From Morgue to Magic and Metaphysics

I stopped by the new home of Isis Books on my way to INATS last June 30.

It's the third home for the Denver area's oldest Pagan-oriented bookstore, now about thirty years old.

Chatting with owner Karen Charboneau-Harrison, I asked her what the building at 2775 South Broadway used to be -- Google Maps still shows it as a plain commercial building with columns in front -- until Karen and her husband Jeff turned them into Egyptian pillars.

"A morgue," she said. "The stained glass was already here when we moved in."

They have remodeled the former morgue garage into a set of little offices/therapy rooms that are rented out to various counselors, massage therapists, etc., which is why the sign out front now says "Healing Oasis."

The bookstore is in what used to be the chapel, and there is plenty of room for the mail-order operation.

Denver Post Discovers Local Pagans

Denver's Pagan community is featured in The Denver Post According to chatter on the local listservs, the "leaving a bottle of whiskey" bit was the reporter's misunderstanding.

Not surprisingly, Colorado's hard-working Wiccan chaplains were completely ignored in this Post article, which seems to suggest that only the Middle Eastern Monotheisms™ can rehabilitate state prison inmates.

But at least the newer piece mentions them:

Brennan and Anthony also serve as state prison chaplains. Their services are in demand by 500 self-identified pagans who account for 2 percent of the state prison population. Inmate neopagans include Wiccans, druids and the Asatru, who worship Odin and other Norse gods. In prisons especially, the Asatru can be identified with Nazis, skinheads, patriarchy and racism, yet there are pure forms, Brennan said, which focus on positives — self-empowerment and tribal loyalty — rather than white supremacy.

Feral Iris

I love wild iris, but it's too dry here in the foothills for them to grow on their own. They do better in the higher, wetter mountains.

But some years ago a colleague gave me a gunny sack full of domestic iris rhizomes she had left over after re-digging her flower beds.

Our "landscaping" here consists mostly of holding the trees at bay ("defensible space") plus a vegetable garden, so I turned the iris loose in the woods. I planted them here and there in little gullies and other low spots that I thought might stay damp in a dry year.

And they have held on. In some bad years, they do not bloom at all. This year we are getting a moderate bloom. It's enough. And while sometimes I am a native-plants purist, I don't think these iris are going to colonize Colorado very fast.

And we all know that there are noxious weeds and "noxious weeds." Take bindweed, for instance. As a gardener, I hate it. But my rancher friend says that cattle will eat it in a dry year, so it gets a tacit exemption from all the weed-control programs--around here, at least.

(Cross-posted to my other blog)

"I am a stag of seven tines..."

... chanted the old Irish poet Amergin.


But when this seven-point bull elk exploded from a shadowy ravine about 25 yards from where M. and I were standing, all I could think about was what a sneaky old elk he was.

There we were, two people (and two dogs) standing and talking in low voices while I photographed three mule deer about 75 yards up the slope, when suddenly there was a huge crash down to our left.

"More deer," I thought, but it was just him. His patience had been finally exhausted, and he gave up his cool hiding place.

He angled up through the leafless Gambel oak toward the rimrock. The deer bounced off a few yards and then stopped to watch, as they do.

And I laid down the camera to help M. look for some gloves that she had left on her favorite rock on Saturday -- strong winds had blown them downhill -- and then we walked home again.

The Scary Countryside

Jason Pitzl-Waters notes an upcoming Guillermo del Toro movie:

The duo will be co-producing Born, a film adaptation of [Clive] Barker's story about a family who gets more than they bargained for when they move to the English countryside.

The scary countryside is a staple of British--and frequently North American--film-making. Perhaps that cliché is the flip side of the Frazerian notion of the countryside as repository of ancient beliefs and practices.

In movies, ancient practices are always scary. When my book Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America was in production, the first cover design (not used) was referred to as the "Children of the Corn cover" in honor of the movie stereotype.

Urban directors make these pictures for urban audiences -- who already harbor odd fears about nature and wildlife, like purse-snatching elk.

In British film, every picturesque village is controlled by a secret cabal of child-sacrificing Satanists, disguised, for instance, as the local branch of the Women's Institute.

