From Rune Soup, a post to follow Jason Pitzl-Waters’ recent discussion of the Borders closing’s effect on Pagan publishers.
It is, as the man says, a “huge rant.”
Home Country: A Southern Colorado Catholic Splinter Group
I visited Florence, Colorado, yesterday and noticed that the congregation of St. Jude the Apostle of the Ecumenical Catholic Church of Christ (not to be confused with the Ecumenical Catholic Church) had apparently evaporated.
At least their sign was missing from the old brick church on Second Street by which I like to park on hot summer days because of the big trees there.
(Street shade is precious. Although Florence is not a Mormon settlement, it has little street-side irrigation channels like Weber City or Vernal, Utah, that seem to cool the air.)
The ECCC website is poorly designed and graphics-heavy, but if you scroll down you you can find the building and shots of the interior. At least one wedding was celebrated while the congregation occupied that space. Maybe it was like the last wedding at Hvalsey church in Greenland, in or about 1408
Like most Catholic splinter churches, the ECCC seems to have a high ratio of bishops and priests to parishioners.
It is one of the “independent Catholic churches,” shepherded or founded by “wandering bishops,” a term I first encountered when writing for Gnosis magazine back in the 1990s. “Congregations tend to be minuscule and sometimes even non-existent” (Wikipedia).
If you have read this far, you are probably wondering why you are reading about St. Jude’s the Ephemeral on a Pagan blog.
Reading about ambitious Pagan centers that are/are not foundering makes me think of the way in which little religious groups that are big on robes and ritual but short on cash sometimes over-extend themselves.
The Wanton Green—Both Book and Blog
Adrian Harris describes a new Pagans-and-place publishing project, The Wanton Green.
For many contemporary Pagans the relationship between bodymind and place is fundamental, but that relationship has rarely been explored in any depth. Paganism is often described as being polytheistic, animist or about ‘nature worship’, and while that’s all true in a vague and anodyne way, it’s of limited value.
Follow the link for more.
Idolatry 101: Kachina Dolls
Traditional-style kachinas by known carvers command four-figure prices.
Robert Cafazzo, antiques-and-art dealer in Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico, discusses the care and repair of kachina dolls, which can be simultaneously images of spiritual power and art objects made to be purchased by collectors.
(Disclaimer: I have bought a few small things at his shop, Two Graces, although not kachinas.)
He also gets into the collecting side and shares some of his “kachina kitsch.”
Then there are the doll carvings made by other Pueblo people. Zuni carvings are some of the best (in the store here they always sell rather quickly, recently I had one for all of 3 hours!), Acoma & Laguna carvings are the simplest and to some collectors extremely desirable but really not for everyone, basically they look like a short log with a stylized face, Jemez dolls tend to be confused with ‘Boy Scout’ carvings, those from Isleta are not common but do exist. San Juan carvings, which I carry are specific to the various Northern Pueblo Dances. As a rule I do not carry Navajo Kachinas, which I refer to as PowWow Dancer Dolls. These may look great on a coffee table featured in a photo essay for Architectural Digest or some other home interiors magazine, but they are some of the worst craftsmanship of curios in the marketplace today. Navajo carvers did make traditional Route 66 Yei Dolls, and there are some amazing Navajo traditional carvings out there. It’s my personal opinion that PowWow Dancer Dolls are not your best option. All of the Pueblos in New Mexico & Arizona have their own unique carvings, some do not offer them as crafts for sale and strictly forbid the sale of wooden deity carvings. When visiting a Pueblo ask for dolls or crafts—never ask for ‘Kachinas’.
In Two Graces, you will find both fine kachina dolls and kachina salt-and-pepper shakers—Robert likes it all.
‘Therapy Tourism’ & Why Talking Doesn’t Help
Ten years after the September 2011 terrorist attacks, follow-up research shows that much post-trauma therapy is useless and possibly makes things worse.
Mental health professionals flooded [New York City] in a wave of ‘trauma tourism’ after two planes struck the World Trade Center in 2001 according to the report.
But the main psychological benefits were felt by the psychologists rather than the patients, said the study, which said experts greatly over-estimated the number of people who wanted treatment.‘We did a case study in New York and couldn’t really tell if people had been helped by the providers – but the providers felt great about it,’ Patricia Watson, a co-author of the report who works at the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress told The New York Times.
‘It makes sense; we know that altruism makes people feel better.’
According to the report, therapy centres were set up in the offices of major employers and in fire stations after 9/11.
But for many survivors, the standard procedure at the time of asking them to talk through their experience was not helpful.
Researchers believe that the process can sometimes push people deeper into depression and worsen anxiety.
Of course, it will take a generation for this new insight to filter through the “helping professions.”
Home Country: Remembering Gia-Fu Feng
The South Hardscrabble Creek area. Click image to see it full size with labels.
There really is a Hardscrabble Creek, and this is part of its watershed. (View is to the southeast.)
The label “Stillpoint” marks the site of a therapeutic community started in 1977 by Gia-Fu Feng, who taught a sort of Taoist (Daoist) philosophy mixed with Gestalt-style encounter groups in North America and Europe through the 1970s and early 1980s. (He died in June 1985.)
