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

A planned Pagan-run rave (in honor of Lammas) in the Pendle Borough of England is running into some resistance from the locals concerned about noise and litter.

“Plans for a pagan music festival – dubbed a ‘mini-Glastonbury’ – have been lashed by residents who fear it will wreck the countryside and encourage drug use. Organisers of the three-day Shamania festival between Burnley and Colne have not yet been licensed .. Residents near the Pendle site have objected to the licence application … ‘We are deeply concerned about the amount of noise created by this event, as well as people camping at the venue, causing disturbance to the wildlife, and to people who pay high rates to live in this area.’”

The organizer insists that the event will be held responsibly, while commenters on the article seem to think objections are more related to the “people who pay high rates” than the concerns for wildlife. A decision is to be made on Monday concerning the license.

Police in San Jose are on the lookout for a Santerian scam-artist who has been bilking money from credulous clients.

“Police are searching for one of two brothers who allegedly used spirituality to scam hundreds of victims out of thousands of dollars in the South Bay, San Jose police announced Tuesday. Since November 2006, police have been investigating a faith healer named John Alexander Manrique Salazar, 23, of San Jose, who called himself “Master Alexander,” and advertised that he could solve personal and relationship problems … An investigation revealed a second suspect, Carlos Manrique Salazar, 34, of San Jose, and hundreds of additional victims who paid thousands of dollars for various treatments. The brothers allegedly preyed on people throughout the Bay Area using Santeria, a mix of Afro-Caribbean and Catholic beliefs.”

Police believe he may now be in the Bay Area posing as a faith healer. Investigators are encouraging anyone with information on this case or suspect John Salazar’s whereabouts to contact Jurado at (408) 277-4521.

Blogger Ed Brayton picks apart the biased reporting in WorldNetDaily so you don’t have to.

“It is absolutely incredible the lengths to which some religious right folks will go to create the fake appearance of persecution, and no one is more dishonest about it than the Worldnutdaily. They’re up in arms about the University of Edinburgh in Scotland allowing a pagan group to hold a conference at the university after, the Worldnutdaily claims, they previously instituting a “ban on Bibles” at the university … The part about banning Bibles is an absurd lie … Those who actually bothered to read down past the headline found out that this was a “ban on bibles” at all; the university had only decided not to allow the Gideons to place a Bible in every dorm room before students moved in.”

Its like shooting fish in a barrel really, but no matter how often rational folks pull that trigger the “news” site keeps re-filling it anyway.

The Toledo Blade profiles Wiccan rock-star Sully Erna of Godsmack, including excerpts from his recent memoir “The Paths We Choose”.

“Erna was 16 and on the verge of killing someone. He was the stereotypical drummer: violent and wild. Sully Erna, the lead singer of the hard rock band Godsmack, which will be in Toledo tonight at the SeaGate Convention Centre, is a different guy. Much different. He’s in his late 30s, drug and alcohol free, passing on his hard-earned wisdom to troubled youth, doing his best to be a good father to his 5-year-old daughter, and staying away from situations in which his only option is to punch someone out.”

So watch out for those “stereotypical drummers”, the next time you’re at a rock show.

In a final note, for those who didn’t get enough looney ravings from Laura Mallory from my last entry, please allow me to correct that error.

“These books have unprecedented amounts of witchcraft and occult practices, they are marketed to our children because sorcery sells … In these books, it’s cool to cast spells and it’s cool to do wrong and if you’re not a witch, you’re not cool … We don’t want our children to grow up to be murderers, but we can’t teach them that in our schools anymore. ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’ was thrown out… I have a dream that God would be welcomed back in our schools again. I think we need Him.”

No need to thank me.

That is all I have for now, have a pleasant day!

The Guardian catches up with Robin Hardy, director of the pagan-themed cult classic “The Wicker Man”. Hardy discusses his latest book “Cowboys For Christ” (a sequel of sorts to “The Wicker Man”) and marvels at the cult audience that has built up amongst his most famous film.

“There have been so many books about the film, and there was an academic festival in Glasgow, for which I gave the keynote speech. And to tell you the absolute truth, it’s very difficult not to howl with laughter most of the time. I mean, we had essays on The Wicker Man and Wittegenstein, The Wicker Man and feminism, and all sorts of things like that. It went on for days, and it took itself very seriously.”

While Hardy denies it, The Guardian thinks that paganism is the dominant theme to Hardy’s work.

“Hardy denies that paganism is the uniting interest of his life. Scoffs at the idea. I’m sure he’s right. He probably has many other interests – having children, for instance – that wouldn’t make a film, but have been just as defining. Still, I think it’s fair to say that paganism is a theme.”

Hardy plans to shoot a film version of “Cowboys For Christ” starring Christopher Lee as soon as he has enough financial backing to go forward. Lets hope that happy day comes soon.

