Around the Blogosphere: A Pagan Cat, Multiple Souls, and Idolatry

¶ “I don’t want to be rude, but what religion are you?” A Pagan pet’s name produces confusion at the veterinary clinic.

¶   “The Three/Four Souls and Their Afterlives.” Heather at Eaarth Animist looks at different traditional accounts to learn what might explain her own experiences: “It has baffled many Western anthropologists how a studied people can talk about a dead person being reincarnated in a child and also being an ancestor. The problem comes from the anthropologist’s own Christian idea of one soul.”

¶ Added to the blogroll under “Classics”:  Roman Times: An online magazine about current archaeology and classical research into the lives of inhabitants of the Roman Empire and Byzantium.

¶ Scholar of esotericism Wouter Hanegraaf from the University of Amstersdam discovers a solid book on idolatry as a category within monotheistic religions: “One searches practically in vain for authoritative monographs about the notion of idolatry and its significance in monotheist religions generally.” There are some contemporary scholars of Paganism working on that area too, but maybe not enough.

The Mind of the Native and the Mind of the Witch

Typical Colorado foothills weather — from snow on the ground mid-May to temperatures in the 80s F. by the first of June. What is this “spring” people speak of? If you have hummingbirds and snow at the same time, that is our spring.

Some links:

• Rod Dreher posts on “How to see a ghost,” which is a little tangential for the blogger usually defined as “crunchy con,” but there is a connection to the idea of being embedded in place.

A lot of the post is excerpts from Rupert Ross’s book Dancing With A Ghost: Exploring Indian Reality, Much of it is animistic, as you would expect:

If, for instance, it is possible for a man to “walk” through the spiritual (that is, the imaged) plane, then he could not deny the possibility that others would be able to do the same. The dimension of each person which did this visiting thus ought to be able to encounter the corresponding dimension of others; suddenly the possibility of interaction with others on that plane becomes real.

Dreher is a capital-O Orthodox Christian (by conversion, hence enthusiastic), writing that he does not “subscribe to the pagan, animistic metaphysic Ross describes, but that it’s interesting to me to observe how much this overall outlook tracks with Orthodox Christianity and its belief in panentheism, which teaches that God is immanent in all creation.” But read his post for the excerpts and to watch him wrestle with what Ross has to say.

• Meanwhile, at his Paganistan blog, Steven Posch links to what he considers an accurate description of the “mind of a witch,” although it was not written from that perspective.

I liked this part:

Like all predators, a witch is a territorial animal, and to know your territory you have to patrol it regularly and you have to notice what’s going on there: what has changed, what’s changing, and what hasn’t changed.

It’s all in how you define “territory.

Egyptian Reconstructionists Won’t Like This

(Trigger Warning: Texas, iced tea, demons)

From D Magazine in Dallas: “The Exorcists Next Door,” a profile piece on two Protestant exorcists.

Dozens of what appear to be demons manifest and depart during this day’s session. Larry coaxes out their names and functions, a veritable pantheon of entities known and obscure: Maranthia, who cuts wicked deals; Horus, Egypt’s falcon-headed god; Molech, who the Bible describes as “the detestable god of the Ammonites.”

What, the god of kings has sunk to possessing “the soft frame of a 38-year-old suburban mom we’ll call Ruth”?

What Does the New AP Stylebook Say?

Last December I reported on an effort spearheaded by Oberon Zell to get Pagan (in the religious sense) capitalized in both the Associated Press Stylebook and the University of Chicago Press’s Manual of Style.

The first is used mainly by journalists (when they remember), the second by writers and editors for university presses and other publishers of serious nonfiction books. Both are periodically updated.

A new AP Stylebook is out and receiving comment. Apparently 200 new religious terms were added. Has anyone seen a copy yet? Even Terry Mattingly at Get Religion says he has not yet seen one, but Emma Green at The Atlantic has and makes some comments, such as this:

“Holy Spirit” and “Holy Ghost” are both capitalized, but the former is the preferred usage, spirits being the more acceptable metaphysical entity. “Satan” is capitalized, but not “the devil.” Also noteworthy: “Voodoo,” the religion, is capitalized, but “voodoo,” roughly meaning “shenanigans,” is not, “especially when ascribing magical solutions to problems, as in voodoo economics.”

Anyone can buy either one of these books, of course, and more writers should. My copy of the AP Stylebook dates from 2004. Time for an update? But I am more of a Chicago guy these days.

Passing of Sasha Shulgin

Here is a good article on Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin, entheogenic chemist and “father of Ecstasy,” who passed away yesterday.

Shulgin was known for discovering, creating and personally testing hundreds of psychoactive chemicals and documenting the results, along with his wife, in his books and papers.

