Modern Pagan TV is a show streaming on the Web, produced in Denver.
You can watch their first programs by visiting the archives at the website.
I’m sure that this is (part of) the future, but I am not going to stop blogging, me. For one thing, I don’t have to think about what I am wearing—although, contrary to the blogger cliche, I am not wearing pajamas at this moment.
It is nice to see that Jason Pitzl-Waters’ The Wild Hunt blog has gotten a major shout-out at Get Religion, the site for people who wonder why the mainstream media handles religion so ignorantly.
I predict that as Pagan traditions become more visible, our activities will be covered by the usual motley crew who went to journalism school instead of, y’know, actually learning anything about anything—history, science, economics, politics, religion, you name it.
Well, good for Mollie Ziegler Hemmingway, one religion writer who knows the difference between a Mormon and an evangelical Christian.
See, blogging is easy. All you have to do is put out good content on an almost-daily basis while writing polite and informed comments at the sites that you hope will notice yours. Nothing to it.
Lots of Pagan sites are talking about a magickal showdown with some Christian spiritual warriors over the District of Columbia. Jason Pitzl-Waters has the thoroughly hyperlinked details.
Here Hecate, who helped start this particular rolling, says some valuable things about framing the issue when talking with non-Pagans.
When talking to the press, framing matters. Your message is that local Pagans, whose heritage goes back to some of the world’s first democracies and who are soldiers, police, fire fighters, doctors, teachers, business owners, parents, and citizens, are standing up for traditional American values including tolerance and religious freedom. Your group will be doing that by [gathering and reading the Constitution, collecting canned food for people of all religious backgrounds who have been hit by the bad economy, chanting and praying, whatever.] You’re saddened that one group of Americans would attack other Americans over their religions. You hope to remind America of the religious toleration that our Founders believed was such an important American value.
Your message is NOT that Pagans don’t worship Satan, eat babies, etc. Repeat: your message is NOT about what Pagans don’t do.
She is a lawyer by trade and just might know something about the practice of rhetoric, y’know? (Many of the famous Pagan rhetoricians, guys like Quintilian, were—at times—lawyers, although the profession was structured differently then.)
To use the language of classical rhetoric, she is arguing the stasis of definition. In contemporary political rhetoric, it’s part of what we call “controlling the narrative” or in other words making your side look good, reasonable, ethical, in tune with enduring American values. etc.
And thanks for the mention in the blog post! I am all for material spirituality.
The AP Stylebook, the holy book of the American journalist, is making some changes, such as now specifying “email” instead of “e-mail.”
In my journalist days, I used to tell people that I had it memorized, but now I have moved on.
Since entering academic journal and book editing, I have embraced the true path of the Chicago Manual of Style—the Torah, nay, the Urantia Book of style books.
And if there is any question that it does not answer, its editors will issue a fatwa to the seeker after truth.
I have received one, and I felt blessed.
Still, in deference to the AP and just to keep my hand in, expect to see “website” instead of “Web site” here in the future.
DC to AC? Fahrenheit to Celsius? PC to Mac?
No, silly rabbit. Change their religion. But first,
And if you bump into a witch in a bar or coffee shop, the book adds, it’s important to recognize that “Wiccans are on a genuine spiritual quest,” providing “the starting point for dialog that may lead to their conversion.”
At least that sounds better than saying they are slaves to Satan.
British Catholic blogger Damian Thompson takes the snotty road (he is shocked!) which is his speciality, as Jason Pitzl-Waters notes.
Via the Pagan Newswire Collective (should I just have a dateline with “PNC” in it?) comes this link to a witchcraft ritual reportedly performed against Adolf Hilter and the Nazi regime in Maryland in January 1941, which is almost a year before the United States officially declared war.
It was inspired by William Seabrook’s Witchcraft: Its Power in the World Today, originally published a few months before—Seabrook himself is in the photos.
In other words, this is not the Wiccan religion nor any variation thereof but witchcraft in the purely magic-working sense.
Having once worked briefly for one of the old-school, cigar-chomping big-city “press agents,” I immediately wonder if the whole thing was not a collaboration between some publicist and the photographer. In other words, was there media involvement from the beginning? So often, things that seemed to have “just happened” in fact did not.
Second, whether contrived or not, this magical working is better sourced than the more famous Lammas 1940 working supposedly performed by British witches. It was during the summer of 1940 when German invasion of southern England was imminent, until the German High Command canceled the invasion.
That Lammas ritual was fictionalized in Katherine Kurz’s Lammas Night. It was described in Gerald Gardner’s 1954 book Witchcraft Today, in which he coyly describes it as being performed by “witches” but does not say if he was there. (Although he was Wicca’s chief founder, his pose in the book is that of an ethnographer/historian, not a participant.)
They met, raised the great cone of power and directed the the thought at Hitler’s brain: “You cannot cross the sea,” “You cannot cross the sea,” “Not able to come,” “Not able to come.” Just as their great-grandfathers had done to Boney [Napoleon Boneparte, 1804] and their remoter forefathers had done to the Spanish Armada” [in 1588] (104).
The problem is, the only knowledge that we have of the 1940 is Gardner’s say-so. All accounts of it trace back to him. My old friend Evan John Jones was skeptical that more than half a dozen people participated, but I am more skeptical. I think that it is equally likely that Gardner, who served in the Home Guard (before moving inland away from the coast) and wrote letters to newspapers advocating desperate resistance to the expected invasion, described the ritual as something that should have happened.
