The Goddess Unmasked (review)
Jenny
jennyg@compuserve.com
Thu Mar 11 13:20:23 1999
Now, if this book actually did what it said it was going to do, I wouldn't be talking to you about it.  _The Goddess Unmasked_, by Philip Davis, claims to be the "first" review by a qualified scholar of the evidence for and against ancient Goddess-oriented cultures.  Not a topic that has a lot to do with the Burning Times...*p*Unfortunately, _The Goddess Unmasked_ suffers from a terrible case of false advertising.  First, it's not a scholarly survey of Goddess-worship.  It's an anti-feminist, anti-Pagan rant.  Davis, a conservative Christian professor of Religious Studies, believes that feminist spirituality is "self-evidently outlandish" and a "potent malignancy" that threats the lives, families, and welfare of innumerable people.  Overall the book is slightly more scholarly than _Wicca:  Satan's Little White Lie_.  But not much.*p*So what's this got to do with the Burning Times?  Well, Davis doesn't distinguish between feminist spirituality (Goddess-worship) and Wicca.  He also thinks that Wicca/Goddess-worship is pretty much synonymous with New Age philosophy, Theosophy, Gnosticism, Hermeticism, ceremonial magick, the Masons, the Rosicrucians, and a host of other groups.  Thus the vast majority of the book is dedicated to a stunningly superficial survey of literally dozens and dozens of "sources" for Wicca/Goddess worship.*p*And I do mean, "stunningly superficial".  Sir James Fraser's _The Golden Bough_ only receives two and a half paragraphs!  Maria Gimbutas' writings (all forty years' worth of them) earn her three pages.  You'd get far more detailed information from a decent encyclopedia -- and you wouldn't have to wade through the terrible bigotry that saturates this book.*p*Plus you'd get better research.  Davis knows *zip* about historical witchcraft.  His account of it is completely and utterly inaccurate (basically, the Inquisition made witchcraft up because they'd killed all the real heretics and needed something to do).  Part of the problem is that all of his sources (except one) are over twenty years old!  They all come from before the trial-record revolution of the late '70's and '80's;  they're all badly out-dated.  This kind of sloppiness is totally inescusable in a "scholarly" work, one written by a professor.  *p*Since he's discussing Wicca, one of the topics Davis addresses is the poor quality of Pagan research on the Burning Times.  He talks about Jules Michelet's _Satanism and Witchcraft_;  Margaret Murray's _Witch Cult_; Gerald Gardner;  and Leland's _Aradia_.  *p*If he did a decent job explaining what was wrong with these folks, I might still recommend his book despite the flaws.  But he doesn't.  Davis doesn't bother to explain *why* scholars reject these theories -- merely that they do.  Readers are, apparently, expected to kow-tow to the Men With Degrees, without having any idea of what their claims are based on.*p*When he does mention evidence, it's in such an abbreviated form that it's almost a parody of the original research.  For instance, Davis implies that Margaret Murray's witch-cult hypothesis was discarded because Norman Cohn looked up her sources and thought she edited them too much.  *Not* because Murray used a fraction of the available evidence;  because she based her theory exclusively on trials involving copious amounts of torture;  because she assumed that confessions extracted under torture were essentially reliable;  etc., etc.*p*Or consider Davis' coverage of _Aradia_.  He offers three reasons why we should consider _Aradia_ a forgery.  1) It's easier.  Well yes, it's always easier to throw out evidence than to explain it.  That's not considered good historical methodology, however!  2) Most scholars ignore it.  Again this is true.  But Davis never explains why, or discusses the fact that Leland's book suffered in academia because of the back-lash against Margaret Murray.  He's also apparently unaware that _Aradia_ is enjoying something of a come-back in scholarly circles.  There's a new, scholarly edition out, accompanied by a variety of essays and articles.*p*3) Leland's methodology wasn't great.  Davis rightly points out that Leland (writing in the 19th century) didn't use 20th century folklore methodology.  For example, in his _Algonquin Legends_ Leland "created" a folktale by blending four different versions of the story into one coherant tale.  This is true.  And, unfortunately, 19th century folklorists often did this sort of thing -- things that no modern collector would dream of doing.*p*However Davis believes that the Algonquin legend "proves" that _Aradia_ is worthless.  Stricter logic might say it suggests that Leland had four "Gospels of the Witches" which he combined into one coherant whole.  For there's certainly nothing that indicates that Leland invented any of his Algonquin sources.  And what Davis completely ignores is that Leland's methodology was painfully common amongst early folklore collectors.  _Aradia_ is no worse than many other sources we still use and rely on.*p*In summary, this is a horrible, horrible book.  Shallow.  Bigoted.  Inaccurate.  I give it one star out of ten.*br*