(Pagan) News of Note

April 3, 2009 By Jason Pitzl-Waters 20 Comments

My semi-regular round-up of articles, essays, and opinions of note for discerning Pagans and Heathens.

The Marin Independent Journal reports that Jo Carson’s documentary film “Dancing With Gaia” has finally been completed and will be shown at the Fairfax Film Festival.

“An exploration of earth-based spirituality shot at sacred sites around the world, including Marin, the film will be shown for the first time at 2 p.m. April 5, a highlight of the 10th annual Fairfax Film Festival. A former Lucasfilm camera operator now working as nurse at Marin General Hospital, Carson traveled throughout Europe, the Mediterranean and the United States, filming the sacred sites of ancient earth-centered religions. She interviewed 15 visionaries along the way.It’s taken 20 years, but Jo Carson’s documentary, “Dancing with Gaia,” is at long last finished and ready for its world premiere.”

The film was inspired by Feraferia co-founder Fred Adams (who is also featured in the film), and features interviews with Pagan luminaries like Monica Sjoo, Cerridwen Fallingstar, and Kathy Jones. For those who can’t make it to a film festival showing, Carson says that there will be a DVD release out soon. Documentaries featuring Pagans are rare enough that I very much look forward to seeing this.

Did any of you catch the 200th episode of “CSI” last night? If so you were treated to an exorcist-haunted take (thanks to direction by William Friedkin) on Santeria (or was it Voodoo, the show is a bit hazy on that front) that manages to imply that the loa/orisha Ogun is some sort of evil demon (complete with subliminal Pazuzu-esque demon-head flashes) and paints adherents to Afro-Caribbean religions as wholly alien and apart from “normal” life.

“There was a piece of white leather in her hand with traces of powdered Datura on it, which was also in Silvia’s system. It’s a powerful hallucinogen that is reportedly used in Santeria voodoo rituals to speak with the dead. Brass and Nick check out local Datura dealers and come across some voodoo chanting with bongos and shrieking and possibly a couple seizures. There is some voodoo priest guy hauled in for questioning, but nothing ever comes of it. Weird  … When brought in, [the killer] still claims his innocence. Until his voice gets low and deep and he blames it on a Voodoo God. Ray twists his arm up, then leaves the room and punches a wall …”

Really awful. Some truly exploitative stuff here. Not a single attempt to paint the killers actions as completely outside the norm for African diasporic faiths, or that “Ogun” is simply a manifestation of his mental illness. In fact, there isn’t really any exposition concerning Santeria at all. It all exists as a prop for Ray Langston (Laurence Fishburne) to get upset and punch things.

I haven’t been keeping track, so I’m not sure when this happened, but Pagan author A.J. Drew has closed down his web sites, started a goat farm, and is selling his most popular Internet addresses for 10,000 dollars.

There have been and still are plans to incorporate PaganNation.com into community software A.J. Drew began several years. However, maintaining this site is beyond our capabilities at this time, the software is not yet ready for release, and the obligations generated when his business was destroyed and the convention failed are pressing. He would very much like to conclude his former life without those obligations. In an effort to meet those obligations: PaganNation.com, WitchesBall.com, and TheRealWitchesBall.com Are for sale as a package: $10,000.00. Should a sale not take place prior to the launch of our software, PaganNation.com will return in a much improved format.

I’m not sure who would be willing to pay that much for 3 domain names (nor do they provide contact information for interested buyers), but who knows? Perhaps there is someone out there with deep pockets who covets “TheRealWitchesBall.com”, I couldn’t say. Aimee Drew (A.J.’s wife) also briefly explains her husband’s 2006 electrocution accident, and the subsequent deterioration of their previous life. It isn’t known if this is a permanent retirement from active participation with the larger Pagan community, or simply a step back to regroup, whatever the situation I wish them peace.

Author and “Techgnostic” Erik Davis shares his introduction to the new book “Mushroom Magick: A Visionary Field Guide” where he ponders the enduring myth of “shrooms” as a precursor to religion.

