THE
ARCANE
ARCHIVE

a cache of usenet and other text files pertaining
to occult, mystical, and spiritual subjects.


TOP | RELIGION | SATANISM

Witches are Satanists

To: alt.magick.tyagi,alt.satanism,alt.religion.all-worlds,alt.pagan
From: tyagI@houseofkaos.Abyss.coM (tyagi mordred nagasiva)
Subject: Witches are Satanists (Was Re: are Wiccans, Satanists?)
Date: 30 Sep 1994 01:24:53 GMT

joe 13 <71420.504@CompuServe.COM| writes:

|aradia  gospel of the witches   tells how the daughter of satan/lucifer
|and diana went to earth to teach witches how to gain their freedom.
|"and ye shall be naked in these rites as a sign of this freedom"

Now this is VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION.  Consider it carefully, Witches.
We are talking now about a Mr. Charles Godfrey Leland (1824-1903), who
was the author of _Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches_, at least
partial inspiration for 'The Charge of the Goddess'.  Let me quote 
something of your favorite writers to you:

Margot Adler has this to say:

"The controversy that surrounds Leland concerns his meeting with a woman
named Maddalena who claimed descent from an old Witch family.  She brought
Leland what she said was the local Witches book, a mixture of myths and
spells.  Leland called it a translation of an early or late Latin work.  
The myths tell of Diana (or Tana), Queen of the Witches, and two different
versions of her union with Lucifer, the sun.  From this union was born a
daughter, Aradia, who was to go to earth as the messiah of the Witches and
teach the arts of Witchcraft to oppressed humanity.  Leland wrote that this
was a sacred gospel of the Old Religion (*la Vecchia Religione*).  He said
this religion still prevailed in entire villages in the Romagna in Italy.

"...., clearly there are elements from 'Aradia' in some of the rites of
modern Wicca.  Several beautiful stanzas from 'Aradia' appear little
changed in the rite known as 'The Charge of the Goddess.'  In 'Aradia'
this appears as follows:

	'Now when Aradia had been taught to work all witchcraft,
	 how to destroy the evil race (of oppressors), she
	 (imparted it to her pupils) and said unto them:

		"When I shall have departed from this world,
		 Whenever you have need of anything,
		 Once in the month, and when the moon is full,
		 Ye shall assemble in some desert place
		 Or in a forest all together join
		 To adore the potent spirit of your Queen
		 My mother, great *Diana*.  She who fain
		 Would learn all sorcery yet has not won
		 Its deepest secrets, them my mother will
		 Teach her, in truth all things as yet unknown.
		 And ye shall all be freed from slavery,
		 And so ye shall be free in everything;
		 And as a sign that ye are truly free,
		 Ye shall be naked in your rites, both men
		 And women also: this shall last until
		 The last of your oppressors shall be dead...."'

"...

"... it is in 'Aradia', and in Leland's other books, that the phrase
'*la Vecchia Religione*' -- the Old Religion -- appears.  And that
is where the term, now applied so often in the Wicca religion, may
have originated.  And 'Aradia's importance in helping to create the
revival cannot be stressed enough.  In contrast to Murray, Leland as
far back as the 1890's said that women were given an equal, perhaps
superior, place in the religion.  He wrote that whenever 'there is
a period of radical intellectual rebellion, against long-established
conservatism, hierarchy, and the like, there is always an effort to
regard woman as the fully equal, which means superior sex.'  And he
noted that in Witchcraft, 'it is the female who is the primitive
principle.'  Leland's book is most popular with the feminist groups
in the Craft, partly because the myth of the creation of Aradia
and Diana places the feminine principle first and partly because the
feminist Witches -- the most political Crafters -- are very sympathetic
to the idea of a link between Witches and oppressed peoples.  In the
appendix to 'Aradia', Leland wrote:

	'The perception of this {tyranny} drove vast numbers
	 of the discontented into rebellion, and as they could
	 not prevail by open warfare, they took their hatred
	 out in the form of secret anarchy, which was, however,
	 intimately blended with superstition and fragments of
	 old tradition.  Prominent in this, and naturally enough,
	 was the worship of *Diana* the protectress.... The
	 result of it all was a vast development of rebels,
	 outcasts, and all the discontented, who adopted
	 witchcraft or sorcery for a religion, and wizards as
	 their priests.'"

_Drawing Down the Moon_, by Margot Adler, pp. 57-9.
___________________________________________________

And if you still don't think that Witches are linked to Lucifer
directly, have this bit from Doreen Valiente for an encore:

"Yet the cosmology of 'Aradia', this fragmentary collection of spells
and stories received from illiterate Italian peasant women, is of
this ancient matriarchal kind.  Leland says of it:

	'To all who are interested in this subject of woman's
	 influence and capacity, this Evangel of the Witches
	 will be of value as showing that there have been
	 strange thinkers who regarded creation as a feminine
	 development or parthenogenesis from which the masculine
	 principle was born.  Lucifer, or Light, lay hidden in
	 the darkness of Diana, as heat is hidden in ice.  But
	 the regenerator or Messiah of this strange doctrine
	 is a woman - ARADIA, though the two, mother and daughter,
	 are confused or reflected in the different tales, even
	 as *Jahveh* is confused with the *Elohim*.'

