Talking about Tlaloc, 5

I think it is time to rebuild the shrine to Tlaloc under the bridge — the one that was mysteriously augmented last summer.  I had taken it down before the spring run-off, which is just a memory now.

Once the heat abates a little, I need to hike back over the ridge and leave an offering at Camera Trap Spring. The rattlesnake that has been there on my last two trips is its “guardian,” I have decided. What should I bring it, a bouquet of mice?

Actually, I owe that snake a favor, since it did not bite one of the dogs when it had all the opportunity and provocation.

Got to see if the bears have attacked the current camera, too. If they have, I may cede the territory to them for a couple of months. But I will leave an offering too

Meanwhile, the fires. As a former resident of Manitou Springs, I was sweating this Waldo Canyon Fire. As a volunteer firefighter, I can say here in my area we have had an easier time so far than last year — so far — with only one little piece of excitement on Tuesday. That, and we’ll be out patrolling this weekend, looking for illegal campfires.

The Witches and the Stripper

Someone at the Daily Mail no doubt had a good time writing the headline “The drunken stripper from the Golden Banana, a coven of Salem witches and the ‘groping’ man horrifically impaled when she crashed into a flatbed truck.”

Yes, it is link bait, and I bit. Wouldn’t you?

But it made me think: One of the many untold stories about the beginnings of the Craft in North America (I can’t speak for other places) is the involvement of people who were in or peripheral to the world of sex work.

I have to make some revisions to an article that I wrote for an edited collection on sex and new religious movements. I’m doing Wicca, no surprise there, and am concentrating on sexual metaphor in ritual.  I think, however, that the editor wants more on the “sexy witch” archetype.

Certainly a lot could be said about that, but in one article? Likewise,  a lot could be said—but has not—about the nexus of sexual experimentation and contemporary Paganism. It’s not just Paganism, of course—alternative sexual relationships and new religious movements have intersected many times. Hence this book. Consider, for instance, the Oneida Community and its doctrine of “complex marriage,” a sort of 19th-century polyamory.

The sexual impulse and the religious-creation impulse are often closely linked, it seems.

British University Lecturer Faces Wrath of Choronzon

Joanne Bedford, who teaches creative writing at The Open University in the UK, has a simple writing technique:‘

• Select
• Copy
• Paste

Then you change a few words. Evidently that is the part that requires university-level instruction, since her students certainly arrive knowing the first part.

It’s one thing to plagiarize Dylan Thomas as well as some lesser-known (but alive and angry)  British writers. But read to the end and you see that she also stands accused of plagiarizing Aleister Crowley.

Which of his works? Inquiring minds want to know.

By the way, Choronzon has a Wikipedia entry. (Via University Diaries.)

Pagans Preparing for Collapse

Archdruid John Michael Greer and the Four Quarters Sanctuary figure in this article on “doom time religion.”

Based on my limited experience, a strong religious emphasis might hold a communal group together. Otherwise, the people you need are not always the ones who want to live in the commune. The hard workers don’t want to have to carry a bunch of parasites and wannabes who think that “communal living” equals “easy.”

On the Necessity of Writing

Smith Corona "Silent" portable typewriterM. gave me this vintage (late 1940s) Smith-Corona “Silent” portable typewriter for my birthday earlier this month. Let it be a sign. Time to start writing—with the latest technology!

Speaking of writing, my former department chairman used to teach a once-weekly one-credit course called “Careers for English Majors.” He would bring in outside speakers, and he always tapped me to talk about a writer’s career path.

But there isn’t one.

Some people figure that out, e.g., Cassie Boorn, 24, in this article, “Six Young Female Journalists, One Year Later.”

Here is what I spent the past year learning; there is no path to success. Social media changed everything, the recession ruined most industries, too many people go to college and any sort of path that once existed is gone. That path is now paved with women who are too poor to have children and burn out by the time they are thirty.  Forget the path you have been sold and make your own. Start a blog, major in Philosophy, have a baby in college, pitch a story to Forbes, ask too many questions, take things apart and put them back together and turn it into a good story.

The path is that there is no path. If you are a writer, you will be writing. Says another of the six, speaking of her still-younger self, “My diaries read like chapter books, with clear beginnings, middles, and ends as I planned, undertook, and achieved milestones.”

That kind of thing.

Eating Tomatoes Makes You a Christian

Salafist Muslims proclaim that eating tomatoes might lead you down the false path to Christianity.

The group posted a photo on its page of a tomato – which appears to reveal the shape of a cross after being cut in half – along with the message: “Eating tomatoes is forbidden because they are Christian. [The tomato] praises the cross instead of Allah and says that Allah is three (a reference to the Trinity).

[God help us]. I implore you to spread this photo because there is a sister from Palestine who saw the prophet of Allah [Mohammad] in a vision and he was crying, warning his nation against eating them [tomatoes]. If you don’t spread this [message], know that it is the devil who stopped you.”

Silly fundamentalists. Eating tomatoes will lead you to worship Coatlicue.

“The Hall of Fame of Unpopular People”

A history and defense of free speech — from an Australian perspective. As Zendo Deb says, it’s worth ten minutes of your time.

This Is How It Begins

I saw this video at The Wild Hunt this morning and wanted to give it more circulation. It is beautifully done — a visual reflection on one person’s (?) or a small group’s (?) clandestine effort to revive a Pagan pilgrimage in the ancient Lebanese city of Sidon, an observance that was suppressed seventeen hundred years ago. This is how the old gods and their followers began once again to meet each other.

More on Pop Witchcraft in Movies and TV

At The Juggler, Zan continues the series on witches in pop culture with a look at the 1990s.

No, I did not know that Charmed wins the category of “longest-running hour-long series that features a trio of women.” But then it started after M. and I had moved up into the hills where, not being committed enough to TV to get a satellite dish, we get by with one or two channels.

Brain Wipe

If you watch this video, the original Latin lyrics for “O Fortuna” will be erased from your brain. You have been warned.

If you do watch, save the Wikipedia link above.