Tag: China

Now They Are Stealing Pagan Artisans’ Designs

On By Chas S. Clifton1 Comment

“Did you find an awesome statue of Odin with a price too good to be true?” begins a recent entry at the Wyrd Designs blog.

The article focuses on a Ukrainian Pagan artist who sells on Etsy. Chinese copyists mass-produced his carved wooden statues in resin, along with others. (Those are the genuine works shown.)

But look at the stats on the knock-off site: the Norse statues in the last month sold 3 thousand units (cumulatively of the Odin, Thor, Freya or Loki statues), and they had over 14,000 shares across social media. It’s unclear if they’re only counting the 19 days of November so far, or if that’s sales in the last 30 days. If those stats are real (and not some engineered gimmick designed to get you to purchase), they sold around $60,000 -$69,000 gross profit (varying on if someone purchased one statue, or multiples where a bundle discount comes into play). Even taking into consideration they’d have out of pocket costs to manufacture the cheap knock offs, they’re probably pocketing between $40,000 -$55,000 in net profit in just one month (based on a typical 60-80% profit margins for mass manufactured goods). In a year if you had steady sustained sales, that’s around $480

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,000 – $660,000 net profit. Near half a million dollars, or more.. Money like that would be revolutionary for artists serving our community.

Three different business are selling those knock-offs on Amazon, for starters, plus they are on other e-commerce sites as well.

There is no immediate cure except to look carefully at the site and try to determine if you are dealing with a real artisan or not. The article suggests some ways of checking, particularly on Amazon, but you cannot always tell if an item was made in some Chinese knick-knack factory or not.

Some sites will have a section on their page dedicated to intellectual property concerns, like TEMU, which gives you the impression that they’re trying to operate ethically. But it’s set dressing, there’s no real accountability process in place at Temu. As an aside, Etsy tends to have solid options from legitimate artisans, though occasionally some knock-offs might infiltrate the service.

Oberon Zell has had to quash illegal reproductions of his Milennial Gaia statue a number of times, as I recall. This was back when he and his late wife, Morning Glory, operated their own crafts business, which now has new management.

If you want a blast from the past, I mentioned one of those Chinese “we’ll make anything” companies, King-Max Products, in this 2007 blog post about Pagan images at a New Age wholesale trade fair.

In a weird way, all this counterfeiting is a sign that Pagan images are becoming more recognizable and marketable, so I suppose you could feel kind of good about that.

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.”((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

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, 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.((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.

An Offer to Buy the Pomegranate, and Other Pagan Studies Scams

On By Chas S. Clifton
Statues of Communist leader Mao Zhedong in various Chinese temples (Bitter Winter).

Periodically I receive these emails, usually in the business-school dialect of babu English. Academic publishing, apparently, is full of scammy stuff like this.((I have also encountered them in real estate and in regard to mineral rights.))

Dear Editor/Publisher,

Hope this mail finds you in best!

I am writing down this mail as a follow up in reference to the acquisition proposal I had sent recently. I request you to revert back and let us know if we can hope to take this forward.

Please feel free to get back to us with your valuable suggestions/queries.

Hoping for a positive response from your end.

Best regards,
Chia Appu

M&A Consultant
JCFCorp
Singapore | India | UK | US
Mobile/Whatsapp: +44 7451248959
website: www.jcfcorp.com

Not the first, won’t be the last. If I set the price at US $500,000, could I string “Chia Appu” on for a bit? The only problem there is that I do not own The Pomegranate; Equinox Publishing does. I would need to take the money and move somewhere that has no extradition treaty with the UK.

Academia has its scams, all designed for people willing to trade money for shortcuts. “Diploma mills” have a hoary tradition, of course.

Sadly, I lost a friend over one of these shortcuts. “R.” had written a couple of articles for Pomegranate in the past, and he was good in his field. He then proposed another article, which appeared ready to publish — except that he wanted to list this Chinese professor as co-author.

