Another Case of ‘Sacred Prostitution’?

In Phoenix, Arizona, the Phoenix Goddess Temple is offering erotic massage, etc., in return for “offerings.”

Women at the temple take names like Magdalena, Shakti, and Devima. There’s also a high priestess named Gypsy, and a tall, lithe blonde named Leila, who advertises her measurements (36-26-37) on her page at the temple website, which includes photo galleries of each goddess.

The goddesses practice techniques that include genital touching for a “religious offering” of money that generally ranges from $204 to $650. Their advertisements go in the adult sections of local newspapers, including New Times, but Phoenix Goddess Temple founder Tracy Elise says the temple is not a brothel — it’s a church, and the services offered are religious rituals to enrich people’s lives.

This gambit has been tried before in other states and not ended well. Our cultural-legal system has no place for “sacred prostitution,” even when presented under the banner of freedom of religion.

British writer Robert Graves, author of The White Goddess (one of the most influential books of the Pagan revival), included a similar sort of temple in his fantasy novel Watch the Northwind Rise, also called Seven Days in New Crete (1949).

I do agree that sexual healing can and does take place. But the legal deck is stacked against offering it openly—you might suspect that when even the “alternative” newspaper calls it “New Age prostitution.”

Classics scholar Stephanie Lynn Budin, author of The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity, has weighed in elsewhere about the Phoenix Goddess Temple.

What drives me really nuts is that this tends to promote the idea that pagan religion is libertine; that this is what you get if you don’t honor some anti-material, anti-body, generally male deity codified in a book somewhere.  This then makes it easier to exploit people seeking new spiritualities, claiming that this is part of the deal.

Her argument, as I understand,  is that we interpret the writings of Herodotus and other ancients through our own sexual preoccupations and that the reality of the Pagan past was something different.

(Hat tip: Caroline Tully.)

Gallimaufry with Books

• Stonehenge as sold by by Ikea. (via Mirabilis)

• If gays come out of “the closet” and witches come out of “the broom closet,” what closet do atheists come out of?

• Ten suggested alternatives to Photoshop. On the Mac, I use Graphic Converter quite a bit. But I might check some of these out too.

• If books had these titles, you would know instantly what they were about. There is this approach too.

This Man is an Author . . .

. . . and here is how his book gets into print, circa 1947. Note that the Linotype does not have a QWERTY keyboard. And has the bindery process changed that much, really? (The printing company where I once worked did only softcover, or “perfect” [sic] binding.)

Seeking AAR Pagan Studies Papers

After reading the Call for Papers, now is the time to submit proposals for the Contemporary Pagan Studies Group’s sessions at the American Academy of Religion annual meeting.

We have two topics this year:

What does Pagan studies offer to academic analysis and critique? How do historical constructions of “paganism” form or misinform contemporary Pagan hermeneutics? How do studies of Pagan practices contribute new notions of religion and/or new methods to understand lived religion? Can Paganism be read as a form of religiosity transcending Wicca? Can the study of Paganism illuminate difficult areas regarding the body, sexuality, the dead, celebrity “worship,” or material spirituality?

West Coast Paganism in the 1960s–1970s. Bay Area “occulture” versus British Wicca? Were there cultural predecessors — the German-derived “Nature Boy” movement, dietary reformers, sexual reformers, Beats, other occultists, and esotericists? What was the West Coast Pagan influence on grassroots organizing and democracy modeling in America? What was the influence of Alan Watts, Esalen, and the “California Cosmology” on Paganism? What theories of new religious movements were tested against West Coast Paganisms?

The meeting will be held  in San Francisco November 19-22, 2011.

All proposals must be submitted through the online system. If you are not currently an AAR member, you may create a temporary login ID and password.

The deadline is March 1.

If You Really Practice the *Old* Religion . . .

. . . then you need some ritual skull cups.

Come to think of it, I think that I know someone who does.

