7 Things We Owe Pagan Newcomers

October 7, 2018 By John Beckett

Recently someone asked me to write a post on “what beginners need to be aware of before joining.” I’m going to write that post sometime soon, but I think I need to write this one first. Mainly this is because most of the regular readers of this blog aren’t exactly beginners, but also because the question had a 1990s BBS “shut up and read the FAQ, noob” air to it.

Rather than telling newcomers how to behave, I think we’d be better off concentrating on what we can do to be honorable and welcoming hosts.

I do not use the word “owe” lightly. Hospitality is among the greatest of Pagan virtues, and it means more than offering food and drink. People come to us looking for a community where they can learn sacred traditions and explore the deepest questions of life. What will they find when they arrive?

Here are seven things we owe newcomers to Paganism.

1. A warm welcome

This is the most basic form of hospitality there is. Someone we’ve never seen before walks into one of our open circles – what do we do? If we’re like too many Pagan groups, we never notice them because we’re hidden away in the kitchen talking to our friends. That doesn’t make a very good first impression.

In 2015 I wrote Hospitality For Humans, which talks about how we can do a good job of welcoming our guests. Say hello. Introduce yourself. Ask questions and let people tell you about themselves. Tell people what they need to know to fully participate in the ritual. Accommodate special needs. And thank them for coming.

It takes courage to walk into an unfamiliar religious ceremony run by unfamiliar people. Respect the courage of your guests, and greet them warmly.

2. An environment safe from predators

What am I talking about? Go read So Long and Thanks for All the Abuse: A History of Sexual Trauma in the Pagan Community by Sarah Anne Lawless. It’s long – read it all. Read the comments too. Pay particular attention to “The Respected Elder” who was so clueless he didn’t realize he was being called out. It’s painful to read. Read it anyway.

Here’s a key quote:

Predators, pedophiles, molesters, rapists… we like to think they are not in our community. We like to think our bond of sharing the same spirituality nullifies their presence and that a spiritual person could never do harm. Time and time again, we are proven wrong.

It’s easy to point fingers at Catholic priests who molest children and rich young men who rape and get away with it. It’s much harder to deal with inappropriate touching, pressure to have sex, and outright assault in our own groups, when we have to either do the investigative work ourselves or turn it over to the police.

It’s also necessary.

Newcomers deserve an environment safe from predators – and so do long-term members.

3. Respectful boundaries

I still occasionally come across Pagans who say that Paganism is all about doing whatever you want, with no boundaries. But even Thelema moderates “do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law” with “love is the law, love under will.”

We need not develop our own Ten (or whatever number) Commandments. But any religion or group needs boundaries – it is the lack of clear boundaries that makes it so easy for predators to operate in our groups and gatherings.

Does your group have a statement on inclusivity and non-discrimination? Does it have a code of conduct that spells out what behaviors are not acceptable? Are these boundaries well-known? Are they enforced, gently where possible and firmly where not?

Beyond organizational policies, we also need respectful boundaries around our individual relationships. People’s personal lives are their own business – respect them.

In addition to boundaries of conduct, we need respectful religious boundaries. There is an attitude in our wider society of “deep down it’s all the same.” No. Our different religions have different foundational assumptions, different traditions, different goals, and different approaches. It’s not all the same, but that’s OK.

We owe newcomers a clear explanation of who and what we are, and just as importantly, who and what we aren’t.

4. Honest history

People still occasionally come into Paganism with the idea that we’re doing exactly what our pre-Christian ancestors did, or that nine million witches were killed during the Burning Times. We owe them an honest assessment of our heritage. Besides, the real history is interesting enough, and simply being old doesn’t mean a religion is meaningful and helpful.

We also owe newcomers an honest history of our individual groups and traditions. It’s fair to say that modern Druidry is 300 years old. But OBOD was founded in 1964 and ADF in 1983.

Sometimes the problem isn’t that we claim stuff is older than it is. Sometimes Pagans claim a tradition is a brand new thing when in reality it’s an offshoot of an existing tradition with a couple of tweaks. My own standard liturgy draws heavily from ADF’s Core Order of Ritual, with influences from OBOD and the Western Mystery Tradition, with a couple of elements that as far as I know are unique to our Denton tradition. Credit your sources, whether they’re old or new.

5. Clear expectations

What are your group’s requirements for membership? What are the requirements for initiation? Is the initiation a simple matter or is it an ordeal? What commitments are members expected to make and keep: personal practice, group practice, finances, anything else?

Mysteries must be guarded and sacred traditions preserved. But no one should have to make a major religious decision or commitment without plenty of time to consider if they really want to do it.

There is no one right way to structure a group or a tradition. Some have loose membership requirements and some have rather extreme demands. Every group isn’t intended for everyone, and traditions with high barriers to entry tend to be more resilient than open groups. But whatever the approach, we owe newcomers a clear presentation of our expectations.

6. Loving support

A religious tradition – especially a local group – is more than a collection of individual practitioners. It’s also a family – and families look out for each other.

We owe our newcomers the kind of support we give our friends and families. Perhaps Evangelicals can be forgiven for not caring about the people they don’t know in their 5000 member megachurch, but if a member of a 13-person coven or a 40-member grove has mundane needs, we owe them whatever assistance is wanted that we can provide.

The principles of hospitality and reciprocity apply. I’ve seen people who come into a group and immediately start making all kinds of demands. We don’t owe those people anything. But let’s take care of our own.

We also owe newcomers our support as they try to learn and figure out things for themselves. They will have questions. Sometimes we need to tell them the answer. Sometimes we need to tell them where to find the answer, or point them in the direction of the answer. Other times we have to say “I don’t know – what do you think?” Not always because they need to work through it themselves (though sometimes that’s the case), but because sometimes we genuinely don’t know and we need to be honest about it.

7. An unlocked door

We love it when people come to our public gatherings, when they want to join our groups, and when they start wanting to actually be Pagans. We don’t like it so much when they decide to leave.

But if people come to the conclusion that this isn’t really for them, integrity demands that they move on. We have no right to stand in their way.

If they’ve taken oaths there may be repercussions from abandoning them, but those repercussions are in the realm of the Gods. It is not our place to enforce them. Which is not to say that if someone abandons us and later wants to return we have to take them back. Maybe we do, maybe we don’t.

But if someone wants to leave our groups, our traditions, or our religions, our only proper response is to hold the door open for them and wish them well on their spiritual journey.

The Otherworld in a Dream – 4 Things I Learned

June 7, 2018 By John Beckett

Dreams have been a source of inspiration and information since the dawn of humanity – and probably before. Modern psychologists attempt to explain dreams in purely naturalistic terms, and most times that’s entirely proper. Most times.

The vast majority of my dreams can best be described as routine sorting and filing. I wake up and if I remember my dreams, I can easily point to a recent book, movie, or something someone said to me that triggered them. These dreams are sometimes interesting and sometimes strange, but they are entirely ordinary.

On rare occasion they are not. Perhaps once a year (on average – there is no regularity) I have a dream that can only be described as prophetic. They contain critical ideas, important information, or messages to pass along to others. They have a unique feel to them that clearly marks them as non-ordinary, but I cannot describe that feeling to myself, much less to someone else. But when I have one, there is no question that I need to take it very seriously.

