How to Read an Academic Journal

“It’s not Harry Potter,” writes Rob “Instant Mentor” Weir at Inside Higher Education.

Students register surprise when I confess that I share some of their frustrations over academic writing. Quite a few scholars are dreadful writers. There is, in my view, entirely too much pretentiousness, jargon, and affected weightiness oozing from journal pages. That’s why the first thing I tell students is to identify their purpose for consulting a professional work. What do they hope to extract? Do they need to learn from the author’s theoretical perspective, or mine the piece for examples? Are they reading it to contribute to a class discussion, or to collect perspectives to use in a paper? These matters determine their reading strategy.

Read the whole thing. It’s short. You can even skim.

Visiting Buddhist Ireland

Melinda Rothouse, Austin, Texas-based writer on religion and performance, visits a Buddhist retreat  in the west of Ireland.

In its former life, before being purchased by [the Buddhist organization], the building served as the courthouse where many of the IRA trials of the 1970’s and 80’s took place. He spoke of cells where IRA members were once held, under maximum security, while awaiting their trials.  These same cells are now dormitories and meditation rooms—talk about poetic justice.

She briefly surveys the Irish religious scene. In case you were wondering,

And what of the ancient Celtic/Pagan tradition that’s so identified with Ireland in cultural imaginings?  Sure, you catch glimpses and hear whispers, especially in the odd women’s retreat advert promising a reawakening of feminine power and sexuality, but it’s not really a living, viable practice as far as I was able to observe. . . . Well, as in America, people are looking for an alternative way to connect with the spiritual without all the cultural and historical baggage of Christianity.  Yoga studios and Buddhist meditation centers are popping up all over Ireland, as a brief Google search will reveal.

Given the fact that the Irish economy is down the tubes right now, “an emphasis on simplicity, quietude (certainly not always observed), communal living, recycling and composting, meditation and study” might just fit well with economic realities. And since the Celtic Tiger lived only twenty years or so (some say less), the older folks remember how to do without.

And as Rothouse rightly observes, “religious traditions are crossing borders as quickly as any commodity.”

The Lower You Go, the Weirder It Gets

Pulling pulks up the trail toward the Eagle Nest Wilderness

Pulling pulks* up the trail

Last week was stressful. It felt good on Friday to drive with a friend into the mountains, meet some others, strap on skis, and head up a trail Away From It All.

Then I come  home to learn that actor Charlie Sheen is a “Vatican assassin warlock” and that some media witch in Salem, Mass., is working magic against him.

(Peg Aloi sees a tradition here.)

If today were not the deadline for submitting papers for the American Academy of Religion’s 2011 meeting—meaning that I have to watch what is coming in for Pagan Studies—I would be tempted to just re-wax my skis and climb back up there.

* Pulk: from Finnish pulkka.

The Wicker Conspiracy

Everyone’s favorite Pagan-themed movie of the 1970s turns up on a list of “15 conspiracy movies that don’t fall apart at the end.”

(Via Ann Althouse.)

Riddle Me This

I have two blogs, this one and Southern Rockies Nature Blog, and I switch between them as the mood and topic strike me.

The Truth Laid Bear “ecosystem” ranking of the blogosphere is long dead, alas.

So now Technorati seems to be the winner in blog-ranking systems.

This blog, Letter from Hardscrabble Creek, has two to three times more daily visitors than does my  Southern Rockies Nature Blog.Yet Southern Rockies has a Technorati “authority” rating, as of today, of 434, whereas Hardscrabble Creek comes in at merely 125.

Is it just that the Technorati system does not handle religion well as a topic? They list 6,758 blogs under that heading. Number one is a Roman Catholic blog, What Does the Prayer Really Say? Is that really the most popular religion blog out there?

Not surprisingly, The Wild Hunt comes in tops on a “Paganism” search (authority 485), followed by Aquila ka Hecate.

Erudite commentary welcome.

