Nurses. Some just do the job. Others are more adventurous and open-minded, experimenting with “therapeutic touch,” various types of counseling, shamanic work, or even sending the recently deceased to Hell or (in theory) to the compost pile.
‘Ghost Brides’ Keep the Family Together
If family and ancestors really, really matter, you can dig up a corpse and manufacture an ancestor.
Ritual ghost marriages, which may date back to the 17th century BC, are increasingly rare in contemporary China – Mao Zedong tried to eliminate them when he assumed power in 1949 – but they are still practised in rural parts of Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan, Hebei and Guangdong provinces. Families often employ a matchmaker to help find a suitable spouse for their deceased loved ones.
The Green Man: A Symbol of Ethnic Resistance?
“Green man,” Norwich Cathedral, England.
Green man masks are a staple seller on Merchants’ Row at any Pagan festival. I found a weather-resistant example at Beltania a couple of years ago, and now it hangs by the front door.
As Paul Kingsnorth writes in Aeon:
There are plenty of hypotheses [about his origin], and it depends on whom you talk to. Those inclined towards paganism like to claim that green men are relics of pre-Christian religions that have been incorporated into churches. I have heard, variously, that the green man represents the spirit of the greenwoods, the rebirth of nature, a rebellion against Christianity, or a symbol of the constancy of nature. Everybody who knows the green man has their favourite theory about what he is and why he is there.
But Kingsnorth goes on to offer a different origin story for the Green Man: that he is a symbol of ethno-political resistance to the Norman Conquest of 1066.
It would seem that if that is true, however, there would have to have been a cover story to tell to the Norman bishop in charge of the cathedral. And as one of the commenters points out, the Green Man figure is not unique to England. So maybe the nature-spirit reading of this figure still “has legs,” even if the Green Man himself does not.
Unspeakable Horror
The complete works of H. P. Lovecraft as a free ebook in various formats, plus PDF.
I hate the moon—I am afraid of it—for when it shines on certain scenes familiar and loved it sometimes makes them unfamiliar and hideous.
It’s All Right. I Have a Book
Bridget on the necessity of reading materials:
Nothing for me is worse than being in the back of an airplane or at a hotel with nothing to read. When in one mountainous far off place, I had to downsize a bag as the little airplane being piloted by what I believe was a Yeti, was weight restricted and my books were left behind for materials I had to have for the mission. I almost would have given up my tools, my poncho and my hiking boots than my little collection of paperbacks, of Earth Abides and Stranger in a Strange Land and a small leather bound book of Shakespeare sonnets.
Appeals Court Grants Partial Victory in California Chaplain Case
The Ninth Circuit Court has partly upheld the Wiccan challenge (headed by volunteer prison chaplain Patrick McCollum) to California’s “Five Faiths” policy for who gets paid prison chaplains and who does not.
Read this helpful blog post from FindLaw and ponder the question, was there a Jewish crime wave in the mid-2000s? Or are the numbers on religious affiliation in prison really unreliable?
Ghost Girls: Witchcrap or Pop Occulture Fun?
My old friend Oberon Zell of the Church of All Worlds is backing this show because he designed some jewelry for the characters.
A Facebook commenter calls the show “the kind of CRAP our spiritual community has had to put up with for decades!”
According to the projected TV series’ website,
Janet, Crystle, and Tawnya are three attractive girls that share a close-knit sisterhood with a decidedly macabre twist. The girls were drawn together by their penchant for the unusual, supernatural – all having supernatural abilities themselves, which set them apart from the rest of the ordinary world. The “Ghost Girls” enclave is based at a haunted old Victorian house in Southern California.
And the editor in me is screaming, “How do you base an enclave?” The “girls” themselves might be based in a haunted et cetera. Hello, dictionary please. But with all the hours of cable programming to fill, someone will probably pick it up.
Consider it another link in the evolution of the “Hollywood Witch.”
Adolescent Rebellion as “Mental Illness”
At Vice, Molly Crabapple gives an ex-goth girl’s take on “Shooter Boys and At-Risk Girls.”
Only she does not really explain the school-shooter phenomenon, though she tries to transition into it at the end. Still, the rest of the essay is excellent.
In the post-Sandy Hook rage to blame anything (guns, video games, internet-addicted youth) the easiest thing to blame is always the kid who fails at the blankly inoffensive ideals of childhood. This 16-year-old drew a glove shooting flames. The police searched his house. They found the sort of gutted machines that hint at a proclivity for engineering. He was arrested on December 18, and was still in juvenile hall when papers ran the story on the 28th.
A few weeks later, 17-year-old Courtni Webb was thrown out of school in California. A teacher searched her bag, and found a poem she had written for herself, that showed too much empathy for Adam Lanza. When you’re underage, your property isn’t private. Neither are your thoughts.
I think of these kids because I was one of them . . . .
Like many smart kids, I had age dysmorphia. In my head, I was ready for adventures. In the world, I couldn’t hang out alone at Starbucks. What the guidance councilor didn’t want to remember is that childhood is helplessness. Schools, sometimes benevolently, sometimes not, have power over their students that most American adults will never experience unless they are in a hospital, old age home, institution or prison.
And there is a Wicca reference too, in a 1990s pop-cultural context. Read the rest.
Of Beards and Priests and Pastors
From the opinionated and entertaining blog Beauty Tips for Ministers, a link to a site examining the beard styles of Christian clergymen.
The thing is, I think I see some Pagan bloggers here as well.
Popularity Contests and Declining Universities
Janice Fiamengo takes on Rate My Professors as a sign of what is wrong with American universities.
Such accusations reveal little about the professor in question; no one ever satisfactorily distinguishes a boring professor from a boredom-inclined student — which is not to suggest that boring professors do not exist, simply that Rate My Professors cannot recognize them. What the comments reveal are students’ assumptions about what they are owed by their teachers and what constitutes a good classroom experience. Most pointedly, they show the extent to which higher education in North America has become a consumer product like any other, catering to client satisfaction and majority appeal. Reading through the comments, one is disheartened not only because so many are crude and illiterate but also because they indicate how deeply most students have imbibed the canard that university is about being entertained and helped to feel good about oneself.
Read the rest: There is even a witchcraft reference.
Rate My Professors probably never would have been created if schools in the 1970s had not started collecting student evaluations, instead of relying on peer evaluations and other methods. That got us to thinking that student opinions mattered right then and there instead in retrospect after a few years of growth.
The funny thing is that in my years of university teaching only once did I see my department chair use someone’s evaluation against them, and that only because he needed some “objective” evidence to support his decision not to rehire a particular adjunct professor.
Otherwise, as long as your numbers came in sort of average, you were OK, and if they were below average, well, that was because you were teaching difficult material and actually making the little darlings work.
I dodged the RMP bullet, but when M. was teaching psychology, one student rated her as “a great teacher, just a little off the wall. but its [sic] all good.” Isn’t “off the wall” appropriate for a psych class? 😉