Did an English Children’s Author Describe the House Wights?

A miniature wood stove for sale on eBay.

When I was 5, my older sisters were 12 and 15. Sarah, then 12, was reading Mary Norton’s “Borrowers” books, as her older sister probably had before her.

Don’t confuse this English Mary Norton (1903–1992) with the prolific American SF/fantasy writer Alice Mary Norton (1912–2005) who wrote as “Andre Norton.”1 (At one time, I did.)

To quote Wikipedia, the original novel The Borrowers and its sequels “feature a family of tiny people who live secretly in the walls and floors of an English house and ‘borrow’ from the big people in order to survive.” I heard my sisters talk about the books, and later I think I read the first one, at least.

To complicate things, my mother had a miniature wood stove and pots on a shelf in my parents’ room, and I thought it had something to do with the Borrowers, like this was their skillet. As an aside, you see these miniature stoves sold as both toys and as salesmen’s models. Dealers will slap on whichever label makes a sale, since the domestic antiques trade is totally unregulated.

Mary Norton also wrote such novels as The Magic Bed Knob; or, How to Become a Witch in Ten Easy Lessons (1944) and sequels, which inspired the Disney movie Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971). “Becoming a witch” seems to have been A Thing in the 1940s.

Given that, maybe she was “telling true lies.” It seems commonplace now for people with an interest in the paranormal or who sometimes have one foot over the edge to deal with their own “borrowers.” I call them “the critters.” Others might say “the house wights.” All much the same, as far as I can tell. Maybe Mary Norton took her own experiences and turned them into children’s lit — why not?

Barbara Fisher, author, artist, editor, and co-host of the 6 Degrees of John Keel podcast,2 once devoted some time talking about the perennial topic: the more look you into the Other, the more it looks back. And getting extra attention from the “tiny people” appears to be part of that. Maybe they are just delighted to have someone who takes the seriously and will give them Skittles and a wee dram now and then. That’s how I pay my “critter tax,” but I’m not buying them household appliances!

I have a couple more stories to tell in upcoming posts. Stay tuned. Follow and subscribe — you know the drill.

  1. Andre Norton’s “Time Traders” series may have been the first science fiction — or at least the first series — that I ever read. ↩︎
  2. Currently on hiatus, but back episodes are available. ↩︎

Will Christians Fulfill a Pagan Emperor’s Plan?

Julian “The Philosopher,” Rome’s last Pagan emperor (mid-360s), would get chuckle out of this. (Although to me he comes across as super-serious, he must have found some things funny. I hope.)

While he was force-fed Christian theology by bishops, growing up in a royal Christian household, he later studied ancient Greek philosophy and literature extensively. Yet he was no bookworm: He was also a blood-and-guts Pagan.

He did not just renounce Christianity by saying the Lord’s Prayer backwards, for her arranged a full tauroboium ceremony to wash away the Galilean stink. After becoming emperor, he brought back large public sacrifices as in the previous centuries:

I worship the gods openly, and the whole mass of the troops who are returning with me worship the gods. I sacrifice oxen in public. I have offered to the gods many hecatombs as thank-offerings. The gods command me to restore their worship in its utmost purity, and I obey them, yes, and with a good will. For they promise me great rewards for my labours, if only I am not remiss.

Some of his coins show a bull on the reverse, and numismatists are still asking why.

Another project that he backed financially was rebuilding the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, which Roman troops had destroyed in 70 CE when they smashed a Jewish rebellion in that province.

Polytheist that he was, Julian had no religious issue with the Jews (so long as they did not revolt against Rome), because their religion was very old. While Gentiles could and did convert, Judaism was not actively seeking them. Christianity was new and militantly opposed to all the old learning and the old gods.

Furthermore, rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem would frustrate Christian teachings that Jesus had predicted its destruction (Mark 13:2) and that the Christian church was itself the “new Temple.” Funds were allotted; then a small earthquake interrupted the work, followed by Julian’s own death in battle. End of story — or not.

But now some Christians want to rebuild the temple — and a sacrifice of cattle, although not a a full hecatomb, is essential!