On Reading Merlin Stone for the First Time

Jason Pitzl-Waters posted a notice of the passing of Merlin Stone, “sculptor and art historian,” yes, but best known in my circles for her book When God Was a Woman, first published in 1978.

I remember an “Oh wow” reaction on reading it when I was in my late twenties—already Wiccan, but still in that eager mode of scooping up new intellectual sensations (something I can still do when the stars are right).

This was in my pre-grad school stage. I did not even know that the author was female—after all, Robert Graves had written The White Goddess, and my only association with the name Merlin was the Arthurian one. (Apparently I was not going to the right conferences. I was not going to any conferences!)

There are lots of tributes to the book’s imaginal power (if not scholarship) at Jason’s post.

The Pomegranate 12:1

I have let weeks go by without mentioning the latest issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies!

Here is the table of contents. All book reviews and article abstracts are free.

Articles

“Franz Sättler (Dr. Musallam) and the Twentieth-Century Cult of Adonism”
Hans Thomas Hakl

“Walk Like an Egyptian: Egypt as Authority in Aleister Crowley’s Reception of The Book of the Law”
Caroline Tully

“On the Pagan Parallax: A Sociocultural Exploration of the Tension between Eclecticism and Traditionalism as Observed among Dutch Wiccans
Léon van Gulik

Special Section: Idolatry and Materiality

“Re-examining ‘Idolatry’ in Pagan Studies”
Chas S. Clifton

“Idolatry, Ecology, and the Sacred as Tangible”
Michael York

“Response to Michael York’s ‘Idolatry, Ecology and the Sacred as Tangible’ ”
Mogg Morgan

“Pagans and Things: Idolatry or Materiality?”
Amy Whitehead

“Idolatry, Paganism, and Trust in Nature”
Bron Taylor

Book Reviews

Dave Evans and Dave Green, eds. Ten Years of Triumph of the Moon (Bristol: Hidden Publishing, 2009).
Samuel Eldon Wagar

Constance Wise, Hidden Circles in the Web: Feminist Wicca, Occult Knowledge, and Process Thought (Lanham, Md.: AltaMira Press, 2008).
Paul Reid-Bowen

de Angeles, Ly, Emma Restall Orr and Thom van Dooren, eds., Pagan Visions for a Sustainable Future (Woodbury, Minn.: Llewellyn Publications, 2005)
Leland Glenna

Tyr: Myth-Culture-Tradition, Volumes 1 (2002), 2 (2003-04), and 3 (2007-08), ULTRA Publishing, Atlanta, Georgia.
Michael Strmiska

David Waldron & Christopher Reeve, Shock! The Black Dog of Bungay (London:, Hidden Publishing, 2010)
Dave Evans

Review: A New Look at Enochian Magic

John Dee (possibly a model for Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest) was one of the most fascinating characters of 16th-century England: mathematician, navigator, occultist, etc.

Working with the trance medium Edward Kelley, Dee produced pages and pages of material, some claimed to be dictated by angels, about the supernatural realms.

Although based in biblical and non-canonical legends of the patriarch Enoch, this system of “Enochian magic,” complete with its own language (as melodious as Klingon) occupies its own space in the overall scheme of Western magic.

A new book on the system, John DeSalvo’s Decoding the Enochian Secrets, lets you see reproductions of Dee’s diaries and tables of “angelic” letters, photographed from the originals in the British Museum.

But as DeSalvo writes, “The angels never explained the use or application of these tables of Enoch that were transmitted to Dee and Kelley. Dee never recorded anything in his diary regarding these tables that could give us any insight into how to use them” (55).

A system  of meditations and invocations in the so-called Enochian language has been practiced over the centuries, and DeSalvo gives some instructions on how to begin with it.

Why the Used Bookstore Clerk Hates You

Because you camp out in the Spirituality section? Or worse.

Also, you are trying to sell us textbooks and other crap, and we’re not buying.

Upcoming Movies with Pagan Themes

Or as one commenter puts it about the new Red Riding Hood, “zeroing in on the symbolism and completely missing the point.”