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Moonhead -> RE: Pagan/Wiccan/Druidism Discussion (3/31/2014 6:53:52 AM)
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"In 1888, the Isis-Urania Temple was founded in London.[10] In contrast to the S.R.I.A. and Masonry,[11] women were allowed and welcome to participate in the Order in "perfect equality" with men. The Order was more of a philosophical and metaphysical teaching order in its early years. Other than certain rituals and meditations found in the Cipher manuscripts and developed further,[12] "magical practices" were generally not taught at the first temple."
(Your selective quoting of sources is still firing on all cylinders. [;)] I suppose comparing the number of named female movers and shakers on that wiki page to the male ones would have borne out my point rather than yours.)
Sadly, Crowley's the only source a lot of twats accept for hermeticism. He certainly went out of his way to make the Golden Dawn far more male than it had been before he infested it like an occult dose of the crabs, no mean feat for a group that started out as a more mystical imitation of masonry with a few token women mixed in, and his own group took this even further. Crowley and his followers and imitators (particularly Kenneth Grant and Austin Osman Spare) are now seen as the last word on the hermetic tradition by most who take that seriously, probably because despite the issues with his libers, he did at least manage to synthesise and condense huge amounts of existing lore into a more or less coherent structure. For most fans of chaos magic, the main appeal is that it's dumped all of this pseudo historical crap, so you can start off from using just one book of magic by Trevor Hine or Peter Carroll, rather than having to wade through a load of additional sources to puzzle out wtf half of Crowley, Abramelin or Solomon is on about. This is also, I suspect part of the appeal of Wicca: despite the amount of stuff Gardner lifted from Crowley, he put it into a new context, simplified its workings, and focussed it more on the individual witch (or coven)'s workings than an exaggerated respect for a tradition that's (largely) no less bullshit than Gardner's. In this respect the notion of witches compiling their own book of shadows sticking to what actually works for them was quite revolutionary, and an obvious precursor to chaos magic. (You could also make similar claims for the "Simon" Necronomicon, if only to wind up the more pompous kabbalists and Crowley groupies.)
With the possible exception of the Black Pullet, the provenance of all these books are uncertain, and a lot of the time probably horseshit. One of the nice things about Wicca is that at least it's obvious who faked the texts and when he did it.
What is inarguable, though, is the point you're dismissing. The hermetic tradition is often devoted to valorising itself by insisting on a deep magical tradition that's closed to the unitiated, obsessed with power structures and seniority, and infested with male control freaks from the birth of the Golden Dawn on down. ("Simon" takes these types to task with admirable humour and restraint in Dead Names.) Gerald Gardner found this far too male for his taste, and established his own tradition as a more female and fluffier alternative, in which role it has endured to this day. There are an awful lot more female wiccans than hermetic mages, put it that way, despite the efforts of twits like Alex Sanders.
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