Pentagram Pizza with Idolatrous Sprinkles

That’s our idol, and we will see you in court!  The Satanic Temple is going after Netflix for using their Baphomet in the new “Sabrina the Satanic Witch” series. (OK, its real name is Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.  Via The Daily Grail.)

I think I blogged her before. Or I should have: “Orgasms I have with my spirit lovers have been way more satisfying than any I’ve had with ordinary men.” (No, it was someone else who had a “sex with ghosts” website, now 404’d.)

An underground chamber has been located under the Pyramid of the Moon in the ancient Mexican city of Teotihuacán. Was it a place for initiatory or shamanic ceremonies, or was it where they kept the . . . special Beast? (Via The Daily Grail.)

A Room Full of Eerie, Masked Idols Has Been Discovered in Peru. “Deep in the enormous citadel of an ancient Peruvian culture, archaeologists have uncovered a corridor containing 19 mysterious black wooden statues.”  “We assume they are guardians,” said an archaeologist. Or maybe they were special Beasts. (Via The Daily Grail.)

Pentagram Pizza with Magic Wands (Serves Five)

Years ago I made a wand of alder wood cut somewhere up Ute Pass, west of my Manitou Springs, Colo., home.

And then I made a fancier one in Craft class, a dowel with an iron rod running through it and silver wire wrapped around the handle.

I pretty much guarantee that if you stand a few yards away, close your eyes, and hold out the palms of your hands, you will be able to tell when the wand is pointed at you.

Anne Johnson, blogging at The Gods Are Bored, has something to say about wands.

How to Make a Magic Wand

The Harry Potter series made magic wands kind of popular and trendy, but wands have always been around. There are two kinds: ceremonial wands and working wands. Today, Teacher Annie is going to tell you how to make a working wand!

How Do Magic Wands Work?

Before I address the complicated question of how magic wands work, I feel like I should offer my credentials as a Pagan, so you’ll know I’m not a phony or anything. I see faeries. I worship vultures. I am crackerjack at explaining weird dreams.

Magic Wands and Romantic Love

So now we find ourselves at perhaps the #1 reason that young people want to try wands and spell work: love! Of course! You need supernatural help to get that certain someone to look your way! Okay. Before you do, please read the following cautionary tale. I didn’t write it. My good friend Anansi the Trickster Spider God didn’t write it either (although He wouldn’t mind taking credit for it).

Magic Wands and Why You Need One

If you’re a regular tourist on this site, you too might want to consider making a working wand. I’ve been writing “The Gods Are Bored” since 2005, and I’ve been alive a lot longer than that, and I have never known a time when I was more in need of a magic wand.

Read the series and learn what to do with that wand on the shelf — or how to make a new one.

Pentagram Pizza: It Resembles the Shaman’s Drum

Shaman from Tuva (Siberian Times).

• Once again, magic and sports don’t mix. According to Siberian Times (July 1), shamans invoked the ancestors to aid Russia’s team in their World Cup match against Spain. As a result (?), Russia won 4–3. But then they lost to Croatia a few days later and are now out of the tournament. Those ancestors, so fickle. (See also, magic and politics).

• Still on Russian shamans: Now they are seeking official recognition as a “traditional religion.”

For the first time ever, the shamans of the Russian Federation have come together and elected “the supreme shaman of Russia” – Kara-ool Dopchun-ool, head of the Kyzyl Local Religious Organization of Shamans – done so by an almost unanimous vote (115 out of 166 votes) and called for official recognition as a traditional religion of the country.

And there is a “United Council of the Shamans of Russia.” How do you think that that will turn out? Is herding shamans like herding cats? Still, it is an interesting bid for greater legitimacy.

• Can occult studies make you crazy? Or just a little unbalanced?

