A Country “Under Christian Occupation”

The BBC profiles some Hellenes — modern Greek Pagans — with minimal snark.

Tryphon Olympios leads many of the ceremonies (BBC).

[The summer solstice is] the most important annual festival for followers of The Return of the Hellenes – a movement trying to bring back the religion, values, philosophy and way of life of ancient Greece, more than 16 centuries after it was replaced by Christianity

These people consider Greece to be a country under Christian occupation.

(Not to mention nearly four hundred years of Muslim occupation as well.)

The followers are an odd mix. There are New Age types who revere ancient traditions, leftists who resent the power of the Orthodox Church, and Greek nationalists who see Christianity as having destroyed everything that was truly Greek.

As the modern-day ancients relax in their camp at the base of the mountain, a few sell philosophy books, CDs, food and jewellery. Some wear modern clothes, others togas [sic], and a few sport a wreath.

No, Matthew Brunwasser, every ancient garment is not a “toga.”

Advice for Twenty-Something Magicians

I was one of those, briefly — it didn’t take. But this is pretty good.

On the other hand, I suspect that there will be a few of you—maybe less than a handful, maybe just one or two—who will stick with it, and make the transition into hardcore, practicing magicians, and it is to you in particular that I feel a certain responsibility to write this essay for. As a member of the generation immediately preceding yours, I kind of have a duty to pass on some hard-won information. Most of you will probably ignore it, or not even be ready to listen to it, but I feel like I should put this out there for whatever greater purpose it serves.

Science Fiction and the Grieving Process

At io9, Lauren Davis writes about how science fiction helped her to deal with her grief at the sudden death of her younger brother.

The podcasts were meant to be a distraction, like the wine or the VCDs of movies my mom had brought home from a trip to Asia that Colin had never gotten a chance to watch. But one day, I heard Robert Reed’s story “A Woman’s Best Friend” on Clarkesworld, and I found that I felt inexplicably lighter. I ran home and immediately looked up the text of the story, rereading it for clues to my sudden shift in emotions.

“A Woman’s Best Friend” is a funny story, a sort of multi-worlds parody of It’s a Wonderful Life. Instead of being led through an alternate timeline by a down-on-his-luck angel, George Bailey is dumped in another universe by an interdimensional being who finds amusement in such rearrangements. George does meet a doppelgänger of his wife, Mary, but she’s no sad spinster and is, in fact, hip to the ways of the multiverse. George left behind a drowned corpse in his own world, but he comes to find that his new home universe holds all sorts of wonders.

Really, whether it is Battlestar Galactica (also referenced in the article) or The Iliad, this is one thing that literature is supposed to do, to help you reframe your life’s problems and learn how to deal with them in a quasi-mythic way. So hurray for that.

‘Non-Christian’ License Plate Prompts Oklahoma Lawsuit

An Oklahoma court has cleared the way for Methodist clergyman Keith Cressman to sue the state over his objection to  imagery on that state’s license plate.

The new license plates carry a photo of a statue called “Prayer for Rain,” of an Apache man shooting an arrow into the sky.

His 2011 lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Oklahoma City seeks a court order allowing him either to cover up the image on his plates or to get a personalized plate for the same cost as a standard license plate.

“Mr. Cressman’s (lawsuit) states a plausible compelled speech claim,” the appellate judges wrote Tuesday in a 39-page decision, reversing Judge Joe Heaton’s dismissal of the lawsuit. “He has alleged sufficient facts to suggest that the ‘Sacred Rain Arrow’ image on the standard Oklahoma license plate conveys a particularized message that others are likely to understand and to which he objects.”

Oklahoma has used American Indian imagery on license plates before, but something about this one evidently pushed the Rev. Cressman’s buttons.

Sigh. Maybe they should make a plain black and white plate for militant monotheists.

Pentagram Pizza: Should You Print Out These Links?

pentagrampizzaItems that deserve more commentary, but are not getting it today:

• From  MIT Technology Review: When we read books on paper, do we retain more than when we read on a screen?

