Tag: academia

The Scholar and the Unabomber

On By Chas S. Clifton3 Comments
Federal marshalls with Ted Kaczynski in custody, Helena, Montana, 1996.

Theodore “Unabomber” Kaczynski, my former neighbor, loosely speaking, has died at age 81. From 1998–2021 he was in the “Supermax” facility at the federal prison complex outside Florence, Colorado, a place I usually drive past once or twice a week. More recently he was in a federal prison hospital, possibly an improvement to being in a concrete box 23 hours a day.

Shortly after he arrived at ADX Florence, I was walking up Pike’s Peak Avenue to the post office. I saw a man on the sidewalk who looked a lot like a prominent scholar of American nature religion, but I knew that that guy lived in the Southeast and would not be in Florence. Until he said, “Hi, Chas.”

The scholar was sharing a motel room in nearby Cañon City with one of the editors of  the Earth First! journal. Back when Earth First! was the freewheeling, ecotage-promoting, Neanderthal-affirming organization that dated its publication by the Celtic wheel of the year, I had been a subscriber. In fact, I had had dinner one night with co-founder Dave Foreman in Boulder one time and had a great conversation about Neanderthal people, as they were understood and theorized back in the 1980s.

Apparently the EF! editor was on Kaczynski’s approved visitor list. The scholar, who had been around EF! before, had hoped to get on that list too, with research interests in mind. Unfortunately, “Uncle Ted” said no.

Dave Foreman split with Earth First! in 1990. I had not given all EF! as much thought in the 90s, but when M. and I paid a visit to their motel, we found  . . . a different tone.

Kacyznski’s message of distrust in  technological “progress” was important, the editor[1]More properly, member of the “editorial collective”? affirmed. But there was that public-relations problem with his “unique program of direct action,” as she put it.

In the motel hallway, I shook my head. Unique program of direct action — that is how you describe sending letter bombs when you speak fluent Enviro-tankie. Earth First! had changed all right. The journal had lost its Pagan-ish-adjacent flavor. And where are they now? More an idea than a (loose) organization, still invoked by ecotageurs. [2]Funny thing, Uncle Ted was no fan of the political left, at least in some of his writings as quoted at the link.

Notes

Notes
↑1 More properly, member of the “editorial collective”?
↑2 Funny thing, Uncle Ted was no fan of the political left, at least in some of his writings as quoted at the link.

A New Survey on Pagans’ Political Attitudes

On By Chas S. Clifton2 Comments

This survey, “Pagan and Heathen Political and Sociall Metrics,”  comes recommended by several scholars whom I know. It is for respondents in the United States and Canada only.

This survey is a means of gathering information about beliefs, behaviors, and demographics from Heathens and Pagans in the United States and Canada. It will ask you questions about aspects of your religious and personal life, and your opinion on hot-button issues. Its results will tell us what Heathens and Pagans have in common across borders, and how different Pagans are within them. For the purposes of this survey, “Pagan” is defined as anyone who practices a form of Paganism and / or identifies as a practitioner of any form of Paganism, and “Heathen” is defined as anyone who practices a form of Heathenry or Asatru or identifies as a practitioner of any form of Heathenry or Asatru.

Warning: A lot of the questions are about race, guns,  and politics, so if you are uncomfortable with slicing and dicing that stuff, don’t go there.

A New Look at “The Golden Bough,” a Book both Loved and Hated

On By Chas S. Clifton1 Comment

Lots of books, documentaries, etc, purport to tell you the “real story” that academics are “afraid to reveal,”  particularly in history, archaeology, and related fields.

Then there is Sir James G. Frazer’s The Golden Bough. In its day, it was academic. Now it is “the book that has single-handedly inflicted the most damage to the understanding of both scholars and the general public.”

Among other things, The Golden Bough contributed much to the idea of “ancient Pagan survivals”  that influenced just about all late-nineteenth and twentieth-century folklore research as well as the grown of conetemporary Paganism.

The high priest of my first coven really wondered at one point if the male leadership should not be decided Rex Nemorensis-style.

Want to know more? Sign up for “Shaking the Tree, Breaking the Bough: The Golden Bough at 100.”

This conference hosted by Drs. Caroline Tully and Stephanie L. Budin under the auspices of the University of Melbourne from Friday, 10 February to Sunday, 12 February 2023 evaluates the continued influence of Sir James G. Frazer and his magnum opus The Golden Bough on the Humanities in modern academia. Talks are 20 minutes/40 minutes (keynote speakers) each, with a short time for Q&A after.

