Has anyone read Margaret Murray?

I read her book *The Witch Cult in Western Europe* a few years ago, and felt enchanted. I am not a neopagan myself, but given her influence on your community, I was curious what you thought of her.

(Of course, I know she is not taken seriously by academics, but I don't think there's much to say on that.)

Posted in: s/heathendom

💀 eriounious

May 08 · 12 days ago · 🤔 1

4 Comments ↓

🌻 softwarepagan [mod] · May 08 at 20:48:

I'm not sure what she has contributed to reconstructed germanic heathenry, though I imagine her ideas were influential for the people who thought up Wicca in the 20th century. The earliest attempts at reconstructing heathenry were heavily influenced by Wicca, but over the past ten years or so, most groups have been de-wiccanizing it in favor of better information we have today.

💀 eriounious [OP] · May 08 at 23:14:

I've been under the impression that she was more or less the origin point, or at least one of the most significant origin points, of neopaganism.

Am I understanding correctly that there is tension between "heathenry" and "Wiccanism?" Would you mind elaborating on that?

🍄 Ruby_Witch · May 09 at 09:35:

Wicca is a modern creation which became more of an organized religion with an established orthodoxy and in- and out-groups than a lot of people are comfortable with.

There are still a lot of followers, and there's nothing wrong with them necessarily, but people who want to have a more free-wheeling interaction with heathenry/spirituality/magic(k)/etc are not as interested in Wicca's ideas as they used to be.

That's my experience at least.

🌻 softwarepagan [mod] · May 13 at 13:19:

@Ruby_Witch you are right about Wicca being a modern creation, but the opposite is true of many heathens: Wicca is exactly the kind of anything-goes McPaganism that we dislike very much.