--- Rob Schaap <rws at comedu.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
> >not Wicca or the gods of Mt Olympus?
>
> Isn't Wicca essentially Christian in inspiration, anyway? As
> I understand
> it, it goes back to the 9th century or so, and was all about
> exorcising
> demons or keeping them without.
>
please god not the neopagans. I use the word god only because it is swearing. Wicca dates back to around 1953, when a British civil servant decided to discover a whole load of previously unknown traditional rites, add a lot of sexual imagery to attract the nuttier fringes of the nudist movement, to pretend that it had anything to do with the Celts (a group also in pretty dubious historical standing), and then to invent the motto "An it hurt none, do as ye will", which as well as rather mangling its Middle English, fits in with the tribal morality of precisely no European pre-Christian society.
The fact that we invented Wicca and the Yanks invented Scientology at about the same time says a lot about the comparative vigour of the two cultures. Given the choice, I think I'd rather have a bunch of crank psychotherapists grabbing money than a bunch of aging hippies farting about in the woods. But perhaps I am just more than usually bitter today.
In unrelated news, a wonderful still of John Prescott, our deputy prime minister, chinning a member of the Countryside Alliance is available here:
Sadly, this angle does not capture the glory of the victim's mullet, which is linked here, along with some glorious examples of the current saccharine bucolic sentimentality of the Telegraph. A letter-writer to the City freesheet Metro in support of Prescott suggested that "the haircut alone deserved some punishment".
cheeeeers
dd
===== ... in countries which do not enjoy Mediterranean sunshine idleness is more difficult, and a great public propaganda will be required to inaugurate it. -- Bertrand Russell
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