Arguments without Evidence—or without Ethos?

I spent a big chunk of yesterday afternoon reviewing a book that purports to prove the existence of a self-conscious, Goddess-worshiping Paganism in 19th-century America. The evidence? An idiosyncratic reading of one writer’s literary output, writing that never uses the words “witch,” “Pagan,” “fairy,” “goddess,” or anything like that, but openly espouses Protestant Christianity.

If I did not feel the obligation to walk the reader through through my thinking—and if the journal’s book review editor involved had not argued persuasively that “to the degree that popular or self-published books inspire us to think more critically and innovatively then perhaps we should be more inclusive”—I would have just written one sentence: “[The writer] is delusional.”

Call it wishful thinking, call it unverifiable personal gnosis, call it “I know that I am right even though there is no evidence.”

Another example of UPG-fueld writing appears to be a book called Trials of the Moon, which purports to challenge Ronald Hutton’s historical books on Paganism without, y’know, actually having to do the depth of research that he does.

It’s sort of like wanting to bat against the San Francisco Giant Tim Lincecum’s pitching but demanding that you get to keep swinging and swinging until you hit one over the fence—none of that “three strikes and you’re out” stuff.

Some people like it even while admitting that it “offers no alternate theory or proposes any possible history” for Wicca.

At The Witching Hour, Peg starts out gently,

But I also noted a number of statements that don’t inspire confidence. By his own admission Whitmore is not an historian, nor even an academic. And this shows in his failure to observe the most rudimentary rules of objectivity and neutrality of stance.

But by the end of her review, she is reduced to “HUH? HUH?”

If you can’t offer evidence, at least try for a believable enthymeme. Truly ancient Pagans, along with inventing the academy, invented a wide range of persuasive tools.

As a Pagan in academia, I like learning those tools and using them.  Of the old persuasive trilogy—logos, pathos, ethos—maybe it is really ethos that is in short supply. UPG has a place, but this kind of writing is not it.

Is Anthropology a Science?

Politicized anthropologists gain ground against archaeologists and physical anthropologists after their chief American professional organization rewrites its mission statement.

The decision has reopened a long-simmering tension between researchers in science-based anthropological disciplines — including archaeologists, physical anthropologists and some cultural anthropologists — and members of the profession who study race, ethnicity and gender and see themselves as advocates for native peoples or human rights.

According to the AAA’s new long-range plan, anthropology is about “public understanding,” not “science.”

Some public understanding occurs no matter what, but the dispute seems to favor those who want anthropology to favor their political agendas.  These are the same postmodern folks who argue that anthropology always served a political agenda, so perhaps they are simply being more up-front about it.

Until now, the association’s long-range plan was “to advance anthropology as the science that studies humankind in all its aspects.” The executive board revised this last month to say, “The purposes of the association shall be to advance public understanding of humankind in all its aspects.” This is followed by a list of anthropological subdisciplines that includes political research.

Anthropology is easily politicized because it deals with social structures, kinship, war, death and burial—everything to do with identity at various levels. And yes, anthropologists have often served larger, powerful interests. Think of Ruth Benedict researching The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, studying Japanese culture to benefit the American occupation.

But I still think that there is a place for “science” and objectivity as ideals, even while keeping one’s eyes open (“reflexivity”).

The “Thinness” of Pagan Culture

Stephanie Drury’s blog Stuff Christian Culture Likes (which, she admits, refers mostly to evangelical Protestant culture) is up to to 204 posts (the numbering is confusing because she sometimes recycles older posts).

In contrast,  the blog Stuff Pagan Culture Likes seems to have hit a wall last March, with no new posts for six months. Too bad.

Our “culture” is just a lot thinner, despite the fact that contemporary  Pagans have been engaging in self-parody since Day 1. Consider some of the material that Isaac Bonewits produced in The Druid Chronicles in the 1970s, for example. (Isaac, amazingly prescient, was already paying attention to chronologies and sources, knowing that future scholars would use his material.)

Right now, on  the academic side, I am feeling the “thinness” all too much. Submission to The Pomegranate are down. (That could be related to the economy, as another journal editor told me that they have the same problem—it’s a general gloominess.) I am reduced to sending plaintive emails halfway around the world: “Won’t you please revise and re-submit your papers?”

And let’s not even talk about the academic job market.

An Icelandic Approach to the “Reburial” Issue

Here is a twist on the controversy over the reburial of ancient remains: Bury the skeleton and grave goods at the museum.

Of course, it helps it the remains are Norse and the museum is the Viking World Museum in Iceland. Not so many problems of cultural continuity there.

According to museum director Elisabeth Ward, research has shown that most Icelandic settlers were pagan [sic] and that paganism was practiced among the first generations of Icelanders.

“We are reconstructing the pagan grave from Hafurbjarnarstadir,” Ward explained. “The skeletons are placed in a wooden boat, which is a replica of a Viking boat, and sand from Hafurbjarnarstadir has been put inside. Some people believe the man was buried inside a boat, but it is not quite clear.”

(Hat tip: Caroline Tully at Necropolis Now.)

‘Satanism, after all, is a religion of peace’

Satire.