Presentations include “The ‘resurrection’ of Frazer’s dying gods in the ancient Mediterranean mythology: A fresh take on the divine death and resurrection through comparison: the case of Baal, Inanna/Ishtar and Dionysus,” plus “’A Victorian Educated Gentleman’: Frazer and his Golden Bough in Context,” and many others.

Everything available on Zoom. Request a link at Goldenboughconference [att] gmail [daht] com. See full conference program here.

The Passing of Jim Lewis, Noted Scholar of New Religious Movements

On By Chas S. Clifton4 Comments
Yep, that’s a well-worn cover.

When I was new to Pagan studies — actually, “Pagan studies” had not even coalesced as a field of study — Jim Lewis’s edited volume Magical Religion and Modern Witchcraft (SUNY Press, 1996) was one of my go-to volumes.

I had an essay in it, not something I am proud of, but definitely a product of “fake it till you make it.”[1]It has not been cited often. Once was in a court brief over a prisoners’ rights case.

Jim was there early. Before The Triumph of the Moon, although after Drawing Down the Moon.

As a good scholar of new religious movements, he was out ahead of of the main group, asking “Who are they? Where did they come from? What do they do? Are they friendly?”

Branch Davidians, Satanists, Scientologists, New Pagans, Space Aliens, Neoshamanism, Falung Gong — he was there. His publication record would be enough for six typical professors.

Jim was also known for encouraging younger researchers, particularly during the time he taught. In the early 1970s, he had been a yoga teacher and founded his own short-lived “community” in Tallahassee, Florida, before going entering postgraduate work.

And like many scholars of new religious movements (NRMs), he had a hard time making a living in academia.  Despite the vibrancy and relevance of NRM research, it just does not draw the funding and respect. You’re better off specializing in New Testament studies and writing yet another book about the Apostle Paul, or developing some new slant on gender-and-theology, if you want to be hired.

Born in 1949, Jim died October 11, 2022. I did not learn this until the American Academy of Religion meeting in late November, sadly. He was hugely prolific as an author and editor, but he was also working right up to the end — because he had to.

After some para-academic publishing work, Jim had taught in the University of Wisconsin system for some time but apparently never had a solid position. Then he was hired by the Arctic University of Norway in Tromso, which really is so far north that you lose the Sun for a while. Seasonal affective disorder aside, it seemed like a good gig, and I for one was happy for him. And presumably there would be enough petro-kroner for a pension.

He published several articles in The Pomegranate in those years, with special attetion to the growth of Paganism in nations that collect religious-membership statistics.

But apparently there was a problem in Norway — he had not put in enough years — he could not get a full-time appointment past age 66 — or some such thing. I don’t how this worked, but he ended up at Wuhan University in China, although he was working remotely in 2020, luckily for him.

If you look at his publications from 2018–2021, you will see a lot about Falun Gong, the large, international new religious movement that has been a particular target of the Chinese government.

To be honest, the Chinese government, after a period of general hands-off, has been realy hard on all religions: Tibetan Buddhism, Islam, Chinese Christian groups, ancient Daoist temples, family and clan ancestral shrines — all have been shut down, bulldozed or forced to turn themselves into government billboards.

No rivals to “President Xi Thought” are permitted, it appears.[2]For more, read the Bitter Winter NRMs webzine.

Beyong writing critically about Falun Gong, he tried cutting some corners in order to pad the rèsumès of his new Chinese colleagues. As far as The Pomegranate was concerned, I refused to play along, and he cut all communications.

But whatever he did, I suspect he took the Wuhan gig to make some last good money as a senior scholar for himself and his wife. Which loops me around to where I started, that the study of new religous movements still, after fifty or sixty years, is not taken as seriously in academia as it ought to be — and hence not compensated.

And that is why too that I don’t expect to see any endowed chairs in Pagan studies in my lifetime.

Notes

Notes
↑1 It has not been cited often. Once was in a court brief over a prisoners’ rights case.
↑2 For more, read the Bitter Winter NRMs webzine.

CFP: Design and the Occult

On By Chas S. Clifton2 Comments
Screenshot from Dior’s Autumn-Winter 2020-2021 haute couture promotional video.

After my various posts on the Pagan-ish presentations by the House of Dior in particular (such as “The Tarot of Dior” and “Dior Dresses the Fair Folk” and “I Want to Call Dior’s Cruise Collection Pagan-ish Too“), I was happy to see this call for papers, “Design and the Occult.”

Here is a little of it — visit the link for all the particulars.

