One: It's very poorly written, with sentences that don't have much to do with each other and big stretches of weird dogma, and doesn't review the book so much as point out the most scare-tactic-type drama-mongering inside it. It makes so many assumptions of fact, regardless of whether it's actual fact or not, that I want to smack the author for bad scholarship.
Two: It conflates Modern Paganism with Nazis and communists* and conflates vegetarianism with Satanists, while seemingly not understanding what Satanism is, and doesnt' even acknowledge the fact that, historically, everything founded has a concurrent opposite value. Also, Alister Crowley was a devout Christian and a healer. He just happened to have decades if prophetic dreams.
Other problems I have:
- There seems to be very little awareness of history: The semi-incoherent rambling about God the Mother completely ignores the fact that Catholicism already worships Mary as close to the level of the Trinity and the historical research that suggests that before the Old Testament was solidified (and even the fact that it was-- by a council of people with agendas that are well-documented in the Middle Ages), there's evidence that Yahweh was one of several gods, and he was probably married. I won't even get into the idea that Christianity is riddled with branches and reformations, and that when it was first forming, it was concurrent with Mithraism, which seems to be the source of many of the symbolisms it uses.
- Feminism is not the same thing as Goddess Worship just because a lot of Goddess Worshipers happen to be Feminist and Feminists think women deserve equal rights. The barely-veiled woman-hating that comes across time and again makes it seem like the reviewer maybe needs to see a therapist about his mother.
- Occultism and Paganism are not the same just because some people practice both and sometimes topics overlap.
- Religions are not validated by other religions. Every religion that's ever lasted has been hated by at least one other. Christians were hated by Rome; please tell me how that is different than this? When there were only a few hundred or a few thousand Christians bucking the Roman system and getting in the way of the dominant religious practice, how was that different than this? And who is he to intimate that it won't last? Everything is based on something that came before and started by someone. Every religion has a place and a time where it started.
-Paganism is not one thing. It's not Jews-Christians-Muslims and then Everyone Else. It's thousands of other religions and views and philosophies, many of which do not even begin to work together.
- Do half the people commenting have anything to say for themselves? Even if they fully believe the passages they're quoting, it's bad discourse to throw out a quote without a frame for the argument at hand, or an interpretation of how it even matters to the problem being discussed.
- How is Wicca a scam? A scam requires something to be taken from you, generally mony and goods, while Wicca has no built-in habit of tithing, no multi-millionaire TV preachers, no megachurches... Check the definitions of words you use. Also, how does the existence of Salvation Army justify the things I just listed? Just because some branches are good doesn't mean they all are.
- It's out of date. Like, decades out. And people are gobbling it up. Isn't there anything new in that world?
- My brain. She cracks.
Silver Lining:
The very first comment pointed out that he's cracked. After that, for every spouter, there was someone willing to argue and try to get a straight answer. Amazing.
* Nazis were fascist, everyone under the control of the government and all wealth belonging to the leaders; Communists were about everyone being on the same level and all wealth belonging to the people, evenly, even if that's not how it played out. They're opposites, mostly, and people following one don't often like being confused for people following the other. Neither, that I can see or know of, has much to do with the founding of Paganism, except maybe that Hitler was obsessed with entirely misinformed and warped old religions and occultism, and neither was Of The Church. Communism wanted to abolish religion, whether pagan or Christian.
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