I was reading a site a few days ago which briefly mentioned Wicca and said that it was too new a path to be classed as traditional. Now I can understand in one sense as Wicca has only been around since the 50's but surely if you follow the original Gardnarian Wicca you are following a Traditional Wicca path. The site I was reading seemed to be saying no it's not in any way traditional.

So how old does a path have to be before it becomes traditional? how many generations of practice need to have gone past before someone can claim their path as a tradition? I know they are two slightly different questions there, but the second one stems from the fact that the path I walk probably isn't recognisable as any particular established path. I take bits from Hoodoo, and from more British paths and combine it with my own wisdom etc. So my path is unique, and as such it could in theory be called a tradition, though I am the only one walking this exact path. If I were to pass my Writings and beliefs onto my daughter and she followed them could she claim it as a trad or would it still not qualify?

Edited to add the following

Something else that cropped up in my mind was this, Even folk who walk the same path and follow the same tradition practice things slightly differently, because they add their own wisdom and knowledge (or idiocy in some cases thinking KC there ) to what they do. As such they are walking an individual path so can't strictly be said to be following a particular trad as it is not the same as the original.

Interesting question, especially as I was talking to some americans the other day; who count Gards and Lexie Wiccans (big W here folks, no self initiation) as the core of what they call BTW (British Traditonal Witchcraft), bizarrely apparently the 1734 trad falls under the same umbrella, who knew, heheh Cochrane would have been having apoplexy that anything that sprang from his teaching got lumped in with Gardners lot, but I suppose it's progress

I shall look forward to peoples comments on this

Heh.

As old as it needs to be.

If, say, the twentieth century isn't good enough for you, I'll make it the nineteenth century for the next person I tell about my trad. Or the eighteenth. Or whatever.

Yeah.. good question.. well when I think about the word traditional....I think something that has been followed/practised for a very long time, something that has been done generations before and passed down... so by taking bits out of other traditions to make your own path..isn't something I'd personally call traditional.. But if you chose to call it traditional I wouldn't have a problem with it.

Dear Herne.



Aye, you find that attitude becoming more and more common these days. The amusing thing about it is that none of those insisting Wicca is much too new to be considered a Tradition have thus far been able to prove that their Traditions is even as old as that .



I don't think there can be, or should be, a precise definition of what a Tradition is, but would suggest that your mention of 'generations' is the core of it. IMHO, a Tradition should be a body of teaching and practice passed down in predominantly oral tradition (whether or not it involves texts) from teachers to seekers. I'd suggest that maybe three generations should be the minimum there (generations in the sense of teacher to seeker patterns, not human lifespans, though length of time will reinforce it). That means that what is passed on to the third generation has sufficient merit in its own right that those receiving it pass it on, even though they weren't taught by the founders.



Surely we all walk our own paths within Traditions? If someone in a Pagan Tradition wasn't bringing their own wisdom & knowledge - or those other qualities you refer to - to what they did, then you could argue they weren't really walking the path in their own right but just going through the motions of what someone else had told them. A living Tradition, such as Wicca, remains effective over time because there's a creative tension between sticking with the tried & tested, and re-examining and developing techniques & practices. What's passed on is spirit and attitude as much as particular forms, techniques and beliefs. I presume that's also true in the other modern Pagan traditions?

BB,

John Macintyre

Dear Naimh,



I'm sure he would, but is it really surprising that with all the changes the community has undergone since those days, 1734 should now find it has rather a lot of common ground with what many call BTW?

When someone makes a huge fuss about how completely different their Pagan Tradition is from someone elses, you can almost take it for granted that they're uncomfortable about the similarities . And a bit of poking around will probably reveal significant cross-fertilisation involving both people and ideas.

And if all that's not thoroughly Traditional, then I don't know what is .

BB,

John Macintyre

Ok I may be being very dumb here but I would say most paths that people tread have traditions within them be it Beltaine with the May pole or honouring the water spirits as in well dressing. (they do this in the peak district) These are just two examples but I'm sure there more than 50 years old.
So in my opinion if you, say for example, celebrate the soltices you are following a tradition, I'm pretty sure people have been doing this for 1000's of years.
Now if your asking about actually handing YOUR practice down to another, as in a FAMILY OR COVEN TRADITION, well I can't answer that.
I do know that we had the Xmas tradition of my Nan would spend Xmas day with my aunt Dot and boxing day with us. That became a tradition, but it was within a lifetime so... was it realy a tradition?

From Wikipedia
The word tradition comes from the Latin word traditio which means "to hand down" or "to hand over." It is used in a number of ways in the English language:
1. A meme; beliefs or customs taught by one generation to the next, often orally. For example, we can speak of the tradition of sending birth announcements.
2. A set of customs or practices. For example, we can speak of Christmas traditions.
3. A broad religious movement made up of religious denominations or church bodies that have a common history, customs, culture, and, to some extent, body of teachings. For example, we can speak of Islam's Sufi tradition or Christianity's Lutheran tradition.