• Re-creating the sound of ancient musical instruments, sometimes with synthesizers.

• A review of Apocalyptic Witchcraft, from Scarlet Imprint.

• At The Journal of Hofstadr Hearth, Alfarrin rethinks the blot in terms of Neolithic and Paleolithic, Aesir and Vanir, reciprocity and sharing. With a big shout-out to Paul Shepard!

• Related issues here at “Heathens in the Military: An Interview with Josh and Cat Heath, Part One,” at the Norse Mythology Blog.

You Want “Paganistan”?

From n + 1

Build Paganistan. A floating Paganistan. “Bulletproof Coffee”? I might try that once.

In addition to seeing government as just another problem that technology can overcome, Seasteaders try to “hack” every aspect of their existence down to their self-care regimens. Many participate in health and fitness regimes like the Paleo Diet and Crossfit—lifestyles that dovetail nicely with more mainstream libertarian retro-futurism, which argues humans ought to live more like they did before their “freedom” was impinged upon by large state governments, all while enjoying the enhancements of technological innovation forged in the free market. It wasn’t just Charlie from the boat cruise who proselytized the health benefits of butter: the unofficial beverage of Ephemerisle was “Bulletproof Coffee”—black coffee with half a stick of butter mixed in—which advocates claim increases their mental acuity and helps them stay trim. The inventor of the concoction claims to have increased his IQ by twenty points and lost 100 pounds as a result of his experiments “hacking” his biology. He was at Ephemerisle, too and later, in an email, told me he’d had a great time.

Have You Accepted Pan?

talk about pan

Active Imagination, Scrying, Creative Visualization, Guided Meditation

Trying to get a good handle on what the Jungians mean by “active imagination,” I have been reading Robert A. Johnson’s Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth this past month.  And I am learning some things. One is that active imagination, while a good technique, is definitely a product of the modern era. For starters, it requires a room of one’s own, quiet time, and literacy, even if done without an analyst.

My professor side started thinking of this as analytical topic for a paper — which I do not intend to write, but maybe someone else can. Take active imagination, scrying, creative visualization, and guided meditation.

Could you do a four-cell diagram with two axes, such as ego — unconscious or guided — unguided?

Johnson himself says this, after stressing that active imagination deals with the surprising and unexpected:

We need to grasp this clearly because there are no so many systems around that can be confused with Active Imagination but are completely distinct from it. The main difference is that they work with a prepared script; everything is determined in advance. These systems are sometimes called “guided imagery,” “creative imagery,” or by something else. What they have in common is that everything is predetermined. You decided in advance what is going to happen in your imagination. The ego decides what it is trying to get out of the unconscious and prepares a script. The idea is to “program” the unconscious so that it will do what the ego wants it to do. In one system, the whole avowed purpose of using the imagery is to get what you want.” (Italics in the original.)

Coincidentally (“there are no coincidences,” my old teacher said) Christina Hoff Kraemer posted recently on similar topic.

Often people use the terms visualisation, meditation and pathworking interchangeably, but they are different techniques, with different purposes and histories of development.

That would be part of my hypothetical paper too: what are the intellectual roots of these practices? Some go back (in the written record) to the Middle Ages, at least — think of the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order, who prescribed a guided imagery (or meditation) exercise where you place yourself as an observer of Jesus’ crucifixion and other significant events of his life, attempting to experience them through all your senses (there is more, of course).

Sky Full of Saucers

I watched Iron Sky last night — and then this:

Must be a meme here somewhere.

You can crowd-fund the sequel to Iron Sky.  This is all part of my appreciation of homegrown Finnish films — they are rare exports.

Holy Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat

I knew that “St. Jehoshaphat” (or “Josaphat” of “Baarlam and Josaphat”) came from bodhisattva, but here is more about the Norse tale of the Buddha. The comments are interesting too.