What’s Really Old, and What Likely Ain’t

by A.C. Fisher Aldag

The origin of Wicca is:

The eight "Wheel of the Year" holidays were:

Modern Paganism came from:

In the fifty-something years since Paganism went public, scholars have been debating the age and authenticity of the various magical religious traditions. Did Gerald Gardner and Dr. Margaret Murray invent the "Old Religion"? Or did witchcraft, magical practice and nature spirituality really exist, surviving until modern times? In any online Pagan forum, e-list or chat group, you can find pantheistic reconstructionists debating eco-feminist Wiccans or family traditionalists arguing with armchair historians about the true meaning of the sabbat holidays and the origins of Wicca. Each individual may have some genuine knowledge… and each may have some serious misconceptions.

There’s even a debate about the origin of the word "Pagan". It is usually attributed to the Latin words "paganus" (singular) or "pagani" (plural), meaning people who lived in a rural area or who did not accept the Roman pantheon of gods. This term later came to designate people who were not Christian. Another possible source is the word "pagus", for a boundary marker, indicating people who lived outside the bounds of a certain district. "Pagan" was a word used in the 1970s and 80s by British traditional Wiccans to describe others who practiced a magic-using religion, without being initiated into a Wiccan tradition. Neo-Pagans, or new Pagans, a term attributed to Oberon (Otter, Timothy) Zell Ravenheart, are individuals without a family history of nature spirituality or polytheism, and who have adopted one or more Pagan paths, including Wicca, Shamanism or Druidry. Today it has come to mean those who practice an earth-centered form of spirituality, those who worship a pantheon of gods, and / or those who practice magic as an expression of religion.

Many neo-Pagans, especially people new to the religious path, might believe anything written in the popular occult press. They may insist that a matriarchal society ruled stone age Europe and that nine million Wiccans were killed during the Burning Times. They might believe that the Druids celebrated Oestara to honor the goddess of spring, or that witches danced naked under a full moon while summoning Cernunnos… during the winter in Scotland. A few Pagan writers maintain that there were no class distinctions or tribal wars before those bad old patriarchal Christians came along and ruined everything.

Some scholars may insist that Paganism is an entirely new religion, because they believe that no folk-magic traditions or earth-centered faiths could possibly have survived in Europe for 1,500 years after the Christian incursions. If a religious legend isn’t extensively documented and verified by someone with a post-graduate degree, the historian may declare that it is simply not true. These individuals tend to discount any and all family traditions of witchcraft, magical folkways or an ethnic heritage featuring earth-based spirituality. They might believe that folkloric surveys and comparative anthropology have little merit in the study of pre-Christian worship, preferring to use "solid" sources such as court documents to authenticate religious practices.

Unfortunately, both of these viewpoints have their fallacies.

During my own research, I learned that many common neo-Pagan practices really do date back to ancient times – sort of. Much of our modern earth-based religions are derived from the folk traditions of Celtic Britain, but they were affected by historic events, such as the Roman occupation, the Anglo-Saxon invasions, the Norman Conquest and the rise of Christianity. Many customs died out, others were incorporated into new ceremonies, and some rites continued without change. During the Renaissance, people were fascinated by all things mystical, just as they are today, and so Pagan practice enjoyed a revival. The Protestant Reformation forced many of the ceremonies underground, or ended their observation all together. The Victorian era saw an interest in "secret" societies, the Druids, spiritualism, and Egyptian and Persian magic. Gerald Gardner brought witchcraft to the attention of the masses with his books in the 1950s. During the 1960s many folk customs were preserved or renewed as a matter of cultural identity. And finally, the eco-feminist movement of the 1980s had a positive influence on Paganism. But what is genuinely historic and what is an invention? What is ancient and what is modern? We can’t always tell.

One problem with determining the age of Pagan traditions is the lack of concrete information, such as legal papers, dated journals, or other verifiable historic documentation. Many academics limit their research sources to written works, including the testimonials of Roman conquerors and Christian monks. Much of this information may be quite biased, or details may have been deliberately omitted. Scholars may accept some folklore as legitimate, but scoff at anything not found in the Welsh Mabinogion, the Irish Red Branch tales, or the writing of Pliny the Elder or Geoffrey of Monmouth. However, this written material is woefully incomplete. Print media wasn’t widely available to working-class people until the Renaissance, and most families couldn’t afford to own books until the nineteenth century. Pagan practices were not only repressed by the Church, they were ignored by the nobility and denigrated by the intellectuals who were responsible for writing social histories. Another factor to take into consideration is that legal documents might only represent festivals that got out of hand, or rites that were outlawed by the authorities. The gathering or custom may actually have proceeded unnoticed for centuries, until the participants got into trouble. Modern scholars who rely exclusively on written documentation may be missing older sources available through archeology (looking at artifacts), comparative anthropology (looking at cultural practices) and linguistics or studying the etymology of language (how words change over time).

