Deep Pagan Thoughts

Moving on up . . . .

2012-06-17T15:49:00.001-07:00

On Monday I moved the majority of my blogging activity over to Patheos, one of the world's largest internet destinations for news and information about various world religions. I'm super-excited to be a part of the Patheos family, but that means I'll mostly be shutting down this website. All the articles will remain up (though many of them will also be moved to Patheos), but I won't be actively posting here anymore.

I'm hoping you'll join me at my new online home, Raise the Horns, where I'll continue to post lots of great Pagan (and rock and roll related) stuff.

Blessed Be!
-jason

Fun with a Cal Thomas Column

2012-05-25T11:11:00.000-07:00

Cal Thomas is America's "most syndicated news columnist." American Idol is America's number one television show. People eat at McDonald's more than any other restaurant. None of that means Mickey D's is gourmet, American Idol is a "good" show, or that Cal Thomas has anything of value to say. Like most right-wing writers Cal Thomas writes to bitch and moan, and complain about things that aren't real. It's a free country, and he has a right to do that, and I have the right to make fun of him for being a douchebag.

I usually try to say nice things about people, but this piece kind of enraged me. My comments are meant to be satire, I don't really think Cal Thomas is a doucehbag, he's a person, I think. Perhaps a conniving one, but a person none the less. My comments are in italics, my buddy Cal's are not.

Evidence of big media’s bias against religion that doesn’t advance the secular and liberal agenda of the Democratic Party is beyond dispute. Any faith attached to a conservative agenda is to be ridiculed, stereotyped and misrepresented. Islam is a notable exception. The media appear to bend over backward not to offend Muslims.

Yes, the media bias is so bad that you are only in 500 newspapers and, according to you, are the number one syndicated columnist in America. It's horrible, ohh the humanity! If the media was so intent on promoting a "secular and liberal agenda" I don't think you'd be in so many newspapers. It's lovely to see someone make such a stupid statement and condem the very industry that has made them extremely wealthy.

Here's one of the reasons assholes like you really piss me off Cal (can I call you Cal?). You bitch all the time about how the Democrats promote a secular agenda when President Obama has gone out of his way not only to display his faith, but to court the vote of Evangelicals. Obama is a very committed Christian, but the only time this is ever brought up is when your side rails against Jeremiah Wright. You can't have it both ways. You guys can't criticize him for not having faith and then make fun of his old church and pastor. That's really fucking stupid.

In addition I've never understood why you think that the mainstream media is out to get Christianity. When I flip through my cable channels (basically all owned by the companies that own the broadcast networks) I see plenty of shows about Christianity and Christians. People constantly talk about Moses like he was a real person (myth!), same with Abraham (myth!). It's like everyone bends over backwards as to not offend the Christians. Last time I checked the always breeding Duggars had a television show too. How many shows feature Pagans, Sikhs, or Jewish families? NONE. You are a fucktard and a liar sir.

And the media does not give Islam a pass either, do you even watch television? I'm sure your real problem with Islam in the media is that it's not vilified 100% of the time. I know that's what your kind wants, and when it doesn't happen I know you complain. "American Muslim" didn't present all Muslims as terrorists so brain-dead troglodytes on the right decided to complain.

Oh, and by the way, Fox News is "big media." You guys have your own fucking channel and it's still not good enough. I'm sorry we all aren't licking your asshole right now.

The Washington Post on Monday, reporting from Carrollton, Ark., uncovered an event that occurred nearly 155 years ago and then sought to link it to the presidential candidacy of Mitt Romney: “On Sept. 11, 1857, a wagon train from this part of Arkansas met with a gruesome fate in Utah, where most of the travelers were slaughtered by a Mormon militia in an episode known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre.”

The Mountain Meadows Massacre is a very real piece of tragic history. If you guys are going to go out of your way to dissect every sermon by Jeremiah Wright then I think Americans have the right to know about Mormon History. Early Mormon History is a bit bloody, and the fault lies on both sides. Oh, and don't tell me the media hates Mormons either. The Osmonds have been on and off TV for years, and TNT even produced a sympathetic bio-pic on Brigham Young. Ass.

The Romney connection? “There aren’t many places in America more likely to be suspicious of Mormonism — and potentially problematic for Mitt Romney, who is seeking to become the country’s first Mormon president.”

Wow. You've really distorted that piece from the Washington Post. Carrollton Arkansas has a memorial to the victims of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. The people there call that tragedy "the first 9-11." You are 100% being a lying asshole here Cal. The reporter is confining the word "place" here to a small isolated corner of Arkansas, a place where this tragedy still festers. No one is calling Romney a murderer, and as the piece goes on to say, the conservatives there are planning to vote for Romney. Cal, tell me, do you ever feel stupid for getting all worked up over nothing?

As Carrollton, Ark., goes, so goes the nation? Would the Post question the legitimacy and faith of a Muslim candidate for Congress, or any office, because of 9/11? Do you even have to ask? Should the Spanish Inquisition reflect on a Catholic candidate?

The piece never implies "As Carrolton Ark., goes, so goes the nation." This is another fabrication on your part because you apparently have nothing real to write about. The Post never questions the legitimacy and faith of Romney, or that of any other Mormons, or Evangelicals for that matter in the article you are slamming. I'll tell you who questions legitimacy and faith though-Mouth-breathers like you and your ilk on the right hand side of the aisle! Fox News does it all the time, you guys do it to Obama, asking if he's a secret Muslim or a Christian who believes in UFO. Douche.

Since Jimmy Carter announced during the 1976 presidential campaign that he was a born-again Christian, the media have been fascinated by religion, but not so much that they would labor to understand it. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is a devout Mormon, but Reid gets a media pass on his faith because he toes the line on the secular left’s agenda, from abortion to same-sex marriage, which Reid endorsed last week. That his church teaches the opposite of the way he votes doesn’t appear to concern him.

Wow, there's so much dumb in this paragraph that I don't know where to start. I think the media completely understands religion, but a reporter's job is to report about it, not to endorse it. This is what you guys on the Right don't understand. Sometimes you have to separate faith from reporting, unless you work for Fox of course. Before Carter we had entered a rather secular period in American history. Ike didn't wear his religion on his sleeve, neither did JFK or LBJ. For a lot of Americans outside of the South, Carter was their first encounter with a born-again, of course there was fascination. Carter legitimized being born-again and having great faith, and you guys still hated him. Fuck.

Harry Reid is a wuss, and is not running for President. He's basically been impotent since becoming Speaker of the House, of course the media doesn't care about him. Romney is running for President, it's a much bigger deal. Are you comparing Harry Reid to the President? The majority of American Christians engage in behaviors not endorsed by their churches. How many Catholics use birth control? Limbaugh has been married four or five times. People commit adultery, and don't love their neighbors as they love themselves. I hate how you right wing froth machines just pick and choose.

I'd also like to point out that there are many Christians who are in favor of gay marriage and are pro-choice. These are not Christian litmus tests. You can be in favor of gay rights and believe in Christ. You can follow the teachings of Jesus (who never, not once, mentions homosexuality) and still be gay.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, also a Mormon, is running for re-election in Utah. Hatch is less scary to the media because he made friends with late Sen. Ted Kennedy with whom he occasionally cooperated on legislation.

No, it's because Hatch isn't running for President.

Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, a devout Catholic, opposes the death penalty, as does the Roman Catholic Church. The Catholic Church also opposes the “death penalty” for the unborn, but Cuomo challenged the Church’s position on abortion in his speech at Notre Dame in 1984 titled “Religious Belief and Public Morality: A Catholic Governor’s Perspective.” Why did no reporter press Cuomo on his “cafeteria theology”? Answer: Because his positions on the death penalty and abortion reflect the views of most in big media.

Sigh. I'm tired of having to explain things to you, but here we go. Most Americans don't march in lock-step with their church. It's just the truth, people can think for themselves. Maybe you can't, but most of us can. Why are you going back to 1984 anyways? Is that all you could find to harp about?

The questions reporters should be asking Mitt Romney are not about his style of worship or about Mormon theology, but rather which of his church’s beliefs he thinks are connected to earthly policies and which ones, if any, he will attempt to implement should he become president.

Only in your deluded little mind has the Mormon question become a big deal. I haven't heard anyone really making an issue of it. Yes, your guy is going to have some trouble with Evangelicals because Evangelicals have argued that Mormons aren't Christians for over a century. That's not the media's fault, that's the fault of some Evangelical Churches. I love how all of you on the right are now cozying up to Mormonism because your candidate is one. Romney hasn't been asked about his special underwear, celestial marriage, secret Temple rights, or whether he will follow The Prophet ahead of the Constitution.

On her Washington Post blog, Jennifer Rubin says the media has a “Mormon Obsession”: “In sum, the left’s obsession with Romney’s faith tells us more about their ignorance of faithful people of all religions than anything else. ... Whether born of ignorance (i.e. that other faiths don’t share these essential values) or rank bias or intention to paint Romney as weird, the definition of Romney as nothing more than a Mormon stick figure is pernicious in our political culture and begs the question: Why is the media entirely uninterested in Obama’s religious influences, and indeed has dubbed such discussion racist?”

To many Americans Mormonism is a mysterious thing. The Mormon Church has been removed from the mainstream for much of its history. There was polygamy, African-Americans weren't allowed to hold LDS priesthood until 1978, and Mormonism is against coffee. In places like the American South and the Northeast it's still a very unknown quantity. I'd expect lots of articles about Mormonism throughout the election season. It'll be an amazing opportunity for most Americans to see how far the faith has come since the Mountain Meadows Massacre.

Journalists and media organizations should be required to take advanced religion courses so that they can better understand faith, explain it accurately and ask the right questions of candidates who believe in an Authority higher than the state.

And so should you, obviously. Some classes on "truth" would also be nice.

Cal Thomas is the country’s most widely syndicated columnist.

That doesn't make him a good or truthful one though.

Pagans and Politics

2012-03-30T13:52:00.002-07:00

Most of you know that I do some blogging over at Patheos now. I blog over there because they get more traffic than a stand alone site like this one (I certainly don't do it for the money, over there I make nothing!). When I write something, I want it to be read, and for it to be read it needs to reach as wide of an audience as possible. So even if there's no compensation in writing over there, I get the satisfaction of sharing my work with others. It's cool. Sometimes I feel as if what I want to write about won't fit in over there, so I write about it on DPT. Sometimes those "don't fit" musings are about things specific to me, like my experiences at a festival or something along those lines. I also won't post anything "political" over there either, the audience is too large, and I'm scared of taking too many liberties with "Pagan Thought."

Over at Patheos my blog posts are part of a larger blog called "Agora," it's sort of a clearing house for bloggers over there without their own dedicated space. Last week I published a piece on Atheists and Pagans and the often strange alliance between the two. It was not my best work. Mostly it was a few observations that I tried to link together. I think I have a tendency to be a bit wordy, so anytime I post over there I intentionally try to simplify things, so there wasn't as much depth to it as I had originally wanted. I don't have access to page-view numbers over there, the only thing I can really see are "the shares" on Facebook. That little piece was linked to on Facebook 67 times, and since I didn't see it on Facebook 67 times I'm pretty sure that it was passed around by more than just my friends.

The same week my "Atheist/Pagan" post went up a number of "Political Pagan" pieces also went up. Most of them were about the "War on Women" currently being waged by some members of the Republican Party (I was pretty sure we had come to an agreement on contraception, apparently I was wrong). What was interesting to me was how little those articles were shared, topping out at 26 shares. Can we, as Pagans, feel political fatigue? How much should we really write about politics anyways? Perhaps people, when they visit a site about Paganism, want to read about Paganism and not the antics of Rush Limbaugh?

One of the problems with writing about "The War on Women" (and please remember, "men" aren't fighting a war against women here, some idiotic men are, and there are some women in that number as well), is that everyone has been writing about The War on Women. I can go to Huffingtonpost or The Daily Beast to read about it. It's certainly not something that's being under-reported in the liberal news sphere. I'm not belittling the issue, I think it's very important (I'm not of fan of going back to the Middle Ages), it's just how many opinions or articles about it do you need?

Unless I'm reading The Wild Hunt I'm not sure how much "body politic" I want in my Paganism (and The Wild Hunt deals almost exclusively with issues relating directly to Pagans). Sure, there are some things which have turned political that are hard to divorce from Paganism, things like preserving the natural world, and issues of equality (especially related to gender). But you can be a Pagan, and be either pro-choice or pro-life, there's not a litmus test. I know Pagans who are against abortion rights, despite what's often portrayed in the blogosphere, there are conservative Pagans. As I've grown older I've tried to stay away from sweeping generalizations about our political leanings as a whole; politically we probably aren't as diverse as the various gods we worship, but there are dissenting opinions out there.

(I will admit to being baffled by "Pagan Republicans." I can understand being politically conservative, but I'm always confused by Pagans who identify with the Tea Party and folks like Sarah Palin. I can't imagine being buddy/buddy with someone who would happily take away my religious freedom. I also can't imagine being a Republican and being in favor of gay rights-though some Democrats aren't all that progressive on the issue either. I understand being a Libertarian leaning Pagan, especially the self sufficient "live off the grid" types, but I'm sorry folks, Ron Paul is not the answer.)

When Pagan liberties are being threatened, and religious freedoms are being trampled upon, we should certainly comment on those things, but do we need to put our athames into every aspect of the greater culture wars? It's one thing to comment on the asinine things being done by a misguided few, it's another thing to inject our spirituality directly into the controversy. I get annoyed when a Christian Pastor talks politics in the pulpit, or talks about them as a member of a religious order. You probably do too, why should Pagans be any different?

Israeli Antiquities, Courts, and a Bone Box

2012-03-14T13:57:00.000-07:00

As someone with a keen interest in the origins of Christianity I've been keeping up with the developments in the trial of Israeli Antiquities Collector and Dealer Oded Golan. Golan is best known for bringing attention to the alleged ossuary (bone box) of St. James, the brother of Jesus, a box that most in the scientific community think is a forgery. Seven years ago Golan was charged with forgery; today he was acquitted of those charges, unfortunately that verdict has been reported with very little context.

The James Ossuary

The Golan case has been featured on programs like 60 Minutes, and in various magazines and cable programs. The sensationalism around the ossuary can be attributed to three words that appear at the end of the inscription on the ossuary "brother of Jesus." Believers in the authenticity of the bone box have the messed up belief that the words "brother of Jesus" proves something, generally that Jesus was a historical personage, and then through a leap of logic totally unrelated to the ossuary, that Jesus was the Son of God.

Ossuaries were commonly used by Jews living in Israel during the Second Temple Period. The practice was discontinued when the Second Temple was destroyed in 70 CE. Jewish burial customs during this period generally called for dead bodies to be laid in a cave for a year, and then moved into an ossuary afterwards, when all the soft tissues had decomposed. Since the practice was popular, and ossuaries were made of stone, thousands of them survive to this day, some people in Israel even use them as flower boxes. An ossuary is not a rare archeological find, what makes the James Ossuary unique is the inscription, or inscriptions.

One part of the inscription on the James Ossuary is beyond reproach. That part of the inscription reads "James, Son of Joseph." The words "James, Son of Joseph" mean very little on their own, those names were extremely common during the time of Jesus. It would almost be like finding a gravestone that said "Jason, Son of Michael," those two names are so common that they provide little insight into anything. Jesus was also a very common name two thousand years ago, and it's not outside the statistical realm of probability that there were several people in the Holy Land with a Joseph for a dad and a James for a brother. The second part of the inscription on the James Ossuary, the "brother of Jesus" part comes from an additional hand. Even scholars who believe in the complete authenticity of the box agree with this, their argument is just that the inscription occurred shortly after the original one.

The inscriptions on ossuaries were very brief, and generally didn't include statements beyond "Douglas, Son of Fredrick," the listing of a brother on the James Ossuary is extremely unique. Believers who are attempting to use the ossuary as a tool for converting souls argue that the extra inscription was added because Jesus was unique in history. That's not a completely unreasonable argument, but James, and his followers in Jerusalem, were also pious Jews. It just seems unlikely that they would have bucked convention, they did all follow Jewish Law for example. They didn't see Jesus as the Messiah preached about by Christians today, they most certainly saw him as a Jewish Prophet, and someone who was a part of Judaism, not someone out to create a new faith. So it seems odd to me that those individuals would have added the "brother of Jesus" tag to the ossuary, it doesn't feel consistent with how they would have acted two thousand years ago.

The inscription is also written in Aramaic, which is extremely problematic. Both Jesus and James would have spoken Aramaic, no question about that, but ossuary inscriptions were generally written in Hebrew. If James, brother of Jesus, died in Jerusalem (likely), this would have most certainly been the case. It's not outside the realm of possibility for the inscription to have been written in Aramaic, just unlikely.

Most scholars believe that the "brother of Jesus" part of the ossuary is a modern addition, probably an addition by Golan, or one of his associates. Golan has (allegedly) associated with Egyptian forgers in the past (for the record those alleged associates refused to testify at his trial). I think it's likely that they added the inscription to his, legitimately old and inscribed with "James, Son of Joseph," ossuary. I'm not smart enough to describe the ins and outs of the inscription forgery business, but most experts argue that the patinas on the two parts of the inscription are obviously different.

In addition to the patina issue, the "brother of Jesus" inscription has various other problems which are absent from the "James/Joseph" inscription. Words are spelled incorrectly, the letters are not of consistent size, and the letters are not in a straight line (they are in the other part of the inscription). This all argues against the authenticity of the Jesus line. If the "brother of Jesus" inscription is legitimately old, it might still be a forgery, perhaps one from the second to fourth centuries. "Christian relics" were in large demand by then, this would have been an easy one to create.

Ossuaries, since they are made of stone, are impossible to date. The only way to date an ossuary is by the inscription placed upon on it, and that only dates the inscription. The actual ossuary could be hundreds of years older than the inscription, especially if the inscription is a forged one. So even if the inscription was not made by Golan or his associates, it's impossible to date to the time of James or Jesus, there are too many variables.

One of the things that today's verdict did not do is prove the authenticity of the James Ossuary. In his ruling the judge involved with the case wrote "This is not to say that the inscription on the ossuary is true and authentic and was written 2,000 years ago, . . . . .We can expect this matter to continue to be researched in the archaeological and scientific worlds and only the future will tell. Moreover, it has not been proved in any way that the words ‘brother of Jesus’ definitely refer to the Jesus who appears in Christian writings."

I'm always baffled why people get so caught up in these arguments to begin with. While there's nothing in the archeological record confirming the actual existence of Jesus of Nazareth, most scholars believe that Jesus was a historical person. Yes, there are some rather rabid atheists who will argue otherwise, but it shouldn't be surprising that a Jewish peasant from two thousand years ago died without a paper trail. The complete authenticity of the James Ossuary then proves very little. Due to the common occurrence of all three names, naysayers could easily dismiss the box even if the inscription was beyond reproach. For Christians who want to use the ossuary to prove the divine nature of Jesus, good luck, if anything the box (if authentic) speaks to the ordinariness of Jesus. If my brother was the Son of God I'd expect a little something extra at my burial (or reburial).

While the New Testament is populated by historical figures (much like Celtic Mythology and the Iliad), the divine nature of those figures always comes down to faith. A bone box doesn't prove the holiness of anyone, not does it discount that holiness. Understanding the context in which a faith arises is a worthy enterprise (and in my mind, makes the experience of that faith more meaningful), but by their very nature, historical details can't prove the supernatural. At the end of the day, you either believe or you don't, and no amount of Aramaic inscriptions, authentic or forged, should change that.

Post "Insert Con Here" Update-Part Two

2012-03-02T16:41:00.002-08:00

If you missed Part One of the "Insert Con Here" Update, you can find it here. It's certainly not essential to read Part One before reading Part Two, or to even read Part One at all, but you might like the compare and contrast between festivals. In a lot of ways going from festival to festival is like "continuing the experience," and other times it's like entering an entirely different reality. Going from PantheaCon to ConVocation falls somewhere in between.

After getting back to Sunnyvale from PantheaCon (a twelve minute drive I might add), Ari and I immediately went to work on packing for ConVocation. For me, it means washing the same "festival clothes" and putting them back into the same suitcase. Ari either has so many clothes that she's got lots of great festival outfits, or (as she claims), she simply dresses like she normally dresses at festivals, so she doesn't need to worry about washing that special pair of spandex infused jeans that hug the butt and (in my case) show off the crotch.

Packing for ConVocation posed some extra challenges, just because you can't take very much with you when you are flying. You get your one big suitcase and your carry-on bag, and since flying costs so much already, who wants to pay more for an extra bag? I had some "extra" stuff to take with to ConVocation, mostly because I was doing different workshops. A Real History of Tarot Cards lecture meant that I needed to take a few decks of cards with me, and since I was going to Michigan there were jackets and hats to pack. Gods, I really hate wearing anything other than sandals at this point in my life. Yay California!

Part of our Michigan trip was spent seeing family. So after getting into freezing cold Detroit Tuesday night* we spent the next day in our old stomping grounds (Lansing MI), before setting out for Con (me) and to Grand Rapids (Ari-where her family lives). One of the weirdest things about being back in Lansing, and Michigan in general, was noticing how dirty and small it was. The roads felt empty, and there was actually green space between strip malls. Areas of Lansing that I remember as being vibrant and alive seemed dormant, and there was a missing vibrancy to everything that I take for granted out here. I'm not trying to disparage where I used to live, I'm just commenting on how different it looked (and felt) to me.

So after driving on empty interstate that moved either at, or above, the speed limit I was at ConVocation. This year's Con was in a new location, unsurprisingly a DoubleTree Hotel. After getting my room key and noticing that it looked EXACTLY the same as my room key at the DoubleTree in San Jose I had a WTF moment. I didn't even need to plug a new internet password into the iPad, a win for my frazzled brain.

ConVocation is about a third of the size of PantheaCon, but 800 people is no number to laugh at. Every year Con seems to get bigger, and this year they even added more classes to the grid. I think they said there were nearly 200 workshops this year. Wow. The biggest difference between the two festivals is probably at night. PantheaCon always has lots of concerts (even comedy shows!) in the evening, along with workshops and rituals. ConVocation tends to just have two or three rituals, and more traditional party fair. There's a Masquerade Ball Saturday night which is the highlight for a lot of people, and karaoke on Friday night. No live music, no workshops, so instead of having to pick from 18 things you only really have to pick from three or four. A lot less room parties too, and no hospitality rooms, though there's usually a group or two with a suite. Con would probably really benefit from group hospitality rooms, there are enough groups in Michigan that I could see some people doing it.

During the day though, the festivals are a lot alike. Some years they tend to feature many of the same workshops too. I already mentioned Selena Fox, but Amber and Azrael K hit both festivals this year (I would have built a link for them as Amber K's "True Magic" was an early favorite book of mine, but I couldn't find one!), and there might have been one or two others. So the two festivals tend to have some overlap, especially at the top. And for both of them, it's wall to wall rituals and workshops during the day. So there you go, especially those of you who asked about differences between the two.

Since I pointed out that we were in a new hotel I feel obligated to comment on it. Con's old hotel was continually bought and sold over the last few years, meaning the service there seemed to be in continual decline. It was also getting too small for the size of the festival. I mostly liked the new digs, but it seemed to lack a comfortable "common area." There is a huge common area at the DoubleTree Detroit, but it's in the middle of the lobby, and since it wasn't an entirely Pagan hotel (they had other guests) it felt sort of weird. Also, because the hotel was so much bigger, the meeting rooms were more spread out where as before everything was in one pretty central location. These are not complaints. The change in hotels was absolutely necessary, and I was happy with most everything, even if some of the new conference rooms were a little on the small size (this becomes important later on).

While I've met a lot of people in California over the years (remember I was visiting for years before we moved out here), I know far more people at ConVocation. I go back 16 years with some of the people there, so there's a lot of backstory and a lot of mutual growing up together. Being reunited with those folks is just an emotional thing to begin with, add the energy of a Pagan Festival and it's even more electric. There's something truly special about hugging folks, making eye contact with all kinds of people, and feeling that closeness. I also probably know more people at ConVocation because they list me as a "Special Guest." Along with Kenn Day and Michelle Belanger I've been a consistent "Special Guest" for the past six or seven years, with my name on program materials and my ugly mug sent out in flyers. It's flattering, and a big difference from PantheaCon where I'm just one of a hundred presenters, even though I do tend to get "Rock Star Rooms."

So I always feel like a bigger deal when I'm in Detroit, which can be kind of douchey of me to say, but I always like to share the truth with people. I do feel more like a rock star in Detroit, which means after reading this all of you out in the Midwest are going to be meaner to me next year, don't blame you. Since I was a "Special Guest" I had to go to the "Opening Ritual." I tend to avoid opening rituals as a matter of course, but Con likes to introduce the special guests and big name authors so I headed up there after a cider and an hour of hiding in my hotel room. I ended up sitting next to Selena Fox where I said to her "I wonder if this will even feel like a Pagan Festival without the tran-gendered/women only ritual debate going?"

I really like Selena, such a humble woman, and considering all she's done for the Pagan Community the last 30 years, she has no business being humble. She's also incredibly high-energy, I think I got tired just sitting next to her. She's just so vibrant and giving. If you told me I had to pick one person to represent Paganism on a talk show I'd pick Selena.

Post-Opening Ritual I hustled back to my room for a hard cider and my notes and equipment for the premier of my "Bigfoot is Real!" workshop. I have been threatening to do a Sasquatch-centered workshop for years, but Ari has always put a stop to it. "No one will ever take anything you do after something like that seriously," was always Ari's argument. On a whim, and kind of as a joke, I submitted "Bigfoot is Real" to Convocation, and they accepted it! After they accepted it I even wrote back asking "Why?" Never in a million years did I expect that thing to get picked up.

So how did Bigfoot go? Pretty well I think. It was an interesting mix of information, slides, and Bigfoot home movies. A friend of mine, who is usually pretty rational, and was definitely sober, even said that I made her question her skepticism on the topic. I thought that was pretty cool. Will I ever do Sasquatch again? That's a pretty open question. It's probably not doable at most of the outdoor festivals because it really, really, requires a projector. There's no way to do it without a slideshow and the videos. I'm not sure I'd ever submit it to PantheaCon either, it's not as eclectic as Convocation. (There's a lot more "non-Pagan" stuff at Con.)

