My series co-editor Wendy Griffin and my editing collaborator Graham Harvey (The Paganism Reader) appear on the BBC Radio 4 to discuss hearing voices and Paganism. (Real Player download — you will hear some BBC news first.)
Tag Archives: England
) appear on the BBC Radio 4 to discuss DNA, the Celts, and Roman Britain
I have started reading Stephen Oppenheimer’s The Origins of the British, which I referenced earlier in my series of “Who’s a Celt Now?” posts.
, which I referenced earlier in my series of From a genetic analysis — his main tool — buttressed by linguistic studies and ancient written sources, he appears to be making these points:
- The people of Ireland, Wales, western Scotland, western England, and the Atlantic coast of France came north from Iberia and southwestern France after the ice melted. These people spoke Celtic languages.
- Conversely, they did not come from central Europe and are not connected to the so-called Hallstatt and La Tene cultures.
- After the ice melted, eastern England did receive settlers from the Continent–but remember that back then, people could walk from what is now France to England, until the sea levels rose.
- During the 400 years of Roman colonization, many (or most) inhabitants of the province of Britannia were probably speaking a Germanic language (related to Dutch or Frisian), not a Celtic language. If true, that is the biggest revelation for me.
- The subsequent Anglo-Saxon invasion was not a genocidal “wipe-out,” but was more like the Norman Conquest of 1066. One ruling class replaced another, but life for Jane and Joe Commoner went on as before.
I will post again after finishing the book.
After the Witch Queen Steps Down: Maxine Sanders’ Fire Child
In the 1960s, when Pagan Witchcraft started to gain widespread media attention, Maxine Sanders (b. 1948?) was one of its visible faces. A tall willowy young woman with bleached blonde hair, she was married in 1965 to Alex Sanders (1926-1988) for whom the Alexandrian tradition is named.
He was older, charming, verbal – she was photographed, his words were recorded. That’s her on the cover of my early hardback edition of Stewart Farrar’s 1971 book What Witches Do, long hair flowing, eyes downcast towards the chalice.
, long hair flowing, eyes downcast towards the chalice.Now she talks — in print as opposed to classes and lectures — in a valuable autobiography, Fire Child: The Life & Magic of Maxine Sanders, ‘Witch Queen’.
The book is not what it could have been. Material is not always straight-forwardly organized, punctuation is erratic and unclear, and words usedly mistakenly (“taught” for “taut,” “vice” for “vise,” that sort of thing). I fault the publisher.
Still, this is an important book. Sanders gave her life to the Craft in a way that few have, and she admits she paid a price: two failed marriages (Sanders, in the end, preferred men), financial hardship in the early years, breast cancer, and, most of all, the hardship of being always on-call in her role as priestess.
Marriage with Alex had been rather like a working relationship. Unconsciously, we sacrificed the more personal and sharing aspects of a normal marriage.
To read Fire Child is follow a trail of ups and initiations, rituals and happenings, magical politics, festivals and and visions.
Yet it is also a frank admission of the dangers of magickal religion. Coming from a background of intense, small-group work, she is prone to opinions such as these:
The modern Craft is a victim of its own success. Its tremendous growth since the heady days of the 1960s has outstripped the availability of experienced and reputable teachers, who in former days would themselves have served an arduous apprenticeship before being judged worthy to passon the tradition – and then only to a few.
(And she admits that even in her own group that rule was not always followed.)
Witchcraft is so often perceived as a young person’s religion that it is good to read a mature priestess’s thoughts. Maxine Sander has gone through the fires – media celebrity, high-profile religious leadership, magic, suffering. Her book is valuable – “full and candid,” to quote Ronald Hutton’s cover blurb. I recommend it.
that it is good to read a mature priestess’s thoughts. Maxine Sander has gone through the fires – media celebrity, high-profile religious leadership, magic, suffering. Her book is valuable – “full and candid,” to quote Gallimaufry with Big Rocks
¶ My copy of Fire Child: The Life & Magic of Maxine Sanders, ‘Witch Queen’
¶ When the Goddess Ruled the Earth
My point is that you cannot necessarily tell by looking at a structure the religious views of its builders. You might be able to make an educated guess by analogy with known cultures, but without extensive, obvious archaeological evidence — and better still, written evidence — you cannot say. Is the “Venus of Willendorf” a religious artifact or a Paleolithic Barbie doll? Will we ever know?
¶ Fiacharrey, “the Bayou Druid,” is making YouTube videos on Celtic Reconstructionism. Here is one.
