I don’t have an original Independence Day blog post. I am still in recovery from yesterday.
So in keeping with recent posts on learning the gods of your region, go and read “Conversations with Columbia.”
Tag Archives: American religion
Hoodoo You Read?
Hoodoo & Conjure Quarterly is a new journal on Southern magic and folklore, and you can buy it on Amazon.com (follow link above).
Contents of the first issue:
Denise Alvarado: “The Origin of the Root,” “Dirt Dauber Nests,” “Conjure Artist profile: The Georgia Mojo Man,” “A Goetic Ritual: Magickal Doll to Raise the Ghost of a Loved One”
Sharon Marino: “Bat’s Blood,” “Secrets of Sex Magick: Explore Your Sexual Fantasies with the Help of the Guede,” “St. Martha Dominadora Love Domination Candle.”
Matthew Venus: “What is Real Hoodoo?” “Bottle Spell for Prosperity”
Madrina Angelique: “Buying Cemetery Dirt”
Alyne Pustanio: “Haunted New Orleans Folklore: The Devil Baby of New Orleans: Fact or Fiction?”
Chad Balthazar, “Planetary Magick and the Venus Love Tub Lamp”
Papa Curtis, “A Short Look at Witchcraft and Self-Defense in the Diaspora”
Carolina Dean: “Shoe and Foot-Track Magick”
Dorothy Morrison,: “The Real Dirt on Visiting the Dead”
Aaron Leitch: “The Return of Psalm Magick and the Mixed Qabalah”
H. Byron Ballard: “Cove-Witches and Curanderas: Traditional Healers and Magic-Women in Modern Appalachia”
And there are several formulas for magickal oils and powders, a little lagniappe (that’s Cajun for a little something extra) magick, a free conjure doll baby template, and a historical text related to Voodoo in New Orleans by Lafcadio Hearn.
Maybe these are people who don’t worry about whether there are pentagrams on the tombstone—they are there for the graveyard dirt.
Talking about Tlaloc, 2
A turkey feather and a candle for Tlaloc. This culvert carries Hardscrabble Creek under a road—what is left of it.
In her comment on my first Tlaloc post, Hecate Demetersdatter asks, “What was/is it about Tlaloc that called/calls to you?”
It was my reading and re-reading of Craig Childs’ House of Rain that made me conscious of how important a deity Tlaloc (under various names) had been from antiquity to the present day in the American Southwest and on south into Mesoamerica. (Childs, no avowed polytheist, tends to regard him simply as the personification of the hydrological cycle.)
If we might regard deities as connected with place, then I am in that place and subject to that hydrological cycle—a cycle that seems to have stalled a bit this year.
And as Tlaloc has been addressed in many tongues already, why not add English to them?
Also, looking forward to the American Academy of Religion meeting in San Francisco, I obviously need to eat here.
Talking about Tlaloc
Bundle of turkey, Steller’s jay, and flicker feathers placed in a dry spring basin.
On Friday morning, April 29, back from a early morning fire call (shed + trash + grasses at the edge of the prairie), I climbed the ridge behind the house and made an offering to Tlaloc, the god of rain.
(I think I need to make a lot more of them, given that it has not rained for a month.)
Later that day the Sand Gulch Fire exploded, forcing us to evacuate our house and spend the night in our pop-up camping trailer parked next to the fire station. But the next day it snowed four inches, helping to bring the fire under control.
The desert ecologist and nature writer Craig Childs got me thinking about Tlaloc a while ago with some evocative passages in his book House of Rain, which I reviewed on the other blog here (also referenced in this post).
At high, prominent springs or caves in Guatemala or the Yucatán, one is likely to find the head of a decapitated rooster (replacing the turkey, which was commonly used in the past) along with pools of melted wax from votive candles (365).
This post kicks off my discussion about being an American Eclectic Witch reviving the cult of Tlaloc on a household basis—no stepped pyramids here, just real mountains.
Tlaloc
Both Aztec depictions of Tlaloc and Mayan depictions of the equivalent deity, Chaac (if you follow a sort of interpretatio azteca), leave me cold aesthetically, for all that they are richly symbolic. But one thing at a time—perhaps I can find one done in the style of pop-Mexican calendar art.
The worship of the gods can change over time—consider this “feast of St. Tlaloc.” We could do that!
More to come.
Army Appoints Hindu Chaplain (Sort of)
There about 1,000 identified Hindus in the U.S. Army, and now they have a chaplain, Captain Pratima Dharm.
Yes, that is probably fewer than the followers of Pagan paths in uniform. The Buddhists have been recognized too, but a qualified Wiccan officer was rejected.
