A Few Quick Notes

August 22, 2009 By Jason Pitzl-Waters Leave a Comment

A few stories for you to digest this Saturday, starting with the announcement yesterday from Isaac and Phaedra Bonewits concerning the closure of their Internet venture Real Magic School.

“Isaac and Phaedra Bonewits are sad to announce that Real Magic School is now closed. It was a wonderful experiment but it turned out to be too much for our time commitments (and our finances) to handle. We have arranged with the Grey School of Wizardry to take transfer student s from RMS. We apologize to everyone, but especially our lifetime members, that the life time of Real Magic School was so short.”

The school, which opened for business in February 2008, had an aspirational trajectory of academic excellence and eventual accreditation. A somewhat different M.O. from the arranged transfer school, the Grey School of Wizardry, with its Harry Potter-isms and courses that equip someone to become a “Journeyman Wizard” (as opposed to the associates degrees RMS was planning to award). No doubt the current fiscal climate made this new venture difficult to sustain, it would be interesting to know how other schools (loosely) built on the Witch School model are doing.

CBS affiliate WBOC in Delmarva, Delaware reports on this Sunday’s Delmarva Pagan Pride Day, interviewing author, Wiccan elder, and event co-organizer Ivo Dominguez Jr. in the process. Too bad they also felt the need to get some “balance” by also digging up a disapproving Christian pastor.

“Still, some like Salisbury Pastor Luther Hill disagree, and say nothing positive can come out of the event.” “Pagans in the Bible usually deal with witchcraft and sorcery and those types of things,” Rev. Hill said. “But even in the Bible when that type of thing has gone on, the power of God has always been victorious over it.”

I wouldn’t mind this somewhat mindless faux-viewpoint-balance if the standard was also applied to puff coverage of local Christian events as well. Needless to say, I’m still awaiting a call regarding my opinions on upcoming Christmas celebrations.

In a final note, it’s time once again to check in with our old friend Don “internationally recognized authority on Ritual Crime and the Occult” Rimer. This time he’s making an appearance at the Oklahoma Gang Investigators Association seminar to talk about Satanic and vampire-related crime.

“Guest speaker Don Rimer spent over three decades as police officer in Virginia, where he discovered crimes involving cult activity.  Satanists committed some of these crimes, but some culprits acted as vampires … Rimer says movies like “Blade” and “Twilight” made vampirism cool, and people commit themselves to being vampires.  Rimer shows the official vampire bible, and there are sanguine who legally practice the ritualist consumption of human blood by drinking each other’s.”

This time the paper also includes his disclaimer that Wiccans and Pagans are no more likely to be criminals than any other citizen, but that kindness is somewhat offset by the fact that attendees to Rimer’s lectures, like Lawton Police Gang Investigator, Tiff Poff, apparently believe that ” appearance is in beginning stages, and they don’t realize it leads to violence, and murder, and suicide and things like that”. So don’t get caught dressing goth in Lawton, they may think your on the fast-track to killing people.

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

Filed Under: Paganism, Religion Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a Comment

(Pagan) News of Note

July 3, 2009 By Jason Pitzl-Waters 4 Comments

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

Move over Long Man of Wilmington and Cerne Abbas Giant, a mining company is carving a 400-yard goddess figure into the Northumberland landscape.

“Dubbed the “Goddess of the North”, Northumberlandia will be made from two million tonnes of earth dug out from an open cast mine in Cramlington, and tower 112ft into the northern sky. The Goddess, designed by artist Charles Jencks, will recline over the Shotton open-cast mine and form the centre piece of a new public park at the site.”

One wonders if this new addition to Britain’s landscape will, in a few hundred years, be considered an “ancient” pre-Christian survival by the locals. It will also be interesting to see if the site will become a pilgrimage place for modern Pagans and Goddess-worshippers.

The Oxford University Press blog points us to a “Meet the Author” interview with Owen Davies.

Davies is the author of  “Grimoires: A History of Magic Books”, a truly interesting work that you can expect to see a full review of at this blog sometime soon.

The Coalition of Visionary Resources (COVR) has given awards to three Llewellyn Worldwide titles: “Faith and Magick in the Armed Forces”, by Stefani E. Barner (Best New Wiccan/Pagan Title), “Magic, Power, Language, Symbol”, by Patrick Dunn (Best New Magic Title) and “The Enchanted Oracle”, by Jessica Galbreth and Barbara Moore (Best New Divination Title).

“COVR is an organization formed by a unique group of businesses that deal in “Visionary Resources,” and who work with and support each other as independent retailers, manufacturers, distributors, wholesalers, and publishers of visionary books, music, and merchandise. For the twelfth consecutive year, COVR’s Visionary Awards were presented at the International New Age Trade Show (INATS) banquet, this year held on June 27th, 2009 in Denver, Colorado. The Visionary Awards are judged by retailers and seasoned professionals, who evaluate each title based upon content, presentation, and their own knowledge of the industry.”

