A Cathedral Re-discovers Mystical Religion

My laugh-out-loud moment Sunday came when reading an article in the Denver Post titled “Finding Faith in the Wilderness.” (The full name of the Episcopal cathedral in Denver is St. John’s in the Wilderness.)

Below, dozens of candles flicker near icons in the dark nave. Incense hangs in the air. Congregants can choose to sit in a pew or on thick cushions at the foot of a simple altar. A stringed Moroccan oud gives even traditional songs of praise an exotic twist, but there is also world music, chant and jazz.

“We’re using the cathedral in new ways, making it more inviting and even sensual,” said the Rev. Peter Eaton. “It’s meant to celebrate and bring alive all the human senses. We think that, in metro Denver, there is nothing else like us.“

In other words, a “a more mystical and meditative feeling than what big-box churches or traditional Protestant services provide.” In other words, liturgy, sacred theatre — what they used to be good at before the Episcopalians developed a bad case of Vatican II-envy back in the 1960s and started trying to be “relevant.”

I have quoted anthropologist Harvey Whitehouse’s distinction between “episodic” and “doctrinal” religion before. Sacred theatre is episodic. Having processions with torches and banners is episodic. (Clifton’s Third Law of Religion: All real religions have torchlight processions.)

The point of this post is not to make fun of Episcopalians, however. I merely want to emphasize the point that vivid experiences count for more than doctrine or theologizing. We Pagans should not forget that fact.

Handbook of Contemporary Paganism in Print

My contributor copy of the new Handbook of Contemporary Paganism from Brill arrived. (You can tell from the price that it is intended primarily for the institutional market.) Here is the table of contents:

“The Modern Magical Revival,” Nevill Drury

“The Influence of Aleister Crowley on Gerald Gardner and the Early Witchcraft Movement,” Henrik Bogdan

“Earth Day and Afterwards: American Paganism’s Appropriation of ‘Nature Religion’,” Chas S. Clifton

“Re-enchanting the World: A Weberian Analysis of Wiccan Charisma,” Robert Puckett

“Contemporary Paganism by the Numbers,” Helen A. Berger

“’A Religion Without Converts’ Revisited: Individuals, Identity and Community in Contemporary Paganism,” Síân Reid

“The Wild Hunt: A Mythological Language of Magic,” Susan Greenwood

“Reclamation, Appropriation and the Ecstatic Imagination in Modern Pagan Ritual,” Sabina Magliocco

“Alchemical Rhythms: Fire Circle Culture and the Pagan Festival,” J. Lawton Winslade

“Pagan Theology,” Michael York

“Drawing Down the Goddess: The Ancient {Female} Deities of Modern Paganism,” Marguerite Johnson

“The Return of the Goddess: Mythology, Witchcraft and Feminist Spirituality,” Carole M. Cusack

“Witches’ Initiation—A Feminist Cultural Therapeutic?” Jone Salomonsen

“Animist Paganism,” Graham Harvey

“Heathenry,” Jenny Blain and Robert J. Wallis

“New/Old Spiritualities in the West: Neo-Shamans and Neo-Shamanism,” Dawne Sanson

“Australian Paganisms,” Douglas Ezzy

“Celts, Druids and the Invention of Tradition,” James R. Lewis

“Magical Children and Meddling Elders: Paradoxical Patterns in Contemporary Pagan Cultural Transmission,” Murphy Pizza

“Of Teens and Tomes: The Dynamics of TeenageWitchcraft and Teen Witch Literature,” Hannah E. Johnston

“Rooted in the Occult Revival: Neo-Paganism’s Evolving Relationship with Popular Media,” Peg Aloi

“Weaving a Tangled Web? Pagan Ethics and Issues of History, ‘Race’ and Ethnicity in Pagan Identity,” Ann-Marie Gallagher

“‘Sacred’ Sites, Artefacts and Museum Collections: Pagan Engagements with Archaeology in Britain, “Robert J. Wallis and Jenny Blain

“Wolf Age Pagans,” Mattias Gardell

Review: Youth without Youth

My movie-fu was strong the other night. I watched the opening sequence of Francis Ford Coppola’s Youth without Youth (2007), all dissolving clocks and such, and said to M., “It’s the ‘terror of history.’ Where is Mircea Eliade when we need him?”

And it turned out to be made from one of Eliade’s novellas.

I have read most of his religious-studies books but (I think) only The Forbidden Forest and The Old Man and the Bureaucrats from among his fictional works.

