People have been stacking up skulls in what is now Mexico City since the Aztecs ruled it.
I just wonder at the timing of this particular raid in late October . . .
Four of the skulls were built into the altar in the central Tepito neighborhood, where police arrested 31 people on Tuesday on suspicion of drug cartel activity, the city government said in a statement. A judge ordered 27 of the suspects released.
Vocabulary word of the day: Tzompantli.
¶ From Scarlet Imprint, Peter Grey’s Apocalyptic Witchcraft. In its review The Daily Grail said,
Grey sets out to explicate a perspective on the familiar symbols and stories of witchcraft in the West which has little truck with the formalities of scholarship, the sensibilities of the Wiccan paths or the white-light Newage perspective. His is a witchcraft both messy and impudent, one that stinks of mud, blood and spunk — in a good way. One where the oft-ignored or sidelined aspects — the legends of human sacrifice, poisons, curses and The Devil Himself — are both represented and, on some level, embraced.
¶ Once again, local authorities are deeply unimpressed by a legal defense based on “sacred prostitution,” especially when the woman involved is trying to get a license for a Colorado marijuana dispensary.
¶ The list of polytheistic devotional books (and some Pagan SF) published by the Biblioteca Alexandrina continues to grow. I have one and should get a couple of others.
The GetReligion blog, which covers issues of religion and journalism, takes on coverage of the Witch School’s move to Rossville, Illinois. (Full Chicago Tribune story and video here.)
Jason Pitzl-Waters has posted repeatedly about the various Witch School controversies, so see his blog for the background.
Maybe it is because I am still working to unload my late sister’s white elephant of a house in a small northern Missouri town, but I feel that this is as much of an economics story as a religious one.
But this is America, and we habitually mis-label our debates. We use the language of race and ethnicity to talk about issues of social class. And we use the language of religion to talk about people’s gut-level fears that their little town — and by extension, them — just does not matter any more in the America of Wal-Mart and mega-churches.
From GetReligion: A reader of ours, Christopher, mentioned in a note to us that the story is largely about a community dealing with “economic decline, arson, and drugs.”
I agree. Although I have never set foot in Rossville, I have been in plenty of places like it.
And it is just too wrenching to their self-image for the Chamber of Commerce types to think of themselves as another Salem, Mass., and to promote Rossville that way!
Instead, they probably hope to attract a new factory. But it is not coming.
Via NeoWayland’s Pagan Vigil blog: the National Institute on Drug Abuse was upset with its Wikipedia entry and tried to fight back. The results were not what the “drug warriors” hoped for.
Mark Twain supposedly defined the futility of fighting with a newspaper by saying, “Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel.”
What do we say now? Electrons don’t come in barrels.