Yet another study attacks the theory of “repressed memory,” which has sent real people to real jails for crimes that they supposedly committed against children. Professor Grant Devilly, from Griffith University’s [Queensland, Australia] Psychological Health research unit, says the memory usually works in the opposite way, with traumatised people reliving experiences they would rather forget. [...]
All summer I have been editing and laying out a biography of the American Pentecostal evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson (1890-1944). I just sent the galleys to the writer, a professor in Arizona, and am working on my own corrections as well. There have been the usual hassles—missing “essential” photos, notes that did not match the [...]
All around the Pagan blogosphere, tributes are being written today for Isaac Bonewits, who died today. Here is a chronology of his life and tribute by Ian Corrigan. I can add only that he was one of the most prolific and visible figures of the Pagan revival from the 1970s forward. As a student, he [...]
Via Bayou Renaissance Man (a former Catholic priest): an entire cosmology invented and/or syncretized and/or revealed by homeless kids in Miami. The homeless children’s chief ally is a beautiful angel they have nicknamed the Blue Lady. She has pale blue skin and lives in the ocean, but she is hobbled by a spell. “The demons [...]
I am preparing myself for life without Fate magazine. Since 1948, the digest-sized monthly—later a bi-monthly—has been a reliable (at least in the publishing sense) source for ghost stories, UFO reports, speculative archaeology, Fortean news, and other manifestations of the weird and unexpected. All viewpoints were welcomed, so articles often completely contradicted each other. Often [...]
First there was Stuff [bourgeois bohemian] White People Like, which produced various imitations, such as Stuff Black People Like and Don’t Like. And in the religion field, Stuff Christian Culture Likes, by a blogging PK—and now its imitator, Stuff Pagan Culture Likes. And there is Stuff Jewish Young Adults Like. Surely this trend is not [...]
Last October 9 I blogged on the deaths at a sweat-lodge ceremony conducted by James Arthur Ray near Sedona, Ariz. There has been a lot of discussion in the Pagan blogosphere about the case, particularly at The Wild Hunt. A lot of people piled on, and there was the usual sloganeering about “cultural appropriation” and [...]
I spent about an hour today on the snow shovel after fifteen inches fell yesterday, laughing a bitter and sardonic laugh at people who associate flowers and bunny wabbits with the spring equinox. (At least the Sun is stronger now than in midwinter.) Today’s preoccupation is the talk that I have to give tomorrow on [...]
I am busy working up a talk on “nature religion” to give to a Unitarian Universalist congregation on Sunday. Hey, it’s a change: bring in the Pagan speaker at Ostara instead of Samhain. On the other hand, they did originally try to get me at Samhain, but someone messed up the scheduling. This is better, [...]
For environmental news of the West, I have subscribed since the 1980s to High Country News, a biweekly magazine. For the first time since a rancher named Tom Bell started the magazine in Lander, Wyoming in 1970, HCN has jumped on the bandwagon of anti-Wiccan snark. In a blog post called “Witches and Rifles,” editor [...]