Bryan Rennie, who has written several books on Eliade, summarizes Eliade’s views on time and history:

Eliade contends that the perception of time as an homogenous, linear, and unrepeatable medium is a peculiarity of modern and non-religious humanity. Archaic or religious humanity (homo religiosus), in comparison, perceives time as heterogenous; that is, as divided between profane time (linear), and sacred time (cyclical and reactualizable). By means of myths and rituals which give access to this sacred time religious humanity protects itself against the ‘terror of history’, a condition of helplessness before the absolute data of historical time, a form of existential anxiety.

When I was in graduate school in the 1980s, two of my professors had been Eliade’s students at Chicago, and although they had developed their own ideas, his influence lingered. One brought him to our campus for what must have been one of his last talks and book-signings; the whole event had a rather funereal atmosphere even though the the guest of honor was still breathing.

So what about the movie?

I said that Pan’s Labyrinth was gnostic, but this one is more so, in a different sense.

The key to appreciating Youth without Youth then is the idea of circularity and return. It is a love story, but not a linear story. Nor is it (except briefly) about reincarnation in an obvious way. Its dream-logic tries to confront the time-trap of mundane life.

Perhaps if Indiana Jones were a cinematic historian of religion rather than an archaeologist, he would be in this movie. It has Nazis too. But there would be no hair’s-breadth escapes.

On Not Being a Textual Religion

People who think that a “real religion” has holy books often do not understand Paganism, whether old or now.

Gus diZerega, who is now blogging at BeliefNet, takes on that attitude in his latest post, “A Pagan View on Sacred Authority.”

Fundamentally we are an oral and experiential tradition. We Wiccans have Books of Shadows, but they are more like ritual cookbooks that sacred texts along Biblical or even theological lines. Similar texts dominate in Brazil among the African Diasporic traditions. Dogma is not particularly important, compared to ritual and experience. This also appears to have been the case in [ancient] Rome.

Read the whole thing.

Incidentally, it is good to see that BeliefNet has a Pagan blogger again. It used to be me, but I was purged along with other non-monotheists. Now the site’s owners seem to be trying to broaden its blogroll once again. You still have to scroll to the very very bottom to find the Pagan blogger.

The Scourge of Fundamentalists Everywhere

It is the time of year when fundamentalists of various sorts get their (Brit.) knickers in a twist over Valentine’s Day.

In India, said knickers will be pink, thanks to an ingenious counter-protest.

Aphrodite will not be denied.

Review: Good Witches Fly Smoothly

There are a lot of books about religious Wicca out there. There are a lot of books about practical magic, spells, etc. There are very few books about what happens next, but Good Witches Fly Smoothly: Surviving Witchcraft is one of them.

Mistake 27: Using a mind key that can be misinterpreted. (Otherwise known as the Law of Unintended Consequences or “be careful what you ask for.” Here’s my version.)

Whether it is called witchcraft or sorcery, the material taught by Gavin and Yvonne Frost through their School of Wicca has always been highly practical. Gavin did start out as an engineer, after all.

Mistake 35: Helping nonentities with no credentials to inflate their egos.

Good Witches Fly Smoothly distills several decades’ worth of magical tales from their own experience and those of their students.

“In each case,” they write, “the outcome was unexpected. In each case, authors’ analysis reveals what went wrong and why.”

Mistake 78: The mistake Flo made was believing everything Chester, as a [spirit] guide, told her without keeping her mind in gear.

If you have ever suffered through some vague airy ritual for “healing the planet” or “world peace,” you will appreciate this book. It is practical to its fingertips.

Mistake 88: The intent of the ritual became polluted because they felt they had to have the orgasm to achieve the goal. No orgasm, no car was the assumption.

I have sprinkled four of the authors’ summaries through this brief review. There are 99 of them in the book. Get it and read them all.

Gallimaufry with Stamps on It

¶ The US Postal Service threatens to cut Saturday delivery, blaming the economy. I have been doing my part for the USPS–I started selling stuff on eBay. eBay must be the best thing to happen to the Postal Service in the last decade–all those people sending packages.

¶ An elaborate Web site about ancient Egypt, although perhaps it was created just to sell Egyptian-themed jewelry.

Ten myths about copyright. Do you know what “fair use” really means?

¶ Also on a literary theme: Neil Gaiman’s thoughts on literary agents. My answer to the question, “How do you get an agent?” is “Try your friends’ agents first.” That may sound like a chicken-and-egg response, but in my experience, writers hang out with other writers. Or writing teachers.

Gallimaufry with Old Bones

¶ Some British Pagans want to rebury a 4,000-year-old skeleton. It seems to me that they are just parroting NAGRPA language without realizing that (to borrow from another blogger) that the Archbishop of Canterbury has as much “blood” claim to the bones as they do.

