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“?

Gallimaufry with Frankincense.

¶ Burn more frankincense in your rituals: it is psychoactive.

¶ From this side of the pond, I would say that if not enough young people are not taking up Morris dancing, they are not getting drunk enough first. (In England?! — ed.) Will it be only the Pagans and that sort who keep it going?

¶ Five top faked memoirs of recent years.

¶ Aiieee, it’s the end of the world! The solar storm will wipe out all our gadgetry!

¶ Aiieee, it’s the end of the world! The Ice Age is coming!

So learn some basic skills and have a plan, I reckon. And burn frankincense.

The Pentagram in 1964

I have more reviews coming, but for now, here is a PDF download of the first issue of The Pentagram, August 1964, price two shillings.

As far as I know, it was the first attempt to create a publication for the various branches of British Witchcraft, then only about fifteen years old, and it lasted but a short time.

Consider the paucity of the reading list on page 3.

Mercury is Retrograde–Use It

For the astrologically minded among you, Mercury went retrograde today, meaning that its apparent motion as view from earth is the opposite of normal.

Every time this happens, the Colorado Pagan email group gets a few “Horrors! Mercury is retrograde!” messages. Astrologers like Lynn Hayes have a standard message:

Meanwhile, Mercury turns retrograde on January 11th where it will remain through January 31. Mercury Rx periods are famous for communication glitches and machinery failures. Often these are due to user error, as our brains function differently during the three weeks, four times a year, when Mercury is retrograde. If you must enter into a contract or begin a new job or project during this period, do everything you can ensure that all agreements are clear and in writing. Read all of your instruction manuals, and don’t be surprised if your phone messages don’t reach their intended destination. Just shrug your shoulders and laugh: “Mercury is retrograde!!”

I find retrograde-Mercury periods refreshing, actually. As someone with a Mercury-ruled horoscope (and therefore an expert, no?) I offer this alternative reading:

In my experience, this is a great time to clear your desk. Write that difficult letter that you put off writing. Tie up loose ends. Keeping plugging along at ongoing projects. Complete some task that you have been meaning to do since whenever.

This is your second chance.

It’s Been Linked with the Darkness!

Confront your misgivings! Join the Rev. Peter Owen-Jones, Anglican priest, into this journey into the deepest heart of darkness — among some ordinary-seeming Australian Witches.

“I’m aware of certain objects, quite frankly, that have always disturbed me.”

A giggle-worthy proof that pith-helmet anthropology of religion lives on. Will the Rev. Owen-Jones go skyclad?

(Via Caroline Tully.)

A Surrealist Hymn to Aphrodite

Blogger like to write about the weird search terms that bring in readers.

Similarly Sannion turned the subject lines of messages caught in his email spam filter into what amounts to a hymn to Aphrodite Pandemos — through the Surrealist technique of random assemblage.

Needed: Druids with Scuba Gear

Yes, the news of a possible stone circle under Lake Michigan has been “surprisingly under-reported.”

If verified, the carvings could be as much as 10,000 years old – coincident with the post-Ice Age presence of both humans and mastodons in the upper midwest.

Additional Ways to Read this Blog

On the right side of the page, you will see links for “Letter from Hardscrabble Creek’s Atom feed and LiveJournal feed. The RSS feed is here.

I have now added links that let you subscribe to this blog on Kindle and to become a fan on Facebook.

I am not sure what the benefits of becoming a fan on Facebook are, so if you know, enlighten me.

Pagans are not a Community nor a Tribe — Not Yet

The lively discussion at The Wild Hunt over “moving on from Paganism” should put an end to the notion that Pagans constitute a “tribe” or a “community.”

Not yet, anyway. We are still part of modern society with its cafeteria spirituality.

Many Pagans, such as Emma Restall Orr in her book that I recently reviewed, are fond of the idea of “tribe.”

Jews, for example, are a tribe (or several). A Jew might never cross the threshold of shul, synagogue, or temple–may even be an avowed atheist–but he or she is still a Jew. Only conversion to one of the other Abrahamic faiths might change that fact — after a time — and even then, you still have “crypto-Jews” popping up. (Everyone wants to be special.)

A Navajo Indian might follow traditional religion, Mormonism, some kind of Christianity, or the Peyote Road, but is still a Navajo.

What we have is a network, not a community nor a tribe. Maybe in a few generations that will change, who knows? (For you anthro and sociology majors, it is the Gemeinschaft / Gesellschaft issue, no?)

Everytime I hear someone going on about “the Pagan community,” I say to myself, “Not yet.” Not when you can walk in and walk out so easily.