Tonight on “Paranormal Witness”
I’m a huge fan of supernatural and ghost shows. SyFy has a particularly good one called “Paranormal Witness”. Unlike “A Haunting”, they use actors who actually look like the people whose story it is.
I have severe trepidation today, though, because today’s “Paranormal Witness” is about a guy being stalked on the streets of Juarez by Santa Muerte.
I’m betting that they will omit that they owe her TWO DOLLARS.
I’ll report afterwards if this is likely to be negative or positive towards the Mademoiselle.
Independence Day
So, it’s the Fourth of July. This is always kind of weird for me, because I enjoy the picnics and the sight of fireworks (since my vacation in Afghanistan, the noise makes me very stressed). I’m not into what I call American flag fetishism, and I hate, hate, HATE the song “Proud to be an American”. First off, yes, I was born in the States, but I’m a Canadian citizens and identify as such. Plus, large rallies of patriotic symbols make me listen for the jackboots in the distance.
Putting that aside, I do what I can for the country. For me, “love of country” means trying to keep up the qualities that make people choose the U.S. as a destination for where they’ll make their dreams come true. I’ll stand against anything that compromises those qualities. I further insist that the land is sacred and to be cared for. This is why I froth at the mouth a bit at the idea that the flag can’t touch the soil. Why not? The land is the land, the country itself. The flag is a godsdamned piece of cloth. The soil of the country should bless the flag, not desecrate it. Whoever thought it’d desecrate the flag suffered from profound cranio-rectal inversion.
In 2011, there was a dominionist Christian effort to pray for the U.S., saying that the “District of Columbia” needed to become the “District of Christ”. They directed their hostility at Columbia, saying She was a pagan goddess who needed ousting. Since Sven and I were working together at Sven’s bankruptcy firm, gaining financial freedom for those in the chains of debt, I purchased a statue of Freedom, also known as Libertas, also known as Columbia.
Bizarre? Not at all. The Capitol building is full of Masonic and pagan imagery. The magic is there to be used if ever someone decides to learn to use the tools. I feel dirty saying this, but Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol makes a handy guidebook to magical Washington, D.C. Pair it up with the book We The People, which like the statue above is available from the Capitol Historical Society for visuals. I’m just sayin’.
We carried the statue above from San Diego to our house in Arizona, wrapped in one of Sven’s business suits. Being Sven, he left the suit out on the bed when he went to sleep. The next morning I woke up, turned over the covers to reveal the suit jacket, and when I lifted the jacket Columbia’s head rolled out onto the covers like something in a Masonic version of The Godfather. Her headdress had broken off too.
I glued Her head and headdress back on today and will be displaying her on the feasting table this evening in an act of sympathetic magic. Blessed be.
Lady Columbia
You can buy this statue from the U.S. Capitol Historical Society.
Heroes
There’s a great brouhaha going on in the pagan blogosphere right now caused by this piece here. TL;DR, pop culture superheroes are our equivalent of the ancient Greek heroes, and their stories our modern heroic myths.
On pondering this, my answer is, “Time will tell.”
There are stories and there are myths. To paraphrase P. Sufenas Virius Lupus, fiction (stories) are neither real nor true, even if they do explain and convey meaning to a person’s life. Myths are perhaps not real, but they are True. For me, the epitome of myth is King Arthur. Others may point to Hercules or Cu Chulainn or Hanuman. Was there an historical person behind these myths? Perhaps, but even if there wasn’t, that doesn’t mean the story isn’t True. The stories, I posit, exist somewhere deep in the human psyche.
There is a reason why the story of a hero whose mother was a royal virgin, who had to be hidden from a man who wants him dead, who returns in disguise to his kingdom, dies betrayed, leaves no body but has many holy sepulchers is the hagiography of so many holy and divine figures. There’s also an eternal story about someone who lives a simple life who has a quest and heroism thrust upon him. There’s a story about a trickster. There’s a story about a fantastic strong man who occasionally isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed but he’s brave and physically mighty so he prevails.
Of course Jesus had to be born of a virgin from the house of David. Of course he had to be betrayed, executed, and then return. He’s a deified hero, and it’s in the job description! That’s not all. One year I was in church around the feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, June 24. The Nativity of Jesus is observed starting on December 24. On St. John’s day, one of the passages read is John’s observation about Jesus that, “He must increase and I must now decrease.”