My prophetic dreams are still dreams – the truth in them is presented in images and symbols, not in literal narratives. Interpretation is still required. But in a prophetic dream, the proper interpretation is never in doubt, and separating the message from the set decoration is simple and straightforward.

A few nights ago I visited the Otherworld in a dream. At first I thought I was dead – I met several people I know who are dead, and the environment made it clear they were not visiting our world. I had no memory of dying – in the dream I assumed I got hit by that runaway beer truck I often joke about, or perhaps simply died in my sleep. But immediately on waking I realized I wasn’t dead, and I hadn’t been dead. Neither had I intentionally journeyed into the Otherworld, as I sometimes do. I was pulled into the Otherworld, though I still do not know who pulled me there.

I also immediately knew that I had to write about this dream, which I almost never do. Someone needs to hear this message, though I have no idea who that is.

Dreams are the most unverified of unverified personal gnosis (UPG). If this doesn’t make sense to you or if it simply doesn’t resonate with you, feel free to ignore it. It’s probably not intended for you.

But if something in it rings true, you might want to pay attention. I learned four important things when I visited the Otherworld in a dream, and three of them are messages for someone else.

The Otherworld is just like this world, only different

This is not news.

Particularly in the Celtic traditions, the Otherworld is often described as being very similar to our world. Many times visitors didn’t even realize they were in the Otherworld until they saw something or someone that doesn’t belong in our world.

I began my visit in a house. Not the stone houses of Skara Brae or an Irish cottage with a thatched roof, but a very ordinary 20^th century American house. When I went outside I saw lawns and trees and driveways and all the other things you’d see in a residential neighborhood. Then I went into a generic office building or perhaps a hotel where everyone was gathering in a large meeting room.

Does this mean the Otherworld is just like American suburbia? That sounds more like Hell than the Land of the Gods and Ancestors! No – the specifics are merely set decorations. The important point is that it wasn’t Iron Age Britain or Viking Age Norway.

Pagans – and I include myself here – often visualize the Otherworld as rural and pre-industrial. That’s understandable – that’s what things looked like the last time our ancestral religions were widely practiced. And it reflects our desire for a simpler time… a desire that overlooks the benefits of modern sanitation and other technological advances.

There is no harm in engaging in a little pleasant anachronistic dreaming. The harm comes when we assume the past was a Golden Age so great that the afterlife must surely look and feel exactly like it. That causes us to devalue the present and undervalue the future.

The Otherworld looks a lot like this world. Our world, here and now, for better and for worse.

[For another take on this, see Modern Fairyland, or Experiencing the Otherworld as a 21st Century City. Morgan Daimler wrote it today, partially in response to this post.]

Everything’s going to be OK, for everyone

Many of us grew up being threatened with an afterlife of eternal torment if we did the “wrong” things, or even if we believed the “wrong” ideas. As much as I’d like to blame that on Christian fundamentalists, they didn’t invent the idea of an afterlife full of punishment. The Egyptians promised a place in the Duat for those whose hearts are as light as a feather, but oblivion for everyone else. The Greeks (or at least, some of them) offered the Elysian Fields for heroes, but a rather dull afterlife for the masses and torments in Tartarus for those who particularly offended the Gods.

I cannot speak for every religion and every culture. It may be that there are many Otherworlds, or that there is one Otherworld with many realms – just as our world has different regions and nations.

But mixed in with the honored dead (and a couple of other not-dead folks like me) were a few people I did not expect to find. A couple of them I would gladly chain to a rock and have an eagle eat their liver for ever and ever. But there they were.

I didn’t feel threatened by them. They may have hurt me or others in this life, but they couldn’t hurt anyone now – and we all knew it. They were clearly disoriented, as though the reality and impact of their actions finally sunk in. No more “it was necessary” or “I was just following orders” or “I have power and you don’t.”

Was their punishment a heavy dose of empathy? Was this the beginning of divine rehabilitation? Or would they be reincarnated with only slight improvements to their ethics and characters? I do not know. I just know that this was a beginning for them, not the end. They were not OK and they weren’t going to be OK any time soon, but they would be OK eventually.

Eventually.

The work goes on

I moved into another large room with many doors in the walls. Did the doors lead to different parts of the Otherworld? Or to new incarnations in this world? Both, I think.

The doors were all closed and none were marked, but I knew I could open some of them. Others I knew I could not open – yet. And I very much wanted to open them. Learning how to open them would – will – take time and work. Sometimes “time and work” means study and learning. Sometimes it means spiritual work: meditation, prayer, and devotion. Other times it means work: planting, tending, and harvesting; building and maintaining.

If you want to open a door, sometimes you have to find a key, sometimes you have to make a key, and sometimes you have to break the door down.

Will this work be done in the Otherworld or in this world? Again, I think the answer is both. There is some work that can only be done in this world. But the Otherworld is more than a place of rest and reunion.

Here and there, the work goes on.

I’ve always been a Pagan

The first three items are for everyone, or at least, for everyone who’s interested. The fourth is specifically for me.

Ever since I started practicing Paganism, I’ve wondered how I’ll react when death becomes imminent. In times of great stress, we tend to fall back on what’s familiar, and especially on what we learned as small children. When death is near, will I feel pulled to abandon the religion that has meant so much to me for most of my adult life? Will fear drive me back to the religion of my childhood?

In this dream, I thought I was dead. But I never questioned my Pagan beliefs, practices, and thinking. I spoke with a dead relative who was a dedicated and orthodox Christian – we briefly discussed our religious differences, in the same polite tone we used to discuss our differing thoughts on politics. I never even thought about reverting to Christianity in any of its forms, much less the fundamentalist form of my childhood.

Back in March I examined the question of how someone from a Christian family in a Christian environment became a Pagan. I speculated that for some of us, Paganism isn’t a choice, it’s an orientation. As I wrote at the time

There has always been something inside me that said “Nature is sacred.” There has always been something that said “there’s more to life than what can be measured and quantified.” I’ve always known the Divine has a feminine side, that the world is full of spirits, and that magic is real.

For me, this dream confirmed that theory.

I never get the whole story

One of the frustrating parts of oracular work is that I never get the whole story. I get messages to deliver, but not what the recipients need to do with them. I get orders to engage in tactical operations, but not the strategic objectives behind them. I’m told to build a gateway, but not where the path will ultimately lead.

The Gods have many virtues – transparency is not one of them.

I don’t know why these pieces of information are important. I don’t know who needs to get them. I don’t know what they (you?) need to do with them.

If this resonates with you, I encourage you to explore it further. If you have your own dreams or visions or thoughts about the Otherworld I encourage you to share them, even if they’re different. Especially if they’re different – many of us may have different pieces of the same puzzle.

If this doesn’t speak to you, don’t give it another thought.

I just know I had this dream, and it was prophetic, and I needed to write about it.

And so I have.

The 4 Best Posts of 2015 You Didn’t Read

December 22, 2015 By John Beckett

Some of you read and share everything I write. Thank you, thank you, thank you. In general, the blog posts that do well (i.e. – the posts the friends of the regular readers like and share) are posts that talk about current events, that build up Paganism, or are controversial. While I frequently weigh in on hot topics, I leave being controversial for the sake of being controversial to other bloggers.

Not every post is intended to go viral. The Nine Things I Think series isn’t well read, but it lets me cover shorter topics without adding filler. Reviews don’t do particularly well, but if I like a book or an album I want to tell everyone about it. I write what the Gods tell me to write and what I feel like I need to say, and after that it’s out of my hands.

