What the Romans did for us–and keep on doing

Spurred by the latest spate of TV miniseries and feature films, Cambridge classics professor Mary Beard looks in the mirror of ancient Rome and describes the different images that it reflects back to us.

This game of defining ourselves against the habits of the “Other” is a very old one indeed. The Romans did it against the Greeks (a load of over-perfumed intellectuals), the Greeks against the Persians (effeminate despots). We are now finding it much safer to look to the remote past–the recent past is, of course, another matter–for our anti-types. For that past cannot answer back, has no government machinery on its side (or not usually), and you can do what you like with it. If they were portraying a modern religion, the lurid, blood-soaked representations of Roman paganism in the new Rome would probably end with the director up before the beak on a charge of “incitement to religious hatred”. As it is, it’s only Rome, so it doesn’t count.

(Tip of the classic Roman straw hat to Archaeoblog). Tag: Rome

Boy genius, borough satyr

When I was in my twenties, a friend introduced me to the writing of Austin Osman Spare, but as solo ceremonial magician rather than as a painter.

The friend was a bit older than I, and he lived modestly in a house he had inherited, had some sort of trust fund, and worked occasionally in the antiques field. Spare’s work must have resonated more with him than with me, although he didn’t live as “a swine among swine.”

The Daily Telegraph (UK) covers the opening of an exhibition of Spare’s paintings in London. (Registration required.) The article mentions Spare’s initial high standing in the art world but also his interest in magic:

He was an outsider from the start. His mother recalled that he didn’t play with other boys, preferring the company of a sorceress called Mrs Patterson, whom he described as his “witch mother”. In 1904, aged 17, he was hailed by the press as a “boy genius” when his work was shown at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition. Lionised by some of the foremost artists of his time–George Frederic Watts, Augustus John and John Singer Sargent–he received a scholarship to the Royal College of Art, where one contemporary described him as “a god-like figure of whom other students stood in awe, a fair creature like a Greek god, curly-headed, proud, self-willed, practising the black arts, taking drugs, disdainfully apart from the crowd”.

The exhibit is tied to a new biography, Borough Satyr, from Fulgur Ltd..

Coincidentally, The Pomegranate will published a paper on Spare in our May 2006 issue if all goes well.

Tag: Austin Osman Spare

Witchy Woman

Marin County, Calif., Witch and writer Macha NightMare sits down for a friendly chat with a reporter.

Whatever else one might expect from having coffee with a world-famous practicing witch, one can’t come away from a meeting with Macha NightMare without being certain of one thing: She’s quite religious. Not in the dangerous, frothing, uncomfortable manner one sometimes associates with unhinged religious fervor, but more in the mold of a funny, confident, appealingly eccentric nun, the kind who knows what she believes and is calmly empowered by it, the kind you might meet at a wedding or peace rally, and walk away later feeling glad you’d met her.

It’s a better-than-average “Silly Season” article, thanks to an articulate interview subject and a sympathetic interviewer.

Macha notes separately that she herself does not teach Media & Public Relations at Cherry Hill Seminary.

UPDATE: She is interviewed here too. She is the Bay Area’s go-to Witch.

Tags: Halloween, Macha NightMare, Witchcraft

The altar of the . . . intramural volleyball league?

Depending on your persuasion, the following announcement indicates the Paganization of an American university, a celebration of “diversity,” a violation of the separation of church [Aztec temple?] and state, “multiculturalism” run amok, or good clean fun.

The student activities board at a university that I know well is holding a Day of the Dead altar-building contest:

Day of the Dead in Mexico represents a mixture of Christian devotion and Pre-Hispanic traditions and beliefs. As a result of this mixture, the celebration comes to life as an unique Mexican tradition including an altar and offerings dedicated to the deceased.

There will be voting on site for the best altar! The winner will win $150 from the Student Activities Board!

The English Club officers have announced that they are sponsoring their traditional Guy Fawkes/Bonfire Night party, complete with fireworks, so I doubt that they will be altar-building too.

Tag: Day of the Dead, Guy Fawkes, Multiculturalism

“Halloween Hoopla”

“What the f*** happened to Halloween?” rants Foamy the squirrel. (Link good until Nov. 3; then check the “Toons” page.)

Tag: Halloween

No costumes, please, we’re teaching to the test

Some Colorado “educators” are going to great lengths to show how hard they are working to raise standardized test scores. The latest gimmick at some schools is to ban school Halloween parties.

I think for the most part the real reason schools are doing away with Halloween during the day has to do with the disruption and the loss of instructional time,” agrees Mike Crawford, principal at Palmer Elementary in Denver.

The hallways at Palmer are decked with yarn-and-construction-paper witches and black bats carrying messages from second-graders on “What drives me batty.” But there will be no party; it will be business as usual.

Other schools keep the party but try to make it “educational.”

Carson [Elementary] holds a Literacy Day, this year on Friday rather than Monday, Oct. 31. Children get costumes and candy, but the catch is they must dress up as a character from a book and tote said book during the parade.

At least we are hearing less about it being an “occult holiday,” but one principal remembers that objection too:

As a veteran educator, he has been hearing Halloween objections, especially religious ones, since the early 1980s. But he says he must respect the [pro-Halloween] majority opinion in his school.

“We’re not worshiping anything,” he says. “We’re playing dress-up.”

And he dresses up right along with the kids. Too many of these principals seem to have forgotten that a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, as the flying nanny sang.

Tag: Halloween

The right Halloween

It’s the season when people celebrate Halloween for all reasons, even the bloggers of “The Cotillion,” a sort of “Carnival of . . .” for social conservative female bloggers.

They have assembled a tasty selection of vintage artistic and cinematic images and an analysis of the Salem witch trials to serve their causes of trashing the “mainstream media,” the lifestyle left, and even Tom Cruise.

OK, I’m with them on the Tom Cruise part. To paraphrase Dorothy Parker’s critique of Katherine Hepburn at the start of the latter’s career, “He runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.”

Hurray for Piglet too.

Tag: Halloween

The day of the dead

We are approaching one festival where the Pagan and Catholic ritual calendars coincide, and the question of who borrowed from whom might even be more complex than we realize.

The Arizona Republic offers a guide to altars for the Day of the Dead / Día de los muertos.

I have my own take on putting up photos of the deceased: I like to wait a few years first. Does someone really need their sleeve tugged in the Otherworld right away?

Marigolds, champagne, whiskey, etc.–all fine.

(Via Relapsed Catholic.)

Tags: Halloween, Day of the Dead

Silly season roundup

Jason Pitz-Waters samples the Halloween-season coverage of Pagan religions. Check the last link in particular.

Halloween