More attempted damage control from the Christian right to the fuss raised by The Da Vinci Code, about which I blogged earlier on Dec. 9, 2003.
Here, AP writer Richard N. Ostling writes a fairly snide review of Karen L. King’s The Gospel of Mary Magdala: Jesus and the First Woman Apostle.
(Credit to Religion News Blog, which has the dirt on all kinds of religious groups, so long as they are not “Christian apologists [or] countercult professionals.”)
As one of those people who always liked candles, I hate to admit this, but it seems to be true. Burning parafin-based candles indoors might be bad for you. But how many candles are too many?
From the linked risk-analysis paper: “These results support the conclusion that the public health risks posed by benzene in candle emissions (soot) do not exceed the threshold (1 excess cancer in 100,000 individuals) for California Proposition 65 listing and labeling. “
Interest in Vodou Surges
As long as I am on the topic of Vodou/Voodoo/Voudoun, this New York Times story ties a “surging revival of interest” in the religion to 9/11, oddly enough. (Free registration required to read the article.) “The appeal of voodoo now cuts across racial and national lines. Some specialists say that in the United States, and particularly in New Orleans, many of those who now gravitate toward it are white.”
“Something very real is happening,” said Martha Ward, a professor of anthropology at the University of New Orleans who wrote one of the forthcoming books about [famed early 19th-century Voodoo priestess Marie] Laveau. “Americans today are hungry for spiritual fulfillment, and voodoo offers a direct experience with the sacred that appeals to more and more people.”
Practical Polytheism
I am currently reading Devoted to You: Honoring Deity in Wiccan Practice. The title is a bit of a misnomer, as one contributor, Maureen Reddington-Wilde, could be more properly described as a Greek Reconstructionist. Since I was recently blogging about Aphrodite, I’m starting with Reddington-Wilde’s chapter on Her.
Editor Judy Harrow contributes a section on Gaia; other constributors are Alexei Kondratiev (Brigit) and Geoffrey W. Miller (Anubis).
Harrow writes, “We are four Pagan henotheists, each of whom has a long-standing devotion to the Deity he or she has written about here. We are devoted. We respect and admire one another’s devotion. . . . Since modern Paganism is a high-choice relgion, we have a wide range of choices in our basic approach to religion itself. So another thing that I would hope is that this book will show you something of the range of options available to you and help you find your own comfortable place within that range.”
Vodou souls
“The Quick and the Dead: The Souls of Man in Vodou Thought” is an essay by the Berkeley, California, musicologist Richard Hodges, who writes, “In nineteenth century France, the Nancy school of hypnotism discovered a way of producing states of abandonment of the body by the personality as profound as in traditional ritual possession. This only became a minor chapter in the history of Western medical psychology. There is a deep-seated prejudice in the West against loss of control. There is such a high evaluation of the individual and his personality that it is very difficult to conceive of the possibility for the ego to relax its grip and to accept to be displaced by something higher and finer. Such relaxation is one of the fundamental states of the human psyche. The absence in the West of cultural institutions for the socialization and development of this state is one of the signs of the loss of genuine psycho-spiritual knowledge in modern times. “
Nightmare Alley
Last November, Jim Lewis, the editor of Syzygy, the journal of new religious movements, tipped me off about William Lindsay Gresham’s 1946 crime novel Nightmare Alley. He suggested that this book about “carny” life–with its attitude that most people are marks, rubes, sheep and that all religions are tricks and con jobs, held the blueprint for Anton LaVey’s creation of the Church of Satan twenty years later.
The relationship might be analogous to the way that the Church of All Worlds was based on Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land — terminology, polyamory, and all (except for Martians).
Gresham’s books are apparently “collectible,” and the cheapest way that I found to buy the book, after cruising Advanced Book Exchange, was to order a discounted copy of Crime Novels, an anthology of noir-ish ficition, from Powell’s Books online. Nightmare Alley is included, along with The Postman Always Rings Twice and other classics.
Now for the truly strange part: he and his second wife, the poet Joy Davidman, became strongly interested in the writing of C.S. Lewis in the 1940s. They broke up in 1954; she went to England and later married C.S. Lewis herself.
L. Ron Hubbard comes into the picture too, but I think that’s enough weirdness for now.
(That makes two posts in a row using the word “noir.” What’s going on? I don’t plan these things.)
And not a minute too soon
I am referring to 2003, of course. Let it be over with. I have just checked two thirty-ish couples, plus dog and toddler, into our rental cabin, and I hope they have a good New Year’s Eve celebration. Mary and I will be catching up on The Sopranos on video, since we live beyond the range of cable television.
We have just returned from a 3,800-mile train trip: Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington (and for me, Newark and New York–right through Tony Soprano’s fictional homeland). Two-and-a-half cheers for Amtrak; I think that it is time we join its “frequent traveler” club and see if we can get any discounts or upgrades. That makes two transcontinental rail trips in six months, and it sure beats flying commercial airlines, an experience that is more and more like going to jail–without the jail cuisine.
And now we have yet another of those perpetual, unwinnable marital argument topics: Is the Superliner (double-decker) sleeping car preferable to the Viewliner (single-decker) sleeping car, or vice-versa? I vote for the Superliner: true, the upper berth has no window, but it just has much more of that 1940s, film noir feel to it, even though the cars are newer than that.
Blogging will slow down until the week after Christmas while Mary and I get on the train for Philadelphia and New York.
According to Leslie Miller, who covers transportation for the Washington Post, on Wednessday the 17th, the Federal Railroad Administration “is trying to give communities that want to silence train whistles some peace,” permitting more gates and flashing lights at crossings. The FRA news release link is here, but may have some problems.
Most of my life has been lived within sound of a train whistle. When I was a poor college student in Portland, Oregon, the Southern Pacific ran through the kitchen of my house, or so it seemed to roommate Yiorgos Chouliaras and me.
. . . as evidenced by this story from an Associated Press contributor in Beirut.
In an incisive bit of analysis, Lebanese sociologist Dala el-Bizri, a resident of Cairo, says male-dominated societies are to blame for making women cover up. “When the condition of women on the street is unnatural, the demand for vulgarity and nudity increases,” she says.
“Come to me once more, and abate my torment;
Take the bitter care from my mind, and give me
All I long for; Lady, in all my battles
Fight as my comrade.”
That’s not one of singer Haifa Wehbe’s lyrics (that’s Haifa on the right), but rather the last verse of the ancient Greek poet Sappho’s invocation to the goddess Aphrodite, as translated by Elizabeth Vandiver. Is the imagery too warlike? Well, one Muslim critic called such performers “weapons of singing destruction.”
Neil Gaiman on blogging versus writing
Neil Gaiman, author of American Gods, a favorite novel of mine, interviewed at Slashdot, responds:
“I’m not sure that there’s a conflict between journalling and writing fiction. (I’m not sure that there’s not.) The big picture problems with doing the journal are more to do with writing in general. I’m a writer: time that I spend writing is time I know I’m working. . . . .
“It’s quite possible that the next time I want to write a novel I’ll stop blogging, or, more likely, cut back enormously — possibly only allow myself to blog if I’ve I’ve made my word count, or only post on Sundays, or something equally as mundane. Because the journal’s well over quarter of a million words long already. And that’s not a book… “