While I’ve come to accept that sometimes the Pagan community just doesn’t care about something as much as I do, there are times when I find myself screaming “this is important! Why are you not reading this?!”

Here are four posts from 2015 I think have some really important concepts in them, but that weren’t well read. Take a look at these summaries, and if you didn’t read them the first time, check them out now.

Fish Is Not Just Fish (August 2015, #111 in readership). This post starts with my experience of ordering fish in a restaurant in Sweden and trying to get past the language barrier to figure out what kind of fish it was. The story illustrates the fact that not everybody who says “I’m a polytheist” means the same thing, as the comments sections of a couple recent posts demonstrated. Differences matter, and so does clarity around our differences.

Reading it again after four months, I see this isn’t my most succinct writing – I probably should have cut it back by about a third. But the story is good, the point is critical, and it’s got what I think is the flat-out coolest photo of the year. This was taken in the New Orleans Aquarium in 2010, and the only photoshopping was turning the contrast up a bit.

Deep Magic (December 2015, #113 in readership). It may be unfair to put this post on the list, since it’s only been up for a little over two weeks. But it didn’t get a good start and it shows no signs of having a “long tail,” so I’m including it.

Deep Magic is a spiritual model of the way the world works, in the ways that we actually experience it. Here’s a key excerpt:

The materialistic worldview has led to viewing everyone and everything as things, whose only value is their utility to humans. This approach has brought us technological wonders. It has also brought us climate change, environmental desecration, slavery and oppression.

Deep Magic sees everything as inspirited beings with inherent worth and sovereignty. It sees the world not as a hierarchy of ownership and control, but as a reciprocal network of mutually supportive relationships. And it understands that while we can control nothing, we can – and do – influence everything.

Who Sets the Boundaries? (August 2015, #115 in readership). This post was inspired by two presentations from Many Gods West, one by Sobekneferu on “Worshiping Deities Whose Mythology Was Written by Their Antagonists” and one by Elena Rose on “Loving Our Monsters.” Like Deep Magic, it asks us to reconsider our basic assumptions about the way the world works, and in this case, about the way the world should work.

A casual look around the Pagan and polytheist communities reveals a greatly disproportionate number of people who have been marginalized, excluded, called monsters, and physically attacked as monsters by the boundary-makers of the mainstream society … And yet, these are the people the Many Gods have chosen to restore Their worship.

Will we let other people define us and set boundaries for us, or will we insist on setting our own boundaries?

This Land Is Your Land (October 2015, #126 in readership). More than just about any other group of people, Pagans understand the need to honor the land and to live in relationship with the land. But the vast majority of us who live in North America don’t have the same deep ancestral connections to the land and the spirits of the land as our friends who live in the Eastern Hemisphere. And we are rightly concerned about how we came to hold this land and the way our not-very-distant ancestors treated the people who were here first.

But the history of humanity is the history of migration – it’s what we’ve done ever since our ancient ancestors started wandering out of East Africa. We’re here, we’ve been here, and we’re going to be here a good while longer. It’s time we started acting like we belong here.

Start forming relationships with the land where you are. Not with some elemental concept of Earth (though there is value in that as well) and not with some vague idea of The Planet, but with the land and the spirits of the land where you are.

And listen to the YouTube of Woody Guthrie singing “This Land Is Your Land.” We never sang the fourth verse in elementary school.

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me.
A sign was painted, said “Private Property.”
But on the back side it didn’t say nothing,
This land was made for you and me.

Thank you for reading and sharing, for commenting here and on Facebook, and for generally supporting Under the Ancient Oaks. Next week I’ll talk about the posts you did read: the Top 10 Posts of 2015.

The Devil and Mary MacLane

February 18, 2024 By John Beckett

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This post was inspired by two books: one fiction, one non-fiction. The first is about a 19 year old woman who – in 1901, in Montana – wrote about her love for her “anemone lady” and her longing for the Devil. If you guessed that was the fiction, you made a reasonable guess. And a wrong one.

Our first book is I Await The Devil’s Coming by Mary MacLane. Her original title was too much for 1901 – it was published as The Story of Mary MacLane. It’s the diary (though she rejected that term, calling it instead a “Portrayal”) of a young woman who was frustrated by the limitations of living in a small Western town, and by the limitations of being a woman in a male-dominated era.

The book is out of copyright and is available for free on Project Gutenberg. The physical book is in print and available for purchase from the usual outlets. I encourage you to read at least a few pages of it. Her writing is quite good. I’m a man born 80 years after her, living 120 years after her book was published, but what she has to say is relatable to me, and I imagine to many of us who are dissatisfied with a world that panders to mundane preferences and prejudices and leaves us out in the cold.

Here’s the opening entry:

I of womankind and of nineteen years, will now begin to set down as full and frank a Portrayal as I am able of myself, Mary MacLane, for whom the world contains not a parallel.

I am convinced of this, for I am odd.

I am distinctly original innately and in development.

I have in me a quite unusual intensity of life.

I can feel.

I have a marvelous capacity for misery and for happiness.

I am broad-minded.

I am a genius.

I am a philosopher of my own good peripatetic school.

I care neither for right nor for wrong—my conscience is nil.

My brain is a conglomeration of aggressive versatility.

I have reached a truly wonderful state of miserable morbid unhappiness.

I know myself, oh, very well.

I have attained an egotism that is rare indeed.

I have gone into the deep shadows.

All this constitutes oddity. I find, therefore, that I am quite, quite odd.

And an excerpt from the second entry:

I wish to acquire that beautiful, benign, gentle, satisfying thing—Fame. I want it—oh, I want it! I wish to leave all my obscurity, my misery—my weary unhappiness—behind me forever.

I am deadly, deadly tired of my unhappiness.

I wish this Portrayal to be published and launched into that deep salt sea—the world. There are some there surely who will understand it and me.

Can I be that thing which I am—can I be possessed of a peculiar rare genius, and yet drag out my life in obscurity in this uncouth, warped, Montana town?

It must be impossible! If I thought the world contained nothing more than that for me—oh, what should I do? Would I make an end of my dreary little life now? I fear I would. I am a philosopher—and a coward. And it were infinitely better to die now in the high-beating pulses of youth than to drag on, year after year, year after year, and find oneself at last a stagnant old woman, spiritless, hopeless, with a declining body, a declining mind,—and nothing to look back upon except the visions of things that might have been—and the weariness.

I see the picture. I see it plainly. Oh, kind Devil, deliver me from it!

Her “Portrayal” was published the next year, in 1902. It sold over 100,000 copies and brought Mary MacLane the fame – and the exit from Montana – she so desired. As you might imagine, it was particularly popular with young women.

Her second book My Friend Annabel Lee (inspired by the Edgar Allan Poe poem “Annabel Lee”) was published the following year. Sales were good, but nowhere near as good as her first book. Her third and final book I, Mary MacLane: A Diary of Human Days was published in 1917, also with lower sales. The Wikipedia page on Mary MacLane suggests that it was “overshadowed by America’s recent entry into World War I” and that’s at least partially true. But in her introduction to the 2013 edition of I Await the Devil’s Coming, book critic Jessa Crispin said that what was new and shocking in 1902 was simply more commonplace by 1917 – the world caught up to Mary MacLane.

