Remember yesterday when I complained about some apparently secret evidence in a New Jersey case of a grave-robbing, and the subsequent racial profiling of people who “practice Satanic rituals” (ie Santeria and Palo)?

“Capt. Richard Conklin of the Stamford Detective Bureau said Wednesday that police are targeting people of African, Central American, Haitian, Cuban or Caribbean decent who practice satanic rituals as potential suspects in the grave robbing. “We’re starting to look at this as a ritualistic-type incident,” said Conklin … Conklin said evidence recovered at the grave site and in New Jersey indicate the body was taken for ritualistic reasons. For fear of compromising the investigation, he would not go into specifics …”

Well, the police have decided reveal some of the evidence that has them rounding up the usual African diasporic suspects, and it doesn’t exactly paint a convincing picture of Satanic Santeros.

New Jersey police investigators say sacrificed chicken remains were found a quarter-mile from the body of a two-year-old girl taken from her Stamford grave. Sgt. Robert Bracken, a juvenile detective with the Clifton Police Department, said there is still no direct link between a possible ritual and the discovery of 2-year-old Imani Joyner, who died in 2007. Two fishermen found her body Sunday in a sealed garbage bag in the Passaic River, and an investigation led Clifton police to Stamford. Up river in Elmwood Park, authorities also found a bag containing chicken parts and believe them to be part of a sacrificial ritual, Bracken said. “Other towns around us have found sacrificed animals,” Bracken said. “I wouldn’t say it happens every day, but it’s not uncommon either.”

Despite the police admitting there’s no direct link between this grave-robbing and Santeria/Palo, and despite the fact they admit finding sacrificed animals around that area isn’t “uncommon”, and even though Sgt. Bracken said that there was “no evidence of a ritual” found near her body, they are still proceeding with the theory that this is a ritualistic act.

“From all the signs and info we have gathered, that’s where it’s pointed right now,” Conklin said. “If we get other information that points somewhere else, we’ll go that way.” In Clifton, Bracken said police are not narrowly focused on the body theft as a being part of a ritual, but investigators are seeing whether there’s a connection between the obscure beliefs and a motive behind the theft.

At this point they had better hope it was some crazed rogue Santero or Palero digging up what they thought was a “magical” corpse. Because if it turns out to be some run-of-the-mill insane fellow, or disturbed teenagers, the police will have wasted countless man-hours on a racist, religiously discriminatory, and futile line of inquiry. Even if it was a Palero, or some superstitious adherent to Palo, they are handling this in such a way as to damage relations between law enforcement and these religious communities for a long time.

The downside to being in a faith that avoids public scrutiny is that the paranoid and the gullible will often ascribe dark and evil motives to your actions, invent lurid details while describing your rites, and cause law enforcement and journalists to engage in a distorted religious/ethnic profiling when investigating crimes. Such is the case with Afro-Carribean/African diasporic faiths like Santeria/Lukumi, Haitain Vodou, and Palo. Regularly misrepresented in the press, assorted crimes and misdeeds are often attributed to them incorrectly, even when far more mundane scenarios are likely. This isn’t to say that adherents to these faiths are immune from committing horrible acts, only that there is a huge imbalance in the way they are depicted and treated.

“…it is perhaps reasonable to be reminded of the view held by American Protestant missionaries who performed their evangelizing work in Cuba at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. That is because this has to do with perceptions that have themselves been recycled to the margin of the numerous and deep cultural changes experienced by the US society since then. For these people this involves “satanic cults,” “demon worship” and atavistic and savage African practices, perceptions that originated in the “civilizing mission” of the white man and, ultimately, in racism and the disparagement of that which is different.”

That imbalance is on display once more, and the press seems to revel in the sensationalism and conclusion-jumping that comes with possible crimes committed by members of these diasporic faiths. For instance, the case of three adults who were arrested for endangering the welfare of a 7-year-old child (one of those adults is the mother) after she was allegedly cut, stripped,  and “forced” to watch animal sacrifices.