“…appearances can deceive. Despite the fact that Psilocybe spores carpet-bombed wide swaths of our planet millennia ago, there is little hard evidence for psychedelic mushroom use in traditional societies—even among groups that consume other mind-expanding plants and brews. Along with Mesoamerica, where royal weddings were capped with mushroom-fueled dance parties, the only other bulls-eye is Siberia, where shamans (and ordinary folks) consumed Amanita muscaria, the non-psilocybin-containing fungus whose psychoactive alkaloids were also passed around through the quaffing of urine. In Europe, there is scant suggestion of mushroom use, despite the ubiquity of several species. Solidly documented cases of probable Psilocybe intoxication begin in the eighteenth century, and they suggest that these accidental shroomers discovered nothing particularly cosmic in their trips—although some did get the giggles. Nonetheless, a number of authors insist that a hidden mushroom cult of fungal gnosis, rooted in Neolithic shamanism, has been passed down secretly.”

Like many myths that gained popularity in the 1960s, the European “mushroom cult” has obtained a reality of its own, with thousands using the fungus both recreationally and for sacred purposes.

In a final note, The Sun interviews Colin Meloy of The Decemberists about their new concept album “The Hazards of Love”, and how folk, metal, and prog-rock are linked together through a shared love of myth and mysticism.

“Metal and folk share a similar fascination with mythology, mysticism, pre-Christian stuff, paganism. Led Zeppelin are the most obvious bridge between the folk revival and classic metal. But Black Sabbath had quite a bit of that with Fairies Wear Boots etc.”

Considering The Decemberists’ new album features “a shape-shifting forest dweller” and a “jealous forest queen”, it might just appeal to fans of myth-drenched pagan-friendly music.

That’s all I have for now, have a great day!

Filed Under: Paganism Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 20 Comments
  • http://executivepagan.wordpress.com Erik

    Hazards of Love is a fantastic album! Highly recommended.

  • http://www.wiccanlife.com Aurora

    I am little surprised to read this text on his pagannation.com site: "Today, he is a goat farmer. One who would like many "neopagan" folk to know has Christian neighbors who are more "pagan" than most of the folk he met in his store, on book tour, or in any other venue." Maybe I am reading this wrong, but it sounds a little harsh, considering that he once earned profits from the people that bought his books, shopped in his store, went to his book tour events, and attended his special events. I'm not one of those people, but I were, I would be a little miffed at this comment.

  • Garan du

    I stopped by Salem West months before this electrocution accident was alleged to have occurred. Aimee Drew informed me that the shop would be shutting down soon due to the rents being raised in the area. Rents were being raised, she said, because the group that owned American Apparal had refurbished the building at 1221 North High Street (directly across West 5th Avenue from the now defunct Salem West location), pouring something like $1 million into the property. This, in turn, caused Franklin County to reassess property taxes in the surrounding area, and resulted in property owners passing on the expense to their tenants in the form of higher rents. She told me that the store just wasn't bringing in enough money to meet the higher rent and that they would be having a going out of business sale and that I should keep my eyes open for it.

    This was a reasonable enough explanation to me, given that it was clear that the store did not appear to be busy enough to sustain itself in the year prior to this occurrence. And this was also during a period when the Short North/Long North area was undergoing a second/third wave of gentrification that forced a number of long-time businesses out. Salem West was not unique in this. Other beloved businesses like Great Things on High have also gone by the wayside because of this changing climate. Given the story above, I find the explanation as posted on PagaNation.com somewhat difficult to credit.

  • Kat Stone

    That kind of comment doesn't really surprise me. I used to be friends with AJ and he wasn't a very nice person and basically just used everyone around him. Aimee, when I knew her, was high on being married to a "writer" and had a major stick up her ass. I am saddened to hear that he was injured and apparently lost everything though, as bad of people as they were/are, I don't think even they deserve that.

  • Bjorn Odinsson

    Well, it doesn't surprise me if the paganation quote was correct. I read one chapter of his book "Wicca for Couples", and set it down, never to crack it open again. I think he was. . .pardon the absence of a long drawn out argument. . .a fizzlebopper.

  • http://stroppyrabbit.blogspot.com Yewtree

    Regarding the mushrooms book: I hope the author acknowledges his debt to the excellent book by Andy Letcher, Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom, which reaches much the same conclusions and was first published in 2006.

  • Shadowhawk

    And His hatred for Gavin and Yvonne Frost didnt help either. I know Gavin and Yvonne, and to me Drew was more flaky then they ever were..No offense,but i wont miss him

    • Lady Heathen

      You are friends with people who taught that deflowering pubescent virgins was a right of passage for modern wiccans? Most heathens would be willing to draw lots to see who got the privilege of placing those two on the end of our spears.