Mary MacLane died alone in her Chicago apartment in 1929. She was 48.

Plain Bad Heroines

The second book that inspired this post is Plain Bad Heroines, a 2020 novel by Emily M. Danforth.

In 1902, two students at a private girls’ school in New England find The Story of Mary MacLane and fall in love with it – and with each other. But then they’re mysteriously killed by a swarm of yellow jackets, which leads to more deaths and the eventual closure of the school. In the present, a young writer researches their story and writes a best selling book about it, which is turned into a movie – a movie whose production is haunted.

The title Plain Bad Heroines comes from Mary MacLane. In her Portrayal she complained about unrelatable characters in “girl-books” and then said “I wish some one would write a book about a plain, bad heroine so that I might feel in real sympathy with her.”

I’m not going to review Plain Bad Heroines. If you want a full review, Goodreads has 5000 of them. I will say that while the ending seemed rather rushed (which is odd in a book that runs over 600 pages), the story had me so engrossed I lost all track of time while I was reading it. If I do a Top Novels I Read This Year feature again in 2024, it has a very good chance of making the list.

What’s important here is that Emily Danforth was inspired by Mary MacLane and so she included Mary and her book in her own novel. And because of that, I learned about a fascinating woman and decided to write about her.

And now you know about Mary MacLane and I Await The Devil’s Coming.

Good writing enriches us all.

The Devil in Montana

In the United States, the further west you go, the less religious people are.

It’s always been this way. New England was settled by Puritans and later by Catholics. The South has always been solidly Protestant and remains so to this day. But the West was too busy and too isolated to get very deep into organized religion. There are exceptions – most notably Mormon Utah – but this is generally true. And at the same time, the whole country was – and still is, to a large extent – culturally Christian. It is odd to hear someone speak kindly of the Devil.

Mary MacLane grew up knowing the Devil and his stories, but she did not grow up to fear him. She wrote:

I am ready and waiting to give all that I have to the Devil in exchange for Happiness. I have been tortured so long with the dull, dull misery of Nothingness—all my nineteen years. I want to be happy—oh, I want to be happy!

The Devil has not yet come. But I know that he usually comes, and I wait him eagerly.

I am fortunate that I am not one of those who are burdened with an innate sense of virtue and honor which must come always before Happiness. They are but few who find their Happiness in their Virtue. The rest of them must be content to see it walk away. But with me Virtue and Honor are nothing.

I long unspeakably for Happiness.

And so I await the Devil’s coming.

The world created by the followers of the Christian God was unsatisfying to Mary MacLane – something else I and many of you have in common with her. She had a good classical education, and she mentioned Aphrodite briefly in I Await The Devil’s Coming. She knew of other Gods. But her devotion was to the Devil. Witches understand why, even if most of us make other choices.

From people who persist in calling my good body “mere vile clay”; from idiots who appear to know all about me and enjoin me not to bathe my eyes in hot water since it hurts their own; from fools who tell me what I “want” to do: Kind Devil, deliver me.

Mary MacLane in 2024

What would Mary MacLane think of our world today? A world that has many more opportunities for women, but also a world that is trying to reverse the progress of the 20^th century.

And, as Jessa Crispin said in her introduction, the world caught up to Mary MacLane. Lucifer has his own TV show and witches have gone mainstream. It’s easy to think that if Mary MacLane was 19 years old in 2024, she’d be just another edgy girl with a YouTube channel.

It’s easy to think that, until you read her book. She was a good writer, and good writers are always in short supply. More than that, her depth of feeling and her longing for a more meaningful life are relevant in any era. Maybe she would have a YouTube channel or a TikTok. Maybe she’d be a novelist, or a journalist, or a performance artist. Probably she’d be a witch. Whatever she was, she’d be relevant.

Because talent plus passion plus determination is a recipe for success in any century.

Did Mary MacLane make a deal with the Devil?

Let me begin this section by clearly stating that Faustian contracts simply don’t exist. Your soul is the essence of who and what you are and it can’t be bought or sold.

But there is a long tradition of people making deals with various supernatural persons: with Gods, with not-quite-divine spirits, with the Fair Folk (don’t make deals with the Fair Folk!). Beyond that, there’s the old warning to be careful what you wish for because you just might get it.

Mary MacLane wrote:

Kind Devil, if you are not to fetch me Happiness, then slip off from your great steel key-ring a bright little key to the door of the glittering, gleaming bad things, and give it me, and show me the way, and wish me joy.

I would like to live about seven years of judicious Badness, and then Death, if you will. Nineteen years of damnable Nothingness, seven years of judicious Badness—and then Death. A noble ambition!

I Await The Devil’s Coming brought Mary MacLane well more than seven years of fame, and more than a little wealth. She never connected with her “anemone lady” but she had numerous lovers, both women and men. She died at 48, but she lives on through her books, which are in print once again.

Perhaps the Devil really was kind.

For Further Reading

Mary MacLane Wikipedia article.

To Be Mary MacLane by Penelope Rosemont, The Paris Review.

Mary MacLane by Julie Buck, Women Film Pioneers Project.

Me, Me, Me, Me: Butte’s Bohemian, Mary MacLane Montana Women’s History.

The Future of Paganism

December 14, 2023 By John Beckett

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It was not so long ago that the Pagan community was bragging about being the fastest growing religion in the United States. We talked about public temples and paid clergy, and we put some work into building theological and philosophical foundations for what our Pagan and polytheist religions would become.

And now? Some of that work is still going on. But even where it is, it’s being done in an environment where organized religion as a whole is shrinking at rates that would have been unimaginable even ten years ago.

My expectation (though it was more of a hope than either a data-driven projection or a divinatory prediction) was that as people left Christianity, many of them would make their way into one form of Paganism or another. I expected people to congregate in three main areas: polytheism, witchcraft, and non-theistic Nature worship.

That hasn’t happened.

Instead, the vast majority of people who are leaving Christianity are becoming “none of the above.” They maintain a few vague, high-level religious beliefs. They still celebrate Christmas and maybe Easter. Spirituality – whatever they think that means – is still important to them. But they no longer identify as Christian and – here’s the big point – they rare attend the services of any religion. They’re not looking for a temple or a shrine or a grove to replace the church they left.

The Pagan movement is not dead – far from it. We are still growing – people are still becoming Pagan in the same ways many of us became Pagan. But the “Pagan wave” we hoped for isn’t coming.

So now what?

I’m not interested in trying to read the tea leaves – I have no skills with tasseomancy. But as an old saying of indeterminate origin says, the best way to predict the future is to create it.

Instead of trying to figure out what will happen, I want to talk about what we want to happen.

What do we want our religious and spiritual future to be?

We will never be united

I occasionally see people say something like “if we’d just put our differences aside and come together for the common good…” It’s a nice thought.

It’s not happening.

The history of the modern Pagan movement from the Golden Dawn to Gardner and Sanders to P-exit has been one of division and schism. Some splits have been over theological or metaphysical differences, while many more have been personality conflicts between leaders whose charisma was exceeded only by their egos.

This is not a Pagan problem. This is a human problem. We will work together when we have to, or when we can see a clear benefit, but the idea of “just come together” is a fantasy that isn’t going to happen.

Beyond that, many of our differences exist for good reasons. Polytheists, pantheists, and non-theists have very different ways of understanding the world and relating to it. We may be able to work together to do Pagan Pride Day once a year, but we’re never going to worship together at every holy day. We don’t even recognize the same holy days.

