Dale Pendell, erudite writer of “the poison path,” author of Pharmako/Poeia, Pharmako/Gnosis, andPharmako/Dynamis, died two years ago, but I only recently found a video of his memorial service.
I am starting this video at the 30-minute mark, because that is when Gary Snyder comes on. Quite simply, I think that most of what little wisdom I have about “nature,” the “wild,” and so on comes either from Snyder or from directions his work has given me. Read his poems, read The Practice of the Wildand The Old Ways,((Buy it used.)) and you will have it.
Gary Snyder . . . Beat poet, Zen Buddhist-animist, not a self-proclaimed Pagan but aware of Pagan sensibilities going back to the Old TIme.
Here he reads the introduction that he wrote for Pharmako/Poeira and then gives a short biography of Pendell.
I would not be surprised if a lot of the people pushing “traditional witchcraft” poison-path stuff are not just lifting it from Pendell’s books. Because they are great.
A small community in northern Poland is embroiled in a dispute over 13 wooden sculptures of spirits based on local folklore, pitting Catholics warning of “demonic idolatry” conservatives against officials seeking to promote tourism. Some of the statues are set to be removed as a result.
Scott Simpson, a lecturer in religious studies at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków and expert on Polish paganism, told Notes from Poland that “the 13 figures have been selected because they are very local. They belong to stories collected in that area, ethnographically, as an expression of local pride”.
“Amongst the voices complaining about the removal, there are people interested in local folklore,” with no strong religious motivations, added Simpson. Yet “other people amongst them would be Contemporary Pagans, who are religiously offended by the things being taken down.”
Contemporary Pagans in Poland are small in number but “relatively visible, for example, in the folk music scene,” according to Simpson. In Poland, there may be “in the order of 2,500 very active participants in Slavic Native Faith (Rodzimowierstwo)” and a “much broader range of people” who sometimes participate.
“They do not like to see their local folklore removed, which is to them sacred,” said Simpson. And they worry about “seeing that some religions can be put up on a pedestal, but the folk religion is sent away to be put in a museum,” as the local parish priest suggested
So will folkloric tourism win over theology? Does tourism favor Pagans (it certainly does in some places)? If I learn more, I will post it.
The western Colorado town of Glenwood Springs is split by Interstate 70, the Colorado River, and railroad tracks. The currently limestone mine is the tan blotch at upper left (Colorado Sun).
When I went to graduate school, I wanted to write a paper on how so many interesting natural sites have “Devil” or “Devil’s” in their name. Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming might be the best-known in the United States.((The federal government has been confused by the possessive apostrophe since the early 1900s.))
There are several “Devil’s Kitchens,” “Devil’s Playgrounds,” etc. Not too far from where I live, a circular valley adjacent to the canyon of the Arkansas River in central Colorado is known locally as either “Big Hole” or “Devil’s Hole.”
I thought that maybe I could trace the proliferation of “Devil” names back to a literal interpretation of the (sometimes) Christian teaching about Satan being “the prince of this world,” but the topic never fit into any class I took and definitely not with my thesis topic, so the database printouts, etc., still rest in a file cabinet across the room.
After subsequent explorations last fall, the [finders] wrote a report detailing their discovery — including warm, moist air blowing from fissures leading to lower levels, potentially indicating a connection to geothermal systems that feed the city’s hot springs below — and submitted it to the [Bureau of Land Management] for review as the agency analyzes the expansion plan.
In other words, if mining geothermal system extends out into the area that the company wants to mine, the expanded mine would put the hot springs themselves in danger and, consequently, much of the town’s recreation-based economy.
I smiled at this part:
The pair named the cave — the first new cave found in the area since 1985 — Witches’ Pantry after the pile of animal bones they found below the steep entrance.
“Like bones stored for cooking a witch’s brew,” Rhinehart said.
I doubt it. But that is the kind of significant question that the New York Times is asking during Witchcraft and Paganism Media Month: “When Did Everybody [sic] Become a Witch?”
Witches are influencers who use the hashtag #witchesofinstagram to share horoscopes, spells and witchy memes, and they are anti-Trump resistance activists carrying signs that say “Hex the Patriarchy” (also the title of a new book of spells) and “We are the granddaughters of the witches you weren’t able to burn.”
Witches are panelists, they are podcasters, they are members of The Wing (which calls itself a “coven”), they are in-house residents at swanky Manhattan hotels and some might say that one is even a presidential candidate, Marianne Williamson. (Alyssa Milano, of “Charmed” fame, recently fund-raised for Williamson. Coincidence?)
