New Poems by Sappho Discovered

One of my fondest fantasies is that some archaeologist working in Greece or Italy will find a jar of scrolls that when read turn out to be the complete works of the poet Sappho — and just to continue the fantasy, packed in with them are the commentaries of the some erudite literary critic of the later Hellenistic period, reflecting back 500 years to her lifetime.

Despite her fame for centuries, most of her poems are incomplete. One of my favorite translations carries that sadness in its title: If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho.

So it is big news when a little more is found.

“The new Sappho is absolutely breath-taking,” said Albert Henrichs, a Harvard classics professor who examined the papyrus with Dr. [Dirk] Obbink. “It is the best preserved Sappho papyrus in existence, with just a few letters that had to be restored in the first poem, and not a single word that is in doubt. Its content is equally exciting.” One of the two recovered poems, Prof. Henrichs notes, speaks of a “Charaxos” and a “Larichos,” the names assigned by ancient sources to two of Sappho’s brothers but never before found in Sappho’s own writings. It has as a result been labeled the Brothers poem by Prof. Obbink.

A downloadable version of Obbink’s paper is here.

Pentagram Pizza from Rome’s Enemy

pentagrampizza¶ The word went around last week of the passing of Jonas Trinkunas (1939–2014), founder of the revived Lithuanian Pagan group Romuva. This Lithuanian website has video of his funeral ceremony, everyone in archaic ritual gear, lots of singing and drumming. (Video may be slow to load.)

¶ “Perhaps the future Carthaginians were like the Pilgrim Fathers leaving from Plymouth – they were so fervent in their devotion to the gods that they weren’t welcome at home any more.” But do not let that sentence give you any warm feelings until you have read the rest.

¶ The polytheists’ Ark was round, but still held animals.

Contemporary Pagan Studies Group’s Call for Papers

The process to submit papers for the Contemporary Pagan Studies Group’s sessions at next November’s American Academy of Religion meeting is now open. The submission deadline is March 3, 2014.

More information and links can be found here.

Call for Papers

We invite individual papers, papers, sessions, and roundtable proposals related to all aspects of Pagan studies (including historic) from different parts of the globe. We welcome papers using diverse methodologies: theoretical and practical, qualitative and quantitative, normative and descriptive. In addition to proposals on topics generally in the purview of this group, this year we especially welcome proposals that address the following for possible cosponsored sessions with other groups:

• Sexuality and gender politics in contemporary Paganism (for a possible cosponsored session with the Women and Religion Section): We seek papers on the critical analysis of women, gender roles, and ideals about women in the contemporary Pagan movement. Possible topics include but are not limited to: ideals about motherhood as envisioned in stories of the divine versus lived parenting, explicit critiques of Western gender and power dynamics in Contemporary Paganism, analysis of gender politics in small groups (e.g., How does the idealized, authoritative high priestess (role manifest in social relations in groups?), analysis of gender ideals versus lived realities and what this means for group cohesion and stability, analysis of British Traditional Witchcraft ideals and the reality of homosexuality in Paganism, analysis of gender fluidity in practice (e.g., Can an effeminate male be high priestesses or take “women’s roles,” and how does this affect group dynamics?). Other topic proposals are welcome.

• Exploring sexual identity and conversion in today’s shifting paradigms (for a cosponsored session with Gay Men and Religion Group; Lesbian-Feminist Issues and Religion Group; Men and Masculinities Group; Religions Conversions Group)

• New animism and ritual assemblies with the other-than-human (possible cosponsorship with Ritual Studies Group and Religion and Ecology Group).  Graham Harvey’s recently edited volume, The Handbook of Contemporary Animism (Acumen, 2013) opens possibilities for dialog among many religious traditions about humans’ relationships with the other-than-human or nonhuman world. This panel seeks papers that engage with the concept of the New Animism from multiple perspectives.

• Contemporary Paganism as “lived religion”: We seek papers for a methodologically oriented panel exploring how religiosity shapes the values and practices of people in their everyday lives. How do our religious views help us to create meanings and take action in the world, how do individuals shape and create practice, and what are the wider social and cultural contexts in which religiosity functions?

New Issue of ‘Pomegranate’ Journal Published

Some people are perplexed as to why this issue carries a 2012 date, although the articles are copyright 2014. We got behind schedule a couple of years ago and have been slowly catching up. The 2013 volume will be a double issue published during the first half of 2014, d.v., followed by the first 2014 issue. Full subscription information here.

