“Witness of Another World” is a Powerful Documentary about “Visitor” Encounters

Aside from an occasional excursion, I am not much into UFO studies. It was years after it came out that I read Jacques Vallée’s1 Passport to Magonia, and it shaped my thinking.

I put its thesis like this: Instead of chugging through interstellar space to Earth, the UFO-nauts have always been here. “They” appear in many different shapes, some humanoid, some not, as it suits their fancy. Sometimes They just like to mess with us for reasons we do not understand. Or in more refined language,

As an alternative to the extraterrestrial visitation hypothesis, Vallée has suggested a multidimensional visitation hypothesis. This hypothesis represents an extension of the ETH where the alleged extraterrestrials could be potentially from anywhere. The entities could be multidimensional beyond space-time, and thus could coexist with humans, yet remain undetected (Wikipedia).

Back in the 1970s, Vallée and his wife flew to Argentina to investigate the case of Juan Pérez, a 12-year-old boy from a gaucho family in northern Argentina. Sent out one morning to bring in the family herd, Juan saddled his favorite horse, Cometa (Comet), and rode off into the pastures. On his ride, Juan encountered . . . something . . . that seemed to be a typical flying saucer. Tying Cometa to the craft’s ladder, he went up into it, he said.

There he encountered two beings. When he went home and told his story, he soon became a UFO celebrity. Cometa, however, sickened and died mysteriously only a few days after the encounter.

Juan’s life was wrecked. Call it PTSD. Call it a bad case of susto (soul loss). He fled the ufology scene. He ended up a fifty-ish bachelor, living an isolated life with just his dogs, working seasonally on neighboring ranches and otherwise alone.

There he was until an Argentine filmmaker, Alan Stivelman, decided to reunite him with Vallée, with whom he had had a good relationship as a youth. Vallée was enthusiastic about the plan — all he wanted was a couple of months to study intensively to improve his Spanish.

Stivelman’s documentary, Witness of Another World, is just beautiful movie-making. Whether on Argentinian pampas or up north in the jungle villages of Guaraní Indians, who play an important part in the documentary (Juan has some Guaraní ancestry) or exploring the texture’s of Juan’s crumbling house, it is good to look at.

It is a story of a man brought back from the edge, a spiritual rescue mission, where ufology meets shamanism meets a compassionate reunion of old friends —  the eighty-year-old scientist and the grown-up but still frightened gaucho boy.

You can rent it (download) for $4.99 or buy it (download) for $12.99. It is on Amazon Prime as well.

Listen to what Jacques Vallée has to say about “the phenomenon,” his term for the whole UFO/demon/fairy/visitor complex. Watch what the shamans do. And remember that “They” are not necessarily our friends.

Bonus: On his Dreamland podcast, Whitley Strieber interviews director Alan Stivelman, with contributions from Jacques Vallée.

  1. Born in France, Vallée has spent most of his life in the US. His career includes astronomy, software engineering, venture capitalism — and UFO studies. [↩]

Witchcraft Cycles and the Official Witch of LA

“Official Witch” Louise Huebner with Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty, late 1960s.

Jason Mankey’s Raise the Horns blog (in the sidebar) carries his look back over the previous decade, “Paganism & Witchcraft in the 2010’s.” I urge you to read it.

I would like to add just a little bit of nuance to one passage:

Until recently Modern Witchcraft was generally tied into some sort of spiritual system. Most of the self-identified Witches I knew twenty years ago talked at least a little about the sabbats or maybe “the Goddess.” Today that’s no longer really the case and “Witchcraft” seems to be associated more simply with just “magic.” There are some who will argue that it’s always been that way, but I disagree. Books on Witchcraft emphasized a variety of different things, a lot of today’s Witchcraft simply focuses on magickal practice.

Apparently I am one who disagrees, because it feels like we are swinging back to the 1960s–1970s, when there were books out on witchcraft that had nothing to do with Wicca; in fact, few people have ever heard of Wicca. But everyone has heard of witchcraft.

To continue ….

I interviewed Amanda Yates Garcia recently and read her book, much of her story was familiar to me because we are of a similar age, however . . . With the exception of Michael Hughes I didn’t know any of the people who blurbed her book (rare for me in the Witch-world), and I’m pretty sure Yates Garcia and I have never been to the same event. That’s not a knock on her (or I hope, me), just an example of the two parallel Witchcraft worlds that exist today. She’s operating in a different sphere than I am on Patheos and at Llewellyn, and that’s OK, but it seems more common today than it did 20 years ago.

Here again,we have cycled around. Amanda Yates Garcia immediately reminded me of Louise Huebner (1930–2014), who got herself named Official Witch of Los Angeles County in 1968. Here is her story how how it happened.

