Intensities: a quiet epiphany
dip in
to the sea
of possibilities…
Patti Smith
I feel as though I am on the edge of vertigo – thoughts, ideas, bits of conversation whirling around me, yet at the same time, it’s quiet. Continue reading »
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Pan: an odd sort of god
“Down the long lanes and overgrown ridings of history we catch odd glimpses of a lurking rustic god with a goat’s white lightning in his eyes. A sort of fugitive, hidden among leaves. and laughing with the uncanny derision of one who feels himself defeated by something lesser than himself.”
D. H Lawrence, Remembering Pan -
Shamanism and gender-variance: uncovering a history
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 »
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Sexual Outlaw, Erotic Mystic: The Essential Ida Craddock – A Review
Sexual Outlaw, Erotic Mystic: The Essential Ida Craddock (San Francisco: Red Wheel/Weiser, 2010) by Vere Chappell is a welcome contribution to a growing body of literature related to Craddock (1857-1902). After a long period of neglect, the life and writings of this amazing woman are finally emerging from obscurity. Continue reading »
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Issues with the Gender Binary in Public Paganism
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 »
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Kula Bodies – III
For this next installment of what’s turning out to be a fairly slow-moving series I’m going to briefly review some of the features of dividuality which have emerged out of ethnographic accounts of personhood in Melansia, with particular reference to the work of Marilyn Strathern and Edward LiPuma. Continue reading »
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Further thoughts on Lineage
Another way to conceptualise lineage is in terms of two complementary axes – the vertical and the horizontal. Continue reading »
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Ganapati variations: an eighteenth-century interpretation
“But the obvious forms and ceremonies of a religion are not always to be understood in their obvious sense; but are to be considered as symbolical representations of some hidden meaning, which may be extremely wise and just, though the symbols themselves, to those who know not their true significance may appear in the highest degree absurd and extravagant.”
Richard Payne Knight, A Discourse on the worship of PriapusIn the midst of Richard Payne Knight’s A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus, and its connection with the mystic Theology of the Ancients (first published in 1786) there is an early European analysis of Ganesa: Continue reading »