One of my goals this year at Convocation was to increase my class sizes. I take the turn out thing pretty seriously, and I want to present things that people will want to go and see. (If a festival is going to let me present, I should present things that draw, it's as simple as that. In addition, if I spend months preparing something I want there to be an audience for it.) Pantheacon and Convocation have very different audiences. There are Pagan rituals, workshops, groups, and classes probably happening everyday in the Bay Area. It's a huge Pagan hotbed, and authors from out of state frequently visit various bookstores and events. As a result PantheaCon has a lot less "entry level" workshops. ConVocation always has a great line-up of speakers, but some of the more basic classes tend to draw big there, just because you can't see a lot of this stuff anywhere outside of ConVocation. As a result some of my more cerebral stuff doesn't attract the same size of audience as it does out West. Deep down I understand how this stuff goes, but I'm a fragile goat, so the workshops I submitted this year to Con reflected a desire to get away from some of the more scholarly rambling I usually do. The results were positive too, and this change in tactics had the desired effect.

My second workshop, on Friday, was called "Tarot: A Real History" and while it certainly wasn't dumbed down, that type of thing tends to be a lot more accessible than me talking about Gerald Gardner for 90 minutes straight. It was my first time doing that workshop too, and while I did mispronounce a city name, it was also fine. Lot of smart tarot readers and historians in that room though, which was cool, because they didn't ever really call me out on anything. In a lot of ways the Tarot workshop was kind of light because there were 80 some odd slides of tarot cards to look at. The actual history of tarot is no big secret, the cards were originally a game, and the more occult parts were grafted onto that several centuries later, but it's not something most people talk about.

One of these days I'd like to write a long piece on "Eight Things You Don't Have to do to be a Pagan." One of those eight things would be tarot. I've read tarot cards in the past, and I love tarot decks as works of art, but card reading is not something I'm particularly drawn to. What I'm always more interested in are the rather more mundane origins of things (like tarot), and the rather limited time frame these things have been around for. Easily accessible books on reading the tarot only date from the late 50's and early 60's, but tarot always feels like it's something that has always been around. This fascinates me, and makes all the reading and research worth it. I also enjoy tracing the "legendary origins" of things like tarot and figuring out where the crazy rumors like "The tarot was started in Egypt" come from.

It snowed most of Thursday night and Friday at ConVocation, which was fun to look at, but not fun for Ari who had to drive in from Grand Rapids to Detroit (three hours) on Friday. Most of you are probably wondering what I tend to do between workshops, hang out with friends and drink cider is the easy answer. Since it's ConVocation, drinking scotch in the Scotch Room is also high on the list. (Yes, we have a Scotch Room at Con, but you have to have an invite, luckily I know these guys so I do get the invites.) It was nice to have a non-party room, though the room did become a party room on Saturday night (more on that later).

Due to the jetlag and general tiredness, Ari and I slept in pretty late Saturday, wasting nearly the entire morning and probably some of the afternoon. That was fine really, I was only really interested in one thing Saturday-beating the shit out of that "Drawing Down the Moon" workshop. Weirdly it was also scheduled on Saturday, and also near 4:00 pm. Need a late afternoon workshop? Apparently Mankey is your man. I had a lot of people telling me they were looking forward to it (and the reviews from PantheaCon the week before certainly didn't hurt), so I felt a little extra pressure, but no sweat.

It went mostly like it did the first time, but I left some things out, and inserted other things. I wasn't using the slide show for it, so I probably looked at my notes more than I did the previous week. The stories though . . . they still inspired that passion in my voice, and nearly brought a tear to my eye. Making it even more special was that my High Priestess from that first Samhain Ritual was actually there in the room listening to me gush about her, I hope she knows how special she is. So yeah, pretty awesome. When I was finally done, I even felt a bit dizzy, almost like I was drunk. I'm not sure if the dizziness was a good or a bad sign, but as I've previously pointed out, I like to be exhausted and giddy when I'm done presenting, and I achieved that.

The only real downside to the workshop was that I was in a rather small room, and we ran out of space. There were people who tried to get into the workshop and couldn't because there was no space left. While that's very flattering, it also kind of sucks for the people who can't get in. When I first got into the room, ten minutes before my scheduled start time, the room was already pretty full. Apparently a lot of people knew how small my room was and wanted to make sure they got seats. I even had a few people sitting on the floor right in front of me, which meant I couldn't move around as much as I usually do.

When I was done with the workshop I couldn't use the "I sold some books so I know I didn't suck litmus test" because by then I only had one book left to sell. I was stunned by how much I sold at PantheaCon, so I only had six books left by the time I got to Michigan, and sold all but one of those before the workshop. Next year, I'll bring more swag.

Dinner at The Olive Garden followed the workshop, nearly immediately, which meant I was odd buzzy company for dinner. I really need that decompression time. Post-dinner Ari and I took a solid one hour nap. She had been battling a cold since Pcon, and I was starting to feel like my own cold was inevitable. It's easy to get sick at a Pagan Festival, there's the lack of sleep and the horrible diet, but there's also the dry air of the hotel wrecking havoc with the sinuses. We still aren't recovered and it's been almost a week.

Post nap I felt like a million bucks and was ready for drinking and mischief. Before some of that could truly begin in earnest, there was Mekong to sing. What is "Mekong?" It's true that it's a river, and an alcoholic drink, but it's also a song by a band called The Refreshments, and it became something of an anthem while we lived in Michigan. "Something of an anthem" doesn't do it justice, it was the high point of every social event. Imagine anywhere between 15 and 80 people forming a large circle and singing an obscure song while toasting each other and going absolutely fucking nuts. That my friends is Mekong. It holds such a special place in my heart that I can barely stand to listen to it without a drink in my hand and twenty close friends near by. So lots of people were looking forward to singing "Mekong" at ConVocation, and a few of them had never even done it before, the song just has that sort of effect.

"As cliche as it may sound, I'd like to raise another round, and if your bottle's empty help yourself to mine, and here's to life!" No lyric better articulates my philosophy in life. Hell, Ari and I use "Here's to Life" like "Blessed Be" in ritual. That's how important the song is. So anyways, we told people we'd be singing Mekong at 10:00 pm and to be in our room around then. We didn't actually start singing it until about 10:30 pm, and by that time we must have had 30 people in our hotel room or something like that. Before "Mekong" we sang along to Journey and other assorted horrible things, all pumped out of the one speaker Ipod player. A lot of the delay was to make sure that our friends who had been singing it with us since the beginning were there, and they were kind of scattered around the hotel. At one point Ari looked at me and said "We aren't starting this without Eddie, and I think the only people who are here are the newbies who have never sung it before!" (That wasn't totally true, but if someone's only been doing it for three or four years, we sometimes see that as barely counting.)

So eventually we blasted the Mekong, and I, of course, did cry. It had been about a year since I've been able to sing that song with such gusto and passion. It was amazingly awesome, and if I hadn't presented at ConVocation the whole trip would have been worth it for that one moment. Realizing that all of us would probably never be standing in that same room all together ever again, I was asked to tell the Dionysus and Cheez-Its story, which I did. The written version will never compare to a dramatic telling of the tale, and as I was a bit tipsy, the version was especially dramatic, with me crawling on the floor and making up new details and bits that I'd never used before. The whole thing got caught on film (computer chip?) too, if it ever goes up online maybe I'll link to it.

After all of that, what's the point of doing anything else? You can't top it can you? Well, you can't, but you can sing Mekong a second time, and we did, this time at the Masquerade Ball since one of our number had missed the first singing of it because he works on the Con Staff. I've never done Mekong twice in a night, so it was an interesting experience. Still enjoyable though. Post-Mekong there were flirtations and dalliances, but I don't talk about that stuff on this blog. Safe to say a drunken Jason crawled into bed with his Ari around 3:00 am after running out of parties to go to.

Since our plane left late on Sunday, I even had a chance to do some shopping in the Vendor Room (necklace for Ari!) and attend a workshop by my friend Melissa on Male Moon Gods. Who knew such things existed! (Well I did, but not in depth.) Delightful! After that it was hugs, goodbyes, and off to the airport. By Sunday night when we finally landed we were both completely wiped out. Ari even took Wednesday off from work in an attempt to recuperate.

So it was a pretty amazing eleven days in all, and we had a blast at both festivals. I love PantheaCon! I love ConVocation! And I especially love everyone I was lucky enough to share a hug or a cider with. Here's to life!

*I think it was only 38 out, but at this point in my life, that was plenty horrible.

Post "Insert Con Here" Update

2012-03-01T12:27:00.000-08:00

Writing a "Post Insert Con Here Update" has nearly become an expectation. Every blogger who visits a major Pagan Festival, whether it be Pantheacon or Convocation tends to do it, and as I'm not always a very original thinker, I'm doing the same. The only difference between me and most of those other bloggers is that I'm brave (dumb?) enough to hit both. So yeah, two Pagan Festivals, eleven days, and a whole lot of exhaustion. Welcome to my world.

Pantheacon

Until this year I had never really noticed that it's not "Pantheacon" and that the organizers spell it "PantheaCon," with the upper case "C" at the end. I guess there are always lots of things I don't notice about PantheaCon, probably because it's just so big and overwhelming. This year they had about 2500 attendees (I've been in towns with less people), and almost 300 workshops, panels, concerts, etc., and that doesn't even count the off the grid parties in various rooms and suites. So yeah, overwhelming, but always oh so rewarding.

This year was a very different PantheaCon experience for me because I ended up staying in a hospitality room on the second floor. Hospitality Rooms are basically a way for groups to distribute literature, information, and to promote themselves. As a newly minted resident of the Bay Area's South Bay, I thought it was important to try and promote some of the groups I hang out with down here. For the uninitiated, the San Francisco Bay Area is composed of several moving parts, and in the Pagan world it's the East Bay (Berkeley/Oakland) that tends to host the most Pagan events. Since I believe in staying in your backyard, I thought that reminding the world that Paganism exists in the South Bay was a noble idea.

The idea was noble, but not all that I hoped it would be.

If you run a hospitality room, PantheaCon wants that room to be open for large parts of the day, fair enough, but since I hadn't thought everything through very well, I started to feel like I was trapped in the room. I had many people from my local community tell me that having our "own room" made the festival for them, and for that I'm happy, but sometimes I just wanted to close the door and decompress, or head out in search of mischief elsewhere. What I should have done was sign people up to be in charge of the room for various chunks of time, but as I was new to all of this it didn't occur to me beforehand. It wasn't a complete disaster or anything, and I did have some fun singing along to various rock songs in the room and engaging in esoteric conversation there, but if I do it again, it'll be done differently.

What's most important to me about PantheaCon are my workshops, and those took up nearly my entire Saturday. Presenters at PantheaCon don't generally do more than one workshop a day, somehow I ended up doing two workshops in a pretty compressed period of time. I did one at 3:30 pm and a second one at 7:00 pm. I've done that kind of thing before, but since PantheaCon is so much bigger than any other festival, each workshop takes more out of me.

When I present I generally want to lay it all out on the floor. In a figurative sense I want people to leave my workshops with the feeling that they are taking a little piece of my soul with them. I want to end the thing with my guts spilled out on the floor, with every ounce I had to give given freely. I honestly believe in really putting myself out there, and burning up every ounce of RedBull and Hard Cider in my system while doing it. Sometimes I feel like I achieve all that, and sometimes I don't, but it's always the goal.

Every year I also tend to favor one of my workshops over the others. Sometimes that's because it's a "new" one, other times it's because some of them are just closer to my heart. This year I was favoring my Drawing Down the Moon: The Mechanics of Invoking Deity above all the others. I had a lot of reasons for favoring this workshop: I had been working on it for over a year, and because I think the practice of DDtM is vitally important. "Nailing" that workshop was my number one goal of the weekend, before cider, the ladies, selling books, or promoting the South Bay.

While I had a lot of energy invested in it, I also had a lot of fears about it. The biggest fear was that no one would show up for it. DDtM was scheduled at 3:30 pm that Saturday, the same time as workshops from Christopher Penczak, Raven Grimiassi, and Orion Foxwood (yes Midwesterners, you've never heard of Orion Foxwood, but he's a huge deal out here), in addition to those heavy hitters there were another eight workshops going on at the same time. To make matters worse I was presenting in what some of my friends call a "Rockstar Room." The Rockstar Rooms are the biggest rooms at Pcon, holding 100 or so people. I was legitimately worried that I'd be presenting to 15 people in a cavernous space; my soul crushed and my insides bruised, but that was only one of my many fears.

Drawing Down the Moon is an intensely personal thing, and by talking about something so personal I thought the workshop had the potential to piss people off, or at least upset them. An experience with deity is always going to be unique to each individual, to try and sum up all of those different unique feelings in an hour would be near impossible. My best hope was that people would forgive me for my transgressions with their experiences while not leaving in the middle of my presentation. My workshop also contained a section on practices that bear a resemblance to Drawing Down the Moon in other faith traditions, traditions I'm not an expert on. Getting corrected in the middle of a workshop sucks, and since I was going to comment on Voudun and the Golden Dawn I was pretty sure that someone was going to interrupt me.

So there are three fears laid bare, and there is still one to go, the fear of the unknown. I know how long my Horned God and Pan workshops are, and I can nearly do them blindfolded, but this workshop was all new. As a new workshop I wasn't sure how long it actually was going to be, or whether the various sections of it would link up properly. I also tend to throw in a few personal bits and stories (especially at the beginning), I wasn't even sure those would work since I had never really spoken about some of those experiences before.

One thing I had complete confidence in was a ridiculous pre-workshop slideshow designed to mimic those obnoxious "Did you Know?" type presentations you find in movie theaters before the previews start. The moment it started the laughter was loud and noticeable. The whole dumb idea went over far better than I thought it would too. People seemed to enjoy seeing a graphic that said "Did you Know?" with the statement "Jason will probably be sober for this workshop" underneath it. The whole thing worked so well that I thought about not doing the actual workshop at all and just leaving people with the slideshow, but I thought I might get in trouble for that, so I proceeded with the workshop.

One of the most amazing Pagan experiences I've ever had was when I first felt the power of the Goddess during a Drawing Down the Moon ceremony. Our High Priestess that night literally glowed in the darkness, there was an energy radiating from her that I had never felt before, and have only really felt a few times since then. Part of Modern Paganism's appeal is that it offers its practitioners an opportunity to literally interact with deity, to find joy and fear and awe and love in the presence of the gods. That's a lot of what I was hoping to articulate at my workshop, and when relating that story nearly brought me to tears, I considered the mission accomplished.

I don't usually cry while presenting, but I think I did for just a second at PantheaCon. A lot of the things I present are "just for fun." They are things I find interesting, and sometimes transformative, and while I hold many of those things close to my heart, they don't move me. Talking about the power of the Goddess while inside of her human vessel moves me. Reciting a few paragraphs from The Wind in the Willows about the Great God Pan moves me. Paganism is religion, Paganism is interaction with deity, Paganism makes me laugh, smile, cry, and tremble, and my faith moves me, and when I find myself, on a good day, able to articulate that passion I feel very good about myself. So if you were wondering how my workshop went, I think it went well.

If no one had said anything to me about it when I was done, I still would have thought it went fine, but at the end I had a big line of people wanting to buy books, and they don't buy books if you suck. In some ways that's "proof" of not going over like a lead balloon. My friend Angus summed up my workshop with these words: "Anyway, his presentation on Drawing Down the Moon was vintage Mankey: Peerless research coupled with a totally bonkers presentation. He traced the concept of invoking deity across the arc of History and across all the cultures of the world, illustrating it all with wonderful slides and sprinkling his trademark Junior High level humor throughout. It was like the History Channel had been overtaken by Beavis and Butthead." (I think he meant all of that as a positive.) I even got a "Best in Show" award on the Doing Magick blog for having the best workshop at PantheaCon. Since Robert is someone I truly respect and have admiration for, it's a high honor.

I ended up back in my hotel room around five, and after a workshop I tend to keep to myself (or cuddle with Ari) and decompress. Since I was in the hospitality room I couldn't do that, so I entertained people and had a cider. In what seemed like ten minutes I made my way back to one of the "Rockstar Rooms" to give my "Alcohol: Elixir of Life" workshop. The Alcohol Workshop is one I put together a year or so ago, and one I'm not all that happy with. I originally wanted to do a workshop on how Ancient Pagans used alcohol in religious practice. Since alcohol was such a large part of their lives, I could never find a way to truly unravel the mundane use of alcohol from the spiritual. So instead of being a workshop on alcohol in religion, it instead became more of a general history of alcohol in the Ancient World, plus a bit on its use in Monotheistic Religion. It's not a bad workshop, it just didn't turn out exactly how I wanted to.

Since I was pretty wiped out, I can't say that my 7:00 presentation was all that great. It was sort of fun, it wasn't horrible, but it wasn't my best moment. I had been so passionate about the previous one, that I didn't have a whole lot of energy left over. Talking about alcohol is fun, but I'm not passionate about it. I also had about half the class size that I had at 3:30, not surprising since I was up against some rituals, dinner, and a whole host of other things. My favorite part of that workshop is the term "social jollification" which is a phrase the early Mormon Church used when having a drinking party. They believed that alcohol provided social jollification, and I'm going to do my damnedest to bring that phrase back.

I'm sure I did other things Saturday night at Pantheacon (usually the height of the festival), but I don't remember what they were. By midnight I was running on less that fumes, I think the car was just stuck in neutral and was only moving because I was going downhill (or being dragged around). Ari was out until three, so someone was keeping the Mankey flag waving.

Sunday was a pretty low key day, and offered me a chance to just talk with some people and hit some workshops. Sunday morning I got my "fanboy" on and went to a Philip Heselton talk. Heselton is a historian and researcher who has done a great deal to shed some light on the origins of Modern Witchcraft. To say he's one of my favorite authors would be understating it a little bit. I got there pretty late (I slept for a small eternity), and ended up with a horrible seat and couldn't quite make out all of his slides, but no biggie, most of the pictures he showed I've already seen. I did get a little bit irritated that people kept interrupting Heselton while he was talking. Anyone who presents workshops on the early Craft tends to get interrupted, and I don't get it. Yes, we know you are smart too, but if you want to present your own workshop, then by all means do so.

After Heselton I had lunch at what Angus calls "Cafe Ho-Hum," (the mediocre in-hotel restaurant) with Robert from the Doing Magick blog I linked to above. I only see Robert once a year at Pantheacon, and I always try to make sure I carve an hour out of the schedule to chat with him. He's much of a ceremonial magician than I am, so I always appreciate his rather different perspective on spirituality. Post-lunch Ari and I went on a vendor room shopping spree, spending far more than we ever dreamed we would. Surprisingly we didn't buy any statues, but we did get window treatments, clothes, crowns for ritual, and a bunch of other stuff. I don't think I bought any books either which is very weird for me.

Dinner was spent with Community Seed (Pagans from Santa Cruz) before heading to Club Max(!) to see Angus do "Pagan Humor IV: A New Hope." (Club Max is a club in the hotel, usually reserved for the mundane folks on the weekend, and had never been used at Pantheacon before.) What is Pagan humor? It's comedy from a Pagan, and let me tell you, Angus is just born to do it. I laughed so hard that I cried a few times. He also insulted every car I've ever owned. I don't give praise lightly, and I never imagined that I would give a giant thumbs up to a Pagan humorist, but I'm doing it. If you ever get a chance to catch Angus, go do it. One of these years I want to take him out East with me and show him off at other Pagan Festivals.

Sunday Night I actually went out and tried to party a bit, but I just wasn't feeling it. I really missed the usual "Green Fairy Party," nothing compares. There were lots of folks trying to pick up the slack, but the vibe was different. Eventually the party I was at got invaded by hotel mundies. Have to give credit where credit is due though, the Pagan Alliance folks went out of there way to be hospitable, and it was a good place to decompress and drink for a few hours.

Monday morning Ari and I shared an elevator with T. Thorn Coyle who smiled at me and said "I didn't know Dionysus drank coffee in the morning." I didn't know that T. Thorn Coyle knew anything about me! I had big stupid grin on my face after that the rest of the morning and it made the packing and leaving that much easier. Coyle is a top-notch writer, someone I deeply respect in the community, and a fantastic presenter and ritualist. So yay to me I guess.

For those of you who keep up with the Pagan blogosphere, you are probably aware of the controversy stemming from Z. Budapest's "genetic women only" ritual Sunday night at Pantheacon. In addition to the ritual, there was also a "sit in" outside of it, protesting the exclusion of trans-gendered women. The link above is a great place to get caught up on the issue, and while I have opinions about it, I'm not sure I have much to offer the conversation.

Paganism has always been exclusionary, and as an initiatory tradition that shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. Not everyone who wants to be initiated into a traditional group gets to do so, and a coven based on "perfect love and perfect trust" is always going to be selective, and that's as it should be. However, those groups don't tend to offer public rituals where credentials are checked at the door. There's a time and a place for everything, and then there are times and places where perhaps some things shouldn't be done. I'm of the opinion that if someone thinks of themselves as a woman, then they should be allowed to go to a woman's only ritual in a public space. I'm not arguing that a group can't exclude someone, just that exclusion should probably not be occurring at an open festival. It's not my festival and I don't make the rules, and on the plus side, the controversy does open up a dialogue, one which I hope will be beneficial to the entire community.

How many words is this? Too many. I'll write about Convocation later this week.

Led Zeppelin and Tarot

2012-01-11T11:05:00.000-08:00

When it comes to Led Zeppelin people like to, for lack of a better phrase, "tell me things." The assumption always seems to be that they know secret things about the band that I'm just not aware of. That tradition truly started about fifteen years ago at a small New Age/Pagan gathering in Lansing, Michigan. I was sitting around, in a Led Zeppelin shirt* of course, minding my own business when a guy who looked like 1974 came up to me and said "Dude, did you know that the song Gallows Pole is a meditation on the Hanged Man tarot card?" Not knowing exactly how to answer, my younger (dumber) self mumbled something about how I was already aware of that, which I wasn't.

When I got home that night I dutifully went upstairs to my room, dug up the second CD from Led Zeppelin's 1990 boxed set, and sat down with the tarot's Hanged Man card. I stared at that card for a good fifteen minutes, with Zep's Gallows Pole on repeat for the whole time. I'm not sure what I expected to happen, but what I expected was certainly more than the nothing that occurred. I'd move the card really close to my eyes, and then as far away from me as my arm would reach, and I did this over and over again trying to gain some divine insight into the world, Led Zeppelin, and the occult. Thankfully, no one was around to watch my stupid card trick that evening.

Now there are as many interpretations of tarot cards as there are tarot decks, but it was always my understanding that the Hanged Man card represented something between the worlds. The Hanged Man is not simply a soon to be corpse blowing in the wind, but a spiritual seeker, attempting to see the next world while on this plane of existence. The Led Zeppelin song Gallows Pole ends with the protagonist dead as a doornail, with all of his attempts to get free of the noose an utter failure. His brother brings gold and silver, his sister sleeps with the executioner, but he still winds up dead. If that's a meditation on the Hanged Man card, I don't want to ever see it come up in a card reading.v

In truth, the song has nothing to do with the tarot and the songs original origins lie in Scandinavia where it was originally a 15th Century children's folk song with a much happier ending. While the tarot predates the song (European style decks were in use by 1450, perhaps a few decades earlier), the cards were originally Christian symbols, and didn't receive their occult associations until the 1800's. In a long and winding bit of evolution the song eventually migrated to the British Isles, and from there to North America. In the late 1930's a version of it was recorded by blues singer Leadbelly, who dubbed the song Gallis Pole. According to most Zep biographers Page was inspired to do the tune after hearing a version of the Leadbelly song recorded by California folk-singer Fred Gerlach. However, author Mick Wall believes that Page nicked Zeppelin's version of the song from African-American folk singer Dorris Henderson, who recorded the song with Pentangle guitarist John Renbourne. So Dutch song, then English folk song, then a blues tune, then an Americanized folk song based on the blues version. Interesting history, but no tarot. (Not that there's a lot of Dorris Henderson out there on the internet, but her voice was amazing.)

Led Zeppelin does has have a history with the tarot, it's jut not quite as spectacular as the dude stuck in 1974 would have had me believe. Most of the association between Led Zeppelin and tarot is due to 1971's Led Zeppelin IV (also sometimes called Runes or Zoso in honor of the glyphs associated with it), and even some of that is wishful thinking. At another more recent festival I had just finished up presenting my Led Zeppelin and the Occult workshop to 75 mostly non-napping people, when a young lady come up to me with a tarot card in her hand. She wanted me to know that the figure on the front of Led Zeppelin IV represented the Ten of Wands.

According to Jimmy Page (guitar, and if you don't know who he is I have no idea why you are reading this) the cover to Zep IV came about when "Robert found the picture of the old man with the sticks and suggested that we work it into the cover somehow. So we decided to contrast the modern skyscraper on the back with the old man and the sticks-you see the destruction of the old and the new coming forward." I'm not entirely sure that's true either, but there is probably something to the claim of contrasting new and old. The classic interpretation of the Ten of Wands has nothing to do with that balance, and instead represents either a large burden, or being unable to see the road in front of you (perhaps because of that burden). The man in the picture is a little stooped over, but he doesn't seem especially troubled by it.

The card I was shown by the lovely lady in question that day did look a lot like the cover of Zeppelin IV, in fact, it looked almost exactly like it. I was actually a bit stupefied that day thinking I had come across something I had previously been unaware of. When I got back home after the festival I began researching the Ten of Cups and was disappointed to find that the reverse of what this girl had told me was true. The cover of Led Zeppelin IV had inspired a reinterpretation of the Ten of Wands, and that the original Ten of Wands was something else entirely. Since the Ten of Wands/Old Man Cover was brought to my attention I've seen multiple decks with sticks on the back, and all of them date to after Zep IV. I think it's cool that Zeppelin inspired something, but it's not the cover of Zeppelin's fourth album that links the band to the tarot, it's the album's gatefold sleeve.

