Tag: polytheism

Call for Submissions: Preternature

On By Chas S. Clifton4 Comments

Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural

Volume 3:2. Old Gods and Ancient Ones

Call them pagan or ancient, earth-based or demonic, or by names like Hekate, Isis, Poseidon, Ereshkigal, Loki, and Anath, the Old Gods have  been topics of energetic scholarly discussion, literary recreation, and artistic depiction for decades. As supplanted as they might seem to historians, the Old Gods live on and capture our imagination.

Contextualized in archaeological study, sensationalized by filmmakers,   and rendered in new costumes and flesh by artists, Old Gods continue,   components of the flexible mythologies that make up shared cultural references. They are used across literature, graphic novels, television series, cinema, and MMORPGs to tell and enact narratives.  As they had in ancient landscapes, the Old Gods now make up part of a dynamic belief systems and figure in new forms of ritual invocations.

This issue of Preternature especially welcomes scholars whose work focuses on the new uses of ancient Asian, Babylonian, Canaanite, Egyptian, Greek, Mesoamerican, Norse, and Slavic Gods. It also welcomes contributions, from any discipline, that highlight the cultural, literary, dramatic, religious, magical, or historical  significance of any of the ancient gods in their own contexts, as a  part of “paganisms,” and as a part of contemporary popular cultures.

We welcome synthetic overviews of Sarapis veneration in Ephesus or the cult of Mithras as much as feminist critiques of  representations of goddesses in graphic novels. Analyses of new  ritualizations of Old Gods in specific neopaganism groups are welcome as well. Ultimately, we are interested in how the ancient gods are  maintained, in various media and inscholarly discussion, in this modern era.

Contributions should be roughly 8,000 – 12,000 words, including all documentation and critical apparatus, and adhere to the Chicago Manual  of Style, 15th edition (style 1, employing endnotes). Contributions mustbe submitted through the Preternature CMS. Final submissions are due March 31, 2013.

Queries about journal scope and submissions can be made to the editor, Dr. Kirsten C. Uszkalo. Queries concerning books to be reviewed can be  made to the book reviews editor, Dr. Richard Raiswell.

Preternature is a bi-annual publication, published through Penn State Press, and available in print or electronically through JSTOR, Project Muse, and as a Kindle e- book.

As always, I recommend reading an issue or two of the journal before submitting anything to it.

Pentagram Pizza: Some Good Reads and Free Music

On By Chas S. Clifton1 Comment

• Finding a complementary relationship between Paganism and Tantra at The Pagan Perspective. Not this:

My sabbatical led me down the rabbit hole of tantra, or rather neo-tantra, which turned out to be nothing more than a mobsterized store front for polyamory and polysexuality. Now I am the last person to dismiss sexuality or the free expression of it; however, when sexuality becomes a religion in disguise, we lose something of both sexuality and religion.

• Download a free compilation album, Songs of the Goddess.

• Edward Butler, who has published two articles in The Pomegranate, has put them and some other material into a book: Essays on a Polytheistic Philosophy of Religion.

• Occult Chicago links to an old article about a “spirit photographer” of that city. Some people sure did want to believe, didn’t they.

Talking about Tlaloc, 5

On By Chas S. Clifton4 Comments

I think it is time to rebuild the shrine to Tlaloc under the bridge — the one that was mysteriously augmented last summer.  I had taken it down before the spring run-off, which is just a memory now.

Once the heat abates a little, I need to hike back over the ridge and leave an offering at Camera Trap Spring. The rattlesnake that has been there on my last two trips is its “guardian,” I have decided. What should I bring it, a bouquet of mice?

Actually, I owe that snake a favor, since it did not bite one of the dogs when it had all the opportunity and provocation.

Got to see if the bears have attacked the current camera, too. If they have, I may cede the territory to them for a couple of months. But I will leave an offering too

Meanwhile, the fires. As a former resident of Manitou Springs, I was sweating this Waldo Canyon Fire. As a volunteer firefighter, I can say here in my area we have had an easier time so far than last year — so far — with only one little piece of excitement on Tuesday. That, and we’ll be out patrolling this weekend, looking for illegal campfires.

This Is How It Begins

On By Chas S. Clifton

I saw this video at The Wild Hunt this morning and wanted to give it more circulation. It is beautifully done — a visual reflection on one person’s (?) or a small group’s (?) clandestine effort to revive a Pagan pilgrimage in the ancient Lebanese city of Sidon, an observance that was suppressed seventeen hundred years ago. This is how the old gods and their followers began once again to meet each other.

Pentagram Pizza for May 1

On By Chas S. Clifton4 Comments

Four toppings this evening. . .

• This made me laugh.

• Some occult-cult films from the past reviewed by Peg Aloi.

• Teaching a course in “world religions” is not as simple as it looks, once you start sorting out “religion,” “religious,” and questions of group identity.

• In the “Finding a God” chapter of Triumph of the Moon, Ronald Hutton describes the rise of Pan in Victorian literature. Sometimes he personified an idealized countryside while at others he was “a battering-ram against respectability.” He appears in America during that period too — this time as sculpture.

How Many Gods Are There? Vote Now!

On By Chas S. Clifton6 Comments

It must be a slow news day, because the Denver Post’s daily news poll is about God . . . or Goddess . . . or the Gods.

“Hard”  polytheism is running at less than 2 percent, so if you can’t vote early, vote often.

I doubt than anyone is going to do anything useful with the data anyway.