Wait a minute, I thought that Marianne Williamson was a Jewish New-Ager. It is so confusing.
At The New Yorker, they have discovered that astrology is back. In never leaves, actually — ask the people at Llewellyn —but new media interest is cyclical as the Moon. Maybe it is just astrology’s “growth” on social media that gets noticed.
As of Tuesday, it’s Witch Kitsch Month. So if this is the time when you stock up on plastic skulls and manufactured stuffed ravens, hit your local thrift store — it’s a whole lot cheaper than Spirit World or some party store.
Prices are low, low, low — horrifically low.
At Goodwill, I found a simply adorable giant rubber rat (not pictured), which probably will become a geocache in some deserted building. Today I lingered over this coffee cup and a skull-themed nightlight — and this Halloween owl—but opted instead for a little battery-powered three-color strobe light ($1.49), made to be put inside your jack-o-lantern. I see it inside a hanging mask, animal skull, or something else instead.((Its package was unopened. Some wholesaler probably dumped them because the package said “Requires 2 AA batteries,” whereas the battery holder is sized for AAA batteries. Made in China.))
“With Open Arms We Welcomes That Which Would Destroy Us.” Camino de la Placita, Taos, September 2019
Earlier this month, M. and I were in Taos, New Mexico, for what I think was the fifth annual PASEO outdoor art festival. The interesting thing about PASEO is that it happens mostly at night, in a town with a late-medieval street plan that was built for ox carts and is still kind of sparing with streetlights. You spend your time walking in semi-darkness from one pop-up installation to another.
Some installations sound better on the page than they are experienced in person, but here are a couple that worked for me.
At least one year, equinoctial rainstorms lashed the night, but this year the festival was moved earlier in the month, and the weather was good for an Underworld-flavored Pagan-ish art experience.
Above and below:
With Open Arms We Welcomed That Which Would Destroy Us by Christian Ristow of Taos is a sculpture of a seated robot deity. From a distance, it is beautiful and seductive, yet on closer inspection it reveals its true nature. It is not evil; it’s a robot. It has its own directives. And like any god, we created it and gave it its power.
Walking up Civic Plaza (which is actually more of a street and not the plaza), we passed under this flaming arch.
Numinous Eye Arch, with the Robot God in the distance.
The Numinous Eye Arch sculpture is a large steel archway with a looming giant spotlight eye at its apex. It gazes impassively in mysterious stoic surveillance, with a dozen [propane-fueled] torches along its length creating a dome of golden firelight. Some 18 years ago I began to feel a strong urge to create a sort of gateway or portal for people to pass through, beyond which one enters an unfamiliar hallucinatory world and goes on to encounter dangers and challenges emerging from one’s own subconscious. Could be a Gate to Hell or a Gate to Heaven, depending…
Past that and around the corner, more leaping flames, but those were the outdoor fires heating the patio at the Martyrs Steakhouse,((There is a reason for that name. It is too long to go into here.)) which we passed, only to re-enter PASEO-space when we encountered a troupe of girl dancers, bedecked in rave-ish electroluminescent hoops and bands.
Taos Un/Connected by Amber Vasquez and Taos Youth Ballet in Taosis a roaming dance performance piece exploring the unique and ever-changing qualities of human relationships. From comfortable friendship or the awkwardness of new love to the isolating “connectedness” that social media can create. Dancers will both speak and dance as they travel in a train of movement.
OK, we’re in artspeak-territory here, but you just let it be and drift with the crowd through the semi-lit alleys and plaza, following the dancers until they finish under the glare of the monumental statue of Padre Martinez((Northern New Mexico’s one-man Renaissance, and he had only the period from 1821-1846 in which to make his mark.)) in the main plaza.
If I might venture into UPG territory, moments at PASEO, out on the dark streets, do indeed have an Underworld feel to them. Ryon Gesink must have plugged into that energy. I have visited that place in dreams a time or so, checking on recently deceased family members. The crowds shuffle along, and it is so hard to see, except when there is an occasional brightly lit scene, and those are very rare.((Or you get flat fluorescent lighting on the way in, which is almost as bad.))
I will probably go back. Taos, after all, is where I officially became a Pagan, and it left its mark.
Burying large reptiles under the floor. It must be a “Pagan survival,” right? Doubtlessly an apotropaic custom, like scorch marks on wooden beams as charm against fire, or leaving old shoes and such inside the walls during construction.
That is Tiger as in Tiger tank, not the big cat. This is a World War II movie. If you don’t like war movies, stop. If you are the kind who reacts with “T-34s in the mud. Cool!” then keep reading.
