Letter from Hardscrabble Creek

I'm Glad That is Settled

2010-02-08T17:55:00.000-07:00

From my current reading, Essentials of Fire Fighting:

As you look at the world around you, the physical materials you see are called matter. It is said [passive voice!] that matter is the "stuff" that makes up our universe.

Sheesh.

Maybe instead of being a volunteer firefighter I should be editing the textbooks.

Anyway, got to study for the test on Saturday.

Air Force Academy "Turns Back Time"

2010-02-08T09:07:00.001-07:00

Back on January 27th, I mentioned that the US Air Force Academy, located near Colorado Springs, had created a ritual space for followers of Pagan religions.

Jason Pitzl-Waters has been keeping up on various reactions, including some form of magic performed by (presumably) evangelical Christians, who think that putting two large crossed bits of lumber on the circle will somehow negate it. (My first thought: firewood!)

At least one writer to the Colorado Springs Gazette accuses the Air Force of romanticizing druids who performed human sacrifice.

It is shocking to contemplate a revival of druidic sacrifice. Can you imagine the Air Force procurement process for victims? Would there be a no-bid process or would there be competitive bidding?

Who is Your Ancient Philosopher?

2010-02-05T23:28:00.004-07:00

I took the quiz and came up with Epicurus, who is truly "the most misunderstood philosopher of antiquity." Watch a short video about him.

Take the My Philosophy Guru test yourself!

A Vodou Resource Site

2010-02-05T18:24:00.003-07:00

Lots of talk about Vodou lately here among the polytheists (and among those who "view with alarm").

Christopher Chase, the Pomegranate's reviews editor, offers this link to a sort of portal site on Vodou. Reviews editors are like that.

Magical Dolls and Missionary Board Games

2010-02-05T15:14:00.001-07:00

From Publishers Weekly, a short review of a new book co-authored by Nikki Bado-Fralick, my co-editor in the Pagan Studies book series (This book is not a part of that series, however!)

Toying with God: The World of Religious Games and Dolls by Nikki Bado-Fralick and Rebecca Sachs Norris, Baylor Univ.

For Bado-Fralick and Sachs Norris (religious studies professors at Iowa State University and Merrimack College, respectively), religious games and dolls are charged with “the magic of childhood combined with the mystery of religion.”

The authors brilliantly use their subject to reveal a complex interplay between worship and the workings of popular culture. A detour into ancient divination practices using dice, magical dolls, and sports as ritual shows these items to be anything but superficial, and raises a central question: why do religious playthings often evoke feelings of unease?

Like the religious toys it analyses, this book is at once fun and serious business. Dolls like Buddy Christ and Nunzilla or unwinnable Buddhist board games may produce a few perplexed laughs, but a game like Missionary Conquest, won by setting up the most global missions, has an undeniably colonialist edge.

The authors also use toys and dolls to explore consumerism, feminism, politics, and the nature of ritual and play. In this readable and fresh look at religious culture, the authors are critical and respectful. They’d rather cast dice than throw stones.

Don't Visualize, Organize!

2010-02-05T04:25:00.001-07:00

That is the takeaway message from Barbara Ehrenreich's new book Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.

Like much of Ehrenreich's writing, it is fueled by righteous anger.

First, as a breast cancer patient, she is disgusted by the happy-face positive thinking of what she calls "pink ribbon culture":

The cheerfulness of breast cancer culture goes beyond mere absence of anger to what looks, all too often, like a positive embrace of the disease (27).

From there it's often into the "motivational" business culture that routes laid-off employees into seminars where they learn to be "a brand called you."

And there is "prosperity theology" in the churches, a/k/a "God wants you to be rich," and "positive psychology" for the non-churchgoing.

Not to mention the "prices will always go up" thinking that contributed to the recent real-estate bubble!

And in Ehrenreich's view, it's 99 percent bullshit, a new synthetic Big Pharma opiate of the masses that prevents people from clearly seeing their economic and political quandaries.

