Pastor Flaten displays a firm grip of the obvious, this week when the sound of grain driers dominates the town and grain cars clank on the railroad tracks. That sermon will just write itself, you betcha.
The actual harvest—the one that feeds us—is running late, however.
All of this is prelude to saying that I am on the road, but more serious blogging will resume in a few days.
Three researchers are working to update Voices from the Pagan Census: A National Survey of Witches and Neo-Pagans in the United States
Helen Berger, one of the researchers, writes, “This survey builds on an earlier one completed over twenty years ago, primarily in the United States, which was conducted by Helen A. Berger and Andras Arthen (of the EarthSpirit Community) entitled the Pagan Census.
“A number of scholars have noted that it would be helpful to have a follow-up of that survey to see if and how the community has changed or remained the same. The survey that follows uses many, although not all of the same questions that were in the original survey to provide that comparison. There are also new questions, for instance about the Internet, something that was of little interest 20 years ago but is now, and some from other studies, that again permit a comparison. This has resulted in the survey being somewhat long–we appreciate your taking the time to complete it.”
Please feel free to spread this URL around the Pagan Web to get as wide a variety of respondents as possible.
Ever resolutely two years behind the pop-culture curve, M. and I recently watched some of True Blood, season 1. We had already read a little of Charlaine Harris (one novel for me, two for her), so we knew about the whole Sookie Stackhouse milieu of “vamps” and “weres” and Harris’ whole bodice-ripping-and-biting atmosphere.
We knew, for example, that the collie dog was really Sam the restaurant owner, who is a were-collie. (Our collie is a ninja collie–much easier to deal with.)
(If Louisiana did not exist, would it be necessary to invent it?)
Partway through the opening sequence, we realized thatTrue Blood was based on Harris’ novels, and our expectations immediately cratered. Been there, done that.
But it … like Buffy … like Twilight … has the critics wondering, “What’s with this vampire craze, anyway?”
When “True Blood” appeared, it was easy to assume it was a metaphor for late-stage capitalism gone haywire, not simply because it began with an insolent store clerk reading Naomi Klein’s “Shock Doctrine” but also because the show seemed predicated on an interest in the retail addict’s belief that we’re made of what we buy.
Read the rest on “reactionary gender politics,” etc.
Via GetReligion.
USA Today’s religion blogger, Cathy Lynn Gross, visits the Patheos religion web site and discovers (shock!) that it has a Pagan portal with actual Pagan content.
The article that catches her attention is “John Muir was a Pagan.”
I admire John Muir, but I do not see him as a capital-P Pagan, follower of a non-monotheistic religion. He might well have been a small-P “pagan”– a non-Christian, a pantheist.
Get over to Patheos and stir things up before they shut it down. I wonder if starting a religion portal in the midst of a recession was a good business plan — were the Brunnicks counting on people to turn to religion when their money ran out? They laid off the Pagan gateway manager, a graduate student in religion, a couple of months ago.
It’s the 100th anniversary of modern Rosicrucianism.
For all their concern about tracing lineage, however, it is possible to find beneath the umbrella of modern Rosicrucianism just about any belief, philosophy or superstition you might care to name – pantheism, reincarnation, alchemy, psychic power, astral out-of-body travel, telepathy. There are Cosmic Ray Coincidence Counters and Sympathetic Vibration Harps. And you can corral just about any historic hero – Plato, Dante, Descartes, Newton – into secret membership of the movement (unbeknown, of course, to the dull minds of conventional historians).
For all the snarkiness, at least one serious historian of esoteric movements is quoted in the article.
That would be Rain in the Mountains.
Described by reviewers as a “quirky indie comedy,” it is about trying to go back to the old, ancestral ways.
And that guy hanging from the tree and telling people their destinies? Hmmm. The screenwriter, you will note, was an Anglo, not an Indian.
Netflix has it.
Yes, I did take the tour of the Cathedral of the Madeline. After a day of listening to talks on Mormon violence–and violence against Mormons–the cathedral felt like Goddess religion. (The Lady Chapel, after all.)
Yesterday’s CESNUR plenary session focused on Western esotericism, which is getting more respect as a “player” in history.
Gordon Melton passed out a fancy diagram of the Western esoteric tradition, including everyone from Swedenborgians to flying saucer religions to Wiccans.
Wicca was placed under ritual magic, although at some distance. Fair enough: ritual magic is an important root. But I think there needs to be a long dashed line connecting to classical Paganism (which was not on the chart), indicating a connection that was literary rather than person-to-person.
For those of you familiar with new religious movements sessions, yes, “Ragged Brian” is here.
Trying to decide whether to take the tour of the (warning, Flash) Cathedral of the Madeline tomorrow to renew my acquaintance with ecclesiastical architecture. (“I think the woods are more impressive,” says M., the dedicated animist.)
I leave today for the annual CESNUR conference on new religious movements, to be held this year in Salt Lake City, so you know which not-so-new-anymore religious movement will be heavily discussed in the presentations.
My paper is a thrown-together mess, but at least it has me thinking about how it could become the introduction to a book that I could write—or co-write, perhaps. More on that as it develops.
I have not tried to sleep over all-night drumming since I was a little kid, when my district-ranger father would let the Indians from the Pine Ridge Reservation put up a temporary dance arbor each year on Forest Service land by our house, across from the Indian Health Service hospital in Rapid City.
That was Plains-style drumming–Boom Boom Boom–mixed with the jingle of ankle bells, and this was polyrhythmic drumming, but the principle was the same: treat it as white noise and go to sleep.
A few margaritas from the pirates’ camp helped the process along. Pirates in Florida are iconic.
I am back from the Florida Pagan Gathering, whose organizers inexplicably decided that my research pre-occupations (What is “nature religion”? Why did people claim that witches used flying ointments?) were worth flying me halfway across the country at Beltane so that I could talk about them to the dozen or so people (out of 700) who wanted to hear about them. Thanks, everyone!
FPG is a big, well-organized event held at a 4H camp owned by the University of Florida. It has room to grow there, and the organizers want to grow it.
A comment that Margot Adler made in one of her talks has stuck with me. At one time (pre-1980) covens and other Pagan groups were mostly separate. Then came the era of national festivals–I remember one of our coveners coming back from one of the first Pan-Pagan festivals in 1980 or ’81, walking two inches off the ground and full of new chants and songs to teach the rest of us.
That era established a sort of common ritual and musical culture, she noted, whereas now we are into the era of semi-professional and professional entertainment, and the brief common culture is diminishing. On the other hand, hearing Spiral Rhythm do the calypso version of “Eko Eko Azarak” was sort of a kick.
I have been working alone in my little house in the woods all winter, and FPG was “bright lights, big city” to this guy. It has been ages since I attended a big festival and got that “temporary autonomous zone” rush.
UPDATE: Coincidentally (there are no coincidences) Cat Chapin-Bishop is blogging on the phenomenon of Pagan celebrity. Two of us who were at FPG have already chimed in in the comments.