The encylopedic mind of J. Gordon Melton

The Los Angeles Times interviews J. Gordon Melton, a major figure in the study of new religious movements.

It’s often said of academics, but for J. Gordon Melton it’s true: He really does have an encyclopedic mind.

After all, Melton is the author of the Encyclopedia of American Religions, the Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology and the Encyclopedia of Religious Phenomena.

Then, for fun, there’s The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead.

“It’s my little niche,” Melton said.

Actually, it’s a big niche.

Erudite and eternally curious, Melton, 64, is one of the nation’s foremost authorities on religion (and vampires too, but more on that later). The research specialist with the department of religious studies at UC Santa Barbara has written 30 books and co-written or edited 17 more, all of which are expansive and eclectic, and weave a colorful and diverse history of the currents of spiritual worship and tensions around the world.

He is the reason that I was shipping cartons of old Pagan magazines to Santa Barbara.

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Gallimaufry: Tab Clearing

Having been knocked down by a head cold the past week, I am just cleaning out some old links.

• Should you use digital cameras for ghost-hunting?

I notice that a lot of the ghost-hunting articles in Fate magazine count “orbs” as evidence of spirits. But are they just artifacts of the digital photographic process?

• I think I want to read Breaking Open the Head.

In a similar vein, I recently bought Dale Pendell’s latest, Pharmako/Gnosis, and it is another stunning combination of entheogenic analysis, poetry, and pharmacology.

• You won’t find “Paganistan” here, but these religious-affiliation maps are interesting.

I note from the low affiliation counts in counties that match the Navajo and Hopi reservations in Arizona and much of the Lakota reservations in South Dakota that tribal religions were not censused either. This map’s concentration of Episcopalians in western South Dakota, however, is the result of that church’s presence on the various reservations.

• Bloggers like to note odd Google searches that brought readers to their blogs. Mine today is from Google Turkey: “sacrifice sheep watch woman video.” Does that seem a little creepy to you too?

Wiccan children running wild

Apparently Wiccans are now a go-to minority group. I just got an email from someone with Ricochet Television soliciting my help in locating Wiccan families with rowdy kids who might want to appear on Supernanny

That’s the show in which “supernanny” Jo Frost sets things right by emphasizing household responsibility, regular family meals, and other such startling concepts.

It’s all about “diversity,” don’t you know:

We’re very interested in having a fully diverse group of families on the show this season, including non-traditional families, Wiccan families, etc.

I don’t know how much the producers pay people in return for having their child-rearing problems broadcast around the English-speaking world, but I will ask, and if I find out, I will update this post.

But will it be like Wife Swap? Probably.

UPDATE: As promised, here are some excerpts of the Ricochet Television staffer’s response to my questions about “Why Wicca?” and “How much money?”

Religion doesn’t play a role in the show, any more than geographic location. By that I mean that Jo [Frost, the “supernanny”] doesn’t address religion directly any more than she says “you live in the mountains, let’s talk about that”. That being said, as I’m sure you agree, the philisophical framework that a family has, much like their environment, effects many of the choices they make and attitudes they have. When I say we’d like to get more diverse families on the show, this is exactly what we mean, people and families who can offer perspectives that arise from their diverse circumstances, even if those circumstances are not a direct focus of the show.

I’m not at all certain what that means. Apparently religion does not matter except when it makes participants “diverse,” and then it does.

there is a stipend we offer to re-imburse families for any time off work, expenses incurred, etc. It’s minimal, a few thousand dollars. We typically hesitate to mention it when casting, for a couple reasons: 1) we normally don’t need to; families who’ve seen the show, and know the show recognize that it really is a service that we provide, and 2) the mention of money tends to attract families who want to do it solely for the money. These families are not who we’re looking for, and it tends to waste our time and theirs.

I think that that could be translated as “We want pure exhibitionists, not exhibitionists who are motivated by money.”

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When does a polytheist pray?

Dave Haxton at MacRaven reflects on the latest scientific study on the power of prayer:

If God’s omniscient than He already knows if the folks are going to pray or not, and if he’s not, well, then the whole paradigm sort of breaks down, and God’s no longer in total control of things.

