You make some very relevant points in this video, Jack. We couldn't view the past through modern eyes/opinions. Gardner was born in 1887 - the Victorian era. His views and writings reflect to era he was brought up in. This doesn't justify his views - it just is. Yes, he was flawed (who isn't?). I wonder what his views would be if he was living in today's world.
Gerald was not some paragon of virtue, not a prophet, not the messiah (HaVNB). He worked some shit out that clearly seems to work and passed it on and it continues to work. No more, no less. I think it's worth pointing out that as much as Gerald travelled the world, he was not a 'worldly' man - His interactions were exclusively from a upper middle class white man visiting these places and there's an intrinsic separation resulting from that. I (at least like to) believe that it would have only taken one or two actual interactions with someone gay to make Gardner go 'Oh, they're just people'. P.S. - The purple lighting switches rapidly between scary demon eyes to absolutely *fire* eyeshadow and I'm all for it either way
Yup, Gerald was a product of his upper middle class times. He would very likely have completely different views had he been born later or even much earlier (cf King James VI & I who had openly gay relationships in the seventeenth century). My father, the product of a 1930s British public school education, had similar views though would never be impolite or inhospitable. Gerald didn't mix in the sort of circles where it was acceptable to be openly gay during his lifetime; in many ways he was a conventional man of his times. His works aren't scripture and we don't have to take his words as gospel. He said himself that he took fragments and made sense of them, filled them out and made them into a system that worked. Doreen further changed them and openly disagreed with Gerard about things. (I was lucky enough to hear her in person in Croydon when she poo-pood the 'threesome law'.) As society changes, so do the products of that society, including religion. Christianity of today is totally unlike the Christianity of the first century AD and there's no reason for Wica to remain as Gerald left it. He himself was constantly changing things; virtually every European line descended from one of his HPSs has a different BoS or a different way of doing certain things. The people of the Wica have never been static, never done everything the same but have learned and changed.
Thanks for sharing your story. I am not familiar with modern magic but as a gay man I appreciate beautiful men as it is the personification of the divine. 🙏❤️❤️❤️
I’m not sure that the idea that homophobia was part of the zeitgeist at the time actually was a good excuse. Britain had just been through WW2, where gay culture was quite visible in the form of the drag artists who were part of entertainment for the troops, and there was a comedy show called “Round the Horne” which had two gay characters called Julian and Sandy who spoke Polari. I went to a talk by Peter Tatchell about the first Pride March in London in 1972. He said that a third of the people were indifferent, a third were actively hostile, and a third were cheering the LGBT+ people. Though it must be said that this was after the cultural revolution that was the 1960s. I grew up in the 1980s and most men seemed to be homophobic-but women, not so much. So I think the idea that homophobia was the norm at the time needs to be made a bit more complex. It was probably similar to what Peter Tatchell said: 1/3 hostile, 1/3 indifferent, 1/3 approving. That said, I totally agree with you that people are complex and they make bad choices and have bad opinions but that doesn’t make them 100% bad. And agreed that Wicca is not solely the product of any single person.
Jack, you might not fancy yourself a real, RU-vid content creator, but your subscribers here are bound to disagree :P Your thoughts and opinions are interesting way beyond the point of deserving good audio to carry them to folks' ears. Your message should be heard! My vote -- grab a Yeti mic (not a big investment) and be done with it.
I am super interested in this, but your audio is poor and I can't hear. My phone is on full blast. I'll try listening later on my laptop with headphones.
I intellectually disagree with most of your videos, but I still enjoy them. It’s the “I almost got a philosophy major and I almost joined the debate team, but I was afraid to because I was very young and it was a dude-fest” part of me I guess. There are definitely objectively bad dudes (Jeffrey Dahmer comes to mind) and you’re very cute, so please stay safe out there. Edward Carpenter is someone I think you might want to look into, if you’re not familiar with his work already. He was also a direct (and credited) influence on Gerald Gardner. I love him. I love that Gardner quote too though, lol.
I've had similar issues but my old plug in noise cancelling headphones connected to my laptop and turned up to 100% means it sounds like normal volume.
Gutted about Gardner. Very old fashioned views, by the sounds of it. Down with bigotry, hatred, ignorance, small mindedness, unfairness and similar. Bah 😤💩
He also wanted his priestesses to be "cat and belled" and faked some of his credentials and took credit for a lot of Doreen's work. But that doesn't mean we have to throw out all his stuff
