CHARLES GODFREY LELAND THE FATHER OF MODERN WITCHCRAFT
CHARLES GODFREY LELAND
THE FATHER OF MODERN WITCHCRAFT
Charles Leland (1824-1903)
Charles Leland - Folklorist and Author whose 19th Century field studies in Italy revealed the existence of a surviving Witch Cult from ancient times. He wrote and had published several classic texts, such as Aradia; Gospel of the Witches, and Etruscan Roman Remains (both published by 1899.) Leland's writings on Italian Witchcraft bear many striking similar elements to the writings on Gardnerian Wicca written by Gerald Gardner over one half a century later.
Many people today think of Gerald Gardner as the founder of modern Wicca/Witchcraft. Gardner's books on Witchcraft published in the mid-twentieth century brought about a growing interest in the Old Religion of pre-Christian Europe. However, over half a century earlier a man named Charles Godfrey Leland wrote on many of the same topics later popularized by Gerald Gardner. For example, the theme of witches meeting at the time of the full moon, being nude, calling their ways The Old Religion, celebrating with ritual cakes and wine, and worshipping a god and goddess all appear in Leland's writings on Italian Witchcraft circa 1896.
In chapter four of his book Gypsy Sorcery & Fortune Telling, published in 1891, Leland makes the earliest connection between Wicca and modern Witchcraft:
"as for the English word witch, Anglo-Saxon Wicca, comes from a root implying wisdom..." Leland's footnote here reads: "Witch. Mediaeval English wicche, both masculine and feminine, a wizard, a witch. Anglo-Saxon wicca, masculine, wicce feminine. Wicca is a corruption of witga, commonly used as a short form of witega, a prophet, seer, magician, or sorcerer. Anglo-Saxon witan, to see, allied to witan, to know..."
What I find interesting is Leland's "pre-Gardnerian" reference to Wicca and Witchcraft. Of further interest is the fact that there is no single element of the basic structure of Gardnerian Wicca that cannot be found in Leland's earlier writings, as noted in the opening of this article. The only exception would be the clear mention of a ritual circle. However, in the Italian witch-hunters manual (Compendium Maleficarum, 1608) we do find a woodcut of Italian witches gathered in a circle traced upon the ground. Therefore the historical support for this aspect of Italian Witchcraft may have been obvious enough for Leland to have felt no need to address it specifically.
But who was this Leland character, and why should we take particular notice of his writings in the first place? Charles Godfrey Leland was a famous folklorist who wrote several classic texts on English Gypsies and Italian Witches. He was born in Philadelphia on August 15, 1824 and died in Florence, Italy, on March 20, 1903. Leland was fascinated by folk lore and folk magic even as a child, and went on to author such important works as Etruscan Roman Remains, Legends of Florence, The Gypsies, Gypsy Sorcery, and Aradia; Gospel of the Witches.
In 1906 a two volume biography of Charles Godfrey Leland was written by his niece Elizabeth Robins Pennell. In chapter One, recounting his personal memoirs, Pennell writes of his infancy:
"In both the 'Memoirs' and the 'Memoranda' he tells how he was carried up to the garret by his old Dutch nurse, who was said to be a sorceress, and left there with a Bible, a key, and a knife on his breast, lighted candles, money, and a plate of salt at his head: rites that were to make luck doubly certain by helping him to rise in life, and become a scholar and a wizard."
Pennell goes on to tell us that Leland's mother claimed an ancestress who married into "sorcery." Leland writes in his memoirs: "my mother's opinion was that this was a very strong case of atavism, and that the mysterious ancestor had through the ages cropped out in me." The biography of Charles Leland is filled with accounts of his early interest in the supernatural, an interest that turned to a life long passion. Of this passion Pennell writes:
"It is what might be expected...of the man who was called Master by the witches and Gypsies, whose pockets were always full of charms and amulets, who owned the Black Stone of the Voodoos, who could not see a bit of red string at his feet and not pick it up, or find a pebble with a hole in it and not add it to his store - who, in a word, not only studied witchcraft with the impersonal curiosity of the scholar, but practised it with the zest of the initiated."
As a young boy Leland grew up in a household that employed servants. According to Pennell, Leland learned of fairies from the Irish immigrant women working in his home, and from the black servant women in the kitchen he learned about Voodoo. Leland writes of his boyhood: "I was always given to loneliness in gardens and woods when I could get into them, and to hearing words in bird's songs and running or falling water." Pennell notes that throughout Leland's life, he could never get away from the fascination of the supernatural, nor did he ever show any desire to.
Fluent in several foreign languages, at age eighteen Leland wrote an unpublished manuscript English translation of Pymander of Trismegistus, a hermetic text now commonly known as Hermes Trismegistus: His Divine Pymander. The Pymander, as it was often called for short, was the foundation for much of the hermetic writings that inspired many Western Occultists during the later part of the nineteenth century and early part of the twentieth century.
In 1870 Leland moved to England where he eventually studied Gypsy society and lore. Over the course of time he won the confidence of a man named Matty Cooper, king of the Gypsies in England. Cooper personally taught Leland to speak Romany, the language of the Gypsies. It took many years before Leland was totally accepted by the Gypsies as one of their own. In a letter dated November 16th, 1886 Leland wrote to Pennell: "...I have been by moonlight amid Gypsy ruins with a whole camp of Gypsies, who danced and sang..." Having penetrated their mysteries to such a degree, Leland went on to author two classic texts on Gypsies, establishing himself as an authority on the subject among the scholars of his time.
