Studying the program book from the upcoming American Academy of Religion–Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting, I came across this description of a joint session session between the Europe and the Mediterranean in Late Antiquity Group, the Manichaean Studies Seminar, and the Religion in Roman Egypt Consultation:

This joint session addresses how, in the conditions of general tolerance that prevailed from Constantine to Theodosius, religious groups adapted from their prior established or illicit status to a free market of open competition and adopted various strategies of attracting or retaining adherents.

Two thoughts: Does this sound familiar? And, second, sometimes it’s too bad that the mushrooming size of the joint annual meeting means that the two bodies will no longer meet together after 2007. Although the SBL has a biblical focus, some very interesting work on late Classical Paganism does slip in.

Jason Pitzl-Waters adds more on Paganism in the YouTube era. He wonders, “More importantly, will modern Paganism change to become more ‘video friendly’?”

Take, for instance, the videos posted by the publicity-hungry Corellian Nativist Tradition. There you may see CNT leader Don Lewis dressed like a small-town insurance agent. His sport coat alone would drive someone to agnosticism.

It’s the horrible cultural pressure of American Protestantism. No one feels like they can be religious in public without putting on an ugly necktie and an unctuous, phony-sincere voice.

Next, pews and hymnbooks for Samhain. Shudder.

Given a choice, I would take dressing up like one’s [imagined] ancestors. Here are some Russian Pagans of the “Circle of Pagan Tradition” doing just that.

UPDATE: Browsing NeoWayland’s blog, I see that the Corellians have had some sort of leadership meltdown. It looks as though the “largest and fastest growing Wiccan Tradition in the world” now has two official home pages. What was that about Protestants?

I had a long and not terribly encouraging talk with my editor at Rowman & Littlefield last week about a book project involving SF/fantasy and Paganism.

Then I walked to another building on campus, where students from the English Club were selling used books and baked goods. A copy of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Forest House (1993), the prequel to Mists of Avalon, more or less jumped out at me, and for fifty cents I bought it.

Bradley said it was partly based on Bellini’s opera woad.

Imagine: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single Druid in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

Have I changed so much since I was rather caught up in Mists? Should I blame the alleged ghost-writing by Diana Paxson? (Warning: lugubrious music on link.)

The book’s allegedly Pagan religion is awfully Protestant. People go around saying things like, “Goddess forgive my sin.”

Tag: MAron Zimmer Bradley

It’s not just contemporary Pagans who are vexed by that problem. Journalist Ron Dreher of the Crunchy Con[servative] blog tries to respond to a political conservative’s criticism, the critic being columnist Maggie Gallagher.

And then his commenters arrive in flocks.

And the argument goes around and around, sounding very much like Wiccans and reconstructionist Pagans arguing, only with different religious language.

And then a real Pagan does arrive in the comments. Someone tries to refute him by quoting G.K. Chesterton, as though the definition of “pagan” had not matured over the last hundred years. Is that the best they can do?

Yes, a sort of philosophical/literary paganism was in vogue in Chesterton’s time–the next issue of The Pomegranate will have an excellent article on that era. But it is not exactly what we are talking about now.

Pagan instructional videos have actually been around since the late 1980s. Now it is the YouTube era, as Druid Ian Corrigan demonstrates. (Not counting clips from Charmed, of course.)

If you understand Dutch, here is some news coverage. There is an English translation in the sidebar.

Tags: Paganism, Druidry

Wicca reaches India, reports The Telegraph of Calcutta. It’s just a “study group” now, the paper says. (Sure!) There is a Web site, of course, which suggests that the organizers have been Wiccan for some years, in fact.

A month after bisarjan, a western pagan cult worshipping the Mother Goddess looks set to rise from oblivion in the city.

The Wiccan Brigade, to be launched some time in mid-November by Ipsita Roy Chakraverti, will be a platform for those interested in studying wicca and using the branch of knowledge to holistic effect.

Some years ago, when I learned that Wiccan groups were starting in Brazil, I was surprised, because I thought that Brazil already had plenty of magical religion. “Too ‘Christian’ for them,” reported my priestess friend whom a Brazilian group had brought in to speak to them.

But for these Indians, is Wicca more Western and somehow suitable for educated people yet still compatible with Hindu culture? We shall find out.

Tags: Wicca, India, Paganism

From “The Heroic Nerd,” a review essay by Luc Sante in The New York Review of Books, discussing works by and about H.P. Lovecraft:

He was also frightened of invertebrates, marine life in general, temperatures below freezing, fat people, people of other races, race-mixing, slums, percussion instruments, caves, cellars, old age, great expanses of time, monumental architecture, non-Euclidean geometry, deserts, oceans, rats, dogs, the New England countryside, New York City, fungi and molds, viscous substances, medical experiments, dreams, brittle textures, gelatinous textures, the color gray, plant life of diverse sorts, memory lapses, old books, heredity, mists, gases, whistling, whispering—the things that did not frighten him would probably make a shorter list. He evidently took pleasure in his fears, at least those on the creepy-crawly end of the spectrum, and although he really did suffer from his fear of cold, for example, this did not prevent him from exploiting that fear in a couple of stories, one of them (“At the Mountains of Madness”) his best.

H/T: 3 Quarks Daily.

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