The Witches of TV

In a post titled “Farewell, Primetime Pagans,” Idol Chatter blogger Ellen Leventry marks the end of Charmed.

And while the show took artistic, action-driven license, it also provided a decent representation of a belief system not often portrayed on television. Reviewer Wren Walker noted that while warlocks don’t actually try to steal witches’ powers, “The pronunciations were good, the tools were explained well, and some ethical considerations were mentioned. The altars looked messy enough to be real–I guess not even Hollywood magick do anything about wax drippings–and the sisters wore-gasp!-regular clothing even when casting spells!”

The parallel universe of train travel

Making train reservations for M. and me to travel to AAR-SBL in November, I discovered that there were already no basic sleeper rooms left to reserve for one part of the trip–outbound from La Junta, Colorado, to Chicago.

Who says Americans don’t like train travel?

Every time I take the (always politically threatened) cross-country trains, I am amazed at how full they are. And yet when the news media talk about travel, it’s always airplanes/cars/airplanes/cars.

Train travel is like a parallel universe. You see America passing outside the window, the crew members and most passengers are Americans, you pay and tip in American dollars, and yet you feel somehow sort of invisible.

Forget your Lear jets. If I were rich, I would have my own rail car. Some people do. If I were merely well-to-do, I would ,

Pagan Studies at AAR 2006

These papers are scheduled for presentation at the Pagan Studies session during next November’s annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion:

  1. “The Pagan Explosion,” James Lewis
  2. “The Fourfold Goddess and the Undying God: Anatomies of Minnesotan Bootstrap Witchcraft Traditions,” Murph Pizza
  3. “Children of Converts: Generational Retention in the Neo-Pagan New Religious Movement,” Laura Wildman-Hanlon
  4. “Alchemical Rhythm: Sacred Dynamic Fire and the Politics of Drumming,” Jason Winslade

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‘Plaid the Impaler Scottish Ale’ & other links

Jay Kinney, “old-school” underground comic artist and former publisher of Gnosis magazine, has revamped his Web site.

Drop by. The doctor is in.

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Fight for Wiccan VA tombstone continues

The widow of of Sgt. Patrick Stewart, killed in Afghanistan, is getting some political support in her fight for a military Wiccan tombstone.

The Veterans Affairs’ National Cemetery Administration allows only approved emblems of religious beliefs on government headstones. Over the years, it has approved more than 30, including symbols for the Tenrikyo Church, United Moravian Church and Sikhs. There’s also an emblem for atheists – but none for Wiccans.

Circle Sanctuary in Wisconsin has an information page.

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The Snake Motif

Right before M. and I left on the road trip that culminated in my rattlesnake bite and hospital stay, I was having trouble with a blockage in the bathroom lavatory.

I did not think that I could get my large plumber’s “snake” down through the waste pipe behind the wall, and I thought of going to the hardware store and picking up a hand-operated plumber's snakesmaller one. But we were busy packing, and so I left the problem for later.

And then, five days later, came the bite from a “baby” rattlesnake and, minutes later, an encounter with a larger one who acted like a proper rattlesnake. In other words, the second one gave us a warning buzz so that we could avoid it.

Home again and still on crutches, I called Cory the plumber. He roared up the driveway in his big diesel van the following morning.

Of course I had to explain the crutches. A few minutes later, he had disassembled the drain and was carrying his electric plumber’s snake up from the van.

“I’ve had about enough of this snake motif,” I said.

“All right,” he replied, “we’ll call it an auger.”

Little snake and big snake, metaphorical. Little snake and big snake, literal.

Sometimes the only god worth worshiping is the god of irony.

There is a complicated message here about the “poison path,” I think, but I am still thinking about it.

Our shamanic EMTs

I keep coming back to this item in the “Sheriff’s Blotter” section of our weekly paper:

On May 10, an ambulance was dispatched at 6:37 a.m. to the Buck Mountain area to transport a female in and out of consciousness…

A Pagan’s perspective on The Da Vinci Code

The most interesting thing about this article in an Australian newspaper is that a Pagan was asked to join the “panel of religious experts.”

The most serious problem according to the panel – a theologian, Catholic film critic, Opus Dei priest and a pagan – is that the basic premise is incoherent. The quest is to find the descendants of Jesus, but because the film portrays him as human, not divine, it simply doesn’t matter.

“All you are left with is the bones of Mary Magdalene . . . Big deal! I didn’t understand the significance at all,” said pagan Caroline Tully. “If Christ’s not supernatural, what’s the point of being a descendant?”

Thanks to a rattlesnake bite, I spent two days last week in a Catholic hospital in Tucson, where the only religious TV channel was the Catholic channel.

I watched one program where a serious-minded Jesuit worked through all the canonical arguments against the movie’s premise. He was an intelligent man–most Jesuits are–and his scriptural arguments were sound. But it also was clear that his postition kept him from answering the “elephant in the living room” question: Why is the story so appealing? Why are people drawn to the element of the divine feminine in the story? He wouldn’t touch that part.

Traveling

Blogging will be slow this week because M. and I are on the road.

Waiting for Euro-porn

“Euro-porn” is my new cinematic category, although really, it’s just “Gothic” in the 18th-century sense dressed up.

The Da Vinci Code is Euro-porn, of course. It’s got ancient buildings like you won’t find in strip-mall America, secret Catholic societies, and layers of corruption that Karl Rove could only dream of.

Well, there is some of all that in New Mexico, but not so elegantly done.

While you are waiting, watch Brotherhood of the Wolf for a Gothic/Gothique mélange of secret Catholic societies, martial arts, shamanism, a whiff of incest, poison and daggers, lush scenery (Haute Pyrénées), heaving bosoms, galloping horses, Mohawks and French revolutionaries, sailing ships, swordplay, vengeance, corrupt aristocrats, architecture, and wolves. Lots of wolves. And it’s all in French.

And did I mention the sort of Hong Kong-style martial arts combat where the assassin attacking the hero from behind screams, so that the hero will hear him, whirl around, and dispatch him?

You can’t get much more Euro-pornographic than that.