Our little celebration here at the American Academy of Religion annual meeting, during which we Pagan scholars and friends discard our tweed jackets and switch to Samhain black, made it to The Huffington Post. (Scroll to the bottom.) Thanks, Grove, I think.
It’s another example of how Wicca, in particular, is becoming the new Other in the religious landscape, elbowing aside the Jews, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and anyone else who fills the blank of, “But how will the _________ react?”
I stood in Cheers Liquor Mart, a supermarket of things alcoholic in Colorado Springs, last Wednesday wondering if I should try a bottle of Witches’ Wit beer.
The “controversial” Witches’ Wit beer, that is, with the witch-burning scene on the label. The brewery had defended the design, and even the artist commented on one blog, in essence, “How dare you insult my artistic vision?! If you could see the painting full size, you would understand.” (Can’t find the link—will add it if I do.) But of course, it’s bottle-label size.
“We have been accused of inspiring violence against women, and we have been compared to the violence in Darfur,” said Sage Osterfeld, a spokesman for Port Brewing. “It has run the gamut from people saying politely, ‘This is offensive to pagans,’ to people saying we are responsible for all that is wrong in the world.”
Now this tempest in a beer glass has even reached The New York Times. Bowing to the pressure campaign started by Vicki Noble, the brewery will have a contest to choose a new label.
Is the design “hate imagery” against today’s Pagan Witches? Honestly, I don’t think so. And if it is, it is nothing to do with the modern religion of Pagan Witchcraft in its various forms. (If you want to argue that it is anti-women, go ahead.)
When it comes to the word “witch,” we want it both ways—safe and edgy. As the Dutch scholar Léon van Gulik writes in a paper that will appear in the forthcoming issue of The Pomegranate,
The acquired taste of Paganism is rationalized by upholding a self-image that perpetuates a tension with the secular world without, and sometimes even the non-initiated world within. This tension can for instance be observed in the clinging to the term “witch” in Wiccan circles, the meaning of which clearly differs between insiders—and outsiders.
There in the aisle at Cheers, however, I decided not to reinforce the current label imagery of Witch’s Wit. Because right next to it was another beer with a folk-Catholic-themed label: Maudite (“the damned one”) Belgian-style ale from Quebec. I acquired a taste for Maudite when in Montréal about a year ago, but had not seen any in a Colorado store until now, so into the shopping cart it went.
UPDATE: No, apparently they are going to consider changing the label.
An only slightly snarky article (it is the New York Times, after all) reports on a decline in “spiritual tourism” in Sedona, Arizona..
Local New Agers seem divided as to whether the economy or the James Arthur Ray sweat lodge deaths are more to blame.
After all the sweat lodge deaths “could have happened anywhere.”
“It was a very unfortunate and sad situation that could have happened anywhere,” said Janelle Sparkman, president of the Sedona Metaphysical Spiritual Association, who attributes the woes that New Age practitioners are experiencing to a lack of disposable income for spiritual needs and not what happened that awful afternoon. “It was not indicative of Sedona or Sedona’s practitioners at all.”
But they happened in oversold Sedona, which has been touristy for much of its existence.
My mother and stepfather moved there in the 1970s. She was teaching at Northern Arizona University, but he had retired and claimed that he could not handle the altitude of Flagstaff (though he was from Colorado), so they lived in Sedona as a compromise.
At that time, Sedona was mostly about art galleries and giving kitschy names to the big rock formations. There was one called Snoopy (after the Peanuts comic strip dog), no less. Young idealist that I was, I found it disgusting. As a newly come-home Pagan, I was not impressed by the desert chapel either when they hauled me out to look at it.
I had not yet developed the ability to appreciate the touristy stuff in a hip and ironic way!
So between that and some family matters that I will skip over, I was unimpressed by Sedona. When the talk about earth vortices and spiritual power points began, all that I could think of was a rock called Snoopy.
A new biography of Ida C. Craddock, late 19th-century practitioner of esoteric religion and “sexologist,” discussed at the Religion in American History blog.
At Egregores, an overview of the prayer-candle industry: “First of all, the mass produced, low-cost nature of the Prayer Candle makes it an inviting template for experimentation. To the right kind of mind, every Prayer Candle has “your crazy idea HERE” emblazoned across it.”
