Ten Worst Movies about Witches and Pagans

Blogger Gus diZerega polled his readers on “The Ten Worst Movies Depicting Witches and Other Pagans.”

Readers differed on The Craft:

“As a movie, I don’t think it was too bad. But their portrayal of witches as goth teenage girls with (somewhat severe) psychological problems just rubs me the wrong way.”

But another suggested, “The three “freaky” witches represented to me what happens when magic is misunderstood and misused by people who are not emotionally and  spiritually prepared for it. Sarah and Lirio, on the other hand, get it right.”

I’ve still got the soundtrack CD somewhere.

800 Bags of Roman ‘Shit’

Noted Classics professor Mary Beard visits the sewers and cesspits of Herculaneum, it being one of the two Roman towns buried by the famous eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE.

A lot of the sieved organic remains are now being studied in Oxford, and they certainly show that the residents were consuming  eggs, nuts, figs and sea-urchins.

Read more about ongoing archaeological work there at Blogging Pompeii.

Most urban dwellers in the Roman empire lived in apartment blocks called insulae, from the Latin word for island.

Watch a  video-recreation of an insula in the Iberian city of Conímbriga (YouTube).

Nova Roma, a group “dedicated to the restoration of classical Roman religion, culture and virtues,”  has its own YouTube channel.

Style note: My headline attempts to copy the BBC News style, wherein certain words are set off in [Am] single quotation marks/[Br] inverted commas  for no discernible purpose except to express some sort of arms’-length, looking-down-the-nose Beeb-oid attitude.

Could a Young Guy be so Cynical about Social Media?

We are to believe that the author of “Six Things Social Media Can’t Do for Your Business” is only 18?

He sounds like another middle-aged cynic who has seen too many new-technology parades pass down Main Street, leaving only manure piles in their wake.

Photographer, Journalist: Is it a Career?

A New York Times media-section piece suggests that “professional photographer” is a poor career choice if you are just starting out.

Since graduation in 2008, Mr. Eich, 23, has gotten magazine assignments here and there, but “industrywide, the sentiment now, at least among my peers, is that this is not a sustainable thing,” he said. He has been supplementing magazine work with advertising and art projects, in a pastiche of ways to earn a living. “There was a path, and there isn’t anymore.”

“Reporter” is not much better, yet, having been both a reporter and a photojournalist (at small papers and magazines where the roles were combined), I don’t necessarily buy all this brave new world talk about bloggers replacing reporters.

Usually, reporters report while bloggers comment, criticize, amplifly, and fling feces.

How many bloggers will hang out at the courthouse, cover the interesting trials, get to know assistant district attorneys and local lawyers, and learn which court clerk will drop nuggets of information and which clerk is just a bureaucratic jerk?

And do that week after week for free or for a few bucks from Google Adsense?

My department head used to teach a class called “Careers for English Majors,” and once per semester he would ask me to be the guest speaker and talk about being a writer.

Speaking of my days in journalism, I would always explain that I did not go to journalism school but entered through the side door, so to speak.

Sometimes today journalism school must seem like buggy whip-maker school. An awful lot of J-school grads know (or knew) how to put out the school paper, but knew little about science, economics, history, religion, or whatever, because instead of taking classes in those fields they were taking “News Writing II” and “Principles of Public Relations.”

Maybe now everyone will come in the side door?

But people still need images and organized news. Otherwise, the powerful will still try to run us over. But how to organize, locate, and present it all?

UPDATE: Suzie Bright is thinking about the same things (we all are) but has a lot more to say than I do. (Note: her blog is probably NSFW in many environments.)

What Do Philosophers Believe?

A brief piece from The Economist’s More Intelligent Life site leads off with this nugget of alleged airplane-seat conversation:

“What do you do?”
“I’m a philosopher.”
“What are some of your sayings, then?”

Read the whole thing. (Via Arts & Letters Daily.)

KISS Kong and Other Letters

An amazing superhero and pop-culture alphabet mashup.

(Via Erynn Laurie)

Can You Sue Your Shaman?—Part 2

Last October 9 I blogged on the deaths at a sweat-lodge ceremony conducted by James Arthur Ray near Sedona, Ariz.

There has been a lot of discussion in the Pagan blogosphere about the case, particularly at The Wild Hunt.

A lot of people piled on, and there was the usual sloganeering about “cultural appropriation” and how “ceremonies were not for sale. ”

Actually, throughout much of the world (and throughout history), ceremonies are indeed for sale. How else do you pay for maintenance of the temple? Do you think the Shinto priest is going to bless your new Toyota for free?

In Wicca, Gerald Gardner’s insistence on not taking money “for the art” was mostly about avoiding prosecution under anti-fortune-telling laws, not cultural appropriation.

But back to James Arthur Ray.

In the latest issue of Shaman’s Drum magazine (no. 82), founding editor Timothy White makes some thoughtful points in an editorial titled “What Can We Learn from the Tragic Sedona Sweat Lodge Debacle?”

White points out several things that went wrong:

  • The sweat followed a 36-hour period of “visionary” fasting, meaning that participants were more dehydrated than they would normally have been.
  • Ray was a “spiritual jock” (my term, not White’s), pushing people to “push past your self-imposed and conditional borders” and shaming participants into not leaving when they were suffering.
  • The plastic tarp coverings may have trapped heat and retarded air circulation more than fiber blankets would have done, making the lodge even hotter.

But he makes several other points as well. First of all, it appears that the lodge was built by the Angel Valley Retreat Center, not by Ray’s team, and had been used previously by other center visitors. Since participants signed a release, it may be difficult to prove criminal negligence in court.

The Sedona location, with that area’s reputation for New Age activities, made it easier for those who “blamed the deaths on New Age spiritual practices ‘stolen’ from Native American traditions.”