Our plans for the future cannot require that people do what we know they won’t.

It can’t be something other people build

The mainstream religions have a way of seeping into alternative religions. Not just their language and stories and doctrines, but also their expectations of what a religion should look like. And the mainstream religions (both Protestant and Catholic) have created the expectation that religious organizations and events are something other people do – and that other people pay for.

Services? Planned and led by professional ministers. Facilities? Built by previous generations. Community outreach, whether for social justice or for evangelism? Done by the very devout, or by paid staff. And all this is paid for by the contributions of about 20% of the members.

If you want a Catholic church or a Baptist church, all you have to do is show up and take a seat. At some point you’ll likely be asked to contribute money or time or both, but the church will go on whether you do or don’t.

Until it doesn’t – many churches have never come back from the pandemic drop-off and some are in danger of closing.

Pagans don’t have that legacy. For the most part, we haven’t built the facilities and organizations the mainstream religions have. Plus if a typical core group is 20% of membership and your membership is 100, then your core is 20 people. If your membership is 10, your core is 2 – and that’s a very different situation.

Whatever you want for the future has to be something you’re willing to help create and support.

photo by John Beckett — St. Barbara’s Church, Kutná Hora. Construction began in 1388 and was completed in 1905.

Paganism on three levels: one, two, or all three?

I love large group rituals. I love leading them and I love participating in them (on the rare occasions when I can be an ordinary participant). They’re a ton of work to plan, facilitate, and present, but when they’re done right, they help people experience the Gods and magic and participate in community in a way that can’t be done alone.

My deepest and most meaningful religious experiences have happened in small groups – three or five or nine people in someone’s back yard, working spells and pouring offerings and opening ourselves to the presence of the Gods and spirits.

The core of my Paganism is my daily and weekly spiritual practice: meditation, prayers, and offerings. If I just practiced my religion on the high days, or on the full and dark moons, or even both, it would be a weak religion. This is something I do every day, and I recommend everyone find something they do every day.

What we want has to be balanced with what is possible. Support for large public rituals – and especially for the organizations required to facilitate them – was never particularly high in the wider Pagan community. It’s been even less since the pandemic. I don’t think we can build a Paganism around large public rituals. And that saddens me, because I love these organizations and rituals so much.

I think we can build a Paganism around small groups and individual practice.

The Gods are still here

Whether the Old Gods really went away with the coming of Christianity is a matter of debate. That They are here now is not.

And They continue to call individuals.

I saw something on social media a few weeks ago where someone was complaining that “Gods don’t call people – people approach Gods.” At the core of their argument was the fear that people are trying to make themselves feel special (or worse, “chosen”) and imagining messages from deities that aren’t really there.

While I understand that concern, the vast majority of people I’ve encountered who are called – in any sense of the term – have responded with humility and reverence, and with a desire to learn and grow in relationship and in service.

A few have been called to found priesthoods and temples and shrines – that those orders are still small does not mean they have failed. Many more are simply honoring their Gods and serving Them in ways that don’t generate headlines.

Is that enough? It sounds awfully small, but I can assure you that if the Morrigan wanted more, people would know it. She’s not known for being timid.

Not all Pagans are polytheists. But for those of us who are, maintaining and strengthening our relationships with our Gods is a foundation we can build on.

We’re in a golden age of magic and witchcraft

We’re living in a very magical time. More people are practicing more magic today than ever before. Information and instruction have never been easier to get – or less risky. The currents of magic are stronger than they’ve been in centuries and they’re only getting stronger.

Magic is something that is often done alone. Think of the witch in her cottage deep in the forest or the alchemist in his laboratory. Or less mythically, our own personal magic with herbs and stones, candles and sigils, visualizations and prayers.

Contrary to what many people seem to think, the key to skill with magic is not finding some archaic book of long-forgotten secrets. The key is actually practicing magic, building skills through repetition and building wisdom through trial and error.

And also, experimenting with new magical systems and techniques, then sharing your findings with other practitioners so they can learn from your work – and then expand on it themselves.

This is an area where our reluctance to embrace institutions isn’t a serious obstacle for growing our traditions. We simply have to do the work, and then do enough networking to share what we discover and learn.

Online friends are real friends

I’m a big advocate for local friends and local communities. If you need someone to take you to the doctor or to take care of your cat while you’re on vacation, you need someone physically close to you. If you want to have a Maypole at Beltane, you need several someones close to you.

But what if you live in a remote area and there aren’t a Maypole’s worth of Pagans within driving distance? Or if there are, but most of them are so exhausted from trying to live through “all this” that coming together even for one of our most popular sabbats is just too much for them?

Our online relationships are real relationships. If it wasn’t for the internet I wouldn’t know people like Jason Mankey and Morgan Daimler. At least I’ve met them in person – I’m still waiting to meet Cat Heath and Lonnie Scott and a bunch more people.

There are some online-only Pagan groups that do the kind of things in-person groups do. That’s one way of doing it. My own model is more about relationships and networking – supporting my friends in their work, and calling on them when I have a need in their areas of expertise.

Our Paganism doesn’t have to look like a church. It doesn’t have to look like a virtual church either.

photo by Cathy Beckett — The Maypole Dance – Denton CUUPS Beltane 2023

What do you want to do?

I frequently struggle to focus on this question in my personal life.

I often worry about what I want to have, forgetting the truth that we live in a society saturated with advertising and that things don’t bring happiness. I worry about what I want to be, forgetting that I am what I am and that changing that requires action. Focusing on what I want to do usually takes care of the other questions – and it’s something I can control.

When it comes to Paganism, polytheism, witchcraft – however you describe your religious and spiritual practice – what do you want to do?

What are you willing to do?

The future of Paganism is not what I thought it would be – what I wanted it to be – ten years ago. We’re not going to see a re-emergence of the temple religions of ancient Greece and Rome. We’re not going to see modern polytheist religions structured like the Catholic Church – or like the Unitarian Universalist Association. That’s probably for the best anyway.

I’m not advocating for a particular model or structure or plan. I’m not saying we should or shouldn’t take this or that approach (although I have noted a couple of approaches we know won’t work).

Contemporary Paganism is like ancient Paganism in that both are organic religions. They grew / are growing from the bottom up. What we read and see in the lore we have took centuries to reach the state they were in when they were wiped out by Christianity.

We’re still in the early stages of modern Paganism.

The future of Paganism is very much undetermined. It will grow out of what we do. It will be what we make it.

What do you want to make it?

Blackthorn’s Protection Magic

November 29, 2023 By John Beckett

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Blackthorn’s Protection Magic: A Witch’s Guide to Mental and Physical Self-Defense

by Amy Blackthorn
Published by Weiser – March 2022
208 pages
Paperback: $16.95, Kindle: $9.99

The most effective magic combines spellcasting and other arcane activities with tangible, this-world actions. If you can do something with 100% reliability then you don’t need magic, but if things are the least bit uncertain then magic can improve the odds that things will work out your way. And conversely, even if something seems so difficult that magic is your only hope, taking even a few steps in the direction of your goal makes it more likely you’ll manifest it.

