Drug war backfires again

The Drug Enforcement Agency’s bureaucratic blunders may unwittingly end up boosting the legal hemp industry, while new research seems to confirm that your body manufactures morphine–a finding with interesting implications for the study of addiction.

If I were (a) younger and (b) more interested in medicine as a career than I ever was, I would concentrate on the study of addiction. What a spiritual-medical-psychological-legal-social puzzle!

Thanks to The Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics for the links.

“The fastest-growing religion”

James R. Lewis (University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point) collects data on new religious movements in this article in the online Marburg Journal of Religion.

In New Zealand, at least, “The fastest growing segment is Paganism (‘Nature and Earth Based Religions’)”. The data from other English-speaking countries are suggestive too, but the United States, of course, does not ask questions about religious affiliation in its census.

My earlier posts on this topic are here and here.

Peyote progress

The Utah Supreme Court has decided that Native American Church members may use peyote even if they are not on the rolls of a federally recognized tribe.

James Mooney, the NAC leader spectacularly busted a few years ago, is celebrating, but the feds, of course, see peyote as an Evil Drug whose use must be contained and limited to enrolled tribal members (marginal folks, you know) and continue to menace Mooney’s NAC congregation.

“If this concerned the sacrament of any other religion, people would be up in arms.” (Links from Religion New Blog.)

Andrew Chumbley

Andrew Chumbley, who died this month on what would have been his 37th birthday, pursued an individualistic form of Traditional Witchcraft, not to mention other byways of magic. Comparisons between his life and that of Austin Osman Spare are inevitable, especially when you consider Chumbley’s artwork.

Häxan

Continuing our sporadic investigation of cinematic paganism, M. and I watched Häxan (“Witches”), a 1922 silent Swedish film that is available subtitled in English as Witchcraft through the Ages.

Released just before Margaret Murray swayed English-speaking readers with her “survival of the Old Religion despite persecution” theory, this film reflects the “enlightened” outlook of the late 19th century: witchcraft was partly ecclesiastical prejudice and partly undiagnosed “hysteria.”

In its own way, its pseudo-documentary approach commits a different set of blunders than did Murray, blaming the Catholic Church for witch persecutions, when, in fact, Church courts were milder (more likely to acquit, less likely to use torture) than were secular courts–and Protestants killed as many “witches” as did Catholics, maybe more.

Parts are hilarious (the animal-demon costumes at the “sabbat”), while other parts are merely inexplicable (the two men dissecting a corpse–what was that all about?).

One online critic writes, “What makes Häxan memorable is [director/actor Benjamin] Christensen’s remarkable quasi-documentary approach, which must have been awfully sophisticated stuff in 1922.”

Maybe. Now, at best, it’s a Hallowe’en party movie.

DNA vs. the Mormons

Christianity Today, which bears no love for the Latter-day Saints, reviews a new book that undercuts a key Mormon teaching: that American Indian tribes are descended from “Lamanites” and “Nephites,” alleged ancient immigrants from Israel. LDS officials react with predictable smokescreen.

Years ago, I worked at a newspaper in a Colorado town next to a Mormon colleague. The paper was owned by a family named Lehman, so I’d occasionally make a joke based on wordplay of Lehman-ite/Lamanite. She would laugh, but with a look in her eye that said, “How do you know about that?”

Another reason for home-schooling

Pennsylvania man keeps the kids at home to protect them from neighborhood witches. Where is Professor Evans-Pritchard when we need him?

Robots in the Victorian Era

Visit this site and marvel at the ingenuity of our ancestors! Then backtrack to the home page for more exploration, after you realize that you are definitely looking at an alternative history of robotics.

Question: Could I buy items from the gift shop with Antarctica dream-dollars?

Interfaith games

In Austin, Texas, a Feri-style invocation in a Methodist Church, the Statesman reports (registration required).

“The expression [broom closet] is an example, Wiccan Gordon Fossum said, of the mix of mirth and reverence his faith embodies. Earlier that morning, Fossum had jokingly invoked the ‘Goddess Caffeina’ to get the church’s coffee maker brewing.

“Wearing a silver pentacle necklace and sipping from a Garfield mug, Fossum shrugged.

“‘If a religion can’t laugh at itself, it’s got some work to do,’ he said.”

Thanks to Doug LeBlanc at GetReligion. Apparently this was his first encounter with Wiccan humor.

Magic noir

Back to my ongoing series on literary and cinematic paganism: over the weekend M. and I watched Cast a Deadly Spell (HBO, 1991), which attempts to blend 1940s-style film noir with magic. In fact, the movie begins with the statement, “The year is 1948. Everybody uses magic.” Everyone, that is, but private eye Philip Lovecraft (the craggy-faced Fred Ward) whose character bears no resemblance to the semi-reclusive writer from Providence, R.I. Julianne Moore plays his girlfriend, a cabaret singer. I would pay to watch Julianne Moore wash dishes, but this movie is just Who Framed Roger Rabbit for occultists.