The most striking tarot related image in the Led Zeppelin catalog is on the gatefold sleeve of Zeppelin's untitled fourth album and features the Hermit from the Major Arcana. Jimmy Page has been exceedingly blunt about the fact that it's the Hermit, “The inside cover was painted by a friend of mine. It's basically an illustration of a seeker aspiring to the light of truth." (The work was credited to the artist Barrington Colby-Mom, who subsequently then fell off the face of the earth.) The Hermit card must have been pretty important to Page, because he dresses up in hermit garb for a silly sequence in the Led Zeppelin concert movie The Song Remains the Same. Of course the Hermit represents the search for truth and wisdom, precisely the kind of soul searching that seemed to go into the lyrics of "Stairway to Heaven." The Hermit on that particular album sleeve makes perfect sense when paired up with "Stairway," the ultimate song about soul searching.

After Led Zeppelin IV the band handed off the album cover art duties to the British firm Hipgnosis, who also designed album covers for bands like Pink Floyd. I don't want to say that the tarot imagery stopped because of Hipgnosis, but it never graced the inside of a Led Zeppelin album again. Perhaps just because it couldn't be topped, hard to say. Page obviously remained proud of his association with The Hermit, appearing as the old wizard in 1976's The Song Remains the Same concert movie (though that sequence was filmed several years earlier), but was that the last explicit tarot reference in the music or art of Led Zeppelin, until possibly 2003.

On May 27 2003, Led Zeppelin released a two disc DVD set of live concert footage, none of which had been officially released to the public before. To say that day was a national holiday for me is an understatement. I took the day off from work to listen to "get the Led out" and listsen to Led Zeppelin literally all day. Upon purchasing the DVD set I was struck by the cover art, featuring some old crumbling mountains standing alone, surrounded by desert. The mountain in the picture doesn't look entirely natural either, it might be something that was carved by human beings. It's old and crumbling, but still standing proudly, ravaged but remaining upright in the face of adversity. It implies a certain eternalness, "age may weather me but I will still remain," type of thing. This king of imagery is common on the tarot card known as "The Tower."

The Tower has several different interpretations in Tarot. Some of them are quite negative, some more positive. The original symbolism of the card probably relates back to the Tower of Babel, which would be fitting for the band that wrote and recorded Stairway to Heaven. I'm not quite sure if the DVD art and the Tower card are related, but the base of the Tower and the base of the mountains on the DVD box tend to make me believe I'm on the right path.

No matter what all the art means in Zeppelin, the band does stand eternal. Even now, forty odd years after their first record they continue to move three million albums annually. That's impressive. Trends come and go, but Led Zeppelin remain, kind of like Tarot Cards.

*All of my clothing either has rock band logos on it or sports teams stuff.

Jason's Charge of the God

2012-01-04T11:13:00.000-08:00

I've always firmly believed that all male archetypes are a part of something greater, and that all roads lead back to the same place. In other words I believe that all religions are valid, and all positive faiths can be seen as expressions of "God." In Wicca, the feminine aspect of "The All" or "Prime Mover" is expressed in "The Charge of the Goddess." The CotG was written and assembled mostly by British Witch Doreen Valiente (who shares a birthday with me!). Her Charge has lots of "bits" in it, ideas incorporated from Gerald Gardner's earlier version, and words from Charles Godfrey Leyland's "Aradia" and the writings of Aleister Crowley. What makes Valiente's Charge great has nothing to do with where the words came from, but everything to do with how those words were used to express universal truths.

Many years ago I was writing a very big Beltane Ritual, and decided to include Valiente's Charge. To counter-balance her expression of the Divine Feminine I searched in vain for something equally expressive of the Divine Male. There are many "Charges of the God" out there, but they are all generally re-workings of Valiente, substituting male things in for female ones, while generally keeping Valiente's cadence and structure. I thought that was lame and decided to write my own, to create something hopefully equal to Valiente's Charge, but unique. The result is Jason's Charge of the God.

The Charge of the God

Revealed now are the words of the Great God. He is the ancient one, whose face has appeared in many roles throughout eternity.

I am he who abides in the deepest darkest woods. It is my place to be with the creatures of the forest running in the cloak of blackest night. With bow strung across my back I make my home with the Earth. I am the defender of the sacredness of nature. I am the Great God.

I am he whose light and warmth brings forth life from the soil. My warmth is the covenant of union between Lady and Lord. My brow is the radiant crown of summer, the glow about me my promise of eternal light. I am the Great God.

I am he who is magick, creator of eternal energy, the catalyst of beneficial change for all who would walk in the Old Ways. My whispers are those of tomorrows revealed and knowledge to be granted. I am the power to see and do all things. I am the Great God.

I am the trickster, scourge of all those methodical and overanalyzing. I am the trouble in the best laid plans, the unexpected when all seems well. I am the chaos in a world of balance. I am the Great God.

I am he whose gift is the vine, the never ending chalice of intoxication. My presents are those of joy: wine, dance, and the freedom to be without care. Merriment and mirth to me are great honor for the joy of the folk is my reward. I am the Great God.

I am the cosmic god, one with all aspects of the universe. It is the stars which provide the sparkle in my eyes, a multitude of planets make up my body, and a thousand suns burn together as my heart and soul. I am the Great God.

I am he who abides in the skies, bringer of thunder and sender of lightning. I give the blessings of rain to the parched and hungry land. I command the winds that turn the seasons. I am he whose face can be seen amongst the clouds. I am the Great God.

I am the horned one, ancient god of fertility. It is my seed which brings forth life in the great womb. I am the bringer of physical pleasure, god of lust, god of the flesh. I give the joys of bodily union to all who ask. I am the Great God.

I am he that stands at the threshold of death, and life eternal. I welcome those who have departed your world and bid farewell to those who return to it. I guard the mysteries of the end and the wonder of beginnings. I am the Great God.

Worship me side by side with the Lady. Honor me and I shall abide forever within you. For as long as tolerance, happiness, and righteousness exist, the true God will eternally reign. I am love, I am eternal, I am a part of all things. I am the Great God.

Given the structure of my Charge-stand alone verses-you can do a lot of things with it. It can be read by two people, trading verses back and forth. It can be re-arranged so that the last verse read coincides with whatever season you are celebrating. When time is short you can even skip a few verses here and there, though I wouldn't skip my favorite ones (horned one, wine god, trickster, nature god). Certain verses are for particular gods as well, and if you are doing a ritual in honor of Pan or Cernunnos you could save their verses for last, or insert their names into the proceedings. (I give the joys of bodily union to all who ask, I am Pan, I am the Great God, etc.)

So it's a pretty adaptable piece, and something I'm rightfully proud of. You can also insert new verses into it here or there. The following two verses are in my official hand-written version, but are rarely used by me these days. The first of these two verses is obviously about Jesus, and reflects my crazy passion to include everyone and everything in my personal theology. I've had some Pagans yell at me for it. "We don't need forgiveness" they tell me, and then I remind them that the verse only says "and those that need forgiveness my receive it."

The second of these two verses is a rather barbed expression of love. I like love, I am in love, I like being in love, but it often makes us do silly (or stupid) things. It can be a double pointed sword if not approached correctly.

I am the sacrificial god, my blood is poured out upon the Earth so that the soil may be renewed, and those that need forgiveness may receive it. I care naught for myself, only for those who serve me. I am the Great God.

I am the god of love and the commitment between two individuals sharing heart, mind, bodies, and soul. It is my arrows which awaken desire in the hearts of women and men, and it is my poison which make the sane foolish in the name of love. I am the Great God.

Black Sabbath, The Occult, and the Origins of the Devil in Heavy Metal.

2011-12-29T12:00:00.000-08:00

Without question, Black Sabbath is one of the all-time great rock bands. They sit on the classic rock Rushmore, alongside bands like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and The Who. The biggest difference between Black Sabbath and those bands is that Sabbath invented a sub-genre of music almost entirely on their own-Heavy Metal. The Sabs were the first ever heavy metal band, and there’s very little debate about it.

Sabbath guitar player Tony Iommi almost single handedly created the genre when he was forced to start “down-tuning” his guitar after an industrial accident chopped off the tips of the fingers on his left hand. That horrible accident changed the sound of Iommi’s guitar, making it deeper, darker, and kind of menacing. (For those of you who don’t play guitar, I should probably elaborate a little bit. Iommi uses his left hand on the frets of his guitar. It’s that hand that he uses to press down the strings. Down-tuning makes the strings lighter, and therefore easier to press down. The reduced tension on the strings produces a lower sound.) The change in Iommi's guitar tuning was the first part of the equation that would create heavy metal, the second part was the band’s aura, an aura created almost entirely out of the public’s perception that Black Sabbath was a Satanic rock band.

There are a lot of people out there who think that Sabbath was the first in a long line of bands influenced by Lucifer. The truth of it is that Sabbath came to Satan’s table kind of late, and they only came to it grudgingly. There had been a couple of major label bands before Sabbath that very publicly embraced the Devil. The first was the American Midwestern band “Coven.” Their first album, Witchcraft Destroys Minds and Reaps Souls, sounded like middle of the road 1969-hippy music, but the band looked like agents of the dark one on the cover, clad entirely in black standing next to a skull. The album even featured a recording of a “Satanic Black Mass” on side two. Despite being released by a mainstream record label, the album was quickly forgotten, though the band did initially attract a lot of media attention.

The gatefold sleeve to WDMaRS featured a scene from the "Black Mass" on the album. What's most striking, aside from the naked woman of course, are the devil (or metal) horns being waved by the participants. (Look at their hands, not their heads!) In a bit of revisionist history Jinx Dawson, lead singer, would claim that she was the inventor of the metal horns, and was the one who popularized their use. While she might have used them, they didn't really catch on until the early 80's when they were being used by Ronnie James Dio, in, you guessed it, Black Sabbath.
Weirdly, Coven would have hit with a cover of the song "One Tin Soldier" from the movie "Billy Jack," in 1971. By this time the band's earlier Satanic associations were being downplayed.

The second rock band to openly embrace the occult, was the English Black Widow (yes people confused them a lot with Black Sabbath back in 1970). While Black Widow sounded more like Jethro Tull than Black Sabbath, they were often taken for a heavy metal band, saxophone solos be damned! Black Widow scored a minor hit in Great Britain with Come to the Sabbat (which I kind of like) off of their debut record Sacrifice. Black Widow played the Satan stuff up to the hilt, even going so far as to conduct black masses between songs in concert. Lyrically, the songs have almost a Pagany vibe, that is before the choruses kick in calling for Lucifer.

While Black Sabbath would cultivate a rather sinister image, much of that was unwarranted. Certainly the name “Black Sabbath” is not a beacon of light, but it certainly wasn’t meant to be an ode to the black mass. Black Sabbath was a compromise name, as the band was originally named (the very hippy sounding) Earth. The only problem was that there was another band in England already named Earth, so they ended up having to change the name.

There’s a bit of controversy over where the name Black Sabbath actually came from. There are some claims that the band was named after the movie “Black Sabbath” starring Boris Karloff, and there was also a book by the same name from the pen of horror writer Dennis Wheatley. Bass player Geezer Butler was certainly a fan of Wheatley’s so it’s quite possible that the name came from there. As early as 1969, “Earth” was also playing a tune called Black Sabbath, another possible source for the band name. It’s not unreasonable to suggest that all three factors played a part in Earth becoming Black Sabbath.

While the first Black Sabbath album (imaginatively named Black Sabbath) doesn’t endorse Satan, record label Warner Brothers tried to make it seem as if the band did. An early record release party held in Los Angeles (minus the band in attendance) featured an appearance by Satanist Anton LaVey, which dogged the band for years. The British release of the album (courtesy of Vertigo Records) featured an upside down cross on the inside record sleeve. Such flourishes, made without the band’s consent or permission, did more to perpetuate the idea that the band was “Satanic” than anything on the album musically.

The album was certainly influenced by the occult, and Geezer Butler and Tony Iommi have admitted to being interested in such things during the band’s early days. Iommi has said that there was “a lot of interest, not practice, but interest.” Most of the interest was confided to Butler who according to Iommi “would do stuff like that, have all his candles burning. Black Walls. He would live the part. We used to go around the black magic shops as well.” Such things certainly weren’t typical in England circa 1969, but they weren’t completely out of place.

Humorously enough it was Ozzy Osbourne (lead singer) who would get saddled with the most amount of Satanic garbage over the years. The singer was never into the occult like Butler, and has been quoted as saying “the only time I’ve ever been into black magic has been while eating a box of chocolates.” Certainly the “Prince of Darkness” shtick has served Osbourne well over the years, but the occult was never his forte.

Ozzy’s greatest contribution to the band on that first album, aside from his vocals, might have been the lyrics he crafted to the song Black Sabbath, one of only three times Osbourne actually wrote lyrics while in Sabbath. Though the tune is certainly creepy, and rather chilling, it was an ode against dabbling in the occult, not an endorsement. Ozzy’s lyrics, with lines like “please God help me” came about due to an episode Butler had with a sinister presence.

According to Butler: “Ozzy brought me this really old black magic book, and it was all in Latin and Greek or whatever. Somebody had lent it to him, and he knew that I was interested in all that stuff. I was looking through it, and then I hid it in a cupboard, where I was living. Because I just got a weird feeling from it. And the next day I went to get it out from the cupboard, to reread it, and it had disappeared. Completely gone into thin air, and it just me living there at the time. And then, I was lying in bed one night and I just felt this presence. I woke up and I saw this black shape, standing at the bottom of me bed staring at me, and it just totally freaked me out. This was like 1969. I told Ozzy about it, and that was when I went off black magic. I took it as a warning to get out while I can."

While Geezer might have been looking to get out in 1969, the first album does contain a tune written from the Devil’s point of view. According to Butler (primary lyricist for the band) N.I.B. was originally written to be a humorous song about Satan falling in love with a mortal woman, but somewhere along the line the humor got lost somewhere. That’s not to say the song is an evil one, it’s a rocking one, but lines like “I will give you those things you thought unreal. The sun, the moon, the stars all bear my seal” certainly conjure up dark vistas. Osbourne’s cry of “My name is Lucifer please take my hand” probably helped to inspire a cadre of young Satanists who didn’t take his warning in Black Sabbath seriously. N.I.B., named after drummer Bill Ward’s face looking like a pen nib, was about as dark as Sabbath ever got, and as far as darkness goes, it was pretty lukewarm. When Ronnie James Dio joined the band in 1979, he would sometimes refer to the track as Nativity in Black, an awesome name, but not what Butler originally had in my mind for the song.

By the time Sabbath’s second album, Paranoid, rolled out in the fall of 1970 the band was already desperately trying to get away from their Satanic-occult tinged image. One of the early standout tracks on the album, Walpurgis, had all of its original lyrics thrown out and was turned into the colossal War Pigs. The lyrics to Walpurgis told the story of a group of witches making sacrifices to Satan. Lyrics like “Carry banners that denounce the Lord” and “On the hill the church in ruin is the scene of evil doings” would have been at home next to Black Sabbath and N.I.B., but Sabbath was desperately trying to move beyond that. The only line that survived during the transition from Walpurgis to War Pigs was "witches at black masses."

Like most bands who write about the occult early in their career, Sabbath moved away from that initial inspiration (or in Ozzy’s case, fear) and found other things to write about. Science fiction and fantasy were certainly inspiration, drugs another. Even sinister sounding songs like Children of the Grave ended up being about love. While the occult would long be associated with the band, the first incarnation of Sabbath moved quickly away from it, and by 1971 had penned a tune on Master of Reality that would have been at home on most Christian rock records.

Yes, you read that last sentence right, Sabbath moved so far away from the occult that they were actually endorsing Christianity just two short years after N.I.B. After Forever was all about accepting Christ and saving one’s soul. Butler’s last verse in After Forever really does lay the cards out on the table when it comes to Black Sabbath and the occult: “Perhaps you'll think before you say that God is dead and gone. Open your eyes, just realize that he's the one. The only one who can save you now from all this sin and hate. Or will you still jeer at all you hear? Yes - I think it's too late."

The lyrics to After Forever shouldn't be all that to surprising to anyone who has actually bothered to look at a picture of Black Sabbath. From the very start all four members were often seen wearing giant crosses around their necks. Those crosses were given to the band by Osbourne's father, and from that moment on Sabbath used the cross on stage designs and concert t-shirts. The crosses were never worn upside down either.

While the first lineup of Black Sabbath would go on to release five more albums after Master of Reality (a few of them classics), none would ever be as popular as the first three records. The occult overtones died out as well, even if the media still liked to portray the band in that light. After the dissolution of the original band, Iommi would find the occult again, but only in order to sell more records as he tried to steer the band in the direction many in the public expected it to go. Some of the post-Ozzy Sabbath albums are classics too, especially the stuff with Ronnie James Dio, but the chills created by songs like Black Sabbath became a thing of the past.

Ozzy tried extremely hard to replicate the menacing atmosphere of Sabbath’s early days, and succeeded early in his career. Songs like Mr. Crowley (about who else? Aleister Crowley) shocked parents and tantalized teens who dreamed of dabbling with the occult, but Ozzy was never an occultist, and while the trappings helped to sell albums, it was obvious in interviews that he was never into that lifestyle.

While the guys in Black Sabbath were never occultists, nor did they worship the Devil, they did help to create the perception that good heavy metal bands did do those things. In doing so, they defined metal as a genre against authority, which it remains nearly forty years later.

I'm Dreaming of a Green Christmas

2011-12-23T09:51:00.000-08:00

For reasons I've never entirely understood, the Holiday Seasons has become intertwined with Winter and snow. You may be thinking to yourself, "Jason, that's because Christmas occurs in Winter," which is true, but do you expect a ninety-five degree day the first day of Summer? Is it magically warm and sunny on the first day of Spring? Of course not, but during the Holidays the expectation that Winter will be in full roar on December 25th is pretty standard.

In some ways Christmas is a late fall holiday, it's only a couple of days removed from the Winter Solstice after all. The coldest days lie ahead for most of us this time of year (think the horribleness of February), and while the days may be getting slightly longer, the worst is still in front of us. Turning Christmas into a Winter Holiday has been horrible for the human psyche. We've turned The Holidays into a Winter Carnival, and then after the first of the year we want to immediately dismiss Winter when it's only just begun. The good parts of Winter are only celebrated at the start of the season, and then everyone starts wishing for Spring. Keeping the Christmas Lights up into February would make the most depressing time of year less depressing. If Christmas is going to be a Winter Holiday Par Excellence we should move it to Imbolc (Feb. 2).

Living on the West Coast the expectation of a White Christmas is extremely bothersome, and represents one of the worst examples of East Coast Bias. "Since it snows in New York, the expectation is that it snows everywhere," which is absolute bunk. The majority of Americans will not celebrate a White Christmas this year, and the majority of Americans will not celebrate a White Christmas next year either. While it's true that many states do get snow on Christmas, there are an equal amount of states that do not, and just because a state can get snow doesn't mean that it will. Think of all the places that will never have (or have a very low probability of having) a White Christmas: Atlanta, Miami, Orlando, Dallas, Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Francisco, New Orleans, Houston, San Diego, Mele Kalikimaka to you all.

I don't begrudge people their White Christmas, it's fine, and snow is really pretty, I just wish the media would start showing some images that reflect the reality of what most Americans encounter in late December. Even while living in Michigan, a White Christmas was never a sure thing, and we certainly had our share of Brown Christmases (a Brown Christmas: a winter day without any snow or living plant life), as most Snow Belt residents do. I grew up in Tennessee (just outside of Nashville) and we never had White Christmases there either (unless you got up early enough to catch the last bit of frost on the lawn) and those are some of my most memorable holidays. Getting a new bike for Christmas in Tennessee meant I could ride it on Christmas Day, sure it was a bit chilly, but it was entirely possible, and like getting a second gift entirely.

About the only other image ever associated with Christmas is the "Ironic Southern California/Hawaii" image. Either the "Look we are celebrating on the beach!" picture or the "Aren't we clever we've got a palm tree for a Christmas Tree!" photo. Out here in Northern California we have plenty of lit up palm trees, but you'd be an absolute fool to unwrap presents on the beach today. It was 37 degrees this morning, and those Pacific Ocean Breezes aren't warm or soothing, they are cold and nasty. My holiday will be similar to the holiday most Americans experience, a chilly one (at least in the morning, it'll probably get to sixty by 2:00 pm), and one without snow.

I'm probably only harping on the White/Green Christmas thing because it's causing conflict with my internal seasonal clock. I keep seeing all of these images of snow, and there is no snow out here, nor will there be. These images create the expectation that there should be, and the odds are better that I'll find a Sasquatch in my backyard than a snowflake in the sky. If you are reading this in New Jersey and find my anger at East Coast Bias irritating, think about our situations if they were reversed. What if the Los Angeles palm tree model of Christmas was dominant, and you were bombarded with that image while you had snow on the ground? Wouldn't it be annoying? Wouldn't it disrupt your seasonal expectations? Of course it would.

If you have a White Christmas I hope it's gorgeous and I wish you all the best. Just be careful while driving, and don't throw out your back while shoveling all that snow. I'll have a Green Christmas, surrounded by blowing leaves, palm trees, and winter flowers. I'm going to be celebrating a Green Christmas out here even though the media says that the idea should be depressing, and yet somehow it's not, I just wish they'd show the rest of the country how joyful it is NOT to have snow on the ground.

Religion on the Public Square-On Nativity Scenes, Mithra, and more.

2011-12-16T15:24:00.000-08:00

I think that I'm kind of an anomaly in Pagan circles, I believe that religion "on the public square" is a good thing. I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea of Nativity scenes on public property, as long as every other faith has a chance to put their faith on display as well. The baby Jesus in the manger is fine by me, as long as it's flanked by a menorah and a sign that says "Happy Yule." Unfortunately, when you put religion on the public square, you get more than just shared Holiday Greetings, you often get deliberate antagonism.

This was vividly illustrated in a recent Associated Press story about the displacement of several Nativity/Christmas scenes at a coastal park in Santa Monica California. The park allows for twenty-one displays, traditionally fourteen of them have been given to local churches who tend to put up Nativity scenes (they are churches, I can't say I'm surprised). This year the system changed and the twenty-one caged display areas were subject to a public drawing. Out of the twenty-one available spots, two went to Christian churches, one went towards a Menorah, and the rest went to two atheists (one person can request up to nine spaces, two people got nine spaces a piece). There are displays in three of the eighteen spots claimed by the atheists. This angered a lot of churches, many of which had been putting up displays at this particular park for over 57 years.

If you are wondering whose side I'm on, I'm on the side of the Christians. I have no trouble with atheists wanting to put up a display over the holidays, but I do think it's really a dickish move to claim a bunch of space with the intention of not doing anything with it. There are no rules requiring them to give back their unused spaces either, so the spaces just sit there, empty. This is obviously a petty move by some small minded people, and it makes me angry. I have many atheist friends who behave rationally, but people like this, who just go out of there way to mock religion, I have very little tolerance for. Remember Pagans, these are people who are going to make fun of your beliefs as well. I know a lot of you out there tend to sympathize with atheists, and we often have common cause, but not in cases like this.

It's not just the unused spaces that bothers me either, it's the way atheists like this shape their message. As you can see in the picture above, the banner says "What myths do you see?*" That's not a holiday greeting, and it's not going to make a Christian suddenly say "Oh, Jesus is a myth?" It's designed to provoke, and it's certainly out of line with what many of us think The Holidays are about. What's wrong with a sign that simply says "Happy Winter Solstice" or "Happy Holidays?" Why does it have to be a sign that belittles someone else's beliefs?

Last year in Florida there was a yard sign battle between Christian groups which were distributing "Jesus is the reason for the season" signs and an atheist group which was distributing "Mithra is the reason for the season." Both sides were wrong of course, Saturnalia predates both the myth of Jesus' birth and the myth of Mithras' birth. I know many Pagans get a kick out of such signs, but the atheists who are displaying them aren't endorsing Paganism, they are using those signs to mock both Pagan and Christian beliefs!

The Christian reaction can also be a bit ridiculous. Last year the Catholic League put up a bunch of "Jesus is the Reason" billboards in various parts of the country to battle the atheists. Instead of saying something nice the tagline is "You Know it's Real," which is especially hilarious given the depiction of Mary and Joseph. It's good to know that Mary is still 100% European, and a full grown adult, because in Palestine two thousand years ago only twenty-four year old women were having babies. (Mary probably would have been fourteen, people just got married early back then.) If you are going to tell me that something is real, at least get your basic historical facts straight.

Personally, I'm well aware that the majority of trappings in the Nativity story are Pagan. Miraculous conception? Pagan. Celestial events at birth? Pagan. Born in a cave?** Pagan. Miracles like talking animals surrounding the birth? Pagan. Pagan Astrologers giving the baby presents? Perhaps not Pagan, but it features Pagans! Pretty cool. I tend to only see my own faith reflected in most Nativity scenes.

The best way to deal with the Holiday Season is not to over-react. I wish more people would look for the things we have in common instead of the things that separate us. I disagree with a great many things in the Bible, but I do agree with "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." As a Pagan if I got some public space for The Holidays, my message would simply be "Happy Yule" with a Christmas Tree. Yule is our word, and so's the tree. Why start a war?

If I were an atheist and I wanted my beliefs respected, perhaps I'd use all the display space I received in Santa Monica to tell the true story of Christmas, that it's a holiday that has evolved from many different traditions. If you want someone to come around to your point of view, try doing something other than making them angry.

I love the Holiday Season, and I'm one of those idealists who thinks that it's something that can unite us: Christian, Pagan, Jew, and atheist alike. Instead of uniting us though, the Holidays are always co-opted by loud fringe groups on both sides who simply want to use it for their own purposes. Atheist groups which put up signs saying "Why myths do you see" aren't trying to unite anyone, and neither is the Catholic League. Why we have to fight during one of the loveliest times of the year will always be a mystery to me.

*There's a lot of bullshit in that banner too. Certainly the birth narratives of Jesus belong in the realm of myth, but the majority of scholars think he was a real person.

**The New Testament says Jesus was laid in a manger, it doesn't say he was born in a barn. A lot of early depictions of the Nativity have the little guy being born in a cave.

Christmas Is Not Yours or Mine-It Simply Is

2011-12-15T11:44:00.000-08:00

This is one of the best things I've ever written, and while it was originally published elsewhere, I think it's worth revisiting.