For years, Texas businessman Byron Stinson has dreamed of a world at peace.

Some evangelical Christians like Stinson, as well as some Orthodox and Messianic Jews, believe the red heifer ritual described in the biblical Book of Numbers could pave the way to rebuilding a Jewish temple in Jerusalem. A new temple, which would replace a temple destroyed by the Romans in the first century, would usher in the kingdom of God, ruled by a messianic figure.

A red heifer c is burned on a pyre on a remote hilltop in northern Israel in a practice ritual ceremony, this month (Photo © Boneh Israel via Religion News Serivce)

According to Numbers 19, the sacred ceremony — in which the cow is slaughtered and then burned — must take place on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem with a view of the site of the former temple, said Rabbi Yitzchak Mamo, president of Boneh Israel, an organization that works to build up and revive biblical sites in Israel and oversaw the practice ritual. . . .

Organizers admitted the idea of a red heifer ceremony could be troubling to some. But Stinson said that in the end, it could have powerful effects for the good.

Yes, it will be a little troublesome to thousands of Jewish rabbis, who took over religious leadership from the old Temple priesthood, and also to those Christians who think that what was done is done.

But there is that minority of Christians who believe that the Temple and the nation of Israel must be upheld in order to bring on their version of Jesus’ triumphal return.

Subscribe to this blog to read more on the academic study of Paganism and related Pagan topics.

The Man Behind Chick Tracts

Somewhere I have a small stash of Chick tracts — Jack Chick’s little Christian comics. I had two collecting rules: I wanted the ones that were openly anti-witch, anti-metaphysical or anti-occult, and second, I had to find them in the wild. Sending away for them would not count; I had to them tucked inside a library book on witch trials or something like that.

Amazingly, there is a collection in the library at Yale University.

So who was Jack Chick, and why did he do it? He died in 2016, and here is the write-up he got in Christianity Today:

The biggest name in tract evangelism, Chick distributed more than 500 million pamphlets, nicknamed “chicklets,” over five decades. His signature black-and-white panel comics warned against the dangers of everything from the occult to Family Guy.

And if you ever in New Haven, Conn., stop by the Yale library.

Tarot Thoughts — And Eden Gray’s Surprising Story

I decided to get more serious about Tarot after all these years. Maybe some day people will see me as a wise old man, but I will need some props – 78 of them, to be precise.

I actually learned to use the I Ching in a superficial bohemian way before I encountered the Tarot, The former probably matches the last year of high school, when I was being educated in these things by a 20-year-old from North Beach (San Francisco), who became a sort of honorary big sister, and when all “alternative” spiritual practices came from the East.1

I finally touched Tarot cards as a college freshman, eventually buying my own pack, which given the options of the time was of course the “Rider Tarot” (today better called the Rider-Waite-Smith deck), from Samuel Weiser, Inc. It came with the obligatory “little white book,” but of course a student soon wants more. The most accessible how-to book at the time was Eden Gray’s The Tarot Revealed, which was matched with that deck. She included a section on Tarot meditation, but essentially this was a bigger, better version of the little white book.

That name “Eden Gray” sounded like a pseudonym through: an unusual first name balanced with a plain English last name. I did not think much about it; I wanted the “woo,” not the history. My wish list included reading in a night club, and I did it — once — it went OK but I was not asked back. A slow midweek night, what can I say? And then other things like grad school got in the way.

Mary K. Greer, the grande dame of American Tarot, wrote a short piece about Eden Gray in 2008 (they knew each other). As Priscilla Pardridge she was the good-lookingl daughter of a well-off Chicago businessman. Born in 1901, she defied Daddy’s wishes and ran off to the bright lights of Broadway. She was a reasonably successful actress on the stage, in radio, and a few movies,2 before taking a metaphysical turn in the middle age. (You may have heard that narrative before.)

Mary Greer writes,

Eden Gray ran a bookstore and publishing company called “Inspiration House,” one of the few places where a person could buy tarot cards and take tarot classes in the late 1950s and ’60s. Her customers complained that the available books were not easy to understand, so she spent weekends in the country coming up with a more accessible way of approaching the cards.

