The tricky side of charisma

Over at GetReligion, a blog devoted to the collision of religion and journalism, Terry Mattingly links to a story of a Pentecostal preacher in trouble.

The details do not concern me. What caught my eye was this part of the linked posting:

Again, in my opinion, this false teaching arose because church leaders saw a need to conceal the widespread sexual immorality in their own ranks. “Touch not mine anointed” is often repeated alongside the Apostle Paul’s statement that “the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.” The latter verse, from Romans, is used to rationalize how a minister can lead a completely dissipated life and still display genuine gifts of God such as the ability to preach or prophesy. The misuse of these verses has done tremendous damage within the Pentecostal-charismatic tradition.

Something that we polytheists should understand — something that I learned in my first coven — is that magickal ability or even the favor of the gods is not the same thing as moral character.

When Mattingly calls Rev. Allen “charismatic — in every sense of the word,” that is what he is saying, with his Christian terminology. The man has “the juice.” But having the juice does not mean that you trust in him other areas.

I suspect that Socrates, for instance, knew that perfectly well. Consequently, he does not discuss it. Every ancient Athenian probably knew that you could be filled with divine power — enthused — now and then, but being so enthused did not make you a philosopher.

Monotheists, however, want it all in one package: the Professional Good Man, to borrow a phrase from Elmer Gantry. Consequently, they are always dealing with clergy-corruption issues.

I had not realized that Pentecostal Christians, in particular, used Bible verses to explain away the issue. They ought to just understand that even if someone “displays the genuine gifts of [their] God,” he or she may still not be someone to listen to in other areas. Their sheep/sheepherder model of organization gets them in trouble again and again.

Little boxes, little boxes, little boxes full of Bible people

During the 2002 American Academy of Religion-Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting in Toronto, the Royal Ontario Museum had a well-timed display of the so-called “James ossuary.”

It was a 1st-century CE stone box of a type used in the Middle East back then for storage of cleaned and dismembered skeletons of the dead. This one was inscribed, “James the brother of Jesus,” and much excitement was felt over that.

Until it turned out to be a fake. The box was real enough, but the inscription was not.

So you have to wonder about these inscriptions that claim to read “Judah son of Jesus,” “Mary,” and so on.

Now the Discovery Channel is about to unleash a show about a whole stack of ossuaries. Yes, it’s the Jesus Family Tomb.

Ah, biblical archaeology. It’s rarely dull. The “Lost Tomb of Jesus” indeed. How the Christian bloggers will blog, the preachers will preach, and the dull thumping sound you hear is an archaeologist beating his head against the wall.

(The title is an homage to Malvina Reynolds, whose songs helped me to survive high school.)

The eye of power, bwahahaha


I saw this ancient artificial eye discussed sanely in Archaeology magazine, but then there is the “soothsayer or priestess” angle.

Trust The Daily Mail for that.

Archaeologists said the woman was a female soothsayer or priestess and would have transfixed those around her with her eyeball, making them believe she had occult powers and could see into the future.

Take a clue from the ancient priestess and wow ’em at the next psychic fair.

You, of course, are my readers . . .

You educated women and the rest of us who love you, that is.

“The Romantic Life of Brainiacs” says that you are not missing out the way that popular media say that “smart girls” do.

The Cliche: Pity the overschooled old maid and the lonely career woman. Highly educated or high-achieving women are less likely to marry and have children than other women. If they do marry, they are more likely to divorce. Even if they don’t divorce, their marriages will be less happy. And, oh, yes, they’ll be sexually frustrated, too.

The Reality In fact, educated women nationwide now have a better chance of marrying, especially at an older age, than other women. In a historic reversal of past trends – one that is good news for young girls who like to use big words – college graduates and high-earning women are now more likely to marry than women with less education and lower earnings, although they are older when they do so. Even women with PhDs no longer face a “success penalty” in their nuptial prospects. It might feel that way in their 20s, when women with advanced degrees marry at a lower rate than other women the same age. But by their 30s, women with advanced degrees catch up, marrying at a higher rate than their same-aged counterparts with less education.

Lots more there. Read the whole thing.

The Ogham Controversy, Now on YouTube


Selected bits of Scott Monahan’s documentary Old News are now available on YouTube, including the trailer (above) or here in a slightly different version.

I tried to summarize this complex alternative archaeological theory of pre-Columbian Celtic explorers/traders on the Southern Plains before.

Welcome to Uhh-merica

“In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

Or maybe not. H.G. Wells put his own twist on it in his story “The Country of the Blind.”

The proverb’s questionable wisdom underlies Idiocracy, a comedy with a plot right out of the Golden Age of science-fiction.