Dietary Advice for Editors, Proofreaders

This kind of nutritional news is much-discussed in my house. I have been taking fish-oil capsules for several years, as well as lutein for my eyes.  Now I crave some sardines: “health food in a can,”  as someone said.

‘Severed Ways’: Headbangers of 1007 CE

"Severed Was" poster imageA movie made by a company called Heathen Films is likely to have a certain ideological component. Severed Ways, a 2007 indie production, however, has not become a cult favorite like The Wicker Man.

The plot comes right from the Vinland Sagas, but adds a bit about two scouts abandoned and believed dead when Norse settlers abandon one settlement after conflicts with the natives.

The dialog is in Swedish with colloquial English subtitles, like “We’re toast if the Skraelings find us.”

But in accordance with a Scandinavian tradition of filmmaking, there are long silent periods where the camera merely follow the men on their journey seeking their comrades.

One Internet Movie Database comment calls it “Aguirre, the Wrath of God for Black Metal fans.” That is not necessarily a compliment, but director Tony Stone would disagree:

Heavy metal and vikings have always had this sort of connection—the warrior spirit, the harshness, the visuals of battle, the pagan side. The music is hard and rough and trying at times, but that’s what the physical world is; that’s how we used to live. Metal describes something of another time. It’s a very emotional music that’s more like classical music in the way it recalls history. It’s also just music we were listening to while making the movie.

As an expression of “Dionysian pessimism” (Nietzsche’s term), it works.

It was filmed in Maine, Vermont, Labrador, and at the reconstructed Norse camp of L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland.

M.’s short review: “Beautiful landscapes interrupted by bashing.”

Bryan White at Cinema Suicide says much the same thing at greater length.

Cocktails for Pagans

Bohemian Spritz

Bohemian Spritz (New York Times photo)

Who says that today’s Pagans are not influencing the larger culture?

The New York Times’ Style section offers the “right drink” for every winter holiday party, including the Bohemian Spritz for “dilettante Pagans” celebrating the solstice. (If that link is problematic, try this one.)

For those slightly weary of the familiar fa-la-la, or for those who are opposed to even the slightest whisper of organized religion, a solstice party provides a refreshing diversion. While actual hard-core pagans [sic] are probably drinking something murky and ancient, a more streamlined beverage might be better for dabblers. The Bohemian Spritz (another creation of Vandaag’s Katie Stipe) is a light, fizzy wine drink with compellingly arboreal undercurrents, provided by pine and elderflower cordials. It is ideal for welcoming the long nights, for putting the Krampus back in Christmas.

One question, where do you get pine liqueur?

UPDATE: Apparently one looks for Zirbenschnapps or Un Sapin, described as “very hard to find—even in France.”

Mapping Pagan Religious Identity

At Witchful Thinking, a practitioner-scholar’s blog, a model for a scheme of Pagan religious identity development.

Take a look and let her know what you think.

From Slate, America’s Two Literary Cultures

This article on “America’s two distinct literary cultures” (via University Diaries) touched me because I almost went down the Master of Fine Arts in writing road myself—and of course I taught alongside people who had done so.

After graduating from Reed College with what amounted to a BFA, I was accepted into the MFA program at the U. of Montana, which I was drawn to because Richard Hugo was there, and I really admired him. (Still do.)

All the paperwork was done; I had only to take the Graduate Record Exam. The day came, I woke up, and I did not go to the testing. Instead I went to work in an advertising agency (the English major’s equivalent of being drafted, I used to joke).

Then came years working in magazine publishing, then daily newspapers (definitely not the normal career path for journalism), a little while in book publishing, and finally p.r. for higher education—until one night “some god or daemon” kicked me in the head and said “Graduate School. Religious Studies.”

Which led, ironically enough, back to the English Department. A job’s a job.  And I was on the fringe of this scene:

Thus the fiction writer’s MFA increasingly resembles the poet’s old Ph.D.; not in the rigors of the degree itself—getting an MFA is so easy—but in the way it immerses the writer in a professional academic network. She lives in a college town, and when she turns her gaze forward and outward, toward the future and the literary world at large, she sees not, primarily, the New York cluster of editors and agents and publishers but, rather, a matrix of hundreds of colleges with MFA programs, potential employers all, linked together by Poets & Writers, AWP, and summertime workshops at picturesque make-out camps like Sewanee and Bread Loaf. More links, more connections, are provided by the attractive, unread, university-funded literary quarterlies that are swapped between these places and by the endowments and discretionary funds that deliver an established writer-teacher from her home program to a different one, for a well-paid night or week, with everybody’s drinks expensed: This system of circulating patronage may have some pedagogical value but exists chiefly to supplement the income of the writer-teacher and, perhaps more important, to impress on the students the more glamorous side of becoming—of aspiring to become—a writer-teacher.

It’s a provocative if wandering essay, full of little knife thrusts like ” the continued hunger of undergraduates for undemanding classes.”

I never taught fiction or poetry, but I did teach some creative-nonfiction classes, and I will never know if I was really any good at it or not, because I was one of those “writer-professors preoccupied with their own work or their failure to produce any.”