The now infamous anti-Harry Potter crusader Laura Mallory (who may or may not have a MySpace page) is in the news once more as the Gwinnett Superior Court hears her case against the school her children attend.

“Mallory is scheduled to appear in Gwinnett Superior Court Tuesday morning to argue the “Potter” stories are harmful and promote witchcraft and the occult to young people. Supporters of the “Potter” books say they encourage children to read and should be available to all students. Since she launched her anti-Potter crusade in 2005, Mallory has taken her case to administrators at the Loganville elementary school her children attend; to a school appeals committee; to the Gwinnett County Board of Education; and to the Georgia Board of Education. She’s lost at each level.”

Mallory (who still claims to have never read the books), eagerly shows why the press still loves (to hate) covering this conservative Christian underdog.

“Some parents who’ve heard about the controversy in the media, now, instead of taking Harry Potter at face value, they’ve started looking into the effects of it … Personally, I don’t think it’s a good idea to raise a whole generation of witches, I don’t think it’s good for our country.”

Quotes like this (conveniently timed with the release of a new Harry Potter book and movie) don’t debunk my theory that she is actually a brilliant performance artist. But even if she is the simple and sincere mother she paints herself as, this crusade does more to spread the gospel of Harry Potter than any ad campaign could. So grab some popcorn (if were lucky I’ll update later today with a verdict) and lets see how long her mad campaign will last. If her promise to go “as far as necessary” holds true I may be covering her exploits until she faces the Supreme Court.

Update: Laura Mallory has lost again, maintaining her perfect losing streak. Mallory claims she “may” take the case to federal court, no doubt funded by conservative culture warriors.

Today is Memorial Day, when the United States honors its war dead. But this year, in addition to the parades, patriotic speeches, and backyard barbecues, modern Pagans are celebrating a victory for the veterans, widows, and family members who fought for equal recognition.

“Since Korean War veteran Jerome Birnbaum died in 2005, his grave in a pagan cemetery had been marked with only a pile of stones and U.S. flags. On Memorial Day, Birnbaum’s grave and those of other military veterans will be dedicated with government-issued markers etched with a symbol of their religion – the Wiccan pentacle. Wiccans sued the government last year, arguing that it was unduly stalling a decision on whether to add the pentacle to the list of acceptable symbols for veterans’ graves. A settlement between the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and Wiccans added the five-pointed star to the list of “emblems of belief.” “I like to see our success literally etched in stone, because it will be,” said Birnbaum’s wife, Karen DePolito. She said winning the fight is vindication for all Wiccans.”

Today at Circle Sanctuary near Madison, Wisconsin a ceremony honoring America’s first Memorial Day dedication of Wiccan veteran gravestones with pentacles will take place.

“The Dedication will honor the lives and service of three Wiccan veterans, consecrate their markers, support religious freedom for all, and celebrate the successful conclusion of the ten year quest to have the Wiccan emblem of belief, the Pentacle, added to the US Department of Veterans Affairs’ list of emblems of belief that be included on the veteran grave markers it issues.”

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, who helped successfully litigate this case, has issued some remarks on this momentous occasion.

“This is, of course, a solemn occasion. You have gathered to dedicate these markers to fallen loved ones – heroes who died in the service of their nation. But while we must acknowledge our grief, we must also understand that we have reasons today to feel empowered about what has been accomplished. Today’s event is a momentous occasion – and it’s one that could not have taken place even two months ago. As you stand and look at the markers that commemorate the lives and sacrifices of your loved ones, bearing the symbol of their faith that you worked so hard to get placed there, you have many reasons to feel proud.”

So here is to the Pagan men and women who have served our country in peacetime and war, and especially to those who have paid the highest price for their service by giving their lives. While no victory such as this can restore a life, or fill the deep well of sorrow that such a loss brings about, it is always a noble thing to properly honor and respect those who have gone beyond this world. Have a good Memorial Day.

Marc Horne from Scotland on Sunday looks at a growing controversy taking place at the University of Edinburgh. It seems that a local Christian group is up in arms after a campus Pagan group was given approval to hold a conference there.

“Two ancient religions have locked horns in a bizarre “freedom of speech” row that is echoing around the corridors of one of Scotland’s oldest academic institutions. The University of Edinburgh has granted permission to the Pagan Society to hold its annual conference – involving talks on witchcraft, pagan weddings and tribal dancing – on campus next month. Druids, heathens, shamans and witches are expected to attend what is a major event in the pagan calendar. But the move has enraged the Christian Union, which accuses the university of double standards after banning one of its events on the “dangers” of homosexuality.”

The school felt that the Christian Union’s anti-gay chat violated its anti-discrimination policy, and in the end offered a compromise where posters offering different views would be displayed at their class if it was to be held. That no such measure has been applied to the Pagans has infuriated local Christians.