  • Peg

    Drew also sat on the URL "thewitchesvoice.com" for some time as well, much to the chagrin of those who created that organization. Of course this would have been a frequently visited site for those trying to visit the true Witches' Voice site at Witchvox.com, and no doubt "Mr. Drew" would have sought to capitalize on this a very calculating and sneaky move on his part. It took a number of years before he was convinced to relinquish the domain name.

    I never really bought the explanation that things went bad after this accident; Drew spent countless hours spreading all kinds of lies and mischief on the internet and if someone truly has a debilitating brain injury, then I would think this kind of activity would not be possible. He did his best to exploit peoples' sympathy and accused others, including me, of discriminating against him because of it.

    Good riddance to this toxic, greedy, manipulative, pathological liar.

  • Peg

    The CSI episode was inaccurate but I found it interesting. The main point seemed to be that a student of Fishburne's was following up on unsolved murders by placing herself in harm's way by "researching" the locations of the crimes. It had an anthropological/ethnographical tinge to it; the student showed great promise and wanted her thesis to be ground-breaking. Sadly even CSI doesn't always do its homework regarding occult practices. I found it funny that datura was painted as a hard-to-procure substance only available at black market-style botanicas.

  • http://ThePaganTemple.Blogspot.com/ PatrickKelley

    Let's see, somebody is electrocuted, thus can't support himself writing, yet can still work with complicated computer codes for websites which he runs, as a smith can create metal based items of allegedly high quality, and can even dabble in architecture and farming, to say nothing of rabble-rousing against the Frosts, and by the way anybody that disagreed with him concerning them. Sorry, but to me the bottom line is, he was probably a mediocre at best writer who just could not develop a sufficient following and went down the wrong road to hype himself. I warned him repeatedly to get out of the hole he dug for himself. He just wanted to keep digging. Hard to feel sorry for him.

  • Lady Heathen

    I am not surprised at all. There is a growing number of former neopagans who have figured out there is very little ‘pagan’ about the neopagan movement. My partner and I no longer attend neopagan retreats or other happenings now that our eyes have opened to how unpagan most so called pagans actually are. The only thing that surprises me is that it took them, or anyone else, this long to figure it out. After all, the Teen
    Witch Kit has been on the market for many years.

    As far as the comment on Christians being more pagan than neopagans, if you find that comment offensive you obviously have major bigotry against Christians. That, or perhaps a complete misunderstanding of the what the word ‘pagan’ actually means. Loosely, it means ‘country dweller’. As most ‘neopagans’ are of the so called ‘urban pagan’ variety, gathering in the back of book stores rather than barns for fellowship, they are probably right on.

    A country Christian is much more pagan than your typical new age urban neopagan. Besides, if he was speaking about ‘pagans’, he wouldn’t have met them ‘he met in his store, on book tour, or in any other venue’. Why? Because real pagans are too darned busy taking care of their farms, raising their children, and sharing fellowship with their neighbors to be hanging out in a new age shop or other such locations.

    Let’s face it, the ‘neopagan’ community has just about nothing to do with ancient pagans. Too bad it took a stroke for him to figure it out, but we heathens will take him if you neopagans are done with him.

    Lady Heathen

  • Dana

    I live in Columbus, and used to live within walking distance from A.J.'s old store. The store closed up suddenly without so much as a going out of business sale, and I heard through the grapevine that there had been a hard rain and a roof leak and it wrecked their inventory. That area of the Short North is not known for its structural integrity and there are several crappy landlords in the area and I believe something probably did go wrong and it might have even led to A.J.'s injury. After he left, a GLBT bookstore moved in for a while but they're gone now too–in the Short North, the queerest section of Columbus, which is in turn the queerest city in Columbus.

    Furthermore, if A.J.'s telling the truth about what happened to him, brain injuries are weird, and there's a difference in mindset between programming and writing prose. By the way, it doesn't take complicated code to write a website, and as for the more complex things one may add, oftentimes these days they are plug-and-play. I can set up a WordPress blog in seconds because my host has Fantastico installed–it really isn't that hard. But I've also sat here in front of my laptop screen trying to get my brain together to journal about my day and drawn a blank.

    Whatever A.J.'s faults, that doesn't mean he can't have legitimate problems and frankly, they have nothing to do with whatever he said in the past. It isn't even karma, because that's not how karma works. If anything I can understand why he was frustrated even while accounting for ego, because many's the time I've wondered why the Pagan community as a whole doesn't care more about certain things it ought to be caring about. I got tired of beating my brains out against a concrete wall and quit giving a damn myself because why be the community freak for nothing?

