“For me, Mr. Martelly is a clear departure from the status quo … a man with a vision for the future of Haiti, who listens to young voices,” said Jean, whose own bid to run for the Haitian presidency was blocked on ineligibility grounds.
“Even though the country is predominantly Christian, we need to accept voodoo as part of our culture, for example. It’s a very mysterious thing. People tend to want to learn more about it. And we need to utilize it within the tourism industry. There is a thing called “The Ceremony at Bois Caïmans,” which was the ceremony that started the slave revolt that lead to Haiti’s independence. We should have, like a Broadway show so people all over the world could come and see “La Ceremonie du Bois Caïmans.” We need to exploit these things, we need to exploit our history and our past because it’s a great past! It’s like we don’t know who we are. We need to restore pride, and for this, we can’t do it alone.”
“You have to take [the friendship with Michel Francois] out of the political context,” says Gesner Champagne, a childhood buddy who married Martelly’s wife’s sister. “You might like the conversation you have with that person. You might like the good time you have with that person. It doesn’t have to be political. You just like the guy.”
Pagan Community Notes is a companion to my usual Pagan News of Note, a series more focused on news originating from within the Pagan community. I want to reinforce the idea that what happens to and within our organizations, groups, and events is news, and news-worthy. My hope is that more individuals, especially those working within Pagan organizations, get into the habit of sharing their news with the world. So lets get started!
“Is our Pagan community prepared to respond in centralized haste when Pagans face disaster? Should the worst happen and an American city is crippled are we able to come together and sustain meaningful relief for our Pagan sisters and brothers? In short, the answer is No! Responding to disaster requires pre planning in funding, logistics and operations. Waiting for the disaster to strike to take action ensures that any effort will be short on success and long on confusion and debate.”
Dybing does not endorse simply starting a new organization, since “such an approach will lead to another ‘new’ organization competing for support of its efforts.” He instead proposes something more like, well, a coalition. An agreement by various Pagan organizations to coordinate and work together in times of crisis, to pool fundraising resources, along with a “committee made up of representatives of the involved organizations” to determine when a disaster threshold has been reached that would activate funding commitments. For those interested in engaging in such a project, or discussing it, I’d recommend heading over to Peter’s blog.
“In June 2010, Luder and fellow members of the Celtic Nation Yahoo Group made appeals to former members of original volunteers for help in recovering any of the pieces of the course outline to compare to the new material. Graciously, DubhTine, a longtime member of the IMBAS council in its heyday, volunteered his time and efforts to discover and forward a significant portion of the languishing course outline. His efforts were instrumental in formatting the new outline and all those who enjoy the course going forward owe him a debt of gratitude. Pech Raithbheartiagh, also a former volunteer on the original project, recovered several important pieces from an old hard drive to help round out the outline. Cuardai Eolais provided continuing compilation assistance as well. With their invaluable help and generosity, Luder was able to begin matching the sections of the original course outline to the new work started just prior to Kondratiev’s death. As time progresses, additional material of Alexei’s will be made available and noted as it is added. For referencing purposes, this is “Alexei Kondratiev’s Lorekeepers Course 1.0″.”
This is an exciting development, one that should help enrich the CR community, and anyone interested in the lucid, learned, and passionate work of Alexei Kondratiev. I would love to see this material, and future additions, released as an ebook of some kind. Perhaps sold to raise funds for the continued preservation of Alexei’s work?
“What I’d like to suggest is that a society that affords real priority to the goddess, and to her way of presenting the revelation of her divine presence, is likely to be a society where the values are cast not as rules or laws. It is likely to be a society in which the values are cast in the form of character-virtues. I think this is so because her message is not a commandment to be obeyed: her message is a presence to be experienced. Her message tells us who she is, not what to do. This means that following orders and rules and laws will not be what matters. What will matter instead, is finding all the places where her presence can be experienced. I think it will also matter that we live our lives in a way that embodies the presence of the goddess.