My family moved to Wytheville Virginia when I was in the fifth grade. Until that time, I had lived my entire life in the Midwest. To say that Virginia presented a few culture shocks would be an understatement. In the Midwest, school and religion did not mix. Sure we sang Christmas Carols and had holiday parties, but we didn't read the Bible in class, nor watch fanciful filmstrips full of Christmases that never were.

One of the more memorable "fanciful filmstrips" was called "The Pilgrim's First Christmas." I don't remember a whole lot about it, but I do remember the Pilgrims celebrating Christmas, making small presents for each other, and probably converting a few Native Americans along the way. It was a rather cozy story, and nothing about it really rang false at the time. Haven't people always celebrated Christmas? Wasn't it all about Jesus at the start with the rest all added later?

If you actually read my notes on Facebook, you know that I'm obsessed with holidays. I love Thanksgiving, revere Christmas, still celebrate Easter, and Ari and I go out every Valentine's Day to celebrate. I love holidays, and while some people might play video games, or collect stamps, I research the histories of religion and holidays for fun. I think it's a nice, normal, hobby, don't you?

This leads me back to the Pilgrims and the filmstrip glamorizing their holiday celebration. Actually, "glamorizing" is probably the wrong word, the phrase "making up" would be more appropriate. The Pilgrims didn't celebrate Christmas at all and until the middle of the 19th Century most Americans didn't either. Christmas as we celebrate it today is a rather "new" holiday. The traditions we most associate with it are only a few hundred years old. Despite how universal and timeless it feels, it's never been universal or timeless.

Sure, by the Fourth Century there were Christians celebrating "Christmas." It wasn't so much a celebration of Jesus' birth but a Christian continuation of the Roman holidays of Saturnalia and the January Kalends. Saturnalia featured many of the things we currently associate with Christmas: large meals, holly, mistletoe, gift giving, and abundance. There was no way anyone was going to convince newly Christianized Romans to give up their holiday celebrations, so they became a part of the new holiday of Christmas, a day to celebrate the birth of Jesus.

December 25th wasn't a date picked by chance either, it was the birthday of Sol Invictus, the Unconquerable Sun, a pagan deity who was very popular with the elite of Rome and those in the army. Other deities who celebrated a birthday that day were the Persian Mithras and the always popular Greek Dionysus. With Jesus' birthday on the 25th the feasting, drinking, and gift giving was all allowed to continue, and people could all participate while paying a little lip-service to Jesus.

As Christianity spread across Europe it "Christianized" other winter festivals, adding their pagan elements to a day allegedly about the birth of Jesus. The Norse Yule was turned into Christmas, moving from the winter solstice to the 25th. Very little else about the holiday changed, gifts were still given out, branches and small trees continued to decorate homes, and solar imagery still abounded. There was no rush to put up nativity scenes in place of the pagan fir trees and branches, Yule might have been called Christmas by some, but it was celebrated the same way.

In the 16th Century the first real war over Christmas was fought, and it was a battle between Christians. Despite the yelling to the contrary, there has never been a war against Christmas fought by the forces of secular humanism, liberals, and atheists. Generally the war against Christmas has pitted Christian against Christian. The first salvo was fired by the English Puritans who waged such a successful campaign that Christmas was literally a forgotten holiday in most parts of England and North America until the 19th Century.

The Puritans suppressed Christmas because they knew it for what it was, a pagan midwinter holiday. They objected to the pagan imagery, the feasting, drinking, and gluttony. Due to their influence Christmas became a rather localized holiday in the early days of the United States. It was celebrated by the Germans and the Dutch, but was forgotten or seen as a small potatoes by the majority of the population. The United States Congress regularly met on Christmas until 1855, and children in Boston went to school on the 25th up until 1870. The first state to declare Christmas a holiday was Alabama, and that was in 1836!

One of the exceptions to this rule was the former Dutch colony, New York. New York City played a major role in establishing Christmas as a national holiday, and none of that had anything to do with Jesus. The Dutch continued celebrating the midwinter celebration of Christmas long after it had gone out of fashion in England. When the Dutch settled the "New World" they brought their traditions with them. One of those traditions was of a mystical gift-giver related to the Turkish St. Nicholas.

Sinterklaus (later Santa Claus of course) was distantly related to St. Nicholas, but he was also related to the Norse god Odin. St. Nicholas was a gift giver (and lots of other things, as one of the most popular Christian Saints, he's associated with nearly everything), and was often depicted with a long white beard, but so was Odin, and Odin road a horse, much like the early Sinterklaus. By the time Sinterklaus came to the United States he was no longer like a god or a saint, Clement Moore in "The Night Before Christmas" described him as a "right jolly old elf." Eventually the Saint Nick of the poem, and the Sinterklaus of Dutch legend became simply "Santa Claus."

"The Night Before Christmas" went on to become the best known poem in the English language, and it's popularity helped to spread the celebration of Christmas. If you were a kid and heard that poem, wouldn't you want to celebrate Christmas? Santa became the reason for the season, and the holiday spread because of Kris Kringle. Without Santa Claus, it's possible that Christmas would have remained a forgotten holiday in the United States.

At the same time the United States was wrestling with Santa and adopting the holiday as its own, Christmas was re-awakening in Great Britain. The great Christmas re-awakening can be attributed to two things: Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" and Queen Victoria's husband Prince Albert. Albert was German, and celebrated the holiday of Christmas just like he did back home in Germany, with gift giving and trees, much like the Vikings did before the coming of Christianity. As a celebrity, he was copied by many in England, and the United States.

Dickens' tale, while it didn't invent the modern Christmas, went a long way towards establishing it as a major holiday. "A Christmas Carol" makes no references to Jesus, and is strictly a secular take on the holiday. It has more in common with the ancient Roman Saturnalia than any celebration contemporary to Dickens. When you get past the ghosts (one who looks very much like the Roman Bacchus), you have a tale full of gift giving, feasting, family, and drinking. The scene where Scrooge sticks his head out of the window and has a boy run to the butcher shop for him is especially telling. Didn't it ever strike you as odd that the butcher shop would be open on Christmas? That's because no one was celebrating it at the time, and if they were, it wasn't the festival it is today.

Due to Dickens, Albert, and Moore the tradition of a Midwinter holiday was re-established in the 19th Century, but capitalism would play a major role in shaping the holiday. As Christmas grew in popularity, manufacturers began to stress the "gift giving" part of the holiday. The Industrial Revolution provided the Western World with all kinds of goodies that needed to be sold, and Christmas became a prime opportunity to do so. Retailers and advertisers spread the word of Dickens' Christmas and used Moore's Santa Claus to sell more toys. The role of capitalism cannot be overstated, Christmas rolled into every nook and cranny of our lives because people wanted to sell things, and then people wanted to get things, and the holiday took off.

Despite the holiday's initial newness in the United States we have a tendency to romanticize a Christmas past that never was. Christmas can certainly be about faith and family, those are good things, and I'm glad there's some emphasis on that in the holiday, but it's never been exclusively about that, and wasn't designed for it. Christmas is a secular holiday through and through (though dressed in mostly pagan outerwear), and it's key building blocks almost never reference Jesus or a manger.

There has been a renewed emphasis in some Evangelical and Catholic circles to "Put the Christ back in Christmas," but the truth is he never was there. The battle has always been to "Put Christ into Christmas." There is no "back" about it, he's basically been absent the entire time. The real War on Christmas is being fought by people suffering under the delusion that it's always been a religious holiday. If there's a "War on Christmas" it's being fought by Christians who are trying to rewrite a secular past and replace it with a religious center that never was.

I often find myself straddling a strange fence during the holiday season. I'm certainly not offended when someone wishes me a "Merry Christmas," nor do I think that the use of the word Christmas in some way walks over my spiritual beliefs. On the other hand I dislike hearing about Jesus being the sole "reason for the season", when he's kind of a late addition to the party. In many ways, Christmas is what you make out of it. If, for you, it's a celebration of Jesus' birth, that to me is awesome. Have at it, and I hope your Christmas is spiritual and meaningful. On the other hand if it's a secular celebration of Midwinter, good for you, that's what it's always been. Christmas is not yours, or mine, it simply is, and I kind of like it that way.

The Best of 2011

2011-12-09T11:50:00.001-08:00

Another year has nearly come and gone, so it's time to reflect on the best and worst of 2011. Yeah, there are a couple of weeks left in December, but it's an American Tradition to do these things this time of year. So apologies to "Sherlock Holmes" and "Americanized Dragon Tatoo," you are ineligible for this list. Now, onwards and upwards with my favorites in movies, books, music, television, politics, and sports.

Movies

2011 saw a plethora of comic book movies released, but surprisingly, those weren't my favorite films of the year. Before you shred my film choices, remember, my tastes are low-brow, and I freely admit this.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes
I have to admit, I dreaded this movie. I grew up a as huge fan of the original films, and since the 1980's I've been craving a good reboot. (Tim Burton's attempt was not good.) Early reports were not good, but this movie had it all: the special effects were spectacular, the story moved briskly, and given the subject matter-the actors involved did a splendid job. Unlike the big super-hero tent-poles, I felt like Rise had real heart, and by the end I was about ready to jump out of my seat so I could cheer on Caesar and the apes. Can't wait for this to come out on DVD next week, it really deserves a good three or four re-watchings (sorry Ari). Kudos to Andy Serkis for giving what deserves to be, an Oscar nominated performance.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows-Part Two
Since reading the book, I've been looking forward to the climactic final battle at Hogwarts, and I'm happy to admit that I was not disappointed The screenwriters did a nice job of simplifying all of the wand crap that goes on in the book too, the result is a movie that mostly makes sense and provides a satisfying conclusion to one of the greatest movie franchises of all time. Yes, the "twenty years" in the future coda looked pretty ridiculous, and while I thought it worked in the book, it probably should have been cut out of the movie.

The Muppets
I grew up a huge Muppets fan, so it's been disappointing to see them as part of history's dustbin. After several horrible movies that lacked the heart of the original Jim Henson overseen three, it was nice to see Jason Segal get the Muppets 100% right. This was the most fun I've had in a theatre in years. The jokes are good, the nostalgia hits just right, and the songs are memorable. It's good to see Kermit and the gang back up where they belong-on the big screen, also also as a part of the national conversation. I've been trying to find a quibble with this film since seeing it at Thanksgiving, and I can't find a weak point. Even the human actors involved are great, and it's nice to see so many of my favorite actors (Jack Black, Chris Cooper, and Amy Adams) involved in bringing The Muppets back to life.

Television
Yes, TV rots your brain and stifles your creativity. That's why Ari and I still manage to read about fifty books a year. Just think if we didn't watch TV we could read a 100 a year! Anyways, now that your judgement is out of the way, it's time to talk boob tube. All in all, I thought this was a good year for television, and it was hard to narrow it down to three shows, but I want this post up by Christmas, so that's how it's got to be.

I liked, but didn't think they should be in my top 3: The Walking Dead (aka The Talking Living), Happy Endings, Cougar Town (don't laugh-you've probably never watched it), and The Office.

Community

I remember watching Arrested Development back in the day, and lamenting the viewing public's inability to like quirky, intelligent comedy. After it was cancelled, I promised myself I'd never fall in love with another show like that again. Obviously I failed, because Community has evolved into my favorite show, even though it's the kind of smart, not for everyone, low-rated humor that I know is going to break my heart (and not just because I'm in love with Allison Brie). This show had me on May 6, 2010 with the original "Paintball" episode (a jaw droppingly hilarious 22 minutes of television), but it made me a fan for life with the "Dungeons and Dragons" episode earlier this year. Unfortunately the internet's favorite show has now been put in hiatus until Goddess knows when, yet Two and a Half Men remains highly rated. Shoot me now.

Parks and Rec

Didn't really care for Parks and Rec its first season, and didn't really start to like it until the end of its second season. In the third season everything came together, and Parks and Rec began to reach heights rarely seen on broadcast television. With the small screens best cast (narrowly beating Community), and primetime's best character, Nick Offerman as Ron Swanson, Parks and Rec has evolved into must see television. There's not a weak link on the show (though the writers seem to be floundering with Rashida Jones' character), and if you aren't a Mouserat fan by now, you don't deserve to walk in Little Sebastian's shadow.

Game of Thrones

As a fan of the books, the TV show is all that I hoped for and more. From the casting of the characters, to the storytelling, Game of Thrones is what every fantasy fan has been waiting for since Lord of the Rings. It's a relief that Martin's books ended up on HBO too; now they can stuff all the sex and violence they want into the show, and take their time selling the story. I know how every episode is going to end, and it's still gripping. The adaptations made for TV have been well though out too, there's no way Dany could be 14 on celluloid. About my only problem with the show is that nearly every piece of extended exposition seems to involve naked women, not unpleasant mind you, but often gratuitous.

Music

I did not find 2011 to be a banner year for music. There was a lot of stuff I liked, but nothing that made me sit up and go "That's a game changer." For the most part, I found myself liking the same old, same old, with one exception, the band Blood Ceremony. Who cares if the lyrics are mildly Satanic? It's doom rock with a flute, and female vocals! I'm in heaven (or hell). When an album has a song entitled The Great God Pan how can I not become instantly obsessed? Check out Living With the Ancients to get your demon flute groove on.

While Blood Ceremony was one of those bands that was "new to me"it's not like the style of rock was all that original. It has that fuzzy, recorded on eight track analog equipment sound that it takes it right back to 1970. If anything, Blood Ceremony is the bastard step-daughter of an infernal union between Black Sabbath, Black Widow, and Epica. While that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, it would be quite a threesome.

Without a doubt, the best party rock album of 2011 was The Spade by Butch Walker and the Black Widows. This thing rocks and swings, mixing the best element of classic rock, glam rock, bubblegum pop, and hair metal. It's hard to describe Butch, he's such a chameleon musically, but there's no denying the pop genius. After a long hard road in under appreciated bands like Southgang and the Marvelous Three, Walker found a pathway to fame by writing and producing songs for artists like Pink and Avril Lavigne. He seems to have become comfortable with the idea of never being a household name, and now just makes music without giving a shit about what anyone else thinks.

After the disappointment that was Roger Clyne's last real studio album, No More Beautiful World, I was worried that my favorite artist of the last twenty years might be losing it. My fears were unfounded, as Unida Cantina, the latest from Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers, was solid from top to bottom. Featuring high energy rock in the mode of The Refreshments (Roger's old band), with some of the more subtle influences that have marked Roger's best work, Cantina is a worthy addition to the Clyne cannon. If there was any justice left in the world, Love is the Road, would be the run away hit single it deserves to be. Yes, my love of Roger Clyne does cloud my judgment from time to time, but the guy really is one of the best American songwriters of the last fifteen years. If you haven't bothered to give him a listen yet, pick this up, or better yet, my favorite album of all time, Fizzy Fuzzy Big and Buzzy, from Roger's days leading The Refreshments.

Books

One of the problem with "books" is that I tend to read lots of things over the course of a year, without worry or care about when they were published. As a result listing my favorite three books of 2011 is a challenge, because most of the ones I read this year were not published this year. As a reader of fantasy novels, I'm also inclined to give higher grades to series read in a given year. For example, I had never read George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire until this year, as a result I want to say that A Dance With Dragons was one of the best books of the year, and it might have been, I don't know, but my mind is certainly clouded by reading 4000 pages of Martin in 2011 (and watching the TV show).

While not quite as engrossing as 1491, 1493 is still a captivating greed. Mann takes up the enormous task of documenting the results of the collision between the Americas and the rest of the world, and the tale is not quite the one you expect. Mann managest to take rather mundane sounding topics, like the evolution of the potato, and turn it into something riveting. Mann finds little forgotten corners of history, and paints a picture illustrating their importance in the grander scheme of things. It's hard to put this book into words, and in some ways the scope of the subject is bigger than any one book can hope to tackle, but if you love history and great writing this should be high on your "must read list."

Lev Grossman's The Magician King continues in the vein of his earlier work The Magicians, and that means that Grossman once again takes all the cliches of Contemporary Fantasy and punches them in the face. His last work was more a grown up version of Harry Potter than anything else, this book takes a different tack, and focuses on deconstructing C. S. Lewis' Narnia, and succeeds brilliantly. One of the best parts of Grossman's work is that he captures the fear and danger that should be inherent when journeying to a magical world or trying to conjure up a god. When reading The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe did you ever really think that a major character might die? Did it ever piss you off that noble Aslan mostly just sits on the sidelines while he has teenagers do his dirty work? Grossman addresses all of those questions, all while creating extremely flawed characters you find yourself caring about. The Fox Network is adapting Grossman's first two books into a television series (which will probably be horrible, these books should be movies-the stories aren't so long they need a TV show), so go out and read them now before they are ruined forever.

Top News Stories of 2011

Obama gets Osama Bin Laden
It pisses me off to no end that even when President Obama accomplishes truly great, all the Right can do is piss all over his accomplishment. Yes, we all know that it was our brave military men and women who ultimately pulled the trigger, but Obama was the one to give the orders, and make the brave decision to enter Pakistani air space to do it. This was a true Obama victory, and showed just what can happen when you bother to read an intelligence report correctly. It's ridiculous to hear GOP blowhards like Mitt Romney argue that we aren't spending enough on the military and that we've somehow become "weaker" under Obama. Since taking office in 2009, Obama's foreign policy has resulted in the deaths of of 22 out of 30 top Al Queda leaders. Give the man his due.

The Worst Crop of Candidates Ever Fielded by a Major Political Party
It's not just the complete failure of the GOP to come up with a credible candidate for the 2012 election, it's the crazy-ass positions these troglodytes have been forced into by the frothing at the mouth Tea Party. With the exception of Jon Huntsman, all of these guys (and Michelle) seem to enjoy spitting in the face of science. Listening to these "candidates" I can't tell if they are running for President in 2012 or 1912, they are all just that ass backwards. I don't know how you can tack that far to the right and hope to win a general election.

In addition to this horrible crop of candidates, the amount of money being spent, the endless "debates" (where GOP "facts" are never questioned by the moderators, please remove your mouths fron Newt's ball sack), it's the early primary season that bothers me too. There is no reason for the Iowa caucuses to be held in January (and even less reason for the Iowa caucuses, too much power is being given to a state that is not representative of the whole country), these marathon campaigns just result in more blood money being handed out to candidates.

Occupy

I'll admit that I don't agree with everything that "Occupy" does, but they have changed the debate in this country. People are beginning to realize just how big of a problem income inequality is in this country. Oh, I said income inequality, I must be a socialist. Go read a history book, the last time income inequality was so great in the United States was right before the Great Depression. It's a real problem, and one worth fighting.

In addition to the income inequality debate, Occupy has opened America's eyes to the amount of corporate money currently in our political system. Efforts to pass a Constitutional Amendment to reverse the horrible "Citizens United" Supreme Court decisions owe their existence to Occupy. I had a friend tell me that the Tea Party and Occupy have nothing in common, because stopping corporate bailouts is nothing. The majority of Americans also agree with many of the principles of the Occupy Movement, and if our friends on the right could get past the Fox News rhetoric many of them not in the 1% would find themselves agreeing to.

The Year in Sports

This year's NBA Finals cemented one legacy and further eroded another. Watching Dirk Nowitzki lead the Dallas Mavericks to their first title was reminiscent of Drew Brees doing the same thing in the Super Bowl a few years ago, it put him in the Hall of Fame, and his name on the short list of "all time great players." For Lebron James of the heavily favored Miami Heat this year's Final further enhanced his reputation as a player who chokes in big situations. While I have no doubt that Lebron will eventually win a title, it was still nice to have a Championship Series with a clear villain (James) and a whole stable of good guys (the Mavs).

Despite a thrilling NBA post-season (NBA Basketball has been on a tear the last couple of years in terms of entertainment and compelling match-ups), the league and its players had one of the most contentious lockouts of the modern era. With billions of dollars in TV, licensing, and gate dollars, it was disgusting to see millionaires battle billionaires while 48 million Americans don't even have a job. While I found myself mostly siding with the players, I am worried that NBA basketball is going to turn into something like Major League Baseball-a with a handful of quality teams and a bunch of bottom feeders. While the owners managed to create a system that will pay them more, they didn't bother to fix the competitive balance issue, which means players will continue to flock to large media markets and avoid the smaller ones. It will be possible for teams to make a run for a few years, but eventually all of the stars are going to end up in New York and Los Angeles.

While it's never fun to watch your team lose in a Super Bowl, the emergence of Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers has mostly been fun to watch. Rodgers is simply playing quarterback at a higher level than I've ever seen someone play quarterback, ever, and that includes Joe Montana, Peyton Manning, and Dan Marino. Can he continue to do it for another eight years? That'll be the test of true greatness.

We also all owe Aaron Rodgers a big thank you for ending the Bret Favre story. Favre was a great quarterback, but his constant need to be in the spotlight the last few years was tiring. Rodgers' Super Bowl win takes Favre out of the spotlight, at least until his Hall of Fame enshrinement in five years.

Unlike the Mavericks/Heat matchup this year's Super Bowl didn't really have a villain. Both the Steelers and the Packers represent the NFL's old guard, original teams with national devoted fan bases. You couldn't ask for two better organizations to meet in a Super Bowl.

Head Injuries were a big story in sports this year, in both hockey and football, and no athlete brought more attention to the issue than Sidney Crosby. When the best player in your sport goes down for eleven months because of a concussion it's obvious that your sport has a serious problem. More and more scientific evidence is pointing to the long-term effects of concussions as well, and it's good to see sports leagues realizing that this is a serious problem.

Christmas and The Bible

2011-12-05T15:39:00.001-08:00

(This blog only dates to the Spring of 2011, before that I blogged in other places and wrote a ton of notes on Facebook. Some of those notes were pretty good, and worth reposting in this space so they can be a little bit more accessible. The following piece is one of those and was originally put on my Facebook Page last December, though I've expanded it in a few places.)

A friend of mine once asked me "Why do Pagans spend so much time obsessing about Christianity?" It's a fair question, and one I have numerous answers to. The most obvious answer is that Christianity is the dominant religion in our society and culture, and to not acknowledge it is akin to ignoring a pink elephant sitting in your living room. Nearly every aspect of our society is filtered through the prism of Christianity in some respects. Christian Morality has decided what is legal and illegal in our society, what is "moral" and what is not, and what can and cannot be said on television.

It's also the faith that many of us Modern Pagans were raised in. Since it was such a part of my early life, I'm still curious about it. My reasons for writing about it are not to disprove it, but to figure out why certain things were written in certain ways. Understanding the context of it leads to a better understanding of it. I just wish that line of thinking was shared by more Christians, many of whom blindly accept every statement in their Bibles at face value, without evaluating the context or circumstances under which it was written.

From a purely personal stand-point I enjoy reading about the origins of Christianity because I find value in the stories (I think Christianity can make someone a better person), and because it's history is interesting to me. I'm not sure when Pan became a god exactly, but you can make the argument that we know the day when Jesus' divinity was voted on. That's pretty cool to me, and I like tracing the origin of religion(s). There's also a plethora of material out there about it, making it easy to research.

So while I'm not sure that I obsess about it, I do enjoy writing about it and researching it. Often I choose to share that research with others-hence this blog post and the occasional lecture on it. Nothing in this essay is ground breaking, but our media has trouble portraying the birth of Jesus in any way outside of the gospel narratives. It bothers me that a story so full of holes historically never gets called out on the problems inherent in it. Every Christmas I run into cable television documentaries out to prove the historicity of Matthew and Luke, and never the other way around. Periodically, "scholars" like Ben Witherington, will host these crazy quests for magical stars that exist only in myth. If the "liberal media" isn't going to bother to tell the truth about what the gospels say and don't say about the birth of Jesus, it becomes necessary for twits like myself to do it.

The New Testament says very little about the birth of Jesus. The earliest writings in the New Testament, letters from the Apostle Paul, make no mention of Jesus' birth. The authentic* letters of Paul were written in about 50 BCE, twenty years or so after the crucifixion. Had their been a miraculous story surrounding Jesus' birth you'd think Paul would have mentioned it, but alas, there are no tales of Wise Men, virgin births, shepherds, or even Bethlehem.

The earliest gospel, Mark, doesn't mention the birth of Jesus either. Again, this is odd if wondrous things were happening that day. Mark's gospel begins with Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist and the start of his public ministry, anything before that is irrelevant to the writer of Mark. Mark's attitude seems to summarize the thoughts of early Christians pretty well, the birth of Jesus wasn't important, it was the death of Jesus that mattered.

The Gospel of John was the last of the canonical gospels to be written, dating to sometime between 90 and 100 CE. The writer of John skips the familiar Christmas story we all grew up with too. John does kind of write a birth narrative, but it's a cosmic narrative (dare I say gnostic at times?), and has nothing in common with the Jesus Birthday stories we know so well.

When it comes to the actual story of Jesus' birth, there isn't one, there are two. The story of Jesus' birth is laid out in the gospels of Luke and Matthew, but the stories are incredibly different, and speak to the different audience each writer was writing for. The Christmas Pageants we grew up with in church (and possibly public school as well) are a combination of the two stories, with some additional material thrown in. Probably due to "Merry Christmas Charlie Brown!" on TV, I'm more familiar with the version presented in Luke than the one in Matthew, so I thought I'd start there.

Luke's account is exceedingly brief. His account of Jesus' birth doesn't even take up a whole chapter. It consists of about ten to eight paragraphs, with a few details we associate with the Christmas story occurring in his first chapter. It's in the first chapter of Luke where we get an angel of the Lord coming down to talk to Mary about her (I'd assume) surprising pregnancy.

The second chapter of Luke relates parts of the Jesus story we know so well. There are angels, shepherds, a manger, Bethlehem, and no room at the inn. Those are about all the details Luke provides. His story hints at a time of year (shepherds usually got the winter months off), but that's it for detail.

Luke's version of events reads as it does because he was writing to Gentiles, and probably peasant gentiles at that. His concern is not with establishing Jesus as an earthly king-like messiah, he's concerned with portraying Jesus as humble and accessible. Sure he's a bit worried about Jewish prophecy, but not to the extent that the write of Matthew was.

