There are girls you marry, and girls you . . .
Robin Runesinger explains Wiccan women: They worship goddesses, and they want to dominate men sexually, you see. (And all the lonely Ásatrú boys take another swig from their drinking horns, each wrapped in a mist of sexual fantasy.)
Reference is made (again) to a dualistic essay in which a rhetorical straw man is chopped to satisfying bits by a nicely honed battleaxe.
The Greeks are at it again
Plans are afoot to rebuild the Colossus of Rhodes..
One of the “seven wonders” of the ancient world, the giant statue of Helios was destroyed by a strong earthquake centuries ago and its material–bronze and iron–scavenged for other uses.
The original Colossus was similar in size and construction to the Statue of Liberty.
Is ‘Hollywood’ the problem?
One of my favorite Pagan academics, Nikki Bado-Fralick, says that the entertainment industry tends to portray certain pagan practices, including witchcraft or Wicca, with a thriller aspect.
The Hermit blog critiques the critique.
The loneliness of the long-distance columnist
Jason Pitz-Waters looks at some of the press coverage that newWitch magazine is receiving and wonders why no one mentions his music column.
Ain’t it the truth. You shoot these columns off into the dark and wonder if anyone ever reads them.
Some years back, I wrote a weekly fishing-hunting-outdoor recreation column for a small Colorado daily newspaper. Then I quit that job in order to teach part-time at a community college and work on a book. About a year later, someone stopped me at the supermarket and asked me to mention his organization’s upcoming event in my column. It would have been appropriate for the column, too, except I haven’t written one for the last year, you illiterate idiot. Like it’s obvious that you are one of my faithful readers . . . not..
OK, I didn’t say that, but I felt like saying it.
Religion being made
An interesting thread on Erynn Laurie’s blog shows a group of Celtic Reconstructionist Pagans attempting to move beyond the idea of “personal gnosis” (“It’s right for me.”)
In comparison to Greek religion, for example, we have almost nothing on Pagan Celtic religion that was actually written down by Pagan Celts, so any discussion about sources tends to get sidetracked into the question of how much the material was cleaned up or otherwise massaged by Christian monks, well-meaning Victorian folklorists, or other persons–hence the large part played indeed by personal gnosis.
So it is fascinating to watch people try to find some common ground in creating what is a 98.5-percent new Pagan religion.
“Revisioning the Past: Reconstructionism, Revitalization and Ethnicity”
The call for papers for the 2005 Conference on Contemporary Pagan Studies is now online here.
The CCPS will be Friday, 18 November 2005, in Philadelphia: that is the day before the American Academy of Religion–Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting begins. Registration for the AAR-SBL meeting is not actually necessary to attend CCPS, which has its own lesser admission fee.
Loving the trees
These young Scandinavians are taking the idea of erotic nature religion to its logical conclusion. Their public actions get attention too. (Not safe for work.)
Who is marginal now?
We Pagan academics struggle with feeling marginal, but as Elizabeth Carnell comments, consider how you would feel to be the only person with a doctorate in trolls?
But no doubt in Finland there are job opportunities.
No more crones on broomsticks
So says Brooks Alexander, author of the latest anti-cult ministry book on contemporary Paganism (hey, we dropped the “Neo-” a while back), Witchcraft Goes Mainstream.
“The old crone on a broomstick is gone,” says Alexander. “In her place is a young, hip, sexually magnetic woman who worships a goddess and practices socially acceptable magic.”
Rich Poll of Apologia Report crows over the book’s favorable mention on a Pagan blog: “Praise from one’s opponent is high praise indeed.”
The author claims “personal experience in the occult,” but then that can mean anything from a detailed study of Neoplatonic theurgy to merely having used a Ouija board once, so who knows?
A movement is underway in Britain to clear the name of Helen Duncan, a Scottish Spiritualist medium sent to prison during World War II under the Witchcraft Act of 1735.
She was convicted of faking mediumistic abilities, but as this reviewer says, some people thought she was a true medium at times:
Her partisans, and conspiracy theorists in general, looked back to 1941, when at an earlier séance in Portsmouth Helen had raised the spirit of a young sailor. In life, he had served in HMS Barham. News of his materialisation soon spread among the families in the port. This was a source of dismay to the Admiralty, who had not yet admitted that the warship had gone down.
A film is now being made about her life.
What is the Wiccan connection? After the war, British Spiritualists lobbied Parliament to repeal the 1735 act. Eventually, it was replaced by a milder law. The repeal occurred in 1951–and suddenly here was Gerald Gardner proclaiming the existence of the hither-to unknown Southern Coven of British witches.
Cynic that I am, I think that Gardner & Friends only felt safe to create the coven then, in part to furnish a “back story” to Cecil Williamson and Gardner’s new witchcraft museum on the Isle of Man, which opened that year.
Indeed, it may be the museum that makes 1951 significant, and that invoking the repeal of the 1735 anti-witchcraft law was merely another of Gardner’s dramatizations.