What matters is being a particular kind of person. At the most basic level, it matters that you are the kind of person who resolves problems with force of thought and feeling instead of with the force of arms. Such a person becomes able to find the goddess within her relationships, and within herself. In the culture of the goddess, there are no rules and commandments, but there still is an ethical understanding, in which some character-values reveal the goddess within, and others do not; some kinds of habits and choices are exemplary of the goddess, and others are not. Except for a few things, like gratuitous murder, there will be little need for absolute categorical distinctions. The ethical understanding can be a matter of degree. Furthermore, since the goddess reveals herself in many different masks and disguises, there can be more than one ethically significant way to embody her presence. There doesn’t have to be only one true way; there can be many true ways. The goddess doesn’t tell you what to do; but rather she shows you different possibilities for what kind of a person you can be.”
Myers is one of modern Paganism’s sharpest thinkers, I highly recommend reading the entire essay where he brings forth examples from Greek, Celtic, and Native American cultures to make his point.
Sunday was the first official production day of the Spirit of Albion movie. The entire cast gathered at the director’s house to record their performances for the film. Here is the first in what will be a series of video diaries of the making of the film. It was a great day, and the cast not look the part, but they all had great voices too! Enjoy the film, and why not subscribe to the channel?
I’ll be sure to continue checking in on The Spirit of Albion, and keep you posted on its progress.
“This festival season, the Staff of Asclepius is seeking guest authors to write about their accessibility experiences at any event large or small. Writers will have the opportunity to share with the community how volunteers accommodated them and offer advice on what could be improved for next time. From the registration process to camping and attending workshops or rituals, what was the experience like? Was staff receptive to your needs and advice for improvement? Email masery@rocketmail.com“
The Pagan Newswire Collective continues to grow and expand as new local bureaus take root all across the country and group blog projects bring together the experience and expertise of Pagans from a wide variety of traditions and communities to share their insights into subjects from politics to pop culture, and everything in between. The most recent addition to the PNC is No Unsacred Place: Earth and Nature in Pagan Traditions.
No Unsacred Place explores the relationships between religion and science, nature and civilization from a diversity of modern Pagan perspectives. With climate change ever-present in today’s cultural and political discourse, and the realities of ecological destruction increasingly impacting our local communities and daily lives, questions about how we live as members of this jeweled, blue-green planet are no longer merely abstract philosophical musings or theological exercises. While cultures throughout history offer us examples of human beings in relationships of worship, stewardship, domination and exploitation of the Earth, modern Paganism is unique in drawing together the wisdom and ecocentric focus of ancient religions with the insights into the physical world afforded by modern science and technology.
No Unsacred Place draws inspiration for its title from the contemporary American poet and environmentalist, Wendell Berry, who wrote: “There are no unsacred places. There are only sacred places and desecrated places.” Berry confronts the assumption that “the sacred” can be cordoned off and separated from the mundane, and challenges us to examine our relationship to those places we consider to be “unsacred” — whether they are untamed forests and barren deserts, or human-made landscapes of metal and concrete — to discover how our attitudes and actions lead to desecration and destruction. Pagans today face the challenge of reconciling the lessons and influence of “dark green religion” environmentalist and conservation movements in contemporary society, with an ambivalence towards the wildness and wilderness of the Earth that is as old as Western civilization itself.
This blog features coverage and analysis of environmentalism and ecology in the news from a Pagan perspective, as well as essays and personal reflections about the role of science, environmental ethics, eco-friendly lifestyles, and an awareness of the land and its seasons, both in religious community and in the personal spiritual lives of modern Pagans.
Monthly columns include “Fur and Feather,” in which Juniper Jeni draws on her extensive background in homesteading and animal rescue to explore issues of animal rights, and “The Sacred in Suburbia,” in which John Beckett confronts the challenges of living sustainably and cultivating sacred relationship with the earth in a land of manicured lawns and strip malls; in addition, Ruby Sara writes on earth-based liturgy and ritual in her column, “Earthly Rites.”
These join the PNC blog family along with Pagan+Politics, The Juggler, and Warriors & Kin. I’m very excited to see the launch of a group blog focusing on nature, the environment, and related issues from a Pagan perspective. I believe modern Pagans have a unique and valuable perspective to share with the world on these matters and look forward to the conversations this site will engender.