Until recently many academic disciplines and subjects avoided the subject of the occult, deeming it too ‘irrational or ‘eccentric’ for serious study. Exceptions to this include the discipline of anthropology, which since the 19th century, embraced the study of religion and belief from Western rationalist perspectives. In recent decades anthropology has explored magic and occultism from a broader range of viewpoints, including phenomenology, relativism, and post-structuralism. In the last two decades adjacent disciplines to design history such as history, art history, sociology, cultural studies, and film studies have increasingly embraced occult subjects. Likewise, the interdisciplinary field of environmental humanities has examined Indigenous, Western and Eastern ideas about the relationships between humans and the natural world, including esoteric, folkloric, and occult concepts.

However, within the field of design history esotericism, occultism, and magic have been largely overlooked with no sustained explorations of their relationships with design and the decorative arts. Notable exceptions to this include studies such as Zeynep Çelik Alexander, ‘Jugendstil Visions: Occultism, Gender and Modern Design Pedagogy’ Journal of Design History, Vol. 22, Issue 3, September 2009, pp. 203–226, and Elizabeth Otto, Haunted Bauhaus: Occult Spirituality, Gender Fluidity, Queer Identities, and Radical Politics (The MIT Press, 2019)

I will have to get this issue of the journal when it’s published. (Pointy hat tip to Sabina Magliocco for the link.)

Even though The Pomegranate published its “Paganism, Art, and Fashion” special issue a while back, this remains a topic of editorial interest.

Chaos Magic Goes Mainstream

On By Chas S. Clifton3 Comments

Peter Carroll, call your office.
I was checking someone on the University of North Texas website today while working on a future Pomegranate article, clicked by chance on the student login page of its website — and this graphic appeared.

Denton, Texas, is a hotbed of chaos magicians? Or is it just the UNT website design office? Someone expects that students will (kind of, sort of) recognize that term?

“Cracow Monsters” Is Just “Weak Horror,” Says Polish Professor

On By Chas S. Clifton2 Comments

Cracow Monsters is a Netflix series about “a young woman haunted by her past [who] joins a mysterious professor and his group of gifted students who investigate paranormal activity — and fight demons.”

Can you say “TV trope“?  I knew you could. Maybe “Cool teacher” or possibly “More than just a teacher,” which may in fact include demon-slaying.

Comes now[1]https://grammar-ttlms.blogspot.com/2007/07/comes-now.html Andrzej Szyjewski, professor of religious studies at Jagiellonian University, which has been doing business in Cracow/Kraków since 1364, as they calculate it, back when demonology was an academic discipline.

He does not approve of the way that the series treats Slavic supernaturals or his university and city.

The viewers are subjected to a whole series of disgusting and terrifying characters of various origins. It quickly becomes obvious that even Trentowski’s inventive vocabulary and imagination is not sufficient enough to describe the mix of entities gathered under the banner of supposedly Slavic mythology. The screenplay incorporates ideas from other, more contemporary Native Slavic faith believers (Rodnovery) and New Age workshops. For instance, in episode four, Chworz summons a creature called Spas. He is, in essence, a personification of certain holidays, described by Ukrainian Rodnovery volkhv (wisewoman) Halina Lozko, which the series depicts as something similar to Ded Moroz, who in turn can be likened to Santa Claus. Over the course of the series, Spas, carrying a staff decorated with hanging dolls, busies himself with freezing and then hanging people who failed to give him a present. The ‘Slavic Grinch’ meets his end when Alex electrocutes him with a high voltage wire. It therefore seems that the screenwriter didn’t bother to carry out at least a minimum amount of research when it came to the most key aspect of the show. She didn’t know that the name ‘Spas’, coming from the word spasitel, which means ‘saviour’ and denotes Christ, is unsuitable for a pre-Christian demon. . . .

Even when the screenwriter bases the story around concepts introduced by [19th-century writer Bronislaw] Trentowski, she seems not to understand them and misrepresent them, either knowingly or unknowingly. The best example of this is using the neologism bo?yca, which Trentowski means as ‘knowledge of gods and religion’, to signify a kind of protective spirit, a radiant entity guarding the main protagonist. She also calls it an Aitvara, which indeed denoted a guardian spirit, but one that watched over homesteads, not individuals. Aitvaras were reptilian in shape, brought wealth and prosperity, and were absolutely not exclusive to high priests and priestesses.

