• And from India, Swarajya magazine offers “The Religion They Want to Build,” which notes the Indo-Europeaness of much revived Western Paganism:
As is expected from the linguistic kinship among Indo-European languages, European Pagan cultures show striking similarities with various Indic indigenous traditions. For instance, among Lithuanian Neo Pagans, the notion of Damumas as a foundation of the world order is a central idea. According to Lithuanian ethnologist and Romuva ideologue Jonas Trinkunas, the word Damumas is linked etymologically to the Sanskrit dharma and the Pali Dhamma. J P Mallory, a prominent Indo-European scholar cites another linguistic parallel in a Lithuanian proverb — ‘Dievas dave dantis; Dievas duous duonoss’. The proverb translates as ‘God gave us teeth, God will give bread’. The Sanskrit equivalent of the proverb is Devas adadat datas, Devas dat dhanas.
Not so crappy. And another indication that some Hindus are realizing that they have more in common with us than with the Middle Eastern monotheisms.
• One more “high” priestess joke, and you’re out of here. From the Colorado Springs Independent, the weekly that gets all the cannabis advertising because the chain-owned daily paper won’t touch it: “Meet Colorado’s High Priestess of Cannabis.” Yes, it’s that favorite form of American creativity: Let’s start a church!
• And on public [sic] radio, “When you hear the word ‘witch,’ what does your mind conjure?” Damn, that’s clever writing. This time it’s the 1A show: “Hex in Effect: Why Witches are Back.” (Were we gone? Did I miss that memo?) A teaser for the radio show, which you can listen to if you have unlimited earbuds time.
• On Halloween, Vox.com covered the Sephora witch-kit kerfuffle, which is already old news. “The occult is having a moment. Companies want in, but not if witches can help it.” So much is wrong with this. Is there something measurable called “the occult”? Sigh. I wanted to list everything Vox gets wrong, I would need a bigger blog. At least The Oniontells you that it is non-serious. Anyway, this one is over.
Maja, photographed by Frances Denny of Brooklyn. Denny is descended from a Salem witch-trial judge of 1692. That qualified her to “explore what it means to be a witch today.”(Daily Mail).
• Ah, those millennials. Now they are “ditching religion for witchcraft and astrology.” I could be snarky and say, “Hey, the Seventies called and they want their headlines back.” Or I could say that this is something that is always going on. Decades. Centuries.
Strangeness. Back before there was an Internet, dear readers, I clipped and photocopied newspapers and magazine articles on Wicca, other Paganisms, etc., and sorted them into folders labeled “Witchcrap 1970s,” “Witchcrap 1980s,” and so on. Eventually, printed-out Web pages joined the rest. Why the name? Because so much of it was crap, but at least it kept the idea out there.
Dear readers, I have to say that this past “season of the witch” has been extraordinary! I have so many bookmarked links that this will be a two-part blog post (or three-part). So . . . in no particular order, it’s “Best of Witchcrap 2018”!
• Those of us in the know know that the heartland of America is the heartland of Paganism, so a title like “Occult Rituals in the Backwoods of Wisconsin” should not raise any eyebrows. After all, who else is in the backwoods of Wisconsin? Circle Sanctuary, that’s who. This one is not really about Paganism, however, so much as it is about murder and “Goatman.” You know, teenagers summoning Satan and all that. Not Selena Fox.
• In Britain, the ever-so-earnest Guardian newspaper asks, “Why Are Witches So Popular?” Since it’s the Guardian, the answer must be that “this new wave is linked to the bubbling cauldron of contemporary politics.” Move along, nothing religious to see hear. No invisible friends — Karl Marx said they don’t exist.
• Meanwhile, in Pagan-friendly but officially Lutheran Iceland, “Icelanders abandon National State Church, as old pagan Ásatrú continues to grow.” The Pagan Association of Iceland claims 1.2 percent of the population, all of whom could fit into Colorado Springs with room left over. But still, I do feel that 1 percent is a kind of tipping point, the point where “they” have to take you seriously. Also, 6.9 percent of Icelanders are registered as “nones.”
I am punting on this post, referring you instead to this one by John Beckett on this year’s new holiday (greeting cards will be available next year, I am sure): “Celebrating Wolfenoot as a Pagan.”
Yesterday I celebrated my friendship with A Certain Dog by cleaning up all the piles of vomit he created, indoors and out in the dog run, after eating . . . a bunch of deer parts he found in the woods, near as I can tell. Plus his breakfast.
