Mike Nichols

[SlaineWildfire]

Has anyone heard of the author and scholar Mike Nichols? I've been reading some of his articles and different pieces of information that he's written and posted on the web and I'm of two minds about him so I was wondering if anyone knew anything about him. I can't really find much about his lineage or what his credentials are and all that. So, if anyone knows anything or knows how to find out any information, that'd be lovely.

My initial instinct is to say that he's a very bright man. He seems to take an extremely scholarly approach to understanding modern witchcraft, as well as it's roots, and he's also been a practicing witch since the 60's, so he's seen a lot of change in his lifetime. I do somewhat disagree with some of his thoughts, but you know, that's bound to happen.

If you're interested, he's got a website based around a book he wrote, and I've found some other independent sites as well.

His website.
The Cauldron, a useful source of articles.  

[TeaDidikai]

I consider his work to be "more of the same". More historical revisionism that came out of the the turn of the century that has been debunked time and again and devalues other's spiritual traditions by playing them off as nothing more than bastardized paganism.  

[SlaineWildfire]

How do you figure? I mean, where do you get that information from, what makes you think that?

Does anyone else know anything about him? I found out that he was a teacher at a University in Minnesota, and that he's written two books and spoken at quite a few conventions, but I still can't find out what tradition he is or where he began his studies.  

[TeaDidikai]

SlaineWildfire

How do you figure? I mean, where do you get that information from, what makes you think that?

It doesn't take more than a glance to see the rehashed faux-history in his Sabbats essays. He also makes some amazingly insulting sweeping generalizations in treating paganism like a unified theology.

But the one that makes me giggle the most is this:

Mike Nichols: An Essay on Yule

In fact, if truth be known, the holiday of Christmas has always been more Pagan than Christian, ...
many of them (like Oedipus, Theseus, Hercules, Perseus, Jason, Dionysus, Apollo, Mithra, Horus, and even Arthur) possessed a narrative of birth, death, and resurrection that was uncomfortably close to that of Jesus. And to make matters worse, many of them predated the Christian Savior.

...
That is why Pagans have as much right to claim this holiday as Christians. Perhaps even more so, since the Christians were rather late in laying claim to it, and tried more than once to reject it. There had been a tradition in the West that Mary bore the child Jesus on the twenty-fifth day, but no one could seem to decide on the month. Finally, in 320 C.E., the Catholic fathers in Rome decided to make it December, in an effort to co-opt the Mithraic celebration of the Romans, the Yule festival of the Saxons, and the midwinter revels of the Celts.

I mean- how many times do we have to illustrate how flawed this stuff is? I mean, only by looking at history through persecution colored glasses can one ignore the Chronographiai and the date being placed nine months after the Feast of the Annunciation.

So- more bad history. More persecution complexes about how the eB!L Xt!aNz stole our PegAnizm!?!!!!!

Yeah- more of the same.