Adding New Gods

On By Chas S. Clifton7 Comments

P. Sufenas Virius Lupus wonders about how new gods are added to polytheist pantheons.

Something that will often happen, particularly with reconstructionist-based practitioners, is that further research into a particular deity and their connections leads to “new-to-me” or various other re-discovered deities that are then taken into one’s personal pantheon. Or, suddenly, a deity emerges in one’s experiences that one hadn’t paid attention to previously, or gets one’s attention in some fashion or other; whether they are readily identified or if it takes some study to figure out who they are, such encounters often occur that expand one’s personal network of divine relationships.  . . .

What about the less-frequent (but nonetheless possible) reality of totally new deities, though? How does one deal with this issue when it arises? I have yet to see any modern Pagan or polytheist treatment of this matter, nor any conventional training and education on when and why it can occur, nor how to handle it when it does. And, while it might not be that frequent of an occurrence, I suspect that we are going to see a lot more of it in the near future as our community expands and the world continues to change.

He goes on to discuss how today’s Pagans might deal with the emergence of new gods, including an ancient oracular practice

The blog made me think, for example, of how the Santa Muerte cult has grown, moving even beyond people with roots in Mexico. The image has been around a long time—go into any folklore museum in New Mexico, for instance, and you will see the similar Doña Sebastiana in her cart, a relic of the old lay brotherhood of the Penitentes. Does that make La Santa Muerte a “new” goddess, or just an upgraded one?

Polytheistic Writing Sought

On By Chas S. Clifton

I am passing this along as a favor to the editor.

Gods are real.And these gods are everywhere, in all aspects of existence, all aspects of human life.”

James Hillman

Minneapolis writer is compiling an anthology of modern, polytheistic experiences, tentatively titled Return of the Gods: The Varieties of Polytheistic Experience

Seeking thoughtful, original, and previously unpublished non-fiction essays recounting first-hand encounters with Gods, ancestors, spirits, disembodied intelligences, and sacred presences in nature.

You may hail from a Hindu tradition, an indigenous tradition, a Pagan tradition, an African-based tradition, another tradition, or no tradition at all

Electronic submissions only.

Please submit only final, proofread copy, double-spaced, maximum 5,000 words.

Please send your story as an MS Word attachment to williammcgillis [at] gmail [dot] com with the subject line: Return of the Gods.

Please refrain from submitting if you are not open to edits.

Please ensure that your story file includes your (less-than-75 word) bio along with contact details, including postal address and email address.

Compensation: All selected contributors will receive a complimentary copy of the book upon publication

Deadline for submissions: June 21, 2012.

Market Share of the Gods

On By Chas S. Clifton9 Comments

A few weeks ago, I was looking at the Sacred Source catalog  and wondered if it could not be treated as a primary source for the extent and type of polytheistic worship in the West — or at least the Anglosphere? — today.

They sort their statuettes, etc., into categories, and I have further divided those categories by gender and also into an animal/other category for non-human representations. I did break their “Americas” category in North and Meso-South.

I double-count Great Rite/conjoined images, and I also count Buddha figures, for although Buddhas are originally human, they are effectively treated by gods by some.

New:  2 male,  13 female
Goddess/Pagan: 8 male, 43  female, 2 other
Celtic: 6 male, 22 female, 3 other
Norse: 7 male,  6 female
Greco-Roman: 19 male, 32 female, 1 other
Hindu & Buddhist: 34 male, 30 female
Native American 0 male,  5 female
African: 1 male, 3 female
Neolithic: 1 male,  3 female
Middle Eastern: 2 male, 10 female
Meso/South American: 2 male,  6 female
Gnostic: 8 male, 15 female
Egyptian: 2 male, 10 female,  5 other

As my title indicates, I am assuming that these numbers reflect sales, not theology. Slow-selling figures are dropped, which is why you do not, alas, find the Emperor Julian in the lineup anymore. (I should have bought several!)

What else do they tell us? Comments are open.

On the Necessity of the Iliad for Modern Polytheism

On By Chas S. Clifton8 Comments

In this week’s New Yorker, Daniel Mendelsohn reviews a new, compressed translation of the Iliad by Stephen Mitchell. (The whole article is behind the paywall—the link is to an abstract.)

Discussing other recent translations, he describes Stanley Lombardo’s as having “a tight-lipped soldierly toughness.” I own that one — I saw its cover while walking through the book exhibits at the 2005 American Academy of Religion annual meeting and almost wept —  it was such an emotionally powerful design.

Mendelsohn, meanwhile, strikes gold at the end of his review:

The Iliad doesn’t need to be modernized, because the question it raises is a modern — indeed, existentialist — one: how do we fill our short lives with meaning? The August 22nd issue of Time featured, on its “Briefing” page, a quote from a grieving mother about her dead son. The mother’s name is Jan Brown, and her son, Kevin Houston, a Navy SEAL, was one of thirty-seven soldiers killed in a rocket attack in Afghanistan this past summer. What she said about him might shock some people, but will sound oddly familiar to anyone who has read the Iliad:

He was born to do this job. If he could do it all over again and have a chance to have it happen the way it did or work at McDonald’s and live to be 104? He’d do it all over again.

Whoever Homer was and however he made his poem, the song that he sings still goes on.

That is the polytheistic view of life. The world is a mess. The world is beautiful. The gods are eternal (or as good as). The gods work at cross-purposes, and sometimes humans are caught between them.

If you try to change the world in the name of some grand, sweeping, utopian vision, you will just make it worse. The most you can do is to give Achilles and  Kevin Houston a good cause.