Yet another study attacks the theory of “repressed memory,” which has sent real people to real jails for crimes that they supposedly committed against children.
Professor Grant Devilly, from Griffith University’s [Queensland, Australia] Psychological Health research unit, says the memory usually works in the opposite way, with traumatised people reliving experiences they would rather forget.
“It’s the opposite. They wish they couldn’t think about it,” he said.
In a briefing to the US Supreme Court, Professor Richard McNally from Harvard University described the theory of repressed memory as “the most pernicious bit of folklore ever to infect psychology and psychiatry”.
Where do “repressed memories” come from? Therapists help patients to invent them, as described in this 1993 article from American Psychologist.
Here is another article by Prof. Devilly on the “memory wars.”
During the “Satanic abuse” scare of the 1980s, some prominent Pagans were fooled by supposed abuse survivors who came to Pagan gatherings and would spout some nonsense about how “I was abused by ‘witches,’ but now I see that your kind of Witchcraft is not like that.”
The template for many such fantasies was Lawrence Pazder’s Michelle Remembers, about a little girl in Victoria, B.C., who supposedly spent her childhood as the plaything of a ring of organized and powerful Satanists.
And I will admit that I was blown away by the story when I first read it, such that I did not notice the obvious plot holes.
I say “plot” because it is a work of fiction, dreamed up cooperatively by patient and doctor (who later married) under hypnosis.
These “moral panics” seem to come through on a regular basis, and all you can do is seek the facts and hope that justice does, in fact, move slowly and deliberately and not at lynch-mob speed.
All summer I have been editing and laying out a biography of the American Pentecostal evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson (1890-1944). I just sent the galleys to the writer, a professor in Arizona, and am working on my own corrections as well.
There have been the usual hassles—missing “essential” photos, notes that did not match the text, etc.—but we are working through all of that.
I mentioned the project on Facebook once, and got a response from a former student who was raised in the Assemblies of God, one of the larger Pentecostal denominations (the largest, says Wikipedia).
She had heard about Aimee when she was younger, but thought of her as a “scary” person.
Having lived with Aimee’s biography for six months, there is much that I could say about her, but “scary” is not a word that I would use. (I sent the student a PDF of the chapter about Aimee’s revival tour through Denver in the early 1920s.)
Do Pentecostal Christians send their elders down the memory hole as effectively as Pagans do?
Or does that process happen in all religions that do not have formal processes of canonizing saints or the equivalent—something that fixes them in memory?
I am still waiting for a serious academic biography of Gerald Gardner, who is after all the founder of a world religion, now that Wicca is in India, Brazil, Germany, and other places.
No doubt many young Wiccans have either (a) not heard of him or (b) think that he was some “scary” old guy.
Philip Heselton (interviewed here), the author of two earlier books about Gardner, is supposed to have a new biography coming out from Thoth, although as of today I cannot find it on their fancy-but-unsearchable website.
I judged the earlier books as being strong on research and legwork, but weak on analysis and contextualizing. Credulous, even. There is probably still room for a biography written by someone with a background in discussing new religious movements.
Meanwhile, Oberon Zell is at work on some new encylopediac work about “wizards of the world.” He has been trying to convince me to a write an entry about Gleb Botkin. Now there is someone who should be kept from sliding down the memory hole of Pagan history as well.
Isaac Bonewits, second from left, at a tree-planting in 1978.
All around the Pagan blogosphere, tributes are being written today for Isaac Bonewits, who died today.
Here is a chronology of his life and tribute by Ian Corrigan.
I can add only that he was one of the most prolific and visible figures of the Pagan revival from the 1970s forward.
As a student, he took what had been a sort of spoof “Druidry” and turned it into a genuine Pagan religion with a spoofy name, the Schismatic Druids of North America.
That in turn become Ar nDraiocht Fein (ADF), which is very much alive today.
Druids are always associated with trees, and the photo is one that I took in January 1978 at a tree-planting at “Annwfn,” part of Greenfields Ranch, near Ukiah, California.