This is the value of Amy Blackthorn’s book Blackthorn’s Protection Magic: A Witch’s Guide to Mental and Physical Self-Defense. It covers the protective properties of stones and herbs, how to use Tarot cards as a focus for protection spells, and some very effective “don’t see me” spells (I’ve used similar spells before with good results). And it also covers how to escape from duct tape and zip ties, and what to do if you think you’ve got a stalker.

This book is exactly what you would expect from someone who is a witch, an aromatherapist, and a purveyor of magical teas, and who also has a background in executive security and is a certified firearms instructor. Amy knows the mundane and magical sides of protection and she shares her knowledge of both in this concise guide.

Thinking through self-defense in advance

The book begins where it should – on ethics. Some protection is passive, but other protection is active. Whether you’re using magic or mundane methods, you may have to hurt someone to protect yourself. Are you OK with that? If not, have you considered the consequences of your pacifism? If you are, have you considered the consequences (physical, emotional, legal) of doing violence? The time to think about these things is now, before you have to make a life-altering choice in a split second.

Honestly, so much of protection and security comes down to this: think through these things in advance. What might go wrong, who might try to harm you, and what can you do if that happens? You need not – and in my opinion, should not – go as far as former Marine Corps General and Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who said “have a plan to kill everybody you meet.” You do need to practice learning to spot threats, and especially practice responding to them.

As Amy says in the chapter on personal security:

We don’t rise to the challenge; we fall back to our lowest level of training. Every time.

And also:

I fully believe in encouraging a society where instead of admonishing women not to be assaulted, we teach everyone consent. Sadly, that is not the world in which we currently find ourselves.

I occasionally see social media posts that say “don’t teach your daughters how to not get raped – teach your sons to not rape.” Why would any reasonable and concerned parent not do both?

The most compelling section of the book is titled “My Self-Defense Story.” Amy begins with a content warning that says “firsthand survivor account of stalking and attempted murder.” I won’t begin to summarize it – I couldn’t do it justice. I’ll just say it’s a real life account of how sometimes “the system” works and how many times it doesn’t, so you have to take responsibility for your own protection – or you die, and die badly. Amy describes how not to die, from personal experience.

A checklist for evaluating curses

As you would expect from a book bearing the subtitle “A Witch’s Guide” Blackthorn’s Protection Magic covers plenty about magical attacks. My last post included the section “you probably haven’t been hexed.” In a Facebook comment, Cat Heath said I was underplaying the risk from hexes and curses. In my experience most people who think they’ve been cursed haven’t. But I respect Cat’s experience and expertise, and she was right to point out such things can happen and we need to be prepared for them.

Cat didn’t know I was reading this book, but she recommended Amy’s Curse Threat Assessment checklist in it. And on that, Cat and I are in complete agreement.

This is a list of symptoms of curses, hexes, and jinxes. If you’ve got three or less, it’s probably just a run of bad luck. If you’ve got four to six, it’s possibly a jinx – which Amy defines as passive, low-level negative energy. If you’ve got seven to nine, it probably is a curse. And if you’ve got ten you need professional help, likely both magical and therapeutic.

Who should read this book?

For Pagans, witches, and other magical practitioners, Blackthorn’s Protection Magic presents essential skills and knowledge to help you deal with the threats to your mental, physical, and spiritual health that will come your way sooner or later. It’s an ideal first book on the subject for new practitioners, and it’s useful for those of us who’ve been doing these things for many years.

For skeptics and those who choose to avoid magic (for whatever reason) the book provides helpful guidance on how to avoid the kind of ordinary crime that can strike anyone, and how to deal with it if it does.

Which is to say, anyone will benefit from reading Blackthorn’s Protection Magic.

Reviewer’s notice

Weiser sent me a review copy of this book. As always, I review what I want to review and I give you my honest opinion. Amy is friend and a colleague and I hope this and all her books do well, but my only obligation is to you, the reader. This is my honest opinion of Blackthorn’s Protection Magic. I’ll be referring to it in the future in my own practice, and I will definitely be referring it to others.

If you’re looking for a book on protection magic, start here.

Streaming Revenge: The Top 10 Horror Movies I Wasn’t Allowed to Watch as a Kid

October 4, 2023 By John Beckett

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This year I’ve been watching a lot of the movies I wasn’t allowed to watch as a kid.

To be fair, my parents put very few restrictions on my movie watching. The only movies I was explicitly forbidden to watch were The Exorcist (which I saw at midnight in college – what an experience!) and Helter Skelter. That one was never fully explained, but it wasn’t a problem. I had no desire to watch it, and I’ve still never seen it.

But I grew up in the era of three TV channels and two duplex movie theaters – there was a lot I missed because it wasn’t available. Even if a movie made it to TV it was often preceded by three terrible words: edited for television. Aggressive censors cut out profanity, violence, sex, and nudity. Especially sex and nudity. And the edgier movies never made it to TV in any form.

Now I’m an adult, living in an era of a zillion streaming services, some of which carry old and obscure movies. Revenge is mine.

These are the Top 10 horror movies I couldn’t watch as a kid. I never heard of most of them when I was growing up, but I would have enjoyed them if I had been able to see them. To fit the requirements of the title, there are two rules.

First, the movie has to be from the 1960s or 1970s. Anything older than 1960 likely wouldn’t have been censored (or rather, it was already censored by the Hays Code). By 1980 I was an adult and could see what I wanted, if I could find it.

Second, it can’t be a movie on my 2016 or 2019 Halloween movie lists. So none of Vincent Price’s Edgar Allan Poe films (some which I did see on Shock Theatre), Hammer’s Dracula series, or The Vampire Lovers (which I definitely did not see as a kid). There are a lot of good movies on those lists, but I don’t want to duplicate them here.

Not everything here was or would have been censored. That’s not the point. The point is that I couldn’t watch them then, but I can watch them now.

All of these are good movies – some are better than others. The rankings are my subjective opinion – not how “good” or “influential” they are, but simply how much I enjoyed them, all things considered. Your rankings may be different – these are mine.

Movies come and go on streaming services – you may not be able to see them in the same places I saw them. IMDb is usually – but not always – a reliable guide for what’s where.

10. Terror in the Crypt (1964)

Also known as Crypt of the Vampire, it was made in Italy and originally titled La cripta e l’incubo. It stars Christopher Lee as Count Karnstein, who is not a vampire but who fears his daughter may be possessed by the spirit of a witch his ancestors killed centuries ago.

Terror in the Crypt is loosely based on Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu (1872), with a dose of Mario Bava’s Black Sunday (1960) mixed in. The story is good, the mystery is preserved until the end, and the supernatural elements aren’t explained away. It’s a good black and white gothic horror film.

Technical note: the version for rent on Amazon Prime is an old print formatted for pre-HD TV (4:3 aspect ratio). I found a much better copy in the original widescreen on YouTube.

9. Season of the Witch (1972)

I was a 10-year-old boy in 1972, but I was a 10-year-old boy who listened and paid attention. The themes of bored suburban housewives and the need for women’s empowerment in Season of the Witch were very familiar. Joan (Jan White) is abused and unappreciated – and then she discovers witchcraft. Unlike so many movies of this era, this one contains some real witchcraft.

In her 2018 book Bell, Book and Camera (updated in 2021 as Lights, Camera, Witchcraft) Heather Greene says “Joan moves from a point of powerlessness to a point of power through sexual liberation and witchcraft. As such, the film is a product of its time and comes the closest to a true feminist witch narrative in any film.” It’s directed by George Romero, better known for Night of the Living Dead.