She does give some space to a fairly mainstream history of creative visualization (or whatever you want to call it) via New Thought, Christian Science, and so on.

Reading Bright-sided as an adherent of a magical religion, I obviously have some disagreements with Ehrenreich's wholesale condemnation. These things work, sometimes with unexpected results--hence the old admonition to be careful what you ask for.

So where do we draw the line between possible and not possible? I do think that "visualize world peace" is a fruitless task, although one may act in a peaceful manner. And whatever you seek under the idea that "thoughts are things" has to be backed up and affirmed by tangible actions.

What a Difference the Suffix '-ess' Makes

2010-02-04T23:15:00.001-07:00

Following a link from another religion blog, I dropped into today on Beauty Tips for Ministers (subtitled "Because you're in the public eye, and God knows you need to look good.")

I read this:

SO many of you have written to let me know that TLC will be airing an episode of “What Not To Wear” this Friday during which they make over a young, beautiful Episcopal priest.

And I was thinking, "Well, this is going in a homoerotic direction" when the truth hit me.

But I suppose if you want to be chased out of an Episcopal church by a bishop swinging his crozier, start talking about the "young, beautiful priestess."

What difference that "-ess" makes. You know why, don't you?

Sex.

It does not matter if you are speaking of the Vestal Virgins of ancient Rome or someone more contemporary. To the monotheistic mind, the word "priestess" seems to conjure up "fertility rites," flowing hair, and orgiastic drumming. Ishtar! Jezebel!

Traditional Episcopalians and other Christians opposed to the ordination of women have used "priestess" as a slur before--and maybe they still do.

No, having women in sacramental, priestly roles is pretty scary, and so the only thing to do is to pretend that they are men under those robes.

Never before has a chasuble looked so much like a burqa.

(And one Episcopal priestess-in-training fears that vestments designed for men make her butt look too big--but that is a separate issue.)

The issue is that religion can be very sexy. Religio-magical power can be felt as erotic power, which why clergy often get into scandalous situations.

Female beauty plus sacramental (i.e., magical) power? There is nothing in the Book of Common Prayer about handling that!

So must they just pretend it's not there?

And what do we Pagans do?

The World of Esotericism

2010-02-04T16:54:00.004-07:00

The University of Amsterdam has one of just a few graduate programs in the study of Western Esotericism, which is often contrasted with Christianity as follows (from a lecture handout based on work of Antoine Faivre).

Christianity
                        Esotericism

Personal deity
                         Impersonal deity
Creation of the world by fiat
                       Emanation of world in stages
Material and evil are real
                      Material and evil ultimately unreal
Humans as creatures
                      Humans as divine sparks
Incarnation
                       Entrapped souls
Sin
                       Ignorance, forgetfulness
Salvation
                      Enlightenment
church
                      school
devotion
                      spiritual disciplines/exercises
Afterlife in heaven or hell
                      Afterlife in new learning situation

(Note, I do not consider Paganism and esotericism to be identical, although many esoteric elements show up in contemporary Paganisms.)

All of this is a lead up to a fascinating web page put by the esotericism program at the University of Amsterdam, showing relationships between esoteric thought, music, art, and philosophy.

Are Epiphany Dreams Found only in the Past?

2010-02-04T13:32:00.003-07:00

The Bryn Mawr Classical Review's book-review feed recently served up a review of William V. Harris's Dreams and Experience in Classical Antiquity
The reviewer writes,

Some combination of [cultural expectations, generic demands, and the imperatives of performance and publication.], Harris argues ... accounts for the relative frequency in antiquity of the epiphany dream, in which an authoritative figure visits the dreamer and makes a significant statement, and for its rarity in the post-Enlightenment West.