"...

"This, then, is the doctrine of the [Gospel of the Witches]: 'Diana
was the first created before all creation: in her were all things; out
of herself, the first darkness, she divided herself; into darkness
and light she was divided.  Lucifer, her brother and son, herself and
her other half, was the light'.  (This is a concept paralleled by some
of the religious thought of the East, particularly that of the religion
of Shiva and Shakti, from which the Tantric beliefs and practices arise.)"

_The ABC's of Witchcraft Past and Present_, by Doreen Valiente, pp. 30-1.
_________________________________________________________________________

There is more about Lucifer detailed within those pages, about his Fall
(yes, just like the Christian concept, only retold in terms of
cosmologic principles).  I suggest to you that Lucifer is not the only
commonality that Witchcraft has with Satanism - that there are others
here such as rebellion, resistance to oppression, and strident political 
adversarialism which constitutes the heart of all satanic practice.

As I'm now going to be following the strands of these two books in review
of Satanism and Neopaganism, I look forward to response to these quotes
and argument as to why this doesn't constitute a rather direct link between
the two religious movements.

Your servant with a wicced smile,

tyagi the evil wiccan 
tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss.com
The Order of K@s Under Satan (TOKUS)

The Arcane Archive is copyright by the authors cited.
Send comments to the Arcane Archivist: tyaginator@arcane-archive.org.

Did you like what you read here? Find it useful?
Then please click on the Paypal Secure Server logo and make a small
donation to the site maintainer for the creation and upkeep of this site.

The ARCANE ARCHIVE is a large domain,
organized into a number of sub-directories,
each dealing with a different branch of
religion, mysticism, occultism, or esoteric knowledge.
Here are the major ARCANE ARCHIVE directories you can visit:
interdisciplinary: geometry, natural proportion, ratio, archaeoastronomy
mysticism: enlightenment, self-realization, trance, meditation, consciousness
occultism: divination, hermeticism, amulets, sigils, magick, witchcraft, spells
religion: buddhism, christianity, hinduism, islam, judaism, taoism, wicca, voodoo
societies and fraternal orders: freemasonry, golden dawn, rosicrucians, etc.

SEARCH THE ARCANE ARCHIVE

There are thousands of web pages at the ARCANE ARCHIVE. You can use ATOMZ.COM
to search for a single word (like witchcraft, hoodoo, pagan, or magic) or an
exact phrase (like Kwan Yin, golden ratio, or book of shadows):

Search For:
Match:  Any word All words Exact phrase

OTHER ESOTERIC AND OCCULT SITES OF INTEREST

Southern Spirits: 19th and 20th century accounts of hoodoo, including slave narratives & interviews
Hoodoo in Theory and Practice by cat yronwode: an introduction to African-American rootwork
Lucky W Amulet Archive by cat yronwode: an online museum of worldwide talismans and charms
Sacred Sex: essays and articles on tantra yoga, neo-tantra, karezza, sex magic, and sex worship
Sacred Landscape: essays and articles on archaeoastronomy, sacred architecture, and sacred geometry
Lucky Mojo Forum: practitioners answer queries on conjure; sponsored by the Lucky Mojo Curio Co.
Herb Magic: illustrated descriptions of magic herbs with free spells, recipes, and an ordering option
Association of Independent Readers and Rootworkers: ethical diviners and hoodoo spell-casters
Freemasonry for Women by cat yronwode: a history of mixed-gender Freemasonic lodges
Missionary Independent Spiritual Church: spirit-led, inter-faith, the Smallest Church in the World
Satan Service Org: an archive presenting the theory, practice, and history of Satanism and Satanists
Gospel of Satan: the story of Jesus and the angels, from the perspective of the God of this World
Lucky Mojo Usenet FAQ Archive: FAQs and REFs for occult and magical usenet newsgroups
Candles and Curios: essays and articles on traditional African American conjure and folk magic
Aleister Crowley Text Archive: a multitude of texts by an early 20th century ceremonial occultist
Spiritual Spells: lessons in folk magic and spell casting from an eclectic Wiccan perspective
The Mystic Tea Room: divination by reading tea-leaves, with a museum of antique fortune telling cups
Yronwode Institution for the Preservation and Popularization of Indigenous Ethnomagicology
Yronwode Home: personal pages of catherine yronwode and nagasiva yronwode, magical archivists
Lucky Mojo Magic Spells Archives: love spells, money spells, luck spells, protection spells, etc.
      Free Love Spell Archive: love spells, attraction spells, sex magick, romance spells, and lust spells
      Free Money Spell Archive: money spells, prosperity spells, and wealth spells for job and business
      Free Protection Spell Archive: protection spells against witchcraft, jinxes, hexes, and the evil eye
      Free Gambling Luck Spell Archive: lucky gambling spells for the lottery, casinos, and races