For the back story on the video, go here: “‘The Flood’, A Haunting New Album Bringing Ancient Sumerian and Babylonian Language and Music Back to Life”
Not all attempts to re-create old music work well. Some are of interest only to scholars. This one works, I think — see if you agree.
This is a Druid knife. It says so.
Some of the links that I saved that never turned into blog posts . . .
• The Internet loves quizes, so “What Kind of Witch Would You Be?” (answer: hearth witch). I always suspect that the answer is based on just one question, while the others are there just for fluff and decoration.
• I saved this link from the Forest Door blog because I liked this thought:
This is, indeed, one of the roots of many problems in modern polytheism – people being unwilling to wait and let things naturally evolve. My biggest concern here isn’t the specific examples of mis-assignment (though they do exist, and are indicative of a serious lack of understanding in some cases). It is the fact that these folks are sitting around trying to artificially assign gods to places and things as if it’s just a game, or at best an intellectual exercise.
• Local cultus is the new kale.
• Is a knife named for Druids meant for Druids? (Echoes of allegations of human sacrifice?) Just what does “Druid” mean here?
• I did like John Halstead’s post on “the tyranny of structurelessness.” See also “Reclaiming.” See also “The Theology of Consensus.”
• Turn off the computer and play a 1,600-year-old Viking war game.
• From last July, a Washington Post story on Asatruar in the Army.
• A photography book of modern British folklore. Not an oxymoron.
• More photography: “Earth Magic – Photographer Rik Garrett Talks About Witchcraft.”
What if witches hadn’t changed that much since medieval times and were still fairly close to the popular imagery conveyed by their early enemies during the classical witchhunts?
• So you’re a Pagan? Here are ten ways to show respect for your elders. It’s the Pagan way.
• Philosophy should teach you how to live. “Why I Teach Plato to Plumbers.” Also, it’s Pagan.
• Reviewing a book on Greek and Roman animal sacrifice, which was, after all, the chief ritual back in the days when Paganism was the religion of the community.
• Was it the bells? Morris dancers attacked by dogs.
• Camille Paglia’s definition of “Pagan” is not mine, but she still kicks ass. Also, “Everything’s Awesome, and Camille Paglia Is Unhappy!”
• Embiggen thy word-hoard! Visit the Historical Thesaurus of Engish.
• But if you really want to go down the 15th-century rabbit hole, follow The Great Vowel Shift.
• The New Yorker covers psychedelic therapy. To learn more, follow and donate to the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies. Also: “How Psychedelics Are Helping Cancer Patients Fend Off Despair.”
• Looking good for an academic interview.
• A review from last year of Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll.
• From the Chronicle of Higher Education: “How to Be Intoxicated.” Not surprisingly, Dionyus figures in more than does binge-drinking.
• Apparently the Yakuza, the Nipponese Mob, planned to call off Halloween due to a gang war. So how did that work out?
Ah, Christmas traditions. So complicated, so misunderstood.
Take Santa Claus, American version. Not a survival of colonial New Amsterdam except in a literary sense, he was pretty well invented by the prolific writer Washington Irving in the early 19th century. And he was connected with Dec. 6th, St. Nicholas’ Day, not Christmas. Let history blogger Patrick Browne take it from here: “Santa Claus was Made by Washington Irving”:
The quote that forms the title of this article is taken from a paper by historian Charles W. Jones, “Knickerbocker Santa Claus,” published in the New York Historical Society Quarterly, in October 1954. Jones challenged the long-standing traditional view that Santa Claus owes his tremendous presence in our culture to Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam (New York). In fact, his research into early colonial New York newspapers, books, diaries and letters turned up no mention at all of St. Nicholas until the time of the Revolution. . . . .
So, by satirically inventing a false tradition of Dutch settlers venerating St. Nicholas, Irving inadvertently gave rise to a very real tradition of Americans venerating St. Nick. This was certainly not the last time in Irving’s career that he would invent folklore which he ascribed to old Dutch settlers.
