¶ Malleus Maleficarum collector figures.
¶ Women of Esoterica blog: “On women involved in the paranormal, esoteric, Fortean, strange, magickal, supernatural, anomalous, symbolic, UFO, ghostly, chupacabra-y, Nessie/Sasquatch, world of really weird things.”
¶ I would like to have walked out under these skies.
¶ Metaphysical writer Louise Hay is profiled in the New York Times: “Queen of the New Age.” (Hat tip: Jordan Stratford.)
¶ I can tell that you are reading only 20 percent of my blog.
¶ Ten years ago, the look of personal computing changed forever. “As far from the cable-twined tangle of beige boxes as you could imagine, its smooth-as-an-egg blue-and-white all-in-one shape was compelling and futuristic.”
¶ When I saw Jason’s post about people choosing to have Pagan weddings for what amount to aesthetic reasons, I was reminded of a news article I linked to in 2006 about Westerners performing fake Christian ceremonies in Japan.
Back in our days as active coven leaders (20+ years ago), M. and I did marry a sort-of Pagan American guy and the daughter of a Thai UN official. Her family treated it as an unusual ethnographic spectacle, but we got a great Thai dinner out of the experience.
No, the marriage did not last. I think we are 1 for 3 on handfastings. You had better choose someone else.
My eyes cringe at Web pages with light-on-dark type. Dark-on-light was good enough for Gutenberg, and it’s good enough for me.
Now there is a solution: a Java script in the form of a toolbar bookmark that lets you flip headache-inducing light-on-dark pages to the way that Johannes intended. (Thanks, Kelley.)
For the bookmarklet, just scroll down to the box marked “Update,” and drag and drop.
Back from a week on the road to a full inbox and a desk covered with bills to pay, I offer a few links for your kind attention:
¶ Attention Kemetic reconstructionists: Don’t let your temple-builders become anemic.
¶ A list of things that offend Muslims. Anyone want to try the Pagan equivalent? I think it would be a lot shorter. Piggy banks and Easter eggs don’t bother me. Can you imagine Pagans rioting in the streets over the crappy remake of The Wicker Man and giving director Neil LaBute the Theo Van Gogh treatment? I can’t either. We prefer to just make fun of it.
¶ This will go onto my must-see list: Jason Pitzl-Waters notes an upcoming movie about the philosopher Hypatia. An uncompromising Neoplatonist, from what I understand, she was murdered by a Christian mob after some bishop put out a fatwa against her.
A traditional Colorado St. Patrick’s Day: dank and snowy. If I were not bogged down with grading, I could contemplate which one of seventeen Irish recipes sounded most appealing. Guiness-and-cheddar fondue?
M. and I will be hearing some music tonight, though.
I finished reviewing the proposals for the American Academy of Religion’s Contemporary Pagan Studies Group.
Our theme for this November’s meeting in Chicago is “The Polytheistic Challenge,” and it looks like we will have enough good papers for our two sessions — about ten papers total. Add to that a session shared with the Popular Culture group, and we will have more.
¶ When monotheists turn violent (which is often): Mormon missionaries vandalize Catholic shrine in southern Colorado. Mormon higher-ups ask forgiveness of Blessed Mother. That was a joke. Actually, they apologized to the San Luis, Colo., town board: one quasi-theocracy to another. They also want to build a huge church in the little town.
¶ Indigenous religious leaders meet about environmental crises. News of the meeting did not apparently make it to the BBC, for instance. I applaud what they are doing, but, unfortunately, they need better media relations. Or else to invite some Pagan bloggers such as Jason.
¶ Wicca is the “designated Other” for comics artists too.
¶ Maybe the Church of Google monotheists would not behead unbelievers.
¶ No pardon for Helen Duncan, convicted under the 1735 Witchcraft Act. (Earlier post here.)
I don’t normally do these meme-post-thingies, but I was tagged by the inimitable Steve Bodio at Querencia.
Here is the challenge:
1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.
Mine reads as follows (the ellipses were in the original, which included the block quotation):
Osbert Sitwell was well acquainted with the story. He says that the deserters included French, Italians, Germans, Austrians, Australians, Englishmen, and Canadians; they lived
–at least they lived–in caves and grottoes under certain parts of the front line…They would issue forth, it was said, from their secret lairs, after each of the interminable checkmate battles, to rob the dying of their few possessions…
There is a new syncroblog “call” up on mythology and landscapes.
I am just back from a Sunday afternoon dog walk, and here is the landscape: winter ice slowly melting above a beaver dam on Hardscrabble Creek.
Mythology? I guess I feel sort of deficient in that area today. Spring, ice, stream, beavers — go for it.
Some people just do not get the concept — in this case, the concept of blogging.
When you write a blog, you either link to a web site you have visited (blog = web log, remember) and you comment on it. Even a Glenn Reynolds-ish “Heh” counts as a comment.
Or you write what amounts to an online diary entry. Those are the two main types of blogging.
But lately, thanks to Google Alerts, I noticed that some Pagan bloggers think that cutting and pasting Wikipedia entries counts as blogging. Examples: 1, 2, 3, 4. There are probably more.
If you cannot link-and-comment, or write about your day (or night), then there is always the Japanese option: Tell what you ate for lunch.
⟨/RANT⟩
Meanwhile, read Doug Cowan’s Cyberhenge: Modern Pagans on the Internet
I updated the book review page of my personal web site.