From left, Isaac’s then-wife Selene Kumin vega, Isaac (leaning on his hoedad), Morning Glory Zell, someone obscured (possibly Gwydion Pendderwen), and would that be Oberon Zell with arm outstretched?
I am glad that I was able to offer Phaedra some help in finding a home for his papers. Although I did not see Isaac often, we were always friends at a distance, and I shall miss his presence on the Pagan scene. Ave atque vale.
Via Bayou Renaissance Man (a former Catholic priest): an entire cosmology invented and/or syncretized and/or revealed by homeless kids in Miami.
The homeless children’s chief ally is a beautiful angel they have nicknamed the Blue Lady. She has pale blue skin and lives in the ocean, but she is hobbled by a spell. “The demons made it so she only has power if you know her secret name,” says Andre, whose mother has been through three rehabilitation programs for crack addiction. “If you and your friends on a corner on a street when a car comes shooting bullets and only one child yells out her true name, all will be safe. Even if bullets tearing your skin, the Blue Lady makes them fall on the ground. She can talk to us, even without her name. She says: ‘Hold on.'”
….
Folktales are usually an inheritance from family or homeland. But what if you are a child enduring a continual, grueling, dangerous journey? No adult can steel such a child against the outcast’s fate: the endless slurs and snubs, the threats, the fear. What these determined children do is snatch dark and bright fragments of Halloween fables, TV news, and candy-colored Bible-story leaflets from street-corner preachers, and like birds building a nest from scraps, weave their own myths. The “secret stories” are carefully guarded knowledge, never shared with older siblings or parents for fear of being ridiculed — or spanked for blasphemy. But their accounts of an exiled God who cannot or will not respond to human pleas as his angels wage war with Hell is, to shelter children, a plausible explanation for having no safe home, and one that engages them in an epic clash.
The reporter sees these “myths” as a response to the kids’ social distress. But do they also reveal an underlying predilection for a sort of cobbled-together Gnosticism?
I am preparing myself for life without Fate magazine.
Since 1948, the digest-sized monthly—later a bi-monthly—has been a reliable (at least in the publishing sense) source for ghost stories, UFO reports, speculative archaeology, Fortean news, and other manifestations of the weird and unexpected.
All viewpoints were welcomed, so articles often completely contradicted each other.
Often the most interesting stories came as reports from the readers of paranormal experiences, encounters of the recently dead, and so forth. There was a certain sameness to these, but perhaps that meant they were true—or else it meant that everyone followed the same cultural template. Or both.
Llewellyn Publications bought Fate in 1988, perhaps hoping to make it what Gnostica, their earlier house organ, had been in the late 1970s—a mix of articles with ads for Llewellyn books.
Some of the long-time readers complained then that Fate was becoming too Wiccan. That is one thing you would learn from all those reader reports: quite a few Americans follow a home-grown metaphysical religion that happily calls itself Christian while including ghosts, UFOs, Bigfoot, and all the rest.
When Llewellyn pulled the plug, ownership passed to a former employee, Phyllis Galde, who kept Fate going, although eventually reducing publishing frequency to bi-monthly.
This spring, it occurred to me that the “bi-monthy” had turned into semi-annually. It seemed like a long time since an issue had arrived in my mail box.
More time went by, and then I got an email saying that the Sept.-Oct. 2009, Nov.-Dec. 2009, and Jan.-Feb. 2010 issues were available—as PDF files. Eventually they put something on the web site too.
So I had the choice of reading them on the screen or printing them at my own expense if I wanted to read them in bed before turning out the light in hopes of a dream of Bigfoot. 😉
The magazine death pool is so close you can smell the fetid waters.
Fate’s blog keeps putting up new entries, but discussion of the magazine’s own fate is oddly missing.
The economics must be rough. Perhaps this is a case of flat advertising revenues versus rising printing and mailing costs.
PDF files are not the answer, and a Web version of the magazine would have to be re-thought from the ground up.
Then there is the whole question of shorter attention spans and lower reading comprehension on the Web (which is why so many blog comments are so stupid, particularly on the political blogs—people just read one phrase and start ranting before digesting the whole little essay).
But if Fate goes under, popular metaphysical religion will have lost an enduring voice.