Adversarial Path

May I draw your notice to the link on the right for this extremely interesting Yahoo group, aimed as discussing the Left Hand Path and aspects of Satanic and Luciferian Witchcraft, amongst other things. New territory for me, and the group leaders, Alexander and Morgana Valdys, are moderating some involved and erudite discussion.

Musings on Prop 8

California has voted to ban the provision of LGBT marriage, 52 to 48 percent, with Florida and Arizona passing similar propositions. It seems that the Evangelical Right, among other powerful pressure groups, has still enough sway to dominate. In Arkansas, singles, unmarried couples and LGBT couples were banned from adopting children.

If we relate these political facts to Brian at House of Inanna’s recent post about the dominance of the patriarchy over our sexuality, things begin to look quite grim for the free-thinkers out there. And given my recent rantings on the subject of encroachment by the Evangelical right even on our assumed freedom of speech over here on WordPress, I think there’s a larger problem extant; ignoring them and waiting for them to go away might not cut the mustard.

I feel the need to maintain a moderate stance and measured tone – hectoring isn’t going to get any of us anywhere. And perhaps unusually among my pagan brethren, I am all for interfaith discussion. I want that dialogue. I want any attempt at understanding and shared experience to be fully undertaken and experienced by all sides. It may not be useful in the short term, or even very pleasant – it may not be wanted or welcomed. I liked this post by mistyg over at Riverwood Wanderings, which shows willing to connect and to talk… this is what’s needed.

However, there’s no enlightenment in maintaining a rigid position in isolation. One of my interlocutors over the Samhain period accused me of being secretly attracted to Christianity and therefore afraid to hear any more about it in case I somehow got converted without meaning to! I was able to tell her that I had previously been Christian and had chosen to ‘turn my face away’, which is how they term it; a measured decision taken in a reasonable understanding of the subject matter.

It’s a pretty sad day when people of faith, whatever their stripe, are chucking vituperation at each other over the Net; it’s the same prickly and distrusting attitude that, when mixed with a dollop of absolute power and a military machine gets you ‘Holy’ wars and religious genocide.

Prop 8 is a sad day for the West – if we can’t deal with equality on something as fundamental to all of us as sexual enjoyment, if we can’t give it legal protection, then we haven’t really got a hope with religion. Faith and spiritual matters polarise more than sex, if this is possible; the vast majority have some sort of sex, but only a small majority have faith. So the Do’s and Don’ts collide, and then all the Do’s collide with each other as some Do more than others, differently to others…. a proper tangle. 

The way the legislation was framed, by the way, didn’t ban LGBT marriage; it sought to protect heterosexual marriage. Are we that scared that ‘our’ rights are going to be undermined? Aren’t they people too? Don’t LGBT citizens, taxpayers and responsible adults deserve the gravitas of a legally binding union? Simplistic questions, but with all the policial manoeuvring, they easily get lost. These are the questions that matter to me here, protecting my corner of my world in which I hold my faith and my sexuality.

It appears nobody is immune!

The usually calm and measured tones of Jason Pitzl-Waters were somewhat disturbed yesterday – and I don’t blame him. The reason? Make Me a Christian.

Channel 4, home of the sober documentary and measured social debate have really thrown us a curve-ball with this one. It’s an interesting premise, and one that might work well as a live debate, but as a TV show? Come on. The preacher is a motormouth who is rabidly convinced his point of view is the correct one – essential if one is to be an evangeliser of any stripe. And the marks, *excuse me*, contestants? Check out the resumes here.

When you look at the exploitative nature of reality (reality?) TV, you have to laugh, but there are a hundred people lined up behind you who think it is a valid form of social commentary. And really, from a sick and twisted perspective, I suppose it is. However you cut it, the net result can only be to do the religious and social perspectives espoused by the participants a disservice.

Of course, there’s got to be a witch in there somewhere. This one is a lapdancer with a shoe fetish. Glad to see they managed to get someone who’s properly representative onto the bus!!

When I was younger and I railed against stuff like this, I used to get old-fashioned looks and a reminder that it took all sorts to make a world. Now I feel like a dyspeptic old fart, but I’m still irritated. Ignore it and it’ll go away? The problem is, it won’t.