Here’s an example: Historians relying solely on written references may assume that the May pole is a fairly recent custom, which was "paganized" or made to seem Pagan during the Renaissance. The first legal reference to an English maypole was in 1644, when it was outlawed by the Puritan-controlled Parliament. The earliest woodcut picture of a maypole dance is dated circa 1680. Yet other sources, including poems, songs and art, indicate that the maypole custom is much older. Purchases for maypole-related equipment, such as shoes for the dancers, were recorded in the mid-1500s. A maypole is depicted in a stained-glass window thought to have been created in 1509. One story about a maypole ritual on a village green was written down in 1477. There is a mention of the custom in a poem circa the 1300s. And there is a reference in 1282 of a Scots vicar leading a dance "around a phallic pole" which got him in trouble with Church authorities. It’s quite probable that the maypole tradition was established long before these sources. Maypoles may have been introduced to Britain during the Saxon invasions, around 600 to 900 C.E. There are several town May totems still standing in Germany, France and Denmark that date to the year 300 C.E. Maypoles may have been simultaneously devised during the Romano-British era, or they might have come from trade with Celts or Basques from the European continent. The history of the maypole in Britain may not have been documented prior to the Reformation because it was too common to be remarkable to the average citizen.

Folklorists often take a different approach to chronicling Pagan traditions, using a wider range of sources than historians might accept. Sociologists may draw conclusions about the origin of a particular ritual by observing similar practices in an intact non-Christian culture. They may compare the symbols or icons of various people. Anthropologists might attempt to trace the history of a rite by comparing it to documented customs. This technique is called "parallelism", and some historians just hate it. Scholars often blast Sir James George Frazer and other folklorists for using parallels to describe pre-Christian ceremonies. Frazer, who was educated at Cambridge, compared English folk customs to similar practices in other societies, as well as in classical Greek and Roman literature. This comparative anthropology technique is still used by academics today.

If there is no verifiable documentation for a tradition, we may have to compare it to similar artifacts or practices, and then use our own common sense about its age and origin. Parallel customs to the maypole dance include circling three times around standing-stone monuments to invoke a deity or spirit, decorating a green branch with cloth flowers and streamers on the first day of May, and carrying a wand made of hawthorn, festooned with ribbons and tipped with a garlic bulb, called a "maypole". These rituals are similar to the maypole dance rite, and therefore may have significant meaning. Maypoles might have derived from an older British tradition of venerating certain trees, dancing around them and decorating them with ribbons and trinkets. These were called "clootie" or cloutie (cloth) or raggy trees, and the reason for tying items to their branches may have been for sympathetic magic or granting a wish. In some areas, people tied strips of clothing to a clootie tree in hopes of curing illness – possibly leaving the ailment behind with the rag. When one such tree was cut down, Roman coins were found attached to its inner bark. This indicates that the custom existed in the British Isles since the Roman occupation, which ended around 300 - 400 C.E. One sacred tree still exists in a Stokes Gabriel churchyard in England. This yew tree is believed to be more than eight hundred years old. Local lore has it that circling the tree three times grants a person’s wish. One account states that an older tree was venerated at Stokes Gabriel before the church was built, probably the site of an ancient Pagan shrine. These sacred tree traditions may well have pre-dated Christianity.

We must also take into consideration the abundance of a source, which means how often an iconic image or folk legend appears, and in how many locations. If representations of a horned man are found on a cave wall in France, on a cauldron in Denmark, in a Welsh hero-tale, on a Romano-British coin and a Gaulish sculpture, then we can surmise that this legend was quite well established throughout western Europe. Of course, the meaning is open to interpretation. Is the figure actually the deity called Cernunnos, or a shamanic priest, or a hunter, or did Uncle Fred put on antlers and clown around to amuse the kids? We can only guess. And no matter what they claim, historians can’t really know that an image is a Pagan religious symbol, a Christian caricature, or ancient graffiti… he or she is guessing, just the same as me.

Here are some of the educated guesses I’ve made from my own investigation into Pagan history. Disclaimer: I’m not a professional scholar or researcher, and I don’t have any letters behind my name. I’m a wife, mother, church secretary, smalltime farmer, a clergyperson and a Pagan author. Any research I’ve done is for fun and my own enlightenment, to find out more about my heritage, ethnic lore, and the development of my religious beliefs.