In 1888 Leland found himself in Florence, Italy, where he lived out the remainder of his life. It was here that Leland met a woman whom he always referred to as Maddalena. Her real name was Maddalena Taleni, or possibly Zaleni. Some people have mistakenly attached the name Margherita to her, resulting from purposeful attempts by Leland and his niece to confuse her identity in order to protect Maddalena's relatives from being discovered as family Witches. Maddalena worked as a "card reader" telling fortunes in the back streets of Florence, and later married a man named Lorenzo Bruciatelli with whom she moved to America. Leland soon discovered that Maddalena was a Witch, and employed her to help gather material for his research on Italian Witchcraft. In Leland's biography, Pennell mentions running across his manuscript notes where he writes of Maddalena:
"a young woman who would have been taken for a Gypsy in England, but in whose face, in Italy, I soon learned to know the antique Etruscan, with its strange mysteries, to which was added the indefinable glance of the Witch. She was from the Romagna Toscana, born in the heart of its unsurpassingly wild and romantic scenery, amid cliffs, headlong torrents, forests, and old legendary castles. I did not gather all the facts for a long time, but gradually found that she was of a Witch family, or one whose members had, from time to immemorial, told fortunes, repeated ancient legends, gathered incantations, and learned how to intone them, prepared enchanted medicines, philtres, or spells. As a girl, her Witch grandmother, aunt, and especially her stepmother brought her up to believe in her destiny as a sorceress, and taught her in the forests, afar from human ear, to chant in strange prescribed tones, incantations or evocations to the ancient gods of Italy, under names but litt! le changed, who are now known as folletti, spiriti, fate, or lari - the Lares or household goblins of the ancient Etruscans."
Maddalena introduced Leland to another woman named Marietta who assisted her in providing him with research materials. Pennell, who inherited the bulk of Leland's notes, letters, and unpublished materials, refers to Marietta as a sorceress but Leland's own description of her in his published works is less clear. At one point Leland mused, in a letter to Pennell dated June 28th, 1889, that Maddalena and Marietta might be inventing various verses and passing them off as something of antiquity. However, Leland seems to have had a change of heart, as reflected in another letter to Pennell written in January of 1891. Here Leland writes:
"It turns out that Maddalena was regularly trained as a witch. She said the other day, you can never get to the end of all this Stregheria - witchcraft. Her memory seems to be inexhaustible, and when anything is wanting she consults some other witch and always gets it. It is part of the education of a witch to learn endless incantations, and these I am sure were originally Etruscan. I can't prove it, but I believe I have more Etruscan poetry than is to be found in all the remains. Maddalena has written me herself about 200 pages of this folklore - incantations and stories."
In another letter dated April 8, 1891 (written to Mr. Macritchie) Leland indicates still other Witches who assisted him in his research:
"...But ten times more remarkable is my MS. on the Tuscan Traditions and Florentine Folk Lore. I have actually not only found all of the old Etruscan gods still known to the peasantry of the Tuscan Romagna, but what is more, have succeeded in proving thoroughly that they are still known. A clever young contadino and his father (of witch family), having a list of all the Etruscan gods, went on market days to all the old people from different parts of the country, and not only took their testimony, but made them write certificates that the Etruscan Jupiter, Bacchus, etc. were known to them. With these I have a number of Roman minor rural deities, &c."
In Florence, Leland spent all of his spare time collecting Witch Lore, and purchasing items of antiquity as he chanced upon them. In a letter written to Mary Owen, Leland says "I have been living in an atmosphere of witchcraft and sorcery, engaged in collecting songs, spells, and stories of sorcery, so that I was amused to hear the other day that an eminent scholar said that I could do well at folk-lore, but that I had too many irons in the fire." Leland describes the Italian Witches he met as "living in a bygone age." It was an age that Leland apparently longed for himself.
Leland, apparently, did more than interview Italian Witches, or simply keep in their company. A passage from his book Etruscan Roman Remains strongly suggests that Leland was himself initiated into Stregheria, as indicted in the last sentence of the following:
"But, in fact, as I became familiar with the real, deeply seated belief in a religion of witchcraft in Tuscany, I found that there is no such great anomaly after all in a priest's being a wizard, for witchcraft is a business, like any other. Or it may come upon you like love, or a cold, or a profession, and you must bear it till you can give it or your practice to somebody else. What is pleasant to reflect on is that there is no devil in it. If you lose it you at once become good, and you cannot die till you get rid of it. It is not considered by any means a Christianly, pious possession, but in some strange way the strega works clear of Theology. True, there are witches good and bad, but all whom I ever met belonged entirely to the buone. It was their rivals and enemies who were maladette streghe, et cetera, but the latter I never met. We were all good."
There is another passage given in the same book. In the chapter titled "Witches and Witchcraft" Leland is interviewing a strega, and asks her how a certain priest became a stregone. In doing so he asks her how he (the priest) "came to practise our noble profession." Leland seems to be referring to the strega and himself as being part of something which the priest had also joined.
