Yoga, Ectasy, Religion, and Sex

Religion is sexy — at least some of the time. (To scholars of religion, all religion is “sexy” in an intellectual sense.)

Last year, I edited and prepared for press a new biography of the evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson. She was a leading figure in American religion in the 1920s, but a sex-related scandal in 1926 hurt her with the news media.

McPherson was widowed as a young woman, then briefly re-married. She was a “rock star” of religion, working larger and larger venues with thousands of people focused on her preaching and healings.

And after raising all of that divine energy, she was supposed to go home to her solitary bed. According to the author—in our private conversations—she did not always do so. Why am I not surprised? Maybe some day he will write that follow-up volume that tells all.

Interesting, a lot of today’s Pentecostal Christians do not know her name, although she founded one of its denominations. One of my students, a Pentecostal, said she had heard of her and thought of her as “scary”—but she did not know why.

All of this is a long introduction to a  New York Times article: “Yoga and Sex Scandals: No Surprise Here.”

One factor is ignorance. Yoga teachers and how-to books seldom mention that the discipline began as a sex cult — an omission that leaves many practitioners open to libidinal surprise.

Hatha yoga — the parent of the styles now practiced around the globe — began as a branch of Tantra. In medieval India, Tantra devotees sought to fuse the male and female aspects of the cosmos into a blissful state of consciousness.

The rites of Tantric cults, while often steeped in symbolism, could also include group and individual sex. One text advised devotees to revere the female sex organ and enjoy vigorous intercourse. Candidates for worship included actresses and prostitutes, as well as the sisters of practitioners.

Hatha originated as a way to speed the Tantric agenda. It used poses, deep breathing and stimulating acts — including intercourse — to hasten rapturous bliss. In time, Tantra and Hatha developed bad reputations. The main charge was that practitioners indulged in sexual debauchery under the pretext of spirituality.

But it’s not just yoga and tantra. People get crushes on supposedly celibate Catholic priests, as Edie Falco’s character, Carmela,  did in The Sopranos. And so on. It’s a issue for clergy, just as it is with psychotherapists.

As a polytheist, I would like to time-travel back to one of Sister Aimee’s healing services and see if she was  channeling only Yeshua the radical rabbi or maybe someone else as well, someone known for lifting his devotees up and them hurling them down.

As polytheists, we know that some of the deities and some ritual practices carry a strong sexual charge. People who work these will feel the results. If we know that in advance—and if we can ways to use these energies that do not have bad social consequences—then Pagans won’t “find themselves less prone to surprise.”

 

The Babalon Working and the Rise of New Paganism

Today I listened to a podcast by California ceremonial magician Carroll “Poke” Runyon about Jack Parsons, himself a magician and rocket scientist of the 1940s.

Runyon argues that the Babalon Working of 1946 in which Parsons participated prefigured on the astral plane the rise of Goddess-centered contemporary Paganism in North America.

If you are not familiar with this corner of American occult history, including Parsons’ connections with L. Ron Hubbard, Aleister Crowley,  Philip K. Dick, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the podcast will bring you up to speed.

Dutch Schultz, Call Your Office

Taking and pulling her achat, he exploded high. The wild glances from his owner walked seeing. Achat viagra motley was the lightbulb and moved a seconds to her woman shorts. So had a good achat into going. The word is begun the park around a giant, on galaxy glanced definitely ever. Achat went. A brendan von roberts of the edmund catherine dade tyree, skink the – sorry frank drug disk was badger in the heat ampersand in newspapers, bows, but tanks of a winder flames. A alive achat? Zek asked. You is up in it. The soft efforts, his missiles do, supposed out the achat – viagra and were suddenly for this death to awe a crowd. She was going the sceptical achat into listening of the viagra in one pleasant heavy men and now hiking him by the seat with the worthy poppy.

I just pulled that out of the spam-comment folder. How do they do it?  But nothing about French-Canadian bean soup.

A Glitch in the Matrix

Via Jonathan Korman’s blog, a collection of “glitch in the Matrix” stories collected through Reddit. Time briefly flowing backwards, apparitions of people who cannot possibly be there, near-death experiences, that sort of thing.

When I was around 20, a few years ago, I kept having dreams about a woman with long black hair named Aroura ( pronounced A-roar-uh) . They were different dreams but for some reason, her distinct face and name always ended up in them. It got to the point where I would wake up frustrated and confused, trying to google her name or find out how I was connected to her. After a few months she stopped showing up and I dismissed it, thinking my brain was just being a “scumbag.”

Fast forward a few years later, Halloween 2009, I’m in the car with a friend stopped at a gas station. . . . .

Prepare to lose some time here.

Why the Pantheacon Gender Controversy Persists

For the second year running, some attendees at Pantheacon have become involved in protests, sit-ins, and a whole lot of blog posts about gender issues.

I am not going to weigh in on Z Budapest, etc. I was not there. But I was reading a post on Religion Bulletin the other day titled “Yogis and the Politics of Offense,”  by Matt Sheedy, that suggested a reason for the size and persistence of this particular Pantheacon kerfuffle.

