“Just when you thought you knew what Colorado Springs was all about,” commented a poster on one of the Colorado Pagan email lists.
It was the City Dionysia festival, complete with a performance of Euripides’ The Bacchae.
There is, of course, a Facebook page, where you can see some photos.
I missed it by going camping, an homage to a different god. Maybe next year.
You have to admit that this event nicely counters the usual “Fort God” image that is commonly encountered.
Click over to Pagans for Archaeology, where Yewtree interviews Australian Pagan scholar David Waldron, author of Shock! The Black Dog of Bungay: A Study in Local Folklore
I think a key issue for me was that transmission of symbols, images and ideas from the pagan past are very fragmentary, complex and ambivalent. People are very quick to throw the “Pagan Survival” label around because they so badly need to feel a connection to the past and a feeling of pastness in what they do. People can also be very quick to deny connection to a Pagan past when debunking. One thing that was really apparent to me when doing my research on the Black Dog of Bungay from a local history perspective, was that it is not a zero sum game. Let’s look at the Black Dog of Bungay for example. There are fragments in the myth from the Celts, Vikings and Romans for example. However, if I was to speak to a 16th century Puritan in Bungay he may not even know what a Celt was and would certainly take offense at the suggestion his view of the attack on St Mary’s church by a Black Dog or “Devile in such a likenesse” was Pagan.
He makes some interesting points about how folklore incorporates outside interpretations, digesting them, and presenting them as truly indigenous and original. Worth a read.
An interesting round-up of Scottish and Pictish-themed movies at Codex Celtica, as well as discussion of new pop-historical writing on King Arthur.
I noticed this post about Mark Teppo and urban magick on Instapundit, linking to an Amazon blog item about his thoughts on the nature of magick.
Like I said, the definition [of magick] is a bit slippery, and it might be a bit much to attribute to the writing of a pulpy occult noir book the grandiose intent of creating magick, but that’s part of what inspired the Codex of Souls. Not so much making magick, but rediscovering the possibility of it. Instead of holding such strangeness at arm’s length and pretending that we’re an entirely rational species, I wanted to embrace our esoteric history. Let it all be true. Why not? It’s a matter of faith, isn’t it? One of the things that separates us from the beasts with smaller brains is the ability to believe in something that isn’t there, and you can argue that when we learned how to dream, our brains got bigger.
Sounds interesting. Have any of you read his books? What do you think? How do they stack up against, say, Charles De Lint?
I spent the last three days camping with friends up on the Arapaho National Forest.
I have done a little deep-winter camping before, but never before on skis with a sled.
I learned that my sleeping bag is not really warm enough for -18 F. (-27 C.) nights. Must remedy that.
Even after that short time, it is hard to make the transition back to the writing life. And things like Facebook–or even blogging–seem so trivial.
But I am developing some new blog posts, so check back after a couple of days.
• Icelandic Pagans curse the nation’s economic rivals. See what happens when you mix polytheism and international banking? (Via Pagan Newswire Collective.)
• I do like what Iceland may do for freedom of the (online) press.
• We are the Empire, and we have the chariot-racing to prove it. Video no. 2 is the better one. Go Greens. (Via LawDog.)
• American pop culture is not keen on reincarnation as a plot device?
• Once again, Wicca as “the Other” gets tangled up with current political debate
From Dark Roasted Blend, a selection of weird and steampunk toys, activating “the threshold between wonder and horror.”
Alien Clone Baby, anyone?
Here is a little bit of synchronicity in my historical reading. I am not sure if it “proves” anything, other than the fact that it is difficult to sort people into “good guys” and “bad guys.”
1. At the library, I recently picked up The Long Morning of Medieval Europe: New Directions in Early Medieval Studies
I wanted to look for some material on agriculture—the adoption of the three-field system, wheeled plows, etc.—but I was sucked into a chapter entitled, “Strong Rulers—Weak Economy? Rome, the Carolingians and the Archaeology of Slavery in the First Millennium AD” by a German scholar, Joachim Henning.
Here are two figures that I have lifted from his work:
As I used to tell my students when we talked about American religion and slavery, the Roman empire back in Jesus’ time ran on slavery the way that our civilization runs on petroleum. (And Jesus had nothing to say about it.)
Slavery requires chains and shackles, lest the slaves wander away. Figure 2.1 is a map of archaeological sites (farms, villas, plantations) containing shackles.
The second figure graphs shackle finds over time in Gaul (France, roughly). They rise during the Roman times, then plunge during the Merovingian dynasty, during the so-called Dark Ages.
But then shackle finds—and hence presumably slavery—rise during the Carologian dynasty. Its founder, Charles Martel (ca. 688-741), stopped the Islamic expansion into Europe. His grandson Charlemagne (Charles the Great) is a huge figure in medieval western European history, but his actions included the slaughter of more than 4,000 Saxons who resisted conversion to Christianity.
There was a European slave trade in Pagan, polytheistic Roman times—and it continued into Christian times, up through the 1400s, at least—and then it was time for Columbus!
2. Meanwhile, a British historian suggests that Viking raids on Europe might have been payback for Charlemagne’s forced-conversion program. (Via the Covenant of the Goddess NPIO blog.)
But before you annoint the Vikings as the pro-Pagan “good guys,” remember that they were in the slave trade too, particularly in what is now Ireland and Russia.
As some people say about their relationships on Facebook, “It’s complicated.”
The US Air Force Academy’s official site for Pagan ritual has received a lot of attention. I first mentioned it on January 27 when I saw the Air Force news release.
In faraway Virginia*, Eugence C. Buie, a retired Disciples of Christ minister, wrote an op-ed piece criticizing his local newspaper’s own editorial about the USAFA stone circle:
It is unseemly to make fun of things we may not understand, particularly religions chosen and valued by others. That is not a strange thing to say in America where it used to be customary to honor and respect everyone’s “freedom of choice,” especially where religious beliefs and practices are concerned.
Some people I know jumped on one phrase in the piece, “Granted, some kinds of Wiccan worship could be considered evil.” Frankly, I have no idea what he meant, since he just tosses that line out there without any further explanation. Sex in the circle? Drumming all night? Wearing too much crushed velvet?
(And, yes, he is conflating Wicca and to some extent Druidism with all Paganism.)
It’s a tribute to all the Pagans who do interfaith work that people like Buie are, however grudgingly, started to respect our right to be here.
Getting one Pagan blog—Jason Pitzl-Waters’ Wild Hunt— ncluded in a survey of the religious blogosphere is progress too. (I remember when BeliefNet wanted my own blog on their Blog Heaven page but some months later purged it along with other non-monotheist blogs, no explanation given.)
* Virginians are not required to comment.
I linked to a site about sex with ghosts, so why not sex with elves?
Call them “the hidden people,” call the them the Shining Ones, whatever you like. These are not garden gnomes we are talking about: “They’re not like small, ugly gnomes. They’re more like tall and beautiful.”
And they know what you want in bed. Whew!
“It would make the world a better place if more people had sex with elves.”
I remain agnostic about that, but I would still love to see Iceland.