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I was recently asked by a young gay man if I thought Druidry or Wicca was more gay-friendly. The answer isn’t simple, but I think it merits some discussion, so I decided to spend some time collecting my thoughts on the subject in writing. Continue reading »
“…there is no word in any language I know which is an exact synonym for vril. I should call it electricity, except that it comprehends in its manifold branches other forces of nature, to which, in our scientific nomenclature, differing names are assigned, such as magnetism, galvanism, &c. These people consider that in vril they have arrived at the unity in natural energetic agencies, which has been conjectured by many philosophers above ground…”
Bulwer-Lytton, 1871, The Coming Race
“On my visit this Morning to Tynah and his Wife, I found with her a person, who altho I was certain was a Man, had great marks of effeminacy about him and created in me certain notions which I wished to find out if there were any foundations for. On asking Iddeah who he was, she without any hesitation told me he was a friend of hers, and a class of people common in Otaheite called Mahoo. That the Men had frequent connections with him and that he lived, observed the same ceremonies, and eat as the Women did. The Effeminacy of this persons speech induced me to think that he had suffered castration, and that other unnatural and shocking things were done by him, and particularly as I had myself some Idea that it was common in this sea. I was however mistaken in all my conjectures except that things equally disgusting were committed.”
William Bligh, The Log of the Bounty, 1789
“Star and nerve-tissue are parts of the system-stellar and nervous forces are correlated. Nay more; sensation awakens thought and kindles emotion, so that this wondrous dynamic chain binds into living unity the realms of matter and mind through measureless amplitudes of space and time.”
Edward Youmans, 1869, The Correlation and Conservation of Force
This post will examine the arrival of thermodynamics in the nineteenth century and consider its wider cultural impact – in particular how it was used to reinforce gender regimes. Continue reading »
As I read through the various commentaries and observations in the wake of this year’s PantheaCon I came across people asserting that what happened was particularly reprehensible because Paganism has always been welcoming to LGBTQI people. This might well be the case in the USA, but its certainly not true for the UK. Continue reading »
Our community benefits from questioning what gender and/or sexuality are doing in a given context. Asking is simple, but the answers often reveal themselves to be complicated, and loaded with values and assumptions in ways that are not initially apparent, particularly when the subject in question is related to religion. For modern religions, like modern Paganism, there are no common, sacred documents that enshrine assignment and treatment of gender and sexuality, or the values encoded by the handling of these issues, which means that we must find our own way of expressing these values in meaningful ways for our community. As different groups under the wide umbrella of modern Paganism find themselves presenting ritual and religion in public, this can cause those chosen ways to be exposed and discussed publicly, which opens them to public criticism, because these manifestations can affect members of our community in ways not anticipated by organisers. Continue reading »
In my last post in this series I examined the relationship between spiritualism and the rapid growth of communications technology in the nineteenth century. This time round, I’m going to focus on the notion of “female passivity” in terms of Spiritualism, and its relationship to wider cultural discourses of the period. Just as spiritualism took off at the same time as the rise of the telegraph, it also was contemporaneous with the growing tensions over women’s role and influence – the so-called “Woman Question”. Continue reading »
Having abandoned everything, O Goddess, the aspirant should make great effort to seek out the company of women.
Brihannila Tantra
One of the most contested topics in contemporary tantric studies is the question of how much agency women had within historical tantric practice. Although many new age and occult representations of tantra speak of it as a “cult of the divine feminine”, more skeptical commentators stress that despite the fact that tantric texts frequently valorise women, tantra is predominantly a masculine practice, in which women are little more than passive objects and sources of power for the benefit of male adepts. Continue reading »
In the early part of the nineteenth century, electricity was thought to be the force most likely to prove the existence of the elan vitale or life force of Naturalphilosophie. Schelling, at the turn of the century, for example, proposed that heat, light, magnetism and electricity were all byproducts of a single universal life force. The arising of electrical models allowed polarities to be discovered within organisms – and between discrete classes of persons. Thus maleness or masculinity was assigned to the positive pole, and femininity to the negative. The gendering of electricity and energy continued in the nineteenth century, particularly in respect to medical theories and the notion of “nervous energy”, and the rise in popularity of Spiritualism. Continue reading »
You asked about how a gay person can celebrate Beltane, as it’s about fertility.
It is such a standard image, no? Beltane being about the God and Goddess having sex or marrying. She in her long hair and coy long-legged femininity. He always tall, muscular, strong, looking conventionally masculine, holding her a loving embrace. I too attended rituals celebrating their happy union. And at midsummer, they stood together, a couple with their child, born from their Beltane coupling. Like you, I heard this described as fertility. And it did seem logical. Continue reading »