And futhermore:

One of the series’ strongest points could be its setting: Kraków, a city famous for its rich legendary and historical symbolism. Unfortunately, Kraków also becomes a fantastical amalgamation of real and fictitious places (such as Wanda Mound). Judging from the places visited by the protagonists during their chase after the zapadliska, they can magically jump from one side of the Vistula to the other every few seconds. The viewers will also get the impression that all classes at the Jagiellonian University are conducted solely in Collegium Novum, the administrative centre of the University. Because of this, the eponymous Kraków becomes a simulacrum just as much as the ‘Slavic beliefs’. The most convincing idea related to Kraków in the series is the issue of the curse: the city is unable to develop properly, trapped in a hollow, drowned in smog and ravaged by extreme weather. In the series, Kraków becomes something akin to London, either shrouded in fog or beaten by rain. In this regard, the screenplay rises to the challenge.

Unlike Ukrainian soldiers, I had to pay retail and wait a few months for delivery, but this looks like my temporary Starlink set-up, right down to the bricks.

I probably could not last through all two seasons, but now that I have Starlink and can stream easily to my isolated forest hideout, I am tempted to give it a look all the same, bearing Prof. Szyjewski’s cautions in mind.

(Thanks for the link to my co-editor in Equinox Publishing’s Pagan book series, Scott Simpson, who also teaches at Jagiellonian University and is the reason why I know anything at all about it. Trust me, he is “more than just a teacher.”)

 

 

Notes

Notes
↑1 https://grammar-ttlms.blogspot.com/2007/07/comes-now.html

CFP: Pagan Studies Conference at Masaryk University

On By Chas S. Clifton1 Comment

Paganism and its Others

13-14 June 2022

Masaryk University, Faculty of Arts, Brno, Czechia

The Department for the Study of Religions at Masaryk University invites your participation in a conference on the overall theme of “Paganism and its Others” to be held in Brno, Czechia, 13-14 June, 2022, with in-person participation encouraged but online presentations also acceptable.

Although relating to the religions of ancient times, the contemporary Pagan movements are part of our shared modern world, bringing up many challenges and opportunities in interactions with their Others. It is precisely these interactions and their implications that we would like to explore at this conference.

The topics we seek to cover include (but are not limited to) these:

Paganism, its Others and the war in Ukraine: targeted to the theme of Pagans and their perception of the war in Ukraine. How do different Pagan groups interpret the war in Ukraine? How did the war change the relationship between Pagans in Ukraine and in Russia? Do Pagans actively participate in the war (e.g. in the army)? How do Pagans across Europe perceive refugees from Ukraine? Do Pagans help refugees?

Paganism in relation to Christianity: this could concern the contemporary situation or past Pagan-Christian relations; Pagan views of Christians, past or present; strategies of Pagan groups for coexistence with Christianity in contemporary Christian-dominant societies; Pagan acceptance or rejection of Christian elements in Pagan religions; attitudes toward Christian “converts” to Paganism.

Paganism in relation to other minority religions: this could also involve contemporary situation or past history; Pagan views of Jews, Muslims, Eastern religions, New Age movements; strategies of Pagan groups for coexistence, collaboration or competition with other minority religions

Paganism and its internal Others: splits in Pagan groups based on personal or doctrinal differences; successful and unsuccessful strategies to deal with such splits

Paganism and its Sexual and Gender Others: analysis of Pagan responses to increasingly prominent issues of sexual and gender diversity; whether Pagan groups are seeking to be more inclusive of homosexuals, transgendered individuals and others, or excluding them; how Pagan “traditionalists” interpret sexual and gender diversity

Paganism and its Ethnic Others: with most Pagan movements grounded in pre-Christian European religious traditions with primarily “white” European identity and membership, how do Pagans relate to people who are ethnically different in their societies, such as Roma, Africans, Asians? Are Pagans moving to include, exclude or ignore people with such identities in their Pagan associations? Are new interpretations of Pagan traditions developing to enable inclusion of ethnically different persons, or are ethnic borders hardening? Are Pagans supportive of policies and programs to help disadvantaged others such as Roma? Have any Pagan movements developed charity programs to assist such persons and groups?

Paganism and its Scholars: Reflections on the fieldwork and scientific research of Modern Paganism; researcher-researched dynamics, methodologies, theoretical frameworks, advances and problems in Pagan Studies; Pagan Studies in relation to other fields of study.

See Abstract submission & Registration for more information. Both passive and active attendance is free of charge

Organizing bodies: Department for the Study of Religions, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University

Organizing committee:

Dr. Michael Francis Strmiska (Global Studies Department, SUNY-Orange in New York State, United States)

Dr. Miroslav Vrzal (Department for the Study of Religions, Masaryk University, Czechia)

Matouš Vencálek (Department for the Study of Religions, Masaryk University, Czechia)

Michal Puchovský (Department for the Study of Religions, Masaryk University, Czechia)

New Pomegranate Published — New Editor Joins

On By Chas S. Clifton
Caroline Tully, U. of Melbourne, Australia

A new issue of The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies has been published online.

