Someone is Stealing the Saints’ Parts of Europe

Of Ireland, at least, where a rash of thefts of saintly body parts has the police baffled.

The only thing creepier is imaging who might be buying them from the thieves, if the dean’s hypothesis is correct:

The latest in a series of such thefts involved the removal of the preserved heart of St. Laurence O’Toole, Dublin’s 12th-century patron saint, from the city’s historic Christ Church Cathedral. As there was no sign of forced entry to the cathedral itself, the dean of Christ Church, Dermot Dunne, initially believed the thief had probably hidden in the building when it closed on Friday evening, taken the artifact overnight and simply walked out the next morning.

“Maybe someone stole it to order; it certainly seems plausible,” Dean Dunne said Monday in an interview at Christ Church. “Or maybe a religious fanatic wants the relic and paid somebody to steal it.”

I know that (alleged) bits of Gautama Buddha are preserved in South Asia, but no one goes into keeping body parts like Catholic and Orthodox Christians. It’s all quite magickal.

The custom was well-advanced by the mid-fourth century, as Julian, the last Pagan emperor, was quite grossed out by it and often referred to Christian churches as charnel houses.

Aside from the Egyptians, most Pagan cultures of his day considered corpses to be polluting, full of miasma, and something to be gotten rid of — burned, buried, or sealed away in a sarcophagus (a word that literally means “flesh-eater,” since they were usually carved from limestone). And even the Egyptians did not stack mummies in their temples.

The last time I thought about saints’ relics was a couple of years ago when a priest was giving me and some colleagues a tour of the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City.

We had walked around into the apse, and while a certain Italian Catholic lawyer (scholars of new religions will know who I mean) dropped to his knees in adoration of the Sacrament, I was studying two reliquaries holding (alleged) bone fragments of Mary Magdalene.

Each one had a tiny bone fragment smaller than the nail of my little finger, encased in a glass capsule that was in turn decorated and encircled with gold. These inner cases, smaller than a lipstick tube, were then held in a larger, glass-walled box affixed to a wall. At least I remember there being two small capsules, although this website page speaks of one (larger?) reliquary.

There are more relics in the altar.

Irreverently, all that I could think of was some monk long ago sitting at a chopping block with a big knife or cleaver.

Behind him is the abbot, telling someone, “Brother Anthony’s knife skills are superb. You should watch him dice an onion or cut up a chicken. We will have plenty of relics to distribute to the faithful this way, and they will show their gratitude with generous gifts.”

Meanwhile, what are they doing with the heart of St. Laurence O’Toole?

A Rootworker in the City

In a two-part interview, the Black Pagan blog talks with Khi Armand of Conjure in the City , who has a shop and practice in Brooklyn.

Part 1 and Part 2.

There is the inevitable discussion of “nature religion” in the city.

I think that [living in an intense, man-made environment] would be subjective – every locale has is ups and downs. Being on overcrowded trains everyday makes me put more emphasis on spiritual cleansing and being surrounded by concrete does mean that it takes effort to get to “nature.” But I’m all the more appreciative of ivy growing up in a brownstone and all the more in awe of when a neighborhood decides to start growing its own vegetables.

I’m attracted to the goal of creating a sustainable earth-centered life in the midst of all this. I also think that magick might work quicker – in a city of 8 million people, you could virtually do a love spell in the morning and meet your new partner that night!

Also discussions of shamanism, grad school, and film-making. Go read. There is a connection to Catherine Yronwode’s operation too.

 

Pomegranate 13.1 Table of Contents

The newest issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies went to the printer last month. Contents are available online to subscribers or by purchase of individual articles.

PDFs of book reviews and of Caroline Tully’s article,  “Researching the Past is a Foreign Country: Cognitive Dissonance as a Response by Practitioner Pagans to Academic Research on the History of Pagan Religions,” may be downloaded free.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Response to Dominique Beth Wilson
Michael York

The Birth of Counterjihadist Terrorism: Reflections on some Unspoken Dimensions of 22/7
Egil Asprem

Pagan Saxon Resistance to Charlemagne’s Mission: ‘Indigenous’ Religion and ‘World’ Religion in the Early Middle Ages
Carole Cusack

Contemporary Paganism, Utopian Reading Communities, and Sacred Nonmonogamy:  The Religious Impact of Heinlein’s and Starhawk’s Fiction
Christine Hoff Kraemer

John Michell, Radical Traditionalism and the Emerging Politics of the Pagan New Right
Amy Hale

Researching the Past is a Foreign Country: Cognitive Dissonance as a Response by Practitioner Pagans to Academic Research on the History of Pagan Religions
Caroline Jane Tully

Book Review: Kerriann Godwin, ed., The Museum of Witchcraft: A Magical History (Boscastle, Cornwall: The Occult Art Company, 2011), 142 pp., £34.00 (hardcover). PDF . Reviewed by Ethan Doyle White

Book Review: Lee Gilmore, Theater in a Crowded Fire: Ritual and Spirituality at Burning Man (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010), 238 pp., (+ dvd) $24.95 (paperback).
PDF. Reviewed by Jason Lawton Winslade

Polytheistic Writing Sought

I am passing this along as a favor to the editor.

Gods are real.And these gods are everywhere, in all aspects of existence, all aspects of human life.”