Over the years, as I’ve studied this subject, I’ve encountered a fair number of cautionary tales. People who become unduly interested in psychic phenomena – interested to the point of obsession – can find their mental health deteriorating, their relationships fragmenting, and their social status undermined. Of course, obsession is a bad thing regardless of its focus, but I suspect that it’s easier to become obsessed with the paranormal than with, say, stamp collecting. Something about this field of inquiry tends to draw people in and make them vulnerable to harm.

Read the whole thing. Was Arthur Conan Doyle driven over the edge? The article references The Trickster and the Paranormal, which is one of those “every esotericist should have this book” books. You can end up “one foot over the line,” it’s true.

In the Land of Fairy, Don’t Eat the Pentagram Pizza

You have heard that advice, right? Don’t eat the food that the Good Neighbors — or however you want to describe those beings whose reality intersects ours — might offer you, or you might be there with them a very very long time.

In Morgan Daimler’s view of the Fairy cities of today, there might be some tempting restaurants. Hmm.

Modern Fairyland, or Experiencing the Otherworld as a 21st Century City

It is true that modern pagans seem prone to describing and viewing Fairy through a primitive lens. When people talk about experiences there they are usually couched in terms of wilderness and wild places or occasionally of settings that may be described as historic such as castles or cottages. And that is not to say that these places can’t be found in Fairy just as we can find these places in our own world, because they certainly do exist both here and there. But there is a definite and noticeable favoring of the sorts of Otherworldly scenery that correlates with the places in our own world people tend to say we are most likely to find Themselves as well. Many pagans talk of Fairy as if it were one vast forest or Europe stuck in medieval times.

In the middle of grieving the effects of gentrification on her street, Anne Johnson gives some thought to the Faeries: “Faeries aka Fairies Are Real.”

So you say, “What do faeries look like?” And I answer, “What have you got?” There are as many varieties of faerie as there are of biological life in the apparent world. Some faeries are human shaped and sized, some are tiny, some look like animals, some like birds, and some are just beams of light. Be careful if you make eye contact, because they like to distract. And whatever you do, show them respect. Even the “critter” ones. Call them “Ladies and Gentlemen,” or “your majesties.”

Related: John Beckett talks about different modes of experiencing the Otherworld here:

Once you’re there, stick to your plan. Not every Otherworldly resident is your friend. Some will try to distract you or co-opt you. Some may try to eat you. Go directly where you intend to go, and don’t trust anyone you don’t know. When you’re done, come back promptly.

Letter from Hardscrabble Creek is not one of the Pagan blogs that he recommends, so if you are reading this, you must have wandered into the woods.

True Fact: There are more than twenty blog posts with the tag “Pentagram Pizza.” Enough weirdness to save in the refrigerator overnight and eat for breakfast! Just click on the tag “pentagram pizza” below.

Pentagram Pizza: The Second Generation

1. I like to point out Pagan writers who are doing more than “how-to” writing, so click over and read Kallisti’s piece on “Some Reflections on Being Second Gen Pagan/Polytheist.”

Most of the issues boil down to how different it is to grow up within something versus convert to it. Unlike many adult converts, I had to deal with religious bullying in the rural Midwest as a child.

2. Norse settlers cut down most of Iceland’s sparse woodlands. Restoring them appears to be harder than it is in other ecosystems. Note to the New York Times, “Viking” is a job description, not an ethnicity.

3. Last weekend M.’s and my old home of Manitou Springs held its annual coffin races. They started right after we moved away, but we met in Manitou, bought our first slightly-more-than-tiny house there, and have lots of memories.

The [Manitou Springs Heritage Center]  will be the starting point of “ghost tours” featuring “spirit guides” who will show people around town for 45 minutes, stopping at sites where actors will play out tales of the colorful past.

“Manitou was full of witchcraft,” [Jenna[ Gallas says. “Not that it is anymore, but I think people still like to believe ooky-spooky happens here, and if we’re gonna celebrate Halloween, we’re gonna do it in Manitou, where the freaks come out every day.”