The Shulgins published the results of their research in two volumes PiHKAL – or Phenethylamines I have Known and Loved – and TiHKAL, which stands for Tryptamines I Have Known and Loved.

Both the books, which run to more than 800 pages, were later published online for free as every person should have “the license to explore the nature of his own soul”, he told Time Magazine in 2002.

Pihkal was subtitled “A Chemical Love Story” (partly alchemical, but it includes how they got together), while Tikhal was “A Continuation.”

I have read only the first, which includes descriptions of tripping amidst the rich and powerful at the Bohemian Grove, where he played the viola in an amateur string quartet. Yes, he was a member and apparently saw no contradictions in that. He had friends there.

In Lieu of a Post, a Link to Posts

blue elk door

I am living behind this door right now and don’t much feel like coming out. So here is something else: Go visit this month’s Animist Blog Carnival, the “Wakeful World Book Club,” devoted to the works of animist author and Druid Emma Restall Orr.

The Zells’ Biographer on “Living Your Myth”

John Sulak, who co-wrote Modern Pagans for RE/Search and worked for a decade on The Wizard and the Witch, the new biography of Oberon and Morning Glory Zell, gives interviewer Anne Hill his own take on the Zells, the writing process, the Church of All Worlds, and others in their circle. (Was Gwydion Pendderwen really the Kurt Cobain of Paganism?)

Sulak compares himself to Studs Terkel, but if he had “cut up” his interviews — and spoke in more of a monotone — he might remind me a little of someone else.

For Carolyn and Morning Glory

On the narrow bridge over Hardscrabble Creek
I toast you both and pour a libation
into spring’s fast-rushing water,
under the white face of the Moon.

I will miss you both, I say to the creek,
and the dog tugs at his leash.
We continue up the rising road
where the Moon reflects in beaver ponds,
into this night and the next night after.

Pagan or mountain-girl atheist, you both
would have enjoyed the Moon,
rising through the pines, the still night
smelling of wood smoke and lilacs.

 

Although Carolyn Petersen died before Morning Glory Zell, I learned of both their passings yesterday.  The Wild Hunt has a tribute to Morning Glory; Carolyn’s last days are described by her husband, David Petersen, a Colorado hunting and nature writer, here.

Sampling the Pagan Blogosphere

¶ Andy Letcher goes to Helston in Cornwall for Flora Day, with flowers, pageantry, and the Furry Dance:

Then there is the Furry Dance itself. According to Ronald Hutton, the first mention of any Mayish activities in Helston is in 1600, but the dance is the last surviving Cornish Processional Dance (of which there were once many). It became popular, and formalised, in the nineteenth century, a legacy that remains, giving it the feel of something out of Trumpton.
There are four dances throughout the day, each processing right round the town and in and out of select shops and houses. They’re driven along by the Helston Town Band playing that tune.
If it’s a contender for the most irritating tune ever written then that’s only because some of us are old enough to remember Terry Wogan’s ghastly 1978 chart-topping rendition of the song (which is a later addition). In fact the tune is full of pomp and brilliantly infectious. It echoes round the streets and does the job of spurring the dancers on.

¶ Apuleius Platonicus tries to put to rest the idea that Hitler and his inner circle were some kind of Nazi Neo-Pagans with a post titled “Hitler Hated Heathens.”

I disagree though with his flip over to the position that Hitler was therefore pro-Christian. In fact, he regarded both Catholic and Lutheran clergy and those would revive ancient Germania as useful idiots — fine if they helped the cause; otherwise, they got a nice holiday at a camp in the countryside. Since the majority of Germans were Christians, it helped to have compliant clergy give the Nazi message a Christian garnish— pray for the troops, etc.

¶ At Invocatio, scholar of esotericism Sarah Veale looks at the Harvard Black Mass story, which has set a black cat among the journalistic pigeons this week.

The shock value of Satanic transgression, ironically—and ideally—will lead to greater discussion about the place of religion in the public sphere. Will it lead to acceptance for marginalized groups? I’m not sure. But it illustrates quite clearly that the laws are for all.

(We saw what you did there, Sarah.)

Response by Robert Mathiesen to “Investigating a Grandmother Story”

This guest post by Prof. Mathiesen began as a comment to my earlier review ofThe Rede of the Wiccae, which he wrote with Theitic of the NECTW tradition. With his permission, I have moved his comments here.

Thank you, Chas! That’s a handsome and generous post.

My view of the history is close to yours, and I really like the term “Gardnerian magnet.” What follows are relatively minor points only, just to flesh out the picture you have painted so ably. (And I am writing in haste, too, so please forgive any typos and other infelicities of expression.)

