The Sabbats and Fanworks
Now, this next section will, by its sheer nature, be rather more conjectural, as it will rely on primarily anecdotal evidence, the forms I have encountered in fanworks myself. Which leads me to posit the question:
Having dissected and analyzed the flawed footing of the Sabbats, how does this relate to the Pureblood Culture trope?
Well, I have found that even though the thematic elements of the Sabbats that are used tend to be preserved, as well as the symbolism surrounding the Sabbats, precious few preserve the actual festivities of the Sabbats, a natural consequence of the method by which the information reaches the author. I have mentioned before, but Wicca is an initiatory religion. Another term that might be used is a closed practice. What does this mean, however?
A closed practice is one in which one must be initiated into the practice to begin learning any of the traditions and rites that the practice holds to, or in some cases, one must be born into it, without the option of initiating into the tradition. One might think of Haitian Vodou, West African Vodun, Louisianan Voodoo, or Hoodoo, all of which are their own distinct magical and religious traditions. One might also think of the practices and beliefs of the Romani, or Sinti, people. Judaism is yet another example of an initiatory tradition. Then there are also Indigenous American practices.
Whilst these practices, beliefs, and traditions are all initiatory or closed because of the history of oppression and colonialism they have been subject to, closing themselves off as a means of preserving themselves, as a method of protecting their culture and beliefs from being wiped out, Wicca is not an initiatory practice for the same reasoning.
Gardner and his original coven were not oppressed and protecting an aspect of their culture. Gardner was not inducted into the last witch-cult of England. Gerald Brousseau Gardner was born in the late 19th century as a white man coming from an upper-middle-class family that was wealthy, and that owned and ran a lumber firm, called Joseph Gardner and Sons. He was looked after his entire childhood by a personal nursemaid, and moved to Nice, France as a small child on the sole basis of having asthma that was better in warmer climates. His claim of being inducted into the last surviving witch-cult was a lie, as the coven he was inducted into was founded in the mid-1930s and may, in fact, simply not exist. He was a beneficiary of nepotism, who founded a religion that had sex as a core aspect. In point of fact, Gardner actively participated in oppressive activities, claiming homosexuality
“brought down the curse of the goddess”
And that
“There are no homosexual witches, and it is not possible to be a homosexual and a witch”
Lois Bourne, a High Priestess of the Bricket Wood Coven (of which Gardner was the founder) stated
“He had a deep hatred and detestation of homosexuality, which he regarded as a disgusting perversion and a flagrant transgression of natural law.”
Why, then, did Gardner decide to formulate Wicca as an initiatory religion, when it has no factors in common with other initiatory religions and closed practices, and he was demonstrably the sort of person that would contribute to the necessity of a closed practice? I am rather uncertain, to be quite honest. I have found no source on the matter. It may be that he made it so, as a method of legitimizing his own initiation into the New Forest coven, but it may also be that he chose initiation due to being influenced by his time in the Sphinx Lodge No. 107 in Colombo, Sri Lanka which, itself, was associated with the Irish Grand Lodge. It may have been due to the (at the time of the religion's creation) unrepealed Witchcraft Act of 1735.
The reasoning matters little. What does matter is that the accurate information of Wicca is held within practicing covens, their traditions kept to those initiated. At least, this is largely true of the modern traditions, as the early stages of the religion were publicized (if indirectly) through the research of Aidan A. Kelly, and his research using the Book of Shadows supposedly created by Gardner himself as a reference. That information then filtered through the larger culture surrounding Wicca, the Occult, and Esotericism. It was then diluted through non-Gardnerian lineage covens, such as Alexandrian Wicca, Feri Wicca, and Dianic Wicca. That information was then further altered through the publication of works focused on eclectic Wicca, self-initiation, and solitary Wicca.
All of this information (as well as the Murrayite Hypothesis being written into the Encyclopedia Brittanica’s definition of witchcraft when Murray was invited to write it) slowly leaked into the popular cultural understanding of magic in the general. This pop-cultural understanding then, necessarily, creates its own tradition, creating an evolutionary tree of British Traditional (Gardnerian) Wicca, leading to Neo-Wicca, leading to Pop-Wicca.
The odd lack of cemented traditions of Pop-Wicca is thus reflected within the Pureblood Culture trope. In Part 1: Pureblood Culture and The Olde Ways I made mention of a common tradition within the bounds of The Olde Ways, that being a Yule Ball. This was, in part, purposefully misleading. Whilst the presence of a Yule Ball (most commonly one hosted by the Malfoy Family) is rather common an occurrence, the use of high-society functions as a concept tends toward being used as a method of displaying the traditions of the Wizarding Religion and is rather more ubiquitous. One such example would be the odd frequency of High Tea as a form of celebration for Ostara. This is not the central conceit for how the Pureblood Culture trope is presented, however. Instead, I shall be examining fanwork implementation through three lenses. The first is research and integration of folk traditions, not dissimilar to this very work. The second is the use of the contemporary understanding of the Sabbats as they are, yet filtered through the lens of Harry Potter as a franchise. The third is the use of the festival names attached to traditions that are spun from whole cloth, wherein using the names acts as a touchstone marker.