The editor and publisher of our county newspaper came to dinner last night (they are married to each other) and we got to talking about this very cinematic phenomenon.

We decided that the secret cabal in charge hereabouts would have to be the [Blank] County Cattlewomen. Don't get yourself on their bad side.

A Splash of Fall Color

Virginia creeper in autumn color, growing in the willows along Hardscrabble Creek.

The Wind that Shakes the Pine Trees

It's a sunny day with a brisk wind blowing. Pine needles are in the air. M. and I both slept in a little last night after returning at midnight from one of the Spanish Peaks International Celtic Music Festival concerts.

We went to one last year too, to hear Kim Robertson's harp and to watch Jerry O'Sullivan fight the uilleann pipes and win.

It's truly a little odd to hear stars of the Celtic music scene play in the old coal-mining town of Walsenburg, which is definitely in the non-fashionable part of Colorado, for all that they are trying to promote it now as "gateway to the Southwest."

Last night the harpist was Lynn Saoirse, while Seamus Connolly played fiddle and emceed. Add cellist Abby Newton, her fiddler daughter Rosie, Connolly's Maine neighbor Kevin McElroy, John Mullen, and the duo of Kim McKee and Ken Willson, who have moved to the area and whom my Celtic music-loving colleague wants to bring to campus.

Now: house-cleaning, cabin-cleaning, desk-cleaning, and somewhere I there I have to read essays from my creative-nonfiction class.

Feral Apples

The equinox is for apples. First M. and walk the small ravine that cuts through our land--that is where the feral apple trees grow.

I think of them as growing from apple cores tossed from someone's pickup window 50 years ago, but really I have no idea.

As Sally the witch says of the magicians' orchard in Robert Graves' Watch the North Wind Rise, these trees have been left in peace.

Only one of the feral trees has borne really well, and I will need a longer pole than my garden cultivator to knock down the high apples. "Wait until after the first frost," M. suggests.

And then we cross the road to a neighbor's house where two planted trees are sagging dangerously with apples. Why haven't the bears arrived? Maybe they will tonight. We fill our bucket in just a few minutes. Apples apples applesapplesapples.

Quick Notes

¶ I went away for a high-school graduation and a small family reunion in one of the non-fashionable parts of Colorado, a trip that prompted these thoughts in my other blog.

¶ Ian Jamison, a British Pagan graduate student, seeks people to take The Pagan Environmental Engagement Survey. In some instances, such as the political parties environmental groups listed and the assumption that taxation is the cure for pollution, it has a British slant, but Pagans from other countries will still relate to most of it.

¶ A New York Times article describes Wicca as "a religion under wraps."

Baca County Beltane

In the photo, the Beltane Sun (astronomical Beltane--May 5) has recently risen. When it appeared on the horizon, it fit right into the little notch in the rock just below its current position--an alignment that happens only on Beltane and Lammas.

The site, on private land, is known to the students of archaeological sites as "the Sun Temple." I went there last weekend with filmmaker Scott Monahan, researcher Phil Leonard, and Martin Brennan, author of several books on Irish megalithic alignments, including The Boyne Valley Vision and The Stones of Time.

Some people prepare for ritual with baths and meditation, but maybe a 150-mile drive into the gradually darkening prairie works as well. A little synchronicity: on the way to La Junta, I heard the NPR report on the Neolithic temple unearthed in Ireland.

We camped at the site. A wall of lightning flickered silently to the north. Some 200 miles to the east, Greensburg, Kan., was being obliterated, but we did not know it. Our part of Colorado, which had been smashed by blizzards last winter, was warm and quiet. A great horned owl and a screech owl called from the cliffs.

Left: Martin Brennan viewing the sunrise.

On of the cliffs, someone centuries ago scraped the rock smooth and pecked a circle a little bigger than a human head. If you sit precariously so that your head is in the circle, then you see the alignment. A couple of alleged ogham inscriptions are nearby.

I am not qualified to judge the ogham, but I know that more and more (although still few) people visit such sites at the appropriate days. They watch as the old drama of sky, Sun, and rock plays out for a few seconds on a quarter or cross-quarter days. Afterwards, I suspect, they feel a little different about their place on this planet and on the southern High Plains.

