Seekers and Guides: The Downward Spiral – Depression and Suicide in Paganism (Part One)
The upshot of this sensationalist and regrettable piece seems to be that being a Pagan will mean one is more likely to commit suicide. This is an astounding, farcical and utterly erroneous claim.
However, the article appears to be based on an equally lamentable book called:
Voices from the Pagan Census: A National Survey of Witches and Neo-Pagans in the United States (Studies in Comparative Religion)
https://www.amazon.com/Voices-Pagan-Census-National-Neo-Pagans/dp/1570034885
UK version
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Voices-Pagan-Census-Neo-Pagans-Comparative-ebook/dp/B09LJ4JMYG/
Undoubtedly, this book is ill-informed because it clearly doesn't even know of the FIRST UK Occult Census which, was produced 1989.
Therefore, this latest pretender bills itself as a 'first'. More significantly the 1989 Occult Census disproves the claims in this US census, which clearly is written by moral entrepreneurs.
This book professes to offer an insider's view of Paganism but is obviously erroneous from the onset because it promotes itself as 'the first', ground-breaking Census of Pagans whilst entirely ignoring the original Occult Census, which was produced and published by the *SAFF in Britain in1989.
Worse still, the US version contradicts one of the main thrusts of the 1989 Census, which established the social and personal benefit of a belief in Paganism etc, by wrongly insisting that Paganism can lead people into harm and, according to some reviewers, even make people more inclined to commit suicide, which is a complete falsehood.
The SAFF has been tracking in detail all cases of occult-related crime etc, over the past 32 years and can categorically state that such an assumption is utterly untrue and reminiscent of the false allegations about teenage involvement in Fantasy Games causing suicides during the hysterical Satanic Panic of the 1990s.
Firstly, it is a logical fallacy (Most of the population in the West are Christians and therefore per capita by belief most suicidees will be Christians not Pagans) and secondly SAFF records and research over 32 years entirely disproves the assumption.
People committing suicide who have been involved in Paganism are almost non-existent and certainly far below its incidence in any set you care to mention in the general population. For instance, males aged 75 and over have the highest rates of suicide in nearly all industrialised countries, and among many of these nations suicide rates increase with age.
In the U.S.A. and Britain statistics show that more people die from suicide than from homicide. Any Pagans who do commit suicide will be a fraction of one percent of these deaths and in any event, it is impossible to attribute the motivation of a suicidee to the religious beliefs he or she holds.
In short, this book is misleading and dangerous to other, non-suicidal Pagans whose beliefs will be denigrated by a fallacy which assumes that the end-result of all Pagan involvement could be killing oneself. In short it doesn't help the future of Neo-Paganism, it destroys it.
This blindingly fallacious book/census may easily create additional and damaging bias against the Pagan Community everywhere.
Are the ill-advised creators of the latest US census trying to start another Burning Times? Witch Finder General Matthew Hopkins would clearly have approved of the negative possibilities behind such a damaging and inaccurate census...
https://pat-regan.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-burning-times-insane-christian.html
The original SAFF 1989 Occult Census may be accessed here:
http://www.sorcerers-apprentice.co.uk/census.htm
Comment on the SAFF Occult Census by The Guardian: " The First study to take the lid off a secretive community of occultists which has burgeoned since the 1960s"
*The S.A.F.F. is a not-for-profit organisation which was inaugurated in 1988 to protect minority religions and alternative beliefs from victimisation and suppression caused by irresponsible media incitement of latent religious prejudices.
Finally, here are a few revealing extracts for the latest SAFF broadsheet about this outrageous situation.
‘In 2003 Helen Berger and Evan Leach published 'Voices from the Pagan Census' a supposedly insightful socio-economic analysis of the new religion of Neo-Paganism.
They billed it as a first-ever and the jacket blurb offers much. Except that it wasn't the 'first', the SAFF published the FIRST Occult Census, a ground-breaking work in 1989 which is still available for download here: http://www.sorcerers-apprentice.co.uk/census.htm Berger and Leach's 2003 book is an almost copy-cat format in profile and scope but appears to have muted some important differences’
‘In the 32 years which the SAFF has been functioning and collecting data there has been only one incidence of suicide related to the occult in our files and that was the death of Nick Gargani from Lewes, a city in Sussex, UK, in 1997. Although Gargani did have a serious interest in the occult his suicide was motivated by other things as the SAFF expose of the story explains here; http://saff.nfshost.com/lewesrep.htm . ‘
‘To imply that Paganism has some inherent harmfulness to it which can exacerbate suicides over and above other religious beliefs is dangerous rehashed mediaeval hogwash which trades on the lives of those who were tortured and went to the stake during the Burning Times. It is an insult to their memory and an insult to all initiated Pagans today.’
Please view the full SAFF runic here:
http://saff.nfshost.com/pagansuicide.htm
Actually this book is so wrong it's beyond belief of any kind,
ReplyDeleteI'm much more pro life as a pagan than I ever were before being one.
Yes - very true what you say.
Delete