status of festivals, perhaps because he associated them with Druidry, orperhaps because Margaret Murray had stated so firmly that the quarter days hadbeen the great feasts for witches. As a result, within the small but growingnetwork of Wiccan covens, the solar feasts still tended to be regarded as minorevents, celebrated at the nearest full moon to the dates concerned and treated asof less importance than the quarter days. This situation ended in early 1958,when Gardners main coven, based on the northern edge of London, objectedcollectively to it. Its members felt that the solstices in particular had greatimportance as calendar events, and that the equinoxes made a perfect symbolicbalance for them. They therefore asked for equal observation of both the cardinalpoints of the sun and the quarter days, as close to the actual dates as wasconveniently possible. Gardner gave way, and in this manner the modern Pagancalendar of eight festivals came into being. [8] Gardner himself still felt that onlythe quarter days were grand witches feasts, and this tradition lingered long insome branches of Wicca (compare Farrar 1971, 81 2). Nonetheless, the basicpattern of the eight feasts was now the norm.

The history of modern Paganism in the decades since 1958 has been one of howthe Wiccan template of ritual has been diffused all over the western world, andthrough many other varieties of Pagan religion that have appeared in the wake ofWicca. It has travelled by word of mouth, by the copying of manuscript books ofritual, and by the publication of an increasingly large body of handbooks about

Wicca and other kinds of Paganism. From the 1990s, the Internet has added amajor new means of transmission (Cowan 2004). To provide one importantexample of the diffusion of the cycle: in 1964 a friend of Gardners, Ross Nichols,seceded from the main modern Druid order to which Gardner belonged.He established his own, the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, and promptlyinstituted in it, as one of his innovations in Druid tradition, the new Wiccanpattern of eight festivals. It is now the biggest Druid order in the world (Nichols1990, esp. 299306; Carr-Gomm 2002, 15961). In the late 1980s a large number ofnew Druid orders appeared in Britain, some of which themselves foundedcolonies overseas. What distinguished these from the older Druidry, which haddeveloped in the eighteenth century, was that they had a specifically Paganidentity, instead of representing themselves as being, like Freemasonry, a systemof philosophy and ritual that could accommodate a variety of faiths. All of them

adopted the eight-fold festive pattern from Wicca, as the definitive one for modernPaganism (Hutton 2003, 23958).By the opening of the 1980s, most Wiccans, let alone Pagans outside the Wiccan

tradition, had lost any realisation that the pattern concerned had been establishedin the 1950s. It was, rather, accepted as an intrinsic feature of what was regardedby many, following Gardners claims, as a surviving ancient faith. [9] By the end ofthe 1980s, the broadening number and range of Pagan traditions influenced byWicca stretched its historic application still further. Rather than being associatedwith one particular branch of ancient paganism, which had allegedly survived asMargaret Murrays and Gerald Gardners pagan witchcraft, it was now commonlyregarded as having been the general festive cycle of north-western Europe



11/24

in pre-Christian times. To one very influential British writer, Caitln Matthews,who served especially the emerging constituencies of Pagan Druidry and anon-denominational Paganism inspired mainly by Welsh and Irish literature, itwas, by 1989, simply the wheel of the Celtic year (Matthews 1989, passim).

An American Version of the Cycle

Since the 1970s, the world centre of modern Paganism has not been the UnitedKingdom but the United States, and the eight-fold pattern has been imported andadapted there in ways that provide further insights into the concerns of this article.America produced its own, home-grown, modern Pagan revivals during the early

twentieth century. What distinguishes them from those based on Wicca is that, likeearlier British and Continental revivals, they failed to create lasting movements(Clifton 2006, 11548; Adler 2007, 24360). Thus, the quarter days, which havealways been celebrated as important feasts in Gaelic areas of Britain and Ireland,were brought to California as the key festivals of an Irish mystical society foundedin the early twentieth century. This was the Fellowship of Shasta, imported intoAmerica by one member whose followers remained activealthough hardlynoticeduntil the 1960s. [10] It was the arrival of Wicca in America from Britain,apparently in the early 1960s, which catalysed the establishment of enduring andlarge-scale modern Pagan religions in the New World; and the cycle of eightfestivals came with it. A particularly good case study of the adoption andnaturalisation of that cycle is provided by a Californian Pagan tradition known asthe New Reformed Orthodox Order of the Golden Dawn. [11]

It began in 1968, as a group of friends in the Bay Area of San Francisco, whodecided to create a body of ceremony that fused together relics of ancientpaganism with the festival atmosphere of the contemporary hippie counter-culture. In doing so, its members were self-consciously trying to recreate a paganwitch religion of the sort described by Margaret Murray and Gerald Gardner, butwith a new organisational structure and set of ceremonies. The liturgy thatresulted was largely the work of one man, Aidan Kelly, who acknowledges that hissources were all literary. The most influential author among them was GeraldGardner, followed by the poet Robert Graves and then a list of lesser namesincluding Margaret Murray and Doreen Valiente. Unsurprisingly, the festivalpattern that Kelly adopted was the eightfold Wiccan one. The rites that he created,however, were almost completely different: most of the liturgy was in verse, and it

was an original composition based on Kellys own reading of ancient mythologiesand medieval literature, often mediated through Victorian and Edwardiancommentaries. For example, those for Midsummer were based on the Arthurianlegend, in conformity with the nineteenth-century ideaapparently first floatedby Edward Davies in 1809 but subsequently very widespreadthat Arthur was atransfigured sun god (NROOGD Book of Shadows, 304; Davies 1809). Midsummerbecame Litha, the Anglo-Saxon word for that season, as found in the writings ofthe early medieval monk Bede (Bede 1843, book IV, 1789). It may have helpedthat it had been appropriated, as Lithe, for the Midsummer festival in thehobbits calendar in J. R. R. Tolkiens fantasy masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings(Tolkien 1966, 3847).

