Tag: Canada

Why You Should Lock Your Car While Shopping at Whole Foods

On By Chas S. Clifton2 Comments

“Ethical consumers less likely to be kind and more likely to steal, study finds,” is the subhead on an article in the lefty British newspaper The Guardian.

OK, several caveats. This is one study by two social scientists in Canada. Science reporting in the daily press is sometimes sensationalized, and, further, I think you can design a psychological survey to prove anything. (Actual social scientists may want to differ, but that is my impression.)

But it’s ironic to see The Guardian sticking it to Al Gore:

When Al Gore was caught running up huge energy bills at home at the same time as lecturing on the need to save electricity, it turns out that he was only reverting to “green” type.

If I am at all inclined to believe Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong, it is because in my youth I met too many people who preached “peace and love, man,” but who would steal anything not nailed down. Their professions of morality in some areas seemed to excuse (to them) their behavior in other areas.

A PDF file of the study itself is available at Professor Mazar’s site.

Canadian Pagan Conference Set for Guelph

On By Chas S. Clifton1 Comment

News release:

The Canadian National Pagan Conference brings together Canadian activists, clergy and scholars interested in the neo-Pagan and revived pagan religions in Canada. These include, but are not lmited to Goddess spirituality, Wicca, Asatru and the Heathen paths, Romuva, Druidry and the Afro-diasporic religions.

A large part of the conference is peer-to-peer workshops on a number of issues important to the members of these religions: parenting, aging, family and sexuality, legal status and recognition, temple organization, and others.

However, integral to the conference from the beginning has been the academic stream of presentations of original research on Pagan paths in Canada (or elsewhere when presented by Canadian Pagan scholars). Research in the demographics of the neo-Pagans, the cultural and political influence of occultism, sexuality and Wicca, and other issues has been presented. The Conference presentations are peer-reviewed and cross-disciplinary (Religious Studies, Sociology and History have been well-represented).

Papers on any aspect of the history or current state of Paganism and neo-Paganism in Canada are welcome. Please send an abstract (250 words) and a brief CV of yourself to Sam Wagar, the academic co-ordinator. Both academics and non-academics are welcome to present research.

More information on the conference, which is happening at the University of Guelph over the Victoria Day long weekend, can be had from the website.

Montréal Magical Mercantile Tour

On By Chas S. Clifton1 Comment


A group of Pagan Studies scholars started Friday at the big John Waterhouse exhibit at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. It offered the largest selection of his paintings ever, plus sketches, drawings, and letters. When the docent suggested that “The Magic Circle” was not really about religion, she was quickly corrected. Poor, well-meaning, volunteer docent!

Then off to the first magical establishment, where we also got a presentation on the work of the Montréal Pagan Resource Centre.

And what’s this? Another Waterhouse painting on a book cover! Extra points if you know which of his paintings has served as cover art for which book.

The shop cat stood guard while someone behind the curtain received a Tarot card reading.

Elsewhere, the price of gri-gri was $9.95 per sachet.

The door to the basement temple promised mysteries underground.

Magical Women

On By Chas S. Clifton

A series of portraits by British Columbia artist Linda Macfarlane, some of individuals in the Western occult tradition (e.g. Maud Gonne), others of representative types. (The Wikipedia entry, however, skips over Gonne’s involvement with ceremonial magic.)

Via The Galloway Chronicles.

UPDATE: As discussed in the comments, Geocities is gone, and so is this site.

Vinland 3

On By Chas S. Clifton

Part 1

Part 2

From the skeptics’ point of view, the acceptance of a Norse presence in North America, following the archaeological dig at L’Anse aux Meadows, should have made the Kensington Runestone a non-issue.

“No Kensington stone is needed to prove that the Scandinavians reached America first,” wrote James E. Knirk of the University of Oslo, reviewing works by two Kensington supporters for the journal Scandinavian Studies.

But the arcane arguments continue. In a lengthy rebuttal (PDF) to Knirk and other skeptics, Richard Nielsen, the best-prepared of the stone’s defenders and author of the book mentioned earlier, marshaled a long series of linguistic defenses for the Minnesota runes.

He argued, with extensive citations, that they did represent “a faithful record of medieval Scandinavian speech” and that their dialect was unknown to the farmer Olof Ohman.

The purported location of the stone’s discovery, west of Minneapolis, seems to make little sense in terms of a possible Norse journey up the St. Lawrence River, through the Great Lakes, and into Minnesota, but Nielsen has an explanation for that too.

Writing in the Journal of the West, Nielsen argues that the location makes more sense if, as he believes, the Norse launched trading trips into the interior of North America from Hudson’s Bay. Indians from the region (Santee Sioux, Mandans, and others) were known to have used a trading route that went down the Red River to Lake Winnepeg and then by other water routes to Hudson’s Bay. The Kensington site, he claims, lies on the portage between the Mississippi watershed and the Red River watershed.

These claims, in turn, tie in the fascinating history of the Norse settlements in Greenland, which did endure for four centuries despite their stubborn insistence on not learning from the Dorset-culture Eskimos and on attempting to maintain a pastoral economy in the near-Arctic.

Personally, I have no strong feelings about the Kensington Runestone’s authenticity, although I do suspect that there was more to the Norse exploration than just the L’Anse aux Meadows station.

Instead, Nielsen’s passionate “outsider” defense of the stone reminds me of another friend of mine, the late Bill McGlone, and his quixotic study of some Colorado stone inscriptions.

More to come.

The Mystery of Wicca Lake

On By Chas S. Clifton

No, that’s not the title of another of Llewellyn Publications’ ventures into “occult” fiction. It’s a question that has been bothering me since my return from British Columbia.

That area of SE British Columbia was settled in the 1890s, first by miners. Ninety years later–1983–the provincial government set 49,893 hectares aside as Valhalla Provincial Park, which includes the Devil’s Range, Lucifer Peak, the Devil’s Couch (another mountain), and other unfortunate names. (Why the Christian Devil gets so many interesting geological features named after him is a paper that I have always wanted to write.)

Other features have names more in keeping with the “Valhalla” theme, which also undoubtedly explains the naming of Thor’s Pizza in nearby Nelson.

Hiking into the Devil’s Range, M. and I came across Wicca Lake, which our otherwise authoritative hiking guide referred to merely as “a tiny lake on Drinnon Pass.” Wicca Lake? Devil’s Range? OK, that’s unfortunate, but the scenery is great: here is one professional photographer’s version.

It’s funny how the memory of how places got their names often vanishes rapidly, within a generation or two, unless they were named after famous people or obvious physical characteristics. I have asked one Canadian Wiccan with a wide geographical knowledge of B.C.’s mining districts if she knows, but so far, no response. I will post one if I get one; otherwise, if you have a solid answer, post a comment.