Take what you read on the Web with a grain of salt! This article, for example, "The Scholars and the Goddess," is as full of holes as a piece of Swiss Cheese. Unfortunately, The Atlantic Monthly risked their reputation by publishing it. The gist of the article is that the Goddess Movement is bogus. The author tries to prove her point by quoting (inappropriately in many cases) from the work of current archaeologists. Here's just one of her many blatant errors: she says, and I quote, "Briggs also discovered that none of the accused witches who were found guilty and put to death [by the Inquisition] had been charged specifically with practicing a pagan religion." Now the author of this article admits that there were "in the neighborhood" of 40,000 executions of "witches" by the Inquisition -- and by some estimates there were many more. It's absolutely preposterous to suppose that Briggs had the records of even a small fraction of those executed, such that he could make a determination of the kind that Allen claims. And as I say, this is only one of the numerous inaccuracies riddling this unfortunate article.
Same bigotry that they trot out every so often. It's bullshit, of course. And they never mention the definitive work by Elizabeth Gould Davis.
ReplyDeleteI also notice the ass who wrote the article mentions that Pagan should be capitalized and then fails to do so. ugh.