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At Sea (2007) dir. Peter Hutton

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Book Review: Blood and Mistletoe by Ronald Hutton

I must admit that Blood and Mistletoe was not my favorite of Hutton's books — although he had my attention and care for the subject by the end. The book surveys the very small pile of primary resources about and references to ancient druids, and then moves into an exploration of the rise and evolution of modern druid groups, as well as contemporary attitudes toward druids past and present. Hutton makes a clear case against any confident assertion that an organized group or social cast, called something like "druids," certainly existed in the ancient world and practiced recognizable rituals or faiths from the corpus of ideas we might recognize as "druidic" in the 21st century. (e.g., Harvesting mistletoe, performing human sacrifices, serving as counselors and astrologers, etc.) I generally agree with his cautious approach, although I can easily believe that a set of terms similar to the word "druid" were used loosely to describe wise people, poets, mediums, and magicians in various parts of northern and central Europe. This is indeed how the word tends to manifest in the earlier written sources from northern Europe; I'm specifically thinking of the medieval Irish stories which mention druids, mostly as scheming and showy individual magicians. Such a loose application of related terms might easily account for the strange array of perspectives on druids that we inherit from ancient, foreign authors.

However, in the section on Irish mythology, Hutton claims that the entire corpus of Irish sagas was clearly written and never orally transmitted because of its lack of rhyming and other memorable structures. He makes no mention of what I understand (unless I am mistaken) to be a notable exception to this: that is the various examples in which metered stanzas of rosc poetry seem to peak out through the prose of the written literature. My learning here is limited, but indicates that these rosc stanzas do hint to at least parts of these stories having older, oral transmissions. I don’t believe this necessarily means that they are pre-Christian in origin. Christianity is widely credited with the arrival of written language in Ireland, of course, but I am also confident that there have been thriving, thoroughly Christian societies that were functionally illiterate. So, while I don’t think that the presence of rosc poetry negates his larger points about a lack of substantial evidence for druids in pre-Christian Ireland, I simultaneously wonder what could have been explored had Hutton given these seemingly-older sections of the Irish sagas a bit more attention. Perhaps nothing, they may be entirely irrelevant, but I am left with some curiosity about the matter. I initially found it difficult to invest in the content of the book, but I imagine it would have been much easier had I possessed a special interest in the origins and development of the modern druid movement or had a particular affection for the history of Welsh nationalism. I found Hutton's writing uncharacteristically lacking in suspense, curiosity, and intrigue without the motivation I imagine those special interests would have imparted to me. To his credit, Hutton did provide his customary serving of saucy, scathing (though politely British) investigations into the characters involved in the formation of modern druidry. It's hard not to enjoy the way he lays out the truths of such figures against their claims. I think the personalities covered in this book and his earlier book The Triumph of the Moon have a lot of parallels worth considering for anyone interested in the history and formation of contemporary movements such as modern pagan witchcraft, druidry, and neopaganism. What sort of personality does it require to forge such modern beliefs?

Have you read Blood and Mistletoe? What did you think?

#Hutton #history #academia #druids #druidry #neopaganism #paganism #polytheism #occult #magic #books #bookblr #book review #personal

Ronald Hutton changes his mind on Witch-Cult Hypothesis: Many Medieval Witches were, indeed, Pagan!

In "Queens of the Wild: Pagan Goddesses in Christian Europe", Ronald Hutton shocks his readers with a new theory that overturns what he has claimed in the past!

If in his celebrated "The Triumph of the Moon" he categorically denied any connection between Medieval Witches and Paganism, he now dramatically changes his mind!

Hutton now acknowledges that Pagan cults have existed in the Middle Ages, but with a resounding twist: these cults would not have survived from antiquity, but would have been created *ex novo* precisely in Medieval times!

Instead of being direct heirs of pre-Christian religions, these Medieval cults would have retained a profoundly Pagan nature, even though they arose during a period dominated by Christianity.

Hutton thus challenges the old paradigm, arguing that these new cults, while not ancient, were much closer to Pagan spirituality in form and substance than anything Christian.

They were an independent system, expressing a Pagan approach to the sacred, unrelated to the dominant Christian traditions.

With this new book, Hutton not only breaks new ground in research on the Middle Ages, but challenges the idea that Pagan cults must necessarily be legacies of the distant past. Even in a Christianized age, there would have been room for the emergence of radically Pagan beliefs that had been overshadowed for centuries.

This new perspective sheds light on a Middle Ages far more complex and richer in alternative spiritualities than previously thought!

"Looking closely at four main figures—Mother Earth, the Fairy Queen, the Mistress of the Night, and the Old Woman of Gaelic tradition—Hutton challenges decades of debate around the female figures who have long been thought versions of pre-Christian goddesses. He makes the compelling case that these goddess figures found in the European imagination did not descend from the pre-Christian ancient world, yet have nothing Christian about them."

#traditional witchcraft #reconstructionist traditional witchcraft #tradcraft #trad craft #paganism #reconstructionism #stregheria #pagan #folkloric witchcraft #italian witchcraft #Hutton #Stregheria #Ronald Hutton #witchcraft #Academia #Academics

Farrah Fawcett as Barbara Hutton: Poor Little Rich Girl: The Barbara Hutton Story (1987).

The true story of one of the richest women in America - heiress to the Woolworth fortune. She had vast wealth and seven husbands, but never found lasting love.

IMDb 6,9