She claimed to have learned witchcraft from her mother and grandmother. Someone has put her 1969 album Seduction through Witchcraft up on YouTube, so you can experience it yourself. Different media, same shtick, am I right?

“A lot of today’s Witchcraft simply focuses on magickal practice”? That is true and probably will continue to be true.

Religious Scholars Incognito

The AAR’s 2019 annual meeting graphic.

When you are a scholar of religion, sometimes you forget how seriously people take religion.

Riding across New Mexico this week on Amtrak’s Southwest Chief, M. and I went to the dining car for supper. All the tables seat four, and to save space and facilitate service, if there are fewer than four of people, the steward will seat others at your table (or you at theirs) to fill them up. To some people, this is social event; others just greet you politely and then ignore you.

We had just one companion, however, an older man who introduced himself as “Fred.” I don’t know how it came up, but he said that he wrote books on various topics, including theology. (Uh-oh.) Also, he said, he had produced a new version of the Bible in 21st-century English. (What a concept! No one has thought of that before!) It became clear that his theology is very conservative.

He asked what I did. I said I had worked as a newspaper journalist and magazine editor, which is perfectly true. I did not say that I was on my way to the annual joint meeting of the American Academy of Religion and the Society for Biblical Literature, because if nothing else, many people will think you are Bible Answer Man or something.

Like the time I was riding a shuttle bus between my Chicago hotel and the McCormick Place convention center and the bus driver shut the door, looked over his shoulder, and said, “I bet you gentlemen know when Jesus is coming back.”

I let the Protestants on board handle that one.

My encounter with Fred, though, was mild compared to what another friend encountered on her trip to San Diego this year:

[I spent the flight] listening to some techbro explain to the Dean [of a certain seminary] how he and his friend started their own church based on self-actualization through electronic dance music.

He ended the plane ride by making the Dean make a Facebook video for his gurufeed (his words) about what he was grateful for and the great synchronicity they had.

I thought about trying to send the Dean a rescue party, but the Southwest flight attendants wouldn’t allow it.

If you are shy or just feeling anti-social, sometimes it is better not to say that you are a religion scholar.

A New Book for the Pagan Studies Series on Pagan Aspects of Pizzica in Southern Italy

A year ago I photographed Jefferson Calico (r.), author of Being Viking: Heathenism in Contemporary America with Giovanna Parmigiani, a visitor to the Equinox Publishing booth at the American Academy of Religion-Society of Biblical Literature joint book show at their annual meetings in Denver, Colorado.

I am happy to say that Giovanna has now signed a contract with us in the Contemporary and Historical Paganism series for her new book, which has a working title of The Spider Dance: Tradition, Time, and Healing in Southern Italy. A little piece of it is in the current issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies as “Spiritual Pizzica: A Southern Italian Perspective on Contemporary Paganism.”((If you do not want to buy access to the article, have you talked to your friendly inter-library loan librarian?))

Q:  Two books is a “series”?

A: It is more complicated than that. The series was originally published by AltaMira Press, a division of Roman & Littlefield, an American publisher. The first book in the series was Barbara Davy’s (a Canadian scholar) Introduction to Pagan Studies (2007), followed by my book Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America (2006).((Wait, you say, those numbers are out of sequence. All I can say is that Barb’s was actually printed first.)) There were others in the series, some acquired by my first co-editor, Wendy Griffin.

Wendy stepped down, and was replaced by the late Nikki Bado. Meanwhile, editorial changes at Rowman left Nikki and me looking for another home. We quickly found one at Equinox, which was already publishing The Pomegranate. Nikki and I brought in more books, including Pop Pagans: Paganism and Popular Music and Modern Pagan and Native Faith Movements in Central and Eastern Europe, whose co-editor, Scott Simpson, stepped up to replace Nikki after her death and continues as series co-editor now.

Meanwhile, there was a merger, a de-merger, and a sale, and those books in the “Series in Contemporary and Historical Paganism” ended up with Routledge, who discontinued the series. Meanwhile, we carried on with Equinox, starting over from scratch, more or less.

Q: What does pizzica sound like?

A: Try this (it’s kind of a formal performance):

Drummers might like this one:

This one is fun too. Remember that this part of the Italian peninsula was settled by Greeks way back.

One last thing: if you order from the links, I do get a small commission, which helps with the Web-hosting bill. Thanks.

Playing Heathen Neo-folk on North Dakota Highways

I was on my way to a little town in North Dakota where a friend lives about at the intersection of Norway and Washington streets — can you get any more perfect than that? And every little town is dominated by a Lutheran steeple.

A friend in Poland and I were emailing about how the eastern Dakotas and eastern Canadian prairies line up with Russia, ecologically. Only this is what you see instead of onion domes.