Which is precisely the position my gods and goddesses are in: they’re within and part of the natural world, and while I believe they have some influence over events in Midgard, they’re neither omniscient or omnipotent – and I wouldn’t want them to be. Because the very existence of such a being would make all other beings essentially slaves, and the universe naught but a clockwork. There can be no free will at all in such a deterministic universe.

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New issue of Diskus is online

Diskus, the online journal of religious studies, is back with new material.

Diskus has always been open to Pagan Studies; for instance, if you scroll down to the contents of issue 6 (2000), you will see a whole issue devoted to Paganism. Both the abstracts and the articles are downloadable.

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Toronto Pagan Conference on CD

You can now buy a CD of the recent Toronto Pagan Conference.

The conference’s featured guest speakers were Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone.

The price is $25 (Canadian), but American buyers could probably send $25 (cash) and tell them to keep the change–it’s a fundraiser, after all.

Why Men Really Hate Going to Church

WMHGTC, by Alaska TV writer David Murrow, is the umpteenth try to understand the “feminization” of American Christianity,

The pro baseball player-turned-preacher Billy Sunday (1862-1935) was just one manly man who fought the same fight.

Murrow is a little shaky on pre-Reformation church history: he somehow blames this feminine influence on the rise of the worship of Mary in the 11th-12th centuries. Yet that is the era that saw not only the building of the great cathedrals (partly by male volunteers) but also the rise of the troubadours and the writing of some great religio-erotic poetry.

But he is dead-on–and even humorous–when he identifies the reasons why most men avoid church: the indoor confinement, the lengthy yackety-yack sermonizing, and church language that places heterosexual men in an uncomfortable role:

I saw a new book for Christian men: Kissing the Face of God. An ad for the book invites men to “get close enough to reach up and kiss His face!” Time out–this is a men’s book? Yikes! With the spotlight on homosexuality in the church, why do we increase [heterosexual] men’s doubts by using the language of romance to describe the Christian walk?

And then there is “praise music.” Here I could not agree with Murrow more: “Not only are the lyrics of many of these songs quite romantic, but they have the same breathless feel a Top Forty love songs.”

On a recent cross-country drive, I tuned into a “praise music” station for a while. Gods! It was like being slowly drowned in high-fructose corn syrup.

But there is one big problem that calling the pastor “Coach” won’t fix. Unlike Paganism, Christianity cannot being avoid the yakety-yak. In the words of Harvey Whitehouse, an anthropologist of religion, it is doctrinal rather than imagistic.

Today’s Pagan religions, by contast, are not “routinized” and do not require a lot of explaining. They are imagistic. They affect practitioners through what Whitehead calls “infrequent repetition and high arousal”–why one really knock-out ritual experience at a festival may stay with you for months.

Secondly, Paganism can wed the erotic and the spiritual. Eros is the force of life, but the monotheists want to build high walls around it. It sneaks back in though, as when they encourage the split between “good girls” (madonnas) and “bad girls” (whores) and then create a “ministry” to deal with it.

Good Pagan ritual can be erotic–which does not mean it must lead to personal promiscuity. But we must acknowledge and celebrate that force. Murrow realizes that a “Come hold me and kiss me, sweet Jesus” form of eroticism will not appeal to heterosexual Christian men. But he has no acceptable celebration of eroticism to set in place of that, and he never will.

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A cover design at last?

Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in AmericaNo one asked me, but this image has appeared on the web page for my book.

All I asked for was a moon. I think that is a full moon seen through fog. Or something. I can live with it. Now if they would just send the PDF files for indexing.

(If the link above does not work, go here and find it through the site search.)

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Caesar’s caesarean, and other myths

How many myths about the ancient world had you always thought were true?

And how did the C in Caesar become soft, anyway? We should be saying “kaiser.” (Via Rogue Classicism.)

A conference for female psychonauts

For women who want to discuss the shamanic use of entheogens, SheShamans is a gathering planned for June in Geyserville, California. (Via Susie Bright, who had a wittier title.)