Enter the garden

A virtual tour of artist Niki de Saint Phalle’s Tarot garden.

A plain-spoken Iowan

When Des Moines County, Iowa, tries to make druggists log who buys pseudoephedrine, lest they be methamphetamine chemists, a local resident “speaks truth to power:”

“Quite frankly, I think the two biggest frauds at the local level are economic development and the war on drugs. Based on the way we’re going, the only manufacturing we’re going to have in this county is meth manufacturing. You [local officials] haven’t done anything for the war on drugs and never will be able to, and you certainly haven’t done anything for economic development.”

(Thanks to D’Alliance.)

Wiccans in our midst, once again

WorldNetDaily, known to its readers as “WorldNutDaily,” headlines, “Wiccans Meeting on Air Force Base.” (The shock of it!) The chaplains, as usual, are outspokenly in favor of the idea. Most military chaplains do support the idea of Pagan congregations.

This quote illustrates a weird kind of acceptance for Pagan military personnel:

Tim Wildmon, president of American Family Association [the “family values” people], said he didn’t see how the Wiccans’ meetings could be stopped, as long as the participants are not “committing violent acts or subverting the American government,” adding, “I disagree obviously with their faith, but I don’t see it as a threat to the military.”

“They ought to say no Muslims in the American military,” he told WND. “Wicca doesn’t teach, as far as I know, what Islam teaches about killing the infidel. Muslims in the American military are a much greater danger to the institution than is Wicca.”

Far-seeing Zeus

If Pagans wrote Chick tracts, they might come out like this. (Thanks to The Pagan Prattle.)

Fingernails

A compact essay by Tyrsson connects fingernail clippings, New Year’s resolutions, and the end of the-world-as-we-know-it.

Magic in the Academy

Morgan Luck’s comprehensive Web site on the Academic Study of Miracles and Magic has a new online home, including links to academic and other papers on mircles and magic.

Is polyamory required?

The publication of this article in Sunday’s Denver Post lit up the biggest Colorado Pagan e-mail list.

Of course, we recognized a pentagram ring–and the reference to reading Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land rings a big Pagan-history bell, about the founding of the Church of All Worlds in the 1960s.

But now people are asking, “Is monogamy subtly put down in the Pagan community? Is there pressure to be polyamorous?”

One poster, a divorced mother with a steady boyfriend, notes, “When I was married, I found it hard to find support for monogamous relationships in the community. The implication seemed to be that if you were monogamous, you were really just repressed and needed to get with the program.”

The high priestess of a Boulder coven, married 25 years, talks of people assuming that she must be polyamorous. “When potential initiate/students come to me on a first information-gathering chat, they often ask if it is required to sleep with the [high priestess] or [high priest].” The answer for her is no, absolutely not.

It’s an aspect of Pagan life that isn’t discussed too often outside the arena of plain old gossiping. When your religion–many forms of Wicca, at least–is heavily erotic in its symbolism, does that symbolism cross over into personal behavior? Like Carrie Bradshaw, I will leave the question hanging.

Killing for the gods

The idea promoted by writers such as Jonathan Kirsch that polytheists are less likely to wage religious warfare than monotheists (including, for instance, Communism as “secular monotheism”) does not mean that polytheistic societies had no religious violence.

Consider the new evidence from forensic anthropologists that not only the Aztecs but also the “peaceful” Mayans indeed engaged in large-scale human sacrifice, including children.

Using high-tech forensic tools, archaeologists are proving that pre-Hispanic sacrifices often involved children and a broad array of intentionally brutal killing methods.

For decades, apologists for these cultures have blamed the Spanish for their so-called propaganda about the “peaceful” Indians whom the Spanish just wanted to conquer and enslave. Certainly the Spanish conquistadores committed plenty of atrocities, recorded and protested at the time by those priests and laymen who objected to them. But the Spanish also recorded what they saw in Aztec society.

I once wrote a paper for a graduate seminar with Davíd Carrasco arguing that, again contrary to the apologists’ view, the Spanish reports of self-mutilation, bloodletting, and self-flagellation by the Aztec priests were probably correct. I quoted Ignatius Loyola and other Catholic religious who advocated self-flagellation, for example, to argue that the Spanish knew these practices when they saw them.

Prof. Carrasco is quoted in the article. I take no credit for shaping his thinking. The man has an ego the size of El Templo Mayor all by himself.

Filler

Bad dogs and other fine T-shirt ideas.

Once I crawl out of the hole that is the first week of the semester, I will post more. That’s a promise.

More on the “poison path”

This looks interesting, but will it hold a candle to Dale Pendell’s work (the third volume is supposed to be out in August)?