He goes on to argue that if readers say that they too have epiphany dreams, it don't prove nuthin':

No doubt some reader of this review is now saying, "But I had an epiphany dream just the other night!" That is the problem with studying dreams: one must work hard to free oneself from dependence on anecdote and from the powerful attraction that dreams have for those who dream them. Appealing to concepts of "selfhood" or "personality" will only reinforce these tendencies by compelling the question, "What does this dream tell us about you?" Harris chooses instead to concentrate on ancient descriptions of dreams and reports of actions based on them. This is a book about dreaming, not about dreams; that is, about behavior and experience in antiquity, not about the ancient self.

If I tell it, it's only an "anecdote," but if someone back then wrote it, it's a "description" and thus useful? But if you act upon the advice of the dream, does that count?

"Epiphany dreams" are not common, but when you have one, you know it.

My example (oops, an ancedote!) was a dream that--at a time when I was not consciously thinking about it--told me to quit my job and go to graduate school in religious studies.

When I awoke with the dream-voice echoing in my ears, I knew that "some god or daemon" had spoken. I immediately started researching university programs, thinking without irony that now I knew what was meant in those biblical accounts of "the Lord spake unto Abraham" or whomever.

Someone or something sure enough spake unto me, and I knew I had to follow the instructions. Or else.

Anyone else had a real epiphany dream? Show of hands? Yes, I thought so.

As to the academic study, there is, I have learned, an almost-complete disconnect between the academic study of ancient Paganism and the study of contemporary polytheism, Paganism, etc.

The former people are mostly in Classics and history, they have an academic heritage a couple of centuries old, and they publish in their own journals, attend their own conferences, and so on.

The latter field only began to take shape in the 1990s.

Some study of ancient Pagan religion does sneak into the Society of Biblical Literature, and when the SBL goes back to having its annual meeting together with the American Academy of Religion's meeting in 2011, maybe, just maybe, there might some crossover.

Celebrating the Season, However You Do It

2010-02-01T21:37:00.001-07:00

Anne Hill has her annual Brigid Poetry Festival going—check the comments for linkage.

Me, I just had to get Out. Cabin fever was setting in, and walking the dogs close to home or going up on the ridge to cut firewood just was not curing it.

So we strapped the touring skis to the Jeep, loaded the dogs, and drove up to a higher, snowier place to ski a few miles, get sunburnt, and have one minor dog incident when they discovered a partly eaten snowshoe hare (maybe a bobcat's leavings).

Naturally they ate it. They need to demonstrate now and then that they understand that dog food does not always come in cans and sacks.

We stopped at Amicas in Salida for pizza. I found myself watching a grey-haired couple waiting to order. He looked to be in his eighties, yet he was wearing up-to-date "powder overalls" (like this).

I wondered if he just wore them for practical reasons, or was he someone who tore up the slopes at A-Basin or Winter Park in his younger years? Or even one of the fast-dwindling group of old men who wear sun-faded 10th Mountain Division patches sewn to the sleeves of high-tech ski jackets?

The earth keeps spinning.

After a couple of pints of Headwaters IPA (me) and some cabernet sauvignon (her) and sufficient pizza, we feed some crust to the dogs back in the Jeep, as a promise of the dinner (from a sack) waiting for them at home.

We started down the canyon of the Arkansas River, and M. remarked that it was not yet dark at 5:30 p.m.

The earth keeps spinning, whirling us on to the next thing.

How to Report the News

2010-01-30T20:00:00.001-07:00

You know it's true. (YouTube video.)

Via, most recently, Snowflakes in Hell.)

Only in New Orleans

2010-01-29T16:42:00.005-07:00

Would you see this actual television commercial in a race for parish coroner?

(Via Talking Points Memo.)

For Any Roman Reconstructionists Reading This

2010-01-29T11:30:00.002-07:00

Make sure that you get the night-time garments (or lack of) right.

Nature Religion at the Air Force Academy

2010-01-27T15:25:00.001-07:00

The Air Force Academy chapel will add a worship area for followers of Earth-centered religions during a dedication ceremony scheduled to be held at the circle March 10.

Gus diZerega notes it too.

Considering some of the previous church-and-state issues at the academy, this is major news.

