Via Sannion, links to a site of choreographers who attempt to reconstruct ancient Greek choral dance. (Scroll down for videos.)
Here dancers and drummers perform while a rhapsode declaims the Catalog of Ships from the Iliad.
I suppose it’s one of those interesting ideas that goes into the “But we’ll never know for sure” file. (Or does it smell too much of the lamp?)
You can’t keep a good drama queen down.
Ted Haggard, the disgraced pastor of the New Life megachurch in Colorado Springs, whom you might of thought would never occupy a pulpit again, but rather skulk around Phoenix, Arizona, peddling life insurance, is ba-a-a-ack.
Ted Haggard, who proves that the Elmer Gantry archetype is alive and well in American Christianity.
Ted Haggard, who thinks downtown Colorado Springs is controlled by demons.
Ted Haggard, who, to his credit, thought that evangelical Christians should embrace environmentalism, but then got busy with meth and gay escorts.
Really, he belongs in a convertible with a sash (Drama Queen 2008) doing his best parade wave (“elbow elbow wrist wrist”).
Really, he is Colorado’s gift to religious journalism. What will he do next?
Arguments about “cultural appropriation” are usually dishonest.
Although they often take place in venues devoted to religion, spirituality, and magic, they are not about religion, spirituality, or magic.
Instead, they are political arguments about cultural survival, usually taking the form, “We/You took everything from them/us, and now we/you want to take their/our spirituality too!”
Let me propose a hypothetical bit of “cultural appropriation.”
I fetch the old Catholic missal off the shelf, blow the dust off (Colorado is dusty), and open it to the ritual for the Eucharist.
I find items to serve as chalice, platen, and all the other necessaries, make myself some cheat cards for the Latin, set up my altar, and proceed to celebrate the Tridentine Mass.
Cultural appropriation? I doubt that the Vatican will be too disturbed, and I will not need to watch out for albino assassin monks.
Is it not “cultural appropriation” when the so-called victim is large and powerful? If so, that makes me think that all talk about appropriation is merely politics.
So what are the consequences of my unsanctioned Mass? From the Catholic Church’s viewpoint, Aquila non capit muscas, I suspect. Any other consequences?
Now you can discuss the religious, spiritual, or magical issues.
Postscript: This post is somewhat based on a dream I had months ago, in which I was called up to baptize someone in some Protestant denomination, and of course I was thinking (a) what baptismal ritual do these people use and (b) since I am a Pagan, will it be “valid”?
Jason Pitzl-Waters offers more links on the Sedona sweat-lodge deaths, including to the Beyond Growth blog, which has been critiquing James Arthur Ray for some time.
(Related: I want to read Barbara Ehrenreich’s newest, Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America
I sometimes wonder at the whole concept of “growth.” Did Socrates talk about “growth”? I don’t think so. Wisdom, yes, attained by philosophical inquiry, life experience, and maybe the gift of the gods—chiefly the first. I expect he would have scorned a workshop that involved putting a couple dozen people (Correction: 64 people) in a sweat lodge and heating it until they collapsed. Not much logos there. Not much inquiry. Not much virtue.
While I am waiting for the book, I think I shall be reading the blog.
Some of the reaction in the Pagan blogosphere to the “shamanic” casualties in Sedona have trotted out that old horse named Cultural Appropriation.
A couple of months ago, one of the Pagan lists in which I participate had a whole discussion of “cultural appropriation.” Cultural Appropriation was led by the halter and trotted around the ring, and all the usual arguments were made:
.Eventually that discussion thread wore itself out. Not two weeks later, someone posted an announcement for a Sun Dance:
The Sun Dance is a ritual of community and praise for the sun and the great spirit that the natives of this continent felt drew them together. Regardless of our faith, everyone can appreciate the sun’s power and importance to all life on Earth. So this will be an upbeat celebration of the sun, the summer we have just had and community. It is also a ritual praising the sun and saying farewell for another year.
Since there is no one ritual for the Sun Dance, and so many tribes viewed and practiced this event differently, we will have a blending of many traditions in our Sun Dance. Please bring drums, bells, noise makers, whistles, rain sticks, musical instruments, or anything else you’d like to celebrate and make a joyful sound with. This event will be outdoors so please wear appropriate clothing as the weather dictates. Also, as part of the ritual involves body and face painting, if possible please wear something that gives you access to your collarbones.
And ol’ Cultural Appropriation stayed in his stall. No one said a word online.
Why?
In the long run, religious creativity will always trump the kind of finger-pointing accusations that you hear about “cultural appropriation” — even before you come to the theological argument that “the gods choose whom they will.”
We have freedom of religion. You cannot stop someone from holding a Sun Dance and calling it such unless you show up and threaten bodily harm. You can threaten other sorts of consequences—that it will offend the spirits or the Grandfathers and someone will suffer—but you cannot guarantee such threats. What if the spirits like the other person better?
As Shawn Spencer, the fake psychic detective, says in the TV series Psych, séances—or in this case, Sun Dances—are like garage sales and plastic surgery: Anyone can have them.
Pagans are well-placed to realize that religion is a creative activity. Writers incorporate the influence of other writers, musicians “steal” from other musicians, actors learn from other actors—why should religious practitioners be any different.
I have complained about some “plastic shamans” in my time too, but to what effect? Just do it. See what happens.
And how I know where they come from.
Two dead, others sickened after lengthy sweat lodge ceremony at the Angel Valley Retreat Center in (where else?) Sedona, Arizona, which advertises, “Angel Valley offers the opportunity to ‘retreat’ from the ‘bus-i-ness’ of life while providing the optimal condition and the services to assist in connecting with and expressing who you are, being your True Authentic Self.”
From the AP story:
Authorities said self-help expert and author James Arthur Ray rented the facility and was hosting the group inside the dome, a low-lying structure covered with tarps and blankets. In a testimonial on the retreat’s Web site, Ray said it “offers an ideal environment for my teachings and our participants.”
On Ray’s Web site, a guide for participants of the five-day “Spiritual Warrior Event” includes a lengthy release of liability that acknowledges participants may suffer “physical, emotional, financial or other injuries.”
I was in a state government office today and saw my first office Halloween decorations. It’s coming. So read this Metafilter discussion about when you are too old for trick-or-treating.
Lots of great comments, but don’t miss np312’s! It’s the most creative Halloween “trick” I ever heard of.
• I have been traveling–and writing about it at the other blog. So for now, some links.
• Raw food and Linux: Interview with two Pagans. Raw food is fine, but it’s easy to look good if you are in your twenties and have the bone structure … As for Linux, that’s fine too, but I have no real reason to switch from Mac OS X. Just not geeky enough—or you could say that I prefer to be geeky about other things.
• Jordan Stratford claims the steampunk aesthetic for Gnosticism. Next, raw food and Linux.
• Boing Boing is hosting guest-blogger Mitch Horowitz, author of Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation
Is it the pop version of Catherine Albanese’s A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion
The “Staffordshire Hoard” is a cache of 7th-century Anglo-Saxon sword jewels and other items recently found in England (and a great boost for metal-detector sales, no doubt).
The caption on one slide of the golden hoard suggests that because a gold cross was folded in on itself before burial, the person who buried the treasure might well have been (wait for it) a “pagan.”
England was becoming Christian by then, although the Norse were not. But I think he (?), whether Pagan or Christian, might as well have been looking at the cross as so much gold rather than superstitiously thinking he would be smitten if he deformed it.
Here is another slide show. Magnificent stuff. How long until we see Ren Faire reproductions?