Counting Witches On Pinheads

https://runesoup.com/2014/11/counting-witches-on-pinheads/
Wicca is the Mormonism of witchcraft.
Think about it. You have an individual, weirdo offshoot of an inconsistent, nebulous, existing tradition. You have spurious claims of authenticity, themselves part of that tradition. You have a religion ossify around this weirdo offshoot that is now so many standard deviations away from the tradition's mean that it is barely recognisable. But behaviourally, it is still there. Cobbling together worthwhile texts and having a bash at magic. That sounds like the families living on Pendle Hill. (Sidebar: I was going to say Wicca is the Mormonism of the grimoire tradition but technically Mormonism is the Mormonism of the grimoire tradition.)
Perhaps it is just my OCD but it surprises me that, still to this day, most people have mistaken the Mormonism of witchcraft for actual witchcraft. I don't understand why we settle for a dysfunctional history when we could have a fully functioning one.
Let me tell you something I get asked reasonably often: "why would a chaos magician be so interested in history?" as if we were all still e-popping party boys recovering from last night. (I did my time swinging from the chandeliers in the 90s and early noughties.) I will tell you. Chaos magic is urban cunning magic. That doesn't mean I'm off wandering Regent's Canal looking for wild fuckweed or whatever. It means it is a specifically urban, specifically post-industrial continuity of the behaviour of accruing what works magically and what doesn't in a given space and time. Yes, it is new. Done right it is also as old as the bones of the earth.