Pagans Across the Pond

[Duder]

Native Americans and Old World pagans share some remarkable similarities in their mythologies and spiritual insights. For example, Indians honor two great spiritual figures, male and female. The Lakota Sioux call them Tunkasila and Maca - Grandfather and Grandmother. In the same way, Wiccans revere the Goddess and the God using a number of different names. Both Indians and Wiccans see these two as aspects of One diety - Wakan Tanka to the Lakota.

Both Indians and Old World pagans emphasize the importance of the circle, which is marked with the four cardinal directions - each of which has a special signifigance. The cardinal points on the wheel represent the four elements of fire, earth, air and water. They also represent important human qualities, such as extroversion, introversion, emotion and logic, and they are the 'sitting places' of special powers or dieties that represent and foster these qualities.

Indians sit on this Medicine Wheel when they pray in their sweat lodges, just as Wiccans sit, stand or dance on the Circle in their ceremonies. For just as the whole universe is a circle, so human life is a circle - and both cultures acknowledge this with the saying "as above, so below".

I wonder what accounts for this similarity, in cultures that are not supposed to have met until Columbian times? Answers that occur to me are:

1. It is pure coincidence.

2. The spiritual systems of Native Americans and Old-World pagans developed independantly of each other, but both are rooted in psychological archetypes that are the same the world over.

3. When people migrated from the Old World to the New at the end of the last ice age, they brought their Old World spirituality with them.

4. There was commerce between the Old World and America before Columbus, but history does not remember it.

5. Satan the devil deceived Old World Pagans and Native Americans with the same lies.

Thoughts?

[technomage]

Well, one quick response, but I'm afraid that it fits none of the categories that you mention.

Yes, there are some (not all, not even most) Native American cultures that have "Grandmother / Grandfather" archetypes, but these are not remotely the same "function" as within Wicca. The Lakotah do indeed have "Tunkasila and Maca," but these are not the central "spirits" in Lakotah worship. Lakotah tend towards pantheism, where each individual thing has its own spirit: while the Ancestors are important, it is these "individual spirits" that the pre-Christian Lakotah deal with on a daily basis.

Additionally, Wicca is not "Old Europe Paganism." Old World Paganism (henceforth OWP) was a discrete, tribal form of polytheism. The OWPs had varying numbers of Gods, and would either worship these Gods as their needs dictated, or would primarily worship one "patron," and honor the other Gods of that pantheon as the ritual circumstances dictate.

Wicca is a relatively modern movement (started sometime in 1947-1949). While early Wiccan authors claimed that the religion was a descendant of European Pan-Paganism, these historical claims have been almost entirely discarded by most Wiccans.

I plan on discussing the history of Wicca, and comparing it to the "History Myth," at a later point, and I invite you to participate in that discussion. Heck, if you can set some of it to rhyme, I think that would qualify you to succeed LakeGeorgeMan as "TWeb Unofficial Bard."

[Duder]

Well, one quick response, but I'm afraid that it fits none of the categories that you mention.

Yes, there are some (not all, not even most) Native American cultures that have "Grandmother / Grandfather" archetypes, but these are not remotely the same "function" as within Wicca. The Lakotah do indeed have "Tunkasila and Maca," but these are not the central "spirits" in Lakotah worship. Lakotah tend towards pantheism, where each individual thing has its own spirit: while the Ancestors are important, it is these "individual spirits" that the pre-Christian Lakotah deal with on a daily basis.

Additionally, Wicca is not "Old Europe Paganism." Old World Paganism (henceforth OWP) was a discrete, tribal form of polytheism. The OWPs had varying numbers of Gods, and would either worship these Gods as their needs dictated, or would primarily worship one "patron," and honor the other Gods of that pantheon as the ritual circumstances dictate.

Wicca is a relatively modern movement (started sometime in 1947-1949). While early Wiccan authors claimed that the religion was a descendant of European Pan-Paganism, these historical claims have been almost entirely discarded by most Wiccans.

I plan on discussing the history of Wicca, and comparing it to the "History Myth," at a later point, and I invite you to participate in that discussion. Heck, if you can set some of it to rhyme, I think that would qualify you to succeed LakeGeorgeMan as "TWeb Unofficial Bard."

Justin -

I will look forward to your history of Wicca thread.

As someone who has been a participant in both Wiccan and Lakota ceremony, I could argue with the way you've characterized the disimilarities between the two ways of worshipping. Admittedly, I've had far more experience with the Lakota that with the Wiccan - so it's possible I don't understand Wicca as well as you do. But I have noticed similarities between the two systems that cause me to look for a strong linkage between them.

. . . but I'll wait for your new thread!

Thanks,

Duder

AKA Sevenhearts to the Lakotas
AKA Windraven to the Wiccans
AKA Matt in the wisasu culture!