One of the most puzzling aspects of Leland's writings on Italian Witchcraft is the fact that he goes back and forth between speaking of Witchcraft in common Christian stereotypes of the period and portraying Witches as "good" and "noble" followers of the goddess Diana instead of the devil. His book Aradia; Gospel of the Witches is certainly a shocking turn from his general theme of the good witches of Benevento. Was he trying to please both sides? Or was he laying the foundation for a greater revelation to come. Perhaps we may never know, as Leland died without completing his work on Italian Witchcraft. One of his last wishes was to ask that someone compile all of the material he had written on the subject into one single volume. I am currently working on such a project.
CHARLES GODFREY LELAND
THE FATHER OF MODERN WITCHCRAFT
Charles Leland (1824-1903)
Charles Leland - Folklorist and Author whose 19th Century field studies in Italy revealed the existence of a surviving Witch Cult from ancient times. He wrote and had published several classic texts, such as Aradia; Gospel of the Witches, and Etruscan Roman Remains (both published by 1899.) Leland's writings on Italian Witchcraft bear many striking similar elements to the writings on Gardnerian Wicca written by Gerald Gardner over one half a century later.
Many people today think of Gerald Gardner as the founder of modern Wicca/Witchcraft. Gardner's books on Witchcraft published in the mid-twentieth century brought about a growing interest in the Old Religion of pre-Christian Europe. However, over half a century earlier a man named Charles Godfrey Leland wrote on many of the same topics later popularized by Gerald Gardner. For example, the theme of witches meeting at the time of the full moon, being nude, calling their ways The Old Religion, celebrating with ritual cakes and wine, and worshipping a god and goddess all appear in Leland's writings on Italian Witchcraft circa 1896.
In chapter four of his book Gypsy Sorcery & Fortune Telling, published in 1891, Leland makes the earliest connection between Wicca and modern Witchcraft:
"as for the English word witch, Anglo-Saxon Wicca, comes from a root implying wisdom..." Leland's footnote here reads: "Witch. Mediaeval English wicche, both masculine and feminine, a wizard, a witch. Anglo-Saxon wicca, masculine, wicce feminine. Wicca is a corruption of witga, commonly used as a short form of witega, a prophet, seer, magician, or sorcerer. Anglo-Saxon witan, to see, allied to witan, to know..."
What I find interesting is Leland's "pre-Gardnerian" reference to Wicca and Witchcraft. Of further interest is the fact that there is no single element of the basic structure of Gardnerian Wicca that cannot be found in Leland's earlier writings, as noted in the opening of this article. The only exception would be the clear mention of a ritual circle. However, in the Italian witch-hunters manual (Compendium Maleficarum, 1608) we do find a woodcut of Italian witches gathered in a circle traced upon the ground. Therefore the historical support for this aspect of Italian Witchcraft may have been obvious enough for Leland to have felt no need to address it specifically.
But who was this Leland character, and why should we take particular notice of his writings in the first place? Charles Godfrey Leland was a famous folklorist who wrote several classic texts on English Gypsies and Italian Witches. He was born in Philadelphia on August 15, 1824 and died in Florence, Italy, on March 20, 1903. Leland was fascinated by folk lore and folk magic even as a child, and went on to author such important works as Etruscan Roman Remains, Legends of Florence, The Gypsies, Gypsy Sorcery, and Aradia; Gospel of the Witches.
In 1906 a two volume biography of Charles Godfrey Leland was written by his niece Elizabeth Robins Pennell. In chapter One, recounting his personal memoirs, Pennell writes of his infancy:
"In both the 'Memoirs' and the 'Memoranda' he tells how he was carried up to the garret by his old Dutch nurse, who was said to be a sorceress, and left there with a Bible, a key, and a knife on his breast, lighted candles, money, and a plate of salt at his head: rites that were to make luck doubly certain by helping him to rise in life, and become a scholar and a wizard."
Pennell goes on to tell us that Leland's mother claimed an ancestress who married into "sorcery." Leland writes in his memoirs: "my mother's opinion was that this was a very strong case of atavism, and that the mysterious ancestor had through the ages cropped out in me." The biography of Charles Leland is filled with accounts of his early interest in the supernatural, an interest that turned to a life long passion. Of this passion Pennell writes:
"It is what might be expected...of the man who was called Master by the witches and Gypsies, whose pockets were always full of charms and amulets, who owned the Black Stone of the Voodoos, who could not see a bit of red string at his feet and not pick it up, or find a pebble with a hole in it and not add it to his store - who, in a word, not only studied witchcraft with the impersonal curiosity of the scholar, but practised it with the zest of the initiated."
As a young boy Leland grew up in a household that employed servants. According to Pennell, Leland learned of fairies from the Irish immigrant women working in his home, and from the black servant women in the kitchen he learned about Voodoo. Leland writes of his boyhood: "I was always given to loneliness in gardens and woods when I could get into them, and to hearing words in bird's songs and running or falling water." Pennell notes that throughout Leland's life, he could never get away from the fascination of the supernatural, nor did he ever show any desire to.
Fluent in several foreign languages, at age eighteen Leland wrote an unpublished manuscript English translation of Pymander of Trismegistus, a hermetic text now commonly known as Hermes Trismegistus: His Divine Pymander. The Pymander, as it was often called for short, was the foundation for much of the hermetic writings that inspired many Western Occultists during the later part of the nineteenth century and early part of the twentieth century.