Hmm. I might be able to work that into a talk that I might possibly be giving later that month in Colorado Springs.

W(h)ine and Yoga

2010-01-27T09:15:00.000-07:00

"Cakes and wine" grounds you after ritual. Now some yoga classes are offering food (and sometimes wine) afterwards, and purists are in a knot.

Around the Pagan Blogosphere

2010-01-25T08:30:00.000-07:00

• "Hard versus Soft Polytheism is a False Dichotomy."

• A recently discovered statue described as the god Odin and welcomed by some reconstructionist Norse Pagans, is--by Viking Period artistic conventions--either a woman or the goddess Freya, says a Swedish archaeologist.

• The Necronomicon: "It's like the Bible but different" (YouTube video). Via Plutonica.net.

• At The Soccer Moms' Guide to Wicca: Unintentionally outed by the school district.

• Something that I wish more people would think about about: When is a wild animal an omen, and when is it just a wild animal?

Canadian Pagan Conference Set for Guelph

2010-01-24T20:27:00.000-07:00

News release:

The Canadian National Pagan Conference brings together Canadian activists, clergy and scholars interested in the neo-Pagan and revived pagan religions in Canada. These include, but are not lmited to Goddess spirituality, Wicca, Asatru and the Heathen paths, Romuva, Druidry and the Afro-diasporic religions.

A large part of the conference is peer-to-peer workshops on a number of issues important to the members of these religions: parenting, aging, family and sexuality, legal status and recognition, temple organization, and others.

However, integral to the conference from the beginning has been the academic stream of presentations of original research on Pagan paths in Canada (or elsewhere when presented by Canadian Pagan scholars). Research in the demographics of the neo-Pagans, the cultural and political influence of occultism, sexuality and Wicca, and other issues has been presented. The Conference presentations are peer-reviewed and cross-disciplinary (Religious Studies, Sociology and History have been well-represented).

Papers on any aspect of the history or current state of Paganism and neo-Paganism in Canada are welcome. Please send an abstract (250 words) and a brief CV of yourself to Sam Wagar, the academic co-ordinator. Both academics and non-academics are welcome to present research.

More information on the conference, which is happening at the University of Guelph over the Victoria Day long weekend, can be had from the website.

A Pagan Festival Just up the Road

2010-01-22T14:12:00.000-07:00

Earlier this month, I was reading the Cañon City Daily Record—a humdrum piece about a city council meeting in the nearby town of Florence—when this jumped out at me:

"We are welcoming to a great variety of spiritual seekers who would classify themselves in many ways, including alternative spirituality, metaphysical, holistic wellness, new age, neo-pagan Earth religion, ecospirituality, native American tradition, Buddhist, Sufi, meditation and yoga practitioners, tribal drumming musicians, feminist Goddesses spirituality, and Kabbalah mysticism.”

Whoa! I thought. Pagans in Florence? (Actually, there are a handful.)

It turned out that the Beltania festival, which had been in northern Colorado, is moving south. We are, after all, a less-fashionable and hence cheaper part of the state.

The Florence Mountain Park hosts a couple of mountain-man rendezvous each summer, and if the city is OK with those guys firing full-size blackpowder cannon, then they should be OK with all-night drumming too.

I mentioned last October how the closing of the private Wellington Lake campground southwest of Denver was forcing at least three Pagan events to seek new venues.

If this trend continues, M. and I won't have to drive so far to attend some of them.

Having Sex with Ghosts

2010-01-18T16:24:00.000-07:00

Someone once wrote that you should never become sexually involved with anyone crazier than you are.

You probably should not get involved with anyone deader than you are either.

But if you do, there is a website about it: "Sex with Ghosts."

It is also in my current findings that woman are more apt to be involved in ghostly sexual encounters with men though I personally believe men or less likely to come forward fearing ridicule.

Yep, and those women buy all the Charlaine Harris novels too.