  • Dana

    Ohio. Columbus is the queerest city in *Ohio.* See? Writing's hard. :P

    (And in case anyone gets their knickers in a twist, I do not say that to be derogatory. One visit to C-bus during the Doo-Dah Parade on July 4th oughta put any remaining doubts out of your head for good. We are the San Francisco of the Midwest and proud of it.)

  • Dana

    What passes for a "religious movement" among most Western "pagans" (used a small p deliberately) is nothing more than an elaborate form of lifestyle-shopping. Not trying to create anything lasting, not trying to learn to live as functional human beings (and sorry, but getting a job and buying a house don't count–go a week with your power out and see if you come out the other side as anything but a gibbering mess), not trying to relate to nature as part of nature… just purchasing things and, when bored with those things, throwing them away and purchasing new ones. I don't necessarily mean physical things, and I don't mean with real money. It's a metaphor. Dig it.

    I wasn't lifestyle-shopping when I found Neopaganism. I was looking for my tribe. Know what? There isn't one.

    Look into the human rewilding movement… it's mostly theory at this point, but the philosophical framing makes more sense than Pagan vs. Christian. Meanwhile, we were supposed to be the ones closer to nature, as Drew and you accurately point out. But, as Gaia is my witness, I have had these discussions on Pagan email lists and over at LiveJournal and always came away disheartened by the scoffing responses. And that's just about relating to nature. Don't even start talking about putting together a coherent tribal tradition that you can pass down to your kids. Half the list will call you intolerant because you offended the childfrees, the other half will call you intolerant because maybe changing which pantheon you worship once a month might not be such a hot idea, especially if you didn't grow up in those cultures.

    Bleh.

  • Arong G.

    Dana (Hi from Columbus),

    I agree with many of your criticisms of the Pagan movement, yet I'm not as cynical as you seem. From my perspective at some point you learn that every movement has it's shadow, where it's rhetoric doesn't always line up with it's practices.

    Ultimately, I found that I take what works and move on. I still consider myself Pagan, but don't seem any point being tied down to any single movement anymore. I'm more looking for people I can work with than worrying what movement I'm part of.

  • Bjorn Odinsson

    LOL HEILSA Lady Heathen! Well wrought words!

  • Bjorn Odinsson

    *Applauds Arong and Dana* You both are very right, Dana, I can sympathize with your cynicism, and Arong, I applaud your pragmatic hopefulness. I am of the opinion that we are in the situation as a community (and yes we are a community whether we like it or not) because we have been far too lax and romantic with our notions. A large part of it has to do with the sociological impetus behind the neopagan revival. Remember that when it "came into vogue" the hippie movement was still going strong and the New Age was being born under the auspices of the "Aquarian Age". People wanted to throw away the wheel and figure out a way to live without it, rather than simply re-making it. While this was a nice bit of dream-puff, it didn't work, as any historian could have told them if they would have listened to such an "establishment" type. So our community was born out of the idyllic anarchist visions of New Age gurus.

  • Bjorn Odinsson

    The traditions that began to be appropriated were viewed as being funamentally flawed by "patriarchy" and thus the scions of our neopagan movement sought to rewrite mythology, history, and forge a new religion for a new age. We are now suffering the consequences of that in what Dana referred to as "life-style" consumerism. I don't necessarily see anything wrong with supporting pagan vendors by decorating one's space with art, statuary and tools, however if this is the final conclusion of one's spiritual pursuit, the destination of their spiritual journey, then I fear these life-style shoppers will ultimately be unfulfilled and shallow spiritually.

  • Bjorn Odinsson

    Ever since the invention of civilization there have always been spiritual mercantiles, the Bible even denounces these "pagan marketplaces". Every large hub of ancient civilization had a temple district of some sort where the faithful could purchase prophylacteries and talismans, idols and sacrificial animals. The reason ancient Paganism didn't have the problem that neopaganism has is because they had philosophers, hierarchy and establishment. There were guardians of tradition and those who sought to expound upon the mysteries of the Divine. That is what we need, as a community, serious philosophical tomes that people will read, thinkers who are publishing more than "how-to-be-a-witch" manuals and get-rich-quick spellkits. We need to deepen our religion, expand it's dimensions. The life-style-shopping dimension is not nefarious, but it must be coupled with other dimensions as well.