In 1870 Leland moved to England where he eventually studied Gypsy society and lore. Over the course of time he won the confidence of a man named Matty Cooper, king of the Gypsies in England. Cooper personally taught Leland to speak Romany, the language of the Gypsies. It took many years before Leland was totally accepted by the Gypsies as one of their own. In a letter dated November 16th, 1886 Leland wrote to Pennell: "...I have been by moonlight amid Gypsy ruins with a whole camp of Gypsies, who danced and sang..." Having penetrated their mysteries to such a degree, Leland went on to author two classic texts on Gypsies, establishing himself as an authority on the subject among the scholars of his time.
In 1888 Leland found himself in Florence, Italy, where he lived out the remainder of his life. It was here that Leland met a woman whom he always referred to as Maddalena. Her real name was Maddalena Taleni, or possibly Zaleni. Some people have mistakenly attached the name Margherita to her, resulting from purposeful attempts by Leland and his niece to confuse her identity in order to protect Maddalena's relatives from being discovered as family Witches. Maddalena worked as a "card reader" telling fortunes in the back streets of Florence, and later married a man named Lorenzo Bruciatelli with whom she moved to America. Leland soon discovered that Maddalena was a Witch, and employed her to help gather material for his research on Italian Witchcraft. In Leland's biography, Pennell mentions running across his manuscript notes where he writes of Maddalena:
"a young woman who would have been taken for a Gypsy in England, but in whose face, in Italy, I soon learned to know the antique Etruscan, with its strange mysteries, to which was added the indefinable glance of the Witch. She was from the Romagna Toscana, born in the heart of its unsurpassingly wild and romantic scenery, amid cliffs, headlong torrents, forests, and old legendary castles. I did not gather all the facts for a long time, but gradually found that she was of a Witch family, or one whose members had, from time to immemorial, told fortunes, repeated ancient legends, gathered incantations, and learned how to intone them, prepared enchanted medicines, philtres, or spells. As a girl, her Witch grandmother, aunt, and especially her stepmother brought her up to believe in her destiny as a sorceress, and taught her in the forests, afar from human ear, to chant in strange prescribed tones, incantations or evocations to the ancient gods of Italy, under names but litt! le changed, who are now known as folletti, spiriti, fate, or lari - the Lares or household goblins of the ancient Etruscans."
Maddalena introduced Leland to another woman named Marietta who assisted her in providing him with research materials. Pennell, who inherited the bulk of Leland's notes, letters, and unpublished materials, refers to Marietta as a sorceress but Leland's own description of her in his published works is less clear. At one point Leland mused, in a letter to Pennell dated June 28th, 1889, that Maddalena and Marietta might be inventing various verses and passing them off as something of antiquity. However, Leland seems to have had a change of heart, as reflected in another letter to Pennell written in January of 1891. Here Leland writes:
"It turns out that Maddalena was regularly trained as a witch. She said the other day, you can never get to the end of all this Stregheria - witchcraft. Her memory seems to be inexhaustible, and when anything is wanting she consults some other witch and always gets it. It is part of the education of a witch to learn endless incantations, and these I am sure were originally Etruscan. I can't prove it, but I believe I have more Etruscan poetry than is to be found in all the remains. Maddalena has written me herself about 200 pages of this folklore - incantations and stories."
In another letter dated April 8, 1891 (written to Mr. Macritchie) Leland indicates still other Witches who assisted him in his research:
"...But ten times more remarkable is my MS. on the Tuscan Traditions and Florentine Folk Lore. I have actually not only found all of the old Etruscan gods still known to the peasantry of the Tuscan Romagna, but what is more, have succeeded in proving thoroughly that they are still known. A clever young contadino and his father (of witch family), having a list of all the Etruscan gods, went on market days to all the old people from different parts of the country, and not only took their testimony, but made them write certificates that the Etruscan Jupiter, Bacchus, etc. were known to them. With these I have a number of Roman minor rural deities, &c."
In Florence, Leland spent all of his spare time collecting Witch Lore, and purchasing items of antiquity as he chanced upon them. In a letter written to Mary Owen, Leland says "I have been living in an atmosphere of witchcraft and sorcery, engaged in collecting songs, spells, and stories of sorcery, so that I was amused to hear the other day that an eminent scholar said that I could do well at folk-lore, but that I had too many irons in the fire." Leland describes the Italian Witches he met as "living in a bygone age." It was an age that Leland apparently longed for himself.
Leland, apparently, did more than interview Italian Witches, or simply keep in their company. A passage from his book Etruscan Roman Remains strongly suggests that Leland was himself initiated into Stregheria, as indicted in the last sentence of the following:
"But, in fact, as I became familiar with the real, deeply seated belief in a religion of witchcraft in Tuscany, I found that there is no such great anomaly after all in a priest's being a wizard, for witchcraft is a business, like any other. Or it may come upon you like love, or a cold, or a profession, and you must bear it till you can give it or your practice to somebody else. What is pleasant to reflect on is that there is no devil in it. If you lose it you at once become good, and you cannot die till you get rid of it. It is not considered by any means a Christianly, pious possession, but in some strange way the strega works clear of Theology. True, there are witches good and bad, but all whom I ever met belonged entirely to the buone. It was their rivals and enemies who were maladette streghe, et cetera, but the latter I never met. We were all good."