Ronald Hutton260


12/24

Kelly had more problems with the equinoxes. As noted, Margaret Murray hadsaid that British witches did not observe them, and he was self-consciously tryingto recreate a pagan witch religion inspired partly by the one portrayed in herpages. All the six other festivals in the Wiccan system have ancient equivalents,manifested both by specific mention in early texts and by a clustering ofsubsequent folk customs (Hutton 1996). The equinoxes lack both these attributes.The spring one has no recorded festival associations in northern Europe before thearrival of the Christian Easter, which, of course, can occur almost a month later.The autumn one is even less evident. The Roman calendar certainly had a scatterof festivals around the time of the equinoxes, and annual offices were assumed atthe spring one, when the military campaigning season began. There were nogreater feasts at the equinoxes, however, than in the remainder of the surroundingmonths, and the opening of the official year was not in itself a great religiousfestival (Scullard 1981, 8495 and 1828). It is necessary to go as far as ancientGreece to find any at an equinox. [12]

Kelly dealt with the spring equinox by applying the name Ostara, which issimply the most euphonious of the early Germanic equivalents for Easter. It was,moreover, one highlighted by the greatest of all pioneers of the study of Germanfolklore, Jacob Grimm, who had suggested that it had originally been the nameof a pagan goddess (Grimm 1882, vol. 1, 1013). Kelly composed rites for itassociated with renewal and rebirth. He named his autumn equinox festivalMabon, which to British scholars might seem preposterously inappropriate. It isa proper name derived from the Welsh word mab/map son or boy, whichhardly suits an autumnal festival. He got there by a route that is typical, and

revealing, of American Pagan syncretism. His starting point was the greatest ofall European myths that can be associated with autumnthe return of thegoddess Kore, or Persephone, to the underworld for the darker half of the year.Her story therefore became the core of the ceremony that he composed for thefestival. The name and the Welsh connection, however, seem to derive from thework of a Welsh scholar, W. J. Gruffydd, published as an article (Gruffydd 1912)and as a book (Gruffydd 1953). It emphasised the identity of Mabon, a characterknown from medieval Welsh literature, as a former pagan deity; an attributionthat is possible, although arguably unproven. Gruffydd went further, to makeMabon into a young god born of a great goddess: a male divine parallel for theGreek Persephone. This was one of the last examples of the Victorian tradition,now almost completely abandoned in Britain, of interpreting medieval romancesas echoes of lost pagan myth. Kellys creation of his Mabon festival marks one

of the main differences between the British and American constructions ofmodern Paganism, in seasonal observance as in other respects. From Britain,Greece and Wales seem a very long way apart. From California, however, theycan look quite close together, and America is, after all, a melting pot of peoplesand traditions from all over Europe and beyond. There is therefore commonly aquality of syncretism, and a range of cultural catchment, in modern AmericanPaganism that is much less commonly found in that of Britain. Kellys newcoinage of names for festivals proved extremely influential in the United States,getting into the mainstream of American Paganism as the latter developed in the1970s, through his contributions to the most widely-read journal of themovement, Green Egg. [13] They subsequently leaked back into British Pagan



13/24

parlance during the 1980s, when the books of American Pagan authors found awide readership in the United Kingdom. [14]

Like Gerald Gardner or his informants, therefore, Aidan Kelly relied heavily inhis recreation of an imagined witch religion on ideas that were, or had been,products of academic scholarship. This is a phenomenon that has already beennoted and treated, in a folkoristic context, by Sabina Magliocco (2004).The relationship between these ideas and the creation of ritual may have been amore complex one than the simple reception of scholarly arguments by members ofa reading public. To some extent, both parties in the process were united by similaremotional or ideological needs. From Michelet onward, those who had propoundeda belief in the existence of an early modern religion of pagan witchcraft, rootedin antiquity, were setting up a portrait of such a religion in opposition to theestablished structures of religious and social authority that were more generallyassociated with the Middle Ages. It acted in great measure as a radical spiritualalternative to Christianity and to conventional mores, to be pitched against thecontemporary conservative admiration for more familiar aspects of medievalism.Gardner, and those who joined him in Wicca, were likewise developing a modernPagan witch religion as a proportionate alternative to social and religiousconventions: they were giving physical expression to a libertarian dream. Likewise,the academic fashion for finding pagan antecedents behind figures in medievalromance and epic, and ancient religious traditions behind modern folk customs,was propelled by much the same impulses that were expressed by creators of ritualsuch as Aidan Kelly. Both were reaching back instinctually beyond the centuries ofChristian culture to a reconnection with older ideas and images that seemed to

express enduring and fundamental qualities of the natural world.There was, however, an important difference between the two phases ofre-creation. Gerald Gardner claimed to be the publicist of a pagan religion thathad survived continuously since antiquity, while Aidan Kelly was openlyrecreating one from modern literary sources, employing a large amount ofindividual imagination and artistry in the process. Nonetheless, he also madeclear that he believed the result to represent a genuine reconnection with ancientpractices and spiritual entities. Just as Gardners seasonal rites were largely apastiche of existing literary texts, and yet contained a distinctive theology, soKellys were based on the crafting together of information taken from books, butthis was utilised to produce what participants felt to be a religious experience. Heand his companions were acting out the parts of figures that his informing textshad held to be ancient archetypes representing powerful and enduring forces of

the natural world. By doing so, they felt themselves to be communing directlywith those forces. The repetition of the rites concerned, with growing assuranceand fervour, reached a point at which all involved in them felt that somethinggenuinely numinous had resulted: waves of unseen lightness, flooding ourcircle, washing about our shoulders, breaking over our heads (Kelly n.d., 3040;see also Adler 2007, 1657). In their parlance, the ritual had suddenly worked.From that moment, they felt themselves to be members of a viable religioustradition.

