{"id":3509,"date":"2011-11-27T16:30:28","date_gmt":"2011-11-27T23:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3509"},"modified":"2011-11-27T16:35:17","modified_gmt":"2011-11-27T23:35:17","slug":"3509","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3509","title":{"rendered":"\u00c6gypt in Northern California: Isis Oasis"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Loreon Vign\u00e9<\/p><\/div>\n

In 1957, a young artist named Lora Vign\u00e9 and her husband moved from Southern California to San Francisco.<\/p>\n

“It was 1957, the beginning of the Beatnik era, and we fitted the description,” she writes in her memoir, The Goddess Bade Me Do It!<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

No poser bohemian, she was already producing commercial ceramic pieces and enamel jewelry of her own design. She opened an art-supply store in North Beach<\/a> and later a gallery, the Noir Gallery, at Stockton and Sutter streets downtown. Here she is on the cover of I Am a Lover<\/em><\/a> (1961), a photo book of North Beach life<\/a> at the peak of the Beat era<\/a>.<\/p>\n

(Her husband, Dion, was an artist, experimental filmmaker, and a doomed lover of Miss Poppy.)<\/p>\n

By the late 1960s she had a thriving business and owned several properties in the city. She also owned ocelot<\/a>s, having created a large indoor\/outdoor space for them between two of her houses, houses located on Isis Street.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

A shrine to Isis.<\/p><\/div>\n

When the city outlawed keeping bigger cats, she went looking for a rural home, which turned out to be an 8.5-acre site in Geyserville, Sonoma County, that had housed a retreat center for followers of the Baha’i faith from the early twentieth century until just recently before she bought it. It came with a lodge, a commercial kitchen,\u00a0 the original Victorian farmhouse, and a theatre\/worship building.<\/p>\n

With the vision of Lora, now Loreon, and fellow devotes of Isis, it became Isis Oasis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On November 18th, the first day of the American Academy of Religion annual meeting in San Francisco, I found myself in a two-vehicle caravan around Sonoma County on what we called the “Mojo and Materiality Tour.” Isis Oasis was the first stop. I was not sure what to expect. Something embarrassingly kitschy?<\/p>\n

Loreon (wearing the same Egyptian-style eye makeup as in her old beatnik photos) was soon drinking tea with us all. She and I swapped stories of our visits to Clonegal Castle in Ireland<\/a>, home of the Fellowship of Isis.<\/p>\n

We wandered through the buildings. It is \u00c6gypt in the California wine country\u2014not the fractious, Islamist Egypt of today but an \u00c6gypt of the imagination, where Isis is still worshiped, where there are priestesses, peafowl and big-gish cats, where visitors sleep in bedrooms thematically decorated to evoke Egyptian goddesses.<\/p>\n

(Isis Oasis also makes an appearance in Erik Davis’s coffee-table book of California religion, The Visionary State: A Journey through California’s Spiritual Landscape.<\/em><\/a>)<\/p>\n

The only question, of course, will be the passing of the sistrum at some future day.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Steps to the large theater and temple.<\/p><\/div>\n

Isis Oasis was the first stop on the tour. Now that I am home after the train journey<\/a>, I will soon have more posts about the tour and the annual meeting itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1957, a young artist named Lora Vign\u00e9 and her husband moved from Southern California to San Francisco. “It was 1957, the beginning of the Beatnik era, and we fitted the description,” she writes in her memoir, The Goddess Bade Me Do It! No poser bohemian, she was already producing commercial ceramic pieces and enamel […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10,75,116,5],"class_list":["post-3509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-american-religion","tag-california","tag-egypt","tag-paganism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-3509","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6593,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6593","url_meta":{"origin":3509,"position":0},"title":"Passing of Loreon Vigne","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 16, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Loreon Vigne, priestess of Isis, who created the Isis Oasis sanctuary and retreat center at Geyserville, California, passed away last night. There are tributes on her Facebook page. Here is an earlier post of mine about visiting Isis Oasis. Her memoir, The Goddess Bade Me Do It, tells her story\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2244,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2244","url_meta":{"origin":3509,"position":1},"title":"Wendy Griffin Named Cherry Hill Dean","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 31, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Cherry Hill Seminary has named Wendy Griffin of California State University, Long Beach as its new academic dean. They made a good choice. I have worked with Wendy for several years on\u00a0 the American Academy of Religion's Contemporary Pagan Studies steering committee, which she co-chaired from 2005-10. She and I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"education\"","block_context":{"text":"education","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=education"},"img":{"alt_text":"Wendy Griffin","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/WendyGriffinAAR2-119x150.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":12320,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12320","url_meta":{"origin":3509,"position":2},"title":"“Why Women Need the Goddess:” The Passing of Carol Christ","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 19, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Carol P. Christ, PhD, a foremost figure in women's spirituality and Goddess religion, passed away five days ago (14 July 2021). She was born in 1945.((Most people said her surname as \"Krist.\"\u00a0 Not to be confused with Carol T. Christ, former president of Smith College and chancellor of the University\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"Carol Christ 1945\u20132021","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/external-content.duckduckgo.com_-262x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":12446,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12446","url_meta":{"origin":3509,"position":3},"title":"Z Budapest Is Still Creating","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 18, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Z Budapest, one the first public witches of the 1970s in the United States, is \"largely retired from ritual work\" but still creating, according to a profile pubished in the Los Angeles Times. \u201cI don\u2019t agree with all her views, but in the history of the craft, she is an\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"California\"","block_context":{"text":"California","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=california"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/z_budapest_-_la_times_2021.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/z_budapest_-_la_times_2021.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/z_budapest_-_la_times_2021.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":6449,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6449","url_meta":{"origin":3509,"position":4},"title":"Investigating a “Grandmother Story”","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 12, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Robert Mathiesen and Theitic, The Rede of the Wiccae: Adriana Porter, Gwen Thompson and the Birth of a Tradition of Witchcraft (Providence, R.I.: Olympic Press, 2005), 167 pp., $17.95 (paper). \u2022 \u2022 \u2022 Gwen Thompson (Craft name of Phyllis Healy), 1928\u20131986, founded the New England Coven of Traditional Witches in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"Book cover of Rede of the Wiccae","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/redeofthewiccae-e1399928966661.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2873,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2873","url_meta":{"origin":3509,"position":5},"title":"Starting Over as a Virgin (Or Else)","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 8, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"When I was a teenager, I remember hearing some slightly older female friends cracking up over the line, \"Let's go to California and start over again as virgins.\" Only it should be \"Toronto,\" not \"California,\" the reason being that you do not want your Muslim husband to beat you. Lina,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Islam\"","block_context":{"text":"Islam","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=islam"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3509"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3522,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3509\/revisions\/3522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}