After an engagement with the Germans in which a Red Army armored unit is mostly destroyed, a Russian driver is found in his tank, badly burned but still alive. He makes a miraculous recovery but loses his memory—he remembers his military skills but forgets his name, personal history, and so forth.
He also talk to tanks. In one scene, he walks along a line of railroad flatcars carrying damaged Red Army tanks to the rear, and each one tells him, somehow, how it was knocked out.
A seemingly invincible German Tiger tank is wreaking havoc with Russian units, and the mysterious driver is given command of an upgraded T-34 and told to locate and destroy “the White Tiger.” Naydënov, the driver, believes that the Tank God warns him when he is in danger, and he also comes to think that the White Tiger is itself animated, not needing a human crew. Although he eventually engages and damages the White Tiger, it escapes.
After the German surrender, a Russian officer finds Naydënov still hunting the White Tiger. He tells the tanker that the war over now. To quote Wikipedia,
But Naydënov disagrees, saying that the war will not truly end until the White Tiger is destroyed. Naydënov believes the White Tiger has gone into hiding and has been recovering from its wounds since their last battle. He claims it will return in several decades unless it is completely destroyed. Naydënov then vanishes along with his tank, seemingly into thin air.
At this point the movie becomes strange. In our normal linear history, Adolf Hitler is dead by then, but the final scene is a monologue between Hitler and some shadowy figure, sitting in an elegant office, in which the German leader talks about the “eternal struggle,” how all of Europe inwardly wanted Nazi German to attack the USSR, and how war is the normal human state.
It’s like additional dialog by Julius Evola. “The blood of the heroes is closer to God than the ink of the philosophers and the prayers of the faithful” — that kind of thing.
Considering that this is a Russian movie, it is the kind of twist that makes me wonder sometimes that although Germany lost the physical-plane war against the USSR, if it did not win on some other plane of existence. Eternal struggle . . .
Some 13th-century Latvian Pagans get the bad news: the crusading Brothers of the Sword are coming, and their choice will be death, baptism, or both.
My “Pagan-ish” blog tag seems mostly to go to Latvian materials, and here is another one, The Pagan King.
Set in the 13th century, when the Baltic peoples were to be the last Europeans Christianized at sword’s point, it is the story of a young man named king of Semigallia, a region now mostly encompassed by the nation of Latvia.
He does not know it, but his land is the target of one Max von Buxhoeveden (probably based on this bishop), who has gained the pope’s blessing to lead a crusade against the Semigallian Pagans.((This would probably be Pope Innocent III, who in the movie is capable of carrying out his own poisoning and stabbing — staples of the medieval pagacy — instead of contracting such activities out to professionals.))
Namejs, the young king, is called to the throne just as he is about to lead a trading voyage to Constantinople. Without much preparation, he is thrust into a role of negotiating tribal alliances and trying to determine whom he can trust, all the while facing an invasion.((In other words, 97 percent of human history.)) His people must adjust from celebrating Midsummer with happy lake-jumping and torch-lit Semigallian football matches (Shirts versus Skins) to all-out war.
In terms of the religion, The Pagan King punts the football, to use American rather than Semingallian rules. Although there is a wonderful sanctuary of standing stones and caves, the script speaks only of “the gods who are within us.” Not evenPerkons (Perkunas) is name-checked. On the other hand, Namejs’ wife does appear to speak a little Snakish — is that a Latvian motif?
The costuming and set design seems to be a spin-off of the 2013–2019 History Channel television series Vikings. There are not enough beehives in Semegallia to produce wax for that many candles!!
In this movie, however, keep your eye on characters with the shaven head-plus-long beard “Ragnar Lothbrok” look. They are never what they seem.
Unless you cannot tolerate medieval battle scenes, of which there are several, you should watch The Pagan King. Here is the trailer:
I am starting this video at the 30-minute mark, because that is when Gary Snyder comes on. Quite simply, I think that most of what little wisdom I have about “nature,” the “wild,” and so on comes either from Snyder or from directions his work has given me. Read his poems, read The Practice of the Wild and The Old Ways,((Buy it used.)) and you will have it.
Today I lingered over this coffee cup and a skull-themed nightlight — and this Halloween owl—but opted instead for a little battery-powered three-color strobe light ($1.49), made to be put inside your jack-o-lantern. I see it inside a hanging mask, animal skull, or something else instead.((Its package was unopened. Some wholesaler probably dumped them because the package said “Requires 2 AA batteries,” whereas the battery holder is sized for AAA batteries. Made in China.))