In a sense there was something characteristically modern in this process:indeed, it embodied a central aspect of what was subsequently to be calledpostmodernism. This was especially that aspect most clearly emphasised

Ronald Hutton262


14/24

by Jean-Francois Lyotard: of postmodernity as a period in which culture recreatesitself by employing many different language games and a heterogeneity ofelements, legitimating itself by the quality and utility of what is produced, asevaluated by those who produce and consume it (Lyotard 1984, esp. xxiv).An application of this postmodern model to another form of recently appearedspirituality, the New Age, has already been made by Adrian Ivakhiv (2001,911). It can certainly be made to fit certain aspects of the development of Paganseasonal festivity. Aidan Kelly self-consciously and openly created a system ofritual by selecting portions of published works, of different ages and contexts, andmixing them together according to his own taste to provide a vehicle for actualexperience. In another sense, however, he was working within much olderEuropean traditions. If he never concealed the fact that he was composing asystem himself, he also felt at times as if he were reconstructing one, fromfragments, hints, innuendos, a riddle, a puzzle dispersed through different texts(Adler 2007, 163). This quest, of recovering ancient wisdom, and so a betterunderstanding of the cosmos, from clues and remnants scattered through manysources, has been a theme of European culture from Renaissance humanismonward, through the Enlightenment project, to Victorian Theosophy. Furthermore,the experience of taking ideas from different texts, and mixing them together in anew framework to form a basis for active religious experience, has always beenone of the keynotes of radical Protestantism. The only difference is that, in thelatter case, the texts concerned were taken from the Bible, sometimes leavened bydevotional writings. In that sense, Kellys approach departed significantly fromthat of postmodernism, in holding to a source of inner spiritual wisdom and

authenticity, validated by reference to the past; something that Susan Greenwoodhas noted as typical of modern alternative western spirituality as a whole(Greenwood 2005, esp. 2069).

The Significance of the Cycle

This, then, is what seems to be the basic outline of the history of modern Paganfestivals. It remains to propose some thoughts concerning their significance asreligious festivity. They have already been subjected to good scholarly analysis asevents that convey a particular experience: in other words, as phenomena in therealms of sociology and anthropology (see particularly Luhrmann 1989;Greenwood 2000; Magliocco 2004). They have not, however, been treated asperformances of theology, or as activities that occupy a particular place in the

development of religious seasonal celebration. In both contexts, they do seem toindicate a shift in emphasis between premodern and modern attitudes, which liesin the relationship between the non-human and the human. Some timeless facetsof seasonal festivity have remained in place, including what is probably thecentral one: that of connecting human beings to the rhythm of the seasons, andthustraditionallyto the supernatural forces that may lie behind it. ModernPagan festivals certainly do that, but they have completely lost the sense ofrelationship with both the natural and the divine that characterises mosttraditional religion. There is virtually no sense of propitiation, nor of a conceptof the natural world as something much more powerful than humanity, andat times deeply threatening to humans. In view of the hugely changed



15/24

relationship between humanity and the natural environment over the past twohundred years, this is hardly surprising. It is, however, one very striking hallmarkof modernity in the nature of pagan festivity. [15]

It is accompanied by a proportionate lack of fear of the divine; of a sense ofdeities either as capricious and moody rulers or as stern creators, lawgivers, andjudges. Modern Pagan deities are viewed essentially as beings of a different orderto humanity, with whom humans should make relationships to mutual benefit. It isvery hard, a lot of the time, to make out whether these beings are supposed to havea literal and objective existence, or whether they function more as motifs andsymbols. As a result, modern pagan festivity almost invariably lacks anycomponent of the central act of most ancient festivity: sacrifice. In many groupsthe remnants of consecrated food and drink, consumed as part of the rite, arescattered and libated as offerings to deities or land spirits. This is, however, moreof an act of sharing than one of tribute. [16] Likewise, the festive rites lack mostelements of what is traditionally regarded as worship. Transactions with deitiesconsist essentially of attempts to bring them closer to humans in a processof understanding and negotiation. Very often these attempts are difficult todistinguish from a process of making the humans concerned feel more divine.These hallmarks have been present from the beginning, in Gardnerscharacterisation of a Wiccan as both priestess, or priest, and witch: the formercan be simply a passive servant of the divine, but the latter is presumed to be amore active and productive agent. It is notable, in this context, that festivalsactually get just two pages out of the one hundred and sixty in his famous seminalbook,Witchcraft Today(Gardner 1954, 21 and 130). Most of that book is concerned

with the potential of pagan witchcraft to cultivate hidden powers in humanbeings, for their own good and that of others. This remained the emphasis in allbooks published on the subject by practitioners during the following twenty years(Gardner 1959; Valiente 1962, 1973, 1978; Glass 1965; Johns 1969; Farrar 1971;Sanders 1976).