There is a long tradition in Western occultism about sucubbi (female) and incubi (male), and the general advice is, "don't do it."

You Cannot Think Those Thoughts!

2010-01-17T09:11:00.001-07:00

A scholar co-edits a collection of essays on Buddhist warfare and "touches a nerve" to put it mildly.

Our intention is not to argue that Buddhists are angry, violent people—but rather that Buddhists are people, and thus share the same human spectrum of emotions, which includes the penchant for violence.

Setting immigrant Buddhism (Japanese, Vietnamese, etc.) aside, most Americans' view of the Buddhism comes from intellectuals like D.T. Suzuki or various elite teachers, roshis, etc.

We Americans never saw Buddhism(s) in its original cultural contexts.

As I recall, some medieval Japanese monasteries used to send out armed monks to fight in various political struggles, just to name one instance.

Martha Coakley Sounds like a Salem Witch-Hunter

2010-01-16T09:47:00.002-07:00

During the 1980s, real people went to real prisons on the strength of children's fantasies. Many of these were people who operated preschools and had devoted their lives to child care.

The 1987-90 McMartin Preschool trial, described as the most expensive criminal trial in American history, produced no convictions--but you can imagine the effect on the defendants' lives.

The West Memphis Three were victims of the same prosecutorial hysteria over "satanism."

The Amirault family trial in Massachusetts was another. To quote Dorothy Rabinowitz, author of No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times:

The accusations against the Amiraults might well rank as the most astounding ever to be credited in an American courtroom, but for the fact that roughly the same charges were brought by eager prosecutors chasing a similar headline—making cases all across the country in the 1980s.

Those which the Amiraults' prosecutors brought had nevertheless, unforgettable features: so much testimony, so madly preposterous, and so solemnly put forth by the state. The testimony had been extracted from children, cajoled and led by tireless interrogators.

It's like Salem 1692 again: letting kids fantasize and treating those fantasies as evidence in court. "Spectral evidence."

On Tuesday, voters in Massachusetts will select a replacement for Senator Edward Kennedy.

The Democrats are running Martha Coakley, a former district attorney and state attorney general, who still thinks the Amiraults' case was handled correctly and who has fought to keep Gerald Amirault in prison because she thinks he is some kind of satanic mastermind.

She is a Democrat, I'm a Democrat. But I don't care if she likes kittens and puppies and takes good care of her aged parents.

For that reason alone--for being the spiritual descendant of the Salem witch-hunters--if I lived in Massachusetts, I would not vote for Martha Coakley.

UPDATE: Civil-liberties writer Randy Balko examines Coakley's record. It sounds like she believes that the cops are always right and the courts never make a mistake.

Dark of the Moon

2010-01-15T21:38:00.000-07:00

I tend to get into some bad places psychologically when it's the dark of the Moon and work is not going well. "No one respects me, no one pays any attention to what I say"—that sort of thing.

The best cure is to take a dog (who may or may not pay any attention but who can be bribed) and go for a hike, interrupted with geocaching, as described at the other blog.

Writing English as a First Language

2010-01-15T09:54:00.000-07:00

Some writing is bland because it does not take chances. Other writing is bland because of poor technique.

William Zinsser deals with the second in this talk to international students in the Columbia University journalism school: "Writing English as a Second Language."

Actually, writing—as opposed to speaking—is a "second language." That is why it must be learned even by native speakers.

Here he is on bureaucratese—and translating bureaucratese into English is something every reporter must do.

First, a little history. The English language is derived from two main sources. One is Latin, the florid language of ancient Rome. The other is Anglo-Saxon, the plain languages of England and northern Europe. The words derived from Latin are the enemy—they will strangle and suffocate everything you write. The Anglo-Saxon words will set you free.

How do those Latin words do their strangling and suffocating? In general they are long, pompous nouns that end in -ion—like implementation and maximization and communication (five syllables long!)—or that end in -ent—like development and fulfillment. Those nouns express a vague concept or an abstract idea, not a specific action that we can picture—somebody doing something. Here’s a typical sentence: “Prior to the implementation of the financial enhancement.” That means “Before we fixed our money problems.”

