Part 2 - Review of Modern Witchcraft with the Greek Gods: History, Insights & Magickal Practice by Jason Mankey & Astrea Taylor

Taylor’s use of Icarus is a good example for classicists studying how Pagans and Witches appropriate Greek myths in creating their religions.

Continuing where I left off, I pick up on page 3, still within the book's introduction. Taylor attempts to argue that magick (a modern occult term different from magic) is present in the ancient Greek world – her main objective, it seems, is to use Greek myth and literature to legitimize the use of Greek Gods in conjunction with Modern Magick. While such a justification is not warranted since whatever is normative and accepted within Modern Witchcraft does not need outside validation. The reason the ancient Greeks are invoked (besides being the theme of the book) is, I think, an attempt to apply the authoritative nature that ancient sources have in Pagan/Witch communities to their religious practices.

Once more, I remind my readers what classicist Sarah Iles Johnston, in Whose Gods are These? A Classicist Looks at Neopaganism has said:

…neopagans base their practices and systems of belief not only on the ancient sources but also, and even more directly, on the work of those who study the ancient sources – that is, they create their religions by drawing upon on the scholarship that we produce.

This review contributes towards understanding how Pagans and witches use and misuse academia to create their religions and how Pagan/witch authors present history in their work.

Taylor argues that the Greek myths provide examples of Gods punishing mortals for their excessive pride but never for witchcraft or magick. Taylor points to the myth of Icarus, writing:

Although Greek myths document the gods punishing people for being excessively prideful, it was never for Witchcraft or magick. One of the best-known ancient Greek stories of pride and punishment was the story of Icarus. His father created wax wings for him, which allowed him to fly through the air just like a god, or so he thought. As Icarus started to fly toward the sun, the heat melted his wings, causing him to fall into the sea and perish. His wings weren't magickal, though--they were a technological invention. The fault lay in his thinking that he was immortal and as powerful as a god, a belief that most Witches do not adhere to. (Page 3)

The myth of Icarus is an excellent example of the consequences of hubris, the excessive pride or self-confidence that often leads to a person's downfall. The myth, however, does not feature any God who punishes Icarus. Icarus’ downfall is the result of his own actions. His hubris and lack of phronesis (φρόνησῐς) practical wisdom led to his demise. Myths that involve the Gods directly punishing a mortal for their hubris are numerous, but Icarus is not one of them. Why was Icarus chosen?

René Milot

Beyond a surface reading, this myth has deeper esoteric meanings; one only needs to apply a bit of Platonism to it to understand those meanings.  If you want to consult the ancients themselves on this myth, there is a good exegesis recorded by Lucian; he writes:

“…Icarus was governed by youth and recklessness (νεότητι καὶ ἀτασθαλίῃ), and sought not the attainable but let his mind carry him into the zenith, he came short of truth and defected from reason and was precipitated into a sea of unfathomable perplexities.” Lucian, Astrology

Taylor identifies Icarus’s fault as him “thinking that he was immortal and as powerful as a god.” This appears to be her interpretation as I cannot find this exegesis from primary sources I have read; in the quote, I provided from Lucian, there is no mention of Icarus thinking he was “immortal and as powerful as a god.” Please let me know if anyone knows a primary source that makes this claim.

The sources I have read don’t align with Taylor’s understanding and retelling. Everyone has their understanding when reading myths, that is fine, but to retell a myth incorrectly and apply a personal exegesis that diverges from Greek sources, while drawing on those sources is an issue. Witches reading this book will no doubt repeat Taylor's arguments in their own discourse, leading to a domino effect of misunderstandings concerning the original primary source and culture from which the myth came.

Taylor’s use of Icarus is a good example for classicists studying how Pagans and Witches appropriate primary sources / Greek myth in creating their religions and how they conceive of their religions in relationship to ancient models. Taylor continues in her argument, justifying magickal practices with Greek examples.