Congratulations to Llewellyn and the assorted authors/artists involved. The publisher won two awards at last year’s gathering. As for the The International New Age Trade Show, you may remember that I reported on their contraction due to the economy last year.

Our pal Don Rimer is hitting the newswires again, promoting his upcoming appearance on a forensics radio program.

“Talk Forensics, a new talk radio show hosted by Larry E. Daniel of Guardian Digital Forensics, is proud to announce that DON RIMER Ritual Crime & The Occult Expert will be the guest this Sunday, July 5th at 4pm eastern. Don Rimer is a retired, 33-year veteran of the Virginia Beach, Virginia Police Department. He currently serves as the Public Information officer and Chaplain for the Virginia Gang Investigators Association. He is an internationally recognized authority on Ritual Crime and the Occult. He serves as an investigator and consultant to agencies throughout the United States and Canada.”

Ah yes, an “internationally recognized authority” (recognized by whom, exactly) who mixes just enough CYA (cover your assets) disclaimers into his old-school “occult crime” scare tactics to continue booking those speaking gigs at churches and civic groups. No doubt he’ll be around soon to remind us that he has a Wiccan friend advisor who gives him books to read.

In a final note, it looks like the Vatican is going to be tightening the theological reigns on American Nuns. Prompted by Cardinal Franc Rodé, who publicly wondered if some Nuns were operating “outside” the bounds of Church doctrine, orders will be evaluated on how well they are living in “fidelity” to their order’s (and the Church’s) guidelines.

“Cardinal Levada sent a letter to the Leadership Conference saying an investigation was warranted because it appeared that the organization had done little since it was warned eight years ago that it had failed to “promote” the church’s teachings on three issues: the male-only priesthood, homosexuality and the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church as the means to salvation.”

U.S. Bishops have already decreed that the practice of Reiki (energy healing), which was apparently gaining quite a bit of popularity among some nuns, to be outside the bounds of Church doctrine. Will we soon see a crack-down on nuns who have shown hospitality to Goddess-groups in the past? The coming years may be some tough one for the more doctrinally liberal elements in the Catholic Church.

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

Filed Under: Paganism Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

The Return of Don Rimer

March 13, 2009 By Jason Pitzl-Waters 22 Comments

Back in November I wrote a post about the remaining “occult crime experts” that still travel the country informing local law enforcement, parents, and community leaders about the “evil” that lurks within their neighborhoods. That particular post singled out retired police officer (and occult “expert”) Don Rimer. Rimer was singled out in the past by Kerr Cuhulain (himself a former police officer) as someone with a decidedly mixed track record of being fair and accurate.


Don Rimer

“I believe that Rimer is sincere … I think that he is making some effort to properly define Wicca to selected audiences. I think that he is doing this because he knows that people like me are watching and he is concerned about liability. I don’t believe for a minute that he knows the difference between Neo-Pagan religions and Satanism. Rimer has said that he is willing to listen and learn and I will endeavor to educate him.”

After my post Rimer appeared to defend his reputation in the comments section.

“I teach parents the warning signs. If that is fear, yes I teach fear … I teach law enforcement about the rituals. If that is fear, yes I teach fear … I will continue to teach, consult, and investigate Ritual Crime as long as those crimes are committed. I provide that service to local, state, and federal agencies across the United States and Canada.”

Since then he has popped up now and then to take issue with how I report on a story.

“You have written about me before, accusing me of hating Wiccans. Wrong, wrong, wrong.”

Well here we go again. WAVY in Virginia reports on the “vampires” in our midst, and guess who pops up as an “expert” in all things evil and vampiric? You guessed it!

“With the advent of Twilight and TrueBlood, we’re seeing people, not just children, not just teenagers, but people are starting to take on that kind of a lifestyle,” says [Don] Rimer. “Very reminiscent of what people did when Ann Rice wrote Interview with a Vampire . Now people are playing games.  New games are coming out. There’s new merchandising that is associated with this and as long as they play their games and conduct their behavior lawfully, no one has a problem with that, but we’re having crimes associated with it.”

The text really doesn’t do justice to the sensationalistic television segment, complete with strange camera angles, spooky lighting, fog, and sound effects. Rimer goes on to depict a couple high-profile crimes as connected to the vampire craze, and inserts only the barest whisp of a disclaimer regarding the millions of people who enjoy vampire-themed media or participate in the vampire subculture/lifestyle and don’t commit horrendous crimes.

“Like in any society, we have good and evil. There are people involved in that that have no intention of committing crimes and then those who do.”

After that CYA (cover your assets) moment, he quickly veers back into how dangerous the vampire life is.

