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.
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).
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
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.
¶ My copy of Fire Child: The Life & Magic of Maxine Sanders, ‘Witch Queen’
¶ When the Goddess Ruled the Earth
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.
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?
… 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.
Your kids won’t know what “Polaroid” means.
I still have my dad’s SX-70 in its leather carrying case. It’s an expensive beast to feed, and when the last flashbar is used up, I will probably dump it. In my memory it sits next to his 1969 Jeep Wagoneer.
Some people liked Polaroid cameras for the privacy factor.
Still on the entheogenic theme …
Andy Letcher, author of Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom
I liked his book, so I suppose that publicity for it is a Good Thing.
Actually, Shrooms — now on DVD
Two articles on the entheogenic drink ayahuasca, one from National Geographic and one from The Los Angeles Times.
The second site requires registration: BugMeNot can give you a password.
It’s definitely your old-school entheogen:
The concoction itself is said to taste so vile that most people fight their gag reflex to swallow it. Devotees liken the flavor to forest rot and bile, dirty socks and raw sewage. Vomiting is so common that indigenous shamans often refer to the ceremony as la purga, or the purge. And ayahuasca can severely test the commitment of its followers: The potion often reveals its celebrated wisdoms only after repeat encounters. The payoff, adherents say, can be life-altering. Debilitating illnesses such as chronic depression or addiction may disappear after just one session, some say. Others say they shed their egos for a night, finally seeing their lives with a startling clarity.
Behind all the publicity lies this Supreme Court decision.
(Via GetReligion)
, long hair flowing, eyes downcast towards the chalice.
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