Reading past the yogis and the “Shit Yogis Say” parody video, I came to this paragraph:

When groups are new and not well defined, and where the boundaries of their self-understanding are generally recognized to be unstable, the work of critique becomes that much easier since it focuses the conversation on tangible matters that can be discussed and debated. As many scholars are aware, this instability and contingency is true of all religious formations, yet it remains an uphill battle to speak of older traditions in the same way—unless of course one’s goal is to cause offense in the first place.

Contemporary Paganism in all its forms is “not well defined.” Our boundaries are not merely porous, they are vaporous. You could do a “Shit Pagans Say” video — and maybe someone has — but a lot of Pagans probably would say that it just critiques the fluff bunnies or something, that none of “that stuff” is really central to their spiritual practice.

On the other hand, the author writes,

Whenever the social practices of a group are presented as the essence of that group as a social whole, there is a risk of causing offense. For something to be considered “offensive” in a categorical sense, however, it must involve more than hurt feelings on the part of an individual. There must be some notion of a “social whole” in the first place and, what is more, those things that are being lampooned must be considered central to the self-understanding of the group in question.

Sheedy argues that another video, “Shit Girls Say,” is indeed offensive because it addresses a social whole, whereas “Shit Yogis Say” does not.

If “girls” constitute a social whole, then certainly “women” do as well.  There is a general assumption of what constitutes “women.” Some people insist that self-identified transwomen, for example,  can also be included. But there is a boundary, and the argument is about who is inside it and who is not. There is something worth struggling over — as long as Paganism(s) valorize women-only ritual and female religious leadership.

UPDATE, Feb. 28: Gus diZerega writes the most reasonable blog post on this whole issue from a Pagan-politics standpoint that I have seen.

To summarize, the protest against Z’s genetic-women only ritual was political.  Its advocates were making a statement about how they believe the entire Pagan community should act: not simply not to condemn, not simply to accept other ways, but to modify their ways so as to include a group that wanted such affirmation even while they were free to practice in their own way within a largely accepting environment.  Sometimes this is necessary to do, as with a hypothetical case of having the community ban a group practicing ritual child abuse. But most of the time this is not necessary.

I am asking different questions, but I applaud Gus for making that point. Wicca, in particular, has always been a small-l libertarian, “live and let live,” do-it-yourself religion. I hate to see one group demanding that another group change its ways to accommodate them based on a self-proclaimed moral authority.

Wicca Work?

M. drew my attention today to the fact that Rocky Mountain PBS (Motto: “All Antiques Roadshow all the time.”) was offering another BBC-produced copy show, Wicca Work. Typical of RMPBS, they seem to be starting with the third season.

CORRECTION: The series is New Tricks, the episode is “Wicca Work.” (Thanks, first commenter.)

The description of the series says,

They may have handed in their badges and started collecting their pensions years ago, but Lane, Standing and Halford are back for a third and fourth series, still working at the London Metropolitan Police as civilians investigating unsolved crimes as part of boss Pullman’s team, Unsolved Crime and Open Case Squad (UCOS). Led by Pullman, who spends half her time trying to rein them in, the three men investigate an array of challenging and disturbing crimes.

What, if anything, is the significance of the title? Is this just another case of Wicca being the new black?

UPDATE: They may have used the word “Wicca” a few time, but this was more Dennis Wheatley than Gerald Gardner. The “white whitches” are really “black witches,” they sacrifice people, and the solitary witch who lives in a tipi (!?) gives the detectives teas that (a) make them incredibly horny or (b) are psychotropic and mind-bending.

Fight Depression with Frankincense?

New research on the psychoactive properties of incense. Surprise, surprise.

An international team of scientists, including researchers from Johns Hopkins University and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, describe how burning frankincense (resin from the Boswellia plant) activates poorly understood ion channels in the brain to alleviate anxiety or depression. This suggests that an entirely new class of depression and anxiety drugs might be right under our noses.

Graham Harvey on Animism

In this podcast, Graham Harvey of the Open University, one of the leading figures in Pagan studies, speaks about animism—our relations with other-than-human communities.

It is one of a series of podcasts featuring leading figures in different areas of religious studies.

And Where Is Goudy, Under the Sofa?

Cats as fonts.

The Valentine Code

Valentin’s Day came this week, and I owed M. a dinner out, so we went. In our case, that means a longish drive, half on gravel roads, to a restaurant with soft lighting and an actual wine list.  Just doing our part for the Romantic-Industrial Complex.  Snow was in the forecast, but did not arrive.

She half-apologized for not getting me a card, but that’s all right, I had not bought her one either. Normally I would shy from buying a card with the word “special” on the front, and now I know why—in the World of Hallmark, it is a sort of code:

S: Are there any words writers are banned from using on a Valentine?

DD: We tried to avoid “soul mate terminology” because you don’t know how well a couple is going to know each other or how well they’re getting along. Some one might not feel comfortable using the word ‘love’ which is where the word “special” comes in. You’ll see that again and again on greeting cards: “for a special mom” or “for a special person.” The word special can mean anything from “you’re the most beautiful person to me” to “I’m glad I don’t live that close to you anymore.”