Well, it's *Hutton* who is willing to credit the idea that Feri is a "home-grown American strain of religious witchcraft". Either you think Hutton is a reliable source, or you don't, but if people are going to use him to back up their opinions, they need to take in *all* of what he says, not just strip it down and use it like a stick to whack people with.
Anderson's story isn't at all like Gardner's, so I'm not sure what you're getting at. Yes, he sure did change what he did over time, as the practitioners of living traditions sometimes do, and the different lines of Feri have different practices, not the least because we all feel perfectly willing to keep evolving what we are doing. But there's a core of stuff that he passed down to everyone, that didn't come from *anywhere* else. Anywhere you encounter it, it came *from* Feri, not otherwise.
I personally disagree with the idea that an old tradition has to be "pure"; I think that the opposite is most likely to be true, because the natural tendency of people is to syncretize and adapt, *especially* when they are under some kind of pressure. Plus Victor personally tended to universalize, and assume that anything he encountered that was LIKE what he was doing was part of the same "secret" strain of mystic whatever. But that was him.
My own feeling on the matter is that I am not a European and I have no interest in reconstructing Old Ancient Traditions I am dubious of the validity of and which I feel no cultural connection to, nor yet trying to swipe ones from indigenous cultures I'm also not part of. I'm a tenth-generation creolized American (by which I mean that I'm mostly but not entirely Euro-descended) and *my* cultural traditions include exactly the hoodoo and Southern folk magic that Feri is most firmly rooted in. My family practiced that stuff and Feri is (at least parts of it) an organic extension of it. It's as close to being a culturally appropriate religious practice that actually conforms to my personal values as I'm going to get.
Anyway, my point was, that the advantage of the initiatory traditions that people are having so much fun scoffing at here is that....they have initiatory lineages. Which you can CHECK. If someone claims an initiation in trad Wicca or Feri, you can ask to be put in contact with their initiator. If the person refuses, you should be suspicious.