In New England, meanwhile, there had been a long tradition of non-Christmas revelry, based on the Puritans’ belief that traditional celebrations were impious:
For centuries, the holiday has served as a flashpoint between competing religious ideas. When the Puritans of New England famously made Christmas illegal during their first decades on this side of the Atlantic, it was not because they were killjoys—or at least, not only because they were killjoys. Christmas was an existential threat to orderly society, a shorthand for the spiritual risks they encountered every day in the New World. The era’s leading preacher, Cotton Mather, even continued to rail against the “heathen feast” after the laws prohibiting Christmas were repealed.
“Can you in your Conscience think, that our Holy Savior is honoured,” he wrote, “by Mad Mirth, by long Eating, by hard Drinking, by lewd Gaming, by rude Revelling; by a Mass fit for none but a Saturn, or a Bacchus, or the Night of a Mahometan Ramadam?”
From “Christmas’s War on America: The persistence and power of the December Holiday over Generations of Americans—Whether They Liked it or Not,” in The Atlantic.
Mather was born in Boston of English parents, who probably told him about the “traditional English Christmas” of the early 17th century. Think of Hallowe’en with an edge: seasonally unemployed young agricultural workers, as drunk as they can manage, working the Yuletide version of “trick or treat” on their better-off neighbors: We will sing at your door, and if you don’t hand over some food and more ale, we might break something.
Or the urban version as it continued:
Rowdy men in colorful rags gather outside the city’s nicer homes, demanding to be let in. Some have disguised themselves with mock-fancy outfits that ridicule their less-than-willing hosts, while others have blackened their faces or dressed up as animals. If you try to keep them out, they will shatter your windows, break down your door, and help themselves to food and drink. If instead you grant the rabble access, your costumed guests will drink your best booze and demand a cash “tip” for slurring a noisy song at your family.
That comes from “Is Capitalism the Reason for the Season?” from B. K. Marcus, who is evidently shocked to discover that there are tensions and contradictions between the marketplace and the family gathered around the tree. He goes on:
In a commercial age, where mom and dad head off to separate jobs while the kids are sent to school, it means spending the holiday together in leisure, practicing a form of mutual generosity that is ritualized to obscure its capitalist origins.
He seems to think, however, that evil capitalist lever-pullers are obscuring this contradiction from us, whereas I think that everyone is aware of it and that people deal with it in their own ways, some by being self-consciously anti-commercial and others by just shrugging their shoulders. Yeah, presents and booze cost money. Even if you make your own, you still need to acquire the materials.
Irving had lived in England for a time, and he wrote of the Yuletide season,
Our thoughts are more concentrated; our friendly sympathies more aroused, we feel more sensibly the charm of each other’s society, and are brought more closely together by dependence on each other for enjoyment. Heart calleth unto heart; and we draw our pleasures from the deep wells of living kindness, which lie in the quiet recesses of our bosoms…Christmas is still a period of delightful excitement in England.
Back to Santa Claus — Isn’t that sequence familiar? Some genuine folk tradition exists but then dies out. A literary type revives it for his own purposes. It catches on to the point that its revived origins are forgotten and people run around talking about this “old tradition” that connects them with the past.
Apparently that is the recipe for success!
Built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps, the mountain park lodge invokes both Heorot1 and a parish church.
We Pagans may think that we “own” Hallowe’en, but we are own some ground at Christmas time — or Yuletide, if you prefer. Today M. and I drove 15 miles over twisty mountain gravel roads to a little town that celebrates a Yule log hunt.
This tradition dates to 1952, so it is about as old as Wicca. And it was passed on through a lineage: people here were given a splinter of another Colorado town’s Yule log in order to inaugurate their own. That town, in turn, received its splinter in 1933 from the Adirondacks resort town of Lake Placid, New York, where a Yule log ceremony was created afresh in 1911.
Recreating ancient tradition: it is all right out of Ronald Hutton’s Stations of the Sun.