I scampered home and typed into my blog, “St John and Jesus are the Oak King and the Holly King. How could I not have seen it?”
A friend of mine, Farrell McGovern, wisely observed, “Others have noticed that too. People like to hear the same stories over and over, and they don’t care who plays the starring roles.”
With that comment, Farrell put together what makes a myth a myth and a hero a hero. I’d add that the stories that partake of Myth tend to having more staying power than those that don’t. A co-worker of mine who was Native wrote a science fiction story where millennia from now, people had discovered Bugs Bunny and worshiped him as a trickster deity. I daresay she’s right. Ol’ Bugs fits that description along with Coyote, Anansi and Loki. He is more a mythic figure than Mickey Mouse, who is now a trademark symbol with no stories of his own.
This is why Star Wars has never lost popularity, and I don’t think it ever will. Luke is yet another son of a princess who must be hidden from a male figure who wants him dead, only to return under an assumed name. The next three films will show if he ends up betrayed and revered after his death. There won’t be a body; we’ve all seen that Jedi tend to not leave them.
If you think about stories that have entered the modern psyche, they are usually the old stories with new characters in the starring roles. Bilbo Baggins and his less fortunate nephew Frodo are Unwilling Heroes who left their comfortable existence in order to become great. King Arthur’s myth is told and retold because we can’t get enough of it, and there is an Arthurian television show, Merlin, being broadcast right now.
Arthurian lore is a good place to begin to address the question of popular culture and polytheistic worship. It’s been 1200 years since Arthur was first mentioned in “History of the Britons”. Churches in England would often gain cachet and amplified sanctity through a connection with the great king. Today, Arthurian themes are prominent in Druidism and Wicca with many of the characters being “revealed” as deities in disguise. Can a hero with a Myth become a deity? We’re almost there with Arthur. In ten centuries, the same may be happening with Bilbo and Frodo.
The Luke Skywalker in me greets the Luke Skywalker in you.
The Vatican calls Santa Muerte “Sinister and Infernal”
The Vatican calls Santa Muerte “Sinister and Infernal”
Santa Muerte is Someone to whom I have been devoted since 2007. She is the best saint I’ve ever invoked and always comes through. She’s not all-powerful, but if she can do something she will. All she asks is to be kept in tequila, fresh fruits and Godiva chocolates.
Happy Easter
Redondo Beach is about 2.5 hours away, but I’m kind of tempted. I mean, this kind of blasphemy is once in a lifetime.
Restoring paganism? For real?
So, Sam Webster, who apparently is “restoring Paganism” (I am far from clear what that means, or why Sam is here to do it), wrote this:
http://www.patheos.com//Pagan/Why-You-Cant-Worship-Sam-Webster-03-20-2013.html
Which means he’s like this:
And much of the rest of the pagan community is like this:
Because it appears that the most important component in being pagan is that you don’t worship Jesus. The whole “worshiping the Goddess and God” or “reconstructing an ancient cultural religion” or “I get my religious experience by feeling the divine in Nature” isn’t worth a tinker’s damn unless you first and foremost don’t worship Jesus.
It all comes together pretty logically, though. He’s a Webster, so it’s his birthright to define the word “Pagan”. Indeed, unless your last name is Oxford or Funk-Wagnalls, you are not empowered to do it. Blessed be.*
I’m retreading things that other pagan writers have already said, but including Jesus in your pantheon doesn’t make you a Christian. A Christian, as I understand it from my years of divinity school, is someone who can recite the Nicene Creed, believing it all the way. So if you…
-Look to Jesus as a model for behavior, or;
-See Jesus as another expression of the Dying God, or;
-Understand him as the incarnation and teacher of Cosmic Christ Nature, or;
-Pray to him on behalf of your Christian ancestors, or;
-Simply view him as one god among untold multitudes, even if he isn’t “yours”,
ZWOT! You are officially “not a Christian!” The Nicene Creed is your checklist:
I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.
I believe science has something to say about this.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.
This is quite a complex Christology, really not relevant to me as a pagan. I understand the theology expressed here, but dollars to doughnuts even most Christians in the pews don’t.
Who, for us men and for our salvation,
Women can fuck right off.
came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven,
Familiar territory here, if you know your mythology. I don’t have a problem with this.
and sits on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.
No he won’t.
And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father and the Son;
Oh, that “filioque”!
who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets.
Who were making things up and usually wrong.
And I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.
Nope.