“Thank you, Jason for your devotion for defending the Afro-Caribbean/Latin American based religion. I do believe practitioners of African-based religions are speaking but not the “mainstream” media or certain individuals. I often must read French, Spanish, Portuguese written [typed] articles to find out what practitioners of such faith[s] are speaking about. Recently there was an article, originally written in Spanish but somehow was translated into English, regarding practitioners of Santeria being really upset and embarrassed by individual practitioners leaving offerings to the orishas in [the] public community [parks for an example where masses commune]. “We” are educating the recently migrant practitioners that “our” rituals must adapt to our times and/or the “general” public. Here is a link to what I am speaking of: titled “Offering to the Orishas”.”
“They interviewed me about this – classic Fox News move “Hey, let’s ask a Wiccan about Voudou!” I’m embarrassed to say that they got some good “out of context” and reporter-fed quotes from me, while completely cutting out the point I was trying to make which was that animal sacrifice is not only a legal practice in the US, but that many “mainstream” faiths including Christianity have a history of it as well. They interviewed me for a good twenty minutes, and BOTH of the statements they showed were fed by their reporter. For instance, I followed up the statement about human remains being a concern with the acknowledgement that most mainstream Santeria practitioners discourage the use of human remains (having read some prominent Santeria practitioners say the same thing) even while other practitioners do not. i thought that by being interviewed that I could help dispel the “OH NOES, ded animal” hype. Lesson: don’t be a patsy for Fox News when they come a-callin’.”
I think both comments add some great context and additional information, and I’m glad they shared it with us here. I’m thinking of taking a page from Andrew Sullivan and highlighting smart, relevant, comments that expand and clarify an issue more often.
I’ve given quite a bit of attention to the syncretic religions of Vodou and Santeria, often in the context of criticizing how journalists handle the subject matter. If you think Wiccans, Druids, and other modern Pagan faiths are given a hard time by the press, imagine being blamed or invoked every time a dead animal turns up. Or in the case of Vodou, having coverage of a tragic fire accident morph into a peculiarly one-sided investigation of Vodou “scammers” in Brooklyn.
“A voodoo priest whose ritual candles sparked a deadly fire in Brooklyn last month is just one of a cadre of supposed mystics who prey on women for money and sex. The women – most of them African or Haitian – sought good fortune, fertility, love, employment and sometimes revenge. Others, like the woman involved in the Feb. 19 blaze in Flatbush, were looking to get legal immigration status. Men in shops along Nostrand Ave. identified by residents as voodoo priests all declined to be interviewed by the Daily News. But clergy, police and residents – in hushed tones – say the voodoo priests have been active for decades.”
The Daily News only quotes a Catholic priest, a local police officer, and hostile neighbors of the practitioner involved in the fire about these alleged “predators.” If they couldn’t get a local Vodouisant to speak on the record, as they attest, an academic to balance the coverage would have been the very least the paper could do. As it stands, there’s no one to defend the religion of Vodou, and the larger impression made is that all priests are con-men.
“Roberto Casillas-Corrales, 53, is facing two counts of third-degree felony desecration of a human body for the two human skulls found on his property, according to a court official. Clearfield police and Weber-Morgan Narcotics Strike Force officers served a search warrant at the man’s home as part of a drug investigation Sunday. No drugs were found. The man told police he used the skulls and animal parts for religious purposes. He said he practices Santeria, a Caribbean religious tradition.”
Here’s more on that arrest. Let’s focus on the fact that this was a supposed drug bust. Yet, they found no drugs, but arrested him instead for the skulls. To repeat, a Narcotics Strike Force found no narcotics, but arrested the Santero on the suspicion that his human skulls might have been illegally obtained. Surprisingly, the media have done no digging into this case, or why the police assumed this man had obtained the skulls in an illegal manner. Are Utah police getting their training from “occult experts”? Or is it simply that years of badly balanced coverage in the press have built up a certain impression about practitioners of Santeria and Vodou?
“One could speculate that the incident might involve a ritual such as that practiced by followers of Santería, who use animals, honey and candles. However, the animals are sacrificed in Santeria as food, rather than for any obscure mystical purpose. Santeros believe the blood of the chicken is sacred, and they do not customarily leave the carcass behind. As a rule, the rituals also aren’t conducted publicly, either.”
