Via PaleoJudaica (scroll to Feb. 24), this fascinating snippet about the most enigmatic of all the Nag Hammadi texts used as a perfume ad.
Some Pagan scholars see in the “I” of the text, “Thunder, Perfect Mind,” a goddess figure, perhaps Sophia, the divine personification of Wisdom, perhaps the goddess Isis. Another translation is here.
Prof. Synecdoche on graduate school
I have been thinking of starting a series of posts about Pagans in academia, mainly because I periodically get these naive questions about “Where can I major in Pagan Studies?” (Short answer: almost nowhere, and who would hire you if you did?)
Meanwhile, blogger Professor Synecdoche has a good post with basic truths about graduate education.
A memory
Newlyweds, M. and I had spent late September through early October 1978 in Ireland, seeing tourist sights and visiting new Pagan friends–Janet and Stewart Farrar, the Fellowship of Isis household at Clonegal Castle, and others.
Homeward bound on an Aer Lingus flight from Dublin to New York, we heard the jumbo jet’s captain speak on the intercom.
A new pope had been selected, he told the passengers, a Polish cardinal.
“The next one will be Irish,” he added, and laughter rolled through the cabin.
Am I a little teary-eyed for John Paul II or for that long-gone me? Or both?
Word comes of the passing of Felicitas Goodman on 31 March. She was in her early nineties.
Born to ethnic German parents in Hungary, she attended the University of Heidelburg. She came to the United States after World War II and worked as a scientific translator before entering graduate school as a “nontraditional” student and earning a PhD in anthropology. She taught linguistics and anthropology at Denison University until retiring in 1979.
And then she began to devote herself full time to some very interesting research in the anthropological reconstruction of shamanism, culminating in the publication of her book Where the Spirits Ride the Wind: Trance Journeys and Other Ecstatic Experiences (Indiana University Press, 1990). Get it if you can, perhaps through some service like Advanced Book Exchange.
I was fortunate enough to persuade her to write the lead chapter of my 1994 anthology Witchcraft and Shamanism.
She purchased some land between Santa Fe and Española, New Mexico, and founded the “Cuyamonge Institute” for the study of shamanism. It never became as large as Michael Harner’s Foundation for Shamanic Studies, but I tend to think of Goodman and Harner as somewhat parallel: anthropologists who “went native.” Goodman, however, taught shamanic techniques perhaps more in Europe than in the United States, particularly in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
Nikki Bado-Fralick, one of her former academic students, wrote of her today, “I learned from Felicitas that we need to be brave adventurers in what she called the ‘alternate realities.’ There seemed to be no aspect of the alternate reality that we should not investigate, no spiritual territory that we should not explore. Felicitas warmly and generously gave to others, supporting them in their adventures without pause.”
Pagan outreach
Cherry Hill Seminary has been updating its Web site, although some of the news links seem to misdirect. Still, CHS has the most extensive program of any of the several Pagan seminaries in existence.
Holy Places Everywhere
The “Neokoroi” page lists primarily civic sites with strong Graeco-Roman religious elements that might effectively function as holy places. Some examples:
Woodside, Calfornia: The Pulgas Water Temple–beautiful Graeco-Roman style building open to the public, marking the place where the water from the Hetch Hatchey Reservoir in the mountains (which provides the Bay Area with fresh water) flows into the Crystal Springs Reservoir.
Minneapolis: In the lobby of the Minneapolis City Hall, there’s a large classical style statue titled “Father of Waters”. Effectively, it’s a statue of the god of the Mississippi River.
Another anniversary
I let my second “blogiversary” go by unheralded, but the local daily paper did annoint me an Gretchin Lair.
In honor of the blogiversary, here is the obligatory posting about “weird search engine results leading people to my blog.”
In my case, it was “Gerald Gardner Pueblo Colorado”. (A lot of the fun would be gone if people knew how to use Google’s advanced search page intelligently.)
To me, of course, “Gerald Gardner” means only him. And while he did visit the United States once in the late 1940s, he was never in Pueblo. Is there some Puebloan who occasionally gets odd looks when he tells strangers his name?
An anniversary
One month ago today I officially contracted Type A Influenza with Executive Option Package. And I still haven’t completely overcome it, due partly to my own foolishness. I should have just crawled into bed for the first week of March, but, no, I had to be the hero professor. With a Tuesday-Thursday teaching schedule this semester, I felt I could not afford to cancel more than one day of classes, lest my students, particularly in rhetoric, fall too far behind. (The advanced writing classes can run on autopilot for a little bit longer, but they too require guidance.) So I kept stumbling in, feverish and croaking. What a mistake. And each weekend I would think, “This weekend I will sleep it off,” and I’d feel a little better, but not really cured.
Cloudy and snowy weather has not helped either, even while M. and I both hoped for a few days of “false spring” to bake us in the sun.
One piece of good news—my paper, “Flying Ointments and the Discourse of Secrecy in Contemporary Wicca” was accepted for the first Pagan Studies session ever at the American Academy of Religion meeting next November. From the proposal, in which I attempt to channel a proper academic voice:
My proposed paper will examine various uses to which discourse about Witchcraft, both historical and contemporary Pagan varieties, uses the topic of psychotropic “flying ointment” as rhetorical trope, as evidence for claims of ethnic shamanism, and most importantly, as an ingredient in a discourse of secrecy.
My history-of-American Paganism book continues its own Journey to the (Editorial) Underworld at AltaMira Press. Evidently Persephone isn’t finished with it yet. Perhaps that is just as well; I have not had the energy to deal with anyway.
Stonehenge South
There is a new “Stonehenge” in New Zealand, but it is more than just a replica of the English original. It is custom-made for its site, “a complete and working structure designed and built for its precise location in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand. The henge stones, viewed from the centre, mark the daily rise and set positions of the sun, moon and bright stars. The henge also forms a Polynesian star compass marking the bearings taken by Polynesian sailors to and from Aotearoa [the Maori name for New Zealand].”
You can view the official website as well as a BBC news report. The wizard in the photos is this wizard.
Men and goddesses
Dave Green, a Pagan sociologist at the University of the West of England, is studying men in goddess religion, and invites Pagan men to take his online survey.