I stumbled across this guy a while ago, and then stumbled across him again yesterday
when I saw a video of him giving a prayer during the Climate march some weeks back (I saw it on Facebook but I'm not sure how to link just the video, sorry). Which reminded me to do a little digging; he claims to be trained in an "ancient Scottish witch tradition," but only the last two lines of the prayer there are from anything remotely Scottish (Gaelic, in fact, though he gives it in English). He also claims to represent or advocate for indigenous and
"ethnic European religions" so I'm wondering if there's more going on as well.
The website talks a lot about "indigenous" this and that, when at the same time they don't seem to have anything to do with
actually indigenous peoples here, as far as I can tell. They seem to be encroaching on a term they have no business using when what they're trying to say is that they're not neopagan. It seems to me that Andras is nothing
but neopagan, and going by the video above along with some digging around I've been doing, I have to wonder if he might be appropriating some Native American spiritualities (in some way or another) too.
In an interview he's done, he says:
For the past several years, I have offered a presentation entitled “The ‘Indians’ of Old Europe” (a title which was given to me by a Hopi elder), describing in greater detail some of my experiences, limited though they be, exploring the perspective of the old pagan cultures as indigenous traditions, as well as my efforts to find current survivals of them. I’m hoping to be able to offer it in book form by next year.
He also goes on to talk about the years he spent learning shamanism, trances, and all that, prompted by an "American Indian friend."
This all screams fraud to me, but I'm not in a position to say how far he might have pushed it when it comes to any misappropriation. So on that front, I thought maybe you guys might be interested in looking into it. I can say that he's certainly made fraudulent claims elsewhere. His claims about having been trained/initiated in a Scottish tradition of witchcraft, taught to him by a Scottish couple are complete bull. In an older version of a
bio about himself he claims to be "a cunningman of the Glenshire witches, as well as an elder in three other branches of contemporary witchcraft..." but I can tell you now that there's no such place as "Glenshire" in Scotland (and I notice he doesn't seem to mention it at all in more recent interviews... I'm not sure if anyone's called him on this?).
In some places he's tried to give Glenshire in Gaelic, calling it "Glainn Sidhr" but that's not even actual Gaelic! Considering the fact that he claims that the husband (of the couple who taught him) was a fluent Gaelic speaker, he should know better. Of course, the couple themselves were based in Edinburgh because their families had to flee the Highlands during the Clearances. These stories of mysterious individuals (or grannies) passing on ancient traditions is so overplayed by wannabe big name neopagans.
On top of that, nobody in Scotland would go round claiming to be a witch because our traditions and folklore see them as a really bad thing - people who go round stealing your luck, or setting out to hurt or kill you. They're completely the opposite of "cunningmen" (and they're not really called cunning men or women here, that's more an English term, too). The only time these things are put together is by neopagans, who tend to see witchcraft as a religious tradition in its own right, and want to believe that it survived in secret for a thousand or so years while they hid from Christians or something. It's not a religion.
It's not a good thing. It's certainly not something anyone would call themselves and go round giving blessings and doing interfaith work. Although I guess the whole lying, fraud, and probable appropriation is in keeping.
But this is what he's doing, trading on these kinds of lies, making a living as part of an organisation that tries to claim that it has nothing to do with neopaganism, and claiming to represent people like me when he's got nothing to do with Scotland beyond fantasies and bits of Scottish prayers he probably found on the web and then stuck on the end of something he (probably, mostly) made up. I'm sure there's more.