A local Protestant minister, an old man with a booming preaching voice, invoked a father god whose radiance shines down. “Ave Sol Invictus,” I thought, considering that the minister stood in front of a wreath-decorated blazing fireplace, no Christian symbolism in sight.
Maybe this was his non-sectarian mode of public speaking, but he talked about this “sacred valley” and the “sacred season” and invoked the ancestors. I felt right at home.
And then our friend, the director of a nearby raptor rehabilitation center, brought in a peregrine falcon while her associate carried a barred owl — and they invoked the birds!
“Owl . . . give us your secret knowledge . . . .” and so on.
“This is getting better,” I thought.
And the little choir sang the Boar’s Head Carol while an admittedly faux boar’s head was carried through the hall. (Memories of my undergraduate years!)
Then we moved outside, and things became a little more primal. The huntsmen in their short green capes gathered around . . .
The huntsmen (green capes) address the crowd before a trumpet sounds the Call.
Is there something sinister about that rope?
The hunt for the Yule log takes place in a mountain park; the huntsmen describe the general area, and then the crowd takes off.
“They haven’t found the log yet,” says a man into his cellphone half a mile from the lodge, while three boys of 14 years or so dispute with one another: “It was over here last year.” “No, it was across the road.”
“You guys don’t know it,” I think, “but you are making memories that very few of your contemporaries will share.”
The ancient sequence is repeated. People (kids in the lead) spread out into the woods.
Then there is yelling in the distance. It becomes more organized: a ritual cry.
And that is followed by the processing of the prize back to the lodge.
The hunters move out into the woods.
That rope? It pulls the Yule log, and the little kids ride.
The girl who found the log must suddenly master a whippy old-style crosscut saw as it is cut into two pieces: one to burn and one to save.
And she must pass another ordeal — an interview from a TV reporter. “How did it feel?”i
And there is more caroling, cookies and hot drinks, and a closing prayer which M. and I slipped away from, thinking of the miles of snowy road and the dog left at home.
It’s truly Yuletide now. And I am bringing down my own logs, but they are to be split and burned as winter closes in.
Winter king, Sakha Republic, Siberia
Oh wait, it is Christmas that has (news media-generated) “wars.” How the winter solstice should be observed, however, has become the subject of almost rabbinical discussion on one of the Colorado Pagan listservs, again.
There are always two core factions, the calendrical and the astronomical. The event at stake is the annual Drumming Up the Sun (DUTS), which takes place at Red Rocks Amphitheatre (actually a Denver city park), whose site looks out over that prairie’s-edge city toward the eastern horizon.
DUTS, as one person wrote, is “organic” — it just happens with minimal organizing. And it’s a cool event (pun intended). If I lived up there, I would go. As one Colorado Pagan recently noted in a different context, “trance drumming has become rarer, drum circles are fading, and there just aren’t as many chances for people to drum themselves into trance and call forth the goddesses and gods into our primal beating hearts.” But this one still goes on — it draws hundreds of people sometimes.
But the question is, which morning?
The calendrical faction says, in effect, “Do it on the 21st because that is the solstice date on the calendar.” One of the “calendrists” writes, “Most of the drummers have opted for Monday since some people have to work Tuesday.”
Linking to this website, a member of the astrononomical faction posts, “[The site] is pretty clear that the night of the 21st-22nd is the shortest night, and what I didn’t mention before but what is also visible there is that the 22nd is also the shortest day, not the 21st. That is another reason why the 22nd is solstice day, despite the moment of the event happening two hours and eleven minutes into the day before. In other words, the 22nd is the shortest day of the year, another way to define Winter Solstice. . . . If people want to drum up the morning of Solstice Eve I think that’s awesome . . . . I am not trying to pressure anyone to do anything, but rather to state what I’m doing with my group and to provide accurate scientific information.”
And a third small DUTS faction — call them “let’s do it all” — wants both mornings, maybe even 24+ hours of non-stop drumming. “Since we already have people who feel inspired to drum on the mornings of the 21st and the 22nd,” one asks, “could we connect them together as parts of a longer vigil?”
