Saying the Pagan Rosary

Pagans and the rosary: religion journalist Kimberly Winston examines a spiritual practice and some Pagan material culture.

Fuensanta Plaza, a follower of the Norse gods who lives in Carmel, Calif., says if her house caught fire, the only thing she would run back for would be her pagan prayer beads, dedicated to the god Loki and goddess Sigyn.

“They are extremely important to my spiritual life, and therefore to my life,” she said. Every day, she sits before her home altar and slips them through her fingers one at a time, “very much, presumably, as my Catholic grandmother used to say her rosary every day.”

Yes, I linked to BeliefNet, despite what I and others are starting to think about BeliefNet, where polytheists are not welcome.

But Winston’s story may pop up in some newspapers as well. And she quotes me, yay.

Gallimaufry

¶ Here in Colorado, Rocky Mountain PBS’ group of stations weights their offerings heavily toward programs like Lawrence Welk and Antiques Roadshow. When they really want to be cutting edge, such as during fund drives, they run a John Denver special.

Having once been peripherally connected with the antiques trade, I actually enjoy Antiques Roadshow sometimes. M., however, makes some comment about the “white-shoe crowd” and leaves the room. I wish I had been watching when an Austin Osman Spare painting was discussed. Did anyone mention ceremonial magic and Borough Satyr?

PanGaia managing editor Elizabeth Barrette has a a new poem published in the fantasy webzine Lorelei Signal. She also has a book in the work on writing Pagan spells, poetry, and ritual texts. She reminds us that PanGaia’s fiction-contest deadline is June 24.

¶ This may be just too obvious, but anyway… If you work at an organization that is cyber-security obsessed, where you frequently have to change your network password, why not encode a magical intention into your password? For a writer, something like “Public@tion08”. And, look, it’s a “strong” password with a non-alphanumeric character.

¶ BeliefNet’s Blog Heaven site has been cleansed of non-monotheists. No Buddhist bloggers, no Hindus, no Pagans. And yet I hear that BeliefNet is still trying to get some Pagans to write essays for the main site. Do we even need them, with all the Pagan sites and forums out there?

¶ Stop whatever you are doing and read this. Then bookmark the blog. It is one of the best out there.

Dionysus, Jesus, Castaneda

After watching the BBC take on anthropologist – novelist – sorcerer Carlos Castaneda, M. and I rented another documentary about him. Enigma of a Sorcerer was released in 2002. It is available through Netflix, but it is only for the hardcore student of neo-shamanism as phenomenon.

Since it is only a collection of interviews (including the late Dan Noel), someone had the bright idea to put pulsating “psychedelic” backgrounds behind each talking head. “I need Dramamine,” M. said, turning away from the screen.

Amy Wallace, one of Castaneda’s inner circle of lovers-students in the 1990s and author of a memoir about that time, was another of the persons interviewed.

Watching both videos, however, you see how Castaneda was somehow possessed by Dionysus–just like every other death-defying savior with a circle of women: Krishna, Jesus, Joe Smith, Carl Jung (compare his “valkyries” to Castaneda’s “witches.”) Gurdjieff too, probably.

Soteriology–the various doctrines of salvation–all suggest the story of the God of variousness whose salvific function is well known in the Orphic cult. His name is Dionysus.

So writes David L. Miller (not to be confused with this David Miller) in The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses (1974), a book a little ahead of its time.

All promised the overcoming of death. Castaneda, according to the interviews, offered a non-ordinary death–to disappear “bodily into the Second Attention”–to his followers. After he expired from liver cancer in 1998, at least one of his lovers went alone to Death Valley, where her bones were later found. Three of the “witches,” Florinda Donner Grau, Taisha Abelar, and Carol Tiggs, also killed themselves, Wallace claims. But she offers no details as to when and how–she just thinks that they must have done so.

Actually, had the BBC wanted to do real journalism, they could have found out who cashes the royalty checks from all of Castaneda’s books. I assume that they go to Cleargreen, Inc., the organization that he set up to incorporate his teaching methods.

Castaneda even has his own “Saint Paul,” Victor Sanchez, who fills the role of the person who never met the Teacher but who claims to be passing on his methods.

Maybe the woman we call Mary Magdalene was either a composite figure or possibly only one of a group of her Dionysian teacher’s intimates. There could be a book there . . .

"I don’t care if it rains or freezes . . . "

Drug-runners lose in court over “profiling” claim regarding Bibles on the dashboards of their cars.

Personally, when running a load from the Coast, I decorate the dash with The Confessions of Aleister Crowley or the current issue of Soldier of Fortune magazine.

(Read the rest of the quoted song lyric.)

Hat tip: Religion Clause, now on the blogroll under “Religion and Journalism.”

See, this is fame

In the postal mail and email:

1. Two fat envelopes bearing mss. of how-to Witchcraft books from publishers who want my name on a cover blurb. Neither came from Woodbury, Minnesota, however. How quickly they forget, eager to move on to the hot new titles in astral sex.

2. An email from someone who shares my surname. My name had come up both her genealogical research and her Pagan research, so “[I] believe that I am supposed to contact you.” Her son is a “sorcer” with a “great destiny” too. Yowie.

They claim descent from the Cliftons of Cornwall. Maybe so. It’s a geographical name (meaning, literally, farm under/by the cliff), so it can pop up anywhere the Angles and Saxons went, but my family lore always said that we came from some Cliftons in the north of England, possibly County Durham.