Luke does give some historical context to his story, the most famous of which is a census allegedly taken at the time of Jesus' birth. "At that time Emperor Augustus ordered a census to be taken throughout the Roman Empire. When this census took place, Quirinius was the governor of Syria. Everyone then went to register himself, each at his home town." Here the author of Luke cites a specific event and a verifiable historical personage, but both references have serious problems.

The reign of Caesar Augustus is pretty well documented, and there's not a piece of paper anywhere outside of the Gospel of Luke that tells of an Empire wide census. The census is simply a vehicle to get Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem, where, according to Jewish Prophecy, Jesus is supposed to be born. There is no way that this census was an actual historical event, it was simply a literary device. If you really stop to think about the census and each person registering "at his home town" you come up with a snarl of near epic proportions. Joseph went to Bethlehem because his ancestor of one thousand years ago was King David (the record keeping for a guy who ended up as a humble carpenter is amazing!). If every person in the Roman Empire had to trace their lineage back one thousand years and then go to that ancestors hometown in an era of foot-travel . . . . commerce and trade would literally halt, armies would fall apart, and the whole giant enterprise would be commented on outside of a sentence in Luke.

Luke's reference to Quirinius is also curious. Quirinius was the governor of Syria, but he did not become the governor of Syria until 6 CE. The date is troubling because the writer of Matthew states in no uncertain terms that Herod was the King of Judea when Jesus was born and unfortunately, Herod died ten years before Quirinius took the throne. If Luke's references to the census and Quirinius are wrong (and history tells us they are), everything else in his birth narrative might be wrong as well.

Where as the story presented in Luke is rather salt of the earth, the story presented in Matthew is far more royal. In Matthew it is Joseph who gets a heavenly visit, not Mary. The writer of the gospel also takes pains to point out that Jesus being born of a virgin is a fulfillment of a prophecy found in the book Isaiah.

There are some serious problems with that prophecy in Isaiah though when it comes to the matter of divine birth. In the Hebrew, Isaiah uses the word "alma" which can certainly mean virgin, but it more accurately translates to "young woman." Most babies born in the year 3 BCE were born of young women, there's nothing all that miraculous about that. Coupled with the silence from Mark and Paul, it's unlikely that Jesus was born of a virgin (not to mention the difficulty), it's also unlikely that Isaiah meant to have his prophecy interpreted that way.

It's Matthew, and Matthew only, who tells the tale of the "Visitors From the East" (as they are called in my Good News Bible). The Three Wise Men as we call them today were never named in Matthew, he doesn't even tell you how many there are. The idea that there were three, and that they had names, was a much later invention. Matthew simply says they were from the East and attended the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem after following a star. Matthew's Jesus is also born in a house, and there are no mentions of a manger or problems with the local inns. "They went into the house" is how my Bible puts it.

The story of the star is unique to Matthew, and the cause of a great deal of speculation. Being the skeptic that I am, I find the tale of the star almost impossible to believe. It's a nice tale, and again, illustrates the ideas that Matthew wants to present (Jesus is divine, this birth is special), but as a real historical event it's hard to take seriously. For centuries scholars have looked for proof of a celestial event similar to the one found in Matthew, with very little luck. A localized star appearing in the Roman Empire would have been cause for a great deal of excitement, and it's just absent from the historical record.

There have been many attempts to link the star to comets, or a conjunction of planets. I think it's best to accept heart warming mythology for what it is, and not sweat the details. There's a star on top of my Christmas tree, it makes me happy, I like the symbolism, I don't see the need to care about its historical accuracy.

Like Luke, Matthew makes reference to a historical event that we should be able to find evidence for. In this case that event is the "Massacre of the Innocents." The Massacre of the Innocents is Herod's attempt to kill Jesus, the "King of the Jews,"after being made aware of his impending birth by the Wise Men. The Massacre involved the killing of every male in the area in and around Bethlehem under the age of two, and it's only mentioned in the Book of Matthew. You'd think such a horrible event would be documented in at least a few other places. (Thankfully, the Massacre of the Innocents did not end up as one of the Twelve Days of Christmas.)

Early Christianity was not interested in the birth of Jesus, and many scholars have speculated that the birth narratives found in Matthew and Luke were later additions to those gospels. If that's true, those stories are in good company. Mark's gospel originally just ended with the crucifixion of Jesus, the "empty tomb" part of the gospel was apparently a later addition.

In recent years it's become popular in modern Pagan circles to claim that all of the "story" surrounding the birth of Jesus is pagan in origin. I think some of that's true, it's probably partially responsible for the idea that Jesus was born of a virgin, and it explains things like the stars and the magi. All of those elements appear in pagan tales from the time of Jesus. The story of Mithras' birth is pretty similar to the story in Matthew, minus the Bethlehem, but I think the Christian take on many of those elements is surprisingly fresh. The tale also remains ambiguous enough that people can add things to it: talking animals, innkeepers, the Wise Men mythology, common man and royalty coming together, etc.

Christmas was an unknown holiday in the early Christian Church. Jewish holidays and then Easter took center stage. Birthday holidays were considered pagan by early Church leaders like Origen. Some of his quotes on the subject are pretty scathing on the subject of birthdays, saints "not only do not celebrate a festival on their birth days, but filled with the Holy Spirit, they curse that day." Ouch. Origen certainly didn't put a stocking up on Christmas Eve.

The first mention of Christmas as a Christian holiday was in 336 CE. The earliest known association with December 25th with the birth of Jesus is from a calendar in 354 CE. The December 25th birthday is very pagan for those keeping score at home. A multitude of pagan deities had their birthdays celebrated on that day near the Winter Solstice, it was one of the feast days of Dionysus. It also coincided quite nicely with the Roman festival of Saturnalia, a winter festival full of feasting, drinking, gift giving, and celebration. The Norse Yule was also at the time of year, and was another holiday featuring drinking, feasting, gift giving, but also evergreen trees and branches, and candles.

To Yule and Saturnalia (and other winter festivals) the stories of Jesus' birth were added to create "Christmas." Of course the development of Christmas went through several starts and stops, and was outlawed by Christian groups like the Puritans (the "War on Christmas" has been fought much more vigorously within Christianity than by any outside forces). It wasn't until the 19th Century that it became universally popular in the Western World.

*That link will take you to an old Facebook note of mine on Biblical literacy.

Cats and Dying

2011-11-30T10:26:00.001-08:00

Perhaps the first sign that we are growing older is not when our parents or friends begin to pass away, but when our pets do. Over the last five years I've had a dozen friends lose pets, and most of those pets were as familiar to me as my friends are. It's impossible to separate the "pet" from the "person" sometimes, people become as intertwined with their pets as they do with a partner, perhaps even more so.

(I have a list of friends that I will forever associate with their pets. Amy/Steel, Karin/Popper, Lisa/Pablo Diablo, Angie/Voodoo, Donigan/Bella, Sara/Crow, Mike/Loki, Teresa & Eddie/Their Loki, Jeff/Zeus, and the list could go on for quite awhile. For some of these people I think of their pets first, and their significant others second.)

This hit home early this morning when my brother Chuck's cat, Lizzie, passed away. Lizzie lived to be 16 and a half years old, which I think is about 102 in cat years, and she passed away quickly and in my brother's arms. In some ways, it's the "best way" for an animal companion to leave this world, but that's cold comfort, and doesn't really ease the pain all that much. Lizzie wasn't my cat, but her loss has had me on the verge of tears for the last twelve hours, as I grieve for her and most especially, the hole in my brother's heart.

Lizzie, we will miss you.

Lizzie was a strange cat, and had a personality all her own. She loved to hunt Ari and I's socks while we were sleeping, sometimes carting off as many four or five a night into my brother's room. While "hunting" our socks she'd sometimes growl like she was preparing to take down a squirrel. Just to paint a complete picture, she didn't just hunt socks either. I've seen her take down a bird, especially impressive for a de-clawed cat. She was also devoted to my brother, and would follow him anywhere in the house(s) we shared together for over ten years. Lizzie (or Elizabeth Chinacat Sunflower to share her whole name) was as complex as any human being I've ever met, and while I often found her cantankerous, she also had a sweet side that most of Chuck and I's friends never got to see. Through her long life she retained her adorable little kitten face, and remained a tiny little cat, by the time she was "old" she still liked she might have been two years sold.

Me and Princess.

Two and a half years ago I lost my own cat, Princess, and while Princess and Lizzie were never friends (Princess once guarded the litter box so Lizzie couldn't use it, she was Siamese), I think Lizzie realized my grief. About a month after Princess had passed on, I remember Lizzie moving into my lap, and sitting there for a good long time, letting me pet her. It had been the first time I'd petted a cat in what felt like an eternity, and it was something she never really did for anyone but my brother. While Lizzie was often people shy, she had a kindness and empathy missing in a lot of human beings. There's a reason our cats have Christmas Stockings, they are a part of our family, and as much a part of our life as any friend or family member.

(Lizzie also had a strange split personality on occasion. One summer afternoon she sat in my lap and let me pet her. Shortly there after she was purring, but at the same time she began to howl and growl at me. She was the only cat that could be perfectly content and yet completely pissed off at the same time. As weird as it was, it's one of the many reasons I loved that cat. That was some exceptional, and memorable, behavior.)

A lot of the pain I have over the loss of Lizzie is that I can't be there for my brother. I think our society often has this skewed perception that when an animal passes it goes into the ground and that people immediately move on. Such is not the case. Losing a pet is like losing any loved one, and the grieving process can be long and painful. If the average relationship with a cat or dog lasts ten to fifteen years . . . well that's longer than most friendships and most romantic relationships. Pets are often the most constant things in our lives, until we have children, and even then a bond with a pet might be one that's not shared with a significant other as a bond with a child might be.

On the positive side my brother and I got to share a lot of things with our cats over the course of their long lives. Chuck and Lizzie got to watch his Lakers and Red Wings win about ten championships between them (sports matter in my family), and see his Chicago Bears make the Super Bowl, and the Cubs come closer to a World Series than they have in 100 years. They also got to share several moves around the country, and see my brother completely pull his life together and go back to school. I'm not sure he could have done that last thing without Lizzie there to share his life and apartment.

(Princess and I got to share two Steeler Super Bowl wins, a Penguins Stanley Cup, and a Celtics NBA title. The Penguin win came just about two weeks before she passed. I remember running up the stairs after the Stanley Cup dancing around with her, so glad that she got to "see" this thing that she didn't even know existed. Yes, I'm weird. A week later Princess wandered through a group of my friends getting goodbye pettings, and then shortly passed on.)

I remember losing Princess and the pain that entailed. I think I cried more over my cat of twelve years (she was six when I got her, she had a long run) than I ever have over any other living thing. Thirty months removed from the experience I'm still bothered by it. Religion offers us some solace over those loses, but it's not as therapeutic as many of us would like. I remember having day dreams a few months after Princess passed on about a tiny kitten meowing on my door step, her face and paws black, her coat tan, a reincarnated little baby come back to me. Unfortunately, the Wheel doesn't quite turn like that, and that day dream was just that a daydream, however the world does work in unexpected ways.

Evie the meercat.

Nine months after Princess passed I was approached by a friend about a cat that needed immediate adopting. With a very unclear head (I had just burned myself something awful that morning at work and had a few big blisters) I agreed to adopt this cat sight unseen, without giving my wife a chance to object or any say in the matter (she had vetoed me getting a new cat). Just like that Evie (short for Evening), came into my life. While I was hoping for a Princess replacement, I got a far more complex cat who is nothing like my old companion. Evie has a sweetness about her, and such a gentle nature, nothing like my old demanding Siamese. But she's also not a lap cat, and only likes to be petted on her own terms. She also doesn't meow, she makes weird trilling noises and howls that make her sound like she's being tortured.

Sisters-Summer and Evie.

This past June my wife and I adopted another cat, and since it was on the Summer Solstice, we named her Summer. Summer is high-strung, demanding, and revels in bossing Evie around. She also loves Ari's lap, and laying in cuddle puddle's with her sister. A new cat doesn't get rid of the scar caused by the loss of another animal companion, but it does reflect the continual turning of the Wheel and our Journey in this world.

I came across Princess' stocking last week while putting up the holiday decorations. The wound was still fresh and it hurt, but I did take some joy in knowing how many years we were able to spend together. Both Lizzie and Princess had good, long lives, spent with people who love them. If you are a cat I'm guessing you can't ask for much more than that.

Summer, house guardian.

The loss of a pet is never easy, and should never be trivialized. While Lizzie has now passed on, she will live on. She will live on in our memories, and in our hearts. Every time I think of my brother I will inevitably think of his cat, and nothing is ever truly gone as long as it's not forgotten.

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, or Blessed Yule-Whatever Floats Your Boat.

2011-11-28T10:54:00.001-08:00

For years, perhaps decades, my favorite time of year was "The Holidays." As a kid, Christmas was my favorite holiday, and my favorite day of the year. Yes, I liked getting things, but I also loved spending time at my grandparents house, and feeling my family close to me. Christmas was always this weird mix of exhaustion, anticipation, exhilaration, closeness, and quite contemplation so that it appealed to about every emotion I had as a kid.

While I was absolutely in love with Christmas: the traditions, the decorations, the food, the TV specials, I always felt it was about more than just one day or just one religion. Even when I was young I knew that ancient pagans celebrated Yule (yay!), and that Hanukkah was being celebrated at nearby households. Instead of being bothered by those other holidays* I embraced them, with the thought that there's something truly special about sharing feelings of peace and love with nearly everyone. I've always believed that the shared characteristics of Midwinter holidays outnumbered the differences, and that light, snowflakes, and giving were universals, and that "The Holidays" could be something that united everybody.

Even at a young age I knew that Hanukkah wasn't always on Christmas, and that "Yule" was a few days before, but I always them imagined running into each other, and since everything was closed on Christmas, maybe there was "carry over" for those of other faiths. Happy Holidays meant New Year's too, so everyone got a chance to celebrate something over the course of about fifteen days. I've always been "all about the party," and the more parties the better. I'll celebrate your thing if you'll celebrate mine, and since they use the same decorations, even better!

When I was in the fifth grade I probably listened to that song above about one hundred times. The idea that "364 days in the year they fuss and feud and fight. 364 days in the year who cares who's wrong or right . . .and then suddenly it changed, how very very strange, suddenly they see the light . . " Perhaps inspired by the Christmas Truce of 1914 during World War One, I lived my first fifteen years on Earth with the belief that people didn't fight on Christmas, or even about Christmas. It wasn't even so much about Jesus either, it was just the idea that for one day each year that we should all be able to forgive one another, and spend an entire day with the ones we love with none of the outside world intruding. Even in my early twenties I had trouble believing that there could be negativity involved with The Holidays. Of course that's changed, and not just because I've grown more cynical.

I know that the modern Christmas has always been about "selling stuff," but it's also turned into a cultural battlefield, more about dividing people than bringing them together. Check out this facebook meme I stumbled into over the weekend:

"WHAT A CROCK!! ..... We can't say Merry Christmas now? We have to say Happy Holidays? We can't call it a Christmas tree, it's now called a Holiday tree? Because it might offend someone. If you don't like our "Customs" and it offends you so much then LEAVE.. I will help you pack. They are called customs and we have our traditions If you agree with this...please post this as your status!! IT'S MY FREEDOM TO SAY MERRY CHRISTMAS! Do you have what it takes to repost this?"

Yes, the federal government has been taken over by atheists and will monitor all the discussions in your home. If you use the phrase "Merry Christmas" you will immediately be sent to a re-education camp in rural Iowa. I'm sure that the person who originally wrote the turd above was upset that their local Macy's ran a banner with the words "Happy Holidays" on it, but how did that hurt their free speech? If a local business wants to use the phrase "Happy Holidays" and you object to that, aren't you tramping on their right to free speech?

The phrase "Happy Holidays" has been around since at least 1942, when the move "Holiday Inn" premiered. It's not some new thing that appeared out of the ether in the mid-90's. (To be completely honest, the song was originally called "Happy Holiday" and was sung on New Year's Eve in the film. The song does reference Santa, and the "Holiday Season" making it inclusive.) When I was young Chicago's WGN Superstation used to run a commercial featuring Bozo and their newscasters set to "Happy Holidays"which ran the entire month of December and the first few days of January. Loved that! It made the greeting about the season, and all the holidays, and captured that inclusive feeling that I still cherish.

While Pagans aren't quite so misinformed about the definition of "free speech" there are many Pagans who get upset by the phrase "Merry Christmas." Yes, it does reference "Christ" (from the Greek "christos" which means "anointed one") but I think we all know how much Jesus there is in Christmas-a few scattered nativity scenes, and a long soliloquy by Linus in A Charlie Brown Christmas, and after that the "Christ in Christmas" becomes more of a private or only shared at church sort of thing. As it's a federal holiday I've always found it difficult not to celebrate Christmas, even as a Pagan. If I don't unwrap presents that day, what else am I going to do? It's not like I can really go anywhere.

As long as someone is wishing me "Merry Christmas" with the very best of intentions, it's hard to get angry with them for saying it. Sure, if someone sends you a Christmas Card with "Keep the Christ in Christmas" while knowing your religious beliefs, they are being disrespectful and it's fine to be a little angry. However, if they say it while unaware of your religious perspective, there's no need to have a teaching moment. The Holiday Season shouldn't be a mind-field where everyone is forced to tiptoe around certain words. Most of us get Christmas presents regardless of what we believe, it's a custom not so much born out of religion (pagan or Christian) but by the media and advertising.

As a Pagan I've always been able to strike a balance between Christmas and Yule (Midwinter, the Solstice). One of those holidays is about the turning of the wheel, and the rebirth of the sun. It's a religious or spiritual observance, and as such, it's an internal thing, how those reflections make me feel is personal thing. It's something that can be put into words, but the majority of people don't come up to me and ask "What are you reflecting on this Yuletide?" While I can spend Yule with people, what makes it special is something that goes on inside of my head and heart. The hope I have for the world and those around me is something I dwell on more at Yule now than on December 25th.

Christmas on the other hand is a secular gift-giving holiday. It's an excuse for parties throughout December and it's a family obligation. I'm not sure I could ever tell my Dad, "Hey I'm not coming over this year because I don't celebrate Christmas, you can have my piece of the Turducken." It's not like the Old Man has ever held my hand and led me in prayer that day. Hell, my grandparents didn't do that either, nor did they send me to bed with visions of mangers and shepherds. The holiday was about giving and peace, and spending time with the ones you love. If it was about Jesus to any of them, they put Jesus where he should be, inside their hearts, and the religious aspect was internalized. Instead of bitching about the "War on Christmas" people like Bill O'Reilly would be better off reflecting on what it means to them.

*Remember, Jason was a right-wing Christian in his formative years, though even then he had a love of heavy metal.

Thanksgiving

2011-11-22T15:34:00.001-08:00

Like most American holidays, Thanksgiving is part myth, and part truth. It's true that the Puritans who landed at Plymouth Rock had some sort of harvest celebration in the fall of 1621, it's far less likely that they called it "Thanksgiving." A "Thanksgiving' in the Puritan sense was a somber day of church hymns and religious observance. Whatever happened in 1621, it was probably a fun day (or week), with beer and cider, lots of food, games, and general merriment.

When I see Pagans hesitate to celebrate Thanksgiving I shake my head in general puzzlement. Thanksgiving is essentially a Harvest Celebration, and most closely resembles harvest festivals in rural England. While I could be totally off-base, to me, harvest celebrations are essentially Pagan. At a harvest fest you celebrate the bounty of the earth. You can "give thanks" to whatever deity you want for that bounty, but harvest celebrations have got to be some of the oldest rituals in the history of humanity, they certainly pre-date Yahweh and Christianity.

There are some Christian overtones to Thanksgiving, it's hard to overlook the Pilgrims, but the Pilgrims of Thanksgiving are more myth than truth. In school we were always led to believe that the Pilgrims were noble religious nomads, who were looking for "religious freedom." Of course "religious freedom" to a Puritan meant "Religious freedom for Puritans, not for anyone else," but why do I have to give a shit about the truth? Why can't I celebrate the myth for one day, and reflect on religious freedom?

Thanksgiving is a holiday about the myth. It's a holiday about seeing America for what we want it to be, not what it always is. Yes, there were Native Americans at the Harvest Home celebration in 1621, but the Pilgrims and Wampanoag Tribe weren't really friends, they were more like reluctant allies. The Thanksgiving myth urges us to overcome our differences, and celebrate our shared commonalities. I know that Native American and Pilgrim children probably didn't run around Plymouth together like best friends (despite fifth grade film strips telling me they did); but wouldn't it be great if they had? There were probably no handshakes in 1621, but the idea that there were, and that Pilgrims and Wampanoags saw the world as something to share* is a heartening one.

I don't want to anyone out there to think that I'm in favor of ignoring history. I'm not a fan of the Puritans, and I'm still sickened by European and American atrocities committed against Native Americans (the big ones being treating them as fourth class citizens, stealing from them, lying to them, the killing, etc.) But to me, "The Pilgrims" are more like Santa Claus than real historical figures, they've been romanticized so much that most of the "real" has been taken out of them. I'm all about myth if it can teach a truth, and the truth is that we overcome racism and cultural differences and celebrate our shared heritage together. That's a lot of what we were led to believe Thanksgiving is about when we were young.

Despite the rather dubious origins of Thanksgiving, I'm going to celebrate it with gusto this year. I have good friends coming over, and there's a twenty pound turkey already in the fridge just waiting to be roasted. Like I do on most holidays, I'm going to ignore the total truth of the day and focus on what we want that holiday to be. I'm going to toast America and continue to hope that we will all one day live up to the noble ideas that inspire us all. I'm going to celebrate my friends, my life, the blessings I've received, my beautiful wife, my two kitties, and of course football.**

Happy Thanksgiving.

*The Wampanoag Tribe probably did see land as something to share. Private ownership of property was a concept they didn't totally understand.

**Thanksgiving Day Football Predictor 2011:
Lions 38 Packers 30
Cowboys 24 Dolphins 17
49'ers 31 Ravens 28

Most Influential People in the Rebirth of Paganism and Witchcraft.

2011-11-15T08:45:00.001-08:00

She's not on the list,
but I think we dated.

Over coffee with a friend a few weeks ago the subject of "Most Influential Pagans" came up, and I thought that would make a great subject for a post here on DPT. Originally I was going to try and come up with a "Top Ten" list, but that was far too daunting. I couldn't decide on numbers 6-10, and in my brain there was a tie for the fourth spot, so I decided that a "Top 3" list would probably be the way to go. I didn't totally crap out on putting together a big list though, I listed a bunch of "runners up" and the pros and cons of each.

For those of you who read my blog who aren't Pagans, you still might find this list interesting. Paganism is one of the fastest growing religions in the United States, and the people who have contributed to it are pretty fascinating. A few of the people on this list did not practice Witchcraft or any other Pagan Path, and some of them would have been surprised to hear themselves referred to as Pagans. What was important to my list, was gathering up individuals who have contributed to the development of Modern Paganism as a whole, which is why there are some non-Pagan folk.

I don't expect everyone in the world to agree with my "Top 3," but that's the point of lists; they are designed to attract controversy, and to get people to argue and disagree. This list has a very strong "Wiccan" slant, which isn't really fair when coming up with a "Pagan" list, but since Wicca is the largest Pagan subset, it shouldn't come as a huge surprise. This list is limited to individuals who were/are most active in the 20th Century up until the present. I had to draw the line somewhere, I already ended up with more people on my list than I had anticipated (every time I thought I was done, I realized I had slighted someone else I thought was important). Enjoy!

American Runners-Up

Carl Weschcke
President of Llewellyn

Who is he?: Carl Weschcke, owner and President of Llewellyn Worldwide (formerly Llewellyn Publications).

Why he's on this list: He's the President of Llewellyn, duh. Love 'em or hate'em, it's impossible to deny the influence Llewellyn has had on Modern Paganism. You might not be proud of it, but you've got some stuff on your bookshelf with that crescent moon on the spine. Llewellyn has introduced more people to Modern Paganism than any other publisher, and done so through well edited books. He also published the first Book of Shadows back in the 1970's.

Why he's not higher: He's the President of Llewellyn.

Margot Adler

Who is she?: That's Margot Adler, NPR Correspondent and author of Drawing Down the Moon

Why she's on this list: I want to just scream "She's Margot Adler!" but that's probably not good enough. For several decades DDtM was one of the five "go to" books on Modern Paganism, and the first real, honest survey of Pagan practices in the United States. While DDtM is a bit dated today, it's still a fascinating history book detailing where we've come from.

Why she's not higher: Though a gifted writer, Adler chose to focus on other things, she's only written three books.

Teen Witch Mother-
Silver Ravenwolf

Who is she?:  Silver Ravenwolf, author of Teen Witch and To Ride a Silver Broomstick

Why she's on this list:  I'm going to take some heat for this one, but there are a lot of people in the Modern Craft who came to it through Silver Ravenwolf. For much of the past two decades she's been the most popular Pagan author on the planet. As much as I dislike some of her books, there's no denying that she's an extremely talented writer. I still like To Ride a Silver Broomstick.

Why she's not higher:  Two words: Teen Witch.

Scott Cunningham

Who is he?:  Scott Cunningham, author of Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner

Why he's on this list:  Cunningham might have been the most popular Pagan writer of the 80's and early 90's, right as Paganism was moving more into the mainstream and becoming more popular. There's an entire generation that grew up reading and recommending Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner. His "Cunningham's Guide To _____" series of books are still must have reference material. Though Scott left us in 1993, his books still loom large in many a Pagan library.

Why he's not higher:  Cunningham never became much of a media presence.

Victor Anderson

Who is he?: Victor Anderson founder of the Feri Tradition

Why he's on this list: Victor (along with his wife Cora) popularized the Feri Tradition. Not familiar with the Feri Tradition? You aren't alone, but you've been exposed to it whether you know it or not. Some of the most influential Pagans of the last forty years come from the Feri Tradition, people like Starhawk, T. Thorn Coyle, and Gwydion Pennderwen. Feri is also an inescapable presence in California.

Why he's not higher: There's no "eclectic Feri tradition" and the tradition its self has a limited presence outside of the Bay Area (when compared with other traditions). Also, the Andersons never published much, just a few collections of Victor's poetry.