It is more attested that Dion Fortune’s ceremonial magic group (and possibly others) were trying to affect the course of the war by magical means.
I stood in Cheers Liquor Mart, a supermarket of things alcoholic in Colorado Springs, last Wednesday wondering if I should try a bottle of Witches’ Wit beer.
The “controversial” Witches’ Wit beer, that is, with the witch-burning scene on the label. The brewery had defended the design, and even the artist commented on one blog, in essence, “How dare you insult my artistic vision?! If you could see the painting full size, you would understand.” (Can’t find the link—will add it if I do.) But of course, it’s bottle-label size.
“We have been accused of inspiring violence against women, and we have been compared to the violence in Darfur,” said Sage Osterfeld, a spokesman for Port Brewing. “It has run the gamut from people saying politely, ‘This is offensive to pagans,’ to people saying we are responsible for all that is wrong in the world.”
Now this tempest in a beer glass has even reached The New York Times. Bowing to the pressure campaign started by Vicki Noble, the brewery will have a contest to choose a new label.
Is the design “hate imagery” against today’s Pagan Witches? Honestly, I don’t think so. And if it is, it is nothing to do with the modern religion of Pagan Witchcraft in its various forms. (If you want to argue that it is anti-women, go ahead.)
When it comes to the word “witch,” we want it both ways—safe and edgy. As the Dutch scholar Léon van Gulik writes in a paper that will appear in the forthcoming issue of The Pomegranate,
The acquired taste of Paganism is rationalized by upholding a self-image that perpetuates a tension with the secular world without, and sometimes even the non-initiated world within. This tension can for instance be observed in the clinging to the term “witch” in Wiccan circles, the meaning of which clearly differs between insiders—and outsiders.
There in the aisle at Cheers, however, I decided not to reinforce the current label imagery of Witch’s Wit. Because right next to it was another beer with a folk-Catholic-themed label: Maudite (“the damned one”) Belgian-style ale from Quebec. I acquired a taste for Maudite when in Montréal about a year ago, but had not seen any in a Colorado store until now, so into the shopping cart it went.
UPDATE: No, apparently they are going to consider changing the label.
As many readers may know—especially those who wander over here from The Wild Hunt—the Druid Network in the UK recently received official recognition as a charity, something similar to getting federal 501(c)3 tax status in the United States.
The process they went through was described in greater detail by Alison Shaffer, a guest poster at The Wild Hunt.
Francesca, an American living in London, puts a different face on Paganism at the Daily Mail protest. Photo: Mani Navasothy
The news prompted a snarky column by one Melanie Phillips at the Daily Mail, Britain’s second-largest newspaper, titled, “Druids as an official religion?”
Will someone please tell me this is all a joke. Until now, Druids have been regarded indulgently as a curious remnant of Britain’s ancient past, a bunch of eccentrics who annually dress up in strange robes at Stonehenge to celebrate the summer solstice.
Of course there was an online petition, which has been or will soon be delivered to the Daily Mail. But last week a few Pagans carried to the protest directly to the newspaper’s offices.
More links here about the petition and what happened.
Toward the end of her interview today on National Public Radio’s Fresh Air, Samantha Bee of The Daily Show describes being raised by a Wiccan mother whose ceremonies were “terrifying,” even though the presence of the religion was “unobtrusive.”
Well, no one expects comediennes to be logical.
What is funny is hearing interviewer Terry Gross fumble around with the W-word.
You are not going to get a discussion of children and the Craft on that show because Gross is so uncomfortable with the topic–in fact, she would see it as “off-topic.” (It’s her program, after all.)
If you listen, it’s toward the end of the segment, after Bee describes her pubescent crush on Jesus, courtesy of her Catholic school.
A New York Times media-section piece suggests that “professional photographer” is a poor career choice if you are just starting out.
Since graduation in 2008, Mr. Eich, 23, has gotten magazine assignments here and there, but “industrywide, the sentiment now, at least among my peers, is that this is not a sustainable thing,” he said. He has been supplementing magazine work with advertising and art projects, in a pastiche of ways to earn a living. “There was a path, and there isn’t anymore.”
“Reporter” is not much better, yet, having been both a reporter and a photojournalist (at small papers and magazines where the roles were combined), I don’t necessarily buy all this brave new world talk about bloggers replacing reporters.
Usually, reporters report while bloggers comment, criticize, amplifly, and fling feces.
How many bloggers will hang out at the courthouse, cover the interesting trials, get to know assistant district attorneys and local lawyers, and learn which court clerk will drop nuggets of information and which clerk is just a bureaucratic jerk?
And do that week after week for free or for a few bucks from Google Adsense?
My department head used to teach a class called “Careers for English Majors,” and once per semester he would ask me to be the guest speaker and talk about being a writer.
Speaking of my days in journalism, I would always explain that I did not go to journalism school but entered through the side door, so to speak.
Sometimes today journalism school must seem like buggy whip-maker school. An awful lot of J-school grads know (or knew) how to put out the school paper, but knew little about science, economics, history, religion, or whatever, because instead of taking classes in those fields they were taking “News Writing II” and “Principles of Public Relations.”
Maybe now everyone will come in the side door?
But people still need images and organized news. Otherwise, the powerful will still try to run us over. But how to organize, locate, and present it all?
UPDATE: Suzie Bright is thinking about the same things (we all are) but has a lot more to say than I do. (Note: her blog is probably NSFW in many environments.)