This movie was originally titled Jack’s Wife and then Hungry Wives. There are at least three different cuts, one running 2:10, one running 1:44, and one – the one I found on both Amazon Prime and Tubi as Season of the Witch – at 1:29. The shorter version doesn’t appear to be missing anything of importance.

8. Castle of Blood (1964)

Filmed as Danza Macabra in Italian, this movie centers around a skeptical journalist interviewing Edgar Allan Poe in London. He’s approached by Lord Blackwood, who bets him that he can’t spend tonight – November 1^st, the “Night of the Dead” – in his abandoned castle. After a few typical haunted house scares, he realizes the castle isn’t abandoned and he’s joined by two beautiful women… who don’t seem to like each other. As the night progresses, more and more people come and go. Are they alive? Ghosts? Vampires? Will our journalist make it till dawn and win his bet?

The opening credits say Castle of Blood was adapted from a story by Edgar Allan Poe, but while it is very Poe-like, he wrote nothing that directly corresponds to this movie. And while Poe lived in England when he was a boy, he returned to the United States at age 11 and never went back.

This is an early 60s horror movie – despite the title, there is very little blood. However, this is the only movie on this list where I feel obligated to provide a content warning. A snake is killed on camera and it wasn’t a special effect. You expect to see humans and human-like creatures treating other humans badly in horror movies. I wasn’t expecting to see this.

That aside, for atmosphere and suspense Castle of Blood is excellent.

There are numerous cuts of this movie – some of them are quite bad. I found two versions on YouTube that are close to original, one in Italian with subtitles and one dubbed in English.

7. Vampire Circus (1972)

Count Mitterhaus drains one too many women and children, so the villagers finally storm the castle and stake him. As he’s dying, he curses them. Fifteen years later, the village is struck by a deadly plague and is quarantined by armed guards. Somehow a circus gets through the roadblocks and brings a bit of joy to the town. Unbeknownst to them, the circus is full of vampires, including a relative of Count Mitterhaus intent on avenging him – and resurrecting him.

I’ve seen all nine Hammer Dracula movies, most multiple times. I’ve seen their Karnstein Trilogy (which isn’t really a trilogy, but the three movies are still worth watching) several times. But I never even heard of Vampire Circus until I went looking for old movies to stream. Perhaps that’s because it has none of Hammer’s usual stars: no Christopher Lee, no Peter Cushing, no Ingrid Pitt. It does have a young – and shirtless – David Prowse as the circus strongman.

Vampire Circus is enough like the other Hammer vampire movies to feel familiar, and it’s different enough to feel unique. That makes it perfect for this quest for streaming revenge.

6. Eugenie (1970)

The first line of director Jesús Franco’s Wikipedia page says he’s “known as a prolific director of low-budget exploitation and B-movies.” Eugenie qualifies as all of the above. It’s based on La philosophie dans le boudoir (1795) by the Marquis de Sade, about a woman and her brother who set out to corrupt a young girl (she’s 15 in de Sade’s story – Marie Liljedahl was 19 when she played Eugenie).

Is it a horror movie? It’s definitely psychological horror, and I found the ending to be rather frightening – and unpleasant. It has Christopher Lee in it, playing a role obviously inspired by de Sade himself. In this interview clip, Lee said he had no idea what the movie was about until after it was finished.

I discovered it because the band Blood Ceremony created a song about it for their new album The Old Ways Remain. Even if you don’t watch Eugenie the movie, check out “Eugenie” the song.

5. Persona (1966)

Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007) is considered one of the greatest directors of all time. He wrote and directed this story of a young nurse (Liv Ullmann) caring for a famous actress who had a breakdown and has stopped speaking. At the recommendation of her doctor, they move to a summer house on the beach, where they’re isolated together – the speaking nurse and the non-speaking patient. As the weeks go by, their personae begin blending together.

This is not a straightforward movie. It contains some disturbing imagery that’s open to interpretation. It had me remembering some difficult times in my life and questioning if my response was ideal, or even adequate. Definitely not a popcorn movie, but it will make you both feel and think.

Persona is in Swedish with English subtitles.

4. Baba Yaga (1973)

Fashion photographer Valentina has a seemingly-random encounter with a rich older woman who calls herself Baba Yaga. After that, Valentina starts having strange dreams, her cameras malfunction in odd ways, and people she photographs die mysteriously. There’s an old house with a bottomless pit and a creepy bondage doll that comes to life. Some of what’s going on is in Valentina’s head and some of it is not – which is which is left for the viewer to decide.

Baba Yaga has very little to do with the witch of Russian folklore. It’s based on the Valentina comics series by Guido Crepax that ran from 1965 through 1996. It’s a combination of horror and giallo (Is giallo a subset of horror? Open a bottle of Chianti or Nero d’Avola and let’s discuss it). It does an unexpectedly good job of capturing the atmosphere of Italy in the 1970s (fashionable but in decline, with talk of a revolution that never came) but mainly it’s a movie that gets the mixture of sexy and scary just right for my tastes.

3. Eye of the Devil (1966)

David Niven plays Philippe, a Marquis who lives happily in Paris with his wife Catherine (Deborah Kerr) and their two small children. Until he gets word that the vineyards on the estate his family has owned for a thousand years are failing for the third consecutive year. If you’ve seen The Wicker Man – a movie that would not be made for seven more years – you know where this is going. Except Philippe is a knowing and willing sacrifice. Eye of the Devil presents the idea of the Sacred King much more faithfully than The Wicker Man.

Most of the story is told from the perspective of Catherine as she attempts to figure out what’s going on, and once she does, to stop it. Will she? Can she? The ending is both what I expected, and not.

This was supposed to be the film debut of Sharon Tate, but because of post production delays, it wasn’t. The opening credits still say “introducing Sharon Tate.” She was very good as someone who may be a witch, and is dangerous whatever she is.

This movie is excellent, and not just because of the “name” cast. The writing and the direction make for a suspenseful and entertaining movie.

2. The Devil Rides Out (1968)

The Devil Rides Out is based on the 1934 novel of the same name by Dennis Wheatley. It was released in the U.S. as The Devil’s Bride because Hammer Films was afraid American audiences would think it was a Western. It’s set in the late 1920s and stars Christopher Lee as a duke trying to rescue the son of a friend from a group of Satanists led by Charles Gray (better known for playing Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever and The Criminologist in Rocky Horror Picture Show).

The Satanism is a mixture of fiction, legend, and misappropriated occultism. Gray’s Mocata is clearly based on Aleister Crowley – one reviewer said that Mocata was what Crowley wished he could be. The movie is one of several from this era centered on the theme that the devil was corrupting young people and only strong institutions (usually the Church, but in this case the aristocracy) could save them.

For someone with only an academic interest in magic, Lee’s Duc de Richleau sure knows a lot about it. He’s good at it too. Some of the ceremonial magic in the film is real – all of it looks and feels genuine. Lee called this his favorite Hammer film, and I see why.

Full disclosure: I cheated on this one. I couldn’t find The Devil Rides Out on any streaming service – free or paid – so I bought it on Blu-ray. I’ve seen it on TCM before – look for it there during their Halloween horror marathons.