¶ George Plimpton was an American writer of what was once called “new journalism” and is now called creative nonfiction. But this article about him in The Nation also points out to what extent famous literary journals were subsidized by the CIA as part of the culture war with the Soviet Union. Who says our government does not support the arts?

¶ Anne Hill defines “California Cosmology” and its evil twin.

Apparently “analog” now means “natural.” I missed that.

So is the “planetary consciousness” of neotribal gatherings like Boom just window dressing for the same old hedonistic consumption and pursuit of distraction? Perhaps. But as a self-consciously visionary environment, Boom necessarily foreshadowed the apocalypse as much as the eco-dream.

¶ A wall painting at the Neolithic town of Catal Huyuk was often called the world’s oldest map. But what if it is not a map at all? Would that mean that map-making was not practiced by “peaceful ancient matriarchies” but was invented by them evil Kurgans?

Pagan Studies at AAR 2009

For lack of an original post today, here are the “calls” for the sessions at next November’s American Academy of Religion meeting in Montreal that involve Pagan Studies.

At some time I want to discuss here where our little sub-discipline might be going, but it won’t be today — I just have too much on my desk.

Given disciplinary boundaries, getting the joint session with Indigenous Religious Traditions was a bit of a coup. It meant overcoming some people’s resistance to the “P-word.”

Contemporary Pagan Studies Group

This Group invites proposals that address the issue of idolatry, namely, examining the roles that material objects have played in religious life – in particular, the inventive strategies that people and/or cultures have used in their attempts to create images of and for worship. For a second session, we request papers that investigate the influence of literature, especially science fiction/fantasy, on contemporary paganisms. Papers that stress mutually interdependent relations are also welcome. In addition, a joint session of the Indigenous Religious Traditions Group and this Group will consider papers that explore common or shared perspectives in sacred practices. Each tradition has a heritage of employing tangible material in activities of reverence, ritual, worship, etc. We invite papers that help us understand where, how, and if the overlaps are truly shared perspectives.

Indigenous Religious Traditions Group

This Group continues to be interested in the utility or difficulties of Western conceptual categories – sacred, cosmology, possession, and others. We are also interested in the conceptualization of “indigenous;” including the invention/production of new indigenous religions. We invite paper submissions that engage the idea of “encounters” between indigenous cultural communities and groups of/from Western civilization, between indigenous communities and other non-Western cultures. In these broad perspectives, we will receive research-based papers focused on cultural and religious exchanges between encountering groups. Special preference will be given to papers that highlight exchanges that have occurred in Canada. In a joint session with the Contemporary Pagan Studies Group, we invite abstracts on tangible sacrality in the performance of ritual or worship. This proposed joint session seeks to explore perspectives on whether contemporary paganism and indigenous religious traditions could or should share a mutual discourse.

Copyediting Religion

Orthographic payback is a bitch.

For years–starting when I wrote for Gnosis in the 1980s–I was one of those pushing for the capitalization of the words Witch and Pagan when used to describe first, the followers of the new, self-consciously created polytheistic mystery religion and, second, Pagan as a more general term for both old and new polytheism.

When I wrote The Encyclopedia of Heresies and Heretics in the early 1990s, I won the capitalization battle over “Paganism,” but lost on changing BC/AD to BCE/CE.

It should be noted that some Pagan scholars prefer “pagan,” either because they are English or because they see “paganism” as a way of being religion in which people of all faiths participate. For instance, making a pilgrimage to a saint’s tomb is “pagan” in Michael York’s view.

But now I am editing and laying out an anthology intended as a college textbook on world religions. And almost everyone has their capitalization quirks.

The writer on Judaism wants write not merely “Israel” but its full diplomatic name: “State of Israel.” Oddly enough, she does not insist on “Federal Republic of Germany.”

The writer on Mormonism wants to capitalize priesthood, as in Aaronic Priesthood, while all the other contributors lowercase it, e.g., Zoroastrian priesthood.

The writer on Islam has a whole capitalization list for me too. The Baha’i wants Baha’i Faith capitalized–which is fine–but also “faith” when it stands alone. And of course the expert on Christianity wants Church to be “up,” even though that runs contrary to the stylebook, which specifies, for instance, “the early church.”

And so on.

Unfortunately the The Chicago Manual of Style does not pronounce on all these issues (except “church”), sending me to other sources, such as the The HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion, in order to try to keep the book consistent.

Wouldn’t it be easier to handle these issues in German, with its capitalization of all nouns, or in Spanish, which is, as we editors say, very “down style“?