There are a lot of Christian historical myths, not just within the Bible, but since the death of Christ, like how Christians were viciously persecuted by the Roman Empire, ignoring how other groups including the Cult of Cybele (or any group that ran afoul of the Romans) were also persecuted. The Crusades, the conversion of Constantine: these are all Christian myths. Stories that were told to help prop up the religion, but that aren’t really what they seem.

Pagans have their own laundry list of myths: how Christians stole everything from them, matriarchal prehistory, the genocide of the Burning Times, the 8 sabbats (the Celts only celebrated 4). I even had a Pagan friend who said that Christians invented the concept of black magic, ignoring how that concept exists in cultures throughout the world, and existed in pre-Christian times.

The thing is that there is a lot of very, very bad history being sold by Pagan authors. Ronald Hutton is an obvious exception. Christianity has had the advantage of having good historians who have debunked its bad history.

Wicca should be a strong enough tradition that it can stand apart from its bad history. When I see extremely well educated Pagans spouting unhistorical nonsense, it makes me despair of the future on the religion.

Oh, and Zeitgeist really didn’t help on the Horus, Jesus, Mithas thing.

For example, I once was looking into a claim that part of the Orpheus myth was him receiving a golden lyre on Mt Parnassus. That certainly seemed plausible, until I noticed that every single website that had the identical sentence, and all sourced exactly the same modern mythology guide which itself had no sourcing at all.

I did hunt for any ancient sources that would back up the claim, but came up empty. While I don’t denounce anyone who makes it, I’m certainly not going to repeat it as proven truth.

And in general, I evaluate as extremely dubious any derogatory claims about other religions. Listen to the way Christians and atheists talk about Islam, for example, and compare that with how Muslims talk about Islam.

Example? Warlock. Doreen Valiente is the only source of those claims and frankly has NO support whatsoever to justify anything that her work was added to the OED, and regurgitated through Arcadia press without confirmation to the accuracy or inaccuracy of any of it. And frankly the EOD etymology from which most others simply copy and past is awful. Look up the word Law for example. it gives it as Laga, and Lagu and Old Swedish Loga. That’s factual. its confirmed by the fact that Utlog (oot lawg) means Out Law. But then type Loga specifically you get redirected to the false claim from the Valiente claim. Problem? Obviously.

But then break down Wor-Loga and its alternatives Vorlaga, Verloga, and Orloga meaning both Our Laws and Primal Laws from the same sources as German, Swedish, etc. Warlock itself is a composite also of Ward +Lock before that modern form and likewise has variations, Wardlok meaning everything from Guardian Watcher, to Protector of Bonds, to Protection Singer, to Keeper of Knowledge, and Guardian of Luck depending on the Language. NONE have negative associations. But because of lousy books, garbage authors and the whole “They stole our Holidays” crap, that’s the source of the problem especially when pitched to largely uninformed and undereducated and ill equipped teens, mostly young girls, especially in the early 90’s with the whole re-surge of NEW AGE movements that root back in the 20’s and 30’s.

As far as the so called “Pagan Trinity” which I really do not care how you measure it since the “Cultures” in question never called Themselves Pagans which any real researcher knows factually, is in fact connected with the Pythagorean concept of the Aion which creates of itself a dual incarnation of Kronus the Father, Rhea the Mother and both as the Aion’s right and left hands so to speak come together to produce the Iesous = Zeus that then creates the “World” and subsequently the Hera of that system so that with union of the third person of the Aion mates with the creation so it can incarnate as the World Soul moving then into a more Pantheistic context.