Likewise, in Greek myth and fiction, there's no evidence of excessive pride on the part of Witches and magicians such as Circe, Calypso, Perseus, Aeetes, Medea, Agamede, and Simaetha. Numerous Greek historical records indicate that magick was considered commonplace.

Taylor is on to something important here but comes to the wrong conclusions. Taylor writes, "in Greek myth and fiction, there's no evidence of excessive pride on the part of Witches and magicians.” That is because witches and magicians don’t fit well into myth, so you will hardly see them in myth. Discussing the difference between a mantis (seer) and magicians, Sarah Iles Johnston writes:

“…it is interesting to note that one way in which the mantis differed from the healer and the magic worker was that he was much more firmly incorporated into Greek myth than they were. Outside of a few divine or semi-divine figures such as Medea, Circe and the very shadowy Dactyls, we scarcely hear of anyone who can even provisionally be called a magician in Greek myth…Why are manteis and their activities central to myth in a way that healers and magic-workers are not? We could take our cue from the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski and suggest that, if myth is typically a way of ruminating about the extraordinary, then manteis must have been extraordinary in some fashion that healers and magic-workers were not.

But if so, their extraordinariness certainly cannot lie in any perception that they were unreal or uncommon – the mantic arts were at least as common in historical Greece as healing and more common than the sorts of magic we hear about in myth. Nor can we argue that the mantic arts were essentially more extraordinary than the magical ones (much less the healing ones) – most mantic rituals, indeed, were quite familiar to the average person.

Rather, I would offer a modified Malinowskian response. On the one hand, even after the rise of medicine as a profession during the early Hellenistic period, quotidian healing, at least, could be mastered by almost anyone – and after all, every household needed someone with knowledge of at least elementary techniques. Few of these elementary techniques, moreover, necessarily involved the gods – in other words, they did not carry humans outside of their own world. Most healing was no more likely to prompt elaborate mythic thinking, therefore, than were other everyday acts such as farming and fishing. Magic-workers, on the other hand, were arguably too extraordinary to fit easily within the world of myth – they claimed not only to be in contact with the divine (as did manteis), but to be able to affect it. Greek myth characteristically focuses on exactly the opposite problem – how the gods affect humans and what constitutes the proper human response to being affected. Indeed, the few magical figures of myth that I mentioned above – Circe, Medea and the Dactyls – qualify as gods, not humans, and are presented in myth as being able to affect humans very deleteriously indeed. (Ancient Greek Divination, pages 113-4).

This neatly answers Taylor’s observation that there is a lack of references to witches in myth, but it is not because witches don’t provide good examples of hubris. Johnston also provides much-needed context about the witches that Taylor names, such as Circe and Medea. Circe is a Goddess. Medea is the niece of Circe and the granddaughter of Helios. Their role in myth is an extension of divine interactions with mortals, and as such don’t play by mortal rules. This is another example of how Taylor appropriates figures from Greek myth, turning them into examples that a modern witch should/could relate to and point to in Greek myth as their ancient counterparts, which they are not.

Lastly, Taylor said that most witches don’t adhere to the idea that they are powerful as a god, which was Icarus’ downfall, yet she points to the divine and semi-divine figures in myth as the modern witches’ predecessors of some kind. Circe, a Goddess, somehow justifies a mortal doing magick (which is different from magic, read part 1 of the review). That is my takeaway from Taylor’s logic here.  How are you similar to a Goddess exactly? How is this not hubris exactly to put yourself in the same category as Circe or Medea? If not hubris, in my view, it’s just silly to make that kind of connection to justify practices in a religious tradition independent from the world and religious landscape in which Greek myth is properly understood.

Doing magick in Modern Witchcraft does not need ancient examples for justification; if witches “work with” Gods, then that is what witches in Modern Witchcraft just do; no qualifications are needed. I find the whole process of appropriating Greek myth in this situation, as a scholar, interesting, but as a Greek, it’s creepy.