“Paganism Goes Mainstream”
That’s the title of a new piece by Kimberly Winston at BeliefNet. I’m quoted in it. Yikes.
Pagan/Christian clergy
Christianity Today’s blog continues to be vexed by Pagan ritual in the Episcopal Church.
With Matt Drudge-like glee, the blog notes that the two married Episcopal clergy involved are also contemporary Pagan Druids. (Let’s capitalize Pagan, please, Mr. Olsen.) Their Druid group is here.
I have seen people hold clerical positions in Christian denominations and Wiccan groups as well. Back in 1996, the fourth of Llewellyn’s Witchcraft Today anthologies, which I edited, carried an article by a woman who is both Wiccan and a minister in the United Methodist Church. So is her husband: they are co-pastors of a UMC church.
From a polytheistic perspective, it all makes sense. From a cultural perspective, it is pretty risky, hence her pseudonym–although at least some of the UMC congregation knew of their dual roles.
UPDATE: Conservative Episcopalians are in full cry, as demonstrated here and here (note the comments).
It’s too easy . . .
. . . to make fun of the “teen witch” fad. I try to restrain myself. I was 16 once too. But then the Llewellyn New Times catalog arrives, announcing their new Teens & Tweens Web site
Are you “Craft curious, but seriously sick of those dense, boring bookstore books on Wicca?” Yes, this is the site for people who can’t make it through even Silver Ravenwolf or Scott Cunningham’s work, presumably, as I doubt the copywriter has even seen Earthly Bodies, Magical Selves.
Fans of Laurie Stolarz’s young-adult mystery novels such as White is for Magic can buy T-shirts proclaiming their allegiance–or lunchboxes, camisoles, and caps.
“Check out our Wicca channel for spellcraft support, Tarot channel for card counseling and Astrology channel for horoscope help.”
Chevrolet, part of General Motors, competes with Pontiac, another part. Llewellyn, too, has started to compete with itself. Result: more market share.
Idol-worshiping Episcopalians
Christianity Today reacts to Pagan aspects of an Episcopal Church experiment with women’s liturgy. Other conservative Christian bloggers chime in: check out the “comments” section of this blog. The ordination of women led to “sexual narcissism,” you see.
It’s been a long time–like 40 or 50 years–since the Episcopal Church was humorously referred to as “the Republican Party at prayer.”
Wolf packs for truth
The Bush campaign’s latest television ad is debunked by the wolves themselves.
You would not expect Karl Rove to have read Of Wolves and Men, would you?
O Web gallego
When I was in graduate school, I studied Portuguese in order to be able to read books on Umbanda for my research. Since I already knew some Spanish, the two languages would blend in my mind and produce a feeble hybrid. I joked to my teacher that I was actually speaking Galician (from northeastern Spain).
That would be no joke to some people, since now there are Web sites in Galician. Abre ben os ollos e toma nota, as they say.
Musicians on drugs
These, however, probably are not the musicians whom you expected to be reading about.
It’s that time of year again
The Religion Newswriters Association primes journalists everywhere with story ideas on Wicca.
Meanwhile, a school district in Washington state bans Halloween as “offensive to witches.” (Thanks to Joanne Jacobs.)
Let’s see, if “Everyone’s Irish on St. Patrick’s Day,” as the common saying has it, then what happens on the last day of October, hmm?
Offended? No. Amused at the annual flurry of attention is more like it.
A Forest God
This has turned into a weekend of car repair and grading student writing. But last Friday M. and I did manage to fit in a short cross-country ramble in the Wets. In some shadowed ravine I bumped into that forest god again.
Or, to use technical language, it is a sort of “irruption of the numenous.”
You’re walking through the woods, and there, in a tiny clearing, you see a man-high young fir tree, all perky and perfect, every needle sharp, blue-green in the sun.
On its needles has fallen a shower of golden coins–the golden, rounded leaves of aspen trees. The little fir seems to have its “hands” out snatching leaves from the shower of gold.
It is full of shining power–and it’s just a fir tree.
Pomegranate updates
I spent a few minutes yesterday on updating the old Pomegranate Web site. SInce all the activity is at Equinox Publishing’s new site, the old one exists mainly to sell back issues.
The first five volumes of quarterly issues, less one–19 issues all together–are available on CD-ROM in PDF format for US $20.
Just for fun, I put up a page listing the contents of Volume 6 (2004).
Finally, I am updating the contributors’ style guide on both sites. (Changes at Equinox’s site, however, will not be immediate, because I have to wait on their webmaster.)
As far as The Pomegranate style is concerned, I have issued an editorial “fatwa” about the capitalization of such words as P/pagan, W/witch, H/heathen, and so on.
It’s “Pagan” both when referring to self-consciously revived contemporary
Paganisms and to other polytheistic, world-affirming religions, especially when viewed in contrast to monotheisms, for example, Roman Paganism.
My analogy is with “Hinduism,” a category that did not exist until Westerners arrived in the Indian subcontinent and applied a label to a very diverse collection of religious practices.
It’s “pagan” when the meaning is “irreligious,” “sensual,” or merely “nature-loving,” for example, we could take the last sense and speak of the literary paganism of Algernon Blackwood.
This rule tends to follow American over British practice, but I’m an American. They get to keep their single quotation marks and to put the full stop outside the final quotation mark in a sentence. (Canadian usage is a muddle, but that’s another issue all together.)