Army Private Joe Bowers (Luke Wilson), statistically average in every way, is volunteered for a hibernation experiment, but through bureaucratic snafus winds up 500 years in the future, where he is now the smartest man on the planet, in a society whose members are no longer able to keep things running and the crops growing — but what the hell, give ’em something to watch on the Violence Channel, and they are happy. (A prostitute named Rita (Maya Rudolph), part of the same experiment, seems more willing to adapt.)

It’s brutally funny. Watch, for instance, the degeneration of such familiar brand names as Costco, Carl’s Jr., and Fudrucker’s. (M. would say that they are plenty degenerate already.) And it’s also a sly plea for some kind of eugenics.

A Revelation on Valentine’s Day

What happens when a confirmed Valentine’s Day-hater comes across a heart-shaped red candle? Dianne Sylvan tells the story.

Meanwhile, Jason Pitzl-Waters supplies the historical background–and it’s not the version that you usually hear.

Blog Valhalla, Polytheism, Books and More

¶ Yvonne Aburrow’s Pagan theologies wiki has what might be the definitive list of active Pagan blogs. I am adding a link on my sidebar.

¶ Speaking of which, this blog now appears on BeliefNet’s Blog Heaven page again. Thanks to everyone who made a fuss.

¶Bedside reading: I started, put aside, but will return to John Lamb Lash’s Not in His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief.

It is a difficult book for me to evaluate: I sympathize with Lash’s point of view, but I think that he distorts some of his sources too much in order to support his views. He wants to use Gnosticism as a path that “can provide the spiritual dimension for deep ecology independently of the three mainstream religions derived from the Abrahamic traditions.”

Gnosticism is still concerned with “salvation,” a concept largely at odds with polytheism, as John Michael Greer points out (see below). Much Gnostic thinking disparages physical existences as a “mistake,” so I am waiting to see how Lash reconciles that with deep ecology and its focus on our relationship with and as a part of nature.

Lash writes his introduction around the life of Hypatia of Alexandria, a Platonic philosopher murdered by a Christian mob in 415 CE. He wants to view her as an “urban shaman,” but I see her more as today’s tenured professor of mathematics. An intellectual through and through. Note how she elevates philosophy over erotic attraction this story of her teaching, true or not.

Reviewing Not in His Image in the Los Angeles Times, Jonathan Kirch writes:

Lash is capable of explaining the mind-bending concepts of Gnosticism and pagan mystery cults with bracing clarity and startling insight. At moments, however, he slips into a kind of New Age rant as baffling as any mystical text. “What we seek in ‘Gaia theory’ is a live imaginal dimension,” he writes in one such passage, “not a scaffolding of cybernetic general systems cogitation.” . . . .

And when he considers what he calls the “sci-fi theology” of the ancient Gnostics, he comes uncomfortably close to affirming that the otherworldly “Archons” of Gnostic myth were authentic extraterrestrials.

An interesting book, but full of special pleading.

¶I am happier with John Michael Greer’s A World Full of Gods: An Inquiry into Polytheism, published by the Druidic group Ár nDraíocht Féin.

Greer’s arguments for polytheism as offering a better model of the universe (including the evil and suffering in it) than monotheism and his lucid explanation of polytheistic spirituality deserve a wide hearing.

He works hard to show that monotheistic thinkers simply do not comprehend the polytheistic experience, and their arguments against it (unless enforced by violence as in Hypatia’s case) simply fail.

Indeed, ancient and modern Pagans alike have the described mystical states in which they have become aware of multitudes of divine beings filling every corner of the cosmos; in the words of the Greek philosopher Thales, they have seen that “all things are full of gods.” This is the polar opposite of henotheism; it is also among the most powerful and transforming of Pagan religious experiences.

A Medieval Help Desk


Twice as funny today because the university’s network has been acting up, and I spent much of the morning in fact on the telephone with various Help Desk technicians.

Tip of the English woolen cap to Fretmarks.

Pagan fiction-writing contest

Llewellyn Publications and BBI media (publisher of PanGaia, Sagewoman and New Witch magazines) are sponsoring a Pagan fiction-writing contest.

Judges are Diana Paxson, Elizabeth Barrette, and Anne Newkirk Niven.

Stories may incorporate aspects of any genre. Previously observed examples of Pagan fiction, which have inspired this Award, include but are not limited to stories about contemporary Pagans and the challenges they face in the ordinary world, mythic fiction, urban fantasy, historical fantasy/alternate history, science fiction about Paganism in the far future, paranormal romance, visionary fiction, weird mystery, and slipstream. Use your imagination.