. . . . you can buy gen-u-wine witchy basil of unknown age and origin on eBay. (Click image to embiggen.)
Strange Things Have Swum in the Midnight Sun
Cryptozoologists may rejoice over a new video of a “sea serpent” in Alaska.
Quick Review: Spellbound: Inside West Africa’s Witch Camps
Karen Palmer, author of Spellbound: Inside West Africa’s Witch Camps, is a veteran journalist, not a historian of witchcraft, so for me to read the book from the latter perspective is to do her a slight disservice. (As an inside, the subtitle might better read “Inside Ghana’s Witch Camps,” but maybe some editor thought that “West Africa’s” had more punch.)
From her website:
With these words, Karen Palmer takes us inside one of West Africa’s witch camps, where hundreds of banished women struggle to survive under the watchful eye of a powerful wizard. Palmer arrived at the Gambaga witch camp [a sort of refugee camp for accused witches] with an outsider’s sense of outrage, believing it was little more than a dumping ground for difficult women. Soon, however, she encountered stories she could not explain: a women who confessed she’d attacked a girl given to her as a sacrifice; another one desperately trying to rid herself of the witchcraft that she believed helped her kill dozens of people.
One troubling thing about studying the Renaissance and early modern witch trials (1500s-1700s) is that we never hear from the victims except through the filter of witch-trial testimony.
Now if you can assume that the phenomenon of witchcraft in northern Ghana is analogous to “our” witch trials—and it certainly sounds that way to me—then once again there are no clear answers about what is going on.
There was Ayishetu, chased from her village by a violent mob, whose life was destroyed by the accusation that she practiced witchcraft, and Winangi, a tiny splinter of a woman who’d gne seeking witchcraft to protect herself and her children. She pleaded to her husband to move her to the camp when she felt she’d lost control of the dark gift. A smart businesswoman named Asara had ended up at the camp when a debtor accused her of causing a meningitis outbreak. Napoa, mannish and grumpy, readily identified herself as a witch and caused fear among the other women living at the camp (41).
The surrounding culture is mostly Islamic but with lots of magical practitioners. Muslim polygamy also contributes to the problem. How do you get rid of the oldest wife? Accuse her of being a witch!
Another analogy with the European witch trials is this: The village shaman-herbalist is not the witch but rather the person who accuses the witch. Or if someone has accused her (usually it is her), the shaman-herbalist conducts a ritual (e.g., watching the death throes of a chicken) to pronounce whether she truly is a witch or not.
So I recommend Spellbound both for a look at contemporary West African issues with witchcraft but also for thinking more about its history in Western culture.
Polytheism in the Marketplace
Going to buy puja supplies from an immigrant Hindu shopkeeper. Confusion ensues, but is resolved.
Witches Keeping Silent
One coven that I used to circle with when visiting their city was big on the old Magicians’ Pyramid: To Know, To Will, To Dare, To Keep Silent.
Sarah Lawless, the “Witch of Forest Grove,” thinks that there should be more silence, writing in a post called “Oversharing Witches“:
I was taught not to share. Specifically, I was taught not to share who my familiar spirits are, to not share the exact names of my deities, not to share what my unique abilities are, not to share recent spells I’ve performed, and to only talk about my tradition when asked (especially by elders) and never say more than the absolute least I possibly can. You’re probably laughing at me because I write a witchcraft blog that’s all about sharing knowledge, practices, and experiences… but hold that laughter. Have you ever seen me state exactly what all of my animal and plant familiars are? Have you ever seen me list the names of all the ancestors I work with? Have you ever seen me state exactly which traditions I trained in? You may have even noticed that I tend to use nicknames and epithets for the deities I work with rather than their actual names. I tend to skirt around a lot of things about myself. This blog is more of a giant Sarah iceberg and you’re only ever seeing the tip.
I see her point, although what I see in too many Craft blogs is just recycling of other people’s stuff instead of sharing secrets!
