Tag Archives: American religion

Talking about Tlaloc, 2

Posted on by

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

Posted on by
Feather offering for 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)

Posted on by

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

Posted on by

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.

Gallimaufry with Book Porn

Posted on by

• “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.

Beatnik Witches

Posted on by

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.

 

Another Case of ‘Sacred Prostitution’?

Posted on by

In Phoenix, Arizona, the Phoenix Goddess Temple is offering erotic massage, etc., in return for “offerings.”

Women at the temple take names like Magdalena, Shakti, and Devima. There’s also a high priestess named Gypsy, and a tall, lithe blonde named Leila, who advertises her measurements (36-26-37) on her page at the temple website, which includes photo galleries of each goddess.

The goddesses practice techniques that include genital touching for a “religious offering” of money that generally ranges from $204 to $650. Their advertisements go in the adult sections of local newspapers, including New Times, but Phoenix Goddess Temple founder Tracy Elise says the temple is not a brothel — it’s a church, and the services offered are religious rituals to enrich people’s lives.

This gambit has been tried before in other states and not ended well. Our cultural-legal system has no place for “sacred prostitution,” even when presented under the banner of freedom of religion.

British writer Robert Graves, author of The White Goddess (one of the most influential books of the Pagan revival), included a similar sort of temple in his fantasy novel Watch the Northwind Rise, also called Seven Days in New Crete (1949).

I do agree that sexual healing can and does take place. But the legal deck is stacked against offering it openly—you might suspect that when even the “alternative” newspaper calls it “New Age prostitution.”

Classics scholar Stephanie Lynn Budin, author of The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity, has weighed in elsewhere about the Phoenix Goddess Temple.

What drives me really nuts is that this tends to promote the idea that pagan religion is libertine; that this is what you get if you don’t honor some anti-material, anti-body, generally male deity codified in a book somewhere.  This then makes it easier to exploit people seeking new spiritualities, claiming that this is part of the deal.

Her argument, as I understand,  is that we interpret the writings of Herodotus and other ancients through our own sexual preoccupations and that the reality of the Pagan past was something different.

(Hat tip: Caroline Tully.)

Gallimaufry in Eden

Posted on by

• At the Religion in American History blog: What Puritans, Shakers, beer, and running shoes have in common.

• Is The Decembrists’ The King is Dead their most Pagan-friendly album? Laura at The Juggler thinks so.

• It is true that religion scholars go on and on about “the sacred.” So why is “the paranormal” not given equivalent attention?

• If I did not have the Interwebz available for checking, I would never have thought that these were actual book titles.