Druid Extrodinaire
Issac Bonewits

Who is he?: Isaac Bonewits author of Real Magic and founder of Ár nDraíocht Féin, the world's largest Contemporary Druid Organization.

Why he's on this list: There's about a hundred reasons to put him on this list, from his bachelor of arts degree in Magic from Berkeley (seriously) to his founding of ADF, to his intelligent and scholarly approach to magick and Paganism, Bonewits has had an influence on almost every aspect of Modern American Neo-Paganism (and he coined Neo-Paganism). Issac passed from this world in August of 2010.

Why he's not higher: Revered on the Pagan lecture circuit, Bonewits's scholarly approach kept him from attaining the success of a Silver Ravenwolf.

Oberon Zell-Ravenheart
(Joking about the Dumbledore thing)

Who is he?: ~~Dumbledore~~ Oberon Zell-Ravenheart founder of the Church of All Worlds and publisher of The Green Egg magazine.

Why he's on this list: One of the first people to realize that magicians, Wiccans, Witches, Druids, and Heathens had a lot in common and were all "Pagans" was Oberon. He popularized the word Pagan as an umbrella term for a very diverse group of people. With his wife Morning Glory he helped to define the concept and practice of polyamory, and before the internet his magazine The Green Egg provided a world-wide forum for Pagans to speak their minds. Due to the power of The Green Egg (read by many leaders in the community), his Church of All Worlds had a huge influence on American Paganism.

Why he's not higher on this list: Until recently, Zell did not have much of a literary presence. In the age of the internet the importance of The Egg has been overlooked by some.

British Runners Up
Perhaps due to geography (I am an American after all) my list of British Runners Up is a bit smaller, however, the Brits make up for it all in the top spots.

Robert Cochrane

Who is he: Robert Cochrane, the inspiration behind the 1734 Tradition and the founder of Clan of Tubal Cain.

Why he's on this list: Cochrane was one of the first people to come forward with a Witch tradition somewhat different than what was first written about by Gerald Gardner. Peers described his rituals as high energy, and he took Witchcraft out of the parlor and back outside into nature. After a falling out with Gardner, he coined the term "Gardnerian" as a derogatory term for Gardner's version of Witchcraft. Correspondences with American Joe Wilson led to the establishment of the 1734 Tradition.

Why he's not higher: Cochrane alienated many of his followers and committed suicide in 1966, he also did not leave much in the way of a literary legacy.

Dion Fortune

Who is she?: Violet Firth, better know by her pen name of Dion Fortune, who wrote the books The Sea Priestess and Moon Magic, founded the Fraternity of the Inner Light.

Why she's on this list: Biographers of Fortune disagree about whether or not she was even Pagan (as we understand it today), but her novels, especially The Sea Priestess (published in 1938) were hugely influential in the development of Modern Witchcraft. Her novel The Goat Foot God, about the Greek God Pan, helped establish the Horned God as "the god" in the Modern Craft. She was also an accomplished magician and is still influential in magickal circles today. One of the first women to have a major influence on both magick and Paganism.

Why she's not higher: By the end of her life Fortune had become a mystical Christian, and was never officially a part of any explicitly Pagan tradition.

Who is he: Raymond Buckland, author and pioneer.

Why he's on this list: Buckland was the first Gardnerian Wicca initiate to practice and initiate in the United States. His book The Tree, was one of the first "do it yourself" Witchcraft books in the world, with complete rituals, a rarity in the early 1970's. Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft (or Big Blue) is one of the most well known Witchcraft guides in existence. Buckland has also appeared in numerous television shows, and is a successful writer of fiction. He's also a remarkably nice guy.

Why he's not higher: I'm not a big fan of "Saxon Witchcraft."

Alex Sanders

Who is he?: Alex Sanders, founder of the Alexandrian Tradition.

Why he's on this list: During the late 60's and into the 1970's Sanders was the most public (and in some cases) notorious Witch in Great Britain. Sanders appeared in numerous television documentaries and even released a record "A Witch is Born." While his title "King of the Witches" was self-proclaimed, he did initiate many important Witches, most notably Janet and Stewart Farrar who went on to popularize many of Sanders' teachings. Sanders also helped to create a more tolerant Wicca having come out as a gay man late in life.

Why he's not higher: Sanders was not a writer, and his quest for attention and knack for burning bridges alienated him from many in the Pagan Community.

The Grand Lady of the Craft
Doreen Valiente

Who is she?: Doreen Valiente, author and liturgist, one of the Mothers of Modern Witchcraft.

Why she's on this list: Even if you've never read a book by Valiente, you've read her words. Much of the ritual used by Modern Witches was composed and arranged by Valiente. While she didn't write all of The Charge of the Goddess her selective use of material and knack for pacing produced what became the definitive version. During the 1970's and 80's her books on Paganism were widely read and hugely influential. Much of what's in Modern Wicca would sound very different if not for the influence of Valiente.

Why she's not higher: Geez, not everyone can be in my top three.

Uncle Al
Aleister Crowley

Who is he?: Aleister Crowley, the most influential practitioner of magick in the 20th Century. He was also a poet, writer, mountain climber, and degenerate (said with love).

Why he's on this list: The better question is probably why he's not higher on my list. Much of Crowley's poetry and other writings has worked it's way into Wiccan Ritual. His approach to magick borders on definitive and continues to influence. Crowley founded the rather Pagan religion of Thelema and wrote the majority of the rituals in the OTO, both groups which influenced Modern Witchcraft.

Why he's not higher: Much of his approach to magick was a refining of earlier ideas, and he's fourth or fifth on my list, geez, that's pretty good.

My Three Most Influential People in the Development of Modern Paganism

Starhawk

Who is she: Activist and writer Starhawk.

Why she's on this list: While Starhawk might not have been the first person to infuse Modern Paganism with an activist streak, she's been the most high profile. She also helped to turn Witchcraft into a religion that promotes female self-empowerment. She was also the first person to publicize many of the teachings and practices of the Feri Tradition. She might also be the most gifted writer to ever pen a "Pagan How To" book. I'm kind of surprised she ended up here too, but the more I think about it, the more I've become comfortable with it. Starhawk has changed Modern Paganism.

Why she's not higher: Well she didn't start it.

Margaret Murray

Who is she?: Margaret Murray, Egyptologist and author of The Witch-Cult in Western Europe.

Why she's on this list: The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1923) was not the first book to suggest that the Western European witch hunts of the Middle Ages were an organized attempt to destroy a native European pagan religion, but it was the most influential. In Witch-Cult, Murray turned Witchcraft into a sympathetic tradition, and paved the way for people wanting to be identified as Witches. Her works also put the words esbat and coven into the English lexicon. Her second book on Witchcraft, The God of the Witches, helped establish the Horned God as a major Wiccan deity.

Why she's not higher: Her works paved the way for Modern Witchcraft, but they didn't include a Goddess, and most of her theories have been discarded by modern scholars. However her influence on Modern Paganism remains enormous.

Gerald Gardner
One day people will be building
statues of this guy, seriously.

Who is he: Gerald Gardner, the first public modern Witch.

Why he's on this list: Gardner was the first person in Britain to publicly call himself a Witch, and to call Witchcraft a religion. From the early 50's until his death in the early 60's he was the most famous Witch in Great Britain, perhaps the world. His books, Witchcraft Today and The Meaning of Witchcraft were the first two books to present Witchcraft as a valid faith. There are also some scholars who claim "he made the whole thing up," and while I disagree, there's little doubt that many of the rituals found in the Modern Craft were written or influenced by Gardner.

Why he's number one: Gardner-inspired Witchcraft is the dominant form of Witchcraft in the Western World, and by extension the most dominant form of Western Paganism.

Led Zeppelin and the Occult

2011-11-08T11:53:00.000-08:00

(This is an old piece, and is basically excerpts from a workshop I do on the topic. In honor of Led Zeppelin IV's fortieth anniversary I thought it was worth putting on DPT. I'm sure there are all sorts of typos in it, I had to rescue it from from the depths of my hard-drive, but I was in a hurry to put it up. There's also an article on my website panmankey.com about Led Zeppelin and Tarot which you can access by clicking here. Happy 40th Stairway!! For musings on the greatness of Zep's fourth album click here.)

Led Zeppelin and the Occult

I’ve always loved rock and roll, but I never thought I’d get involved with it in any tangible way. A few years ago I was kicking around ideas for summer workshops and came up with the idea that something on Led Zeppelin and the occult might be fun, for me. I never thought anyone else would care about it. A few months later I’m at the Starwood festival with almost 100 people under a tiny little canopy, cranking up the Zeppelin and talking about Aleister Crowely. It was amazing. Couple the Zeppelin talks with Morrison Rituals, and all of a sudden I’ve cornered the market on Pagan rock and roll presentations.

This whole Led Zeppelin and the Occult thing is really important to me because the Zep was my gateway into Paganism. Jimmy Page's fascination with Aleister Crowley led me to want to know more about Crowley, and forced me to get over the stereotype that anyone who is not a Christian is a Satanist. Robert Plant's interest in Celtic Mythology opened the door into the world of modern Witchcraft, the ancient Druids, and a whole mess of bad Llewellyn books. Led Zeppelin laid the groundwork for my walk with the Goddess and God, and I have a feeling that I'm not alone. The response I get when talking about Zeppelin is confirmation of that, as is you reading this!

I was 17 when I got serious about listening to Led Zeppelin. The year was 1990 and Atlantic Records had just released the four disc “Led Zeppelin Boxset” that fall. As a heavy metal fan I knew that I had to have it, but I didn't really know why. Of course I was familiar with Led Zeppelin, who hasn't heard “Rock'n'Roll” “Black Dog” “Whole Lotta Love,” and of course “Stairway to Heaven?,” but the Zeppelin catalog is so much deeper than what classic rock radio would have you believe.

Over the next few months I lost myself in the Zeppelin, by May of that year I had become a fanatic.

For a period of time in college I tried to convince my friends that my nickname should be “Led,” that's how bad (or sick) my Zeppelin jones was (anyone catch that pun?), oh who am I kidding, is. As I've grown older I've found new things to appreciate about the band, and because modern rock music basically blows serious chunks, Zeppelin has become popular again, almost hip. So popular in fact that Zeppelin clothes are easier to find now than they were ten years ago.

The pseudo-goth-punk rock mall chain Hot Topic said in 2006 that their best selling t-shirt ever was a Led Zeppelin one. The particular shirt in question was nothing all that special, just the Swan Song Record label logo (that was Zeppelin’s vanity label for the uninitiated) and some lettering that read “North American Tour 1977, ” but to many that logo was a mystery. Now that little falling angel logo has never been much of a mystery to me, it’s just a picture of Apollo adapted from the painting “Evening: Fall of Day” by William Rimmer. Contrary to a few published reports, it’s not Lucifer, its not even Icarus, but that’s what makes Zeppelin so much fun, a hidden promise of the sinister cloaked behind English blues rock.

Led Zeppelin and the Blues

Zeppelin was a blues band, and the influence of the blues is all over their music, but it goes farther than that. The legends of Led Zeppelin are also built around the myths of the blues. One of the oldest blues myths is that of the crossroads, you know the one, where young bluesmen go to make a deal with the devil at the crossroads in order to obtain mastery of their craft (usually the guitar). Jimmy Page was said to have led Led Zeppelin (perhaps minus bass player John Paul Jones) in that very rite back in 1968. Music has always been associated with Satan, and it's not surprising that the blues became associated with Jack Scratch.

However in the case of the blues, some of this story might very well be true. One old bluesman summed up the crossroads experience like this:

If you want to learn how to make songs yourself, you take your guitar and you go to where the road crosses that way, where a crossroads is. Get there, be sure to get there just a little 'fore 12 that night so you know you'll be there. You have your guitar and be playing a piece there by yourself...A big black man will walk up there and take your guitar and he'll tune it. And then he'll play a piece and hand it back to you. That's the way I learned to play anything I want."

Myths such as the one above were popular in the South in African-American communities; mostly because magic was still a part of people's daily lives back then. The practice of Hoodoo was common, and accepted. Hoodoo is a magickal system that originated in Africa, and grew deep roots in the American South. It's not a religion, but some of the spells in Hoodoo call upon Christian deities, and some spells pay homage to ancient African deities. (Have I offended most modern practitioners of Hoodoo with that definition? It's a complex thing to define, but hoodoo is not voodoo, it's a rural kitchen Witchcraft.)

There are dozens of interviews with people who have claimed to make a deal at the crossroads, and many of those interviewed about the subject offered detailed explanations on just how they sold their souls. Methods vary, and some involved animal sacrifices, but the version I gave you above is probably the most common.

It's important to note one thing about the devil and the crossroads myth, the terms “Devil” or “Satan” rarely, if ever, come up. The buyer of the soul is more likely to be referred to as “The Big Black Man” or as a black animal of some sort, most commonly a dog. This has led to speculation that the crossroads myth is African in origin, and that the deity being petitioned is an African one. The most common name I've heard in conjunction with the crossroads tail is Egba (or Eshu, or a dozen other spellings) or Pomba Gira. Egba is said to guard the crossroads and teach wisdom. So perhaps somebody was tuning those guitars that launched the blues upon the world, just not who we thought it was.

The man most associated with the crossroads blues legend was Robert Johnson, who was a virtual unknown when he died back in 1938. It wasn't until twenty-five years after his death that Robert Johnson would attain lasting fame and immortality. When the blues craze hit Great Britain in the early 1960's, Johnson's record label decided to cash in and put out a quick compilation called “King of the Delta Blues Singers.” While the title sounded impressive, Robert Johnson was never the king of the delta blues singers, though his music was damned good.

The circumstances surrounding Johnson's death in 1938 were murky, and his untimely death at the age of 27 kicked up all kinds of crazy rumors about the man selling his soul to the devil. The record label played up the myths too, knowing that controversy was good for record sales. For the record there was a Johnson who was said to have sold his soul to the devil back in Robert Johnson’s time, but his name was Tommy Johnson, and his music didn't influence Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page the way Robert's did.

While Robert Johnson didn't sell his soul to the devil, there is still a lot of references to hoodoo in it, which I think are worth checking out. The song “Hellhound on my Trail” features more than lyrics about Johnson’s impending doom, he also sings about Hot Foot Powder:

You sprinkled hot foot powder mmmm

mmm around my door

all around my door

You sprinkled hot foot powder

all around your daddy's door

Hotfoot Powder was said to rid people of bad neighbors, and cause ex-lovers to roam the world alone and unsatisfied. Not quite the devil, but at least it’s a bit a magickal.

In “Little Queen of Spades” Johnson sings about a woman wearing a mojo bag, which is a small bag used to carry magical items. Originally it was thought that mojo was a corruption of the English word magic, but it's more likely that the word has origins in West Africa and is a corruption of “mojuba” which means prayer. A mojo bag is a prayer bag, or a portable spell you can carry with you.

The mojo bag features again in the song “Come On In My Kitchen” (arguably Johnson's finest song), only this time he refers to it as a “nation sack.” The lyrics relate the bag's magickal properties:

ah she's gone

I know she won't come back again

I've taken the last nickel

out of her nation sack

It’s bad hoodoo to take something out of one’s mojo bag . . . The linear notes to “Robert Johnson the Complete Recordings” state that a nation sack is "a small pouch worn around the neck in which keepsakes and valuables are kept” but that’s utter nonsense, and was obviously written by someone not familiar with hoodoo.

There are several other Johnson songs with references to the Crossroads and the Devil, but they don't have the occult significance of the songs and lyrics outlined here. Some of them have nothing to do with what you think they do. “Crossroad Blues” is just about moving along, and not about any pacts with the devil.

So what's the point of spending so much time on Robert Johnson? Well, he was a big influence on the Zeppelin, and his lyrics can be heard on songs like “The Lemon Song,” “Traveling Riverside Blues,” and “Trampled Underfoot.” More importantly, his popularity reintroduced the crossroads myth to the modern world, and much like Johnson, Zeppelin too was said to have sold their souls to the devil.

Jimmy Page and Aleister Crowley

"My interest in the occult started when I was 15. I do not worship the devil but Magick does intrigue me. Magick of all kinds. I read "Magick in Theory and Practice" when I was about 11 years old but it wasn't for some years that I understood what it was all about." -Jimmy Page

Led Zeppelin's connection to the occult really begins with Jimmy Page, and he makes no effort to hide it. Pagey's interviews are filled with references to True Will, Aleister Crowley, and magick. It's been said that he is a member of the O.T.O., but I can't verify it. (When I finish the Zeppelin workshop someone will always walk up to me and say “Hi, I'm with the O.T.O., and Jimmy Page is definitely a member.” Five minutes later someone will walk up to me and say “Hi, I'm with the O.T.O., and Jimmy Page is definitely not a member.” For those not in the know, the O.T.O. is a magickal order, which uses a lot of material from English magician Aleister Crowley. If you aren’t familiar with Crowley, go look him up on line before reading any further.) It's obvious that the occult is more than just a passing fancy for Page though, and as recently as 2005 he’s been photographed wearing an O.T.O. t-shirt.

Page has been a fan of Aleister Crowley since his youth, and as an adult went so far as to buy Crowley's old house at Loch Ness (Boleskine manner). The house its self is said to be haunted, according to legend a church full of parishioners burned down on the spot where the home was eventually erected and that their souls still turn up on the property from time to time. Up until recently it was a bed and breakfast.

In 1976 Page opened up an occult bookstore called “The Equinox Booksellers and Publishers" on Kensington High Street, London. It remained open for about ten years, and re-printed several of Crowley’s books. When asked why he opened up the store Jimmy said: "There was not one bookshop in London with a good collection of occult books and I was so pissed off not being able to get the books I wanted."

According to those in the know, Jimmy Page has the largest collection of Crowleyana in private hands. He owns wands, clothing, books, letters, and various other ritual tools. While most of Jimmy's friends say that the stuff is kept locked up in a vault, singer Michael Des Barres says that he and Page played with it all one afternoon, even going so far as to dress up in Crowley's robes!

The respect that Page felt for Crowley rarely turned up in Led Zeppelin, but it did make the wax on Led Zeppelin III. Early pressings of the album have the words “Do what thou wilt” engraved into the runoff near the record's label. The cover for “In Through the Outdoor' features a figure who looks a lot like Aleister Crowley circa 1940. Besides these two specific instances the likeness and words of Aleister Crowley don't feature in the albums of Led Zeppelin. (Page wasn’t alone in his reverence for Crowley, an image of the mage appears on the cover of The Beatles “Sergeant Pepper’s” album!)

Robert Plant and Hobstweedle

Robert Plant was a hippie in the truest sense. He loved the psychedelic sounds coming out of San Francisco, wore the tie-dye, and generally was a “peace and love” guy. Unlike Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, Robert Plant wasn't a veteran of London's music scene; he grew up in the more rural Birmingham, like his buddy John Bonham (drums). Plant's interests lied outside the realm of ceremonial magick, but many of them are still interesting for those of us trying to understand the mystical side of Led Zeppelin.

In the late 1960's the works of J.R. Tolkien were seen as essential hippie literature. Hippies saw the hobbits as an ideal agrarian society, living off the land, and taking care of it. Plant was a fan of Tolkien before his Zeppelin tenure, eventually working in a band with a very Tolkienesque name called Obstweedle (usually misspelled Hobstweedle). Plant even named one of his dogs Strider, after the Lord of the Ring's Aragon.

There are several Led Zeppelin songs with Tolkien related lyrics, and many of them happen to be among my favorite Zeppelin songs. “Ramble On” from Led Zeppelin II was the first time something from Middle Earth popped up in the music of Led Zeppelin. Robert sang:

Mine's a tale that can't be told, my freedom I hold dear

How years ago in days of old when magic filled the air

' twas in the darkest depths of Mordor, mm-I met a girl so fair

but Gollum and the evil one crept up and slipped away with her.

Yes, feel free to blame Robert Plant for all of the dragons and wizards that currently populate a great deal of heavy metal music.

The song “Misty Mountain Hop” was named after a fictional mountain range on Middle Earth. Besides the title, the song has very little to do with “The Lord of the Rings.”

So I'm packin' my bags for the Misty Mountains

where the spirits go, now

Woo-over the hills where the spirits fly

The rest of the song is essentially about a love-in that got busted, it's clever and cute but has nothing to do with the current discussion, not that I don't like love-ins, and for those who were looking for one where I live, just try to show up when my wife’s not home.

Perhaps the best of Plant's Tolkien inspired songs is “The Battle of Evermore” which coincidently is probably Zeppelin's most mystical sounding song. “Evermore” is a hodge-podge of various traditions, mostly mixing Tolkien with Celtic mythology. Plant has stated that he wrote the song after reading a book on Scottish History, and many people have noticed similarities in the lyrics between “Evermore” and the Irish National Anthem!

The Tolkien influence is blatantly obvious in lyrics like “the Ringwraiths ride in black” but to attribute the entire song to Tolkien's world seems shortsighted. Lyrics like “I'm waiting for the angels of Avalon” suggest that blending of mythologies and ideas. Plant has stated in interviews that when walking the English Countryside he can feel the ghosts of ancient warriors stirring on their former battlefields. It's possible that these feelings also led to the composition of the lyrics.

It's worth nothing that Celtic Mythology was very important to Plant and that he has studied it on and off for his entire life. His son Karac was named for a Celtic warrior who battled the Romans. Later in life, Plant would begin to explore the mystical heritage of India and the Middle East. The sounds and rhythms of those cultures, while hinted at in Zeppelin's music, would be explored much more fully during Plant's solo career and his brief “No Quarter” acoustic fling with Jimmy Page in 1994.

All About Led Zeppelin's Fourth Album

Led Zeppelin's greatest monument to the occult is their fourth album. Mistakenly called “Zoso” by some, or simply “Runes,” Led Zeppelin IV is an occult tour de force, from the album cover to the songs. Released in 1971, Led Zeppelin IV is the band's best selling album, and most mysterious. It was released without a title, and the band's name is glaringly absent from the album cover.

The album cover features a solitary old man with a bundle of sticks tied to his back. Jimmy Page has tried to popularize the idea that the man on the album cover represents a lifestyle that fosters harmony with nature. According to Page, the picture was found in a junk store by Robert Plant and then worked into the cover of the band's fourth record. While it's a cute story, it's not true. The picture was created specifically for the album cover and bears a striking resemblance to English cunningman "Old" George Pickingill.

Pickingill was a turn of the century English cunningcrafter, with a rather sinister reputation. (Cunningcraft is the practice of English folk magick, and cunningmen and cunningwomen plied their trades in rural English villages for centuries. Use of cunningcraft was not seen as adversarial to Christianity either, and cunningmen were important parts of their communities, much like a blacksmith.) Instead of being held in high regard by those in his community, as many in his craft were, he was a social outcast and a figure of fear. Allegedly he was also the teacher of Aleister Crowley (and also English Witch Gerald Gardner), and founded several witch covens in rural England. While the witch coven stuff is utter nonsense, Pickingill was a real person, and the association with Crowley was a strong one by 1971, strong enough that the picture is no accident. Crowley probably never so much as met Pickingill (Old George makes no appearances in Crowley’s diaries), but the legend was a popular one in the early 70’s.

This past summer I was shown a tarot card that looked exactly like the figure on the cover of Led Zeppelin IV. I was told that the Ten of Wands was the real inspiration for the cover art, but going back through some tarot history, it seems that the reverse is true, the Zeppelin cover art served as inspiration for this one particular tarot card. A quick look at the Rider-Waite tarot (the most popular tarot deck in existence) clears up the confusion. Still, it's nice to see Zeppelin influencing modern artists.

There are some very real tarot references in IV, most notably the album's inner gatefold picture. Without a doubt that features the Hermit from the tarot, and Page has freely admitted to this during interviews. The picture was attributed to a friend of Page's named Barrington Colby Mann, and was clearly based on the Hermit image in the Rider-Waite deck.

Page must have identified strongly with the Hermit, since the image of the Hermit shows up again in Zeppelin's concert/movie The Song Remains the Same. After climbing a mountain Page comes across an image of himself that turns out to be the Hermit, either resulting in chuckles from the audience or murmurs of “that's deep,” depending on the level of sobriety among those watching the film (Jason’s advice is to just focus on the music).

Whose symbol is whose? From left to right:
Page, Jones, Bonham, and Plant.

A bit more mysterious are the four runes or symbols which appear on the spine of the record jacket and the album sleeve. Each symbol is a reference to one of the four members of Led Zeppelin, as none of the band member's names appear anywhere in the album credits. The idea for the four rune symbols probably belongs to Jimmy Page, and according to sources Page and Plant had their symbols custom made for the record, while Bonham and Jones picked their symbols from a book. Jones has said that he and Bonham's symbols came from Rudolph Koch's “Book of Signs,” which was handed to him by Page with the instructions to “pick something out.”

Jones' symbol is a popular modern rune, depicting a circle intersected by three ovals. The rune stands for integrity and competence. John Bonham’s symbol is simply three interlocking circles, and either represents the trinity of Man/Woman/Child (Bonzo was a devoted family man) or Father/Son/Holy Ghost. Bonzo's symbol also bore a close resemblance to the logo for Ballantine Beer.

The Egyptian Goddess of Truth and Justice, Ma’at inspired Plant’s symbol of a circle with a feather in the middle of it. Ma'at was the patroness of the pharaohs, and her symbol was the feather. It's likely that the ideals of truth and justice appealed to Plant, and he might have been reading a book on Egyptian myth at the time he crafted his symbol.

The most mysterious of the four symbols belongs to Jimmy Page. To start with, it's not the word “Zoso,” (though it sort of kind of looks like that) and to imply as much would probably piss off Jimmy. According to Jimmy the sign might have it's origins in a series of doodles he jotted down while on the phone in the spring of 1971, but this is probably not the case.

Page's symbol bears a strong resemblance to a glyph found in the 16th century book “Ars Magica Arteficii” by J. Cardan. In a section on astrological signs the “Zoso” rune appears almost as it does in 1971. The separate components of the rune sign indicate different things. The stylized “Z” is a reference to the astrological sign of Capricorn, which is Page's sun-sign. The “oso” is open to various interpretations; the two most common are that it stands for “666,” or that it represents the alchemical symbol Mercury.