There is another passage given in the same book. In the chapter titled "Witches and Witchcraft" Leland is interviewing a strega, and asks her how a certain priest became a stregone. In doing so he asks her how he (the priest) "came to practise our noble profession." Leland seems to be referring to the strega and himself as being part of something which the priest had also joined.
One of the most puzzling aspects of Leland's writings on Italian Witchcraft is the fact that he goes back and forth between speaking of Witchcraft in common Christian stereotypes of the period and portraying Witches as "good" and "noble" followers of the goddess Diana instead of the devil. His book Aradia; Gospel of the Witches is certainly a shocking turn from his general theme of the good witches of Benevento. Was he trying to please both sides? Or was he laying the foundation for a greater revelation to come. Perhaps we may never know, as Leland died without completing his work on Italian Witchcraft. One of his last wishes was to ask that someone compile all of the material he had written on the subject into one single volume. I am currently working on such a project.
 | the culdee's? sounds like christian egnotics... | by Luxas for everyone |
So many questions have been raised concerning the mysterious community, called Culdees, and such various opinions have been expressed concerning them, that one may be excused inquiring whether in their midst we can trace reminiscences of old Irish faiths. The notion has been long prevalent that the Culdees were only Scotch, having nothing to do with Ireland; whereas, they were originally from that country.
Their most bitter enemy in early Christian days was the Venerable Bede, who denied their claims to orthodoxy. But, since he was a Saxon, and a priest under Roman rule, his charges have been slightly heeded. Their maintenance of an hereditary priesthood was not merely Jewish, as he supposed, but of Druidical sympathy.
Prof. Rhys judiciously remarks - "Irish Druidism absorbed a certain amount of Christianity, and it would be a problem of considerable difficulty to fix on the period where it ceased to be Druidism, and from which onwards it could be said of Christianity in any restricted sense of that term."
As both St. Patrick and St. Columba have been regarded by some modern writers as simply Culdees, and not following orthodox views and methods, might not the many stories told of their conflicts with Druids have been brought forth by ancient chroniclers, in refutation of the slanders abroad concerning their heretical, Druidical tendency? The same supposition may be equally directed against the early Welsh missionaries, though these were almost all from Ireland. Certainly their assumed miraculous powers inclined to the old traditions of Druidical performances. They had all of them a control over the powers of nature, and had' even raised the dead; at least, their biographers claimed it for them.
Dr. Carpenter speaks thus :- "The incidents in St. Columba's life have been originally recorded in the contemporary fasti of his religious foundation, and transmitted in unbroken succession to Abbot Adamnan, who first compiled a complete Vita of his great predecessor, of which there exists a MS copy, whose authenticity there is no reason to doubt, which dates back to the early part of the eighth century, not much more than one hundred. years after St. Columba's death. Now, Adamnan's Vita credits its subject with the possession of every kind of
miraculous power. He cured hundreds of people afflicted with inveterate diseases, accorded safety to storm-tossed vessels, himself walked across the sea to his island home, drove demons out of milk-pails, outwitted sorcerers, and gave supernatural powers to domestic implements."
All this reminds one strongly of the powers attributed by tradition to the Druids of the period, and points suspiciously to some outgrowth from Druidism in his case.
Columba was an Irishman of Donegal, and died, as it is said, in 597. Adamnan declares that his staff (without which a Druid could do but little), when once left behind at lona, went of itself over the sea to its master in Ireland. He founded a monastery at Durmagh, King's Co. At lona the ruins are those of the Cluniac monks; for, says Boulbee, "not a trace can well remain of the primitive settlement of Columba." But lona was certainly a Druidical college at first.
Like the Druids before them, the Culdees formed communities. Richey tells us - " The Church consisted of isolated monasteries, which were practically independent of each other; the clergy exercised no judicial power over the laity." On the other hand, Wood-Martin of Sligo supposes, "Christianity must have been first introduced into Ireland by" missionaries of the Greek Church." He notes the fact that Bishops were to be found in almost every village. It is also pointed out that Columba never sought Papal sanction for the conversion of the Picts.
The lona tonsure, like that of St. Patrick's time, was the shaving of all the hair in front of a line drawn over the top of the head from ear to ear. The Roman, as all know, was a circle at top, and appears to have been first adopted at lona early in the eighth century. The first, or crescent, shape was Druidical.
It was about that date, also, that the Roman way of keeping Easter succeeded the so called Irish mode. At the Council of Whitby, Colman of lona was outvoted, though
protesting the 'antiquity of his own practice. McFirbis's MS. speaks thus of the year 896 - "In this year the men of Erin consented to receive jurisdiction and one rule from Adamnan respecting the celebration of Easter on Sunday on the14th of the moon of April, and the coronal tonsure of Peter was performed upon the clerics of Erin." Again, it says, "The clergy of Erin held many Synods and they used to come to those Synods with weapons, so that pitched battles used to be fought between them, and many used to be slain." After this authority, one need not wonder at the assertion that Irish Druids formerly led contending parties.
lona had certainly a Druidical college till the community was expelled by Columba for his own community and the Highlanders still recognize it as the Druid's Isle. An old statistical work says, "The Druids undoubtedly possessed lona before the introduction of Christianity." It must be admitted that the Culdees wore a white dress, as did the Druids, and that they occupied places which had a Druidical reputation. They used the Asiatic cross, now called that of St. Andrew's. Dr. J. Moore is pleased to say, "The Culdees seem to have adopted nearly all the Pagan symbols of the neighbourhood."