At the end of the 1970s a movement arose to emphasise the religious aspects ofPagan witchcraft, as a feminist and ecologically friendly alternative to mainstreamfaiths. It was in origin an American phenomenon, reflecting both the greatergeneral religiosity of the USA and its native inheritance of nature-centredtranscendentalism. British witches also found it attractive, both as a logicaldevelopment of their existing beliefs and as a solution to a serious public imageproblem. A nature-venerating religion was simply more acceptable to most peoplein modern western societies than the traditional associations of the witch (Hutton

1998, 34068). On both sides of the Atlantic, however, humanity remained centralto Pagan festive rites even after this shift of emphasis. The most famous of all thefeminist American witches, Starhawk, created with her coven network in the late1970s a series of seasonal rites that addressed human hopes and fears at each pointof the Wiccan eight-festival cycle (Starhawk 1979, 18196). Those published in theearly 1980s by a pair of British witches, Janet and Stewart Farrar, were much moreclosely centred on the deity figures of goddess and god, presenting them ascharacters in a constantly repeated creation myth. Nonetheless, their avowed aimwas to reintroduce urban people to the archetypal rhythms of the natural world(Farrar and Farrar 1981, esp. 127). At the end of the decade, another Britishcouple, Vivianne and Chris Crowley, produced their own book on Wicca, in which

Ronald Hutton264


16/24

the seasonal rites featured as exemplifications of human maturation, as featured inJungian psychology (Crowley 1989, 188 206). This emphasis has been even moremarked since 1990, as pagan Druidry, ecopaganism, and non-denominationalforms of Paganism have taken their place alongside Pagan witchcraft. Festivals aretreated, according to the tradition, either as honouring human emotional needs oras enabling humans to work more productively with the natural environment(Harvey and Hardman 1995; Harvey 1997). They are essentially about theempowerment of the human participants, in making them (at least to themselves)more effective as inhabitants of the present world and assisting them tounderstand it and themselves to a greater extent.

It has been suggested that much of this pattern may be attributed to the impactof modernity, and the shift that this has produced in human attitudes to thenatural environment. It may also, however, be attributed in part to the true historicroots of modern Paganism, which do not lie in the mainstream religions of theancient world so much as in the alternative, late antique, tradition of ritual magic.The source of this is not in Athens or Rome, but Egypt, and by far the closestreference point to modern Paganism in the ancient world is found in the GreekMagical Papyri. From these, and other works of Graeco-Egyptian ritual power, canbe traced a literary tradition that descends continuously, through Greek, Arabic,and then medieval Latin texts to the present. I have argued at length elsewhere forthe descent of this tradition (Hutton 1991, 337; 1998, 66111; 2003, 87192). Here itis sufficient to note that, in many respects, modern Paganism consists of aspectsof religionthe formal honouring of deities and the natural forces that they areheld to representgrafted onto a tradition of ritual magic dedicated to the

empowerment of the humans who enact it. The human relationship with deity inmodern Paganismof attraction, negotiation and partnership, taking place onspecific ritualised occasions set up by the humans concernedis far closer tothat of ceremonial magicians with the entities they seek to invoke than that ofworshippers with deities in most religions. That is also the reason for the appeal ofMargaret Murrays vision of an ancient witch religion to people such as Gardner,for that vision combined an apparently ancient system of nature worship with theimage of the witch, one of the most potent and challenging representations of themagician in European culture.

There seems, therefore, to be a double paradox in the historical significance ofmodern Pagan festivity. On the one hand, it seems to be a distinctively recentcreation, answering to specifically modern attitudes and needs. On the other, it hasboth very old roots and a direct line of transmission from antiquity. On the one

hand, it has been characterised above as an assemblage of materials taken fromdifferent sources, all or almost all literary, and put together at a recent date. On theother, it has also been suggested that it represents an original, and inherentlyviable, form of religion, however recently developed. A large part of the solutionto both apparent paradoxes lies in its relationship to ceremonial magic.The position of Paganism in the contemporary western world, as primarily agroup of religions associated with a counter-culture, is inherent in its developmentout of a tradition that has itself always been counter-cultural: the generallyclandestine and proscribed European practices of ritual magicians. The latterwere, as I have argued elsewhere, originally rooted in ancient religion, and havealways interacted with the religion of the day. It could be said that they have



17/24

recently flowered into a religious system in their own right, as modern Paganism.One of the key features of the latter, exemplified by a consideration of the historyof its festive cycle, is that it lacks that aspect of religion that both modernity, andritual magicians of all ages, have found most unpalatable: a sense of humanhelplessness and subservience.

In conclusion, what does all this contribute to a discussion about the nature oftradition? Here it should be noted that folklorists have, from the beginning,adopted a definition of the term that departs from that in common parlance.The latter tends to delineate a body of knowledge, customs or beliefs receivedfrom the past, with an emphasis on continuity and authority in the reception of it.In the article quoted near the beginning of the present one, published in thepresent journal well over a hundred years ago, Joseph Jacobs declared that thisdefinition was misleading, and that instead tradition should be viewed as aprocess, understood by following spatial and psychological patterns (Jacobs 1893).Even he, however, was repeating a conclusion that had been drawn before him bythose interested in the nature of culture, such as William Morris, who emphasisedin 1878 that the natural state of any tradition is one of constant change (Morris1878, 1578). In terms of nineteenth-century British political attitudes, it shouldbe acknowledged that this was not a consensual way to characterise the term,even among intellectuals, but a self-consciously radical one, pitted against theconservatism latent in the commonly assumed one. Nonetheless, it did have somepractical advantages in acknowledging that received belief and practice areinherently mutable, in a manner suited to both the discipline of history and that offolklore studies.

