Hey everyone. I recently abandoned a book, which made me think a lot about how we, as readers, should be critical, especially when it comes to Pagan classics and elders. In short, I think we need to do better at times.
This is a book that has been fundamental to a lot of people, a classic, one I was excited about, but it fell flat for me. I couldn't finish it after almost a quarter of it, and I insisted on it for long. However:
It was disorganized: included rituals before explaining what a ritual is; started talking about important and fundamental people within Wicca and witchcraft, when talking about the Wheel of the Year;
Photo by UMUT 🆁🅰🆆 from Pexels. - It was socially irresponsible: assured the reader that all illnesses come from spiritual causes;
- Had wrong information: said that Warlock was completely dropped by the 2000s, when now there's a resurgence of the term;
- And was culturally appropriative: it talked about animal totems, which are not part of Wicca or witchcraft, but Native American spirituality.
These are just some of the problems I had with this book, because there were more. And while it's true this one made Wicca and witchcraft available for many, it was a light when there were few options, I had better expectations about it.
Some time ago, I started reading another book, this time about queer witchcraft, from another author who I love and who is an instant buy for me. If I see that name on a cover, I get it. Period. I admire the work this person has done, and had high expectations for this book, but this was a first for me. There were mistakes about mythology, lack of sources about historical events and explanations, to the point of leaving me frustrated.
When I talked with a friend about this book, they told me "if an elder says X happened, and in reality it didn't, then it happened. That's the power of an elder" (I'm paraphrasing here; this was some time ago). No, that's not power. It's a mistake, plain and simple. People make mistakes, young and old alike. Sometimes it seems like we cast elders under this magnificent light because of the tremendous work they have done. The merit is there, the respect is there, as it must. But this doesn't mean they can do no wrong. Again, people make mistakes, it's part of our nature.
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| Image by Michal Jarmoluk from Pixabay. |
Also recently, I started frequenting a group of Wicca and witchcraft on Discord, but I started noticing a lot of AI images in there. When I asked about it, one of the moderators, a high priestess, told me she was fine with AI and others were not. Even though she said she was going from AI to Canva, that it was a slow process, her stance bothered me a lot, so I'm out of there.
Just because someone has had so much experience doesn't mean we shouldn't be critical. In fact, we should be much more than with others. These are the people who paved the way and continue to inspire a lot of us, they have done a lot of firsts in their careers, yet they are also human. If we want to learn from them, that means doing better, not because this is a competition or out of spite, but because that's how progress happens.
As extreme examples, Gerald Gardner was homophobic, Scott Cunningham was culturally appropriative, and Zsuzsanna Budapest was transphobic. Their work is still important, what they did before matters, and because it matters we see it for what it was: imperfect, human, product of their times. We learned from this, we do better now, and we need to keep doing so.
There are two proverbs that I like:
“Ask the experienced rather than the learned.” — Arabic.
“When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.” — African.
The knowledge we get from this people is incomparable, they have done a lot of work for us, so I think it's only fair we do also a lot of work so the legacy can keep going. People do what they can with what they have, with what they know, and they do their best. As readers, we should do as well.
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