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.”
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.”
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.
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 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.”
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.)
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.
Sociologist Helen A. Berger, author of A Community of Witches: Contemporary Neo-Paganism and Witchcraft in the United States, has a new book coming out in July, written together with Evan Leach and Leigh Shaffer.
The title is Voices from the Pagan Census: A National Survey of Witches and Neo-Pagans in the United States. Like her first, it was published by the University of South Carolina Press.
I plan to post a fuller review after I have read it. The “census” referred to was distributed by Berger and by Andras Corbon of Earthspirit Community. The authors claim that (this time) they reached more than just the festival-going Pagan crowd.
According to the catalog, “The scholars . . . identify variations within the Neo-Pagan population, including those related to geography and to the movement’s multiple spiritual
paths.”
Since it has been several years since I have published any of the print versions of “Letter from Hardscrabble Creek,” I am creating this blog to talk about the process and progress of writing and also to comment on what I think are the best new books on contemporary Paganism and nature-based spirituality.
I will also be posting updates on my work in progress, a study of the Pagan revival in America, which has the working title of HER HIDDEN CHILDREN and which will be published by AltaMira Press.