Call for Contributions: Women in Magic

This call for contributions to an edited collection comes from editor Brandy Williams’ blog.

Megalithica Books, an imprint of Immanion Press (Stafford, U.K./Portland, OR, U.S.A) is seeking submissions for an anthology on women working in the magical communities, particularly in communities where women have not been extensively published or in which women face stereotyping and misunderstanding within and without the community. These communities include (but are not limited to) groups and individuals working in the Golden Dawn, Thelemic, Aurum Solis, Alchemy, Chaos, and Experimental Fields.

Women have been involved in traditional and ritual magic since the late Victorian era. However women are often viewed as tangential to these communities or as soror mysticae, assistants to the magician. Today women are actively involved in ceremonial magical groups and lodges, alchemy, chaos magic, and Experimental Magic, overcoming stereotypes and creating new visions of magic within the communities.

Go here for the whole thing.

1734 and All That

A missive showed up in my inbox lately, written by some Wiccan Web denizen, who although in a coven (this part was confusing) had had some sort of vision or revelation involving the number 1734, which led him/her/it to my Witches’ Voice piece on the so-called “1734 Tradition.”

I say “so-called” because I think that there is less there than meets the eye. I am too young to have known its founder, Robert Cochrane, but I did know people who knew him, such as Evan John Jones — who himself was never sure of Cochrane’s bonafides.

Something you learn along the path is that magickal ability does not always come packaged with moral uprightness. Actually, the Catholic Church says much the same thing in its doctrine of ex opere operato, meaning that the sacrament is still effective even if the priest is a sinner.

In North America, the “1734” (it’s a message, not a date) tradition derives from a series of letters that Cochrane sent over a few months in the mid-1960s to Joe Wilson, then serving in the US Air Force. The two never met; Cochrane’s suicide interrupted the correspondence.

When you read those letters–or Cochrane’s lengthier correspondence with the English magician William Grey–you can see him hinting at Great Mysteries, playing a game of “I’ll tell you one of my secrets if you tell me one of yours first,” and suggesting that students try a new technique, which, if it is successful, the teacher will then claim to have known about all along.

He had the mojo, but he also (somewhat like Alex Sanders) had an inferiority complex about the Gardnerian Witches, who had a ten-year head start. His response was to claim access to traditions more secret, more traditional, more ancient–and then try to find evidence for them.

On this side of the pond, Gardnerian Witchcraft had arrived in book form in the 1950s and in person (the Bucklands) in the early 1960s. The interest in the Craft, however, was far greater than one “legit” Gardnerian coven could meet. Consequently, all sorts of new forms of American Wicca sprang up. The Cochrane-Wilson letters were copied and passed around, becoming one form of non-Gardnerian “traditional Craft” that people could recycle to show that they too had the Real Old Stuff.

This new mix of Pagan, ceremonial magical, old-school occultism, and other elements flourished in Southern California, of course. If you read Ann Finnin’s The Forge of Tubal Cain, you get a lively who-said-what-to-whom first-person narrative of the Los Angeles-area Craft scene in the 1970s–including some discussion of links between the Society for Creative Anachronism, other SF-fantasy fandom and the Pagan movement, an area that has not been researched enough.

Finnin and her husband Dave have been group leaders for more than 30 years, and part of The Forge of Tubal Cain is devoted to issues of running a coven, avoiding problems, building a group mind, and so forth.

The remainder of the book gives portions of the training and ritual used in their group, the Roebuck, which may be seen as an extensive ritual and religious system based partly on Cochrane’s sketchy teaching and inspiration. I recommend it, primarily as a chance to hear the thoughts of Craft elders talking about the things that work and the things that don’t.

Will "Rome" Rise Again?

Pridian at Codex Celtica wraps up news on various movies and movie re-makes based on ancient history.

The killers of Thomas Becket as “The Wild Bunch”? Gag me. But this part is interesting:

A feature version may be in the works to wrap up the unresolved plot strands of the award-winning HBO/BBC TV series Rome, which dramatised the dirty-politics underside of Rome’s transitional period from republic to virtual monarchy amidst civil war. The TV series ended abruptly story-wise when the 3rd series was cancelled in mid-term. The original kernel of it was a reference in Caesar’s Gallic Wars memoir to two ‘ordinary’ soldiers who recover the Legion’s captured brass eagle. The original plan was for 5 seasons, the last focussing on how the Roman authorities dealt with the troublesome rise of a certain ‘messiah’ in Palestine, but cancellation led to this subplot being abandoned and other plotlines combined into highlights. The primary source seems to have been Suetonius’s gossipy Lives Of The Caesars.

Count me in for that.

Blogging in Fire Season

My days this week were split between book-editing, another writing project, and fire-fighting — or worrying about fires.

In late January I joined the little rural volunteer fire department, which seems in a way to embody what the Founders meant by “militia” back in the 18th century.

M. and I also signed up as volunteers for the Colorado Division of Wildlife — we have had one training day and no projects yet, but that will change.

