Pastor Flaten displays a firm grip of the obvious, this week when the sound of grain driers dominates the town and grain cars clank on the railroad tracks. That sermon will just write itself, you betcha.
The actual harvest—the one that feeds us—is running late, however.
All of this is prelude to saying that I am on the road, but more serious blogging will resume in a few days.
The story of Little Red Riding Hood, usually dated to the 16th or 17th century, may be much older, says an anthropologist who studied multiple versions from around the world.
Professor Jack Zipes, a retired professor of German at the University of Minnesota who is an expert on fairy tales and their origins, described [Dr. Jamie Tehrani’s] work as “exciting”. He believes folk tales may have helped people to pass on tips for survival to new generations.
He said: “Little Red Riding Hood is about violation or rape, and I suspect that humans were just as violent in 600 BC as they are today, so they will have exchanged tales about all types of violent acts.
“I have tried to show that tales relevant to our adaptation to the environment and survival are stored in our brains and we consistently use them for all kinds of reference points.”
I had heard it argued lot of the classic European fairy tales reflect the social destruction of the Thirty Years War (1618–1648)–disease, fighting, looting.
But apparently “Little Red Riding Hood” counts as ancient Pagan wisdom.
(Via Arts and Letters Daily.)
So says the News of the World, so consider the source.
Both Emma and Amie are in the throes of planning their weddings for next year – or hand-fastings, as they’re called in pagan circles, because the couple’s hands are tied together during the ceremony.
Both are planning outdoor ceremonies officiated by a high priest and priestess, using pagan vows they’ll compose themselves. Emma’s gown will be green “to symbolise new beginnings”, while Amie has plumped for a purple medieval-style dress, followed by a hog roast on the beach. Conventional it isn’t – but if paganism continues to grow, hand-fastings could be the next big thing.
Emma has Pagan tattoos!
Three researchers are working to update Voices from the Pagan Census: A National Survey of Witches and Neo-Pagans in the United States
Helen Berger, one of the researchers, writes, “This survey builds on an earlier one completed over twenty years ago, primarily in the United States, which was conducted by Helen A. Berger and Andras Arthen (of the EarthSpirit Community) entitled the Pagan Census.
“A number of scholars have noted that it would be helpful to have a follow-up of that survey to see if and how the community has changed or remained the same. The survey that follows uses many, although not all of the same questions that were in the original survey to provide that comparison. There are also new questions, for instance about the Internet, something that was of little interest 20 years ago but is now, and some from other studies, that again permit a comparison. This has resulted in the survey being somewhat long–we appreciate your taking the time to complete it.”
Please feel free to spread this URL around the Pagan Web to get as wide a variety of respondents as possible.
Entries in a steampunk design challenge. I rather like “Amazon 1821.” And this one. There are multiple pages.
I suppose it was reading The Witches of Chiswick
Ever resolutely two years behind the pop-culture curve, M. and I recently watched some of True Blood, season 1. We had already read a little of Charlaine Harris (one novel for me, two for her), so we knew about the whole Sookie Stackhouse milieu of “vamps” and “weres” and Harris’ whole bodice-ripping-and-biting atmosphere.
We knew, for example, that the collie dog was really Sam the restaurant owner, who is a were-collie. (Our collie is a ninja collie–much easier to deal with.)
(If Louisiana did not exist, would it be necessary to invent it?)
Partway through the opening sequence, we realized thatTrue Blood was based on Harris’ novels, and our expectations immediately cratered. Been there, done that.
But it … like Buffy … like Twilight … has the critics wondering, “What’s with this vampire craze, anyway?”
When “True Blood” appeared, it was easy to assume it was a metaphor for late-stage capitalism gone haywire, not simply because it began with an insolent store clerk reading Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine” but also because the show seemed predicated on an interest in the retail addict’s belief that we’re made of what we buy.
Read the rest on “reactionary gender politics,” etc.
Via GetReligion.
The popular image of the sexually alluring witch goes back to Circe at least, was notable in the early modern period in the work of artists such as Hans Baldung, and got a big boost from Jules Michelet.
It keeps popping up today. Sometimes it is lightly disguised, as in the Craigslist posting blogged about here, where what the original poster seems to want is not a Tarot reader but a softcore porn model.
“Red Witch,” an Australian blogger, has been collecting popular culture images of female witches (some of them NSFW, not surprisingly), with thoughts of doing a book.
Anyway, I started collecting the stuff you’ve see on this blog because it seemed there had been an evolution in the representation of witches, and I wondered whether the polarized version that I was familiar with (witches are either good/bad, young/old, sexy/hag) was actually the mid-point of an evolution in which the Witch is at first only bad/old/hag, then becomes either good/young/sexy or bad/old/hag, and then is only good/young/sexy. Since nobody that I knew of—and my collection on witchcraft was pretty complete even then—had discussed the history of the representation of witches, and the importance of good/young/sexy witch imagery to the growing social acceptance of witchcraft and Wicca, I wanted to understand it better.
Matilda, who appears to be in the UK, has some flirtatious fun with the witch archetype on her web site.
As far as the modern religion of Wicca is concerned, the sexual element was there from the beginning, when Gerald Gardner and his priestess/paramour Edith Woodford-Grimes created the “Southern Coven of English Witches.” Where was his wife, Donna? Not interested in nudism, free-thinking, ceremonial magic, esoteric religion, and running a witchcraft museum, apparently.
(A good scholarly biography of Gardner as founder of a new religion still needs to be written. I would love to see it in the Pagan studies book series that I co-edit.)
At least Wicca is somewhat honest about its sexual element, with the centrality of the Great Rite and all. The fact is, however, that religion often has a sexualized component.
Every time that a Catholic priest, Pentacostal preacher, or Lutheran minister gets caught having sex with the wrong person, it is treated as a deviation from the standard. But sometimes spiritual practices lead to a stronger sexual vibe–and then what do you do with it?
I learned in graduate school, finally, from a professor of Asian religions why monks and nuns there often wear saffron robes. The color signifies their spiritual “heat.” It’s a warning—keep away!—like an orange road cone.
The East has sex scandals too—Sai Baba’s is just one example.
In Christianity, however, the professed religious often wear black, brown, or white—neutral colors. “Nothing happening here.” (Except for some of those Pentacostals …)
Wicca tries to seize the hot wire and direct the current. When that works, it can be life-changing. When it does not work, you get the usual run of social and interpersonal problems.
Hecate reminds us that ten years have passed since the Wiccan world lost Doreen Valiente, who still does not get enough credit for her part in creating the religion.
I corresponded with her some in the 1980s, but, ironically, arrived in her home of Brighton just weeks after passing. Riding city buses with E. John Jones, he would point and say, “Doreen used to live on that street,” or “Doreen had a flat in that building.”
I got the impression at third-hand that there was a bit of struggle over who would become the official custodian of her papers and thus her memory–perhaps one of my British readers could enlighten us on that.
Via Prof. Reynolds, Brian Francis Slattery’s “ten books that don’t get enough respect.”
And the only one that I have read is Little, Big
Some of the others looks interesting. Nostromo
I can understand seeing a goddess in your lover. But this is pushing it too far.