The Anatomy of Diesel Punk

For when you are tired of the fussiness of steam punk—diesel punk explained:

Generally, dieselpunk can take inspiration from ’20s German Expressionist films, film noir, 1930s pulp magazines and radio dramas, crime and wartime comics, period propaganda films and newsreels, wartime pinups, and other entertainment of the early 20th century. As this covers a broad spectrum, the precise sources of inspiration can vary greatly between dieselpunk works. Like Steam Punk, Dieselpunk is a genre dictated primarily by its aesthetics rather than by its thematic content. Both grime and glamour have their place in dieselpunk.

Now I learn that one of my Favorite Movies of All Time is diesel punk:

• the 1995 film adaptation of Shakespeare’s Richard III, set in 1930s Britain (coupling Diesel Dystopia with Putting On The Reich and ShoutOuts to 1984)

Click through to YouTube trailer. When I saw the ticker tape machine in the opening sequence (not part of this YouTube clip), I was gone.

Tools for Writers

Here are some software tools for writers, particularly novelists.

I have had Scrivener installed for months, but I have not used it, because my internal censor says, “Fiddling with new software is not writing.” (Blogging, however, is.)

Anyone have experience with it? Is it significantly better than Word, Open Office, or anything like that?

Dave Haxton at MacRaven, in a post titled “Why Crunch Mode Doesn’t Work,” endorses the Pomodoro Technique for pacing your desk work.

It’s good, although you don’t need special paper and a T-shirt. I sometimes use a basic wind-up kitchen timer and set in a bookshelf on the other side of the study, where I won’t be tempted to look at it until it dings.

Bibliotheca Alexandrina Seeks Pagan Writers

Bibliotheca Alexandrina publishers seek writers for a new series of anthologies dedicated to various gods. You may also read  longer versions of the calls for submission at Amanda Blake’s blog, Temple of Athena the Savior.

There is, of course, no connection other than name and some history between this publishing project and the newish building in Alexandria, Egypt. Somehow I doubt that if you went to the latter, you would find the works of Iamblichus or Plotinus on the shelves.

Oh, Let’s Just Talk about the Weather

I think my brain has slowed down this week. At one point the temperature dipped to -20° F. (about -30° C), and I was completely preoccupied with trying to keep heat and water in both my house and the guest cabin.

There was one bad moment about ten o’clock at night a week ago when, due to a series of unfortunate events, a pipe did start leaking dramatically, spraying water into my basement.

I had to wade through the spray to shut off three valves, more or less by feel, and all I could think was, “I’m in a submarine movie.”

Life imitates art, as usual. Just as “myth” (the explanation) follows “ritual” (what you do).

And it’s snowing a lot. Earlier in the winter, this part of the Colorado foothills was short of snow. New York City had more snow than we did.

But we are catching up. I think we got November’s snow on Saturday night (a foot) and more is falling now. And it is normal for it to keep falling through April, when those New Yorkers will be looking at spring flowers.

The problem is that at some point (probably around 0° F.), I stop wanting to just hole up and work at my desk, instead starting to fret about what is going to break or freeze next. No fun.

Or I go to the hardware store looking for a machine to help me deal with it all.

An Old-Fashioned Funeral

In the southern Colorado town of Crestone, a woman gets an old-fashioned funeral.

Belinda Ellis’ farewell went as she wanted. One by one, her family placed juniper boughs and logs about her body, covered in red cloth atop a rectangular steel grate inside a brick-lined hearth. With a torch, her husband lit the fire that consumed her, sending billows of smoke into the blue-gray sky of dawn.

People do still occasionally light funeral pyres. The Pagan Book of Living and Dying (1997) describes one such in Texas. When I read that chapter, I suddenly understood references in Classical texts to “funeral games.”

It takes hours for the pyre to burn down, so what do you do in the meantime? Race your horses? Play volleyball?

But disregard the next-to-last paragraph in the Yahoo article—the legendary stuff.  Crestone is a quirky place—and people work to keep it that way—but overall there  is more “fakelore” generated about the San Luis Valley than about anywhere else in Colorado. People even say that I was born there.