This is not my Beltane post

But the Beltane post is coming. Maybe tomorrow. It was interesting--meaningful in a kind of low-key way.

And should I mention that it is snowing? Just another springtime in the southern Colorado foothills.

What I Will Be Doing for Beltane

Yes, "will be doing." Some people look at the calendar and say that Beltane is this evening and tomorrow. Others celebrated last weekend, according to the "weekend nearest the cross-quarter day" rule. Only by that rule, it comes next weekend.

By the Sun, it falls on Saturday the 5th, as this archaeastronomical Web site will show you.

I plan to visit one of the archaeastronomical sites in southeastern Colorado of which I have written before. This one, the Sun Temple, as the contemporary researchers call it, will be new to me. Something is supposed to happen there on the cross-quarter days. I hope to post photos and/or video links next week.

Meanwhile, you may decide if Beltane and the other cross-quarter and quarter days is

a. Calculated by the solar/astronomical calendar.
b. Calculated by the secular calendar and celebrants' work schedules.
c. A week-long season, so the day does not matter.


If (a) or (b), is it better to celebrate early to get "rising energy" or as close to the actual moment as possible?

Spring Runoff

Spring runoff fills Hardscrabble Creek,
Wild plum blossoms scent the air—
not quite sweet.

28 April 2007

Martin Brennan at Anubis Caves

Boulder, Colorado, resident Martin Brennan is known for writing visionary books about ancient megalithic monuments, such as The Boyne Valley Vision.

A new video clip shows him discussing the mysterious carvings that appear to be synched to the equinoctial sunset shadows at "Anubis Caves," a site in the Oklahoma Panhandle. You can view them at filmmaker Scott Monahan's site or at the Mythical Ireland site.

The case for a Celtic connection was made by Barry Fell, Gloria Farley, and the late Bill McGlone, particulary in his book Ancient American Inscriptions: Plow Marks or History?

I have discussed this issue before. It truly baffles me. McGlone makes a plausible argument for the transatlantic origin of these symbols and writings, except . . . .

Why here? Why in far western Oklahoma and southeastern Colorado? There were no great trading cities here 2,000 years ago and no gold nuggets lying on the ground. According to conventional archaeology, there were only a few people here, living the simplest hunter-gatherer lives. They were probably similar to the people encountered by the Coronado expedition in the 1540s living along the rivers (little rivers, mostly) of the High Plains and hunting buffalo when they could.

It's a hell of a long way to go for a Druidic vision quest.

Nevertheless, the other more contemporary puzzle is why these alleged Celtic inscriptions are so ignored by contemporary Colorado Pagans, most of whom have never heard of them. If you had Stonehenge only four hours' drive from metro Denver, wouldn't you go there now and then?

UPDATE: While I concentrated on the alleged Celtic presence in the Southern Plains, I should point out that other students of the inscriptions claim a Punic (Phoenician or Libyan) presence also. It is hard to discuss all this without getting into the politics of diffusionism and the turf battles between Old World and New World archaeologists, all beyond the scope of this blog.

The Ogham Controversy, Now on YouTube

Selected bits of Scott Monahan's documentary Old News are now available on YouTube, including the trailer (above) or here in a slightly different version.

I tried to summarize this complex alternative archaeological theory of pre-Columbian Celtic explorers/traders on the Southern Plains before.

That Auction

Just a follow-up to yesterday's post: We went to the auction, so I can see that I've seen that particular elephant.

I think I was last at the Pines Ranch the summer of 1975, when I drove there in Dad's Chevy Vega from Colorado Springs, got permission to park it near the lodge, and walked up through the nearby summer cabins, onto the Rainbow Trail, and thus to Lake of the Clouds.

Obviously, it has changed a little. I spotted the two-story Victorian lodge with the porch that I remembered, but that whole fake Western town/office/dining hall/swimming pool complex was not there then.

As for the art, I have nothing against representational art (one of my favorite painters of all time is still John Singer Sargent), but I want it to move me somehow, to go beyond mere postcard prettiness. (I love Sargent's nervous intensity.) One more office-credenza-size bronze bull elk or mounted-cowboy-with-packhorse does not do much for me.