Read the rest at Greer’s blog: “Eden Gray’s Fool’s Journey.“

Time passed, and I bought some other books too, getting more interested in the history of the cards. But when my paperback copy of The Tarot Revealed wore out, I bought another one, just out of loyalty/

  1. In another timeline, she was probably my first lover, but not in this one. ↩︎
  2. Eden Gray was in one movie with Ronald Reagan, where they shared their interest in astrology, says Mary Greer in the linked article. ↩︎

Communitas Populi Romani, a New Roman Pagan Group

Luca Fizzarotti, center, pours water on hands during a ritual with the Communitas Populi Romani, Feb. 10, 2024, near the Forum in Rome. (RNS photo/Claire Giangravè)

Luca Fizzarotti, center, pours water on hands during a ritual with the Communitas Populi Romani, Feb. 10, 2024, near the Forum in Rome. (RNS photo/Claire Giangravè)

Religious News Service notices Communitas Populi Romani, a Pagan group organized in 2013.

In the beginning, the group focused on reenactments and history, but it slowly shifted toward becoming an officially recognized religious group. There are 20 or so members, said Donatella Ertola, who joined the group in 2015 and now organizes meetings three or four times a month in the places that are closest to the original temples spread across Rome.

“We all believe in the gods, we make rituals at home, we have devotion temples at home, we have our priests and officiants,” she told RNS, adding that this is a “niche community that has been growing recently.”

But I had to laugh at this: “When I met her, she said, ‘I am pagan and vegan,’ and I thought ‘Great! I am celiac!’” said Pieri, who works as a sound technician.

Because what is the real religion of today? Diet. And however your therapist describes you in categories of the DSM-5, or its Italian equivalent.

Still I like that they are trying to reactivate old sacred places while simultaneously not feeling the need to dress up like the ancestors.

‘Paganism and Its Others’ — A New Special Issue of The Pomegranate

“Paganism and Its Others, a double issue that has been in the works for rather a long time, is finally published, including, among other things, discussion of Pagan-identified units on both sides of the Ukraine invasion and also perhaps the definitive (so far) article on Czech Pagan black metal music.

Here is the introduction by guest editor Michael Strmiska (free download).

You will find links to all the articles here.

But they are expensive, you say. You do have choices. Are you at a university with a religious studies program? If you are on the faculty, suggest a Pomegranate subscription to your library, and all the students will get online access. If you are not a professor, try to persuade a professor to recommend it to the library. Or use interlibrary loan; you should be able to that online nowadays.

If you visit a publicly supported college or university, you may still have interlibrary loan privileges as a “community member.” And even small public libraries are plugged into networks with access to all kinds of materials. Just ask. You might be surprised.

Finally, the online article preview will provide info about the author’s whereabouts. Universities have online directories in most cases. Sometimes a polite email explaining your interest in someone’s article might just get you a PDF.

What Does ‘Pagan Persistence’ Look Like?

For more than a century, scholars and Pagans (who are sometimes the same people) have debated the persistence — or not — of Pagan ideas and practices into the Chritian era. This is the question that Robin Douglas and Francis Young examine in Paganism Persisting: A History of European Paganisms since Antiquity.

Reviewer Ethan Doyle White writes in Reading Religion:

“Trying to escape the binary between the “hermeneutic of survival” and the “hermeneutic of concoction” that have historically dominated discussions on the topic, Douglas and Young outline a ‘hermeneutic of persistence,’ maintaining that “elements of paganism continued to exist in post-classical European society, constantly ready to be revived and reanimated” (2). Even while pre-Christian religions themselves essentially became extinct in most of Europe, images and ideas from those traditions persevered, allowing them to be adopted and reutilized by later individuals, some of whom considered themselves Christian, and others who were actively seeking replacements for Christianity.”

Get your library to order it or buy some expensive English electrons.

YouTube Episode Explores Pagan Music

Slovak religion scholar Michal Puchovský’s new YouTube channel, 15 Grams of Religion, offers a new video on “What Makes Pagan Music Pagan?”