In recent years a new emphasis has been laid on the formulation made byMorris and Jacobs, by American folklorists. Richard Handler and Jocelyn Linnekinhave defined tradition as a wholly symbolic construction with an assignedmeaning: an interpretative process that embodies both continuity anddiscontinuity and a process of thoughtan ongoing interpretation of thepast. As all cultures change ceaselessly, they argue, traditional is only aparticular value given to something new (Handler and Linnekin 1984, 2734).To Henry Glassie, likewise, tradition was the creation of the future out of thepast by human beings going through life. He viewed it as cultures dynamic, theprocess by which culture exists (Glassie 1995, 395412). Simon Brenner notedthat his contemporaries were placing a new emphasis on the concept of traditionas one of process or transmission rather than something essentially rooted in thepast (Bronner 2000, 90). The relevance of all this to the history of Pagan festivals

must be obvious, and Bronners is particularly apposite. He has emphasised that,in post-industrial society, tradition appears exceptionally elastic, even protean,and individualised. As a part of modernity, he believes it to be morecontemporaneous, more spread spatially, more strategically applied andmanipulated, rather than being a surrounding state of being. As such, he findsit both invented and inherited, individual and social, stable and changing, oraland written, of past and present, of time and space, about both authority andfreedom (Bronner 2000, 96). Every term on that checklist can be applied to themodern Pagan festive cycle, and so can his further recommendation that a study oftradition by folklorists could point to the ways that spiritual and socialconnection can be subjectively invoked (Bronner 2000, 96).

Ronald Hutton266


18/24

So much appears easy to point out, and the suggestion abovethat the presentstudy might contribute to a discussion of the nature of traditionmight almostappear to be misplaced. There is not in fact much discussion to which tocontribute: rather, folklorists have recently been reaching a consensualformulation of the nature of tradition that is itself based on ideas articulatedsince the earliest days of their discipline. What might encourage a debate would beto examine the way in which their definition differs from that of historians. Here itis essential to return to the latters concept of invented tradition, as headlined in1983 by Hobsbawm and Ranger, and subsequently accepted across much of thediscipline. At first sight this could operate comfortably as a subset of the list ofaspects of tradition listed by Bronner, and indeed Pagan festivals fit well withinmost aspects of the HobsbawmRanger formulation. Eric Hobsbawm defined aninvented tradition as:

a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual orsymbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition,which automatically implies continuity with the past. In fact, where possible, they normallyattempt to establish continuity with a suitable historical past (Hobsbawm 1983, 12).

What makes them invented, in Hobsbawms view, is that they are responses tonovel situations, which take the form of reference to old situations, or whichestablish their own past by quasi-obligatory repetition (Hobsbawm 1983, 12).

This can comfortably be accommodated within the folklorists model, whileplacing a still heavier stress on the element of creativity and novelty as opposedto that of inheritance and continuity. It certainly can be applied to the modernPagan festive cycle. Especially relevant here is Hobsbawms perception that theinvention of tradition, although probably a constant throughout history, isespecially frequent in times of rapid social change, when the cultural patterns forwhich existing traditions had been designed are disrupted. Modern Paganfestivals fall into the category of invention that Hobsbawm himself considered themost interesting of all: the use of ancient materials to construct inventedtraditions of a novel type for quite novel purposes (Hobsbawm 1983, 4). Inaddition, they can match all three of the categories into which he divided moderninvented traditions: those establishing or symbolising social cohesion; thoseestablishing or legitimising relations of authority; and those inculcating beliefs,value systems, and conventions (Hobsbawm 1983, 48).

The problem here is that Hobsbawm also uses the term tradition in a formthat is, potentially at least, opposed to that formulated by folklorists. He declares

that the object and characteristic of all traditions is invariance: to impose fixedand formalised practices by repetition, with reference to a real or invented past.This he contrasts with custom, which does not preclude innovation and change,and serves to give any desired change the sanction of precedent, social continuity,or natural law, as expressed in history (Hobsbawm 1983, 2). Such a distinctionstrikes directly against the sense of tradition as a process of inherent adaptationand mutation, as suggested by the folklorists quoted above. Clearly, the latter mayunderstate the amount of rigidity and orthodoxy present in some historicalexamples of tradition, but it seems difficult in practice to find a generallyapplicable boundary between tradition and custom as defined byHobsbawm. He seems, rather, to be discussing different forms of tradition,



19/24

some more rigid than others, as encompassed within the folkloric model. ModernPagan festivals are clear examples of tradition as defined by the latter, but fitcomfortably within neither of Hobsbawms two terms.

On the other hand, there is a point at which the definition of tradition proposedby the folklorists quoted above is likely to make many historians uncomfortable.It was reached most obviously by Handler and Linnekin, who proclaimed that:

[T]raditions are neither genuine nor spurious, for if genuine tradition refers to the pristineand immutable heritage of the past, then all genuine traditions are spurious. But if, as wehave argued, tradition is always defined in the present, then all spurious traditions aregenuine. Genuine and spuriousterms that have been used to distinguish objective realityfrom hocus pocusare inappropriate when applied to social phenomena, which never existapart from our interpretation of them (1984, 288).