As of this morning, the online opinion-soliciting continues.
If I must take sides, I lean toward the astronomical faction. I have always felt that if you are timing any working to planetary motion, then starting just after the peak moment of whatever is better than starting before it. “Catch the wave,” so to speak. But others may think differently.
As for the solstice, being a self-employed foothills dweller, I will likely roll out of bed on the 22nd, take a bodhran, dress warmly, call the dog (just the one dog now), and climb up the ridge east of the house.
Thanks to the shape of the land, even if I sleep a bit late, I can pick one of several clearings in which to stand as the sun clears the ridge to the southeast. My drumbeats can float out over the little valley, the neighbors’ scattered houses and pastures, and the sun-lit mountain to the west.
Unless, of course, it’s snowing hard, in which case I will have to improvise.
Aleister Crowley’s “abbey” in Sicily is still there, but the building seriously needs help. This petition is partly designed, I am told, to persuade local authorities that it is worth saving as a historical site — and presumably as a tourist destination.
Aleister Crowley took up his residence at Villa Santa Barbara at Cefalu, located in Palermo, Sicily – ITALY during the 1920s, and he afterwards transformed it into the Rableaisian Monastery Thelema Abbey (or Abbey of Thelema).
At Cefalu, Crowley was mainly climber, painter and prolific writer. He personally painted the walls of his residence and he also made some artworks during that period of time, that are actually in Australia. His figure is considered between the 100 most important figures in England and it is often of mediatic attention and interest.
Already Leonardo Sciascia, Fosco Maraini, Vincenzo Consolo, Giuseppe Quatriglio, Marco Fax, Pietro Saja, Domenico Portera, Nico Marino, Alberto Samonà, Antonino Napoli, Marco Pasi, Massimo Introvigne, and others in Italy have seriously dealed with this charachter and with his stay that inspired films as those by Kenneth Anger and by Ferdinando Vincentini Orgnani, more a wide musical productions that ranges from the Beatles to Led Zeppelin, from the Iron Maiden to Coil, the Current 93, Coph Nia, but also Ozzy Osbourne, Graham Bond and many others.
The house in which he lived is considered a cultural object from the Italian State and it is a so important momument that has always been the pilgrimage destination for a wide international community.
It is actually in a state of serious degradation and abandonement: the roof of the building is going to fall and the murals inside of it, partially compromized, risk to fade.
Signing the petition you want to save the Abbey and its paintings.
Initiative by www.abbeyofthelema.org
Thursday I arrived in Atlanta for the joint annual meetings of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature.
Attendees come from all over:
They are focused on the presentations they must make:
Alison Beyer, “Creating Sacred Space with Art Exhibitions: Another Approach to Interfaith Work”
They attend a lot of receptions, especially those with a reputation for plentiful food and drink:
North American Association for the Study of Religion. Janet Joyce,
managing director of Equinox Publishing, center, in black.
They go to more sessions:
Ellen Randolph, “Gnosticism, Transformation, and the Role of the Feminine
in the Gnostic Mass of the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica.” Grant Potts, session presider.
They try to find a place to sit.
They go to the book exhibit and make sure that their and their friends’ books are prominently displayed:
Yale University Press booth.
They slip away to museums:
Gwendolyn Reece at the Carlos Museum, Emory University.
They hang out in the various hotel bars and go out to dinner:
Shawn Arthur, Helen Berger (back to camera), Barbara McGraw, (unidentified), Doug Cowan.
And then it’s back onto the escalator. Where is the “Dunwoody Room”?
Until they are exhausted and must go home, where they sort out their notes:
UPDATE: Here is Thorn Mooney’s take on the same event, “Me, Pagan Studies, and the AAR.”
I go out to breakfast at a diner not in a big downtown hotel, and as I follow the hostess to my booth, words float up: “seminary,” “dynamics,” “Old Testment.”