It was 95 percent standard middle-range-Taos-art-gallery stuff, well-executed but predictable. Back in the 1970s we started calling some of that genre "oil company boardroom art"-- romantic views of the country that they are now cutting up with roads and drill pads. My checkbook stayed in my pocket. OK, I had tentatively set a spending limit in the hundreds, and pretty much everything was in the $1,200-$2,500 range; and I would have to be deeply in love to spend that kind of dough.

A Greenhouse

Big news that is not about writing: the new greenhouse kit is here--four big cardboard cartons lying beside the driveway. I hope this weekend to spread gravel where it is going to sit, and then I can assemble it next Friday or Saturday. The weather forecast is dry, luckily--and the aspens are turning now, streaking the ridges with gold.

We have always had vegetable and flower gardens. We grow food to eat and some plants just because they are dramatic and drought-resistant (wormwood, various sturdy asters), and we grow some medicinal herbs. Since the greenhouse will not be heated, it will not provide year-around production, I reckon; but it should stretch the season for salad greens, at least.

This afternoon Mary and I are going to an art auction to benefit the local conservation land trust, which I do support with donations, even though I feel like they tend to ignore this end of the county. Mary is not thrilled about hob-nobbing with the "trophy house" crowd (if that truly is who attends), but I think that we will see at least a few familiar faces from our service on the board of another nonprofit organization a couple of years ago.

There will be painting demonstrations, which seems weird to me. Can you imagine a writing demonstration? It's the finished product that matters. (My father, who was a representational painter, would disagree with me on that--but I am not interested in studying another painter's technique.)

The art will be primarily representational and/or "Western," I suppose, but maybe we'll find a local version of Robert Bateman--someone whose paintings of the natural world are not only superbly executed but also have a sense of Mystery to them. I'll take the checkbook, set a modest spending limit, and see what happens.

To use my favorite 19th-century expression, I just need to "see the elephant."

Autumn Winds

I came home this evening with the usual disconnected, uprooted feeling that I have after a long day in the classroom. The danger is that I'll sit down with a book or the television, have a glass of wine, another . . . another, and be too fuzzy for any serious work.

To avoid that outcome, I decided to cut firewood. The little Husqvarna chainsaw is finally out of the saw-repair shop (it had a midlife crisis), parts having finally arrived from Sweden by sailing ship.

Racing against sundown, I started cutting pine and juniper limbs that had been sitting in a stack all summer after the branch-breaking blizzard in March. The west wind carries a suggestion of moisture--the first snow for the high mountains? Rain for us? It's the 9th, but that wind felt equinoctial.

Last Sunday, the 7th, Mary and I were invited for a potluck brunch at "the squire's." That's how we think of him: a rich doctor with a ranch at the end of our road, and a couple of others in Colorado, British Columbia, and maybe somewhere else. The guests included some of our neighbors (his former employees), the publisher of the county newspaper and his wife, a German exchange student, and a few other locals. It was interesting how much the conversation focused on vegetable-gardening and greenhouses. (Coincidentally, we had just ordered one ourselves from Seeds of Change after the contractor who was supposed to build one for us flaked out.). I keep thinking about how all these people, most of whom are comfortably well off, were talking like survivalists.

The next day I talked with another friend at the other end of the county, a fulltime freelance writer, who has horses and burros, but primarily for pleasure, and suddenly he is talking about large-scale greenhouses, production growing of "micro-greens" for the local organic growers' cooperative, and how much land he could legally irrigate under his well permit.

Another friend down by Durango slipped the phrase "small livestock" into his last message, without being more specific. He's the former Western field editor for Mother Earth News, so I think that he might be on to something. This is starting to feel a lot like the 1970s all over again; I get that feeling every time I see a newspaper article about the possibility of fuel-cell cars. There is something in the wind saying that a degree of self-sufficiency is going to be in style again.

What Mother Earth News says about harvesting rainwater is technically a violation of Colorado's byzantine water laws, but we do it anyway. Now we need a bigger tank.