The context of this passage was that the authors were reacting against theargument, made by some prominent twentieth-century predecessors, that it wasimportant to distinguish between folk beliefs and customs that had a genuinelyold provenance, and those that claimed one but had in fact been recently created.Built into this was the presumption that the latter were in an important sense false,and that it was only the former which were the true province of folklore studies.Handler and Linnekin held that, on the contrary, if all tradition represented aprocess of re-creation in every present, then all could fall within the remit of thescholar of folklore. Both positions empowered folklorists, in different ways suitedto different periods. The first sought to establish them as the judges or arbitratorsto whom society turned for a definitive decision as to whether or not a piece ofapparent folk culture should be accepted as a true relic of the past, and so worthyof respect as such. The second greatly enlarged the area of social and culturalstudies that could be claimed by folklorists as their own, and gave that area a newdynamism, excitement, and flexibility that could sustain the disciplineindefinitely. Historians should not, as a discipline, have any problems with theenterprise on which Handler and Linnekin were embarked.

Where the problems do occur for scholars of history is in applying the HandlerLinnekin formula to their own work, for the simple reason that they are notprimarily concerned with the present, and with the end product (to date) of theprocesses under investigation. A large part of their work consists precisely ofthe investigation and validation of historical claims. Few, if any, would now believethat the whole truth of any portion of the past can be recovered by the present, butall would agree that it is possible to refute some claims that are made about the past

absolutely, and to prove others, with as much certainty. Many more assertions abouthistorical events and phenomena can be pronounced to be more or less likely to beaccurate by scholarly investigation. Put like this, there is no doubt for a historianthat some statements about the history of traditions, which do to some extentdetermine their nature, actually are spurious, and some genuine. In the context ofthe present article, it matters a great deal to a historian that Gerald Gardners claimsfor the historicity of his religious tradition were false, whether he himself madethem with perfect sincerity or not. A folklorist need not have the same concerns.

Where both disciplines can converge, within the definitions suggested by thefolklorists cited above, is in dealing with the practical consequences of historicalverification. It is perfectly in order for a historian to prove that the claims made

Ronald Hutton268


20/24

by a current tradition for its history are wholly or partly false, while recognisingthe validity of that tradition as a part of the contemporary world. It wasemphasised above that the seasonal rites revealed by Gardner were a pastiche ofpre-existing modern literary texts, dressed up as a surviving ancient religion.Equal emphasis was given to the fact that, nonetheless, they embodied adistinctive theology of divinity and the afterlife, which both provided a viablereligious system and was in many ways especially well suited to modern needsand tastes. The latter comment could be made with equal force about thesubsequent elaborations and developments of the Gardnerian seasonal cycle offestivals. What cannot be wholly tested by either historians or folklorists is thebelief voiced by some practitioners involved in this process that in creating thenew they were in some measure restoring the old, by entering into a spiritualunion with deities or with human ancestors. Members of both disciplines can unitein studying such an example of the formation of a tradition as a cultural process.Theologians have often employed a different word for it: revelation. The mereadmission of the possibility of that further element, introduced by another setof disciplinary conventions, is a reminder of how deeply complex the issue ofknowledge can be. To return to the concerns of folklorists, it can be proposed inconclusion that a consideration of the history of modern Pagan festivals can fulfilthe remit laid down by figures such as Hartland and Jacobs, long ago, whileengaging fully with that formulated by their most recent successors.

Acknowledgements

This essay is based upon a lecture commissioned by the Getty Institute, andrequested again by Harvard University. I am very grateful to Jan Bremmer andHannah Sanders for initiating the process by which I came to speak at thoserespective institutions, and to my hosts at both. I have another great debt ofgratitude to Sabina Magliocco, for her many valuable suggestions regarding waysin which the lecture could be converted into a journal article. I am also verygrateful to the owner, Graham King, of the Williamson Papers, held at theMuseum of Witchcraft, Boscastle, for allowing me to consult this collection, and toRichard and Tamarra James, the owners of the unpublished manuscript of YeBoK of ye Art Magical in the keeping of the Wiccan Church of Canada, forallowing me to read it and other documents in their possession.

Notes

[1] In conformity with practices now becoming established in the discipline of Religious Studies,I refer to modern Pagan religions with a capital letter, but keep the lower case, pagan, whenreferring to the pre-Christian religions of Europe and the Near East, and to subsequentreflections on them. For a discussion of the rationale behind this distinction, see Hutton (2003,xiiixv).

[2] A much more detailed coverage of the same ground is to be found in Ronald Hutton,forthcoming (a).

[3] This is strictly speaking a Bardic name, for use among the leaders of Welsh cultural revivalism.



21/24

[4] The importance of these authors was first noticed by Cohn (1975, 103 5), but he did notnote the significance of the ideological context within which they were working, as suggestedhere.

[5] For a discussion of it, see Hutton (1998, 226 32). Extracts were published in Kelly (1991), theseasonal rites being on pages 6770, but fleshed out there, to use the authors term, in a waythat gives a very distorted sense of the originals.

[6] The works of Crowley concerned are the Gnostic Mass and the manifestation of Nuit in theBook of the Law: see Hutton, forthcoming (b).

[7] This was Doreen Valiente, whose information is in Farrar and Farrar (1981, 148).