But there might be more to this story:
Dharm speaks easily of Christian teachings. A unique aspect of her story is that until this year, she wore the cross of a Christian chaplain on her battle fatigues. When she started on active duty in 2006, she was endorsed by the Pentecostal Church of God, based in Joplin, Mo.
But she’s now sponsored by Chinmaya Mission West, a Hindu religious organization that operates in the United States. A Washington, D.C.-area religious teacher who interviewed her for the organization before giving her an endorsement said her multifaith background is an advantage.
“She knows Christian theology, and she has a great grasp of Hindu theology,” said Kuntimaddi Sadananda of Chinmaya Mission’s Washington center. “This means she can help everyone.”
She didn’t convert from Christianity to Hinduism, she said.
“I am a Hindu,” she said. “It’s how I was raised and in my heart of hearts, that’s who I am.”
But — and perhaps it is hard for some Western Christians to understand — she hasn’t rejected Christianity either.
“In Hinduism, the boundaries are not that strict,” she said. “It is to base your life on the Vedantic traditions, and you can be a Christian and follow the Vedantic traditions.”
As I understand it, the Vedanta schools of Hinduism tend toward a sort of intellectual monotheism and reject all that colorful gods-and-goddesses stuff except when interpreted allegorically. So she has blended it with Christianity?
Chinmaya Mission West is an Advaita Vedenta organization.
Lawyers Comment on the Pagan Prison Chaplain Case
Of all the discussions of the prisoner “free exercise of religion” issue that produced a lawsuit brought by California volunteer Pagan prison chaplain Patrick McCollum, I recommend that you read Wiccan lawyer Hecate Demetersdatter’s explanation.
The appeals court has not decided on the rightness or wrongness of the basic question, but it has upheld the lower court’s ruling that McCollum does not have legal standing to bring the case, because he cannot show that he himself has been injured.
But here’s where, IMHO, Judge Schroeder sets out a clear path that shows how to build a successful case. Pagans need to request visits from Pagan chaplains (in hospital, when they are concerned about their family members, before appeals and other trials, etc.) and document that they get denied because their chaplains are not “regular paid chaplains.” They’ll probably also have to accept a visit from, say, a Catholic priest who counsels them about the evils of Witchcraft and then show why that didn’t work for them, because CDCR’s policy seems to envision paid chaplains ministering to prisoners outside their religions when necessary. And then, with the help of McCollum and those willing to raise funds and do magic, etc., they’ll have to pursue their claims in a timely manner.
More careful foundational work is going to be required, in other words. Someone—or better yet, several someones—is going to have to show “injury.”
Prisoner “free exercise” cases are not slam-dunks. Law blogger Howard Friedman lists a couple of recent instances that have not gone well for Pagan prisoners. (Watch his blog: these cases turn up frequently.)
Friedman’s summary of the McCollum decision:
The court concluded that many of the chaplain’s claims were derivative of inmate’s claims, and the inmate plaintiffs were dismissed because their claims were untimely or they had failed to exhaust administrative remedies. It rejected the chaplain’s claims that he had either third-party or taxpayer standing to assert the religious rights of Wiccan inmates.
Which again is about the issue of standing. I see no point in further appeals. It sounds as though a whole new case would be more successful, given time and willing plaintiffs.
AAR 2011 Pagan Studies Sessions
For those of you attending this year’s American Academy of Religion meeting in San Francisco, here is a preliminary schedule of the Contemporary Pagan Studies Group’s sessions.
Gallimaufry with Book Porn
• “Interview, Chaos, Spiritual Machines, Circles, Readings, and Book Porn” at Plutonica.
• A Heathen-metal concert review at The Movement of Sound. (That is one genre you won’t hear on A Darker Shade of Pagan.)
• Anticipating a movie based on Neil Gaiman’s American Gods at The Witching Hour.
• Bo at The Cantos of Mvtabilitie lists favorite blogs, which must pass tests of both stylishness and spirituality.
This is Civic Nature Religion
Deep in Mother Earth, an important ritual takes place.
Don’t tell the wrong people that we might count it as “nature religion.”
Beatnik Witches
Aidan Kelly’s Hippie Commie Beatnik Witches, which has circulated in digital form for some years, can now be purchased as a book from Amazon, with new material added.
As the San Francisco counter-culture teeters on the edge of the Psychedelic Era, a group of twenty-somethings, open to spiritual experiment (and other sorts of experiments), find themselves morphing into something that they do not quite a have a word for . . . Druids? Witches??
Built from recollections and interviews, it is a picture of people creating a new religion based on a heady mix of reading, ritual, and inspiration.