(1) In the 1800s a number of Spiritualists maintained that there was no essential difference between a (Spiritualist) medium and a witch (or, for that matter, a real magician). A small number of mediums actually hinted (rarely) that they regarded themselves as witches, or (even more rarely) risked calling themselves witches as a means of enhancing their power in the public eye. No doubt these witches, like most other Spiritualists at the time, did some of their work in circles. Theirs are not *quite* the same thing as witches’ circles today, but there are similarities, e.g., equal numbers of men and women as an ideal.

Spiritualism (like Freemasonry and New Thought) tended to run in families over generations, so this sort of witch might even truly be doing what her mother and grandmothers did, and they, too, might have called themselves witches. Since Spiritualism is a religion, these women would have been religious witches. The family history of Gundella (Marion Kuclo) might be an example here, to judge by some of the hints in her two published books of ghost stories.

(1a) This school of thought within Spiritualism was rooted in a somewhat earlier theory, held by several Mesmerists and scholars of Mesmerism (often called “animal magnetism” by its proponents), that the historic phenomena of magic and witchcraft could be explained as poorly understood forerunners of Mesmerism itself. The most notable exponent of this view was Baron Du Potet de Sennevoy, whose major work on the subject (La magie devoilée) appeared in English translation in 1927 (Magnetism and Magic). Du Potet was an artist of magic, so to speak, and his book offered much inspiration to any would-be witch who wanted to invent a witchcraft of her own.

(1b) Other Spiritualists adapted the Mesmerists’ viewpoint slightly to their own religious assumptions. Here I should mention particularly Allen Putnam, author of a pamphlet “Mesmerism, Spiritualism, Witchcraft and Miracle” (1858) and “Witchcraft of New England Explained by Modern Spiritualism” (1881). Some opponents of Spiritualism flipped this theory on its head, using it to condemn rather than examine what they regarded as genuine powers possessed by [some] human beings. An example of the latter would be Mary Baker Eddy; early editions of her main work, “Science and Health,” express her views somewhat more bluntly than the later editions.

(2) Once Emile Grillot de Givry’s pictorial album on Witchcraft and Magic had appeared in English translation (1931), any woman who wanted to invent a witchcraft of her own as a means of claiming agency and power had lots of useful material to draw on. She might, for instance, have borrowed or adapted some of the spells Givry included in his book, or used a witches’ knife and called it (as Givry did) her arthamé. (A British pronunciation of that odd word might have been misspelled as athamé or athalmé by any English speaker who knew no better.) Robert Heinlein’s second wife, Leslyn MacDonald, seems to have been a woman who did just that, if the character “Amanda” in Heinlein’s “Magic Inc.” depicts her at all. The same seems to have been true of Shirley Jackson, to judge by conversations I had with the daughter of one of Jackson’s closest friends.

(3) William Seabrook’s book “Witchcraft, Its Power in the World Today,” published in 1940 in the USA and 1941 in the UK, offered a whole range of other, much edgier magical practices to the would-be witch, and anyone who had read Jack London’s novel “The Star Rover” (1915) would already have been familiar with some of these practices and the putative power they offered. Gardner or his immediate teachers were almost certainly familiar with Seabrook’s book, and Jack London’s novel is explicitly cited in the manuscript “Ye Bok of ye Art Magical.” Seabrook’s book, issued by a major publishing house, circulated widely, and Jack London’s novel even more widely.

(4) On the West Coast, in particular, there are old traditions of Pantheism, Nature Religion and the “propless mind-over-matter” magic of New Thought that reach back to the days of Joaquin Miller and John Muir, and even beyond them into last decades of the 19th century. These have been moderately well studied by such scholars as J. Stillson Judah, William Everson and Catherine Albanese. [So far as I know, there are few really clear traces of outright Polytheism on the West Coast during those decades, but I may have overlooked something.]

(5) Although in the early days Margaret Murray’s books were not all that widely circulated in the USA, a small booklet that popularized her results (and even went beyond them a little!) was published in 1926 and had a simply enormous circulation. This was Joseph McCabe’s “New Light on Witchcraft,” which was one of the Julius-Haldeman “Little Blue Books.” Anyone who wanted to invent a witchcraft for herself would have found ample inspiration in this brief work.

None of these points, of course, challenges your claim, which is probably correct, that there is no reason to posit the existence of “a self-consciously polytheistic Pagan religion called Wicca or Witchcraft” before 1951 — much less any sort of unbroken centuries-old tradition of such a thing. I’m just putting a few more highlights and shadows on the picture you have painted. The pre-Gardnerian history of religious witchcraft in the USA is rather more complicated than either the proponents or the opponents of all those “grandmother stories” have imagined.