I tried telling him that he did not have to eat it all at once, but could bring some home in his carrion bag. Did he listen?
I am reading one of the Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child “Agent Prendergast” mysteries right now ,Crimson Shore.
Pendergast is a New Orleans-raised rich eccentric (New York mansion, manservant) with a twenty-something assistant/ward, Constance, possessed of “an old-fashioned beauty.” He has FBI credentials, but apparently answers to no one in the J. Edgar Hoover Building on a regular basis, instead taking cases that engage him intellectually.
Crimson Shoreis set in a lonely, decayed Massachusetts fishing village1 and the plot involves events in Salem in 1692. And someone once was walled up in a wine cellar and left to die — there is your Edgar Allen Poe reference, as the characters make clear. Lovecraft? How about a reference to the Necronomicon delivered with a literary elbow to the ribs? Also mysterious creatures in the salt marshes.
So is that more like theMurder, She Wrote TV series meets Poe, etc? A little toward the “cozy” end of the spectrum as opposed to the hard-boiled “police procedural” end?
“What I would like you to do, Constance, is to go to Salem tomorrow morning. I understand there are many attractions, including a ‘Witch house,’ a ‘Witch Dungeon Museum,’ and the famous Witch Trials Memorial, not to mention the ‘Witch City Segway Tour.'”
“Segway Tour? Surely you’re joking.”
“More to the point, Salem is also home to the Integrated Wiccan Alliance.” He passed her a card. “A certain Tiffani Brooks, also known as Shadow Raven, is head of the league and the leader of a coven there.
Constance took the card. “Wicca? White magic? And what am I supposed to find out?”
When I was a kid, I read some condensed version of the Iliad for young people. I did not understand the gods.
After all, I was raised to be a Christian. In the Bible, YHWH was supposed to take care of his special people, the Jews, although sometimes he expressed his care and concern . . . oddly. The Christians continued that idea with themselves as the special people, and so on with other monotheistic religions. Obviously, God favored the “good guys.”
In the Iliad, the Greeks are the “good guys,” near as, although the Trojans are not especially villainous, just the other team. But the story is told from the Greeks’ point of view. Yet some of the gods favored on side and some the other. How could that be?((You don’t really hear about the Trojans’ religion as a separate thing.))
That is the polytheistic view of life. The world is a mess. The world is beautiful. The gods are eternal (or as good as). The gods work at cross-purposes, and sometimes humans are caught between them.
Meanwhile, I see some Pagans convinced that they know how the gods vote — or would vote, if they could produce a photo ID at the polling place.
Are these the same Pagans who sneer at that subset of evangelical Christians who apparently think that Jesus is a Republican?((After 2,000 years of worship, he is definitely a god. And maybe he is a Republican. Or like in the TV version of American Gods, there are multiple Jesuses and one is a Republican.))
If you are really a polytheist, then you must accept that the gods do not vote. Their values are not always aligned with our day-to-day political values. Really, what does Aphrodite care about Colorado’s proposal to change the redistricting process or about who wins the race for Pueblo County coroner? Should I consult Hekate about my congressional candidates?
In the context of discussing a Heathen theological question, Galina Kraskova puts the issue this way:
On the other hand, statements such as, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” might be comforting but do represent a kind of crypto-monotheism, especially when people capitalize History and treat it as a force equivalent to the Judeo-Christian-Islamic Only God.
This “history” is apparently quasi-sentient and going somewhere other than to its own destruction. It is no coincident that the statement is attributed to a Unitarian minister.
Some Pagans I know (or know of) are working with various American archetypes ((I use Salmon too!)) in the sense of asking protection and blessing, which is OK. It’s like always ending a spell with “Or something better.”((It is always good when you can rid yourself of annoying people by blessing them.)) That means not ordering the gods around: “[Deity], cause [Candidate] to win the election!”
In the mundane world, stories like “Witches Hex Kavanaugh” are great clickbait.((For readers outside the USA, the article refers to Judge Brett Kavanaugh, recently added to the US Supreme Court after a contentious confirmation process in the Senate.))
Here is the old-line conservative magazine National Review, suffering from a drop in circulation, taking a clickbait-ish shot at “progressive” Witches:
And there was a pre-parade: on October 24, the Catrinas parade. The photos above are from the Catrinas parade, but you might have a hard time telling the difference.
When I look out my window,
I am reading one of the Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child “Agent Prendergast” mysteries right now 