As to the origin of the word, Reeves might well remark in his notes on Columba's Life, " Culdee is the most abused term in Scotic church history." As the Ceile De, the Four Masters mentions them in 806. Todd writes of them thus - "The earliest Christian missionaries found the native religion extinct, and themselves took the name of Culde from inhabiting the Druids' empty cells." Jamieson styles them Culdees or Keldees, Kyldees, Kylledei. O'Brien has them the Irish Ceile De, servant of God. Another call them Clann Dia, Children of God. Barber considered them Mithraists.
Higgins, in Celtic Druids, will have Culdees only changed Druids, and regarded the Irish hereditary Abbots of Iona, the Coarbs or Curbs, as simply Corybantes. Latin writers knew them as Colidei or God-worshippers. Bishop Nicholson thought them Cool Dubh, from their black hoods. As C and G are commutable letters in Irish, we have Giolla De, Servant of God. The word Culdee was used by Boece in 1526. Dr. Reeves, in the Irish Academy, calls the Servus Dei by the Celtic Celi-Dé, and notes the name Ceile-n-De applied to the Sligo Friars in the Four Masters, 1595. Monks were reputed Keledei in the thirteenth century. Brockham's Lexicon finds regulars and seculars called so in the ninth century.
The Four Masters record that "Maenach, a Celae-Dé, came across the sea westward to establish laws in Ireland." In the poem of Moelruein, it is the Rule of the Celae-n-dé. The Keledei of Scotland, according to Dr. Reeves, had the same discipline as the Irish Colidei. One Collideus of the Armagh church died in 1574. One Celi-dé of Clonmacnois, dying in 1059, left several sons, who became Abbots after him.
The canons of York were Culdees in Atheistan's time. Ceadda, Wilfrid's predecessor, was a Culdee. They were also called, from their mode of celebrating Easter, Quartadecimans. The last known in Scotland were in 1352. As Bede says, the Irish, being Culdees, would as soon communicate with pagans as with Saxons; the later following Latin or Romish Christianity.
Ireland, as reported by Giraldus, had a chapel of the Colidei on an island of Tipperary, as he declared some were on islands of Wales. They were in Armagh in 920. Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh, asserts that the Northern Irish, "continued still their old tradition," in spite of the declaration of Pope Honorius. In Tirechan's Life of St Patrick, Cele-de came from Briton to Ireland in 919; but in 811 some were said to have been miraculously conveyed across the sea. Bede, who opposed them, whether from Ireland or Scotland, was shocked at their holding his religion "in no account at all," nor communicating with his faithful "in anything more than with pagans." He banished those who came to his quarter.
He found these Irish, Welsh, and Scotch Christians to have, in addition to many heresies, the Jewish and Druidical system of hereditary priesthood. Property of the Church even descended from father to son; and, says Dr. Reeves,. "was practically entailed to members of certain families." He adds that they were understood in the 12th century as "a religious order of clerks who lived in Societies, under a Superior, within a common enclosure, but in detached cells; associated in a sort of collegiate rather than coenobicai brotherhood."
Giraldus, as well as Bede, complained of their hereditary priesthood. The same principle prevailed in the Druidical region of Brittany, and only yielded to the force of thà Council of Tours in 1127.
Although St. Columba had no exalted idea of the other sex, saying, "Where there is a cow there will be a woman, and where there is a woman there will be mischief" - yet his followers practised marriage But while, says Mylin, they "after the usage of the Eastern Church, had wives they abstained from them, when it came to their turn to minister." The "Woman's Island" of Loch Lomond was one of the female sanctuaries on such an occasion Their opposition to celibacy brought them much discredit with other priests.
Archbishop Lanfranc was shocked at their not praying to Saints, not dedicating churches to the Virgin or Saints, not using the Roman Service, and because, wrote he, " Infants are baptized by immersion, without the consecrated chrism."
St. Bernard was distressed at what he heard of these Irish Culdees, who had no Confession, never paid tithes, and lived like wild beasts, as they disdained marriage by the clergy. In his righteous anger, he stigmatized them as "beasts, absolute barbarians, a stubborn, stiff necked, and ungovernable generation, and abominable; Christian in name, but in reality pagans." This harsh language is not worse than that employed by the Pope, when he entreated our Henry II. to take over Ireland, so as to bring the Irish into the Christian Church, compel them to pay tithes, and so civilize them.
One would fancy, with Algernon Herbert, that the Culdees performed secret rites, and indulged, like their Druidical fathers, in human sacrifice, from the legend of St. Oran being buried underneath the church erected by Columba, to propitiate the Powers, and secure good fortune. In that case, however, St. Oran offered to be the victim, so as to avert evil from bad spirits.
