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.”

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.