Mothman, John Keel, and Weirdness
Io9,com offers a reflection by Ed Grabianowski on the “Mothman Prophecies,” both the 1975 book by John Keel and the subsequent 2002 movie with Richard Gere, which has little in common except the title and infamous bridge collapse.
Grabianowski’s article is a level-headed examination of the “flap” of 1967, about which I can say little—I wasn’t there. Maybe it did all start with the sudden, startling flight of a barn owl, viewed by people keyed up by the excitement of social transgression and (probably) anticipated sexual activity.
(The “seven feet tall” part is possible too—I’ve mistaken a jackrabbit for a deer when one suddenly jumped up in front of me at dusk—your eyes can play tricks.)
John Keel’s subsequent book went way beyond those particular events, describing how even his act of trying to report on them put him into a sort of “twilight zone” of inexplicable happenings.
Grabianowski is leery of its reporting:
Somehow, in five years, Keel went from a plain denial of any Mothman-Silver Bridge connection to one of the most elaborate and bizarre cryptid tales ever told, with himself as a central character. The clues to what sparked the change come, again, from the published letters of Keel and [Gray] Barker. To put it bluntly, in much of their paranormal and UFO writing they were “taking the piss.” As Barker put it in a 1970 letter, “the kookie books are about all that I can sell these days. I lost the ‘sensible’ subscribers…long ago, so I get a kick out of letting it reflect the utter mental illness of the field.” Lurid tales sold a hell of a lot better than dry investigations that didn’t find much of anything, and there was always some portion of the public gullible enough to swallow any story whole. So that was how they made their living.
I did not read Keel’s Mothman Prophecies until the early 1980s. (It is still in print.) When I did, I was surprised at the “twilight zone” stuff, because my own youthful adventures in investigating certain phenomena had put me into a similar zone, where, among other things, just being in “the field” caused people to act strangely, to turn on each other, become wildly paranoid, etc. No drugs involved.
So I had to respect the book for that aspect—whatever “Mothman” was, paranormal investigations can leave you with one foot on “the other side,” in a strange psychological space.
Here is a YouTube video of Keel speaking about Mothman, etc.
Who You Calling ‘Digressive’?
A review from the July 11-18, 2011, issue of The New Yorker. The Waterstons, in particular, should get more credit as early Pagan-friendly (or Pagan-inspiring) musicians.
Starting Over as a Virgin (Or Else)
When I was a teenager, I remember hearing some slightly older female friends cracking up over the line, “Let’s go to California and start over again as virgins.”
Only it should be “Toronto,” not “California,” the reason being that you do not want your Muslim husband to beat you.
Lina, 20, is originally from Afghanistan and isn’t surprised the surgery is now available in Canada.
“My friend heard that it was going on in Saudi Arabia because people fear their husbands,” she said.
“If she doesn’t get it done, then they are going to find out that she wasn’t pure on the wedding night, but if she does get the surgery done, they could find out that she wasn’t pure and got this surgery in secret, which would be very bad.”
File under “Desert Monotheisms.”
Theology Spam—Who Knew?
You hear the word “spam” and you probably think about Viagra, “genuine” Rolex watches, and corrupt West African government officials with bags of money to share.
But do you think about theology? I did not until yesterday, when I received a message from “Terry Denson” with the subject line “A Pagan Writer’s Blog.” Since that happens to be the subtitle of this the blog, I expected the content to be something about Paganism.
Instead, “Terry Denson” announced that he or she writes “articles for [name of site], a website dedicated to providing students with the information and tools needed in order to purse their theology degree.”
The website links mainly to obscure schools you never heard of, like Grand Canyon University, “a private Christian university.”
And then “Terry Denson” wants me to link to his or her article about creation versus evolution.
If there is one contentious topic that I have never heard Pagans discuss, it is “creation versus evolution.” All this “science versus religion” stuff seems like a non-issue in Pagandom, at least in my experience.
In yours?
This Is My Independence Day Blog Post, Sort Of
I don’t have an original Independence Day blog post. I am still in recovery from yesterday.
So in keeping with recent posts on learning the gods of your region, go and read “Conversations with Columbia.”