Out Of The Shadows, An Exploration of Dark Paganism & Magick Options

I was emailed reguarding a post on The Orical (found @ www.onewitch.com) about this book. It seems to cover an aspect of Paganism that many consider taboo. I hope to aquire this book soon. You can find more info on it at http://www.waningmoon.com/book/ (IMG:style_emoticons/default/yes.gif)

Christianity by the way (and I never said it was), was not spread by torture and genocide. Torture and persucution came around 400 years after the death of the man Jesus, perfected under the auspisces of the Roman church, again well documented for those willing to read

I'd like to see which documents you speak of. For many a college professor claim any "documents" from that period are inaccurate due to being written and re-written from various perspectives over hunders of years and that about 90% of those existing documents are replicas made by people who wrote down their interpritation of another replica document and the other 10% is incomplete due to ware and tare that 2000 years can bring on paper. Plus the celts didn't write things down so what was written about the celts was not done so by celtic sources. See when the Roman empire fell this lead to a period of unrest called the dark ages. In this period of time there were few libraries and most records were kept by secular christians trying to apply god to the past 10000 years of human history.

As to the old ways, the knowledge is passed down from generation to generation, in the old tongue, through the female line.

Uh huh. You mean they weren't burned at the stake and survived the inquisitions and crusades and all that? Most "celtic" culture has been lost to time and what exists today does under the interpritations of people like Gardner, who really just made educated guesses as to how the celts PROBABLY lived and had little actual evidence to support their claims about celtic culture. A prime example is stonehindge. There is little evidence the celts even touched these monoliths, made before the bronze age, long before any clets were in Europe! Yet I saw a show on PBS about a group of modern "druids" who regularly carry out their "celtic" religion (mostly sabbats and esbats) dispite the fact no celts even used stonehindge. This is just an example of how people misidentify with celtic peoples and form their own ideas that may or may not be accurate. This leads me to believe that while you may believe you are following a celtic tradition I highly doubt it actually how the ancient celts lived. Especially since most knowledge we have is based on christian and roman documentation, not celtic sources.

or for that matter by presenting more fact than mere conjecture

So now that we can see the forest full of trees (and the savages running naked), have you anything to offer that isn't conjecture?

I should probably say this now, seeing as how you might not be too happy at the moment, but I mean no disrespect to your beliefs. You can believe anything you like and that is a good thing. My stance is that I don't believe in a true celtic culture existing today and that if what you are saying is that you are a part of a true celtic culture I would like to see the evidence in support of this.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/offtopic.gif) sorry just had to post....