A report from Public Radio International on the Brazilian Spiritist religion of Umbanda focuses on a same-sex couple and conflicts with evangelical Christians.
Hogwarts for Vampires
Maybe if I had a bookish teenage daughter I would know this, but the boarding-school-for-vampires (etc.) genre has exploded.
Here is a typical cover blurb:
Two years after a horrible incident made them run away, vampire princess Lissa and her guardian-in-training Rose are found and returned to St. Vladimir’s Academy, where one focuses on mastering magic, the other on physical training, while both try to avoid the perils of gossip, cliques, gruesome pranks, and sinister plots.
Margot Adler and I were discussing vampire books about four years ago, when her quest to read them all had passed ninety titles. Cradle-Marxist that she is, she was trying to understand the vampire craze as being somehow a critique of capitalism.
I don’t think so—and definitely not in the Young Adult classification. Check out this list of suggested titles, linked from a website of a public library near me.
It could be more work for Joseph Laycock, the go-to guy in religious studies for vampire-ology, but he has moved on to otherkin, of which more anon.
Robin of Kent (and His Merry Men)
A British historian argues that Robin Hood was based on a guerrilla bowman nicknamed Willikin of the Weald, although he might have passed through Sherwood Forest. (A snippet of the longer article from History Today)
That puts him fighting for “bad King John” (a minus) but against the French (always a plus for an English folk hero).
Whoever he was, check out his filmography. Where that leaves Herne the Hunter, I don’t know.
Freelancers versus Editors in the Digital/Print Age
Freelance journalist Nate Thayer’s blog post about his experience with The Atlantic has made some waves.
In short, Thayer was pretty annoyed when Olga Khazan, an Atlantic editor, asked him to re-write a piece published elsewhere for The Atlantic — for free. Thayer reproduced their email exchange, which included him reminding her that “exposure” does not pay any bills:
I am a professional journalist who has made my living by writing for 25 years and am not in the habit of giving my services for free to for profit media outlets so they can make money by using my work and efforts by removing my ability to pay my bills and feed my children. I know several people who write for the Atlantic who of course get paid. I appreciate your interest, but, while I respect the Atlantic, and have several friends who write for it, I have bills to pay and cannot expect to do so by giving my work away for free to a for profit company so they can make money off of my efforts.
Then a more senior editor, Alexis Madrigal, got involved, feeling Thayer’s pain but explaining how, gosh, publishing is in a tough spot and he just doesn’t have any budget for freelancers, even as he wanders the halls and ponders the magazine’s past glories
If I open up one of our musty tomes at the office, I can get sucked in for an hour just looking at the ads, or marveling at the eloquence of W.E.B. DuBois. When I look back at old Ta-Nehisi posts or see Fallows in the halls, I can get emotional. I was watching Ken Burns’ National Parks documentary, and he notes, offhandedly, how stories that ran in our magazine helped preserve Yosemite for future generations.
Commenters saw it differently:
I just love reading lengthy self-justifications from people who have full-time jobs taking other people’s work for free.
And
Congratulations: you’ve made your magazine’s arrogant, sorry-not-sorry half-apology and made it into a full out non-apology. The amazing thing is that you think you’re articulating a defense of the profound self-worship of The Atlantic, when actually, you’re engaging in it.
A lot of the comments does engage the money issue in intelligent ways, so if you are trying to write for money, it’s worth reading them.
Archaeologists Find Secret to Norse Sunstone?
This might be one of those “But we already knew that!” deals, but French archaeologists think that they have an actual example in hand of a “sunstone,” said to be used by the Norse to navigate in cloudy weather.
This one, however, comes from a Tudor-era shipwreck. Same principle though.
(LDS historians and scholars, this is not about you.)
Publisher Drops Suits Against Blogging Librarian
A university librarian who described Edwin Mellen Press on his blog as “dubious” and as offering “second-class scholarship” was sued in turn by the press, but the lawsuit has now been dropped.
The lawsuits inspired scholars from around North America to rally behind Askey. Created by Martha Reineke, a professor of religion at the University of Northern Iowa, a petition demanding EMP to drop its lawsuits had garnered more than 3,100 names as of Monday morning.
EMP told CBC Hamilton on Monday that it “has discontinued the court case against McMaster University and Dale Askey.”
In a statement, the company added: “financial pressure of the social media campaign and press on authors is severe. EMP is a small company. Therefore [it] must choose to focus its resources on its business and serving its authors.”
The key words appear to have been “social media campaign.” In the relatively small world of academic publishing, it got results.
I notice that Mellen’s website describes them as a “non-subsidy academic publisher.” That was not always my impression, but OK. Another page, however, states “The Edwin Mellen Press refuses to write, rewrite, or revise any author’s text.” Not hiring copy editors saves money!
UPDATE: See comments.
Is Paganism Doomed?
No, this is not the judgment of one of the usual (Pagan) suspects.
It is a tangent spun off a column by Rod Dreher, who comments frequently on ecclesiastical matters. He was raised a southern Protestant, converted to Roman Catholicism, left that church over the sex-abuse scandals, and is now an Orthodox Christian — although he is aware that the Orthodox churches are not scandal-free either.
Although Dreher and I are a little different theologically, I think that he would pass the next-door-neighbor test, especially as he loves to cook and appreciates the cuisine of his native Louisiana. Maybe he would invite me over now and then.
Like many members of the chattering classes, Dreher has been looping back again and again to the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI. What does it mean for the future? and all that sort of thing. (Me, I wonder if the prophecy-falsely-attributed-to-St.-Malachy is right, and the next guy will indeed be the last pope. Then we can ask some questions.)
So in the course of musing on the future of Christianity and religion in general, he quotes some Brazilian who says that interest in Brazil’s established Afro-Brazilian traditions is diminishing.
[Quoting the Brazilian:] As I said in other topics, christianity in America and Europe is not the only faith that is hemorraging people: as follower of the so called ‘african paganism’ (macumba), here in Brazil, it’s baffling to see the temples devoid of young people: of the dozens of young man and woman I know only three (including me) are active. In my mother’s generation, almost everyone in Brazil was macumbeiro (follower of the macumba), today temples are closing, the priests are spiritually weak, and one rarely see the offerings to the spirits in the crossroads, beaches and graveyards.
And he decides that paganism [sic] is preferable to atheism, even if it is not the Real Thing.
Personally, I find paganism far more attractive than atheism, because pagans, however mistaken their understanding (from a Christian point of view) nevertheless share with Christians a recognition that there is Something There beyond ourselves, and the material world. I can have (have had) a fruitful, engaging discussion with my friend and commenter Franklin Evans, a pagan, in a way that I just can’t with friends who have no spiritual or religious beliefs, or a sense of the numinous.
My guess, and it’s only that, is that some pagans will fall away from the practice of their faith for the same reason many Christians are: because it doesn’t make sense in our scientistic, materialistic, consumerist world. At the same time, I think that paganism stands to gain overall from the unchristening of the West. If you look at the Asatru site, this neopagan religion speaks to longings that are deep within all of us, and cannot be suppressed forever.
The Nurse as Psychopomp, or Maybe Not So Much
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.