His translations of the Tao Te Ching and of Chuang Tsu remain popular, in both sense of the term.
Earlier incarnations of Stillpoint had been in Los Gatos, California, and Manitou Springs, Colorado, where M. and I first knew Gia-Fu and his followers as one of several large, communal living experiments. We had no desire to live in a therapeutic commune and do encounter groups, however!
This last incarnation of Stillpoint never became the “new Taoist village” that Gia-Fu envisioned, although the remodeled barn/community building and various cabins and hermitages are still there. Ownership has passed through a chain of people connected to Gia-Fu.
One of them, Carol Ann Wilson, wrote a good biography, Still Point of the Turning World, but as so often happens with “crazy wisdom” teachers, I think that you had to have been there to really “get” Gia-Fu.
My last sight of him came in the spring of 1985 when I drove past Stillpoint, bound for Boulder after turkey-hunting up South Hardscrabble Creek. He was strolling up the side of the gravel road in billowing, bright-yellow trousers and his padded jacket—probably the one in the Wikipedia photo. When I came back permanently, only his memory remained.
R.J. Stewart and the Old Ones
In this essay from 2006, R.J. Stewart discusses some of his teachers in occultism, particulaly Ronald Heaver (that’s Mr. Heaver to you), also known by the pen name of “Zadok.” (Bill Gray also figures in the essay, hence the plural.)
Before recounting my meetings with Ronald Heaver, I would like to share some brief insights regarding the teaching methods and general consciousness of the older generation of mentors in Britain. I am referring to those who, like Ronald Heaver, had come through both the 1st and/or 2nd World Wars. Few of them are left now. Many people today do not understand how different their methods were from those familiar to us in the last 20 years of spiritual, pagan, and New Age revival. There is, as a result, romanticizing, even fantasizing, about some of the founders of our spiritual and magical revival, and especially that powerful branch that relates so strongly to Glastonbury and the Sacred Mysteries. . . . .
Some of the methods of that older wartime generation of spiritual mentors may seem strange to us, but were essential to them in their day. This background, both individual and cultural, is helpful to our understanding of Ronald Heaver’s life and work, as he was of that generation, though in many ways he rose above it, despite a most difficult and dramatic life.
Firstly, many of these older generation teachers, mentors, and mystics of the British inner tradition, be they known or unknown, would teach different, even contradictory things, to different students. Therefore, students learning individually from one teacher, would each receive variations or even contradictions of the core teachings. This method was widespread, and was not as frivolous as we might think. Another method, which was well known, though supposedly secret, was to give an initiation or a confirmation of spiritual power, then tell the recipient that only he or she had received it. Years later, the recipients (plural) would find others who had had the same experience! There are typically certainly key secret phrases and dramatic unique subtle sensations, so no one (but no one) can fake receiving such spiritual empowerments.
In other words, you didn’t download the “Glastonbury” app and have instant knowledge, apparently. (Grumble grumble.)
Interesting stuff, worth reading.
Pagans Are Popping Up . . .
. . . in Religion Nerd’s daily summary of off-beat religion news.
Also—the Dalai Lama flops as a food-show judge.
On the Norwegian ‘Esoterrorist’
Egil Asprem, a Norwegian scholar of esotericism and contemporary Paganism (he has published in The Pomegranate on Norse Paganism and Kabbalah) has a blog post up: “Counterjidhadist Templar Terrorism,” on Anders Behring Breivik’s use of Western esoteric language and symbols. Worth reading.
It is as if an ideological critique of (or revolt against) modernity which seeks to incorporate a religious dimension hardly ever escapes the esoteric – whether the revolt comes from the left or the right.
How to Talk with the Non-Pagan Press
Lots of Pagan sites are talking about a magickal showdown with some Christian spiritual warriors over the District of Columbia. Jason Pitzl-Waters has the thoroughly hyperlinked details.
Here Hecate, who helped start this particular rolling, says some valuable things about framing the issue when talking with non-Pagans.
When talking to the press, framing matters. Your message is that local Pagans, whose heritage goes back to some of the world’s first democracies and who are soldiers, police, fire fighters, doctors, teachers, business owners, parents, and citizens, are standing up for traditional American values including tolerance and religious freedom. Your group will be doing that by [gathering and reading the Constitution, collecting canned food for people of all religious backgrounds who have been hit by the bad economy, chanting and praying, whatever.] You’re saddened that one group of Americans would attack other Americans over their religions. You hope to remind America of the religious toleration that our Founders believed was such an important American value.
Your message is NOT that Pagans don’t worship Satan, eat babies, etc. Repeat: your message is NOT about what Pagans don’t do.
She is a lawyer by trade and just might know something about the practice of rhetoric, y’know? (Many of the famous Pagan rhetoricians, guys like Quintilian, were—at times—lawyers, although the profession was structured differently then.)
To use the language of classical rhetoric, she is arguing the stasis of definition. In contemporary political rhetoric, it’s part of what we call “controlling the narrative” or in other words making your side look good, reasonable, ethical, in tune with enduring American values. etc.
And thanks for the mention in the blog post! I am all for material spirituality.