The Old Religion

A Historical Look at Paganism

IN THE BEGINNING, God was a woman. That's a startling claim for almost anyone, I realize, because for the longest time we have been taught that God is male. In reality, of course, it is impossible to ascribe gender to diety with any accuracy -- diety is that which is beyond all understanding, and therefore transcends any human or even physical qualities we can ever hope to imagine. However, God was envisioned as female during the first 300,000 years of humankind's existence.

Why? Early people observed that women gave birth, although they had not yet made the connection between pregnancy and sexual intercourse. Women menstruated, gave birth, and nursed (fed) their children of their own bodies. This was wondrous, magical, miraculous, made more so by the observed fact that only women could do this. There was also something mystical about how their menstrual cycle, that painless monthly bleeding, seemed to co-incide almost perfectly with the phases of the moon. These same people also observed the way the Earth yielded its bounty and found many parallels between the fertility of the Earth and the fertility of women. Earth was regarded as our Great Mother and all things feminine were considered holy. When sexual intercourse was recognized as the means of procreation, it was considered a sacred act. Paganism (the pre-Christian nature religions) was the norm. Life was celebrated. Mother Earth, Mother Nature (terms we still use today) was worshipped along with the elements without which there could be no life: Earth (solid, mass), Air (breath), Fire (heat, warmth), and Water (lifeblood).

As early peoples watched the sky, they learned much by observing the patterns made by the stars at night. They saw metaphors in the phases of the moon as it waxed, shone fully, and waned. The lifespan of the moon, played out monthly (indeed, the word "month" comes from "moon") regularly demonstrated the universal trinity of beginning, middle, end; youth, prime, elder. After a while, the moon became the symbol of the Pagans' triple Goddess as Maiden, Mother, and Crone.

Each of the moon's four phases (waxing, full, waning, new/dark) lasts for seven days; this is where we get our 7-day week from. One full month, therefore, is exactly 28 days. Do the math. By the lunar calendar, a year has 13 months with one day left over. 28 days per month times 13 months equals a 364-day year, as compared to a solar year of 12 uneven months adding up to 365 days. This is where the fairy-tale "A year and a day" comes from. More on the significance of the number 13 later.

So what happened? Hard to say exactly. Somehow the concept of patriarchy was developed. I'll not waste bandwidth wondering how or why. No one seems to know why. The point is, it happened. And as it happened, the patriarchs decided that in order to achieve exclusive dominance, it was necessary to denigrate women and everything that went along with the organization of a matriarchal society. The procreative powers of women became envied, then feared (If they could create, could they not just as easily destroy?), then declared "evil" and "sinful." Soon, sex itself and the ecstasy of the orgasm were considered dirty and taboo, to be avoided at all costs. To support the patriarchal claim that men were superior to women, stories were invented and old myths were either condemned as proof that evil forces were at work against them or inverted to show males in the superior position. Men began to claim that the "female agenda" (sound familiar, folks? We still have a long way to go....) was to destroy males, and the tool of evil they used was their own sexuality. Anyone who spoke contrariwise was branded a heretic and faced unthinkable physical punishment. Anyone who practiced a religion other than the official one, especially if it was Pagan Goddess-worship, was branded as evil, the enemy, and subjected to grievous torture and execution. Years of repression led to forgetting by all but a persistent few who managed to preserve the old ways.

One of the Pagan religions is Wicca, a form of Witchcraft. This is perhaps one of the most slandered religions in the world. Perhaps a Witch is not a Christian, but that does not mean s/he is anti-Christian, any more than being Muslim is equal to being anti-Buddhist. Unique to the Christian tradition is declaring their mode of worship the one and only "right" way, declaring any variation to be wrong and evil, punishing and persecuting any who practice differently. In truth, Witchcraft is not evil, merely different from Christianity. Taoism is different from Christianity, but it is hardly evil. Unfortunately, all the negative myths generated about Witches are mostly still believed today.

Perhaps the most famous (and the most negative) reference to Witchcraft may be found in Ex. 22:18 from the King James Version of the Bible (KJV): "Thou shalt not suffer a Witch to live." This, unfortunately, is a mistranslation, and following is evidence supporting this claim:

In the KJV, the translation of Ex. 22:18 is "Thou shalt not suffer a Witch to live." The NIV (a contextual translation) has it as "Thou shalt not suffer a sorcerer to live." In the Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, it claims the word "witch" in Hebrew as:

"kashaph: a prim. root; prop. to whisper a spell, i.e. to inchant or practise magic:--sorcerer, (use) witch (-craft)."

However, in Webster's New World Hebrew Dictionary, the term "kashaph" can be broken into two parts: a root word "kash" meaning "straw, herb, reed" and "hapaleh" meaning "casting, bringing down, using." Combined, these words translate into "using/casting herbs/straws/reeds" i.e. one who uses herbs. So a better translation is "one who uses/has knowledge of herbs."

Hebrew is a contextual language. Words can have a positive or negative meaning based upon context. "Kashaph" is not the Hebrew term for "witch." The Hebrew term for Witchcraft is "keeshoof," meaning "sorcery" or "magic." "Mekhash" means "to bewitch," and the term for a female who practices magic is "mekhashah," whereas the term for a male is "mekhashef" (the "ah" and "ef" suffixes denote gender.) Note that none of these terms has a similar root to "kashaph." Therefore, the question is why did an unrelated term like "kashaph" get mistranslated as "witch"? Easy: Terms that denote "knowledge of herbs" have tended to get translated as "witchcraft" in theological writings for nearly 2000 years.

Now we get into the part about "living." Strong's lists that word in Ex. 22:18 as "chayah" [khaw-yaw'], meaning "to live, have life, remain alive, sustain life, live prosperously, live for ever, be quickened, be alive, be restored to life or health."

Again, let's look at Webster's New World. Since, "ch" does get changed into a "k" in Hebrew, we'll look up the word "khay" or "khayah." Webster's gives the definition as: "living, alive, living among, dwelling, being alive, being full of life."

According to the Hebrew, as backed up by a Hebrew dictionary, the phrase cited, Ex. 22:18, uses a negative context to refer to "one who uses herbs, dwelling/living among you" - i.e. "You shall not allow someone who uses herbs in a negative manner (i.e. a poisoner) to dwell among you." This is utterly unrelated to what the KJV says. If the original texts meant "witch" or "witchcraft," ("mekhashah" and "keeshoof") then why did it not use the Hebrew terms for "witch" or "witchcraft"? Instead, the terms it used, being unrelated to "witch" or "witchcraft," were then mistakenly (some would say deliberately) translated as "witch" and "witchcraft."

[In Memory of the Burning Times] [Never Again the Burning Times] [The Witches' Voice]

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