“Investigators arrested two people who live there — Julio and Zahira Cano — and another woman — Yenitza Colichon — for allegedly cutting Colichon’s seven-year-old daughter with a razor blade. The prosecutor’s office says they sliced the young girl’s clothes from her body and then slaughtered animals in front of her. The ritual apparently happened in May and the arrests were Tuesday, authorities said. Neighbors tell us several children live in the home. A search of the place uncovered a shrine, religious statues, bones, and machetes…”

What the reporters don’t ask is if the child was indeed “forced” to participate, or if she was there by choice. What kind of cut did she receive? Where? In what context were her clothes removed? Was she naked, or were outer garments symbolically removed? If this was child endangerment, why did it take two months for an arrest to happen? What do the other children think? None of these questions are asked or answered in the reports which are happy to leave things at interviews with “shocked” neighbors and re-worded police reports. Perhaps these people truly are guilty of endangerment and abuse, but if they aren’t, they are now vilified in their neighborhood and in the court of public opinion. No greater understanding is reached, no experts consulted. Then again, even when an academic or expert is brought in or quoted, there is no guarantee of a balanced accounting of possible events. As is the case of a recent grave-robbing in New Jersey.

“New evidence in the case of a toddler who was exhumed from her grave and dumped in a New Jersey river this week leads police to believe the body was taken for ritualistic purposes. Capt. Richard Conklin of the Stamford Detective Bureau said Wednesday that police are targeting people of African, Central American, Haitian, Cuban or Caribbean decent who practice satanic rituals as potential suspects in the grave robbing. “We’re starting to look at this as a ritualistic-type incident,” said Conklin … Conklin said evidence recovered at the grave site and in New Jersey indicate the body was taken for ritualistic reasons. For fear of compromising the investigation, he would not go into specifics … they now believe that a person, or persons, practicing a dark form of black magic known as Santeria or Palo Mayombe may be responsible. “Because the baby had some mysticism to it, we believe that it was targeted,” Conklin said. According to Columbia University adjunct professor, Daniel Dawson, who has written extensively on the subject, Palo Mayombe originated in the Congo of Cuba.  Palo Mayombe is rooted in the use of elements from the natural world and is based on the belief that all natural elements have distinctive powers that can be harnessed for protection and for healing, Dawson has written.”

First of all, “Satanic” Haitains and Cubans? They don’t even try to mask their ignorance of African diasporic ritual.  As for Daniel Dawson, whose specialty seems to lay in art and cultural matters, she isn’t directly interviewed, and gives no opinion as to whether she thinks the culprits are practitioners of Palo. Her credentials are merely used by the writer to build the case for a ritualistic grave-robbing. We are left to guess what “evidence” led the authorities to guess it was a ritualistic matter, and what, exactly, makes them point the finger at “Santeria” or “Palo Mayombe”. While people of “African, Central American, Haitian, Cuban or Caribbean decent” lay low, will we eventually find out it was some disturbed teen? Why only people of color? Is it because these police know that white people never do crazy things and give them a ritualistic veneer? Again, this is a recipe for misinformation, stereotyping, and ultimately, discrimination. If reporting on crimes that may be linked to African diasporic religions don’t get better, all those dark rituals we don’t understand could lead us to do some ugly things we may regret later.

Ever wish you could make a career from your practice of Witchcraft? Wish no longer! Wookey Hole Caves, a tourist attraction in Somerset, England, is looking for a full-time Witch to do witchy things all day long.

“So the job is straightforward: live in the cave, be a witch, and do the things witches do. Wookey Hole is advertising nationally and hopes to attract a strong field of candidates, with the £50K salary serving as a major incentive. Interviews for the post, which will involve on-site assessment incorporating a range or standard tasks, will take place on Tuesday 28th July at 11am. Given the nature of the role, Wookey Hole has decided to run the process on an “open audition” basis. Ambitious witches, looking for a key career move, should turn up dressed for work and bring any essential witch accoutrements. A limited range of potion ingredients will be available.”

Could this be Kevin Carlyon’s big chance? Will they film the auditions? But before some of the more, ahem, flamboyant members of our community consider emigrating for a chance at the job, keep in mind they have some pretty firm ideas of what their ideal witch would be like.

“Wookey Hole wants the appointee to go about her everyday business as a hag, so that people passing through the caves can get a sense of what the place was like in the Dark Ages. This was when an old woman lived in the caves with some goats and a dog, causing a variety of social ills including crop failures and disease. She also turned the local milk rancid.”

I can turn milk rancid, but only by forgetting in the back of the fridge for too long. As for social ills? Well, we support gay marriage. Would that do? They whole thing seems rather embarrassing and offensive, but then again, in this economy a decent salary is hard to come by.

