Talking to UUs about Nature Religion

I am busy working up a talk on “nature religion” to give to a Unitarian Universalist congregation on Sunday.

Hey, it’s a change: bring in the Pagan speaker at Ostara instead of Samhain. On the other hand, they did originally try to get me at Samhain, but someone messed up the scheduling. This is better, actually.

It’s a good thing that Unitarians tend to be a bookish crowd, so I do not have to sing, dance, lead breathing exercises, etc. There are others who are so much better at all that.

I can talk, however. But I will have to repress the tendency to want to turn and write on the blackboard.

I will lean heavily on the “three kinds of nature religion” described in Her Hidden Children and of course on Catherine Albanese’s work on nature as a source of sacred value in American religion.

Looking at books makes me painfully aware how much I need to start on a new writing project before my brain atrophies.

Why You Should Lock Your Car While Shopping at Whole Foods

“Ethical consumers less likely to be kind and more likely to steal, study finds,” is the subhead on an article in the lefty British newspaper The Guardian.

OK, several caveats. This is one study by two social scientists in Canada. Science reporting in the daily press is sometimes sensationalized, and, further, I think you can design a psychological survey to prove anything. (Actual social scientists may want to differ, but that is my impression.)

But it’s ironic to see The Guardian sticking it to Al Gore:

When Al Gore was caught running up huge energy bills at home at the same time as lecturing on the need to save electricity, it turns out that he was only reverting to “green” type.

If I am at all inclined to believe Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong, it is because in my youth I met too many people who preached “peace and love, man,” but who would steal anything not nailed down. Their professions of morality in some areas seemed to excuse (to them) their behavior in other areas.

A PDF file of the study itself is available at Professor Mazar’s site.

Movieland’s Wacky Witches & Pathetic Pagans

Gus diZerega is looking to compile a master list of “the worst portrayals of Pagans and Witches” in the movies.

Go visit him and offer your suggestions.

Esoteric Poetry Competition Announced

News release:

ESOTERIC POETRY INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION esotericpoetry@googlemail.com

YOU ARE INVITED TO SEND short poems of up to eight lines (not including the title) on an esoteric subject. These may refer in a general sense to ‘inner’ knowledge, this may be esoteric in the sense of inner knowledge as in:

Astrology,

Alchemy

Gnosticism

Magic

but may also be understood in relation to the experience of seeking an understanding of an unending number of life’s challenges or disciplines: justice, plumbing, child rearing and the perfect omelette spring to mind.

Poems may for example reveal hitherto unknown secrets, conceal them, or relate to the subject matter in another way. All poems will be judged solely on literary merit

Competition sponsored by
The Cambridge Centre for the study of Western Esotericism
www.ccwe.wordpress.com

==================================
In conjunction with Heffers Bookshop, Cambridge, UK
www.blackwell.co.uk
and Waterloo Press www.waterloopresshove.co.uk
===================================

PRIZES:
1st £300
2nd £150
3rd £75

SEE www.ccwe.wordpress.com
ENTRY PAGE for details of terms and conditions and how to enter.

SEE RESULTS AND PRIZE GIVING PAGE
Prize winners will be announced at Heffers Bookshop, Cambridge, UK Thursday 18th November 2010 and on this website later that evening and by email the following day. Winners unable to attend the heffers prize-giving evening at heffers will be sent their prizes via paypal in GBP. CLOSING DATE FOR ONLINE ENTRIES: 15 SEPTEMBER, 2010 midnight GMT

see JUDGES PAGE for details of the judges
Daniel Healy
Helen Ivory
Jon Woodson
===============
contact: Sophia Wellbeloved: esotericpoetry@googlemail.com

—
Dr Sophia Wellbeloved
Director, Lighthouse Editions
www.gurdjieff-books,net
www.gurdjieffbooks.wordpress.com
www.sophiawellbelovedpoetry.wordpress.com

Director, The Cambridge Centre for the study of Western Esotericism www.ccwe.wordpress.com

CCWE is  independent of any academic or esoteric communities, the co-ordinators share an interest in the need for a wider dialogue between scholars and practitioners in the field of Western Esotericism and in the establishment of a secular space in which an interdisciplinary network can thrive.   From 2009 CCWE has operated within Lighthouse editions Limited, a small publishing company Directors: Dr Sophia Wellbeloved, Jeremy Cranswick – see http://gurdjieffbooks.wordpress.com

Gallimaufry with Distinctions

• Ule-Alfarrin (a/k/a Robin Artisson, if I am not mistaken) lists differences between “New Ager” and “Heathen.” I like this one:

13. Almost no one who in the course of their religious practice, takes a first, middle, or last name which is the same as an animal, a plant, a weather-based phenomenon, an element, a mineral, or a combination of any of those things can speak for me, nor do they likely believe anything like me.