Pagan studies is a fairly small world, and I had never heard of this man. I looked him up at [well-known Chinese university], and there he was, in the Dept. of Communist Studies or something like that.

It was clear to me that the Chinese professor had had nothing to do with writing the article, which was based on fieldwork in Western Europe. He was just being offered the chance to pad his c.v. in return for some other favor for R. — like a non-resident teaching position?((R. is lucky that he was not required to live there, given a certain well-known disease outbreak.))

And there was more to the deal. [Well-known Chinese university] was supposedly starting a center for the study of new religious movements. The university was ready to “throw money at” the center’s projects.

If I were willing to designate their center as a “sponsor” of The Pomegranate and “put some Chinese names on the editorial board . . .  the arrangement [would be] more than nominally profitable [for you].”((R. had his own journal, which I am suppose now has some Chinese professors on the editorial board.))

And there was no doubt that [Well-known Chinese university] had the cash.

There it was, a naked bribe. An odd  experience. Had I been as financially shaky as R. thought I was — as financially shaky as he himself had often been until later in his career — I might have been more tempted. Sorry, professor of Communist studies, you are not going to buy your way in Pagan studies that easily.

I said no, and R. cut me off completely.

Something chilling occurred to me later. The  incident was about five years ago. Since then, the mainland Chinese government has been cracking down on religion — all religions. The online journal Bitter Winter has carried many articles on the repression of not just “foreign” religions, mainly Islam and Christianity, in the People’s Republic, but also Buddhist and Taoist temples, new Chinese religious movements, and even family and clan memorial halls that go back for centuries.

All of them threaten President Xi Thought, apparently. All you can worship is Communism.

So if [major Chinese University] was preparing to study new reliigious movements, was that just part of a plan to wipe them out? There are predecents for that sort of thinking.

Pentagram Pizza Cut into 12 Slices

On By Chas S. Clifton2 Comments

• Everything old is new again — young Chinese discover the Western zodiac and think that it is cooler than “Year of the Monkey,” etc.

• “Witchcrap” from The Daily Beast website — “These Modern Witches Want to Cast a Spell on You.”

Modern witchcraft combines feminism, self-help, and wellness. But is there more to it than pretty crystals, stunning Instagram pictures, and lucrative business opportunities?

I think that’s called “fake news.”

• From Jason Miller’s Strategic Sorcery blog: “American Gods: The Jersey Devil and the Pines Witch.”   This post was part of “The American Gods Project” — read the rest. “Truly, all sorcery is local.”

• In Albania, they stop the Evil Eye with plushies. Truly, all sorcery is local.

Western Polytheists Have a Long Way to Go

On By Chas S. Clifton5 Comments


For example, at our funerals, where are the dragon dancers? The all-female marching bands? The strippers?

“I want it to be boistrous. My father liked this kind of atmosphere.”

These Taiwanese make a New Orleans funeral look positively Lutheran.

And it’s much the same in mainland China, where the spicy-funeral custom is drawing the attention of the ever-vigilant government.

Take the outdoor funeral for an 86-year-old man surnamed Huang in central China’s Henan province in December 2012. A woman in a short, white skirt and halter top pulls a mourner on stage and begins to undress him, while periodically peeling off a piece of her own clothing.

Sex and death, baby. Keep turning the wheel.

Magic in Philadelphia, Worshiping Game Characters, and a Holy Mountain in Scotland

On By Chas S. Clifton
exhibitions_magic1
Photo: Penn Museum

• If you live in or near Philadelphia, visit the U. of Pennsylvania museum for “Magic in the Anciet World,” an exhibit that “explores some of the magical objects, words, and rituals used in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome.”

• When a Chinese grandmother left an offering at a statue of a video-game character, social media there lit up. But was she merely carrying on tradition?

• “Last temple of the Celts” might be overstating the matter just a little, but it’s an interesting article about a holy mountain in Scotland.

‘Ghost Brides’ Keep the Family Together

On By Chas S. Clifton2 Comments

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.

Read the rest.