Pomegranate 9.2

I’ve been remiss in not noting the contents of the latest issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies. Videlicet:

• “The Quandary of Contemporary Pagan Archives,”
Garth Reese,

• “The Status of Witchcraft in the Modern World,” Ronald Hutton,

• “Kabbalah Recreata: Reception and Adaptation of Kabbalah in Modern Occultism,” Egil Asprem

• “Putting the Blood Back into Blót: The Revival of Animal Sacrifice in Modern Nordic Paganism,” Michael Strmiska.

And the book reviews.

Abstracts are online, and the book reviews may be downloaded in their entirety.

Book Meme

I don’t normally do these meme-post-thingies, but I was tagged by the inimitable Steve Bodio at Querencia.

Here is the challenge:

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

Mine reads as follows (the ellipses were in the original, which included the block quotation):

Osbert Sitwell was well acquainted with the story. He says that the deserters included French, Italians, Germans, Austrians, Australians, Englishmen, and Canadians; they lived

–at least they lived–in caves and grottoes under certain parts of the front line…They would issue forth, it was said, from their secret lairs, after each of the interminable checkmate battles, to rob the dying of their few possessions…

I tag Jason, Peg, Caroline, Anne, and Jordan. Pass it on.

My book? Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory
.

Gallimaufry with Bar Graphs

• Learn all about American religious affiliation from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life — until you get to us. We are in the “Other Faiths” category under (sigh) “New Age.” Notice how the Jews and Hindus score highest in education, the evangelical Protestants and JW’s lowest.

• Utra Press, the publishers of the journal Tyr now have their own web site.

• Isaac Bonewits is starting his own magick school. Jason Pitzl-Waters has the details.

A Mythical Creek with Real Beavers


There is a new syncroblog “call” up on mythology and landscapes.

I am just back from a Sunday afternoon dog walk, and here is the landscape: winter ice slowly melting above a beaver dam on Hardscrabble Creek.

Mythology? I guess I feel sort of deficient in that area today. Spring, ice, stream, beavers — go for it.

When Librarians Strike Back

A fairly brilliant fund-raising idea in Alamogordo, New Mexico: funding a new library with photos of a local book-burning.

The book burning pitted two opposing points of view. It was “not a book-burning, but a holy bonfire,” according to the church’s founding pastor, Jack Brock…..On one side [of the street] were Brock and members of his congregation. They burned a few books in the Harry Potter series and other titles, and “pornographic magazines,” Brock said in a telephone interview Saturday.

They stated the belief that the books had satanic origins and could influence children to take up witchcraft.

Oh, that “satanic” Potter kid. Let’s make him the poster child for libraries and bookstores everywhere.

Wait, he already is! Right: Hogwarts-themed bookstore parade entry, Fourth of July 2007, Mendocino, California.

(Pointy-hat tip to Broomstick Chronicles.)

UPDATE: Bad link fixed (Thanks, Erik).

The Pagan Anthology of Short Fiction

Winners of a a Pagan fiction contest will be included in a new collection forthcoming from Llewellyn Publications. The contest was co-sponsored by BBI Media, and the judges named three winners:

• Grand prize, $500, and publication in PanGaia magazine, to “A Valkyrie Among Jews” by April

• Second prize, $250, to”Black Doe” by Vylar Kaftan

• Third prize, $100, to “Dead and (Mostly) Gone” by Deborah Blake

After the Witch Queen Steps Down: Maxine Sanders’ Fire Child

In the 1960s, when Pagan Witchcraft started to gain widespread media attention, Maxine Sanders (b. 1948?) was one of its visible faces. A tall willowy young woman with bleached blonde hair, she was married in 1965 to Alex Sanders (1926-1988) for whom the Alexandrian tradition is named.

He was older, charming, verbal – she was photographed, his words were recorded. That’s her on the cover of my early hardback edition of Stewart Farrar’s 1971 book What Witches Do, long hair flowing, eyes downcast towards the chalice.

Now she talks — in print as opposed to classes and lectures — in a valuable autobiography, Fire Child: The Life & Magic of Maxine Sanders, ‘Witch Queen’.

The book is not what it could have been. Material is not always straight-forwardly organized, punctuation is erratic and unclear, and words usedly mistakenly (“taught” for “taut,” “vice” for “vise,” that sort of thing). I fault the publisher.

Still, this is an important book. Sanders gave her life to the Craft in a way that few have, and she admits she paid a price: two failed marriages (Sanders, in the end, preferred men), financial hardship in the early years, breast cancer, and, most of all, the hardship of being always on-call in her role as priestess.

Marriage with Alex had been rather like a working relationship. Unconsciously, we sacrificed the more personal and sharing aspects of a normal marriage.

To read Fire Child is follow a trail of ups and initiations, rituals and happenings, magical politics, festivals and and visions.

Yet it is also a frank admission of the dangers of magickal religion. Coming from a background of intense, small-group work, she is prone to opinions such as these:

The modern Craft is a victim of its own success. Its tremendous growth since the heady days of the 1960s has outstripped the availability of experienced and reputable teachers, who in former days would themselves have served an arduous apprenticeship before being judged worthy to passon the tradition – and then only to a few.

(And she admits that even in her own group that rule was not always followed.)

Witchcraft is so often perceived as a young person’s religion that it is good to read a mature priestess’s thoughts. Maxine Sander has gone through the fires – media celebrity, high-profile religious leadership, magic, suffering. Her book is valuable – “full and candid,” to quote Ronald Hutton’s cover blurb. I recommend it.

Gallimaufry with Big Rocks

¶ My copy of Fire Child: The Life & Magic of Maxine Sanders, ‘Witch Queen’ arrived, and I will post a full review soon. Short version: Better than I expected.

When the Goddess Ruled the Earth is a new quasi-documentary film on hypothesized Neolithic religion. The trailers are all shots of ancient megaliths with a “voice of God” (sorry) commentary. Looks like orthodox Gimbutas-ism.

My point is that you cannot necessarily tell by looking at a structure the religious views of its builders. You might be able to make an educated guess by analogy with known cultures, but without extensive, obvious archaeological evidence — and better still, written evidence — you cannot say. Is the “Venus of Willendorf” a religious artifact or a Paleolithic Barbie doll? Will we ever know?

¶ Fiacharrey, “the Bayou Druid,” is making YouTube videos on Celtic Reconstructionism. Here is one.

Seizing Symbols of Love

The Valentine’s Day card that I bought for M. would be illegal to Saudi Arabia’s Wahabi Muslims.

It would be an acknowledgment that women are more than a necessary evil, household appliances in veils. Maybe it’s an incitement to polytheism too. Who knows?

In fact “red items” are a problem.

So if I had Saudi students and marked their papers in red ink, I would be inciting lust or something?

Aphrodite will not be denied.

"I am a stag of seven tines…"

… chanted the old Irish poet Amergin.


But when this seven-point bull elk exploded from a shadowy ravine about 25 yards from where M. and I were standing, all I could think about was what a sneaky old elk he was.

There we were, two people (and two dogs) standing and talking in low voices while I photographed three mule deer about 75 yards up the slope, when suddenly there was a huge crash down to our left.

“More deer,” I thought, but it was just him. His patience had been finally exhausted, and he gave up his cool hiding place.

He angled up through the leafless Gambel oak toward the rimrock. The deer bounced off a few yards and then stopped to watch, as they do.

And I laid down the camera to help M. look for some gloves that she had left on her favorite rock on Saturday — strong winds had blown them downhill — and then we walked home again.