There
are two clear paths to follow here, one that leads to the 1950's and the other
that goes back to the beginnings of time. So we shall begin at the dawn of time
as humans first set foot upon the land having finally evolved from our primate
cousins and into the fascinating, deadly and potentially god-like beings that we
are today. The first humans were naturally pagans, by this I mean they
worshiped the land, the seasons and any force that seemed more powerful than
themselves.
As time passed and they moved to towns and cities pagan beliefs came to and were only a problem for society if someone was believed to have jinxed or cast a spell upon another person or their property. Throughout Ancient Greece a huge number og gods and goddesses were worshiped. And with the Roman invasions these were accepted and although their names changed the deities remained the same. It was only with the birth of Christianity and the madness of the one God idea that things turned ugly for the Pagans. Worshipping or in reality the offering of a food item or drop of wine on an altar to a deity was seen as idol worship by the Christians and then Muslims who frowned upon this. And so it was the the 2000 year persecution of Pagans began.
At first the Christian way was to take over Pagan shrines and holidays, hijacking them for Christian alternatives thus making it a much smoother transition from the one to the other. But with this came persecution which eventually lead to the witchcraft trials in England and America and a whole period of human history when so called witches were slaughtered because they used a few herbs, had a few odd habits and did not suck up to the local priest or other authority figures.
Things began to change in the Victorian period as Christianity began to finally loose its death grip upon the human mind, the shackles began to fall and the society of that day began to take interest in medium ship and spiritualism. This was the watershed period as society once more began to search for its real pagan and spiritual side rather than the convoluted hierarchical male dominated madness that was Christianity.
As well as spiritualist, magicians were born and began to create whole frameworks of ritual to connect with energies and deities again, idol worship became a new form of religion. The Golden dawn system of magick was designed with the well known proponent Alistair Crowley writing tombs of information about real magick.
So after the dark ages Paganism began to flourish again and as the world moved through two wars, women were slowly becoming liberated and the Beat Generation was about to tear society wide open in preparation for the revolutions of the 1960's, the scene was set for witchcraft to emerge once again. It was arguably Gerald B. Gardner with his books on witchcraft heavily influenced by the work of British anthropologist Margaret A. Murray writing in the 1920's that kicked of the new Wicca movement. Additionally in 1951 the last Witchcraft Act was repealed therefore freeing wicca to become a religion in its own right and this instigated the birth of the New Age movement that had its roots with the beat generations interest in Eastern Spirituality and snowballed into the glorious counter culture of the 1960's.
Human society has therefore come through a number of stages to reach is current freedom of spiritual thought and practice. It began as hunter gatherers treating the land and the elements as living beings able to influence our lives and then as we moved into cities and towns, theses beliefs came with us and were a part of everyday life for the ancient Greeks and Romans, then we passed through nearly 2000 years of Christian inspired dark ages to finally emerge as true pagans and spiritual beings ready to merge with the kaleidoscopic spiritual awakening of the 21st century and the first steps the human race is taking to its own eventual transcendence to the realm of gods.
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