[8] Frederic Lamond, pers. comm., 28 March 1992, and Lamond (2004, 15 17). Mr Lamond was amember of the coven at the time, and his account of events has been confirmed to me by twoother surviving members, Lois Bourne and Dayonis, and by a third, Zach, who joined soonafter the reform was made.

[9] See, for example, how they were treated by even an unusually historically conscious andenquiring pair of Wiccans in Farrar and Farrar (1981).

[10] Information from Ella Young, relayed to me by Aidan Kelly, June 1993.

[11] What follows is based on Kelly (n.d.), and presented by him to me in 1993, together with thebook of rituals of NROOGD. I am naturally very grateful to him for these gifts. The details inthese works have been confirmed to me as accurate by Fritz Muntean, another foundermember, with further corroboration provided by Margot Adler.

[12] It is also, apparently, not very fruitful even there: Jan Bremmer tells me that the EleusinianMysteries were indeed celebrated at the time of the autumn equinox, but that they did notmake any apparent reference to that event or incorporate it into their symbolism.

[13] Kelly (n.d., 41).

[14] Especially influential in spreading them in the United Kingdom was Starhawk (1979).[15] For portrayals of this festivity, see the many works on modern Paganism cited in the text and

the bibliography.

[16] Some Pagans would also regard the creative composition, craft, and performance put into areligious rite as an offering in itself. It is also possible that some of the recently appeared and sofar tiny American groups who self-consciously seek to reconstruct ancient religions do sacrificeanimals in the traditional manner (Sabina Magliocco, pers. comm., 19 February 2008). Thereare, however, no equivalents to these in the United Kingdom.

References Cited

Adler, Margot. Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers and Other Pagans in

America Today. 3rd ed. New York: Penguin, 2007.Bado-Fralick, Nikki. Coming to the Edge of the Circle: A Wiccan Initiation Ritual . Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2005.

Bede.Works, ed. J. A. Giles. Oxford: 1843.

Berger, Helen.A Community of Witches. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1999.

Bronner, Simon. The Meaning of Tradition: An Introduction. Western Folklore 59, no. 2 (2000):87104.

Carr-Gomm, Philip.Druid Mysteries. London: Rider, 2002.

Cathryn Charnell-White, ed.Bardic Circles: National, Regional and Personal Identity in the Bardic Visionof Iolo Morganwg. Aberystwyth: University of Wales Press, 2007.

Ronald Hutton270


22/24

Clifton, Chas S. Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America. Lanham, Md:AltaMira, 2006.

Cohn, Norman.Europes Inner Demons. Falmer: Sussex University Press, 1975.

Constantine, Mary-Ann, ed. The Truth Against the World: Iolo Morganwg and Romantic Forgery.Aberystwyth: University of Wales Press, 2007.

Cowan, Douglas.Cyberhenge: Pagans on the Internet. London: Routledge, 2004.

Crowley, Vivianne.Wicca. London: Aquarian, 1989.

Davies, Edward.The Mythology and Rites of the British Druids. London: Booth, 1809.

Dupuis, Charles.LOrigine des tous les cultes. 3 vols. Paris: n.p., 1795.

Falassi, Alessandro. Festival: Definition and Morphology. InTime Out of Time: Essays on the Festival,

ed. Alessandro Falassi. 1 10. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987.Farrar, Janet, and Stewart Farrar.Eight Sabbats for Witches. London: Hale, 1981.

Farrar, Stewart.What Witches Do. London: Hale, 1971.

Gardner, Gerald B.A Goddess Arrives. London: Stockwell, 1939.

.Witchcraft Today. London: Rider, 1954.

.The Meaning of Witchcraft. London: Aquarian, 1959.

Gibson, Marion.Witchcraft Myths in American Culture. New York: Routledge, 2007.

Glass, Justine.Witchcraft. London: Spearman, 1965.

Glassie, Henry. Tradition.Journal of American Folklore 108 (1995): 395412.

Greenwood, Susan.Magic, Witchcraft and the Otherworld: An Anthropology. Oxford: Berg, 2000.

.The Nature of Magic: An Anthropology of Consciousness. Oxford: Berg, 2005.

Grimm, Jacob.Teutonic Mythology. 2 vols. Translated by J. Stallybrass. London: Bell, 1882.

Gruffydd, W. J. Mabon ab Modron.Revue Celtique33 (1912): 45261.

. Rhiannon: An Inquiry into the Origins of the First and Third Branches of the Mabinogi . Cardiff:University of Wales Press, 1953.

Handler, Richard, and Jocelyn Linnekin. Tradition, Genuine or Spurious. Journal of AmericanFolklore97 (1984): 27390.

Hartland, Edwin Sidney.The Science of Fairy Tales. London: Nutt, 1891.

Harvey, Graham.Listening People, Speaking Earth: Contemporary Paganism. London: Hurst, 1997.

Harvey, Graham, and Charlotte Hardman. Paganism Today. London: Thorsons, 1995.

Heselton, Philip.Wiccan Roots. Chieveley: Capall Bann, 2000.

.Gerald Gardner and the Cauldron of Inspiration. Milverton: Capall Bann, 2003.Hobsbawm, Eric. Introduction toThe Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger.

1 14. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

Hugues, Pierre Francois, Baron dHancarville. Recherches sur lOrigine, lEsprit et les Progres des Arts dela Grece. Paris: n.p., 1785.

Hutton, Ronald.The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles . Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.

.The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain . Oxford: Oxford University Press,1996.

. The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1998.