Being a Heathen is often about making such distinctions, ja?

• Anne Johnson discusses building fairy houses. She understands that the fairies are not always cute.

• Talking to Unitarians about animism. I have to do something similar later this month.

• Anne Hill suggests two great books on dreams. She should know.

Wicca as the (Untrustworthy) Other, Again

For environmental news of the West, I have subscribed since the 1980s to High Country News, a biweekly magazine.

For the first time since a rancher named Tom Bell started the magazine in Lander, Wyoming in 1970, HCN has jumped on the bandwagon of anti-Wiccan snark.

In a blog post called “Witches and Rifles,” editor Jonathan Thompson last month took on the well-covered issues of the Air Force Academy’s earth-religions worship circle and managed to blend it with the other well-covered issue of the Bible verse coded into rifle sight systems made by military contractor Trijicon:

COLORADO

Should the Urantians face persecution for their religious beliefs, they could always consider buying real estate in another part of the West, namely Colorado Springs. There, the U.S. Air Force Academy has set aside an outdoor worshipping area for “Pagans, Wiccans, Druids and other Earth-centered believers,” according to the Associated Press. The academy has long been criticized for erasing the line dividing church and state in a heavily evangelical Christian-leaning manner.

It was recently revealed that the military had been using rifle scopes that were engraved with biblical references by the manufacturer. No news yet on whether any future firearms will be engraved with secret Wiccan code.

Jonathan Thompson’s attitudes are typical of what you find in most elite media outlets as well as academia, however. It is not Wicca that is suspicious—all religious affiliation is suspicious to people like him.

Having worked in both journalism and academia, here is my quick guide towards religion as typically understood by inhabitants of both those worlds (such as Jonathan Thompson):

  • Jews are generally all right, particularly if they write for Tikkun magazine, but Israelis are scary.
  • Christians are at best hypocrites. At worst, you can expect them to fortify themselves in rural compounds and commit incest—-and those are the Presbyterians.
  • The Catholic Church, however, is easy to cover (except for the parts that are in Latin) for anyone experienced in big-city “machine” politics, such as Democrats in Chicago.
  • Buddhists are all right if they are poets. Ethnic Buddhists (for example, Vietnamese) are invisible.
  • Hindus, Sikhs, ethnic Taoists, etc., are generally invisible.
  • Muslims must be treated carefully because they might explode.
  • And Pagans? They are easy to ridicule because, after all, people like Jonathan Thompson, editor of High Country News, don’t know any.

Somehow I think that Tom Bell, the old rancher, might actually have been more accepting. But I never had the privilege of meeting him.

Nothing thrills an archaeologist…

… like a mass grave. Maybe it helps if said grave is 1,000 years old.

To find out that the young men executed were Vikings is a thrilling development. Any mass grave is a relatively rare find, but to find one on this scale, from this period of history, is extremely unusual.

Apollo, God of Coffeehouses

Solar Roast Coffee, 226 N. Main St., Pueblo, ColoradoBack when Enchanté was a zine rather than a blog, Brightshadow did a series of articles on “gods of the city.”

These were representations of the Old Gods in statuary, architecture, etc., primarily in New York City, where he lives.

New York has no monopoly on them, of course. I like riding a morning train into Chicago from the east and seeing the rising Sun light up the statue of Ceres on the Chicago Board of Trade building, for example.

Pueblo, Colorado, has a coffeehouse dedicated to Phoebus Apollo. You can see him in his Sun-chariot over the door.

No, it’s not across from a hospital and full of doctors. City Hall types are more prevalent.

The owners have put the Sun to work, however. All of their coffee is solar-roasted in a variety of home-built roasters, which you can see on their Web site.

I would tend to associate coffeehouses with Hermes—all the brain buzz, the clicking laptop keyboards, the newspapers and books.

But this one’s Apollo’s.

UPDATE: Still learning my way around WordPress—I hit a little glitch and lost the comments on this post. Sorry.

A Slap from the Colorado Legislature

Because Colorado’s lawmakers in their wisdom are trying—and failing—to make Amazon.com collect state sales tax, Amazon has cut off all of its Colorado affiliates.

From my perspective, the legislators were willing to sacrifice individual “Amazon affiliates” who happen to live in Colorado (like me). In return, they get nothing except the satisfaction of making some kind of point that will be lost in the general political noise.

I never made big money as an Amazon affiliate. It was about enough to pay my Web-hosting and email account bills for the year. Who knows, I might have spent part of my commission in Colorado and paid Colorado state sales tax.

But no more.

Way to go, wise legislators!

Seven Years of Blogging

Today marks the seventh anniversary of Letter from Hardscrabble Creek, originally the name I gave to a column that appeared in various long-gone Pagan zines.

It all started with this.