[MR] new vs. old

[Towey, Brian]

What a huge and fascinating topic!  

I agree about looking into local histories for converted sites and shrines.


As for ceremonies and cultural survivals, I will never forget trying to
explain to a Venezuelan Catholic friend, in Spanish, where the word Easter
came from.  There seems to be no word in Spanish for "goddess."  It was a
null concept.
"A god, only female," I explained.
"You don't mean the Virgin, do you?" he asked, looking dubious.
"No."
"I didn't think so."

To Eogan's long post on Estra, I would only add that the equinox never can
fall in April (easter-monadh), and Easter Sunday can never fall as early as
the equinox.  So any association between the two is probably fanciful.  The
true modern survival of Estra may not be in the Pascha at all, but in
Playboy.  Early Germanic descriptions of the goddess supposedly show her as
a voluptuous woman with the ears and tail of a rabbit.  <g>

For a better approach, take a look at a book called _The Goddess Obscured_.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0807067237  
It traces one particular grain goddess and the way her legends influenced
specific regional legends about certain saints and the BVM.  

There are ethno-historians and cultural anthropologists that have done good
work on cultural survivals.  The stuff that happens outside the church will
usually be more interesting than the stuff inside: jack-o-lanterns,
Christmas trees, Easter eggs, and other cultural trappings that are not
officially Christian.  Resist any impulse to generalize.  Local variations
in Christian practice are going to be the most fruitful.  A mountaintop
shrine here, a miracle tale there, burying a St. Joseph statue head down to
sell your house, and so on.  Get past the modern, homogenized Santa Claus to
the way Father Christmas was portrayed in a particular part of England, and
you may have something you can use.

Stuff you find on the Web is likely to be tertiary at best.  (Not to mention
the anti-Catholic comic books sold in fundie bookshops.)  Dig into the
library at a good seminary and look for books on Mithras, Cybele and Attis,
Sol Invictus, or the other mystery cults that were popular in pre-Christian
Rome.  I think you'll find that Christian scholars are very candid about
such things.  For example, the Tauraboleum, where initiates of a mystery
cult stood under an iron grate while a bull was slaughtered, may have
influenced Christian rhetoric about being washed in the blood of the Lamb.
But, you will also find whole volumes that draw a distinction between that
symbol and the water of baptism, which is never portrayed as blood, citing
primary sources at length.  How's your Greek?

You may also want to dig into Zoroastrian lore to see the roots of
demonology and angelology in 1st century Jewish and Christian thought.  The
vocabulary, and the ranks and names of the angels and devils, have their
roots there.  Of course, practicing Zoroastrians are scarce since the recent
genocide in Iran, but there is a good body of literature that is likely to
have the primary sources you want in footnotes.

Good luck!  

Charles Fleming
mka Brian Towey