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.
The God Cafe in Eustis, Florida. Closed on Sundays. Here is some background.
I have my own collection of Jack Chick pamphlets, but to make collecting more sporting, they have to be found in public places: left inside a library book about Wicca or on a public park bench, that sort of thing.
Maybe God’s Cartoonist: The Comic Crusade of Jack Chick will create more collectors of “all things Chick including the art, artists, writers, controversies, death threats, witch spells, Illuminati, Catholic assassins and more!”
(Hat tip: Jason’s other blog.)
Some American Pagan military veterans feel that established organizations such as the American Legion and VFW are too heavily Christianized, so they have started a Yahoo group as a first step towards forming a separate organization.
It is the old dilemma — change from within, or go outside “the system”?
If you are a Pagan veteran and wish to participate, there is more information here.
Jordan Stratford, Gnostic priest and writer in Victoria, B.C., blogs about possible prejudice against present-day Gnosticism on the part of the Wikipedia cabal.
My own experience with Wikipedia is tiny — making minor edits on three or four articles — but I know that there are people who must spend hours every day on it.
Other stories about “revert wars” and similar cyber-squabbles involving political figures are common enough, so I can believe that one or two judgmental editors could mess with (in this case) Gnosticism too.
For some reason, Pagan-related articles have fared better. But I know that some of the Pagan editors are the same folks who were on the former Compuserve Pagan forum circa 1990–people who spend an awful lot of time in cyberspace.
As for modern Gnosticism, another trove of articles exists at the website of the former Gnosis magazine. Founding editor Jay Kinney is himself a priest of the Ecclesia Gnostica, a contemporary Gnostic church started by Stephan Hoeller (who thus far is still in Wikipedia.)
There might be a lesson here about depending too much on Wikipedia?
My laugh-out-loud moment Sunday came when reading an article in the Denver Post titled “Finding Faith in the Wilderness.” (The full name of the Episcopal cathedral in Denver is St. John’s in the Wilderness.)
Below, dozens of candles flicker near icons in the dark nave. Incense hangs in the air. Congregants can choose to sit in a pew or on thick cushions at the foot of a simple altar. A stringed Moroccan oud gives even traditional songs of praise an exotic twist, but there is also world music, chant and jazz.
“We’re using the cathedral in new ways, making it more inviting and even sensual,” said the Rev. Peter Eaton. “It’s meant to celebrate and bring alive all the human senses. We think that, in metro Denver, there is nothing else like us.“
In other words, a “a more mystical and meditative feeling than what big-box churches or traditional Protestant services provide.” In other words, liturgy, sacred theatre — what they used to be good at before the Episcopalians developed a bad case of Vatican II-envy back in the 1960s and started trying to be “relevant.”
I have quoted anthropologist Harvey Whitehouse’s distinction between “episodic” and “doctrinal” religion before. Sacred theatre is episodic. Having processions with torches and banners is episodic. (Clifton’s Third Law of Religion: All real religions have torchlight processions.)
The point of this post is not to make fun of Episcopalians, however. I merely want to emphasize the point that vivid experiences count for more than doctrine or theologizing. We Pagans should not forget that fact.
This fellow — Santa Claus, Father Christmas — has joined the lineup of graven images on our polytheistic/animistic mantel. That’s Hermes’ foot at the far left, followed by an ossuary jar of sharp-shinned hawk bones, and Hekate on the right.
We all know that Santa’s name derives from the Dutch form of St. Nicholas, but what need have we Pagans of a saint whose titles include “Defender of Orthodoxy” (versus the Arian Christians) and whose biographers proudly proclaim that he destroyed Pagan temples. So forget that part.
The connection with Odin is fascinating but fragile. Others go off on different tangents.
As the scripture states, “He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus.”
On the other hand, I really have no problem with calling this time of year “Christmas” in casual conversation. When I was in my twenties, I rigorously drew a line and would only say “Yule.” Now I am more casual.
A few years ago, when I was on the board of a local environmental-education group, I helped organize a couple of presentations by the staff of Mission: Wolf, a sanctuary located one county south of me. As part of their mission, “Socialized ambassador wolves travel nationally, offering public education while stimulating people to care about and respect nature.”
Often they have the audience sit in a circle on the floor, if the group is small enough, and the leashed ambassador wolf comes around to give each a quick sniff. If you get a wolf kiss (and I have), that’s supposed to be something special.
One day last summer, M. and I were at the farmers’ market in Florence, Colo., and people from a different, smaller, wolf sanctuary were there. They seemed less focused on environmental ed. and more on magic, in the form of “Cheyenne, the Healing Wolf.”
I don’t see it on the web site, but the people from this second sanctuary insisted that their oldest wolf could diagnose cancer and other illnesses. They were less into teaching about wolves in the wild and more into presenting these predators as healing beings.
Third, at the beginning of October, M. and I returned to Yellowstone National Park for the first time in some years. Our last visit, in fact, came just before the reintroduction of wolves to the park in the mid-1990s.
And how the northern edge of the park, in particular, had changed. There were wolf tourists. Every pull-out between Mammoth Hot Springs and the northeast entrance contained serious-looking individuals with spotting scopes and expensive telephoto lenses, scanning the hillsides of the Lamar Valley. The nearby Slough Creek Campground, which used to be half-empty in autumn, is always full.
Imagine, if you have not seen one, a full-size tour bus with wolves painted on it, picking up forty or so hikers who have been on a wildlife walk to look for . . . wolves, of course. When someone sees a wolf, the news spreads around the park by “bush telegraph.”
Not everyone is keen on wolves, however. I spotted this sticker on a truck in Cooke City, Wyo., just outside the park.
Cat Urbigkit’s Yellowstone Wolves: A Chronicle of the Animal, the People, and the Politics is a definitive history of the issue.
But I think that is the minority view. It is as though we have flipped 180 degrees from when Barry Lopez wrote Of Wolves and Men in the 1970s. He was trying to convince readers that wolves were more than mere vermin. Now they are emissaries of nature religion, furry saints.
American nature religion often has a therapeutic slant, that’s for sure. “The wolf will heal you.” It’s a change from “The wolf will eat you,” but is it any more truthful from the wolf’s point of view?
I post this from the Wireworks cafe in Pueblo, partway through our journey to the train station.
I hope that I have everything I need for a successful conference session:
Doing a paper on the Day of the Dead at two Southwestern universities, plus attending a Samhain ritual. Too much?
I’ll try to post more as the meeting continues.
in the 1970s. He was trying to convince readers that wolves were more than mere vermin. Now they are emissaries of nature religion, furry saints.