The way I read this something would become a tradition after it was handed down one generation.

bb
RamsHart

Well, looking at younger nations I would say about 3 generations of family settlement make a local tradition, so I guess anything more than that is generally a "long" to "very old" tradition.

Maybe a lot depends on the "age" of the practitioners who carry the tradition, in trust?

I've looked at the on-line Oxford English Dictionary.

Tradition seems a strange word, it is a noun, the name of the act of passing something. I can't quite get my head round that. I give you a book, we have a tradition.

I agree with RamsHart, a single transference makes a tradition.

The problems arises when those who have a series of traditions going back to 1957 look down on those who have only been passing things on since 1990.

My tradition is more traditional than your tradition .......


dav

umm, here's my two penneth.

I don't follow any particular path ie wiccan, asatru. So I don't suppose I have a traditional tradition ( ).

I don't think that it matters how old a particular has to be in order to be called traditional (it doesn't make it any less valid). All faiths are new at some point, I suppose the ones that stick around so long might be the ones that haven't been devalued or ceased to be valuable.

i don't expect my learning to be passed down to my son either - 'cos his life will be different to mine and what I have learned may be irrelevant to what he needs to understand.

fizzy

Now that last bit is mainly what brought me to start the topic. I personally see any ones path/tradition as being valid, it is a working path for them weather I would think it right for me or not. I wouldn't say what I practice is a tradition simply because it's my own path, but if my Daughter or someone else did follow my "teachings" then it would be classed as a trad.

I've never really been one to be worried about if I would be classed as a trad path witch or eclectic or what ever, I am just a witch walking my own path, doing what feel right to me when it feels right. simple as. But I do find all the sometimes heated discussions (read Bloodbaths) that abound around the issue of the validity of a trad.

In our family something has to be done three years running to become "family tradition" (e.g. drinking Baileys whilst making Christmas dinner).

Traditional to what?

Like someone here said, if you follow the original Gardnarian Wicca you are following a Traditional Wicca path.

At the same time. The worship, of say, Egyptian gods is not traditional to the British Isles. But when it was brought over here, it wasnt a new path with no tradition of its own, or does tradtition hinge on length of time in one place?

Personally I think tradition has two meanings when it comes to "paths".

1. Is it the original form of the path created. Orthodox.

2. Is it native? I dont think that anyone would consider the Worship of Egyptian gods to be traditional here... even if you do follow a "traditional" path.

Some interesting points raised here. In my opinion, there is a difference between traditonal and hereditary paths that is sometimes confused. Some hereditary paths have been handed down for many generations, and while it may have evolved over time to allow for changing circumstances, the core teachings have remained the same.

But, and this is again only my opinion, in a sense, it doesn't really matter how long any particular path has been around; in celebrating the sabbats, and in fact all accepted practices, we are all linking in to something far older. We may not be doing things in exactly the same way as our ancestors, but even in ancient times, practices must have varied widely from place to place. There were local gods, and holy places, and rituals which were peculiar to individual tribes or regions.Paganism has always been diverse, and this flexibility is one of its strengths.But I believe there is enough of a similarity there that if one of them were to show up at a modern circle, they would recognise what was going on. I'm not going to go in to who took which practice from which source, enough has been said on other threads about Gardner, Doreen Valiente, Alex Sanders, or the Golden Dawn, etc. The point is that there is a commonality that ties modern and ancient practice together, and as long as it works, does it matter how old it is?

Heya

LOL, this is a dozy of a question and I've enjoyed the responses!

In Academic circles at present there's a definition of the 'Western Esoteric Tradition' as deriving from around the time of the Renaissance, incorporating Alchemy, Hermetic Philosophy, Kabbalah, Tarot, Ritual, Freemasonary, etc. In order to 'define' an esoteric tradition certain components are taken as 'instrinsic', and one of those is "transmission", the very idea that a previous poster here has mentioned - that an important thing in esoteric traditions is tradition! That's to say, lineage and oral teachings, or certainly initiatory teachings that are transmitted in a particular way over time, hence a "tradition". It's all very self-defining, I feel.

One cynical but astute Mage once muttered to me that the only thing that defines a body of thought as 'traditional' Occultism, Paganism or Magick is that it includes an argument about how traditional it is. LOL.

Or, as a Witch once said to me twenty years ago, "I've met loads of traditional hereditary witches, but never their parents."

Silenus

A very important point that is often overlooked, particularly in the modern Heathen world.


dav

Good question!

I agree with Ramshart (and Herne agreeing with Ramshart) that a single transference could technically be classed as a tradition. I think the issue about abusing 'tradition' to make or validate any one particular path, especially if there is a degree of fabrication. As Selinius nicely demonstrated - meeting loads of hereditary witches but never their parents.

Herne, I think if your daughter followed 'your' path as you had shared it with her I think it would become your families 'tradition' as well as drawing from different traditions.

Q

but of course you forget that it is traditional that such things are passed from grandmother to grandson missing out the parent altogether.

I'll fetch my coat ...



dav

sorry John !

I have actually met a couple of the parents (and the Grandmother). It was rather funny. I resisted the urge to mention to the "hereditary" witches that I had met their family.