Not long ago, Puchovsky published a paper in The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies, on the Pagan musician and teacher Žiarislav, titled “Actually, I’m Pagan Thanks to Music: The Role of Žiarislav’s Music in the Life of Modern Pagans in Slovakia,” which was based on his master’s thesis.

Žiarislav has his own YouTube channel, and here is maybe his best-known music video.

Have a Happy All-These-Things Festival Weekend!

(image by Grok 3, which was having trouble with “Feliz” and “Cinco”)

The Power and Sorrow of Gododdin

Two things arrived together in a package from Amazon: a new Bluetooth mouse, currently in use, and leading Welsh poet Gillian Clarke’s new version of Y Gododdin, titled The Gododdin: Lament for the Fallen.

I first encountered the poem in my early twenties — was it while shelving books in the college library, being puzzled by the Welsh title, and taking it off the shelf? Or a little later?

I had read some of the classics of heroic literature: the Iliad of course, Beowulf in my Old English class, “The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel” and other Irish tales, the Arthurian stories — this was different.

There was no narrative. Something had happened, something heroic but disastrous. A force of three hundred or so post-Roman British cavalry (armor, flowing cloaks, no stirrups, Christian), probably accompanied by foot soldiers — maybe PIctish allies — attacked a larger Saxon/English force (Heathen) at a river ford in what is now northern Yorkshire. Almost all them died in three (four?) days of fighting, even while cutting deep into the larger force.

This happened in the late sixth century, when what is now Britain was a patchwork of kingdoms. “Gododdin” is the name of a tribe, with the “dd” pronounced as “th.”

The work is attributed to the famous Celtic British poet Aneirin, written with a “strict pattern of alliteration, syllabic stress and rhyme . . . an aide-memoir for listeners to hold the poem, recite and pass it on” (viii). It’s impossible to replicate that in English, hence the challenge for translators. Think of it as a garland of flowers, each one named for an individual warrior, a pair, or a trio.1 Here is one:

Cadfannan

Before the cattle rose in the east, he raced to war,
his soldiers drilled, shield-shatterer.
Weapons rang before the bellowing herd,
belligerent Beli, border guard,

gold-torqued ox, mounted, grizzled warrior,
bone-headed boar at the dangerous border;
‘Lord save us who calls us to heaven,’
he roared, raising his javelin,

Cadfannan, praised soldier,
no doubting he trod armies under.

Or of one of the survivors, Cibno, the poet says

Cibno, wordless when war was done,
took communion on his return.

More than shields were shattered. Yet why do we care?

In 2007, I wrote a post titled “Mars and Venus Are in Love.” It was partly a response to a then-new book, A Terrible Love of War, by James Hillman (1926–2011), a psychologist in the lineage of Carl Jung, famous for titling another of his books We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy–And the World’s Getting Worse. Hillman’s “archtypal psychology” is far-reaching, and it spurns a lot of pop psychology clichés, like the whole idea of “growth“:

Hillman, with his profound intellect, disarming charm and a suffer-no-fools-gladly attitude has shaken up all that they were sure about (note-taking, diagnosing, medicating, dream work, the importance of cure) and takes on politics, architecture, soul-making and other topics that therapists thought were outside of their purview.

For all his often cap-A Archaic attitudes, however, Hillman was a man of Modernity, of the World War II generation, and like many he no doubt asked, “Why do we still have wars?” His book on war tries to answer the question, yet I felt in reading it that he was frustrated that there was no easy answer. In the end — back to polytheism — it more or less comes down to “We have war because Aphrodite desires Ares.”

As another of his readers asked, “What if Aphrodite were akin to Pan? What if she valued, not war, but Ares himself, a man-god, a relationship, a lover, yes, a lover, not a warrior?“

I have enormous respect for Hillman, although his path is arduous. Like some Witches, he suggests that a “soul” is not something you are born with, but something that you build through your life and works.

But sometimes I wonder if the answer to the war question is even more chthonic than “Venus Loves Mars.” Maybe it is simply that Earth needs blood. Humans need blood poetry, “a rousing rhyme for a bright-clad band.”