I drive on by, blasting Hedningarna (The Heathens) or some other Norski neo-folk on the Jeep’s speakers. The poor immigrants— their pastors thought that even Hardanger fiddle music was devilish. So much left behind.

Pomegranate 21.1 Published—Table of Contents

The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies

Issue 21.1 (2019) table of contents

Articles
Fallen Soldiers and the Gods: Religious Considerations in the Retrieval and Burial of the War Dead in Classical Greece
Sarah L. Veale

Attitudes Towards Potential Harmful Magical Practices in Contemporary Paganism – A Survey
Bethan Juliet Oake

Spiritual Pizzica: A Southern Italian Perspective on Contemporary Paganism
Giovanna Parmigiani

The Ethics of Pagan Ritual
Douglas Ezzy

“The Most Powerful Portal in Zion” – Kursi: The Spiritual Site that Became an Intersection of Ley-lines and Multicultural Discourses
Marianna Ruah-Midbar Shapiro , Adi Sasson

Book Reviews-open access
Stephen Edred Flowers, The Northern Dawn: A History of the Reawakening of the Germanic Spirit. Vol. 1, From the Twilight of the Gods to the Sun at Midnight
Jefferson F. Calico

Liselotte Frisk, Sanja Nilsson, and Peter Åkerbäck, Children in Minority Religions: Growing Up in Controversial Religious Groups
Carole M. Cusack

Ronald Hutton, The Witch: A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present
Chas S. Clifton

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween, dear readers. This day finds me still coping with the 16.5 inches (41 cm) of snow that fell this week, working simultaneously on two journals (a new Pomegranate is coming!) and preparing to start a book-editing project. And my own stuff too, of course.

It doesn’t feel very Halloween-ish, to tell the truth, but the British neighbor is throwing a Bonfire Night party on the compromise date of November 2nd, and I am looking forward to that.

Have We Indeed Reached “Peak Witch”?

I doubt it. But that is the kind of significant question that the New York Times is asking during Witchcraft and Paganism Media Month: “When Did Everybody [sic] Become a Witch?”

Witches are your millennial co-workers doing tarot card readings on their lunch breaks, and professional colleagues encouraging you to join them for a New Moon ceremony aimed at “career success.” (This happened to me the other day.)

Witches are influencers who use the hashtag #witchesofinstagram to share horoscopes, spells and witchy memes, and they are anti-Trump resistance activists carrying signs that say “Hex the Patriarchy” (also the title of a new book of spells) and “We are the granddaughters of the witches you weren’t able to burn.”

Witches are panelists, they are podcasters, they are members of The Wing (which calls itself a “coven”), they are in-house residents at swanky Manhattan hotels and some might say that one is even a presidential candidate, Marianne Williamson. (Alyssa Milano, of “Charmed” fame, recently fund-raised for Williamson. Coincidence?)

Wait a minute, I thought that Marianne Williamson was a Jewish New-Ager. It is so confusing.

There are some interesting links here though.

That Altar Needs More Skulls

Photo: Secretariat of Citizen Security of Mexico City

People have been stacking up skulls in what is now Mexico City since the Aztecs ruled it.

I just wonder at the timing of this particular raid in late October . . .

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Police found more than 40 skulls, dozens of bones and a fetus in a glass jar next to an altar in the den of suspected drug traffickers in Mexico City during a raid this week, authorities said on Sunday.

Four of the skulls were built into the altar in the central Tepito neighborhood, where police arrested 31 people on Tuesday on suspicion of drug cartel activity, the city government said in a statement. A judge ordered 27 of the suspects released.

Vocabulary word of the day: Tzompantli.

Building an Altar to the Dead

“A Step-by-Step Guide to Building Your Own Altar This Día de Muertos,” from the Remezcla (” the most influential media brand for Latino Millennials”) website.

Rooted in pre-Hispanic traditions and mixed with elements of Christianity, the ofrendas – which can consist of several levels, depending on space – are a place of gathering. Not only do they unite the living and the dead, they’re also a space to share stories. Each family member contributes by talking about their history.

You can build ofrendas, which include items that reveal a little into the person you’re celebrating, anywhere within your home. Centered around the photos of a loved one, ofrendas typically commemorate those you knew personally. But it’s not rare to see ofrendas honoring celebrities, especially those we feel we know firsthand.

The beauty of these altars is they can take any shape and are highly customizable. But they should represent the four elements: fire (candles), wind (papel picado), earth (food), and water. While no two ofrendas are alike, here is a eight-step guide to get you started.

I published a similar set of instructions earlier along with some reflections. 

And after that, La profesora became upset that students were doing it wrong — in other words, they were being too much multicultural with their altars to celebrities, etc., and so the campus-wide altar building in the Student Center was stopped, while only one “correct” altar was erected in a showcase in one classroom building.