“There are people in that culture (who) believe they have the right to take human blood by whatever means necessary.  Then others are just playing a game. It’s just a game. It’s a movie, it’s a book and we just want to look that way. We’re just going to go to a club, but there’s all kinds and children getting involved in that don’t know the difference.”

Oh, and like all occult “experts”, Rimer gives the vague checklist of “warning signs”. Wearing black, writing backwards, strange new friends, “dark” make-up, and the number “7″ (which he claims is the vampiric number). The kind of list that gives parents the excuse they need to ship their children off to boarding schools, and not face that the problem could be with them, not their kids. I’m not saying that the occasional occultist loon-bat doesn’t occasionally pop a gasket and do something horrible, but these “trends” of occultic crimes are all correlation without causation (and very often have very mundane motivations behind them). In fact, many “occult” crimes could have just as easily been “crazy Christian” crimes if the troubled souls in question had picked up a Bible instead of “Twilight”. Yet you don’t see retired police officers traveling the country informing people of the hazardous effects of improper Bible-reading, giving lists of Christian “warning signs” (prays a lot, starts quoting the Bible randomly, sees demons), and intoning darkly about the dangers of unsupervised Bible study.

By linking troubled teens and isolated crimes with any vague occult angle they cand find, ritual crime experts create a comforting fantasy world of a pervasive directed evil that can be fought. It is a narrative that says “if only we can prevent our children from reading/watching media concerning vampires/werewolves/the occult then we will be safe”. But like all fantasies it isn’t true. Horrible things still happen. They happen even when you remove all troubling literature and occult-laced media from the public eye. It is a fact that the remaining “ritual crime experts” fear to engage with, because they’d be out of a job if all of this was believed to be truly random and had more to do with isolated cases of mental illness than with what movies these people watch. No doubt Don Rimer will be along in the comments shortly to tell me how wrong I am…

Filed Under: Religion Tagged With: , , , , , 22 Comments

Occult "Experts" and Misinformation

November 6, 2008 By Jason Pitzl-Waters 6 Comments

A surviving remnant of the bad-ol’ “Satanic Panic” days are the “occult crime experts” who travel the country speaking in various small towns to law enforcement groups, school boards, and various churches. Spreading misinformation, sowing unwarranted fear of teen subcultures, and presenting isolated “ritual” crimes as part of a larger evil occult underground. A paper in Danville, Illinois gives unquestioning press-release coverage of just such an “expert”.

“Teenagers who like techno-rock music may sometimes be confused with teens fully into the “goth” look and music, Don Rimer pointed out to a group of 90 people who attended his “Ritual Crime & the Occult” seminar Wednesday in Danville … Rimer, an internationally recognized authority on the expanding youth sub-culture that embraces the occult, is a retired Virginia Beach police officer who now consults with agencies faced with bizarre ritual crimes. He also speaks to schools, churches, civic groups and professional organizations around the country, pointing out dangers teenagers face when they begin to dabble in the occult. Rimer told the group there are many signs teens display that can warn parents their child is feeling disassociated from his or her peers and ripe for recruitment by an array of predators who call themselves vampires, Satanists or any number of other occult followers.”

Gods forbid your child slides down the slippery slope from “techno-rock” (a term I have never heard a young person use) into “goth”! He or she would be a sitting duck for occult vampire Satanic predators! Rimer claims that kids who aren’t involved in “sports teams, church groups and other organizations” are especially endangered (I’m truly surprised the vampires didn’t get me). As for Rimer, it just so happens that he has had an initially good, but increasingly chilly and hostile relationship with modern Pagans. Kerr Cuhulain, a former police officer, who has spent a lot of time highlighting these “experts”, spoke with several Pagans unhappy with Rimer’s presentations.

“I have heard him speak and he does not, repeat does not like Wiccans. He thinks everything that is not Christian is Satanic and he does not like being corrected. I’ve tried to correct him in several talks that he had given locally and he does not appreciate being corrected, because he finds Satanism in everything that he does, including pentacles. He thinks pentacles are the work of Satan, and if you wear one, you are a Satanist. He is considered an ‘expert’ around here on occultism and the powers that be around here like calling him in to identify items found at crime scenes or in teen’s bedrooms as Satanic. He is almost becoming a one trick pony in that he finds what he seeks.”

The problem with these “experts” is that their misinformation can help create the very chaos they claim to want to prevent. A parent who once tolerated their son or daughter’s exploration of non-Christian faiths could quickly turn hostile once they are convinced that such activities are part of some sort of occult criminal conspiracy (not to mention the danger of local out Pagans being branded as “predators”). When joined with school officials and local law enforcement who believe the same thing, you soon have a self-fulfilling prophecy of alienation and suicidal thoughts. Rimer, in his obsession with all things “Satanic”, carries an infectious plague of intolerance and fear wherever he goes.

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