“The Union has won strong backing from the Catholic Church in Scotland, whose spokesman, Simon Dames, felt that allowing the pagan festival to go ahead while barring the Union meeting was an example of “Christianphobia”. “This appears to be a clear case of double standards,” he said.”

But is this a double standard? I suppose you could make that argument if the school had interfered with a general conference on the religion of Christianity and then not done the same for the Pagans. But the Christian course was specifically on the moral “dangers” of homosexuality and was not a general conference on the faith itself. Last time I checked, while many Christians morally oppose homosexual behavior due to their reading of the Bible, the moral opposition to homosexuality isn’t in itself a requirement for admission into the ranks of Christendom. Of course this didn’t stop a Catholic Church spokesman from making wildly hyperbolic statements.

“The principles of a pluralistic democracy revolve around an acceptance of competing ideas and universities should be enshrining this principle. Anti-racism groups would never be asked to put up posters saying there are alternative views.”

Because anti-racism meetings and talks against gays are basically the same! Perhaps homophobia is becoming a sacrament after all.

The National Post in Canada has an interesting article posted concerning the rise of interest in academic study of pop-culture and the role of religion within it.

“Prof. James, who has taught at the prestigious Ontario university for the past three decades, is one of dozens of scholars who will be bridging the vast academic divides between high-brow, low-brow and near-satirical esoterica at this year’s conference, which is being held as part of the annual Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences in Saskatoon. At this summit where Almighty notions will be poked, prodded and deconstructed, religion scholars will deliver presentations on topics as varied as ‘Women’s Hair Donation in Japanese Pure Land Buddhism,’ ‘Durkheim Goes Mainstream: Durkheimian Shadows within Popular Feminism and Media Representation of Sisterhood,’ and ‘Monotheistic Monsters and the Power of Polytheism in Battlestar Galactica.’”

Why this rise of interest in the deeper meanings within pop-culture? The piece asserts that the post-9/11 rise of two cultural flash-points (from two different religious/political positions) has fueled this interest.

“…the events that followed 9/11, the controversy surrounding the bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code and the flap over Mel Gibson movie Passion of the Christ – and the growth of the pursuit of spirituality – all have contributed to a boomlet of student curiosity in their field of expertise.”

Also feeding this trend has been the rise of the Harry Potter witch-hunts, and the popularity of celebrity atheist authors like Richard Dawkins. While all coming from different places they have all helped insert religious and philosophical meaning into our popular culture. Scholars are particularly interested in how themes and trends within popular culture affect how we act.

“The image of scholars searching for allegorical meaning in mainstream movies or popular paperbacks might seem farfetched, but as God scholars point out, holier-than-thou attitudes in religious departments have taken a democratic twist over the past couple of decades. They now focus less on what the masses are thinking – the philosophy or theoretical approach – and concentrate more on what they are actually doing: the sociology of their religion.”

Personally, I have always taken the position that pop-culture is important, especially for adherents to minority faiths like ours. Movies like “The Da Vinci Code”, television shows like “Battlestar Galactica”, comic books like “Phonogram”, and even Summer blockbusters starring certain pirates, all help clear a path towards mainstream acceptance and understanding. It isn’t so much evangelism (despite the hysterics of some Christian groups), as it is a subtle form of apologetics for outsider views.

This is why I liberally mix “hard” news in with posts about movies, books, and television shows. Because they can be a bellwether for our future, and can prepare us in a way other media cannot. In today’s society, what we watch when we are having fun can be almost as important as what we publicly claim to believe.

I generated a bit of controversy amongst some of my readers yesterday for not making my spoiler warning on my Pirate’s of the Caribbean post big enough to be immediately eye-catching. I would like to say that if my reveal lessened anyone’s enjoyment of the film, I do humbly apologize. It wasn’t my intention to “spoil” the film for anyone.

In my defense, I haven’t seen the film myself and found out about this plot-point from reading several reviews of the film. I assumed (perhaps wrongly) that since so many film critics felt this wasn’t a major spoiler I could get away with posting about it. So in the future I’ll be more careful about giving away details about newly-opened films.

NOTE: This post will be discussing possible spoilers for the third “Pirates of the Caribbean” film “At World’s End”, so read at your own risk.

So the third installment of the hugely successful “Pirates of the Caribbean” films “At World’s End” opened last night, and it seems that Disney has decided that the Pirates live in a world where pre-Christian goddesses roam the earth. The third film reveals that the Voodoo-practicing witch known as Tia Dalma is secretly a sea goddess.

Naomie Harris as the witch/goddess Tia Dalma

It seem that the “nine pirate lords” imprisoned a sea goddess by the name of Calypso for some reason or another, and she is freed from her human form at the climax of the film.