If St. Patrick, St. Columba, and other early Irish Saints had been true monks, why did St. Bernard, in his Life of Malachy, Archbishop of Armagh, 1130, say that up to that time there was not a monk in Ireland ? Columba certainly took Culdeeism to Scotland from Ireland. In the Bog of Monaincha are two islands. On one was a monastery for men, their wives occupying the neighbouring Woman's Isle. Giraldus Cambrensis, who wrote of the Community of Monaincha in the twelfth century, called it the church of the old religion, and politely designated as "Demons" all who belonged to that former church. The Abbey church, the ruins of which still remain, and which was 38 feet by 18 feet in size, was erected after the time of Giraldus.
Thus R. F. Gould, in his Freemasonry, had some grounds for saying - "The Druidism of our ancestors must have been powerfully influenced by the paganism of the Empire at the period when Christianity dawned on Britain." He deemed it probable that the early clerics of Christianity, "the cultores deorum, the worshippers of the gods, gradually merged into cultores Dei, worshippers of the true God." So it might be that, as Higgins wrote, "The Culdees were the last remains of the Druids."
Druidism after the 1400's might have followed that way, but before not...
many written in those times just to slander, and even accuse,
so
much like the bible, unless you read all 6000 books, don't come crying
to me, about why you missed a good bit of history and truth....
| magic's magic(k) | by Luxas for everyone |
magic is an energy and yes you have to tap into it,
but it is also a hidden fundimental key in the connection or living of all things "weird"
yes weird, because that which is sensity to these fields of energy, can seem to have an almost dynamic effect, meaning you become atuned to the harmony (the way life works or dies) and this scares those that want to believe in a higher power controlling our fate, yes there are higher powers but no direct design on our fate or faith if your into that idealism, we all are resources of the kenetic stream, and only by learning the tools and perhaps tricks, can we as beings of energy and thought evolve, cool huh,
but sadly some as a living race want to think, we are now more technology and medicine,
but if it wasn't for those that when against the face value of religion or idealism as in known,
we would still be bodies with no skeleton image.... ( what i am getting at is both the spirital and physical scientific design have the loopholes in their truths, but when one defines another it makes complete sense......)
but it is also a hidden fundimental key in the connection or living of all things "weird"
yes weird, because that which is sensity to these fields of energy, can seem to have an almost dynamic effect, meaning you become atuned to the harmony (the way life works or dies) and this scares those that want to believe in a higher power controlling our fate, yes there are higher powers but no direct design on our fate or faith if your into that idealism, we all are resources of the kenetic stream, and only by learning the tools and perhaps tricks, can we as beings of energy and thought evolve, cool huh,
but sadly some as a living race want to think, we are now more technology and medicine,
but if it wasn't for those that when against the face value of religion or idealism as in known,
we would still be bodies with no skeleton image.... ( what i am getting at is both the spirital and physical scientific design have the loopholes in their truths, but when one defines another it makes complete sense......)
H.G.Wells
"perhaps time is but my partner and i merely its taxi driver....
"perhaps time is but my partner and i merely its taxi driver....
| A,B,C's the fun way.. | by Luxas for everyone |
ABC's of Neopagandom
Just to confuse you all: strait
Altar- feng shui wiccans
Black Magic- dog wisdom and view (colorblind art)
Just to confuse you all: strait
Altar- feng shui wiccans
Black Magic- dog wisdom and view (colorblind art)
Centering- During sex when she says is it in, the place you most want to be..lol
Circle- when you spellcast and it his someone next to you...
Craft- the word you say when you being polite (oh, cr....p)
Cove- when you really need that beach to do ritual
Cove- when you really need that beach to do ritual
Coven- when you want to cover something up, and teach the goverment a less by being out in the open..lol
Discord- when your singing in the tub during orgasm, huh, musical
Esbat- the irish dude who created the song "smokey mountain high"
Esbat- the irish dude who created the song "smokey mountain high"
Flying- Delt, Amway of the future
Glossary- a book determining to teach you to find another book
Grounding- when you as a youth say you want to study witchcraft or magic(k)
Hain- Sam : When your friend sam acts up, you says that's hain sam (
slang
" meaning Hainus " coin in the 80's by Wayne and garth.....Snl
Handfasting: when you really want to get married but the other 3 guys are in the wings so you settle
Incense- traditional term inocense but sence you had to light up, now you know...
Jack-o-lantern- Jacks christmas present and what she says
Karma- a carpet with about 6 years of shoe dust
Lammas- traditional a lame ass, but they settled
Magick- when you say i got your nose and mean it...lol
Nine- the limit of orgasms in a tight.......(cat) lol
Orgy- from the nursery rhyme porgy, the movie....followed
Pentagram- 1,000ith of a sexgram
Quest- when a knight bags a lady in the woods and her ropes aren't tight enough
Rowan- The british made it a sport and invite har-vard...
Quest- when a knight bags a lady in the woods and her ropes aren't tight enough
Rowan- The british made it a sport and invite har-vard...
Sabbat- like esbat his older brother
Skyclad- when you run around naked thinking your wind..lol
Spell- what some christian women have when guy wants to have sex....
Talisman- when your friend talis, gets out of his house and parties
Underwear- protictive clothing to those that fear being o'natural and good traffic distractions
Virginity- Unity of the Virgins "wican order started by a christian church" they have been losing membership ever sence....