I was going to write about a prominent Ukrainian Pagan politician that was hit (and killed) by lightning, but it looks like I’m going to have to address Pope Benedict XVI’s latest encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, instead. It’s no secret that Benedict has a special dislike of “paganism” and anything that may even hint at theologically destabilizing the Church’s patriarchal hierarchy (like feminist theology), he’s described pre-Christian gods as “questionable” and unable to provide hope, and engaged in a kind of Holocaust revisionism by saying that Nazi-ism was born of “neo-paganism”, but these were only indirect criticisms of modern manifestations of Pagan religion. Now, he’s directly addressing modern Paganisms in his latest encyclical.

“…it is contrary to authentic development to view nature as something more important than the human person. This position leads to attitudes of neo-paganism or a new pantheism — human salvation cannot come from nature alone, understood in a purely naturalistic sense…”

To be fair, he also criticizes the idea of nature as mere “raw material”, and promotes an end to “reckless exploitation”. In fact, if this were the extent of Bendict’s swipes at modern Paganism I might have left it alone, but he returns to the subject again later on in the work.

“There are certain religious cultures in the world today that do not oblige men and women to live in communion but rather cut them off from one other in a search for individual well-being, limited to the gratification of psychological desires. Furthermore, a certain proliferation of different religious “paths”, attracting small groups or even single individuals, together with religious syncretism, can give rise to separation and disengagement. One possible negative effect of the process of globalization is the tendency to favour this kind of syncretism by encouraging forms of “religion” that, instead of bringing people together, alienate them from one another and distance them from reality. At the same time, some religious and cultural traditions persist which ossify society in rigid social groupings, in magical beliefs that fail to respect the dignity of the person, and in attitudes of subjugation to occult powers. In these contexts, love and truth have difficulty asserting themselves, and authentic development is impeded. For this reason, while it may be true that development needs the religions and cultures of different peoples, it is equally true that adequate discernment is needed. Religious freedom does not mean religious indifferentism, nor does it imply that all religions are equal.”

Catholicism is the best! Paganism is the worst! Rah! Rah! Rah! Some religions are more equal than others, right Benedict? I love the scare quotes around religion when describing syncretic, magical, and occult belief systems, it really drives home that the current leader of the Catholic Church doesn’t see us as even practicing a valid faith (even if in error). I suppose I should be flattered that the Pope considers us enough of a going concern that we’re mentioned in an encyclical, but I doubt it’s a first step towards understanding or tolerance. After all, if we aren’t “equal” to Catholicism (and other faiths that the Catholic Church deems “real” religions), maybe we don’t deserve the same religious freedoms and protections.

I always expect a bit of triumphalism and rhetoric when a religious tradition talks to itself, after all, if they didn’t think they were the best faith ever why bother? However, some of the conclusions made by Benedict here could have some chilling repercussions for modern Pagans around the world. We are already seeing a rise in Catholic exorcists who see adherence to “New Age” or Pagan religions as a form of demonic possession, isolated instances of growing radicalism among Catholic youth, and a crack-down on practices like Reiki for being “corrupting” to your spiritual health, what actions could result from this latest encyclical where a hierarchy of religious freedom is subtly endorsed?

Summer seasonal celebrations by Pagan and pre-Christian faiths isn’t merely relegated to places like Britain or North America, various Pagan groups in Russia celebrated the arrival of Summer, and their numbers are growing to the point where the international press is taking notice. Sergei Ponomarev, writing for the Associated Press, talks to some modern Russian Pagans celebrating a fertility rite known as Ivan Kupala.

Priests pelt grain on the crowd, and young women with braided hair serve loaves of unleavened bread and kvas, a nonalcoholic drink made of rye. As darkness falls, they jump over bonfires, roll burning wooden wheels symbolizing the Sun chariot and float burning candles in a nearby river to attract good luck. Dmitri Pankratov, who goes by Ragnar among his friends, says Slavic paganism is the only true religion for Russians. Other religious “are branches grafted to a tree,” Pankratov says on the morning after the festivity. “None of them are a root of the people.”

Ponomarev also briefly touches on nationalistic impulses within Slavic Paganism that has led some to join violent extremist movements that target the Orthodox Church and non-Slavic immigrants. Some of these themes were touched on in Speaking of Faith’s “Pagans Ancient and Modern” show, which interviewed Adrian J. Ivakhiv, an academic whose parents are Ukranian.