Practitioners of Santeria and Vodou are often quite secretive, but a new openness and engagement has to be initiated, if only to combat blatant falsehoods and misinformation from self-appointed experts. Otherwise how stories like these are covered remain rest solely on the whims of a single reporter or editor.
Like many modern Pagans I’ve been long fascinated with Arthurian myth and its ties to pre-Christian religion. So little is actually known about the historical reality of Britain’s King Arthur that both Christians and Pagans alike have claimed him for their own. In the early 1980s, a mini cultural movement of sorts began that either gave greater emphasis to “pagan” elements in the story or imagined the entire mythos through a lens of Celtic pre-Christian religion. A precursor was Mary Stewart’s “Merlin Trilogy,” which saw an omnibus edition released in 1980, then came John Boorman’s 1981 film “Excalibur,” which explicitly counted Merlin and Morgan Le Fay as followers of the “old ways,” followed by Marion Zimmer Bradley in 1982 with her revisionist (and highly influential) novel “The Mists of Avalon”. In 1984, the first novel of The Fionavar Tapestry trilogy by Guy Gavriel Kay, which explicitly tied Arthur to Welsh and Celtic myth in a fantasy setting, was published.
This movement utterly changed the way the Arthurian story was told in modern times. While King Arthur was considered a Christian story for hundreds of years, it was now accepted that pre-Christian themes be included in any modern retelling of the legend. From Bernard Cornwell’s Warlord Chronicles to 2004′s big-budget film “King Arthur.” Some tellings were good, and some were not-so-good, but few can deny that the tension between pagan religion and Christianity has now become a fairly integrated trope in the story. Much like the modern introduction of a Muslim character into the Robin Hood cycle, which also underwent a process of “paganization” in the 1980s, but that’s a different story.
“…we wanted the magic to be something very organic, elemental, true to [Merlin as] a pagan character. He’s not of this newfangled Christian age. He has a very different belief system…”
“He says his focus is on credible, relatable characters built off of the struggles of the time, the conflict between emerging Christianity and fading paganism, which is personified in the characters of Arthur and Merlin. But, according to Chibnall, there are other characters, like Morgan, who have a much more complex relationship with those traditions.”
So whether it’s bad or good, pagan themes in the Arthurian cycle are further solidified in “Camelot.”
I’m taking a personal day today as it’s my wedding anniversary and we’re headed out to the coast for a bit of celebration. But before I go here’s a few quick news notes to tide you over until tomorrow.
“Due to the suddenness [of her passing], the family is struggling with funeral costs and Fay’s memorial service, which was planned for earlier this month, had to be postponed due to a lack of funds. Stone City is now collecting donations from the community to raise the funds needed to hold Fay’s memorial and help her family through this difficult time. We feel it’s important for the community to honor Fay’s life and service by providing a proper memorial rite. It would be tragic both for her family and the community if a dedicated community builder such as Fay could not be properly memorialized at her passing simply because of a lack of funds.”
Stone City is looking to raise $600.00 to cover memorial costs, and help support Fay’s family. All donations are tax-deductible. If your life has been touched by Fay’s work, or if you want to help out a family in need, do consider making a donation.
“The purpose here, then is to make the case for the inclusion of polytheism as a legitimate belief system, for it has animated people throughout the world since ancient times and has often provided an understanding of divinity and reality that is more rational than Abrahamic monotheism and has been the cause of far less violence in the world. Hinduism will be used as a primary example, since it offers a good example of polytheism and how it can be blended with the Hindu understanding of monotheism into a useful and practical theology.”
For more Hinduism-related content from the Huffington Post, click here.
“…we wanted the magic to be something very organic, elemental, true to [Merlin as] a pagan character. He’s not of this newfangled Christian age. He has a very different belief system and also, we both decided that it’d be great to look at the magic where it wasn’t, you could just wield it and walk off, but actually, like all of us, if we have a power, whether it’s with our pen, the microphone or whatever, there’s a level of, you know we can’t abuse it. The moment we step up, we know that abuse comes back to haunt you. So with the magic like that, [it can’t be abused without a price]. Even in politics, you can’t abuse politics.”
As for positive advance reviews? Well, the more fannish-oriented sites seem to think it’s OK. Once it comes to Netflix, I’ll certainly give it a chance.