James Hillman

Minneapolis writer is compiling an anthology of modern, polytheistic experiences, tentatively titled Return of the Gods: The Varieties of Polytheistic Experience

Seeking thoughtful, original, and previously unpublished non-fiction essays recounting first-hand encounters with Gods, ancestors, spirits, disembodied intelligences, and sacred presences in nature.

You may hail from a Hindu tradition, an indigenous tradition, a Pagan tradition, an African-based tradition, another tradition, or no tradition at all

Electronic submissions only.

Please submit only final, proofread copy, double-spaced, maximum 5,000 words.

Please send your story as an MS Word attachment to williammcgillis [at] gmail [dot] com with the subject line: Return of the Gods.

Please refrain from submitting if you are not open to edits.

Please ensure that your story file includes your (less-than-75 word) bio along with contact details, including postal address and email address.

Compensation: All selected contributors will receive a complimentary copy of the book upon publication

Deadline for submissions: June 21, 2012.

Invocatio

Added to the blogroll, Sarah Veale’s blog on Western esotericism, Invocatio.

Foreclosing on Churches

Another cautionary tale for the people who want permanent Pagan buildings. Don’t get behind on your mortgage. Being a religious institution does not protect against foreclosure, although it may postpone it for a time.

“Churches are among the final institutions to get foreclosed upon because banks have not wanted to look like they are being heavy handed with the churches,” said Scott Rolfs, managing director of Religious and Education finance at the investment bank Ziegler.

If the property’s value has fallen, the bank is less willing to refinance what is usually a commercial loan. Read the rest.

An ‘Extraordinary’ British Conference

CALL FOR PAPERS
Exploring the Extraordinary 4th Conference
22nd-23rd September, 2012
Holiday Inn, York

Since its inception in 2007, members of Exploring the Extraordinary have organised three successful academic conferences that have brought together researchers from a variety of different disciplines and backgrounds. The purpose of these events has been to encourage a wider dissemination of knowledge and research, and an interdisciplinary discussion of extraordinary phenomena and experience. By ‘extraordinary’ we refer to phenomena and experiences that are considered to be beyond the mundane, referring to those that have been called supernatural, paranormal, mystical, transcendent, exceptional, spiritual, magical and/or religious, as well as the relevance of such for human culture.

We are looking for submissions for our fourth conference, and would like to invite presentation proposals on topics related to the above. Please submit a 300-500 word paper abstract to Dr Madeleine Castro and Dr Hannah Gilbert (ete.network@gmail.com) by the 6th April 2012. Accepted papers should be on PowerPoint, no longer than 20 minutes, and intended for an interdisciplinary audience. Please include contact information and a brief biographical note.

For more information, and to see past conference schedules, please visit http://etenetwork.weebly.com

One Week Left for AAR Paper Proposals

The deadline for proposals for the 2012 American Academy of Religion annual meeting is Tuesday, March 13.

Here are the suggested topics for the Contemporary Pagan Studies Group:

  • For a possible cosponsored session with the Indigenous Religious Traditions Group, we invite papers on the intersection of contemporary indigenous traditions and paganism related to indigeneity, authenticity, and legitimacy. These may, for example, analyze how claims of indigenous status are used in relationship with political and theological issues or how groups deploy strategies around the issue of “authenticity.”

  •  The major metaphors of any religious tradition speak to ways humans connect with the Divine. Ancient — and some contemporary — forms of Paganism frequently employed notions of sacrifice and reciprocity. Modern Wicca, to name one tradition, consciously rejects the notion of sacrifice and replaces it with sexual intercourse as a metaphor both of internal psychological integration and as cosmic creation and fertility, from the Great Rite to the Dance of the Maypole. We invite papers on how these metaphors persist, interact, and manifest within historical and contemporary Paganism and how they frame interactions among participants.

  •  Is there really such a thing as Pagan “theology,” or is the term itself too embedded within an Abrahamic religious context? Should Pagan theology more accurately be described as praxology, or theories of Pagan praxis? What would Pagan praxology look like and how would it advance our understanding of religion?

More information here.

“Wicca Man” Trailer

Here is the trailer for the new British documentary on Gerald Gardner, theatrically introduced by Ronald Hutton rather like an episode of the archaeology program Secrets of the Dead.

Britain’s Wicca Man – (C) Matchlight from Matchlight on Vimeo.

I am happy to hear Professor Hutton say that Wicca was developed in the 1940s—I would say the very late 1940s at that, definitely post-World War II.

It is time to give up on the whole legend of the hidden coven at the Rosicrucian Theatre, of Gardner’s 1939 initiation at Dorothy Clutterbuck’s house, of the 1940 Lammas working against a possible German invasion, and all of that.

There is no evidence for any of it except Gardner’s say-so, and if those things happened, they do not gibe at all with what we know that Gardner was doing in the 1939-1947 period, namely trying out a variety of different esoteric groups before he “found” the one that he liked—Wicca.

Pop Classics

Added to the blogroll: Juliette Harrisson’s Pop Classics, “witty and entertaining random thoughts on appearances of Greek and Roman stuff in popular culture.”

Here is her episode-by-episode review of the series Rome, of which, it must be said, I was a total fan.

“Boring Soldier” and “Dodgey Soldier” — love it.