Table of Contents

Articles

Introduction: Paganism, Initiation and Ritual PDF Open Access
Christian Giudice, Henrik Bogdan 181-183
How to Become a Mage (or Fairy): Joséphin Péladan’s Initiation for the Masses PDF Restricted Access
Sasha Chaitow 185-211
Pagan Rome was Rebuilt in a Play: Roggero Musmeci Ferrari Bravo and the Representation of Rumon PDF Restricted Access
Christian Giudice 212-232
Cleanliness is Next to Godliness, But Oaths are for Horses: Antecedents and Consequences of the Institutionalization of Secrecy in Initiatory Wicca PDF Restricted Access
Léon A. van Gulik 233-255
The Law of the Jungle: Self and Community in the Online Therianthropy Movement PDF Restricted Access
Venetia Laura Delano Robertson 256-280
Meeting Freya and the Cailleich, Celebrating Life and Death: Rites of Passage beyond Dutch Contemporary Pagan Community PDF Restricted Access
Hanneke Minkjan 281-303

Review Articles

“Mummers, Maypoles and Milkmaids: A Journey through the English Ritual Year” PDF Restricted Access
Ethan Doyle White 304-308

Book Reviews

Melissa M. Wilcox, Queer Women and Religious Individualism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 276 pp., $24.95 (paper), $65 (cloth). PDF Open Access
Rachel Morgain 309-312
Catherine R. DiCesare, Sweeping the Way: Divine Transformation in the Aztec Festival of Ochpaniztli (Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2009), 248 pp., $60 (cloth), $45 (ebook). PDF Open Access
Susana Perea-Fox 313-316
Carole M. Cusack, Invented Religions: Imagination, Fiction, and Faith (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2010), 179 pp., $89.96 (cloth), $79.96 (e-book). PDF Open Access
Christine Hoff Kraemer 317-320
Philip West, The Old Ones in the Old Book: Pagan Roots of the Hebrew Old Testament (Winchester: Moon Books, 2012), 128 pp., $16.95 (paperback). PDF Open Access
Stephanie Lynn Budin 321-324
Kristy S. Coleman, Re-Riting Woman: Dianic Wicca and the Feminine Divine (Lanham, Md.: AltaMira Press, 2010), 257 pp., $35.00 (paperback). PDF Open Access
Michelle Mueller 325-328

Chant like the Beast

A vinyl LP record is available of Aleister Crowley chanting in Enochian — and more

Recorded onto wax cylinder in the early 1910s, and later transferred to 78 RPM discs, this material has been unavailable on LP since the first limited edition of <500 copies released in 1984 through the efforts of Mr. David Tibet of Current 93 infamy. The tracks include Crowley’s recitation of the first two Enochian Keys, original poetry, incantations, and songs. An absolutely essential piece of occult history reissued on LP.

Purchase information here. The seller is in the United Kingdom, so you may have to ask about shipping to other countries.

Summoning the Eggplant Spirit

There are people who say that they communicate with plant spirits. There are people who make videos and upload them to YouTube. There are people who love a good joke. At least two of the three are represented here.

(I do see a little kid who is having an interesting childhood.)

Via Ultraculture

Trees, Animism, and Yuletide

Christmas tree discarded on public land in southern Colorado. (Photo: Royal Gorge Field Office, Bureau of Land Management)

Christmas tree discarded on public land in southern Colorado. (Photo: Royal Gorge Field Office, Bureau of Land Management)

I wanted to use the photo of the dumped Christmas tree with two different posts. Then I decided to combine them, so keep reading.

1. “Trees” is the theme of this month’s Animist Blog Carnival, hosted by Australian blogger Jay at naturebum. Tree totems, forest fires, Indo-European cosmology, and more!

2. Is there anything grosser than building up to the orgy of gift-unwrapping on December 25 and then declaring the whole holiday season over?A couple of days after that, and the local newspapers are telling you where you can “recycle” your Christmas tree.

But a book review in the British weekly The Spectator notes that at one time, decorations were left up until Candlemas.

‘The season of Christmastide has, in other words,’ [author Nick Grooms] observes, ‘shifted forward, as if it now expresses an impatient and premature desire for gratification. The result is that there are two cold months of winter following Christmas.’

At the very least, tonight is not quite Twelfth Night, unless like one Wiccan friend of mine, you count your twelve days from the winter solstice. So the colored lights will stay on a bit longer.

UK Druids Restore Damaged Ley Lines

A major effort is underway:

The council of British Druids have been working through the night to restore ley lines which have been damaged by recent storms. Many households have been without spiritual energy throughout the Yuletide holiday which has affected psychic connections in many parts of the country. A spokesman for the Druids commented; ‘We are doing all we can to restore the lines during the traditional pagan festival of Winter Solstice and we hope to have positive energy flowing freely between Glastonbury and Stonehenge by the weekend.’

Isis Gets Some Ink*

A fairly straight-forward article on one of the Denver area’s longer-lived occult bookstores, Isis Books, appeared in Sunday’s Denver Post.

“Makeshift Egyptian temple” is not quite right, though. The building used to be a mortuary with columns out front (where the limos used to pull up) that lent themselves to an Egyptian-inspired paint scheme.

The store started in Denver on East Colfax Avenue, not far from Hubcap Annie’s, the used hubcap store, which gives you a sense of the neighborhood.

If I remember correctly (always debatable), the first owner wasn’t making a go of it, and her landlord, this Jewish guy with no interest in Paganism, etc., took over. Karen Charboneau moved up from clerk to manager to owner, overseeing moves first to a bigger space on Colfax and then to the close-in suburb of Englewood, as well as developing a large mail-order operation.

*My reference point is always printing, not body art.

“Block like an Egyptian”

Too late for Yule, but isn’t there a Kemetic-reconstructionist gift-giving festival for which these would be perfect?

And give the copywriter a raise.