Roebuck Tradition
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
These are the practitioners of the Hereditary Crafts. Also known as "Fam-Trad", short for "Family Tradition", these are the people who have actually passed down the practices through their family line. Until recently, it was rare (although not unheard of) to find a hereditary family practicing a full-blown religion in the sense we usually mean today. More common would be a family with a collection of "folk" practices, passed down from elders to children, which are recognizable as "folk magic" to anthropologists and others who study such matters. The family itself would not even necessarily recognize its practices as Pagan, and often consider themselves devout members of more mainstream faiths if asked about their practices, they would claim they're just "doing it the way the old folks did," or words to that effect. (For instance, many who now consider themselves Pagan had parents or grandparents who taught them to read tea leaves, palms, or tarot cards, or who did certain things around the house at certain times of year, "for luck."). Many of these families, in current generations, have recognized their Pagan roots with the modern widespread availability of information, and have chosen to incorporate modern Pagan practice with the traditions handed down to them from their elders. More unusual still are those families, very few and far between, who have actually kept a Pagan religious sensibility alive through the generations. They are usually rural, often agricultural, and their practices tend not to resemble modern Witchcraft at all, since they weren't affected by the ceremonial influences evident in the Craft of the British revival.