What is this “was,” Ms. Gallas? Yes, we did our part in the 1980s. Rituals upstairs in the Spa Building? You bet. Rituals outdoors downtown around the mineral springs? Those too. I have to think that someone else has carried on!

4. The obligatory pre-Hallowe’en news feature, this one from the NBC affiliate in Washington, DC.

Images of witches being veiled in darkness, casting spells over cauldrons endure, but a new generation of Wiccans and witches have established growing communities in D.C. and across the country.

Yada, yada. But this good:

“[Hallowe’en is] a celebration of the witch. You can have sexy witches, you can have scary witches, but it’s still a celebration of the witch. Even if the witch isn’t shown in a positive light,” said Stephens, a 37-year-old Wiccan who also practices witchcraft.

Pentagram Pizza Cut into 12 Slices

• Everything old is new againyoung 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.

Pentagram Pizza: Toppings Begone!

pentagrampizzaThe Roman Catholic Church in the United States reports a shortage of exorcists, says a British newspaper.

In lengthy interviews with The Telegraph, the two exorcists discuss how the increase in drug and pornography addiction, failure of the mental healthcare system and a rise in popularity of “pagan activities”, such as using a Ouija board to summon the dead, are among the factors contributing to the huge increase in demand for the Rite.

¶ The title says it: “Why It’s So Damn Difficult to Discuss Occult Topics in the Media.” Of course, if “occult” means hidden, then “media” means the opposite of hidden, and there could just be some tension there.

¶ “Grounding” or “earthing” is not just a magical exercise: it can actually heal your body when done with real earth. Science!

Pentagram Pizza at the Mongolian Grill

pentagrampizzaSome links worth exploring:

• In post-Soviet Mongolia, shamanism is a “growth industry,” says an MIT anthropologist. In Manuduhai Buyandelger’s Tragic Spirits: Shamanism, Memory, and Gender in Contemporary Mongolia, she writes how, “shamanism is a historical memory for people who lost parts of their ancestral homeland, and who had been marginalized and politically oppressed.”

• Photographer Rik Garrett (formerly of the Occult Chicago blog, now relocating back to the Pacific Northwest), is interviewed at beautiful.bizarre.

Rik harnesses old, analog photography techniques and a deep sensibility that is both educated and magical. I dare to believe he is opening doors to the past, recreating a cross-section of witchcraft and the earliest technologies in photography, and to the spirit realm—illuminating phenomenon and sparking the imagination beyond the typical scope of artistry.

• Is this the first baby step toward recording your dreams?Scientists Figure Out What You See While You’re Dreaming.” I am imaging YouTube full of Inception-style videos. Yikes!

• Should you be hung as a witch? Take the test and see if you are guilty of witchcraft. (Link fixed.)

Pentagram Pizza from the Godmother’s Recipe

pentagrampizza• The archaeologist Margaret Murray played a key part in the origins of Wicca — and she was occasionally a magic-worker herself, by her own admission in her memoir My First Hundred Years (1963).

Ethan Doyle White examines her role in a guest post at Adventures in History and Archaeology, noting, “Murray’s interest in magic was not solely personal, but rather had a strong professional dimension to it as well.”

Mama Fauna goes Herne-hunting in Alaska, with unpredictable results.

• John Michael Greer writes an essay, “A Wind that Tastes of Ashes,” on the recent flap over accusations that “fascists” (never defined) and the “New Right” (never defined) are infiltrating Pagan groups. “After all, there’s another kind of power that’s just as illegitimate and destructive, and that’s the power of demagogy: the brute force of a frightened and furious mob whipped up into a frenzy by rhetoric of the sort we’re examining.”

Pentagram Pizza with Layers of Woo

pentagrampizza • Lydia Crabtree not only knows “woo,” she can organize it into a ten-part scale and a four-part diagram. Fascinating.

And there is a Part 2: “Parenting to the WooWoo.”

• Where did “the humanities” come from? Come travel back to the good old days of “philology.”

• Philology is not old enough for you? Relax with some Babylonian tunes.