Working all week on Her Hidden Children, my book on the early decades of the American Pagan movement, part of the AltaMira Press Pagan Studies series. I’ve written history before, but somehow, writing about events in which I participated makes me feel at death’s door. I turn for inspiration to my beau ideal of a dignified old age, William S. Burroughs.
Pagan World Report
Here’s a site collecting Pagans-in-the-news articles from all over the place. I started doing the same thing with scissors and photocopier in the pre-Internet 1970s, but it was impossible back then to have this kind of scope. My stuff went into a series of file folders labeled “Witchcrap,” since that’s what most of it was.
Paganism: A Reader
What I hope was the last paper work for Graham Harvey’s and my new anthology, Paganism: A Reader went into the campus mailbag today on its way to Routledge, the publisher. The book is a collection of mostly primary sources, so in that way it’s somewhat different from Graham’s earlier anthology, Shamanism: A Reader. The selections in it begin with Classical materials, including “The Hymn to the Moon” (attributed to Homer) and the famous address to Isis from Apuleius’ The Golden Ass, in Robert Graves’ translation. What I regret not being able to include (for reasons of space) was Sappho’s poem to Aphrodite, which I always find to be heart-wrenchingly good. But the Emperor Julian’s “Letter to a Pagan Priest” was included, as well as some translations from Celtic and Norse sources that have been important to the Pagan revival.
We have tried to show just a few of the literary influences on the Pagan revival as well, such as Kipling’s Puck of Pook’s Hill, Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, and Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon, as well as many well-known contemporary Pagan authors (Gardner, Valiente, Adler) and some new writers: Judy Harrow, Michael McNierney, and myself.
Daniel C. Noel
I was shocked two days ago to learn of the death in late 2002 of Dan Noel, a friend and sometime mentor. I had the privilege of reviewing his book The Soul of Shamanism: Western Fantasies, Imaginal Realities (Continuum, 1997) for Gnosis. He taught me the difference between “imaginary” and “imaginal.”
Here is an interview with Dan about the ideas in that book, including the “lure of the archaic” and the “democritization of the sacred.”
Sacred Ground
Rediscovering America’s Sacred Ground, subtitled “Public religion and the pursuit of good,” will be on my reading list as soon as SUNY Press releases it. The author is Pagan scholar Barbara McGraw, who “examines the debate about the role of religion in American public life and unravels the confounded rhetoric on all sides. She reveals that no group has been standing on proper ground and that all sides have misused terminology (religion/secular), dichotomies (public/private), and concepts (separation of church and state) in ways that have little relevance to the original intentions of the Founders.”
Voudoun gets official recognition in Haiti
This story comes courtesy of Gina Oboler on the Nature Religions Scholars list. It quotes Haitian President Aristide as saying, “An ancestral religion, voodoo is an essential part of national identity.”
Priests and priestesses are now asked to register with the Ministry of Religious Affairs, which will allow them to conduct officially recognized marriages, etc.
Pokemon the Pagan
Here is a scholarly controversy that I had been unware of: whether there is a conflict between the teachings of Wicca and of Pokemon. That assumes that Pokemon has “teachings,” of course.
Meanwhile, getting ready for a workshop on traditional European entheogens next summer, I’m enjoying revisting Eliot Cowan’s Plant Spirit Medicine.
Wicca’s appeal among the young
Wicca’s Wicked Appeal among the Young
The Catholic news agency Zenit offers this interview with journalist Carlo Climati, author of a book called “Young People and Esotericism,” on the growing menace of Wicca.
Sample quote: “If one wants to succeed in atttracting a girl, one doesn’t have to buy an amulet but give her a bunch of flowers.”
Wiccan Books Need ‘Earth Tones’?
A couple of months ago, Judy Harrow, author of several worthwhile books on Wicca, mentioned to me that publishers–or at least one of her publishers–have decided that such books’ covers require (1) a pre-Raphaelite female and (2) earth tones. Check out the cover of Devoted to You, an anthology on the Pagan deities that she recently edited for Kensington Books. See what I mean?
In my darker moments, I wonder if Wicca has gone from being a mystery religion to a fashion statement in fifty years. If you’re young, unconventional, angry at the world, you announce, “I’m Wiccan.” You don’t, however, want to say “I’m a witch,” because then people expect you to “do things.”
As for larger Paganism, check out this page of so-called Pagan blogs. Exactly what’s Pagan about it. (UPDATE: The link was dead, so I removed it.)
Reprinting "Crafting the Art of Magic"
A round of discussion on the Nature Religions Scholars Network e-mail list about the desirability of reprinting Aidan Kelly’s book on the origins of Gardnerian witchcraft, Crafting the Art of Magick Book 1 (there was no Book 2), which came out a decade ago from Llewellyn Publications. Although primarily based on textual criticism applied to the Book of Shadows, the book did make some strong points about the 1940s-1950s Wiccan revival, particularly the point that Gerald Gardner and friends were creating a new religion and that that was something that humans do. On the other hand, apparently valuable parts were edited out of the Llewellyn edition, there were editing errors, etc.
I may check with the editorial director at Llewellyn to see if she would entertain the idea, but I suspect I will hit a stone wall, based at least partly on how personally miffed Carl Weschcke seemed to be back in 1992 that Kelly had not delivered the ms. for the sequel. And despite the publication of Gus DiZerega’s Pagans and Christians, there is still that Llewellyn prejudice against “scholarly” books.