Believe it or not, this is the language that people in authority in America routinely use—officials in government and business and education and social work and health care. They think those long Latin words make them sound important. It no longer rains in America; your TV weatherman will tell that you we’re experiencing a precipitation probability situation.

He almost sounds like some Norse reconstructionist Pagan bashing the "soft Mediterranean cultures" there, doesn't he.

But don't blame the Roman Empire. Blame the writers of the 16th-19th centuries who imported Latin terms because they sounded grander and because they had all studied Latin in school.

Write with Anglo-Saxon action verbs as much as possible, and your writing will be better. You can ~~deposit that knowledge with certainty in your financial institution~~ take it to the bank.

Too Much Pagan Writing is Too Bland

2010-01-14T21:09:00.002-07:00

I wish Pagan writers would stop giving advice and writing bland how-to articles.

A lot of what makes Pagan magazine publishing is its bias towards advice-giving. That and poor graphic design, in some cases.

Look at Circle magazine, for example. Circle reminds me too much of the bland publications of cookie-cutter financial advice that mutual-fund companies, credit unions, etc. send out.

I feel as though I have read almost everything in it before. "How to use your cauldron." "The Celtic legend of Whatever."

I tend to skim the "Passages" section and the "Lady Liberty League Report," and then it goes on the shelf.

Its graphic design, unfortunately, reflects its early 1980s incarnation as a tabloid newspaper. Boring. When they shrank the size to 8 x 10, it did not get the makeover it desperately needed.

Of course, there is a rule in commercial magazine publishing that after two years every topic is new again.

But what is missing is personality. The Cauldron, which is still more in the "zine" class (originally it was typed and reproduced by mimeograph on the cheapest paper) shows the personality of its editor, Mike Howard.

American Pagan writers seem too afraid of being "personal." Instead, they churn out bland how-to stuff.

When I edited some books for Llewellyn in the 1990s, "too personal" was the kiss of death—the term they used when they wanted to reject a piece of writing. They probably would have called the The Confessions of Aleister Crowley "too personal."

The new Witches & Pagans at least has columnists. I turn to Kenaz Finan or Judy Harrow or R.J. Stewart before tackling the main features. I want stories and the "too personal" more than I want the how-to stuff. Sometimes I even get it.

But their Web site needs updating. Thanks to the Web, publishing a magazine is now twice as much work as before.

I thought Thorn was cool, so I subscribed and promoted it, only to see it go "online only," which most likely is the kiss of (slow) death.

The nascent Pagan Newswire Collective that Jason Pitzl-Waters is organizing has a worthwhile purpose: to make it easier for Pagans to define Paganism in the media marketplace. (Jason's own blogging is newsy, which makes it a daily read.)

Where the PNC will find outlets I am not yet sure. All journalism is in turmoil right now, and journalism about religion even more so—even though so many news stories have unexplored or unexplained religious dimensions.

Meanwhile, I go on looking for good writing that happens to be Pagan, rather than "Pagan writing."

Bloggers Frighten 'the Authorities'

2010-01-10T21:05:00.003-07:00

Governments in more and more countries are afraid of "unregistered" (sic) bloggers.

China was still the leading Internet censor in 2009. However, Iran, Tunisia, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam and Uzbekistan have all also made extensive use website blocking and online surveillance to monitor and control dissent. The Turkmen Internet remains under total state control. Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer remains in jail, while well-known Burmese comedian Zarganar has a further 34 years of his prison sentence to serve.

However, the Report also notes that democratic countries have not lagged far behind, instancing the various steps taken by European countries to control the internet under the guise of protection against child porn and illegal downloading. It also notes that Australia intends to put in place a compulsory filtering system that poses a threat to freedom of expression.

Some people think that blogging and tweets will overthrow governments. Eh...not so fast.