“Tia Dalma (Naomie Harris), a voodoo priestess who, it turns out, happens to be the sea goddess Calypso in human form, hence her power to revive the dead. She was once the lover of Davy Jones (Bill Nighy), captain of the Flying Dutchman, who, pursuant to some unspecified betrayal, has been cursed to wear a rubber octopus face that obscures what a good actor Bill Nighy actually is.”

In Greek mythology Calypso was either a naiad (water/sea nymph), a daughter of the titan Atlas most famous for delaying Odysseus for seven years and bearing him a son, or she was one of three thousand Oceanids born by the sea titans Oceanus and Tethys. In either case she certainly is tied to the sea and is divine (and Odysseus was certainly something of a pirate).

Detail of Calypso from “Odysseus und Kalypso” by Arnold Bocklin

This is an interesting twist since the historical pirates we most associate with the popular image of piracy lived in a thoroughly Christian age. Considering the vogue for all things pirate-y (including a reality television show) it should be interesting to see if sea deities start creeping into the lore and popular notions of swashbuckling pirates. Certainly products tying in with the Tia Dalma/Calypso character are already appearing, all we need now is a book claiming that pirates were secret pagans (no doubt already being written by somebody) and a new nautical-themed strain of modern Paganism could pop up before you know it.

So while film critics are equally split on whether the third “Pirates” film is any good, what isn’t in doubt is the heavy influence this film will have on the popular culture. Like it or not, Captain Jack Sparrow and the rest of the pirates acknowledge the existence of pagan gods, and aren’t shy in asking for their help (making them technical polytheists). All thats left is to see how many shrines to Calypso emerge from it.

The Boston Globe reviews the work of conceptual artist Cameron Jamie, during a retrospective show at the MIT List Visual Arts Center. Arts critic Ken Johnson, who was once greatly skeptical of Jamie’s vision, now feels he understands the underlying message of his work.

“What you have to realize about all this is that none of it is to be taken at face value as traditional art. It only starts to make sense if you think of Jamie as a sort of amateur anthropologist-philosopher who studies the persistence of myth and ritual in modern society … From Jamie’s perspective, paganism in many different forms continually percolates just below the supposedly rational surface of modern society … If there is a lesson to be drawn from Jamie’s art, it would be that however rational and commonsensical we think we are, we are all subject to the power of archetypal images, irrational fantasies, and mythic narratives, often when we are least aware of it.”

One of Cameron’s works singled out in the article is his collaboration with Mike Kelley for a series of photos called “Gothic”. The photos document young people in the goth subculture, and according to Johnson, they show how ’shared fantasies create alternative worlds’. But then the links between “paganism” and the goth subculture (among others) no longer “percolate” beneath the surface, so much as they harmoniously co-exist alongside it. Our society’s “paganism” has been leaving the realms of the subconscious and entering the literal for decades now. Which if anything makes Jamie perceptive of a growing trend (one that several artists are picking up on) instead of a pioneer of our subconscious desires.

Johnson does bring up an interesting larger theory, that our shared pagan past has never left us, and was always waiting to come back to the surface. I agree with scholars who believe that polytheism is the natural state of human society, no matter how far we run from such a reality. It only stands to reason that artists would be sensitive to this impulse and desire to portray it in their works.

The New York Times looks at the new wave of occult-tinged shows that will be premiering come the fall television season, and wonders if this sudden popularity is due to an increase of anxiety with Americans.

“The prevalence of supernatural plots ‘is reflective of increasing anxiety – personal, economic and national’ that pervades the American mood, said Mr. Rash, who was in New York last week to attend the networks’ presentations … Most of the coming new shows ‘are playing to viewers’ desire to be in fantasyland,’ said Shari Anne Brill, senior vice president and director of programming at Carat USA in New York, part of the Carat division of the Aegis Group, adding, ‘The real world has become such a horrendous place that people are looking for magic to avoid the tragic.’”

Among the new supernaturally themed shows premiering is “Moonlight” a vampire-themed romantic detective series on CBS, “Eli Stone” concerning a lawyer who has visions, “Pushing Daisies” about a man who has the power to bring people back from the dead (both of those shows are on ABC), and Fox’s “New Amsterdam” about a immortal homicide detective. These shows (and several more fantasy/supernatural-themed programs) are, according to the article, much due to the success of the super-hero drama “Heroes”.

“Yet the popularity of ‘Heroes,’ which ends its first season tonight, is widely thought to be the inspiration for the escapist trend for next season. NBC is even hoping that lightning will strike twice; it is planning a six-episode spinoff, ‘Heroes: Origins,’ expected in spring 2008.”

It remains to be seen how successful this new rash of occult-tinged programming will be with American audiences, but it does seem to point to a new willingness to explore the fantastical. My only regret is that the only witch-themed television show coming this fall will be in Spanish (without English subtitles).