The special double issue on the theme of Pagans, museums, and heritage organizations was guest-edited by Pomegranate’s new associate editor, Caroline Tully.

She is an archaeologist at the University of Melbourne, Australia and the author of The Cultic Life of Trees in the Prehistoric Aegean, Levant, Egypt and Cyprus and many academic and popular articles. Caroline is an expert on Egyptomania and the religion of Minoan Crete. Her interests include ancient Mediterranean religions, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Thelema and contemporary Paganisms, particularly Witchcraft and Pagan Reconstructionism. Caroline has curated exhibitions of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman antiquities, and regularly presents lectures and workshops on ancient religion and magic.

Caroline also guest-edited the “Paganism, Art, and Fashion” (vol.22, no. 2) special issue in 2020.

I will make some posts about individual articles, but here are the contents pages. Book reviews are free downloads. Articles can be downloaded for a price — or talk to your friendly librarian.

The Making of an Ethnobotanist in a 1960s University Scene

On By Chas S. Clifton4 Comments

One of the books on my ethnobotany shelves is Witchcraft Medicine:Healing Arts, Shamanic Practices, and Forbidden Plants, a colloboration between Wolf Dieter Storl, Claudia Müller-Ebeling, and Christian Rätsch, all three anthropologists and ethnobotanists.

Müller-Ebeling and Rätsch are married and live in Hamburg, but Storl was born in Germany in 1942 and came with his family to Ohio in 1953. Now he goes back and forth but lives primarily in Germany with his American wife.

Despite the cover and and subtitle, “A German ethnobotanist’s wild roots in the Psychedelic Sixties,” what  Storll’s memoir, Far Out in America, really describes is the pre-psychedelic late 1950s and early 1960s, the time when only a few university students would have heard of LSD and — lacking a connection to certain psychology professors or a father working in the right section of the CIA — would have had no idea how actually acquire some.

Storl himself describes Far Out in America as a story of personal adventure that would be “told in the hall of the gods.”  When not in school, he sets out on epic hitchhiking adventures, passing through every subculture from Appalachian moonshiners to civil rights activists to Chicano adventurers to seasonal workers in national parks.

I liked the two half-assimilated German beatniks, sons of German scientists brought to the US after World War Two “to continue their reearch on miracle weapons, rockets, antigravitational objects, and jet fighters.” They introduce college freshman Wolf Dieter to the music of Bob Dylan, whose 1963 album The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, Storl says “expressed the feeings of the times, the Weltschmerz, world-wearienss, and all that was stirring young hearts.”

For a bright young Ohian, Ohio State University is an obvious choice, and he goes off to Coumbus to study botany and agriculture, only to discover that he has enlisted in the Green Revolution, learning to “export high-yield ‘miracle seed’ to backward peasants in Asia, africa, and South America,” as one of his professors explains. The program is totally about large-scale, mechanized, monoculture farming guided by technocrats like he was being groomed to become.

Erika Bourguignon in the 1970s.

He drops out. After other false starts, he ends up in anthropology, where one of his professors is Erika Bourguignon (1924–2015), who taught more than forty years at OSU, and who was one of the few anthropologists to take “woo” — excuse me, “extraordinary states of consciousness” — seriously.

She published a lot, and when I was in grad school myself, her books and article were widely cited. Nikki Bado, my friend and former Pagan-studies book series co-editor, was one of her students.

Another was Felicitas Goodman (1914–2005), whom I met in the 1990s and thought of as sort of the European Michael Harner. She came to OSU as a middle-aged student, another one whose family emigrated to America after WW2, and earned a PhD there. She also started her own school of (neo)shamanism, The Cuyamungue Institute, in New Mexico, but also taught classes in Denmark, Germany, and other countries.

When I edited Witchcraft and Shamanism (1994) for Llewellyn, I was thrilled to get a chapter from her, “Shamans, WItches, and the Rediscovery of Trance Postures.” For the whole story how how she managed postures depicted in ancient and and indigenous pictures and sculptures with different sorts of trance experiences, read her book Where the Spirits Ride the Wind: Trance Journeys and Other Ecstatic Experiences.

Wolf Dieter Storl has numerous YouTube videos, about two-thirds of them in German and others in English.