Resistance is futile

“We are Zogg.” Go here if you dare–and have a fast connection. (Link from Non Fluffy Wicca.)

In memorium Monica Sjoo

Monica Sjoo, artist, writer, and a key figure in Goddess spirituality, died Monday.

With Barbara Mor, she coauthored The Great Cosmic Mother: Discovering the Religion of the Earth (Harper San Francisco: 1987). She also wrote Return of the Dark/Light Mother and other works.

In an email circulated this week, Starhawk writes of her,

The last time I saw Monica, she came for a night to the Earth Activist Training I was coteaching in England. She presided over the ritual we were having that night in her wheelchair, sitting by the fire like an embodiment of the Crone herself. We told stories, of the walk and the Stonehenge ritual, of Greenham and the antinuclear actions of the eighties, of the early years of the feminist spirituality movement. The younger women activists—and the men—listened with rapt attention to a history most of them had never heard. Monica seemed strong, at peace, complete. That is how I will remember her, her silver hair shining in the firelight, her eyes alight. One of the mothers of the women’s spirituality movement is gone. May the Goddess embrace her, take her into her loving arms, and bring her strong, creative spirit around the circle to rebirth.

A poem she wrote as her son Sean was dying of cancer is here.

Mutilating Pagan art

Via The Cranky Professor, I discovered Towards an Archaeology of Iconoclasm, a blog devoted to early Christian campaign to destroy or at least any earlier art that suggested connection to Pagan thought. The writer is a Danish graduate student in archaeology, Troels Myrup Kristensen. The thesis will attempt to answer questions such as who were the image-breakers? In what contexts does iconoclasm occur? What role did religious violence play in late Roman/early Christian society? What is the larger picture?

The Abrahamic religions’ hostility to art continues–witness the Taliban’s destruction of the giant Buddhist statues in Afghanistan a few years ago.

Discusing a damaged sculptural group of the Three Graces, Kristensen notes,

There were many different motives for Christians to smash pagan sculpture, and one of them was an aversion to nudity. This is clear from a series of sculptures, whose genitalia have been mutilated.

Genital mutilation. What more is there to say?

Church, state, and sacred sites

No insightful comment here, just a link to a Christian Science Monitor piece on the difficulties of applying law to sacred sites. Kennewick Man gets a mention too. (Remember, boys and girls, “Caucasian” is not the same as “Caucasoid.” Even the CSM fumbles that term.)

What she said

Sunfell, posting at The Juggler, wields her Giant Hammer of Paradigm Busting:

Unity” is another delusion that should be thrown out with PLPT [Perfect Love and Perfect Trust]. We are happily individual, with our individual Circles and practices. Anyone who seeks to unify the community is doomed to fail.

Why do people make such a fuss over “unity,” when so often it just means “Do it my way”?

The sacred prostitute

In recent decades, two groups have attempted to rehabilitate the so-called “sacred prostitutes” of the ancient Mediterranean world. Part of what we think we know of these alleged customs of temple prostitutes–either women dedicated their virginity to a deity and/or possibly slaves–comes from the Greek geographer and historian Strabo, who lived about 2,000 years ago.

One group did so in the interest of improving the image and social standing of today’s sex workers, as does this site:

[M]any contemporary prostitutes turn to the iconography of the “sacred prostitute,” a quasi-historical construct providing a “golden age” when the prostitute’s unique power was honored rather than reviled. Relying on mythology and animal imagery of Near Eastern goddesses, particularly Lilith and Inanna, this strain of discourse constructs a position of political and spiritual sovereignty within which prostitutes can contextualize their work and their political struggles.

Others seek to meld the commercial and sacred roles. They may seek to expand the boundaries of how we express spirituality or view prostitution as redefined as “priestess.”

The “holy whore” may express a form of gnostic spirituality as well.

Some followers of revived ancient Egyptian religion take a similar line:

The Egyptian sacred ‘prostitute’ (who was probably a highly regarded as a member of Egyptian society because of her association with different gods or goddesses (such as Bes and Hathor), rather than the street walker that the modern mind imagines) advertised herself through her clothing and make up.

However, this article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz is more skeptical, at least about Egypt:

Surprisingly, the minute one sets aside the Judeo-Christian moral code and excises from the list of “harlots” those who engaged in a provocative line of work such as erotic dancing, there is no evidence, in all the historical findings from the days of the Pharaohs, that sex could be bought for money in the Land of the Nile. (Link via Paleojudaica.)

Clearly the combination of women + sex + religious worship is still a potent one, even to another writer who wants partially to debunk it.

Kama, working name of an Indian-born London prostitute who considers herself to be a devadasi, or sacred prostitute in the Hindu tradition, has a blog too, where she has mentioned that she felt looked down on by British sex-worker activists, who considered her to be a “trafficked woman.”

She writes elsewhere,

Being a Devadasi allows me a world view that legitimizes my sexual behaviour so I can enjoy myself without any sense of guilt or regret, it gives me the processes that allow me to genuinely have affection for the men I meet, and a lifestyle that allows me to live independently of South Asian patriarchy while yet maintaining a South
Asian identity.

So there is the new sacred prostitute: economically on her own and framing her life in terms of identity politics.

Ghost story

Boulder, Colo., Wiccan priestess Morwyn has a piece in the current (August 2005) issue of Fate magazine, titled “Exorcism Spanish Style,” based on an incident that occurred to her in Santiago de Campostela in 1997.

She owns Dunraven House, the latest incarnation of magical-supplies business that has occupied her since the 1970s–she told me once that she was inspired by similar such stores catering to followers of Umbanda and Candomblé that she encountered when in Brazil on a Fulbright fellowship.

I always tell my nonfiction-writing students that Fate is the place to try to sell a true ghost story.

Banned at Borders?

I was trying to track down a report that The Love Spell: An Erotic Memoir of Spiritual Awakening, by high-profile Wiccan lawyer and priestess Phyllis Curott, had been yanked from bookstores after pressure from social-conservative Christians such as these.

I cannot find anything so far to substantiate that rumor.

What is probably worse, in her social sphere, is getting the snarky treatment from Veiled Conceit, a blog devoted to sarcastic deconstruction of New York Times wedding announcements.

The Potter menace

To my mind, the best thing about the Harry Potter books is that kids like to read them, and I generally think that Reading is Good. But I never made the important connection noted by Christian blogger Dan Edelen: Wicca is the first world religion produced in the United Kingdom. J.K. Rowling lives in the UK also. It’s no coincidence!

As ever, don’t skip the comments.

UPDATE: In a different sort of bitchfest, blogger Lindsay Beyerstein has all the links on Terry Prachett’s denunciation of Rowling for not being a proper fantasy-genre writer.

It really pisses [Pratchett and Neil Gaiman] off that such a huge commercial success isn’t counted squarely as a coup for the fantasy genre.

On the other hand, they really don’t like the fact that a card carrying non-fanboy is kicking asses all over the best seller lists.

There is a sign on the border of every ghetto: “Sal si puedes. Get out if you can.”