#1 You do realize that Hutton doesn't appear to have actually read Whitmore's book, don't you? According to Donald Frew, Hutton told him that he will often make a pronouncement about a book without actually reading it, but based upon what he THINKS it says. That is something I would never do. Anyhow, even after Whitmoore gave him a just dressing down based largely upon cherry picking and misrepresenting his sources, Hutton continues to maintain these factual errors within the second edition of "Triumph."
Early in the second chapter, Hutton attempts to impose an artificial distinction between contemporary and ancient pagans based on nothing but his personal opinion. He proclaims that unlike we Pagans, the ancients were not nature worshippers in any sense because (stating a personal opinion as an unsubstantiated fact) Hutton contends that the Ancient Gods had nothing to do with the forces of nature nor the natural world. And he dismisses the Earth-Mother goddesses as "literary figures, rather than actual goddesses" because they supposedly lack any priesthood or temples dedicated to them.
But this suggestion is factually WRONG! It took me all of three minutes to debunk it using ancient source material and specialist scholars in their respective fields. Gaea had three famous temples with 1 each in the city states of Sparta and Athens, but she was also worshipped alongside Demeter and had shrines for offerings in the temples of other deities. The Roman goddess Terra was worshipped in a temple dedicated to her on the Roman Forum where she was served by the official state priest of Rome. These are facts, they are not a matter of a difference of interpretation! Hell, there are cults throughout the ancient world where they literally worshipped trees as deities, in addition to the feature of aniconism where a deity was worshipped as a plank of wood or a stone, as well as the myths showing the animism within Nature such as in Ancient Greece. In fact, Whitmore goes on at length to cite dozens of scholars who've concluded that Earth Mother goddesses were actual deities who were worshipped. Regrettably, Hutton has a habit of treating specialist scholars as though he knows better than they--an arrogance the severely undermines his scholarship.
So, Hutton appears not to have even read Whitmore's book for himself, which doesn't surprise me. When Janine Farrel-Roberts cited Prof. Eva Pocs' book to Hutton, "Between the Living and the Dead" he mischaracterizes it as though he has read it, but this proves his unfamiliarity with the title.
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