Yes, it’s another joint annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion and the Society for Biblical Literature. Atlanta, again, as in 2010 and 2003. That could have something to do with the fact that the AAR, the child that outgrew its SBL parent, is headquartered at Emory University. I think the staff likes to schedule a meeting every few years that they themselves can drive to.
We Pagani have been busily scheduling our steering committee meeting, our annual dinner (which I may have to miss due to a key client meeting, dang it), and the Pagan Studies/Pomegranate drinks party, which I will not miss.
Oh, the post title? Just an experiment in clickbait. Did it work?
There is a well-established (since the 1970s, I think) Pagan/metaphysical bookstore in Denver called Isis Books & Gifts.
Someone got confused about the name, it appears. And it was not the first time.
All the more reason to refer to those rapists and beheaders as “Daesh” or the “Islamic State.”
Carl Llewellyn Weschcke
First, the official announcement from Llewellyn, then my comments.
It is with profound sadness we share the news of Carl Llewellyn Weschcke’s passing. He passed peacefully on Saturday, November 7 surrounded by family. He was 85.
Carl Llewellyn Weschcke was Chairman and the driving force behind Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd., the oldest and largest publishers of New Age, Metaphysical, Self-Help, and Spirituality books in the world.
Weschcke was a life-long student of a broad range of Metaphysical, Spiritual and Occult subjects which led him to the purchase of the Llewellyn publishing company in 1961. He relocated the company to his home on Summit Avenue in St. Paul. The mansion was said to be haunted and became the subject of many investigations and news stories through the 1960s and 1970s and remains well-known to this day.
Authors and booksellers referred to Weschcke as “the Father of the New Age” because of his early and aggressive public sponsorship of Astrology, Magic, Metaphysics, Paganism, Parapsychology, Tantra, Wicca and Yoga. Weschcke and Llewellyn contributed to the burgeoning New Age movement in the 1960s and 1970s, sponsoring Gnosticon Festivals, opening an occult school and bookstore, and publishing the occult newspaper Gnostica. He is a former Wiccan High Priest and played a leading role in the rise of Wicca and Paganism during the 1960s and 1970s. In the fall of 1973 Weschcke helped organize the Council of American Witches and became its chairperson.
He has a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from Babson College, studied Law at LaSalle University, and advanced study toward a doctorate in Philosophy at the University of Minnesota. In 1959 he was elected president of the NAACP’s Minnesota branch and elected Vice President of the ACLU’s Minnesota branch. In addition to book publishing he has worked in the pharmaceutical industry, furniture manufacture, and real estate management. With Llewellyn, he has worked in all aspects of the business and has co-authored ten books with Dr. Joe Slate of Athens, Alabama.
Carl is survived by wife Sandra and son Gabe. Sandra is President and Treasurer of Llewellyn Worldwide and Gabe serves as Vice President. They plan to carry on Carl’s legacy championing of alternative approaches to mind, spirit and body.
Arrangements for a memorial will be forthcoming.
I had the privilege of staying with the Weschckes at their home in Marine-on-St. Croix for a few days in the early 1990s. (Although no formal offer was made, I think that Carl was hoping that I would come on board as an editor.) That four-book “Witchcraft Today” series that I edited for them in the 1990s was his idea.
It’s true that he came from a line of German doctors and pharmacists, and originally he worked in the family pharmaceutical firm that made over-the-counter medicines—cough drops and the like. He told me he used to look from his office window at a former soft-drink bottling plant—the building that later become the Llewellyn headquarters in St. Paul.
He did not start the company, but he and Sandra grew it from a small publisher of astrological almanacs and the like into its present form. He even added “Llewellyn” as his middle name.
Another memory: having just a few hours to examine his private library, which filled a three-car garage (or was it a four-car?). It was like the whole history of esotericism in America, but I think that astrology was perhaps always his first love. Although their son, Gabe, was groomed to take over the business, at that time—twenty years ago—I did not feel that he shared the love of the astrology, Pagan, New Age, etc., product line. That does not mean that he cannot be an effective manager though.