The ‘Benign Craft’

Being driven back from a family gathering in the north this week, I happened to be flicking through Times2 and found a quietly extraordinary article by Ken Russell, which can be found here. I had to read it twice because it didn’t hit any of the usual sensational stereotypes for articles of this sort – and indeed it’s caused so little in the way of waves that I haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere else.

The article has a number of the usual inconsistencies – the male witch is a ‘warlock’, apparently (but from a Pagan-Germanic lineage, which might be a good enough reason); sundry comments about Aleister Crowley; the ‘tens of thousands’ of witches burned across Europe, yada yada; and the news that there are four elements (what happened to spirit?) – but the couple that Russell contacts for his information don’t seem to have given him the clearest picture to work with. What’s ‘grey magic’? There’s a point where they claim ‘Black’ magic rebounds on the user sevenfold, and then another point where the expressed aim is to ‘…integrate the mundane with the evolutionary thrust, not to favour one at the expense of the other,’ at which, they lost me completely.

This slight difficulty aside, I liked the article. It was measured, stressed the use of magic as a unifying and assisting force for good; Ken Russell professed himself unfazed by the proximity of packs of witches and sincerely interested in their practice. He stresses the humanitarian and caring professions the correspondents are engaged in, and that they’re grounded, intelligent people. They seem very unaffected, very earthy, very low key. Their comment ‘…the forest, the time of the year and the Moon are our church’ resonated with me.

From this article, I drew a number of heartening conclusions. First, there are interviewers who can take a story like this, make it interesting, enlightening and readable to the layperson, without sensationalism. Second, there appear to be pagans out there who aren’t trying to get into the news for all the wrong reasons; the so-called ‘media suicide’ that so many interest groups fall foul of.

Perhaps there’s beginning to be room for a sensible, low-key and measured discussion of the facts surrounding modern paganism. Who knows, perhaps we’ll even get some sensible TV coverage at some point – but for this, pardon me readers, I’m not holding my breath!

Ludlow Esoteric Fair 2008

What a wonderful day we’ve had. S, M, K and M and me! A day of good food and good laughter; the best kind, right from the gut and long, loud and full of feeling. Loads of presents, loads of thoughts, loads of ideas, fresh air and sunshine.

Until 4pm this afternoon, I was under the distinct impression that the company was a better reason for coming than the reason we actually convened at the Fair – the talks. As it turned out, the company WAS better – but the talks livened up considerably!

 ‘The Travels of John Dee’ wasn’t riveting and we missed Julia Phillips’s talk on Madeline Montalban as we had to keep going out to move our cars. Ludlow has instigated a ludicrous 4 hour rule on parking for some reason; a real irritation!

Then Ken Rees stood up and entertained and interested us on The Regency. Not a great deal is known about this shadowy group; see Seshat’s Voice for a really good overview of the topic.

I thoroughly enjoyed his talk; he gave an historical overview and some of the local colour. From the outset, he was careful to stress his level of involvement; he was never in the ‘inner circle’, he was explicitly an academic, he took students with him to rituals, took casenotes afterward, and he was making educated guesses on some of his points – but he said as much. During his talk, three people in the row ahead of us spent a lot of time tutting, hissing, laughing and muttering to each other. I was minded to collar one of them after the presentation and ask them what their problem was, but it turned out I didn’t need to. During the question and answer session, the gentleman of the three was called upon, and he proceeded to denounce Ken Rees as a liar and a poor scholar, accusing him of fudging his information and not correctly referencing his sources, implicating the organiser of the show for revealing ‘secret’ information on the whereabouts of Ron White and George Winter’s graves, and ending by saying that his own book (due out in 2 years’ time apparently) would give all the ‘real’ information and knowledge that Rees’s lacked. Rees replied courteously but without giving ground.

Then, one of the ladies of the party stood up and said she was very disappointed in the pack of lies Rees had come out with, and that she had expected better from him.

I, of course, needed to make my point here; this man was doing his best to give an opinion, an overview, nothing more. So I said that I had no connection to the argument but had come to the talk to learn more. I had enjoyed the talk, and felt it was well presented, but that if there was an argument to be had, it should be conducted in a grown-up manner and via academic means (for some reason the Ludlow Three seemed to think I was making a point in their favour, as they all started nodding vigorously. I can assure them, I was not).