White’s conclusion: “I personally believe that the Sedona sweat lodge deaths were caused by a combination of preventable errors and manipulative mind games, due in large part to Ray’s negligence. . . . However, it may be difficult to prove that Ray’s behavior during the sweat was criminally malicious—since he subjected himself to the same challenging conditions.”

And one more thing: screaming for Ray’s head on a plate could encourage the prosecution of “all sorts of ceremonial leaders—vision quest leaders, entheogenic ceremonialists, and even shamanic practitioners—for other accidental deaths. [There have been some such prosecutions—CSC] Although I believe that careless teachers and leaders should be held responsible for preventable mistakes, I think that civil suits may be the best way to encourage appropriate safety measures.”

I titled my first post “Can You Sue Your Shaman?”  But should you? Shouldn’t people walking dangerous paths accept some responsibility?  After all, we followers of magical religions insist that we are not sheep who need a shepherd (Latin: pastor).

The secular law, after all, has fairly narrow definitions of what constitutes a crime and what constitutes a tort. “Bad spiritual teaching” or “improper ritual” or “malicious magic” do not quality.

After all, there was a day—a mere 400-500 years ago—when “malicious magic” or sorcery was a criminal offense in  Western secular courts, but do we want to go back to those standards of proof?

Journal on New Religious Movements Seeks Submissions

Call for Papers and Invitation to Subscribe:

The International Journal for the Study of New Religions, published by Equinox in association with the International Society for the Study of New Religions (Sweden), is a new, international vehicle for publishing theoretical and empirically-based studies in the field of new religions.

International Journal for the Study of New Religions considers submissions from both established scholars and research students from all over the world. Articles should be written for a general scholarly audience. All articles are refereed. International Journal for the Study of New Religions is published biannually in May and November. Each issue includes articles and a number of book reviews. The journal is published simultaneously in print and online.

The term “New Religions” can be defined in several ways. ISSNR and IJSNR has chosen to adopt a broad definition. In the narrow sense, “New Religions” is a term applied especially to religious phenomenon that emerged in the West after the mid-1900s.

More widely understood, the term can also include older religious movements or organizations which are “new” in a specific historical context. The term encompasses organized groups as well as less organized movements. Many of these groups and movements are international and can be found in numerous countries.

There are also new religious movements that are specific to a particular country or to a particular area of the world. In recent decades, new religions or new religious movements outside of the Western context have attracted attention.

Additionally, the concept of New Religions includes contemporary Paganism, less organized phenomena, such as the so-called New Age and alternative spirituality, as well as new expressions within established religions.

Papers of no more than 10,000 words (including abstracts and referencing) should should be submitted through the journal website:

Enquiries can be directed to the editors:
Carole M. Cusack (University of Sydney, Australia) carole.cusack@sydney.edu.au
Liselotte Frisk (Dalarna University, Sweden) lfi@du.se

Enquiries about book reviews should be directed to the book review editor:
James R. Lewis (University of Tromsø, Norway) james.lewis@uit.no

Subscription to International Journal for the Study of New Religions is available through the journal website (see the pull-down menus ‘Subscriptions’). Subscription may be to IJSNR alone, or may include membership to the International Society for the Study of New Religions.

The International Society for the Study of New Religions’ inaugural conference will be held at the University of Gothenburg fro May 5-7, 2011. A call for abstracts and further information will be available soon.

Thinking about ‘Nature Religion’ in the Snow

I spent about an hour today on the snow shovel after fifteen inches fell yesterday, laughing a bitter and sardonic laugh at people who associate flowers and bunny wabbits with the spring equinox. (At least the Sun is stronger now than in midwinter.)

Today’s preoccupation is the talk that I have to give tomorrow on nature religion to some Unitarians.

First off, it’s not an easy term to define. I can think of at least three definitions for “nature religion.”

1. One was developed by Catherine Albanese, historian of American religion: “a symbolic center and the cluster of beliefs, behaviors, and values that encircles it.” (Nature Religion in America, 7)

To Albanese, the term was a “scholarly construct” that made it possible to talk about various attitudes and activities under one heading, everything from “natural healing” to national parks to New Agey dietary fads.

I was present at an American Academy of Religion panel c. 1998 when Professor Albanese learned to her surprise that “nature religion” was also a term self-applied by many contemporary Pagans. Pagans had simply not been on her mental radar.

2. My own research, however, showed various Pagans using “earth religion” and “nature religion” to describe themselves (and to avoid loaded terms like Witch and Pagan) at least as long ago as 1970. And 1970 happens to be the year when the first Earth Day was observed.

3. Somewhat similar to Albanese, another religious studies professor, Bron Taylor, has a recent book called Dark Green Religion: Nature Spirituality and the Planetary Future.

Not particularly theistic, Taylor defines “dark green religion” as “religion that considers nature to be sacred, imbued with intrinsic value, and worthy of reverent care.” The “dark” suggests not just intensity but also nature religion’s propensity to “precipitate or exacerbate violence” (ix).

Once jokingly described to me as “the house intellectual of Earth First!” Taylor has had a long interest in studying ecotage and other environmental violence, along with more peaceful manifestations of nature religion as  surfing culture.

Consequently, where Albanese tends to be more interested in the nineteenth century, Taylor is more focused on contemporary environmentalism and politics.

Who Was Hypatia?

On the streets of Alexandria, Egypt, a mob led by Peter the Lector brutally murdered Hypatia, one of the last great thinkers of ancient Alexandria. Mary Evans Picture Library / AlamyWith the build-up among Pagan moviegoers for a North American release of Alelejandro Amenabar’s Agora, here is a quick biography of the philosopher Hypatia herself and the religious conflicts that led to her murder by a Christian mob. (She was a bit older at her death than is Rachel Weisz.)

(Via Rogue Classicism)