The Scary Countryside
Jason Pitzl-Waters notes an upcoming Guillermo del Toro movie:
The duo will be co-producing Born, a film adaptation of [Clive] Barker’s story about a family who gets more than they bargained for when they move to the English countryside.
The scary countryside is a staple of British–and frequently North American–film-making. Perhaps that cliché is the flip side of the Frazerian notion of the countryside as repository of ancient beliefs and practices.
In movies, ancient practices are always scary. When my book Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America was in production, the first cover design (not used) was referred to as the “Children of the Corn cover” in honor of the movie stereotype.
Urban directors make these pictures for urban audiences — who already harbor odd fears about nature and wildlife, like purse-snatching elk.
In British film, every picturesque village is controlled by a secret cabal of child-sacrificing Satanists, disguised, for instance, as the local branch of the Women’s Institute.
The editor and publisher of our county newspaper came to dinner last night (they are married to each other) and we got to talking about this very cinematic phenomenon.
We decided that the secret cabal in charge hereabouts would have to be the [Blank] County Cattlewomen. Don’t get yourself on their bad side.
Gallimaufry with Nut Brown Ale
¶ John Barleycorn Reborn is a double CD compilation of dark folk music from the British Isles.
¶ Staying with the British theme: if you see this, you must be in Glastonbury.
¶ Now this is embodied Paganism.
¶ “Sexy witch” Halloween costumes (big this year) require striped stockings. Why is that? The “sluts and slashers” aspect of costuming bothers some Pagans.
¶ Another example of group disfunction?
¶ I missed DOR Day. Next year I won’t. (I do wish bloggers would abandon white-on-black type. The only thing more eyestrain-inducing is purple-on-black.)
The Wee ‘Oss in Cornwall and California
Folklorist Alan Lomax’s 1953 film of the Padstow, Cornwall, May Day festival, Oss Oss, Wee Oss! is now available on DVD, together with the Pagan hobby horse procession from Berkeley, California, and an updated film from Padstow in 2007.
Order before July 3 for free shipping.
You can also see small video clips from the original 1953 documentaryon the Web.
A nice touch: the two-sided DVD has both NTSC and PAL formats, so it can be watched anywhere.
Prince Charles, thatch, and the collapse of civilization
The Prince of Wales recently was quoted as saying McDonald’s restaurants “should be banned” (in the United Arab Emirates, if not the UK).
What do we call that, “nutritional mercantilism“?
Although I admire him for his environmental work and his line of organic foods, I laughed pretty hard at Steve Stirling’s fictionalized version of the prince in A Meeting at Corvallis, the final book of his post-Collapse trilogy. (Yes, I know, trilogies . . . )
I have mentioned Stirling’s fairly realistic Wiccan characters, but the third book offers an England where now-King Charles rules, and he has imposed his aesthetic taste on as much of the nation as he controls. Houses must have thatched roofs, while farmers and laborers must wear the old cotton smock when they work outdoors. “De national dress, mon,” says a Jamaican immigrant turned farmer.
Update: Alice Thomson calls the prince a true prophet.
Pagans Want Some Bones Back
Borrowing the rhetorical tools developed in North America, British Pagans are becoming increasingly vocal on the issue of “ancestral remains.”
British pagan groups are increasingly asking for human remains and grave goods from pre-Christian burials to be returned to them as well. The presence of what they see as their ancestors in dusty drawers or under harsh display lights is an affront to their religion. To them, the bones are living beings, whose existence is bound up with their religious descendants and the sacred land.
I am friends with some of the British Pagan academics who have been pushing this issue hard. On the other hand, ask any geneticist: lots of people, most of them not capital-P Pagans, are descended from those ancient ancestors.
So let us admit that these demands are to a large extent a stunt. We are dealing with self-appointed spokespeople here. David at the Cronaca archaeology blog has other comments.
Death of a Chief Druid
Tim Sebastion, chief of the Secular Order of Druids in the UK, died on February 1.
He was always in the swirl of controversy around Stonehenge. This site, although dated, gives a feel for how that has gone.
His order was formed in 1975 and the acronym was chosen deliberately, or so I have been told. Based on my couple of meetings with Tim (the last in a Bath pub in 2004), it seemed that by appearing to not be totally serious, he was able to be very serious.
He also held the Bardic Chair of Caer Badon (Bath) after founding a gorsedd (poetic competition) in 1995.
A ton of British Druid Web sites exist: Here is a sampling.