The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles

The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy
The first edition cover of Hutton's book.
Author(s)	Ronald Hutton
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Subject(s)	Religious history
Publisher	Blackwell
Publication date	1991
Media type	Print (Hardcover & Paperback)

The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy is a book of religious history and archaeology by the English historian Ronald Hutton, first published by Blackwell in 1991. It was the first published study of pre-Christian religion in the British Isles, dealing with the subject during the Palaeolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Roman occupation and Anglo-Saxon period. It then proceeds to make a brief examination of their influence on folklore and contemporary Paganism.

In keeping with what was by then the prevailing academic view, it disputed the widely held idea that ancient paganism had survived into the contemporary and had been revived by the Pagan movement. In turn, it proved somewhat controversial among some sectors of the Pagan community, with two prominent members of the Goddess movement, Asphodel Long and Max Dashu publishing criticisms of it.

Synopsis

In this work, Huton attempted to "set out what is at present known about the religious beliefs and practices of the British Isles before their conversion to Christianity. The term 'pagan' is used as a convenient shorthand for those beliefs and practices, and is employed in the title merely to absolve the book from any need to discuss early Christianity itself."^[1]

Reception among Contemporary Pagans

Dealing with both ancient pre-Christian religion and its influence on the contemporary Pagan, or 'Neo-Pagan' new religious movement, The Pagan Religions of the British Isles prompted various reactions from members of the contemporary Pagan community, both positive and negative.

The book proved controversial amongst some contemporary Pagans and feminists involved in the Goddess movement, one of whom, Asphodel Long, issued a public criticism of Hutton in which she charged him with failing to take non-mainstream ideas about ancient goddess cults into consideration.^[2] Ultimately, Hutton would later relate, she "recognised that she had misunderstood me" and the two became friends.^[3] Another feminist critic, Max Dashu, condemned the work as containing "factual errors, mischaracterizations, and outright whoppers" and claimed that she was "staggered by the intense anti-feminism of this book". She went on to attack Hutton's writing style, calling the book "dry as dust" and claimed that she was "sorry I bothered to plough through it. If this is rigor, it is mortis."^[4]

Other Pagans were less critical of Hutton's work. One American Pagan named Lorena Wolfe commented that the book touched "at the basis of our belief system -- our symbology, our festivals, our view of our history, and our vision of the Goddess Herself", but ultimately she recognised that "Mr. Hutton seems, overall, to be reasonably sympathetic to those with neo-pagan beliefs".^[5]

Meanwhile, whilst he faced criticism from some sectors of the Pagan community in Britain, others came to embrace him; during the late 1980s and 1990s, Hutton befriended a number of practicing British Pagans, including "leading Druids" such as Tim Sebastion, who was then Chief of the Secular Order of Druids. On the basis of The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles (which he himself had not actually read), Sebastion invited Hutton to speak at a conference in Avebury where he befriended a number of members of the Pagan Druidic movement, including Philip Carr-Gomm, Emma Restall Orr and John Michell.^[6] In later years, Hutton would write further historical studies of the contemporary Pagan movement, producing The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (1999) and Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain (2009). In 2011, a writer for the New Age magazine Kindred Spirit noted that Hutton had become a "well-known and much loved figure" in the British Pagan community.^[7]

References

Footnotes

1. ^ Hutton 1991. p. vii.
2. ^ Long 1992.
3. ^ Hutton 2010. p. 257.
4. ^ Dashu 1998.
5. ^ Wolfe 1994.
6. ^ Hutton 2009. p. xiv.
7. ^ Whitlock 2011. p. 33.

Bibliography

Academic books

• Hutton, Ronald (1991). The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy. Oxford, U.K. and Cambridge, U.S.A.: Blackwell. 
• Hutton, Ronald (1999). The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. 
• Hutton, Ronald (2009). Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. 
• Hutton, Ronald (2010). "Writing the History of Witchcraft: A Personal View". The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies 12 (2): 239–262. 

Non-academic sources

• Dashu, Max (1998). A Review of Ronald Hutton's The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles. http://www.suppressedhistories.net/articles/hutton_review.html. Retrieved November 2011. 
• Lachman, Gary (13 May 2007). "Ronald Hutton - Wicca and other invented traditions". The Independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/ronald-hutton--wicca-and-other-invented-traditions-448667.html. Retrieved 30 September 2011. 
• Lamond, Frederic (2004). Fifty Years of Wicca. Green Magic. 
• Long, Asphodel (Summer 1992). "Review of The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles". Wood and Water 39. http://www.asphodel-long.com/html/pagan_religions.html. Retrieved November 2011. 
• Whitlock, Robin (January/February 2011). "Is it time for Pagans to fight for their rights?". Kindred Spirit 108: 32–34. 
• Wolfe, Lorena (1994). "Some thought on the book The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles by Ronald Hutton". Pagan Network for the Inland Empire. United States. http://silver-gateway.com/grove/hutton/index.html. Retrieved November 2011.