(^172) A Wiccan Bible
it was, it typically noted a leader or elder. Most of the printed material there was to
read was academic, although there was a bit of Dr. Leo Martello, Sybil Leek, and the
now infamous newsletters from New York. I think I remember reading material by
Herman Slater, but to be honest I can not be sure. Published books were hard to come
by and frankly, the majority of what I read was illegally photocopied.
While in the U.S. Military, I received dog tags that said ‘No Preference’ for my
religion. I think it might have been abbreviated. I mentioned this to my Drill Sergeant
and explained that I indeed had a preference. He sent me to the chaplain who asked
me what I believed. I explained my belief system; he looked it up in a military manual,
and then explained that I was Wiccan. Though I argued the point, thinking the word
was just a bit too pompous for this simple Pagan, he insisted that it was the best thing
the military had for my dog tags, so I reluctantly accepted.
When I returned to the United States, I found a group of folk in my home town
called the Pagan Community Council of Central Ohio. I attended their meetings and
talked with them. Although there were a few folk following Native American and a
couple following Northern European Pagan paths, the great majority claimed to be
Celtic Wiccans. It seemed everywhere I went the only thing that outnumbered the
percent of Pagans reportedly following a Celtic path was the percentage of shopping
mall goers who wore Don Johnson-style baggy pants. The Celts were indeed the peak
of fashion.
So I looked into what Celtic lore I could find and found a great difference between
the books being written for Pagans and the books being written for historic value. For
the most part, everything in the books written for Pagans was written as if the author
was there to witness the event first hand. The straw that broke the camel’s back was
when I read that the ancient Celts used to make corn husk dolls as part of their reli-
gious celebrations. Now, I know the word corn was a European term used to describe
many different grains and not the New World discovery of maze (the ancestor of mod-
ern corn), but the author was rather specific that these dolls were made from corn
husks. There were even a few diagrams and I’ve got to tell you, if it was wheat husks
that author was talking about, it was some mighty large wheat those ancient Celts were
a growing.
In 1993, I opened a Pagan shop in Ohio and set about the task of stocking the
shelves with books that I thought were applicable. Unfortunately, those books were
hard to find and did not sell well. The Celtic craze had yet to die out, and being Celtic
Wiccan was becoming more and more fashionable. To stay in business, I begun offer-
ing my customers what they wanted, and I bit my lip to fight back comments on the
whole idea that Wicca is an ancient Celtic religion.
Then someone asked me the question that led to Chapter 9. The research that I
conducted for that chapter led to the following information, and I discovered the so-
called Eight Sabbats of the Wiccan religion are actually modern constructs. The an-
cient Celts did not celebrate four quarter days and four cross quarter days, they
celebrated what can best be described as this, that, and the other thing. You see, those
folk whom we typically call the Celts were so incredibly diverse, the only thing they had
in common is that among their many tribes, each wrote down just about nothing.
r WB Chap 10.p65 172 7/11/2003, 5:54 PM
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