Another woman added that personal attacks were completely inappropriate for a forum like a public lecture. The final bolt was thrown when a chap with a PhD piped up and supported Rees on his referencing; he correctly stated that, if the subjects had not given permission, it was unethical and against Research Council rules to unmask them.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen such an ill-tempered and discourteous treatment of a speaker in a public debate. Those three people, whoever they were or thought they were, attempted a deliberate sabotage. I admire Ken Rees for standing up and giving his talk, knowing full well that people who opposed him were in the audience and likely to cause trouble. And I told him as much.

If paganism is ever to rise above the petty infighting, personality cults and knowledge-hoarding behaviour seen in the worst of the world’s despotic regimes, it’s going to have to follow people like Rees and Ronald Hutton, Julia Phillips and others and engage in academic and balanced debate. In a very real way, it doesn’t matter who’s right; no-one will remain right for ever. The purpose of academic research and publication is gradual and sometimes cataclysmic paradigmatic change. No one person has all the answers. Answers will change over time, and with changes in research method. Also, bringing this sort of squabble to a public meeting is just plain bloody rude. 

I believe it had the opposite effect to that intended by the ringleaders; loads of people signed up for Rees’s online study group on the Regency, and the feeling in the hall supported him.

 

 

Crafty… in the Right Way – Update

My check about the Pagan blogsphere this morning brings up a nice little coda to the above discussion, which I got into last week.

New British legislation will now require those charging for esoteric services such as spiritual healing, mediumship, charms, and so forth to provide disclaimers for their work if they receive payment. They will also have the burden of proof laid upon them if they are legally challenged and accused of fraud – if, for example, their spells don’t ‘work’.

There’s clearly two issues here; people are worried that their livelihoods might be taken away from them, and see it as yet another manifestation of the Nanny State (as the ruling has actually come across from the EU), but in my heart it looks like the Universe might be trying to tell these people something.

The other question is one of religion – we don’t ask the Christians to prove that Christ will save their souls, even though they go to Church and pay the company of the Church of England reasonable sums per year for upkeep on the buildings and so forth. We don’t ask Catholics to prove that wine and bread really do turn into flesh and blood during the Communion. So where’s the line? Many pagans believe their talents in this regard to be as a result of their spiritual faith – and so how does one regulate the results?

I expect there to be a healthy and lively debate on this; good. Perhaps it will serve to further the understanding of Paganism in general, and witchcraft in particular, with the masses. Perhaps that’s overly optimistic, but it’s sunny outside and I’m feeling upbeat! 🙂

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Here we go – sane and reasoned commentary on this matter from Matthew Parris. I agree.

 

My present

Today…. was the first day of Spring.

Blue skies, calm clouds, light breeze, warmth. I saw a butterfly. I saw nesting birds. I saw buds and flowers where none had been yesterday.

Thank you, thank you my Goddess.

Getting Technical

Wayhey!! I’ve been bought an early birthday present – a domain name and site builder! Now, I’m a Luddite and technically incompetent to a high degree so it won’t be a very good-looking site – but I’m building it at the moment and it should be up soon. There’ll be a little blog and some information pages, an edited BoS and other information. Nothing fancy. Could be fun though!

At the moment I’ve got it set to divert here. Knowing me it’ll take me months to stop faffing with the site and send it live…. but it’s a really enjoyable process – what a great present!

Batty!

The Times today tells us that a Florida company, Spiritual Brands, has compounded the heinous crime of marketing another 10 brands of mineral water, by putting Jesus on the label. If only I were joking. Apparently, the customers are responding to knowing that God is with them when they buy these drinks. If He is, He’s saying ‘No, don’t do it!! mineral water is an ecological disaster!!’ Kinda like putting devotional messages on a crop sprayer.

This is what I was talking about on WW yesterday; Christianity in its broadest brushstrokes is completely divorced from the planet which supports it, which gave it a chance of living. I know many ecologically minded Christians; one place they didn’t learn to be a tree hugger was in church. More’s the pity.