Tag: Pagan studies

Lifting up Love & Light in North Carolina

On By Chas S. Clifton1 Comment

A mug with the Pagan triple goddess symbol is pictured at Quantum Soul in Carrboro on Sunday, Oct. 22, 2023. S

A mug with the Pagan triple goddess symbol is pictured at Quantum Soul in Carrboro on Sunday, Oct. 22, 2023.

The student newspaper at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, does the annual Pagans-and-witches story but reaches out a little farther to interview a graduate student working in that area.

“There are lots of different ways that people celebrate this time of year and engage in this time of year and the best thing to do to learn more is actually to just ask people,” Mary Hamner, a Religious Studies graduate student studying paganism and witchcraft at UNC, said.

* * * *

According to Hamner, it is very difficult to estimate pagan and witch populations in the U.S., but assumptions can be made based on statistics concerning witchcraft-related book sales or the number of posts under certain hashtags on social media.

She cautioned people from making the mistake of thinking pagans and witches are “fringe groups,” or a group with extreme views, especially in the South.

“The South has this really entrenched history in Protestant Christianity in particular,” she said. “That doesn’t erase the fact that it is a really diverse region and many other religious groups have been here the whole time just because they are not the ones routinely who get the microphone handed to them.”

Now if we could get the Daily Tar Heel  to follow  Pomegranate style and capitalize “Pagan” while lowercasing “religious studies,” which is not a proper noun unless you are talking about the UNC Department of Religious Studies.

Ronald Hutton’s Gresham Lectures Available Online

On By Chas S. Clifton1 Comment

The five lectures that Ronald Hutton gave this past spring in the Gresham College series Finding Britain’s Lost Gods are available for viewing online. Each lasts about an hour.

  1. Gods of Prehistoric Britain

  2. Paganism in Roman Britain

  3. Anglo-Saxon Pagan Gods

  4. Viking Pagan Gods in Britain

  5. Finding Lost Gods in Wales

  6. How Pagan was Medieval Britain?

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.

Witch Dance is a Phenomenon

On By Chas S. Clifton3 Comments

“Time was,” Minnesota witch Steven Posch wrote in 2016, “here in Paganistan, the Besom Brigade used to show up at the Heart of the Beast May Day Parade, black steeple hats and all, doing our precision broom drills down the middle of Bloomington Avenue.”

A sort of drill team with witches’ brooms popped up in several places in the 2000s; Here is a grainy video from Pantheacon 2008.

I was researching something about Wicca in Germany, and up popped this Witch Dance video. Apparently the belly-dancers got involved, put some shimmy in the besom brigades’ sweeping, and now it’s an international thing. From Germany, here is the Tribal Gypsy Dance troupe:

A few years ago at Nokomis beach in Florida, some pirate flavor:

This year, the Witches of Wasburn, Wisconsin, help celebrate Zombie Days:

And this year in Frenchtown, New Jersey, a plaintive call from the bourgeois bohemians in the YouTube comments:

Hello Tricia. We checked this account but didnt see an email posted by way we could get in touch with you. That said, my husband and I live in Milford NJ. We are throwing a Christmas party and are wondering if you could teach our guests a dance. If so, please let us know your fee. You’re great at teaching groups of people and feel you would make a wonderful addition to the occasion. Please think about it.

I am all for putting your Paganism in the street (or on the beach or Salem Common) where it belongs. But Pagan studies friends, this is waiting for some theoretical lenses!

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.

Ronald Hutton’s Goddess Book Available for Pre-order

On By Chas S. Clifton1 Comment

From the publisher, Yale University Press:

In this riveting account, renowned scholar Ronald Hutton explores the history of deity-like figures in Christian Europe. Drawing on anthropology, archaeology, literature, and history, Hutton shows how hags, witches, the fairy queen, and the Green Man all came to be, and how they changed over the centuries.

Looking closely at four main figures—Mother Earth, the Fairy Queen, the Mistress of the Night, and the Old Woman of Gaelic tradition—Hutton challenges decades of debate around the female figures who have long been thought versions of pre-Christian goddesses. He makes the compelling case that these goddess figures found in the European imagination did not descend from the pre-Christian ancient world, yet have nothing Christian about them. It was in fact nineteenth-century scholars who attempted to establish the narrative of pagan survival that persists today.

The book will be out later this spring. For some reason, Yale UP is not taking pre-orders, but you can pre-order from Amazon,[1]If you do, you will help me pay my hosting fee or from several other sources linked on the Yale UP catalog page.

Notes

Notes
↑1 If you do, you will help me pay my hosting fee

Pagan Studies: 2022 American Academy of Religion Call for Papers

On By Chas S. Clifton
(Photo: Denver Convention & Visitors Bureau)

The Call for Proposals for the Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado, November 19–22, 2022 is now available, and the PAPERS System is open for submission.

This is the Contemporary Pagan Studies Unit’s particular call, to save you searching.

More info from the AAR secret headquarters in north Georgia:

  • The Annual Meeting will have an in-person only format this year. There will not be a virtual component for the 2022 meeting. For future years, we are exploring the possibility of offering a separate, virtual meeting in addition to the in-person Annual Meeting.
  • Annual Meeting proposal submission is restricted to current AAR members only. You will need to renew your membership in order to log into the PAPERS site.
  • Exceptions will be made for scholars outside of the field of Religious Studies and Theology on a case-by-case basis. Requests must be submitted through the AAR Membership Waiver for Proposal Submission form by February 25, 2022 to be considered.
  • The deadline for submitting proposals is Tuesday, March 1, 2022 at 5:00 p.m. EST.

Not Too Late to Register for the Conference on Current Pagan Studies

On By Chas S. Clifton

The organizers of the Conference on Current Pagan Studies have an excellent line-up of speakers (list here) for the conference this weekend.

Albrecht Auditorium, one of the conference spaces normally. (Stock photo from Claremont Graduate University.)

As in 2021, it’s by Zoom. I hope this will be the last time — or at least that they will be able to do a hybrid next year. I gave a talk there in 2020 [1]Before the Wuhan flu was offically here, but I had been sick all December 2019 — Influenza B? and of course the after-sessions at the bar were the best part. This is true of most conferences, and Zoom just ain’t the same.

This year, however, it’s a lot of good content for a reasonable price. Register quickly!

 

Notes

Notes
↑1 Before the Wuhan flu was offically here, but I had been sick all December 2019 — Influenza B?

“Wælcyrge or Witchcraft: Identifying Heathendom in late Anglo-Danish England”

On By Chas S. Clifton1 Comment

Just one of many presentations from the just-finished online conference  Performing Magic in the pre-Modern North.

Here, Ross Downing deals with such issues as whether witchcraft and Heathenry were defined differently in the time of King Alfred the Great in the late 9th century, including details as the execution of condemned witches as well as animals accused of being witches’ familiars (although that was not the Anglo-Saxon term), including ethnic and gender issues in witchcraft accusations.

These all look fascinating, and I will have to watch three a week to finish by Candlemas. Read more about the conference, which focused on Scandinavian but here includes Anglo-Saxon and Danish-ruled England.

There is an enormous amount of material here, and it is all free at this time.