Besides the runes, the most mysterious part of Led Zeppelin IV is the song “Stairway to Heaven.” To tell you the truth, I'm not sure what the song means. I've seen it explained as a Christian allegory (really), and as a hymn to Satan. I've always thought it was a song about spiritual longing and desire, which seems to play into the symbolism on the album jacket. One thing I can tell you is that if you play it backwards you might hear the words “here's to my sweet Satan.

Before we get into the backwards masking stuff I thought we should go to one of the sources for an opinion, here’s what Robert Plant had to say about the whole thing: “To me it’s very sad, because ‘Stairway to Heaven’ was written with the very best intention, and as far as reversing tapes and putting messages on the end, that’s not my idea of making music.”

In case you were wondering, the most infamous part of “Stairway to Heaven” is this one:

If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow, don’t be alarmed now

It’s just a spring clean for the May Queen.

Yes, there are two paths you can go by; but in the long run,

There’s still time to change the road you’re on.

Which allegedly comes out this way when played backwards:

Here’s to my sweet Satan

The one who whose little path would make me sad,

Whose power is fake/Satan.

He’ll give those with him 666.

There was a little toolshed where he made us suffer, sad Satan.

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Because we can, here is the passage in question . . . .

When you listen to the section in question, you can sort of hear something that sounds like “Here’s to my sweet Satan” but the rest of the verse is basically unintelligible. If Led Zeppelin was really working for the Devil I like to think they’d be a bit more upfront about it. It’s not like Jimmy hid his interest in Crowley.

The section in question is definitely not a backwards mask, backwards masking is a very deliberate technique, and a fine piece of studio trickery (especially in 1971). What’s so interesting about the Stairway/Satan problem is that the alleged shout out to the devil can be heard on both live and studio versions of the song! That argues in favor of coincidence, but in all honesty, I wouldn’t put a trick like that above Jimmy, he’d probably get a good laugh out of it.

While Zeppelin was always accused of Devil worship, the Stairway furor didn’t really begin until 1982, with you guessed it, an evangelical (radio) preacher, from California no less. Why anyone takes any of those people seriously is beyond me.

Summing Up

When I first started really listening to Zeppelin the occult influences of the band made me a little nervous. Back when I was 18, I was president of my church youth group, and not quite sure if I was ready to make a devotee of Aleister Crowley an idol. As I’ve grown up and widened my horizons, the occult stuff in Led Zeppelin has added to my Zeppelin obsession. It’s amazing that the two things I love more than anything have sort of ended up meeting in the middle, and those two things are, you guessed it, my Pagandom and the eternal music of Led Zeppelin.

May the Zeppelin ever soar!

Forty years later . . . Led Zeppelin IV

2011-11-08T11:31:00.000-08:00

Music lacks magic these days. There's nothing special or surprising about listening to a new album today. You get on your computer and download a bunch of music, there's no wrapping, no packaging, no cover art to stare at. The purchase is immediate too, within seconds you can be playing your new album, and even if you still buy hard copies of albums (CD's), you can stick those into your CD Player the moment you get in the car. Listening to new music used to be an experience, because it was so hard to do. (For musings on Led Zeppelin and the occult experience click here.)

I have several framed album covers on the walls of my townhouse, because LP's were the greatest experience of them all. They contained music that wasn't super-easy to listen to, you had to want it, you had to be up for going through the ritual of taking the album out of the record jacket, handling it like a baby, placing it carefully on the turntable, and then moving the needle onto the wax. Playing a record took time, and it was something you listened to from start to finish. Listening to an album wasn't immediate gratification, it was total immersion in an artist, a world, a vision, a sound.

Very few records change the entire course of rock music*, Led Zeppelin IV was one of them. I still have daydreams about what it would have been like to tear into that album back in 1971. Staring at the weird album cover without the band's name on it, puzzling over the runes that graced the record sleeve. It's possible that in 1971 you could have picked up IV without hearing anything off of it first. What a trip that would have been. Can you imagine, sitting on your couch, firing up the record player, lighting up a joint, and hearing Stairway to Heaven for the first time, completely unannounced and unprepared for it? There are no secrets when it comes to music today, you can stream anything before you buy it and but it on Youtube, impossible to do in 1971. I would have been stoned** as a gourd in 1971 running around my house going ape-shit crazy over the last three minutes of Stairway thinking this is the greatest shit since ever.

One of the things that would have made IV such a mind-fuck in November of 1971 is that no one would have been expecting it. Yes, Led Zeppelin was one of the biggest bands in the world in 1971 (just three years after they got together), but 1970's mostly acoustic Led Zeppelin III was largely seen as a commercial and artistic disappointment, expectations for Led Zeppelin IV would have been small. What makes IV the classic it is, is how it takes the acoustic experiments of III and weaves them into an overall big rock sound (like in Stairway), or takes acoustic rock to a grander level, to this day nothing sounds like The Battle of Evermore, except the Battle of Evermore.

My first memories of listening to IV as an album, and not a few isolated radio hits here and there, dates back to my freshman year of high school. My brother Chuck in his infinite wisdom got me a copy of the album (on cassette!) for Christmas. It wasn't something I asked for, he just said it was something I "needed" as a fan of hard rock and heavy metal. Shortly thereafter I have memories of dancing in my bedroom getting and getting dizzy while listening to Rock and Roll, still my favorite shake your rock bootie track of all time.

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I've written extensively before about how much Led Zeppelin changed my life, but that Christmas was the beginning. There was a time when it was a rare day in hell when I wasn't wearing a Led Zeppelin shirt. Nothing sounds like Zeppelin, nothing rocks like Zeppelin, nothing has ever been as consistently great as Zeppelin. There are some Zep fans who think that Physical Graffiti or perhaps II are their greatest achievement, I disagree, I think it has to be IV just because the album contains every element that made them so great. There are no throw away tracks, on 1991's boxset, seven of IV's eight tracks made the cut, IV is a greatest hits album, the playlist for every classic rock station of the past thirty years.

Often ignored in the hullabaloo over radio classics like Stairway and Black Dog, what makes IV so interesting and so unlike most rock music in its wake, is the drum sound. John Bonham just hit the drums harder than any other human being behind a kit, as a result there's a sonic boom behind Zeppelin that no other rock band has ever had. Forty years later and people are still sampling When the Levee Breaks because it sounds so amazing. A rock critic I read once described Bonzo as always playing "behind the beat." He argued that Bonzo was always about a mili-second off from where you thought the beat would fall. So instead of "pause pause pause beat," you got "pause pause pause pa-BEAT" which always drove the music forward and gave it a sense of urgency that most rock lacked. As a rock album I find IV to be extremely danceable, when I hear the rock tracks, I want to move and groove. That's all Bonham.

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It wasn't just Bonzo's urgent drumming that made his drum sound, when you listen to IV you can hear him doing all kinds of things, he wasn't just a time-keeper, he was a full contributor to the bands sound. He was always playing more than what was needed, giving the music added texture. You could just listen to the drum tracks on IV and be completely engrossed, no drummer ever gave a better performance. The boom and echo in the drum sound is also attributable to super-producer Jimmy Page, who knew how to mic a drum a sound in a way that no one else had figured out at the time. IV was not recorded in a studio, it was recorded at an old country estate (Headley Grange-how much do I love Zeppelin, I don't even have to look this shit up), and Bonham played in the living room allowing his drums to "breathe."

(Working on this piece I spent a lot of time on Youtube, and there are a few nifty videos there just featuring Bonzo's drum tracks. Even in 1979 Bonham was still nailing it, Fool in the Rain is an overlooked Bonzo masterpiece, there's about 100 things going on during that drum track, and then there's just the deep sound of raw power of the time-keeping.)

It wasn't only Bonham, 1971 found all the members of Led Zeppelin at the peak of their powers. Robert Plant was a vocal phenomenon (and all of 21 years old), and after IV his voice would change and he'd never again be able to hit the high notes that marked early Zeppelin. Plant was just soulful on parts of IV, and introspective when he needed to be. His voice reached heights never before attained in British Blues Rock. Fairport Convention singer Sandy Denny, one of all the time greats, said she "sang herself hoarse" trying to keep up with Plant on The Battle of Evermore. Lyrically Plant also threw down the gauntlet, creating the genre of wizard-rock, but doing so in a mystical way, and not in a dopey dragons and rainbows sort of way***.

For me it's Bonham who makes this album (and Plant would love hearing that), but everyone contributed. Who else but Zeppelin would have a bass/keyboard player that also plays recorder? John Paul Jones was always the icing on the Zeppelin cake. Not only did he play in lock-step with Bonzo (they were arguably the greatest rhythm section of all time), but he was funky. While Bonzo grooved, Jones would play these funky bass-lines that were equally bootie shaking, and he did this in a hard rock band without anyone ever calling him out on it, because it was amazingly awesome. Listen to Zeppelin live, without a rhythm guitar player, it's Jonsey's basslines that Page solos over, and the sound is never compromised.

Led Zeppelin IV marked the moment where Jimmy Page went from being an amazing British Blues Rock guitarist, to being a guitar god. Think I'm kidding? You haven't listened to that solo in Stairway in awhile have you? Between the recorders, the bewildering lyrics, and the drums, Page's guitar solo in that song often gets lost, and it's amazing. He plays the shit out of it, and there's no need for a rhythm guitar track because the solo is so interesting, and because Bonzo and Jones sound abso-fucking awesome on their own. Listen to the live version of Stairway, and how Page just masters his 18 string guitar, you can almost imagine him casting a spell over it saying "You will be my bitch, and the world will think Satan is playing rhythm." After IV, Page would create guitar armies in the studio and on stage, and no one else in the 70's even came close to touching his jock, not even Clapton.

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Due to the emerging chameleon like talents of Page, IV just goes all over the place. There's the funky hard rock of Misty Mountain Hop, Rock and Roll, and Black Dog, and the Celtic tinged sounds of Four Sticks (featuring another drum workout by Bonzo, and called Four Sticks because he plays the track with four drumsticks, have I mentioned how great Bonham was?), Evermore. The folk sound of Going to California is completely on target, and a huge step up in sound from earlier experiments on III. By 1971 Page had mastered what the band would call "light and shade," being able to go from arena rock warriors to folk-hippies without missing a beat (like Bonham would ever miss a beat).

Weirdly, the fortieth anniversary of IV has passed in classic Zeppelin style, quietly, and without the massive reissues that most bands would engage in to mark such an anniversary. Dark Side of the Moon also turned forty this year, and was re-released in multiple formats, but for Zeppelin, IV stands the test of time as is. Here's to forty years of the greatest rock album of all time, and in forty years people will still be listening to it.

*How rare is it to make an album that that changes rock history? In the past twenty years I can only think of three off the top of my head, Pearl Jam's Ten, Nirvana's Nevermind, and The Slim Shady LP by Eminem. That's it, those albums changed music forever.

**I'm not really a drug guy, but if it was 1971, wouldn't I be smoking pot probably?

***Apologies to Ronnie James Dio.

Honoring the Ancestors . . . . Or Not

2011-11-07T10:34:00.000-08:00

Every Samhain I'm confronted with several rituals that call for "honoring the (or our) ancestors." While I understand the reasoning behind it, it bothers me from both a theological and a personal perspective. This doesn't mean I ignore the "death" aspect of Samhain, just the opposite, I've always embraced it utterly, but the people I choose to honor and remember that night I don't think of us my "ancestors."

On Samhain I like to honor and remember the "recently departed." I light candles for my grandparents, remember friends I have lost, and still lament the passing of my cat Princess. I don't think of any of these people (or cats) as ancestors, they are all immediate family members or former peers. I've never stopped to think about a distant forbearer, or a relative known only to me from a faded photograph. The losses I've had effect me enough that I don't really want to add anymore grieving to my life.

A big reason for my lack of ancestor worship (or honoring) comes from being an American mutt. While I've always been told that my grand-father's side of the family was "Welsh" it's not something I'm sure of, and I've never felt a great connection to it. I have many friends who are wrapped up in their cultural identities. "I hate the English because I'm Irish," or "I'm rooting for Italy in the World Cup because I'm Italian." I've never felt this kind of identification, and while I'm nominally an Anglophile (British rock bands are the greatest of all time, earl grey tea is delicious, Wicca is English), that has nothing to do with Welsh roots.

While there are lots of elements in Modern Wicca that could be considered "Celtic" (deity choices, the sabbats, much of our modern mythology), I've never felt especially close to the Ancient Celts. Out of all the great Western Paganisms, it's Greek religion, myth, and deity that I've always felt closest to, and that started at a young age. There's not a drop of Greek blood in my body, but it's the group I most identify with. When I'm asked to bring a dish at Samhain that my ancestors would have eaten, I'm at a complete loss because I don't particularly care what the Ancient Welsh ate. Ask me to bring something that my spiritual ancestors might have eaten and I'll show up with some wine and honey-cakes.

I don't mean to dismiss the Welsh and the Celts out of hand, I have some interest in them. I do the occasional workshop on Druids, one on British manifestations of the Horned God, and I'm familiar with Celtic/Welsh myth, it just doesn't call me to like Pan and Dionysus. I don't know why I would want to call to a bunch of ancestors I don't feel necessarily connected to, who may not be my ancestors anyways. Since my Mother left me in the second grade, I have almost no idea where the other side of my genetic code comes from. In other words, even if my Gramps comes from a Welsh background, that's only a tiny percentage of me.

From a theological perspective honoring my ancestors and inviting them to ritual makes even less sense. The spirits of my grandparents being around is understandable. My Grandmother has been dead for ten and a half years, my Grandfather for eight, that's a blink in the history of the world. If you believe in reincarnation, maybe they haven't been reincarnated yet, they are barely dead in the long-view of things. There presence in ritual from a theological perspective is completely logical, an ancestor from two thousand years ago is much less so.

If we are going to accept reincarnation as the death/afterlife/rebirth scenario in Modern Paganism, wouldn't the spirits of our ancestors be reincarnated by now? Who exactly are we calling on Samhain if that's the case? Do a few of our ancestors just drop out of the cycle of death and rebirth in case someone comes calling?

Reincarnation opens up a giant can of worms when it comes to honoring our ancestors. Let's say my genetic ancestors are Welsh, but in my last four past lives I've been an Ancient Greek, a Jewish Pharisee, an Italian Merchant, and a low level official in the Inca Empire, what connection do I have to Wales? Does a genetic heritage trump all of those past lives? It seems rather limiting that we'd only be reincarnated into a specific cultural group time and time again.

The idea of reincarnation changes the entire equation when it comes to honoring past ancestors, because those ancestors could have come from anywhere. Perhaps the cultures we feel closest to are a product of those past lives, and represent our true ancestors? Is our genetic make-up simply chance? I know, I'm spitting out more questions than anything else, but I don't have any answers, just thoughts to ponder. I guess you could make a Jungian type argument that our genetic heritage is imprinted with certain keys that connect us spiritually to our ancestors, but I've never felt that connection.

In 2012 I'll be invited to several Samhain rituals again where I'm invited to honor the ancestors. I'll again lament the loss of family and friends from my recent past, and then take comfort in their presence. My mind will wander and my spirit will hover, and I'll say a Goddess Bless to my genetic ancestors, and my spiritual ancestors, and then I'll return to focusing on the losses that have actually shaped my life.

My Ghost Story

2011-10-31T14:24:00.000-07:00

Not a picture of the ghost in this story.

As a boy I was fascinated with the paranormal, and while I've become far more skeptical as an adult, I still have an ongoing interest in UFO's, cryptids*, ESP, and ghosts. I've never encountered any of those things outside of the printed page, with the exception of ghosts. Yes, I've seen a ghost, and not only have I seen a ghost, I felt a ghost, which made the experience even more real.

In 1995 I lived in a giant house in Cape Girardeau Missouri. I'm not sure exactly how old the house was, but it was over 100 years, possibly closer to 150 (we were led to believe that it had been built before the Civil War). This house was monstrously big, and even had a carriage house out back. It had been a frat house at various points in its existence, and was probably the most striking and noticeable house in all of downtown Cape. I lived there with a plethora of roommates, so many of them I can't remember the exact numbers.

Shortly after we moved in we began to notice strange things happening. All of these things were benign, none of us were ever scared, but they were noticeable The most common of these anomalies were lights turning on and off for no particular reason, and this happened throughout the entire house. You could be lying in bed at four am in and all of sudden have your bedroom light turn on, all with your bedroom door closed and locked. Bathroom lights might suddenly go dark while you were in the shower, and that kind of stuff happened when there was no one else in the house, and with frequency.

Some of my roommates reported things being moved around, a set of keys left in the sitting room might end up in the kitchen. Living with ten people the key thing is not surprising, anyone could have moved them, the lights were a whole different phenomenon. I suppose they could be reasoned away by "old wiring," but we weren't buying that. All of us were convinced that we had a ghost in the house, though we weren't freaked out by it.

Southern Missouri in the summer time should probably be called "Southern Misery," due to the overwhelming heat and humidity. Cape Girardeau is a city built on a swamp next to the Mississippi River, to say that it's humid is like saying the ocean contains water. There are days there in August and July when it's impossible to fall down, the overwhelming amount of moisture in the air will keep you vertical. It's the only place I've ever lived where you can swim standing up on dry land.

On a sweltering July night, broke and bored, my roommates thought it would be fun to have a seance and attempt to talk to the ghost in our house. Since I was the resident Witch of the house (for a whole year at that point! An expert!) I was elected to conduct the seance. It wasn't the first seance I had ever lead, due to my fascination with paranormal and the occult I led a couple in high school, but it wasn't something I did all that often.

(One of the high school era seances I led did produce some results. That particular seance was held while on a church youth group trip, and occurred at a church in East Tennessee. Two of the sixteen kids at that seance claimed to have seen a dead relative that night, and all of us thought that things in the room shifted a little bit: words on posters were different in the morning, pictures on the wall looked different during our seance, etc. I didn't have any experiences that night, other than things looking different during the seance, but it was interesting that other people did.)

Before starting the seance in Cape, I told everyone that it would be done in a Wiccan style for protection. No one objected, so I called the quarters, cast a circle, and called the Goddess into our circle (I didn't really have much of a relationship with The God yet). With the preliminaries out of the way I had everyone hold hands around our dining room table, and began to call to the spirits of the dead.

While I was asking for the dead to attend us, I felt two things. The first was an abundance of energy near our front porch, it felt like an army of ghosts trying to break into hour house. The second thing was a light, curious, energy, hovering at the very edge of our circle. Taking a deep breath I said to that light energy, "Spirit who lives with us in this house, you are welcome to enter our circle."

When I said those words was when the creepiest thing happened, I felt a freezing cold crawl across my wrist, from the outside of the circle towards the center. I was holding hands with my friend Scott, and when I felt that icy touch, he looked right at me and said "Did you feel that?" Let me again state how hot it was that night, temps that day were near 100 degrees with a high amount of humidity. That night was cooler, but it was still hot and miserable, there were no cold north winds that evening. There were windows in that room, but I was on the other side of them, and if a breeze had caused that icy touch it would have come across the center of the circle towards me, this touch started at the non-window side of the room.

I've had a few "holy shit" moments, and that ghost-touch ranks as the biggest of them. You will never convince me that sensation I felt came from anything but a ghost. The fact that the person next to me also felt it, and in the same place, gives me even more faith in that conviction. I was touched by a ghost, period**, and the experience was far from over.

Shortly after we had felt the ghostly presence enter our circle I asked it for a sign so that those it hadn't touched could experience it. A moment later a blobby looking ball of energy began to coalesce in the center of the table. This energy was about the size of a basketball, and a ghostly, glowing white. After forming it began to move upwards, thinning as it did so. It was almost like watching a pitcher pour in reverse. As the stream of ghostly energy began its upward climb it began to dissipate at the peak until nothing was left.

Shortly afterwards, we began ending the seance and I dismissed all of the spirits. The ghostly energy I felt on my front porch began to wane, and I thanked the Lady, the quarters, and took down the circle. After that seance we never had a light suddenly turn on or off again. The skeptical will rationalize this experience in their own way, and that's fine, but I'm sure I saw (and felt) a ghost that night.

Happy Halloween!

Blessed Samhain!

*A cryptid is an "unknown animal" like a Bigfoot or the Loch Ness Monster.

** Not only was a touched by a ghost that night, I had created a circle that worked exactly as I constructed it to. Nothing entered that circle without my permission. If you are ever going to hold a seance, I recommend casting a circle first.

Halloween Traditions . . . . .

2011-10-26T11:54:00.000-07:00

(This was a hard piece to write. Most of the things discussed here require much more depth, I am mostly just giving you the bare bones of years of research. I almost foot-noted the thing, but since I don't get paid to blog, it became too daunting, and I didn't want to add four more hours of work to the project. If you like the piece, please link to it and share it! The greatest gift you can give to a blogger is that of sharing. Praise is great, but sharing is even better! Enjoy! -jason)

When I was a kid, Halloween was a happy time of year. My little brother and I dressed up in costumes and went trick or treating. Our elementary school even gave us a half day that was mostly just dedicated to a party. (We even got to wear our costumes!) It was one of the best days of the year, and while I knew that "being scared" was a part of the holiday, it was a minor one. It was mostly about candy and costumes, carving pumpkins, and spending time with friends.

In 2010 Americans spent nearly two billion dollars on Halloween, as a holiday cash cow it seems to be getting bigger every year, but in some ways it feels like it's getting smaller. Trick or treating is on the decline, and schools are facing pressure to cancel Halloween Parties during the schoolday. People are still dressing up and carving jack-o-lanterns, but Halloween has become less of a children's holiday than it once was. Some of the decline in trick or treating is probably due to the ridiculous and untrue stories about randomly poisoned treats and razors in apple blades, and some of it's probably due to the increased levels of isolation in America, but there is another factor.

As Halloween became more and more popular in the 1970's and 80's a backlash began, and as the Evangelical Right grew in power that backlash become louder. Certain Christians began to actively campaign against Halloween, proclaiming it a "pagan holiday," beginning a drive to remove it from the public schools (using the argument for the separation of church and state, which is hilarious when you think about it) and marginalize the holiday.

What's so weird about the Halloween backlash is that very little of Halloween is actually pagan, modern or ancient. It's true that the Celts celebrated the harvest on October 31st (Samhain), and that the day was considered a time when the "veil between the living and the dead was at its thinnest" (and even that is disputed-the Celts just didn't leave us a lot to go on) but other than that . . . . there's not much pagan (for an overview of how I use the word "pagan" click the link) in Halloween. Samhain was probably a time to honor ancestors, prepare for winter, and celebrate the harvest. That sounds a lot like most holidays from October-January, and you'll notice that most of our modern Halloween trappings are conspicuously absent. The Celts didn't dress up, go trick or treating, or even engage in any pranks, in short, Samhain shares a date with Halloween and perhaps a "feeling" but nothing else.

So where do most of our modern Halloween customs come from? It's a good question and a complicated one. The Modern Halloween celebration in the United States is a relatively new phenomenon, and represents a mix of cultures, capitalism, and accommodation. The Celts weren't the only ancient pagans to celebrate a holiday near October 31, the Romans celebrated Pomona on November 1st, as both a holiday and a goddess. Pomona was the goddess of the orchard, perhaps beginning Halloween's long association with the apple (thought the fact that it's harvested in October is most certainly the bigger factor). Pomona was a time of feasting and merry-making, much like the Roman Saturnalia.

In the 9th Century Pope Gregory IV declared November 1st as All Saint's Day (also called All Hallows or Hallowmas), a holiday dedicated to remembering all of the saints "known and unknown." In 1006 November 2 was proclaimed All Soul's Day, a day set aside for praying for all the souls lost in purgatory. Curiously, in Ireland, All Soul's Day had been celebrated on May 1 prior to 1006, so the placement of All Saint's and All Soul's doesn't entirely rest on the idea of propagating the Celtic Samhain from the pagans. I'm sure it played a small part, but it's important to remember that the Catholic Church represented all of Europe, and the majority of Europe was not populated by Celts, and not every culture had a holiday on October 31st. (Western Europe had also been Christianized centuries before the establishment of All Saint's Day and All Soul's Day.)

We tend to think that the "Holiday Season" (Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Year's Eve) as long today, but it was even longer in the Middle Ages. Hallowtide (Halloween through All Soul's) was the beginning of the Holiday Season-a season for masques, balls, rebel rousing, and begging. In some respects, Halloween became a repository for orphaned holiday traditions. A lot of the traditions we associate with Halloween actually got their start in other holidays, including Christmas, and later the American version of Thanksgiving.

The tradition of trick or treating grew from a variety of sources. For several centuries All Hallow's Eve was an evening spent begging. The less fortunate would ask the rich for money or food, a common practice before important Catholic holidays. The Christmas version of Wassaling (or Caroling) is an early version of "trick or treat," though minus the trick. It was considered better form to sing or dance for a reward. During the Renaissance the "treat" became more defined, and many areas settled on the "Soul Cake" an oat and molasses cookie.

The term "trick or treat" wasn't even in common usage until the 1940's, and its first use in a national publication was only in 1939 in an article for "American Home" magazine. The trick or treating written about in 1939 bears little resemblance to the modern day version. In 1939 the magazine writer was encouraging her readers to leave an open door on Halloween, and to invite children inside to have some treats in an attempt to prevent vandalism. Kids during the 1930's were already asking for treats, but usually at local businesses instead of residences. It was only in the post World War Two years that trick or treating turned into a national phenomenon, and that was done to quell the violence that had grown up around the holiday.

While it seems weird to think of Halloween as violent (scary yes, violent no) it was scarily violent in the United States from the post World War One era right up until World War Two. The tradition of violence and mayhem on Halloween arose from many sources. One of those sources was the rowdy celebration of Guy Fawke's Day (or Bonfire Night) where an effigy of the Catholic Fawkes was paraded through town (sometimes with an effigy of the Pope as well) and thrown on a bonfire. Revelers on Bonfire Night sometimes wore masks as well, hiding their identities as they engaged in the rowdy and destructive festival.

