this is not intended to be adversarial...
i have appreciated all of the definitions discussed in this post... they are useful, and quite informative!
FWIW, concerning this topic, I generally point people towards Christine Hoff Kraemer's resources... particularly this one first:
Annotated Bibliography of Histories and Ethnographies of Interest to Contemporary Pagans
(Designed especially for the smart and skeptical contemporary Pagan practitioner who is frustrated with the bad history that is rampant in so many Pagan books)
http://christinehoffkraemer.com/paganbiblio.html
(this is an archive of a comment i made to a post by queenofhalves) concerning the definitions of magick, wicca, and witchcraft.
whatever your definition of magick, i would ask, is it functional? "...success is thy proof."
often, the way that i communicate about magick with others is through ritual.
for myself, i tend to use these categories for different types of ritual (with a secret handshake to greg stafford):
*animism/shamanism... ecstatic worship/adoration of spirits/ancestors
*theism... sacrifice/propitiatory worship of deities
*sorcery... veneration of prophets/saints/founders/traditions
*mysticism... discipline of transcendence/integration, generally ascetic
obviously, depending on the group one works with, there can often be mixed forms of ritual; but many conservatives warn against this sort of radical experimentation (don't cross the streams ...it would be bad!).
i tend to approach ritual from a slightly more liberal perspective, perhaps similar to "the method of science and the aim of religion."
i usually tend to focus on one form of ritual at a time, until i achieve some degree of familiarity with it; and then, in certain situations, i have been known to synthesize different rituals... if, after analysis, i have found them to be mutually beneficial.
it seems to me that wicca was the product of an attempt to bring ceremonial magick and witchcraft together... a syncretism of high and low magick, if you will? of course, now people use the word carelessly, so it seems to have lost much of its original specificity.
the connections between magick/wicca/witchcraft are complex; but there's a lot of chicken/egg controversy which seems to date back to Rabelais...
sparked by another lj discussion, i had a brief conversation with sam webster about his essay, "Ritual, Magick & How Pagans will Save the World."
addressing one of the issues of contention that arose in my mind, he seemed to define ritual as that which is intended to transform, rather than the "things in our culture that have been called 'liminoid' or pseudo-ritual, like plays or movies or professional sports..." and similarly, in the aforementioned essay, he also referred to worship as a "worth-shaping tool." also in this essay, he managed to use the word "pagan" in a way that helped me reclaim it somewhat (for my own personal perspective). here's an excellent quote for elucidation:
"Pagans are something unique, something that has never occurred before in the history of humanity. We ritualize in a way no one else has before us. We are the only culture I know of that, as a regular practice, composes and recomposes rituals ‘de novio’ and usually as one-offs. ... With ritual we shape the values we would live by giving ourselves the taste of what could be. We take values and lessons gleaned from throughout time and expose our souls to them to be inspired and transformed. And we are pretty good at it. ... I also feel we stand on the threshold of cultural creativity (An era much like classical Alexandria) an era of empires and vast inhuman political, and in our age, commercial forces that leave individuals disempowered. An end of the Post-Modern period and the beginning of a new era of cultural creativity. ... It is time to change this and I warrant that we Pagani have arisen to cause this change."
so, this is The Great Work, is it not? ...to transform our individual selves, and our collective culture in the process! hmmm, so i guess now i'm pondering what the definitions could be for Pagan, Pagani, Neo-Pagan, etc... well, here's sam's brief piece called, "Why I call Myself Pagan"
FWIW, concerning this topic, I generally point people towards Christine Hoff Kraemer's resources... particularly this one first:
Annotated Bibliography of Histories and Ethnographies of Interest to Contemporary Pagans
(Designed especially for the smart and skeptical contemporary Pagan practitioner who is frustrated with the bad history that is rampant in so many Pagan books)
http://christinehoffkraemer.com/paganbiblio.html
(this is an archive of a comment i made to a post by queenofhalves) concerning the definitions of magick, wicca, and witchcraft.
whatever your definition of magick, i would ask, is it functional? "...success is thy proof."
often, the way that i communicate about magick with others is through ritual.
for myself, i tend to use these categories for different types of ritual (with a secret handshake to greg stafford):
*animism/shamanism... ecstatic worship/adoration of spirits/ancestors
*theism... sacrifice/propitiatory worship of deities
*sorcery... veneration of prophets/saints/founders/traditions
*mysticism... discipline of transcendence/integration, generally ascetic
obviously, depending on the group one works with, there can often be mixed forms of ritual; but many conservatives warn against this sort of radical experimentation (don't cross the streams ...it would be bad!).
i tend to approach ritual from a slightly more liberal perspective, perhaps similar to "the method of science and the aim of religion."
i usually tend to focus on one form of ritual at a time, until i achieve some degree of familiarity with it; and then, in certain situations, i have been known to synthesize different rituals... if, after analysis, i have found them to be mutually beneficial.
it seems to me that wicca was the product of an attempt to bring ceremonial magick and witchcraft together... a syncretism of high and low magick, if you will? of course, now people use the word carelessly, so it seems to have lost much of its original specificity.
the connections between magick/wicca/witchcraft are complex; but there's a lot of chicken/egg controversy which seems to date back to Rabelais...
sparked by another lj discussion, i had a brief conversation with sam webster about his essay, "Ritual, Magick & How Pagans will Save the World."
addressing one of the issues of contention that arose in my mind, he seemed to define ritual as that which is intended to transform, rather than the "things in our culture that have been called 'liminoid' or pseudo-ritual, like plays or movies or professional sports..." and similarly, in the aforementioned essay, he also referred to worship as a "worth-shaping tool." also in this essay, he managed to use the word "pagan" in a way that helped me reclaim it somewhat (for my own personal perspective). here's an excellent quote for elucidation:
"Pagans are something unique, something that has never occurred before in the history of humanity. We ritualize in a way no one else has before us. We are the only culture I know of that, as a regular practice, composes and recomposes rituals ‘de novio’ and usually as one-offs. ... With ritual we shape the values we would live by giving ourselves the taste of what could be. We take values and lessons gleaned from throughout time and expose our souls to them to be inspired and transformed. And we are pretty good at it. ... I also feel we stand on the threshold of cultural creativity (An era much like classical Alexandria) an era of empires and vast inhuman political, and in our age, commercial forces that leave individuals disempowered. An end of the Post-Modern period and the beginning of a new era of cultural creativity. ... It is time to change this and I warrant that we Pagani have arisen to cause this change."
so, this is The Great Work, is it not? ...to transform our individual selves, and our collective culture in the process! hmmm, so i guess now i'm pondering what the definitions could be for Pagan, Pagani, Neo-Pagan, etc... well, here's sam's brief piece called, "Why I call Myself Pagan"