“Paganism in Eastern Europe tends to be on the right end of the spectrum. But yeah, I mean, there’s nationalism and there’s nationalism. There’s a kind of civic nationalism that is inclusive and just wants to get things moving in the right direction in a given country. And then there’s the kind that really claims that one group of people, one ethnic group, or one nationality has the rightful claim to a particular piece of land and others don’t. And you do find some of that among people of this religious persuasion. You find it among others as well, but it’s definitely a fairly strong tendency.”

But modern Paganism in Russia isn’t simply assorted pseudo-nationalists, and anti-Russian Orthodoxy rebels (though Russian Christians aren’t exactly friendly to Russian Pagans), it also has surviving remnants of pre-Christian religion through the Finnic-derived Mari Traditional Religion (though they reject the term “pagan” as a descriptor).

“The Mari, a Finnic people of roughly half a million whose language sounds a bit like a strange mixture of Finnish and Turkish, are said to be Europe’s last pagans. Yet their priests, called kart in Mari, reject that notion. “We are not pagans. We call our faith the Mari Traditional Religion, and we are registered officially in the republic,” said Vyacheslav Mamayev, who oversaw the ceremony as the chief kart of the local Sernur district. He went on to explain that for the Mari, God has nine substances, or hypostases, ranging from the life-giving Ilyan Yumo to the birth goddess Shochinava. Asked about the theological foundation of his faith, Mamayev smiled and said, “Everything works through nature.” Indeed, like most animist religions, the Mari faith traditionally knows no written scriptures and no sacred edifices. Prayers are chiefly held in sacred groves, where some feasts include the ritual slaughter of animals as sacrifice.”

It’s hard for an outsider to get a truly clear picture of what modern Paganism is really like in Russia, most journalistic accounts that reach us either focus on nationalistic thugs or anthropological-style reports on folk-survivals. There is, no doubt, any number of Pagans there who reject violent nationalism and have much in common with Pagans in Britain, Australia, and America, but I doubt we’ll hear much from them in the press any time soon. However, the AP article does note one commonality between Paganisms in Russia and the West.

“The fractured pagan groups constantly argue about the authenticity of rituals, the hierarchy of priests or the pantheon of gods.”

Sounds like they’d fit right in around here.

As hinted in my recent post about the knighting of Sir Christopher Lee, it looks like the fiscally derailed production of “Cowboys For Christ” is back to filming in Scotland. Both /Film and ShockTillYouDrop are reporting that the long-promised sequel/re-imagining/companion to the classic 1973 horror/folk-musical “The Wicker Man” is now in the midst of shooting.

“ShockTillYouDrop have been informed that Robin Hardy’s long awaited Cowboys For Christ is finally in production. Some shooting has already taken place in the US and the filmmakers are reportedly in the midst of the Scottish shoot right now. Hardy’s 1973 directorial debut The Wicker Man is truly one of the most jubilantly beloved films in the pantheon of British genre pictures. I still see it doing abundant business as late night screenings, and pretty much everybody I speak to holds it close and dear, including those of us all too aware of its shortcomings. For a good few years now, Hardy has been touting Cowboys as a kind of follow up, a ’spiritual successor’ to feature a number of the same ingredients as Wicker Man: a clash between pagans and Christians, a remote rural location, Christopher Lee as a mysterious aristocrat.”

That there will be a continuity of director and lead actor (Hardy and Lee) from the original film is certainly promising, as is the prospect of a another folk-centric soundtrack. This time headed by Scottish musician Keith Easdale of the band Calasaig. If this production finds success, or at least an appreciative cult audience, we might get the full “Wicker Man Trilogy” that Hardy mentioned back in 2007 (the proposed third film “Twilight of the Gods” would be set in Iceland and deal with Norse pagan themes). Then again, considering the 36-year wait between “The Wicker Man” and “Cowboys For Christ”, Hardy might not make it to a third installment, he’s no spring chicken you know.

In any case, I’ll be queuing up to see the film once it sees the light of day, and who knows? Perhaps the subcultural love for the original film, a love that has spawned a musical in England, and a rock opera in California, might just erase the bad taste of the misguided 2006 remake and spur a big sequel-demanding payday for “Cowboys For Christ”.

I’m taking the day off from blogging, enjoy the fireworks!

Oh, and thanks to the precise wordsmiths who wrote the Declaration of Independence.