Halloween also became a time for drunkenness and role reversal. It became the one night of the year where it was "OK" for a child to get away with playing pranks on a parent or other adult. Eventually these pranks became more malicious, especially in the United States, where gangs of kids would wander major cities on Halloween causing nothing but trouble. Some of those kids were just soaping windows, but others were engaging in physical and petty vandalism, costing cities and home-owners thousands of dollars in property damage.

What inspired Halloween in the United States? Massive immigration from Scotland and Ireland. Halloween was popular in England, but had been mostly overshadowed by Bonfire Night. It was always seen as important in Scotland and (especially) Catholic Ireland, a country that wanted nothing to do with burning an effigy of Guy Fawkes. The earliest Halloween celebrations in the United States were cultural holidays, celebrating Scottish and Irish Culture. Early Halloween cards featured tartan and the words "Auld Lang Syne" in yet another example of how Holiday Traditions mixed and took awhile to settle into their now comfortable spots.

The word Halloween is of fairly recent vintage, first being used in the mid-1700's. The holiday might have become known as something else entirely if not for the work of Scottish poet Robert Burns (who also wrote "Auld Lang Syne") who wrote the poem "Halloween" in 1785. "Halloween" is difficult to understand today (having been written in Burns' native Scottish brogue) but it's a fascinating glimpse into the cultural celebration of Halloween in Scotland. For Burns, Halloween is a celebration of the harvest and a night for divination.

Despite what people want to find in Burns' "Halloween" the poem is more notable for the absence of the familiar. There is no trick or treating, no witches, ghouls, or ghosts, but there is a lot of divination. Wanting to know the future is a cultural universal, and divination is an art form found in every religion and in all sorts of local folk-customs. In the 18th Century Halloween was considered a good time of year to try and figure out who a young woman's future husband would be. (It wasn't the only time of year for this practice either, it was common at numerous other holidays, including Valentine's Day most obviously, but also Candlemass and May Day.) Nuts were thrown into fires, and their roasting and cracking sounds were interpreted for signs of future nuptials. Apples and mirrors were also used in divination rites. "Bobbing for Apples" originally began as a fortune-telling exercise and later just evolved into a party game. (Though less popular today, apples were also tied to strings and swung from ceilings.) Halloween was a popular time for ladies' parlor games in 19th Century Britain and the United States, many even saw the holiday as a "Woman's Holiday."

The use of the apple in Hallowtide divination practices should not be a surprise. Apples were especially abundant in October. When you think about it, most of the "natural elements" used to decorate around Halloween are simply what's around during that time of year. Gourds, apples, fallen leaves, straw, all common things in an agricultural setting. Even scarecrows are just another reflection of the agricultural cycle that was. If there's anything truly "pagan" about Halloween, it's probably the harvest associations. (Which makes me laugh when Christians replace Halloween with "Harvest Celebrations," because that's the most pagan of all Halloween traditions.)

Burns did mention fairies, but he failed to mention ghosts and other ghouls. (Many early Halloween postcards actually contain leprechauns!) While Burns didn't mention the scary as we think of it today (though fairies could be nasty business), it had always been a part of the holiday for many who celebrated Halloween. Despite the efforts to cast Dia de los Muertos (The Mexican Day of the Dead) as a pagan celebration, it has many precursors in Catholic Europe. All Soul's Day was used to honor fallen ancestors, perhaps due to the earlier associations on Samhain (or the association with Samhain and the dead could be a reverse projection). As Halloween was gaining traction in the United States Spiritualism was at its speak. Spiritualists taught that the living could talk with the dead, and it's been estimated that 20% of Americans were Spiritualists in the 19th Century. Ghosts weren't rare visitors in homes back then, they were frequent, and would remain so up until the 1920's. Halloween would have certainly been a great night for a seance!

As Halloween gained popularity in the early 20th Century, so did horror movies. Four of the biggest "stars" in the 1930's were Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, and the Wolf-Man. As costume parties became more common place, dressing up as a favorite Universal Monster was an easy decision. Monsters just naturally fit into late October as well. Dracula isn't all that scary during the summer, but in the fall . . . when you can still be outside even though the sun sets at 5:00 . . . . monsters are a natural fit. Fairy tale witches have been associated with Halloween since the late 19th Century, probably due to their overwhelming popularity in fairy tales. Think back to the "bad guys" in most storybooks back then, Dracula hadn't quite entered world consciousness. While Witches were common, it took "The Wizard of Oz" (1939) to standardize the look of the Halloween witch. Witches wore all sorts of colors pre-Wizard, but basically only black afterwards.

Surprisingly, one of the things not mentioned by Burns in his Halloween poem is the jack-o-lantern. While it's been suggested that Jack-o-Lantern is genuinely old, there are no written references to it until 1663 when it's referred to as "Jack with the Lantern." Old Jack with the Lantern was one of many fairy tale stories featuring the trickster figure "Jack." According to his Lantern tale, God wouldn't accept Jack into heaven, and Satan wouldn't accept him into hell, but Lucifer was nice enough to throw a burning ember of coal Jack's way, which Jack then kept in a hollowed out turnip. Jack was then cursed to wander the world with his glowing turnip until Judgement Day.

There might be some historical precedent for the turnip-o-lantern. Many scholars think it was used in Catholic Ireland to represent souls stuck in purgatory on All Soul's night. The turnip lantern could be used to honor those souls, or perhaps to guide them to a better place. When the Irish moved to North America they began replacing the hard to carve turnip with the easier to carve pumpkin and the modern Jack O Lantern was born. Instead of being an ancient symbol of pagandom, it's a relatively modern twist on a Catholic custom.

(Many Americans have inserted Jack-o-lanterns into the historical record before they even existed. Washington Irving's "Legend of Sleepy Hallow" is a great example of this. The Headless Horseman didn't throw a jack-o-lantern at poor Ichabod Crane, he only threw a pumpkin. Despite our modern day imaginings the story didn't even take place on Halloween! The Dutch didn't celebrate it, but it just fits so easily into our Halloween mythology doesn't it?)

One of the great thrills about Halloween is dressing up in costume, but this is (again) a rather modern development. There is some historical precedent for it though, remember how Hallowmas kicked off the Holiday Season? Well, the Holiday Season was a time for masquerade balls, which of course involved masks. Guy Fawkes day also featured masks, and holiday pranksters tended to hide their faces, either with cork or the occasional mask. Holidays through the Hallowmas to New Year's Cycle also featured days where unconventional behavior was rewarded. Early versions of all those holidays featured "Lords of Misrule" and the occasional cross dressing. Social norms were thrown out the window on holidays, and Lords sometimes played peasants, and men sometimes played women.

Halloween wasn't the only holiday to feature dress up either. For about fifty years the City of New York featured all kinds of costumed kids and adults on Thanksgiving (From about 1870-1932). People would dress up on Thanksgiving and then dance for handouts while in costume. Eventually (and partially because of the "Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade") the tradition was moved to Halloween. Costumed Halloween parties had been gaining in traction since the early 1900's, so the move was a natural one.

The tradition of dressing up as something sinister was a German one and can be traced to a version of the Walpurgis Night Celebration. Walpurgis is a holiday a lot like Halloween, full of tricks and pranks. The song "Night on Bald Mountain" is an interpretation of Walpurgis, a night when it was said that witches celebrated the coming of Spring, often with Satan. The German Walpurgis festival of Faschnacht featured people dressed up as witches and ghosts, this was absorbed into Halloween.

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By the early 1950's businesses began to see an opportunity to make big money with Halloween, and began to gather up the separate strands that made up the holiday and turn them into a whole. Parties were promoted for adults, and the practice of trick or treating was turned into a national custom. Due to the powers of TV, radio, and print, it began to feel like Halloween had always been a part of our lives. Add the human capacity for wanting to be scared, and everything fell neatly into place.

Halloween is a pagan holiday, and a Catholic one, but mostly it's a secular one. It represents our desire to celebrate the harvest at a seasonally appropriate time. It plays to the joys of being young and pretending to be something we are not by dressing up. Halloween fits nicely into our consumer culture, and allows us to play with that part of our psyche that likes to experience fear. Halloween is a blending of folk traditions and capitalism. Halloween doesn't endorse a particular religious view, it speaks to what's best about us as people; it allows us to build something new while paying respect to our past.

Bibliography:

Death Takes a Holiday by David J. Skal Bloomsbury Publishing; 2002.

Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night by Nicholas Rogers Oxford University Press; 2002.

The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain by Ronald Hutton Oxford University Press; 2001

Drawing Down the Moon (and other things)

2011-10-24T15:23:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure I'll ever understand the rationale behind programming at Pagan Festivals(1). Over the weekend I got a list of workshops approved for Convocation in February. I already knew I was presenting at "Con" several months ago, but I never know what they want me to present until later. I tend to give them a list of workshops and then they pick three or four, perhaps a ritual too. I think this year I gave them a list of six workshops, and they took three of them.

For the last two years I've been working on a presentation called "Vampires Don't Sparkle: A True History of Vampires" and for the past two years I've submitted it to Convocation. I've always thought this would be a good workshop to do at Con (probably because Michelle Belanger presents there and always draws a big crowd), but it's never been accepted. Lecturing on the history of vampires is the kind of workshop I like presenting, because I love rambling on about history, and the topic lends its self to the occasional joke.

I've always believed (but have no proof) that the reason for "Vampires" rejection was because some people might think that I'd use the opportunity to belittle the subject matter. Would I tell jokes? Certainly. Do I think the idea of people calling themselves vampires is a little silly? Perhaps, but it's no more absurd than worshipping Jim Morrison as Dionysus. The truth is, the literary evolution of the vampire is pretty fascinating, especially how vampires have evolved from boogeyman to sympathetic anti-hero. As a kid I was also obsessed with monster movies, and spent a lot of time reading about vampires and werewolves, and how their myths developed.

As a presenter and writer I like to be heard and I like to be read(2). If I'm going to take the time to create a workshop I want a lot of people to listen to it, so I try to come up with topics that will appeal to a broad spectrum of people. That's a challenge for me, because my workshops are generally cerebral, and are often about histories, and there are a lot of people who would rather go to workshops about magic, and various other "how to" type presentations. I get that I'm not everyone's cup of tea (or cider), so the vampire workshop was an attempt to branch out to the "Twilight" crowd, and a different (and perhaps bigger) audience.

I'm sure there are a lot of you out there thinking, "Jason, the reason everyone passes on your vampire workshop is not because of your odd sense of humor, but because it has nothing to do with Paganism." You have a very valid point, however Convocation accepted this workshop:

Bigfoot is Real!

Yes, this isn’t a joke, Bigfoot, the legendary Sasquatch, might actually be more than just a myth. Despite what the scientific establishment has told you, there is a lot of credible evidence pointing towards the existence of a large ape in North America. This workshop looks at the very real evidence-physical and video-that suggests Bigfoot is no fairy tale. You’ll enter a skeptic and leave a believer!(3)

So obviously, they accept non-Pagan workshops. I'm not picking on Convocation here, Con is a wonderful festival, and they've always treated me very (very) well. Hell, I'm flying back to Michigan in February just to go to it, that kind of says it all. It's also just a few days after Pantheacon, another great big Pagan festival that I'll be at (though that one is not definite yet), so I've committed to running myself ragged for a solid week, obviously I love doing this stuff, but that doesn't mean I always understand everything involved behind the scenes.

I will admit that the prospect of talking about Sasquatch has me giddy with anticipation. I can't imagine lots of people showing up for it, but I'm excited none the less. I've been interested in monsters (and yes that includes vampires) since the second grade, back when I thought the Loch Ness Monster was possibly real, and most obviously a plesiosaur. While my belief in Nessie has waned over the years, my desire to explore the strange, the unexplained, and the mysterious never has. That's probably why Modern Paganism appeals to me, it does explore the strange, unexplained, and mysterious. Modern Wicca offers a unique insight into deity absent from the rest of Western Religion, and getting closer to life's big mysteries is a continuing thread in my life.

When most of us think about Modern Wiccan Ritual, we tend to think about calling quarters, casting, a circle, and inviting deity into the circle. Those are all magickal things in their own right, but to me the most incredible part of ritual is Drawing Down the Moon. How many other faiths let you talk to deity? There's something incredibly powerful about the idea of being in a room with the Divine, and not just feeling the presence of the divine, but being able to talk to it, to interact with it.

For the uninitiated Drawing Down the Moon is the process of directly calling deity into a mortal vessel. When a High Priestess (or Priest) draws down the moon she literally draws the Goddess inside of her. Once the Goddess is there, the Priestess is absent, and the Goddess speaks through her Daughter and interacts with those around Her. Think about that, it's truly a "holy shit" moment, a moment that's often lacking from Modern Ritual, Pagan or otherwise.

While Drawing Down the Moon is practically the most awesome think I can conceive of, it's often absent from a lot of Modern Pagan Ritual. There are certainly groups who still make it a central part of their rites, but that seems more like the exception these days. There are a lot of reasons for this. Drawing Down the Moon is hard work, a lot of people aren't ready to do it, and it's not something you generally see at (open) large rituals. It's also such an overwhelming experience for everyone involved (Priestess and circle-mates) that it's generally not a good idea to do in certain (most) circumstances. It's something, by its very nature, that requires well trained clergy.

I had my first experience with Drawing Down the Moon thirteen years ago (?) and it was a real life-changing experience. There were a few things that stand out about it to me. The first were the eyes of my High Priestess/The Lady; they were alien, penetrating, powerful, and nearly drove me to tears. They weren't the eyes of the person/High Priestess who entered the circle with me. The second thing was that I swear She glowed, that there was an artificial light coming up through her skin, making her appear kind of like a ghost in a mostly dark room. Inside of myself I felt like a fraud for ever believing, even if just for a second, that the Goddess wasn't real, and I realized that this was the most terrifying and exhilarating thing I'd ever witnessed in my life.

A year later I drew down the God, and did so quite unintentionally. I was High Priesting my second ever Morrison Ritual (yes, I believe absurd things), and as it went along I was rather sure I was nailing it, it just felt right. Of course I'd been working on getting in touch with Dionysus and Jim Morrison for the better part of two weeks: reading nothing but Morrison poetry and Doors' biographies, eating steak (I avoid red meat as a rule), listening to copious amounts of The Doors, and consuming a healthy amount of wine. I had done my research, but I wasn't expecting a transcendent experience.

Somewhere in the middle of that ritual I lost myself. I was told later about the girls I kissed and the jokes I told, and I wish to high hell I could get those memories back, but apparently Dionysus decided he needed some of those. While I was away I remember being warm, happy, and content; it was pleasurable, but not in an orgiastic sort of way, more in that "wrapped up under a warm blanket on an autumn night" kind of way. The skeptics out there have always told me that I was drunk during my moments (twenty minutes or so) of Dionysian Possession, and I'd be lying if I said I had nothing to drink that night, but the amount I consumed was rather minuscule, at least by my standards. So it couldn't have been just that.

Since those two incidents I've drawn down Dionysus on multiple occasions, and have also drawn down Pan a small number of times. I've also witnessed several High Priestesses Draw Down the Lady. Even though I've seen drawing down done a number of times (and been a part of it too), it's still a rare thing. It's not a part of every ritual, and even when it is, it may or may not work (you can't tell deity what to do, deity does what it will). It's one of those moments I'm constantly looking for though, as I attempt to explore those mysterious, unexplained, and strange corners of spirituality, religion, and Modern Paganism specifically.

That curiosity has led me to not just witnessing and participating in Drawing Down the Moon, it has led me to a deeper exploration of the process. It's made me wonder what goes on when people draw down deity, where the idea that you can do something like that originated from, and the origin of the words used in the more common drawing down rites. I decided to turn all of that wondering into a workshop, and while I might be talking about Sasquatch in February, I'm also going to be talking about Drawing Down the Moon:

Drawing Down the Moon: The Mechanics of Invoking Deity

The ritual of "Drawing Down the Moon" has become one of the most important and essential parts of Modern Wicca, but how did the concept and ritual develop, and what is really going on when you "draw down" deity? Mankey explores the history of the Drawing Down ceremony, focusing on its alleged origins in Ancient Greece and how the ceremony has developed in modern times. The differences between invoking and evoking will also be discussed, and what types of energy are associated with each. This workshop also provides information for performing your own "drawing down" ceremonies. One of the major differences between Modern Paganism and other living religions is how close we (Pagans) get to our deities, "drawing down" is the most powerful way to celebrate that closeness.

I haven't been so excited about a workshop in several years, so I'm glad (and relieved) that Convocation chose to accept it. (And if you are reading this and not heading to Michigan in February, it's one I hope to do in a lot of places, sit tight, and it'll be the focus of a few blog posts in the coming months.) My Pagan life is at its most perfect when I can write and talk about the things that excite me, and also experience them in ritual.

1 In a similar vein, I'll never understand why some blog posts are more popular than others. Last week's Jesus Ween post was linked to a number of times and became my most read blog post ever. Truthfully, I thought it was a little weak, but thanks for reading.

2 I love to be read, so if you enjoy a particular blog post, please link to it and share it. It's not all difficult to do, and I'd really appreciate it.

3 Yes, I do (mostly) believe in Bigfoot. The idea that there is an eight foot ape in the Pacific Northwest is rather unbelievable, but there's enough evidence out there that the issue should at least be looked into. Am I believer, yes, could you convince me Bigfoot isn't real? Of course.

Defining the word (or words) "pagan"

2011-10-20T15:26:00.000-07:00

While the comments section on DPT is usually pretty quiet, I do get a lot of comments about my blog on Facebook.* Most of those comments are about content too, not the abundance of grammatical errors and misspellings that plague my posts. Monday's "Jesus Ween" entry garnered quite a few comments, and I found one of them extremely interesting. My friend Cm Barons** made an observation about the following paragraph:

"Yes Halloween is a creepy time of year, death is just in the air. It's hard to escape dying plants, hibernating animals, frosty nights, falling leaves, and yes the ancients used to slaughter a lot of animals around November 1st. All of those trappings are natural things, and they can't be escaped. They all fit nicely into a cosmological Pagan worldview, but they are a part of everyone's experience, they aren't necessarily Pagan things.***"

He found that last sentence slightly under-thought, and made the argument that paganism is "a popular (democratic) experience?" and went on to say that "Halloween is the mundane celebration preliminary to All Saints Day/All Souls Day- in the same vein as Mardi Gras precedes the austerity of Lent. Both Halloween and Mardi Gras embody worldly, human festivity compared to the solemnity mandated by the church. I see 'pagan' with a much wider brush stroke." Of course this got me to thinking about how exactly to define the word "pagan" and the word "Pagan."

When I use the word Pagan (capitol P) I'm using it to signify one specific thing: an ambiguous but somewhat unified theory of Western Religious thought. In my mind Modern (or Contemporary or Neo) Pagans generally share three or four characteristics. Some Contemporary Pagans**** practice all of these things I'm going to list, some just one or two, but all are pretty recognizable as facets of today's Paganism.

Nature Religion Pagans revere nature. Pagan holidays aren't birthdays or death-days, they are natural times of year determined by the annual "Turn of the Wheel" (changing of the seasons). While the level of "revering nature" varies from Pagan to Pagan; some worship nature while others simply honor yearly cycles, but it's pretty universal.

Polytheism Calling all Pagans polytheists is rather limited, some are duotheists, and if you believe that "all gods are one god" some people might call you a monotheist, I even know a few atheist Pagans. What makes Paganism unique, and why I use the term polytheist, is that Pagandom will generally support your experience with the gds. If you worship Thor and I worship Pan, we aren't necessarily adversaries. Your religious experience is just as valid as mine. We may not worship the same gods, and we may have different concepts of what deity is, but as a community we don't invalidate someone else's experience as a result. Contrast this with most monotheistic religions where a parishioner acknowledging a moment with deity results in puzzled stares, exile from the group, or a trip to the insane asylum.

The Feminine Principle Most Pagans revere a Goddess, or are open to the idea that deity is not exclusively male. Pagan Goddesses are equal to male deities, not subservient or asexual entities like the Catholic Virgin Mary. In addition to honoring the Divine Feminine, Pagan Circles generally see equality among the sexes. Women can lead rituals (and in many traditions are actually above men) and participate as equals (or superiors) in 99.9% of all "Pagan" traditions.

Western Religious Tradition Just five years ago I wouldn't have added this fourth caveat, but these days I feel it's necessary. The majority of the stuff that makes up Modern Pagan Religious practice comes from Western Sources. Most of us tend to worship European and Middle Eastern deities, and the nuts and bolts of ceremony are also generally European. Many Modern Pagans attempt to recreate (or at least re-imagine) Ancient Western Paganisms, whether they are Greek, Roman, Celtic, Egyptian, or Norse. In addition there are several groups out there who would prefer not to be under our umbrella. Labeling Native American Traditions "Pagan" is a recipe for trouble, the same goes with Hindu traditions. That doesn't mean Modern Pagans ignore ideas, beliefs, and deity from outside of Western Culture, it just means that those impulses are generally filtered through a Western prism. Lots of Pagans I know worship Eastern Gods, and use Native American Ritual Techniques, but if they wanted to focus exclusively on those things they would join a Shinto Temple or petition the Lakota tribe for membership. Paganism is highly adaptable and it's easy to add things to it, but those things are usually adapted for Contemporary Pagan use.

Those four things are generally found in most Western Pagan Traditions, or "Pagan Religions" as I think of them. The word "pagan" is far more complicated, and can be interpreted several different ways. For a long time the most common definition of the word pagan read something like this "anyone who is not a Christian, Muslim, or Jew." This definition is still used by a lot of people, and when those people stumble upon a faith outside of the Abrahamic Tradition they label it "pagan" by default. This definition nearly matches the use of the word pagan in some anthropological circles. Many anthropologists will label native religions as pagan, even if that religious tradition in Africa has nothing in common with one in the Philippines.

In my own writing I often use the word pagan to refer to ancient pagan religions of Europe and the Middle East. Since most of those religions are unique unto themselves, I sometimes call them ancient paganisms. While it's true that both the Ancient Greeks and the Vikings worshipped a multitude of gods, the similarities mostly stop there. Those paganisms are also filtered through distinct cultural perspectives. As a Modern Hellenic Re-constructionist I can relate to today's Asatru because we come from the same cultural background and share a common language. Not the case two thousand years ago.

The original meaning of the word pagan means "country dweller," and comes from the Latin word "paganus." Whether subconsciously or as a result of the word pagan's origins, a lot of people refer to old or rustic practices as pagan. I think my friend Cm was referring to something like this. There's nothing linking the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance explicitly to any ancient pagan religious practice, and many of the people who participate in it are devout Christians, but it's the type of think that often gets labeled as pagan regardless. Morrison Dancing lacks a true pagan religious pedigree, but it's the kind of folk custom that people call pagan anyways. Lots of rustic traditions get labeled as pagan even when they aren't, probably because they feel pagan.

There's a certain romance to the countryside, and people like to imagine it as an eternal, unchanging place. That means any sort of ritual or practice in it has to come from pre-Christian sources, even if that's not actually the case. I think as human beings we are naturally attracted to certain types of rituals and to celebrating the change of the seasons. These rituals and acknowledgments do not necessarily have to be religious, but they are the type of thing people like to label as pagan. Regardless of your religion, if you live in a rural area it's likely that you are going to do something to try and ensure a good harvest. Even if your fertility ritual includes a statue of a saint or a Virgin Mary, people are often going to label it pagan.

Seasonal Celebrations are also thought of as pagan by many. There are good reasons for this, the first holidays might have very well been seasonal celebrations, and therefore pagan ones. Seasonal celebrations also touch on the changing of the seasons, a frequent motif in Western pagan religions. That's why walking into a craft store in the fall feels so pagan to many of us. Decorating with leaves, pumpkins, and other assorted gourds is not necessarily religious (a wreath made of leaves on the door does not make one a Pagan), but it just feels like it could be. "Her house was decorated in a very pagan way," because it was covered with signs of autumn.

Pagan is often used in a derogatory way to express displeasure with a person's morality. If you are a swinger, or in a polyamorous relationship , someone might call you a pagan even if you are a practicing Baptist. For some, paganism is synonymous with hedonism, probably because our pagan ancestors were seen as hedonists, and it's not hard to picture crazy orgies held in honor of Dionysus and Aphrodite either. Modern Paganism is a sexually charged religion, but that doesn't mean everyone who engages in it is polyamorous and going to "great golden copulations," though I'd be down with that if that were the case.

Rituals or celebrations that are high energy, or perhaps full of happy drinking are sometimes called pagan. One of the most influential parties in literature on my psyche is the Christmas Party hosted by Old Fezziwig in Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol." Fezziwig's party doesn't really have a religious component, but it features dancing, drinking, flirting (perhaps more?), singing, and general merriment. It's how I've always wanted my own Yule Ritual or Party to feel and look. It's not pagan in the sense that most of us use the word, but it's the type of celebration that feels pagan. This is the type of "pagan" my friend was writing about when he wrote "Both Halloween and Mardi Gras embody worldly, human festivity compared to the solemnity mandated by the church." So in that sense, any celebration of joy could be looked at as pagan.

Bigots like Janet Mefford often link homosexuality to paganism, in attempt to demonize the both of them. To some Christians homosexual relations are "pagan" because they go against the teachings of Yahweh. If close minded people want to call every gay person they meet a pagan I'd be happy to have the whole LGBT Community as a part of our tribe, but that's probably not fair to my gay Christian, Jewish, and Muslim friends.

So what is going on exactly when we label something or someone P/pagan? We could be talking about an umbrella religious term, or it could signify something sexual, old, seasonal, joyous, or rustic. I kind of like all of these definitions myself, but I try to be careful with my writing and refrain from labeling something Pagan when it's only pagan. Sure my experiences as a Pagan contain all of those pagan elements, they are sexual, seasonal, joyous, antiquated, and rustic, I hope yours are too.

*If you are just a reader and not a Facebook friend and want to read those comments you can add me on Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/jmankey is the profile.

**A writer as well, he has a book out there somewhere if you are interested. For the record, it's pretty good.

***Really weird to be quoting myself.

****While most of the community probably uses Neo-Pagan, I like to use the term Contemporary Pagan. Neo-Pagan means "New" Pagans, since we are a few generations in now, it doesn't seem appropriate anymore. In academic circles the term "Contemporary Pagan" is gaining a lot of traction, but do as you will.