Greek Pagans in the Sun
The Web site of the Supreme Council of the Gentile Hellenes, a Greek Reconstructionist Pagan group in Greece, has posted video clips of a NBC news feature about Greek Pagans–tied to the Olympics coverage, of course. (The compressed clips total about 30 megabytes.)
Coverage includes an Orthodox priest saying that Greeks can’t go back to idol-worshiping and footage of a vandalized Athens bookstore that sold Pagan books.
“The Witches Next Door”
Crisis, a conservative Catholic magazine, offers a new article on evangelizing Pagans, which such quotes as these:
“Why should Catholics care about a religious system so alien to ours? The simple answer is: It’s there, it’s growing, and some ex-Catholics find it attractive. (A more flippant answer: Look at what we have in common; after all, we’ve both had problems with Protestant Fundamentalists and been maligned in Jack Chick comics.)”
It all comes down to the usual stuff: Jesus trumps the Horned God. Catholics should set aside any distaste with Paganism long enough to drag us back into the True Church.
But Crisis has bigger image problems right now: editor Deal Hudson has had to resign as President Bush’s liason with Catholic voters after some skeletons fell out of his closet, as revealed by the National Catholic Reporter here.
(Thanks to Wendy Griffin for the original link.)
Another witchy movie
Keeping up with the theme of small-p pagan books and movies (see entries here and here), M. and I have now watched I Married a Witch, released in 1942 and starring Veronica Lake in her prime–all long blonde hair and sleepy, scratchy voice.
Robert Benchley, a well-known humorist of the time, plays best friend to the bridegroom, Fredric March.
The plot revolves around the stereotypical idea of the witch giving up her powers to marry a mortal, which meant that I had to endure M. making gagging noises every time Lake’s character, Jennifer, would say something like, “I want to be good wife, darling.”
The South African-born actor Cecil Kellaway, who plays Jennifer’s sorcerer father, Daniel, apparently once had a guest role on the 1960s TV sitcom Bewitched, which was based on much the same premise.
Portability
Walking past the Chemistry building on my way to the parking lot yesterday, I had a random thought that it was 20 years since I had bought my first personal computer, a Kaypro II.
Offering a state-of-the-art 64k memory (that’s kilobytes, not megabytes), it was also portable, which is to say that it had a handle riveted to one side, and its two sections could be snapped together to make something the size and weight of a heavy suitcase. I traveled with it belted into the passenger seat of my ’69 VW bus.
But it got me through numerous freelance writing assignments , graduate school, and the production of Iron Mountain: A Journal of Magical Religion, a forerunner of The Pomegranate.
And I am happy to say that the editorial copy for Pomegranate 6.2 went off to the copy editor in England today, meaning that we should have copies in hand in time for the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion and the Pagan Studies conference.
Almost pagan
Thanks to Nick Freeman, whose paper, “The Shrineless God: Paganism, Literature, and Art in Forties England,” will appear in the next issue of The Pomegranate, I have been watching and reading some classics of literary, if not self-consciously religious, small-p paganism.
One was the film A Canterbury Tale, made during World War II by the writing-directing team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (a Hungarian refugee in England).
One appreciation of the film includes this comment: “Strange and poetic, A Canterbury Tale combined Christian metaphysics with a celebration of England’s rural past that at times seemed almost pagan.”
Powell and Pressburger also made The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, which Winston Churchill allegedly hated, about an honorable but intellectually hidebound British officer.
M. and I also enjoyed the Foyle’s War series, set on the south coast of England early in World War II. I am starting to think that its writers mined the Powell-Pressburger vein–not for plots, but for plot elements. Just so far I have noticed these in episodes of Foyle’s War:
1. A band of small boys collecting scrap paper for the war effort find a document that aids the protagonist (A Canterbury Tale.
2. An aging Army officer, now reduced to serving in the Home Guard, who is outwitted in a war game by a less scrupulous younger counterpart (Colonel Blimp).
Most of Powell and Pressburger’s films are available as mail-order rentals through Video Library.
Cutting-edge Pagan Music
Check the playlist for Jason Pitzl-Waters’ next “Darker Shade of Pagan” radio show (also webcast) — he is the magister of contemporary Pagan DJs.
‘Where You At?
Rebecca of “What’s in Rebecca’s Pocket?” blog rediscovers the “Where You At?” bioregional information quiz, which first appeared in CoEvolution Quarterly, later known as Whole Earth Review, in 1981. I am glad to have done my part in disseminating it within the Pagan community.
(Whole Earth Review is no more, but the Web site still exists.)
Randomness
I am really too busy preparing for fall classes to blog right now, but meanwhile…
First, from CultureCat (11 August), this thought:
[Colleague who’s just starting to learn about blogs, reflecting after our lengthy discussion of public/private and the pros and cons of real name v. pseudonym in blogging] “You know, academic blogging under your real name is sort of like the intellectual equivalent of going to a nude beach.”
Second, from Dave Haxton’s blog, another attempt to outlaw a plant, or the uses thereof. You will see from the design of this blog why I’m amused.
I have been re-reading Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, the leading entry in the literary genre of “when Classics majors go bad.”
It was first published in 1992, and I did my part for her royalty payments by sending at least three hardcover copies as Christmas presents in 1993. Sales were good, Tartt’s reputation soared, and some readers apparently worshipped at her feet.
Now I think it ought to be declared one of those unintentional Pagan classics like the film The Wicker Man. (The Fortean Times interview with director Robin Hardy is here.)
The Wicker Man’s appeal lay in its portrayal of a fictional yet contemporary Pagan society, rather than its plot. The Secret History is a different sort of drug: it whispers of power and liberation in a seductive Romantic way, filtered through the mind of a 4th-century C.E. Hellenistic intellectual, the kind who would have referred to Christians as “atheists.”
Conference on Canadian Paganism?
Some tentative organizing is underway for a conference on Canadian Paganism, with preliminary information here.
Meanwhile, the second annual Pagan Studies conference held just before the American Academy of Religion annual meeting is scheduled for 19 November in San Antonio. More information here.
More on the chaplaincy issue
Terry Mattingly of the GetReligion blog has two entries (first and second on the issues raised by the Contra Costa Times that I referenced yesterday.
So if this is the case, what set of universal standards or laws might U.S. military officials cite in order to limit the religious rights of witches, druids, wizards and other pagan folk?
Yes, indeed. The bureaucratic machinery is groaning and creaking as it attempts to deal with the fact that there is more to American religion than the Abrahamic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam).
In fact, even though the United States does not count religious affiliation on its census, it may prove to be the military that does, thus providing us with some way of extrapolating affiliations in the larger population. Maybe, contrary to what I wrote earlier, Wicca will turn out to be “the fastest-growing religion” after all. Right now, who can say?
Meanwhile, as a former newspaper reporter, I continue to enjoy Mattingly’s attempts to get the religion stories (and religion angles on other news stories) that the mainstream “pack journalists” miss.