White Witch- then a witch only wants to be 1/3 patriotic
White Witch- then a witch only wants to be 1/3 patriotic
Witch- When your in a store and others ask if your wiccan or pagan
and you have to make a quick reply
Xerox- Gardenerian books
Yorkshire- every hear of puding, its the capital of jello
Zygurmist- when a mage has decided that his Zygur is misting
(ancient chemical, ooops now you know...)
by Luxas
by Luxas
| thinking arch-Mage Philosophy 101 | by Luxas for everyone |
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with
sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
-Galileo Galilei
"The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher
demonstrates. The great teacher inspires."
-William Arthur Ward
"Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance."
-Confucious
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as
sweet."
-Shakespeare
"I am only one,
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something;
And because I cannot do everything
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do."
-Edward Everett
"If there is light in the soul,
There will be beauty in the person.
If there is beauty in the person,
There will be harmony in the house.
If there is harmony in the house,
There will be order in the nation.
If there is order in the nation,
There will be peace in the world."
-Chinese Proverb
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't
do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the
safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
-Mark Twain
"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
-Chinese Proverb
"What we see depends mainly on what we look for."
-John Lubbock
"Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness."
-Chinese Proverb
"I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him."
-Booker T. Washington
"Some people are always grumbling because roses have thorns. I am thankful
that thorns have roses."
-Alphonse Karr
There are still lands so remote, mountains so high and seas so deep that the
human race has yet to drain all the magic from them, as it has from so much
of the world... In some ways, though, the elder glories are stronger than
ever, sheltered as they are within the minds of the very species which seeks
their destruction. Thus, magic and wonder endure - thrive, even - in a realm
which no human can crush, at least not without destroying themselves. So long
as there are dreams, there shall always be magic..."
- from the journals of Wysothron, last of the Zakotan Dream Guardians
"Know where all the exits are, never sit with your back to the door,
watch the reflections, watch the shadows, and keep your hands free and your
weapons loose."
-Shin'a'in Proverb
"Never sit down with your sword at your side-strap it to your back for a
faster draw."
-Shin'a'in proverb
"If the enemy is within firing range, so are you."
-Shin'a'in proverb
"You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page and feel as if
you've lost a friend."
-Anonymous
"He who has nothing to die for has nothing to live for."
-Moroccan Proverb
"After awhile you learn the subtle difference between holding a hand and
chaining a soul,
And you learn that love doesn't mean leaning and company doesn't mean
security,
And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts and presents aren't
promises,
And you begin to accept your defeats with your head up and your eyes open,
with the grace of an adult, not the grief of a child, And you learn to build
all your roads on today because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for paths.
After awhile you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much. So
plant your garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone
to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure...
That you really are strong, And you really do have worth."
-Veronica A. Shoffstall
"Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice: it is not a thing
to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved."
-William Jennings Bryan
If you read this far thank you. You are far and few between.
sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
-Galileo Galilei
"The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher
demonstrates. The great teacher inspires."
-William Arthur Ward
"Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance."
-Confucious
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as
sweet."
-Shakespeare
"I am only one,
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something;
And because I cannot do everything
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do."
-Edward Everett
"If there is light in the soul,
There will be beauty in the person.
If there is beauty in the person,
There will be harmony in the house.
If there is harmony in the house,
There will be order in the nation.
If there is order in the nation,
There will be peace in the world."
-Chinese Proverb
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't
do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the
safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
-Mark Twain
"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
-Chinese Proverb
"What we see depends mainly on what we look for."
-John Lubbock
"Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness."
-Chinese Proverb
"I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him."
-Booker T. Washington
"Some people are always grumbling because roses have thorns. I am thankful
that thorns have roses."
-Alphonse Karr
There are still lands so remote, mountains so high and seas so deep that the
human race has yet to drain all the magic from them, as it has from so much
of the world... In some ways, though, the elder glories are stronger than
ever, sheltered as they are within the minds of the very species which seeks
their destruction. Thus, magic and wonder endure - thrive, even - in a realm
which no human can crush, at least not without destroying themselves. So long
as there are dreams, there shall always be magic..."
- from the journals of Wysothron, last of the Zakotan Dream Guardians
"Know where all the exits are, never sit with your back to the door,
watch the reflections, watch the shadows, and keep your hands free and your
weapons loose."
-Shin'a'in Proverb
"Never sit down with your sword at your side-strap it to your back for a
faster draw."
-Shin'a'in proverb
"If the enemy is within firing range, so are you."
-Shin'a'in proverb
"You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page and feel as if
you've lost a friend."
-Anonymous
"He who has nothing to die for has nothing to live for."
-Moroccan Proverb
"After awhile you learn the subtle difference between holding a hand and
chaining a soul,
And you learn that love doesn't mean leaning and company doesn't mean
security,
And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contracts and presents aren't
promises,
And you begin to accept your defeats with your head up and your eyes open,
with the grace of an adult, not the grief of a child, And you learn to build
all your roads on today because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for paths.
After awhile you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much. So
plant your garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone
to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure...
That you really are strong, And you really do have worth."
-Veronica A. Shoffstall
"Destiny is no matter of chance. It is a matter of choice: it is not a thing
to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved."
-William Jennings Bryan
If you read this far thank you. You are far and few between.
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