23/24

.Witches, Druids and King Arthur: Studies in Paganism, Myth and Magic. London: Hambledonand London, 2003.

.The Druids. London: Hambledon Continuum, 2007.

.Blood and Mistletoe: A History of the Druids in Britain . Yale University Press, Forthcoming (a).

. Aleister Crowley and Modern Witchcraft. In Aleister Crowley and Western Esotericism, eds.Henrick Bogdan and Martin P. Starr. Albany: State University of New York Press, Forthcoming (b).

Ivakhiv, Adrian.Claiming Sacred Ground: Pilgrims and Politics at Glastonbury and Sedona. Bloomington:Indiana University Press, 2001.

Jacobs, Joseph. The Folk. Folk-Lore, 4 (1893): 237 52.

Jarcke, Karl Ernst. Ein Hexenprozess. Annalen der Deutschen und Auslandischen Criminal-Rechts-Pflege1 (1828): 450.

Jenkins, Geraint. Facts, Fantasy and Fiction: The Historical Vision of Iolo Morganwg. Aberystwyth:University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, 1997.

, ed.A Rattleskull Genius: The Many Faces of Iolo Morganwg. Cardiff: University of Wales Press,2005.

Jenkins, Geraint, Ffion Mair Jones, and David Ceri Jones, ed.The Correspondence of Iolo Morganwg.Aberystwyth: University of Wales Press, 2007.

Johns, June. King of the Witches. London: Davies, 1969.

Johnston Hannah E., and Peg Aloi, ed.The New Generation Witches: Teenage Witchcraft in ContemporaryCulture. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007.

Kelly, Aidan.Crafting the Art of Magic. St Paul, Minn.: Llewellyn, 1991.

. Hippie Commie Beatnik Witches: An Historical Memoir on the Craft in California,

1967 77. Unpublished manuscript, n.d.Knight, Richard Payne. Discourse on the Worship of Priapus. London: n.p., 1786.

Lamond, Frederic.Fifty Years of Wicca. Sutton Mallet: Green Magic, 2004.

Leland, Charles Godfrey.Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches. Translated by Mario and Dina Pazzaglini.Custer, Wash: Phoenix, 1998.

Luhrmann, T. M. Persuasions of the Witchs Craft. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Postmodern Condition. Translated by Geoff Bennington and BrianMassumi. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984.

Magliocco, Sabina.Witching Culture: Folklore and Neo-Paganism in America . Philadelphia: Universityof Pennsylvania Press, 2004.

Matthews, Caitln.The Elements of the Celtic Tradition. Shaftesbury: Element, 1989.

Maxwell-Stuart, P. G. An Abundance of Witches: The Greatest Scottish Witch-Hunt. Stroud: Tempus,2006.

Michelet, Jules.La Sorciere. Paris: n.p., 1862.

Mone, Franz Joseph. Uber das Hexenwesen.Anzeiger fur Kunde der Teutschen Vorzeit(1839): 2715and 4445.

Morgan, Prys.Iolo Morganwg. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1975.

Morris, William.Hopes and Fears for Art. London: n.p., 1878.

Murray, Margaret.The Witch-Cult in Western Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1921.

.The God of the Witches. London: Sampson Low, 1933.

Ronald Hutton272


24/24

Nichols, Ross.The Book of Druidry, eds. John Matthews and Philip Carr-Gomm. London: Aquarian,1990.

Oates, Caroline, and Juliette Wood. A Coven of Scholars: Margaret Murray and Her Working Methods.London: The Folklore Society, 1998.

Onion, Loretta.Never Again the Burning Times: Paganism Revived . Prospect, Ill.: Waveland, 1995.

Owen, William.The Heroic Elegies and Other Pieces of Llywarch Hen . London: n.p., 1792.

Pearson, Joanne.Wicca and the Christian Heritage. London: Routledge, 2007.

Purkiss, Diane. The Witch in History: Early Modern and Twentieth-Century Representations. London:Routledge, 1996.

Salomonsen, Jone.Enchanted Feminism: The Reclaiming Witches of San Francisco. London: Routledge,2002.

Sanders, Maxine.Maxine: The Witch Queen. London: Star, 1976.

Scullard, H. H.Festivals and Ceremonies of the Roman Republic. London: Thames and Hudson, 1981.

Simpson, Jacqueline. Margaret Murray: Who Believed in Her, and Why?Folklore 105 (1994): 89 96.

Starhawk.The Spiral Dance. San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1979.

Tolkien, J. R. R. The Return of the King, being the Third Part of the Lord of the Rings . 2nd ed. London:Allen and Unwin, 1966.

Valiente, Doreen.Where Witchcraft Lives. London: Aquarian, 1962.

.An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present. London: Hale, 1973.

.Witchcraft for Tomorrow. London: Hale, 1978.

.The Rebirth of Witchcraft. Custer, Wash.: Phoenix, 1989.

Williams, Taliesin, ed. The Iolo Manuscripts. Liverpool: n.p., 1848.

Archival Source

NROOGD (New Reformed Orthodox Order of the Golden Dawn) Book of Shadows . (In the archive ofRonald Hutton, author of the present piece).

Williamson Papers, Museum of Witchcraft, Boscastle, letters from Gerald Gardner to CecilWilliamson, 1951 4.

Ye Bok of ye Art Magical. Wiccan Church of Canada, Toronto, Gerald Gardner Collection.

Biographical Note

Ronald Hutton is Professor of History at the University of Bristol.


modern pagan festivals

Documents