I do believe in Jesus, who was born of the virgin Mary, hypostasis of the Feminine Divine. I believe that the Christ Consciousness, or something like it, descended upon him at his baptism, after which he spent 40 days in the desert, grappling with it. He came out of the desert and began his teaching. Having enraged the mortal authorities, he was crucified, died and was buried. He rose again after the second night, which no prophet ever foresaw, because that’s what Dying Gods do. He ascended into heaven and while his orthodox worshipers wait for him to return and take revenge on everyone who was mean to them in high school, he won’t. He remains ever present through his teachings and whenever bread and wine are broken and consumed in his memory. My ancestors worshiped and still worship him, I consider his words when I’m dealing with others and I have a picture of the Sacred Heart on my ancestral altar. He did not die for my sins, and I don’t need salvation because of the crime of some mythical proto-ancestor. I am not a Christian, and if you’re reading this, chances are you aren’t either.
*You were thinking about being blessed in the name of Jesus! Admit it! Heretic!
Please allow me to introduce myself.
To say I’ve been obsessed with religion all my life is probably to sum up my existence in a nutshell. I was raised Catholic, and it took hold. I blame the statues. Had the first churches I attended with my parents been the modern type, with white walls, Roman numeralsinstead of actual Stations of the Cross and a few discreet statues, I probably wouldn’t be writing this now.
Send me screaming to the nearest botanica, why don’t you?
I was baptized at St. Edmund’s in Brooklyn, went to Mass at the glorious St. Mark’s in Sheepshead Bay, and had a crazy Puerto Rican tía in the Bronx who collected discarded furniture from churches that were being renovated. Her apartment was full of prie-dieux, statues, and if I recall correctly, a whole altarpiece. She also had a crucifix as big as my three-year-old self. It used to hang over the bed on which I sat as I watched The Monkees.
So yeah, that all left its mark.
I was also surrounded by Judaism. When we passed Temple Har Ha-Shalom on our way to St. Edmund’s, I asked my mom why we never went to church there. I don’t remember her answer, but I came away with the impression that Jews were people who made bagels, went to church on Saturday and wore yarmulkes.
It wasn’t until we moved to the Washington D.C. metro area when I was six or so that I encountered places that didn’t have a church for us at all, and no visible Jews. The church that did go up for us eventually is a post-Vatican II horror, with plastic seats, bare brick walls—no statues! At the same time, I was starting to read mythology. Is there any wonder I got confused?
Plus, as I grew older, Catholicism started to lose its luster when I discovered my status as a second-class citizen. Our then-diocese, Arlington, only allowed female altar servers in then 21st century, and then grudgingly. I found out about the contraception thing. At the same time, I became a huge fan of the saints, particularly the bizarre southern Italian ones. I was both terrified of their stigmata, inedia and visits from the Devil and envious of them.
Sorry, St. Gemma, you’re one of the main offenders.
I did the usual foray into Wicca when I was 20 or so both because of the sexism I saw in Christianity and the war between the virginity cult and my hormones. My first Wiccan book was The Spiral Dance. It gave me both the female God I wanted and needed at the time and the idea that sex wasn’t bad. If I could have only let go of my fear of hell, inculcated by old-style Catholicism and fostered by Bible-thumping Protestant friends, I might have gone in that direction, religiously. In that case, I really should be grateful to that fear of hell. Sorry, Wiccans.
Fast-forward 20+ years, and forays into queer Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, and research into Reform Judaism and British occultism. I can talk Qabalah, Tarot, Freemasonry, and folk religion, among others. I converted to Asatru, but have a lot of heavy baggage along with it. Often, that makes me feel really guilty. This blog is partially to discuss that.
Books to turn your own child into me:
D’Aulaire: The Greek myths, the Norse myths
Lives of the Saints
The Spiral Dance.
Another blog? Why?
I have my LiveJournal for daily things and Northern Heim, Southern Clime for my Asatru things. I think a lot about religion in general, and have been experimenting in different ones since I was a little kid. I didn’t think it was appropriate to talk about what else I’m reading and pondering in NHSC, so I started this one up. Currently I’m reading A Garland for Polydeukion by P. Sufenas Virius Lupus of aediculaantinoi here on WordPress and a book of Bon Tibetan sleep and dream yoga. Much of my library is being catalogued in Goodreads. Expect Buddhism, Asatru and weird Catholicism.
Dr. R's Religious Ramblings 