You did not know that the Swiss did the drumline thing?

Give these guys pikes and halberds and use your imagination. (YouTube video–fast connection required.)

I came to the university this morning, and as I walked up the steps to one building, I found an ivy wreath lying at my feet.

Having had the benefit of a liberal arts education, I immediately thought, “The Bacchantes were here last night.”

One problem: it was plastic ivy. Maybe today’s Bacchantes shop at Hobby Lobby. In southern Colorado, we do not have ivy-covered university buildings. And maybe that’s a good thing.

Every time that I drive through the small southern Colorado town of Del Norte, I am annoyed. Still they have failed to erect a sign on US 160: “Birthplace of Chas S. Clifton.” I may have to make my own, I thought, and bolt it to a convenient post.

But not now. Del Norte may have been my first home, but that is nothing compared to its being the site of a papal consecration.

Reading the Holy Office blog (written by a religion journalist) I learn that the next pope was supposed to have been consecrated there last August.

But the ceremony was delayed. There may still be time to attend. Maybe I could get my photo taken with the pope, and Del Norte would be doubly famous.

Note that the next pope is from Oklahoma. Southern Colorado is always full of Okies and Texans fleeing the summer heat. Were he a Texan, the venue would be Lake City, and that is a longer drive.

Keep reading Holy Office for more on radical traditionalist Catholics:

And, frankly, who can blame people for getting caught up in the excitement? In a crowded religious marketplace, radtrads have a lot to offer: poorly-pronounced Latin, ample parking at half-deserted storefront churches, the glazed certainty otherwise present only in certain murderous androids, and even the prospect of receiving messages from the Virgin Mary, some of which might tell you to go ahead and marry a couple more wives.

Tags Del Norte, David Bawden

An occasional blog stew.

—Yvonne Aburrow, writer, blogger, and Web developer, has created a Pagan theologies wiki, with this entry on “conversion” as understood in Paganism and some parallel academic theory.

–Oral traditions–literary, religious, folkloric, and other–are the focus of the Journal of Oral Tradition, now online with downloadable PDF files of articles, such as Stephen Mitchell on “Reconstructing Old Norse Tradition”.

–I have a whole multi-part series coming up on new thinking about “Celts,” but meanwhile, I heard the music of Turlough O’Carolan performed last night in Walsenburg, Colorado, which is probably only the second time in history that that has happened. The first time would have been a year ago during the first Spanish Peaks International Celtic Festival, which is still going on.

–Speaking of music, my old friend Bryan Frink is collecting political songs (generally satirical) at a new website. Check out the post-Katrina “Battle of New Orleans.”

The call for papers for the next Canadian Pagan conference is now online. The conference will be held May 18-21, 2007 at the University of Winnipeg. Its theme is “The Pagan Muse: Inspiration, Creativity, and the Art of Pagan Practice.” Both academic and “grassroots” scholars are invited.

Typing this brought back a memory from the 1970s, when I read in a tiny Denver literary magazine, Mano a Mano, an opinion that went something like this: “Just because [Poet So-and-so] is in the Craft, he thinks that he has a direct line to the Muse.”

Heh. To paraphrase that eminent Deist Benjamin Franklin, the Muse helps those who help themselves.

Tag: Paganism

Why do bureaucratic organizations like universities have “affirmative action directors” and “diversity committees” that skirt the edges of the Constitution when what humans really respond to is food?

I have never felt that the autumn equinox required big-time ritual, but it is fun to celebrate with with a food fest, like Pueblo’s annual Chile & Frijoles [beans] festival.

It’s mostly about food, although the sound track pits classic rock against thumping norteño music against folk music, all from different stages and loudspeakers.

Italian burritos. Kielbasa with green chile sauce. And not pictured here but doing a good business, the inevitable American Indian fry bread stand.

And the vegetal star of last weekend, green chile peppers roasted in the mesh cylinders rotated over flames, here at Musso Farms’ booth.

Tags: chile peppers

Americans United for Separation of Church and State is now threatening a lawsuit against the Veterans Administration for its foot-dragging over a Wiccan soldier’s memorial plaque.

Previous post here. Right: artist’s rendition of what Sgt. Stewart’s plaque should look like.

From the news release: Americans United for Separation of Church and State today [26 Sept.] warned the Department of Veterans Affairs that litigation will become unavoidable if it continues to discriminate against Wiccans by denying the right to include the Pentacle, the Wiccan emblem of belief, on government-furnished headstones, plaques, and other memorials for fallen veterans. In a letter issued today, Americans United gave the VA fourteen days to approve the Pentacle or face litigation.

There is ongoing coverage Circle Sanctuary’s Web site.

Tags: Wicca, veterans

I have been reading Erik Davis’s fantastic (in all senses of the world) book The Visionary State: A Journey Through California’s Spiritual Landscape, illustrated with lucious photos by Michael Rauner.

You can read an excerpt on Davis’s Web site.

I know just few of the Bay Area places, such as the San Francisco Zen Center (didn’t know it was a Julia Morgan building though) or the Swedenborgian Church. I want to just jump in the car with the book and a road map and find the rest.

Of course, they had to draw the line somewhere, but this story makes me think that maybe the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Library should have included with some of the other shrines.

Tags: California, Religion, Erik Davis, Michael Rauner

Living beyond the range of cable television and not willing to pay for a satellite dish, M. and I watch HBO series with a year’s delay.

Right now we’re working our way through the first season of Rome. And we like it, right from the starting sequence of the animated graffiti (based on originals in Pompeii, or so they say.

But despite the presence of historical advisors, anachronisms both religious and mundane creep in.

For instance, in Episode 8, Cleopatra is shown smoking opium, which is wrong on two counts. First, as far as I can tell–and I have researched this some–the technology of smoking with a pipe, as opposed to throwing herbs or resins onto glowing coals, was unknown in Eurasia until Columbus sailed to the Western Hemisphere.

Second, the pipe shown is not an opium pipe, but an East Asian tobacco pipe. The bowl is wrong.

Opium had been used in Europe since the Bronze Age, at least, but not in pipes.

Steven Saylor felt that Cleopatra’s character was wrong, as well, but that is another story.

The show’s makers fudged the stirrup question. The Romans did not have stirrups–no Europeans knew them until a few centuries later. Yet if you look, you can see that riders in long shots are riding with them. Close up, however, they have been removed for verisimitude’s sake.

I was skeptical about the brothel-keeper in Episode 7 counting with her abacus, but apparently the Romans indeed did have them. The one in the scene looked more Chinese, however.

And I wonder at seeing candles everywhere instead of cheap ceramic oil lamps. The latter are not hard to find–they are still made for the Middle Eastern souvenir trade.

On the religious side, in one of the early episodes, there is a brief depiction of the taurobolium, or purification in the blood of a sacrificed bull. That rite was not known in the last days of the Roman Republic, which is when the series begins.

The other rites, whether in temples or at home altars, have to be admitted as reconstructions. There is so much of basic religious practice that we do not know, really. Music, too, can only be guessed at.

Quibbles aside, it’s worth renting the series on DVD if you have not seen it.

Tag: Rome