Tonight, Saturday, and Sunday I will be involved with more wild-land fire training. That is our main concern — stopping wild fires that threaten structures — rather than structure fires as such.

I have a stack of books to review. It is a lot easier to think about writing on a day like today: cloudy, a wisp of drizzle in the air, not much wind.

Awaiting a Movie about Hypatia

Hypatia of Alexandria, born c. 355 (?) and murdered by a Christian mob in 415, was a Neoplatonic philosopher and mathematician—math and philosophy were more intertwined then than they are today.

Her life and death are part of the plot of Agora, a forthcoming movie directed by Alejandro Amenábar. You can see a trailer here (thanks to Jason Pitzl-Waters for the tip).

Her killers were fired up by one Cyril, a bishop of Alexandria and now a saint of the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches. Hypatia, after all, was not a Christian, was upper-class, was an intellectual, and worst of all, was a female intellectual.

(Patriarch issues fatwa, followers riot and kill — the usual pattern.)

In the movie, a slave falls in love with Hypatia. Not very likely: one of the old stories told about her is that when one of her students was attracted to her, she threw a used menstrual rag in his face. It was a philosophical lesson–that he should love eternal beauty, not the beauty of the flesh.

Hypatia of Alexandria is supposed to be a good reconstructed biography. For a shorter discussion of sources about her life, go here.

I want to see Agora but I am also a little afraid to see it. It might push too many buttons. Sometimes I think the fourth century CE is still with us in the cultural-religious conflicts we see around us.

Gallimaufry with Ink

¶ Kitty Burns Florey advocates teaching handwriting in schools: “Educators I talked to claim that kids master reading more easily when they write a word as they learn it: the writing process keeps their attention focused as they match symbol to sound.”

¶ In my former home of Manitou Springs, Colo., a goddess figure is re-named.

¶ I knew about Graham Harvey’s book Animism: Respecting the Living World,but I did not realize that he had created an excellent Web site to go with it.

Thorn and Pagan Magazine Publishing

I like magazines. I have worked for three, owned one (still going), and sold freelance articles to a bunch of others. I taught university classes in magazine-writing and production.

So when Vol. 1, No. 1 of Thorn, subtitled Paganism in the Silicon Age, hit my mailbox, I was eager to read it.

Having made various cynical comments in the past about “Wicca as fashion statement,” I was a little amused to see two fashion layouts in the magazine. One, “Creation Myth: Intelligent Designs from the Descendants of the Sun Gods,” showcased Peruvian textiles. The models looked like models, and I am not sure where the photos came from. (Ex-editor that I am, I always look closely at credits, trying to determine what was in-house content and what was not.)

More fashion. The magazine’s centerspread, “Phos: Primal Wear in the Forest,” shows two designer/models looking sullen and “alternative” in their own designs. No word on where to buy them–or if you can–whereas the Peruvian clothes were at Saks.

Don’t get me wrong. I like Thorn. It’s a generational thing—in the publishing sense.

Having worked much of last summer on Green Egg Omelette: An Anthology of Art and Articles from the Legendary Pagan Journal, I had plenty of time to reflect on its content. Green Egg was — and is — about visions of Pagan spirituality and culture, much of it speculative.

Thorn, however, takes Pagan culture for granted. As far as I can tell, that is a Good Thing. Not that such culture is a finished product, no way. And it is still minuscule in the overall picture. But it exists.

The magazine has good writers, a wide range of articles, and most of all, the opportunity to help define what Pagan culture is. Blogs like this one are fast but fragmented. Books can take a long-range thoughtful look at what has happened and what might happen. Magazines, meanwhile, have enough lead time to get thoughtful articles but come out frequently enough to be more or less current.

From a media point of view, I think there should be a place for Thorn—and for its competitors, such as PanGaia, newWitch, and, yes, Green Egg.

I like the fact that you can subscribe with PayPal, but being conservative about these things, I would include a blow-in or bind-in card for people who want to use other payment methods.

Since Thorn is published quarterly, it is alternating print issues with online issues–the February 2009 issue is now available, with a report from PantheaConm, an interview with paranormal-romance author Sherrilyn Kenyon, and a thoughtful piece on the threat from racial-supremacists to the Pagan movement.

I have mixed feelings about this approach. Magazine-guru Samir Husni, a journalism professor who studies the industry, pans the whole e-zine concept: “So it is beyond me to understand why people, very creative people, spend so much time to create what they call “e-zines” that do nothing but imitate ink on paper.”

He wants the Web to do what it does well—short prose, sound, video—and print to do what it does well.

Green Egg has switched to sending subscribers a PDF file of the print magazine—you print it yourself. Switch email addresses, though, and you’re in trouble.

I want there to be a place for print magazines with good artwork and articles that you can curl up with, so I subscribed to Thorn and wish it well.

A publisher friend of mine says that Sunset magazine helped define “Southern California” for a generation. We need the Pagan magazines to do the same for Pagan culture generally.

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.