Of course, family lore and $2 will get you a cup of Starbucks coffee.

3. A Colorado author wrote me a letter, wanting permission to reprint photos from my first-ever book(let), Ghost Tales of Cripple Creek.

“You are hard to track down!” she writes.

If only. See item no. 2.

Martin Brennan at Anubis Caves

Boulder, Colorado, resident Martin Brennan is known for writing visionary books about ancient megalithic monuments, such as The Boyne Valley Vision.

A new video clip shows him discussing the mysterious carvings that appear to be synched to the equinoctial sunset shadows at “Anubis Caves,” a site in the Oklahoma Panhandle. You can view them at filmmaker Scott Monahan’s site or at the Mythical Ireland site.

The case for a Celtic connection was made by Barry Fell, Gloria Farley, and the late Bill McGlone, particulary in his book Ancient American Inscriptions: Plow Marks or History?

I have discussed this issue before. It truly baffles me. McGlone makes a plausible argument for the transatlantic origin of these symbols and writings, except . . . .

Why here? Why in far western Oklahoma and southeastern Colorado? There were no great trading cities here 2,000 years ago and no gold nuggets lying on the ground. According to conventional archaeology, there were only a few people here, living the simplest hunter-gatherer lives. They were probably similar to the people encountered by the Coronado expedition in the 1540s living along the rivers (little rivers, mostly) of the High Plains and hunting buffalo when they could.

It’s a hell of a long way to go for a Druidic vision quest.

Nevertheless, the other more contemporary puzzle is why these alleged Celtic inscriptions are so ignored by contemporary Colorado Pagans, most of whom have never heard of them. If you had Stonehenge only four hours’ drive from metro Denver, wouldn’t you go there now and then?

UPDATE: While I concentrated on the alleged Celtic presence in the Southern Plains, I should point out that other students of the inscriptions claim a Punic (Phoenician or Libyan) presence also. It is hard to discuss all this without getting into the politics of diffusionism and the turf battles between Old World and New World archaeologists, all beyond the scope of this blog.

Polytheism at The New Stateman

The New Statesman, a British news magazine, has been offering polytheists a platform in its online religion column:

A Blackboard Epiphany in Ancient Delphi (March 19)

The Ancient Gods of Greece Are Not Extinct (March 20)

A Liberal Religion (March 21)

Worshipping the Ancient Greek Gods (March 22)

How Did I Become a Druid?” (March 26)

Worshipping the Sun of God (March 27)

A Brief History of Druidry (March 28)

How Being a Druid Affects my Life (March 29).

Collect the whole set. (Via Tropaion, a blog on Neo-Hellenic religion.)

Cremation, public lands, and commerce

Ladies in White, from the left, Catherine Goodman, Pat Cross-Chamberlin and Fran Coover, in the Rattlesnake Wilderness in Montana.Ladies in White, three women in Missoula, Montana, tried to start a business scattering human ashes–what the funeral industry calls “cremains”–on national forest land.

The U.S. Forest Service doesn’t like the idea, because they see a “slippery slope” towards permanent monuments:

But the Forest Service has long had a firm policy against commercial scattering, said Gordon Schofield, the group leader for land use here in Region I. If ashes are scattered “the land takes on a sacredness, and people want to put up a marker or a plaque.”

The Ladies in White say their practice is environmentally benign, although they do accept that like other public-lands commercial users (guide services, for instance), they need a permit.

Currently, the official position on private scattering is “don’t ask, don’t tell.” (Some of us writers do tell, however.)

What a wonderful tangle of American religious issues: “nature religion” in the broadest sense, the change in funerary practices, representatives of some Indian tribe sticking their oar in, the organized environmentalists, and the bureaucrats in the middle of it all.

Take a look at Catherine Goodman, the woman on the left. What is that on her head–antlers? a crescent crown?

Via Ann Althouse’s blog, where there are lots of comments.

Keeping it real with Robin i’ the hood

A flashback to the 1980s: M. and I have been watching some episodes of Robin of Sherwood.

This was the “Pagan” Robin Hood, thanks to the appearance therein of Herne the Hunter, not to mention bits of ceremonial magick.

Back in 1983, the show was a cult favorite in several senses of the term.

Now, it makes me think “Sir Walter Scott (think Ivanhoe) meets Dennis Wheatley.” Or Hammer Studios in the Greenwood.

And then there is the issue of knitting. Dear reader, when you see characters wearing knitted “chain mail,” you know it’s a cheap production.

If you see male characters wearing knit tights, you might surmise that the director made his girlfriend the costume manager, because knitting was not even known in 12th-century England–not even by hand, let alone machine-knit.

In fact, if 12th-century male characters are wearing short tunics and tights, then the historical research for the film probably consisted of watching the 1922 version of Robin Hood, starring Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., which seems to have set the fashion for most subsequent adaptations.

The National British Pagan Burial Mound

I blogged earlier about how some British Pagans have borrowed the rhetoric of North American tribes, wanting their own version of NAGPRA and control over the remains of prehistoric British people.

Blogger and academic Yvonne Aburrow suggests that such remains, after study, might go into a national burial mound.

It would be wonderful if a keeping place for the ancient British dead could be specially constructed, perhaps in the form of a very large Iron Age roundhouse, or a burial mound, where the dead could be kept in special shrines, with all the details known about them and their lives displayed near them, but still allowing archaeologists access for research.