1. Daughters of Darkness (1971)

Stefan, a young rich Englishman, has just married Valerie, an even younger Swede. He’s reluctant to take her home to meet his mother, and they end up at a Belgian seaside resort in the off-season – they’re the only guests in the hotel. Until, that is, they’re joined by Countess Elizabeth Báthory and her beautiful traveling companion Ilona – who never come out in the day. And then young women in the nearby town start turning up dead and drained of blood.

This is a story of secrets, lies, and manipulation. The story is tight, the acting is excellent (especially Delphine Seyrig as the Countess), and the atmosphere is as good as you can get without setting it in a haunted castle.

I could have listed the top three movies in any order. But unlike so many of the movies on this list – and in this genre as a whole – I liked the ending of Daughters of Darkness. And that’s enough to make it #1.

An Experience of the Gods that Left Me Floored

June 14, 2023 By John Beckett

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Not all questions I get require a full blog post to answer. Here are some shorter ones, and my responses.

What’s an experience of one of the Many Gods that just left you floored – that changed all of your preconceptions about Paganism and the deity in question?

The one that left me floored was my first ecstatic experience of Cernunnos. There is nothing like a first-hand experience of a deity to remove all doubt that yes, “all this” is real.

But I think the most important experience was when I spent nine nights meditating on each of the Gods of the Egyptian Ennead. At the time I was very much a soft polytheist, mainly because I was still working my way out of the monotheism of my childhood. But as I meditated on Isis, Osiris, Set, Nephthys, and others, I realized that my experience of each God was different. I experienced Them as different persons. And if I experienced Them as different persons, it would make more sense to think of Them and relate to Them as different individual persons.

I am a polytheist in large part because Isis is not Osiris and Osiris is not Set.

I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on Godspousing and/or non-spousal romantic relationships between Gods and mortals.

I have no first-hand experience with this and very little second-hand experience. There is some historical precedent for it, though not a lot. I understand it intellectually but I struggle to relate to it emotionally and spiritually.

That said, it’s very important to some people. I give great deference to other people’s religious beliefs and experiences, at least when they’re not hurting anyone else, which God-spouses rarely do.

This is one of those things where I live and let live and spend my time on the things I’m called to do, and don’t worry about things that for the most part don’t concern me.

Rebecca Buchanan asked:

If you could see your favorite Pagan book adapted into a television series or film, which would it be?

I’ve read a lot of magical fiction (mainly urban fantasy) but not much that’s explicitly Pagan or polytheist. But of what I’ve read, the one I would most like to see made into a movie is Lammas Night by Katherine Kurtz. It’s a fictionalized version of Operation Cone of Power, the series of workings by witches and occultists to stop Hitler from invading Britain in World War II. Operation Cone of Power is a great story and I’m surprised no one has made a movie out of it yet. I think the closest anyone has come is Disney’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks. And that’s not the same thing.

Cat Gina Cole asked:

What role of activism do you think the current Pagan community needs to take in our current social climate?

That’s a hard question to answer as asked, because our current Pagan community is so diverse (which is a good thing) and so divided (which is a bad thing). We can’t agree on what needs to be done, much less how to do it.

At the least, it’s everyone’s responsibility to be an engaged citizen: to stay informed, to vote in every election, and to let your elected officials know how you feel about important legislation. Beyond that, it’s up to individual Pagans to decide how much time and energy they can put into political activism, and in what ways.

But I also think we can make a difference simply by being who and what we are, especially when we do it openly. We can show the mainstream culture that Nature is sacred, that gender has many expressions, and that things like consent and bodily autonomy are fundamental rights. We can influence the wider culture by making good art.

If your calling is to be out in the streets with bullhorns and signs, then do it. I can’t do that, and I’m not going to push myself and others to do what we can’t do. I am going to encourage everyone to do what they can do, whatever that may be.

I remember you writing once that you don’t believe in the Christian God, but I’ve been wondering if the Christian God could be a God who has a colonisation/imperialist streak and wants his people to spread his message? Countless people say they have had a real experience of this God, and with the aspect of Jesus. They are having real interactions with Something, so what are your thoughts on that?

As a polytheist, it would be disingenuous to accept the existence of every God known to humanity except for this one… or three… though I tend to think two. So I believe in the existence of the Christian God, and I absolutely believe in the existence of Jesus. I just don’t believe all the things Christians have said about them over the past 2000 years.

And then there’s the matter of the multiplicity of the Gods. Last year I said I think that white Christian nationalists are praying to a God I call “Yahweh-Paul-Calvin” – the vengeful God of the Old Testament, filtered through the missionary zeal and misogyny of Saul of Tarsus, and presented in the context of the cruelty, patriarchy, and might-makes-right of John Calvin.

Does the Christian God really want to be worshipped as the only God? Or do His followers want justification for their imperialism and colonialism? I don’t know. As with the question on God-spousing, I think I’m better off focusing on my own religion and leaving Christian religion to the Christians.

Someone sent me a link to this very good post from the Patheos Progressive Christian channel titled Stop Saying, “There, But for the Grace of God, Go I.” and then asked:

I believe the Gods I work with support me, and, when They feel it is justified, for Their own reasons, protect me. How do you see grace in a Pagan context?

Grace is not an exclusively Christian concept. Grace is simply the blessings of the Gods, the gifts They give us and the whole world because They are good. I completely agree with Gregory Smith (who wrote the post on the Progressive Christian channel) that we should never allow ourselves to feel superior or special because the Gods have blessed us.

As Pagans, we tend to emphasize reciprocity. The Gods give to us so we give to Them, in hopes that They will give to us again. But we are mortal humans – we are incapable of paying the Gods back on a one-for-one basis. I don’t think They expect that of us. It’s enough to do what we can in our human-to-divine relationships, and in so doing, set a good example for our human-to-human relationships.

And also, if the Gods do good things simply because They are good, what example does that set for us? If we wish to be good, let us do good, not because someone may reciprocate, but because it’s the right thing to do.

Maintaining a regular spiritual practice helps maintain my mental health. Unfortunately, the more stressed and overwhelmed I become, the harder it gets to maintain my regular practice. I end up in a vicious cycle where I can’t manage to engage in the work that makes me feel better.

Regular spiritual practice helps us deal with the ordinary stresses of life. It helps us put bad things into a broader context so we can deal with them. But it’s not a panacea. If you’re stressed because your roof is leaking, the answer isn’t to meditate more – the answer is to fix your roof.

The problem is that many of the “leaky roofs” we face aren’t within our power to fix.

Since you mentioned mental health, let me emphasize that if you need a mental health professional, see one. I know it’s not that simple – or that cheap – but resources are available. Don’t try to handle everything on your own if you don’t have to.

When I get to the point where I’m overwhelmed, the first thing I do is go take a long walk. And while I’m walking, I start listing out all the problems / challenges / stressors that I’m facing. Name each one.

What is it? Where does it come from? How is it impacting me right now? Many of my stressors are less about what’s actually happening and more about the overall environment. If how I’m responding isn’t helping me and it isn’t helping my more vulnerable friends, then I need to change the way I’m responding. It’s OK to set things down and come back to them when you’re in a better place.

Then for the things that are impacting me right now, what can I do to make them better? Make a plan and start working the plan.

And while you’re building your plan, don’t forget to schedule joy.

This may not put a new roof on my house, but it will usually patch the holes. And that lets me get back to living the way I want to live, including my regular spiritual practice.