“Directed by Harry Potter veteran Chris Columbus, the film is a fantasy based on the first book in Rick Riordan’s popular series. In the story, a young modern-day boy named Percy Jackson learns that he’s the half-human/half-god son of Poseidon and embarks on a journey of adventure and self-discovery that also involves warring gods.”

You can see the official film web site, here. It is scheduled for release February 12, 2010. Can a film tied so deeply to the pre-Christian Greek mythos find the kind of mega-success that Potter did? One thing’s for certain, if you thought certain Christians went nuts over a bunch of English boarding-school kids casting spells, wait till their kids want to see a film about the children of pagan gods.

“[Greece deputy town supervisor Jeff] McCann said the town has long used a list of worship services published in a local newspaper to extend invitations to local clergy for the meetings. The list offers little diversity, he said, and the town has had difficulty locating people from nontraditional faiths who may not have a physical church building they attend. “Now that the issue has gotten some publicity, we’ve had people call up and say they have an interest in delivering a prayer,” he said, adding that nonclergy, the nonreligious and anyone else who wishes to speak the pre-meeting prayer is welcome. “If a private person wants to come and say a prayer, they can come and do it.” Indeed, he said, next month’s Wiccan prayer was initiated by local resident Jennifer Zarpentine, who called town offices to ask whether she would be welcome at a meeting.”

So local resident Jennifer Zarpentine did indeed give an opening invocation in Greece, making her re-think the issue of sectarian prayers now that she was included.

“In just a few seconds’ time during the April Town Board meeting, Jennifer Zarpentine made Greece history. Zarpentine, a Wiccan, delivered the first-ever pagan prayer to open a meeting of the Greece Town Board. Her hands raised to the sky, she called upon Greek deities Athena and Apollo to ‘help the board make the right informed decisions for the benefit and greater good of the community.’ A small cadre of her friends and coven members in the audience chimed in ’so mote it be … Zarpentine said she was pleased by the opportunity to pray at the meeting. ‘I thought the invocation went well,’ she said. ‘The board was respectful;, they all bowed their heads.’ As far as the lawsuit goes, Zarpentine said the town isn’t being discriminatory. ‘They are including everybody,’ she said. ‘They asked me.’”

Americans United were, naturally, unmoved by the town of Greece’s recent inclusiveness, so litigation moved forward. This past Thursday Americans United and the town of Greece (represented by the right-wing Alliance Defence Fund) gave their arguments to a judge and are now awaiting a summary judgement in about six weeks.

“In the hour-long hearing, Richard R. Katskee, assistant legal director for Americans United, argued that the plaintiff is concerned not with prayer before the meetings but with sectarian prayers that have dominated the practice since Auberger started it in 1999. According to court papers, of 104 prayers from 1999 through 2007, none were non-Christian. Since the lawsuit was filed, the majority of the prayers have been Christian, with one being delivered by a Wiccan priestess and two others by non-clergy. Katskee stressed that the plaintiff is not against Christian prayer, but that the prayers have been aimed at one sect … Joel Oster, a senior litigation counsel for Colorado-based Alliance Defense Fund that is representing Greece, said that it is not right to ask the town to police the clergy. “It is not the town’s place to tell the clergy what to say,” Oster said. “It would cause a nightmare for the town.” Auberger has said that the town’s practice is to have an open invitation to any Greece resident to contact the town about giving the prayer.”

So now we’ll find out if a legal fig-leaf in the form of a single sectarian Wiccan prayer (amidst a hundred Christian prayers to Jesus) can aid this New York town and their socially conservative legal team overcome the AU and some pretty strong legal precedents in their favor. Will Greece’s “include a Wiccan” gambit work? Or will they be forced to switch to non-sectarian prayers? In about six weeks we get to find out.

“What is clear is that Lord Elgin used his position as ambassador to Istanbul to gain access to the Athenian Akropolis — as well as the right to remove objects from the temple for further study. It is not clear that the sultan who granted the permission imagined Elgin taking these things away permanently, but that is what Elgin arranged. The Greeks object that the Turks had no business giving Greek marbles away, but of course, then our quarrel is with the whole structure of nineteenth century gunpowder imperialism. To demand the return of all such ill-gotten goods would hasten the end of the modern public art museum as we know it today. But again, the Greeks insist that this case is unique, not a precedent-setter.”

What makes this essay so unique as opposed to other break-downs over the controversy concerning the marbles is Ruprecht’s willingness to explore the strange reality of pagan sacred objects becoming secularized “national treasures” used to reflect the glory of the  (often Christian-dominated) nations that posses them.

“That religious statuary has been re-conceived as national treasure is but one of the oddities — and one of the transformations — managed by the modern public art museum … Lord Elgin looted an ancient Greek temple in the name of British glory, installing the marbles eventually in a new kind of modern shrine, a museum. Athens has now built a glorious new museum to hold the marbles Lord Elgin did not take, in tandem with plaster casts of the ones that are still in London. The Greeks are now demanding the return of all the marbles, which would tear a very large hole in the British Museum collection. In all of these debates about history and national identity, about national treasure and the virtues of repatriation—and very much as Quatremère lamented—it is the ancient religiosity of the pieces that have been lost to view.”

Stranger still, is the irony of a Greek Orthodox Church who supports these (now safely secularized) pagan temple items being restored to their country, yet want to edit a museum film showing the many indignities and damages wrought on the Parthenon by ancient Christians.

“The animated segment showed figures clad in black climbing up ladders and destroying part of the Parthenon frieze; the scene referred to well-documented episodes of destruction that took place in the early Byzantine period (5th-8th centuries A.D.), when Christians often demolished monuments and temples belonging to the old pagan era. Many parts from those temples were used to build churches. The Parthenon itself suffered some damage but was spared a worse fate by being converted into a church. Church officials contended the film misrepresented the attitude of the Greek Orthodox Church toward Greece’s ancient heritage.”

Though, after an outpouring of outrage and accusations of censorship, the film is being restored.

“Greece’s new Acropolis Museum on Tuesday said it will undo controversial editing of a video showing the Parthenon temple vandalised by early Christians in a row that has sparked complaints of Church-backed censorship. The video will be restored after its maker, renowned French-Greek filmaker Costa-Gavras, said he meant to attach no blame to Christian priests for the destruction, museum director Dimitris Pantermalis said.”

In the closing of his essay, Ruprecht warns that “when religion is deleted from the museum, it tends to be replaced by nationalism”. These objects, objects that were once part of a thriving religious culture, are now treasures used to reflect the glory of the nations and politicians who posses them. Can we honor the pagan religious past contained within these items instead of devolving into mere nationalism and historical revisionism? Must we destroy the temple to make a museum?

The post made me think of the Iliad, when fighters are shielded by one god(dess) or another. (One of the commenters had a similar reaction.)

For instance, in Book 20, Poseidon whisks the Trogan fighter Aeneus away when invincible Achilles is about finish him off — that sort of thing.

I was raised Christian and heard Bible stories every Sunday. There was never any doubt whose side Yahweh was on in the wars of the Hebrews.

Consequently, it was a little strange at first to encounter the polytheistic world of the Iliad, in which the gods take sides. Unfair! Which is the “right” side?

But yet is not the Iliad a truer picture of the world we live in?

PS: The best cover design for the Iliad ever published is this one.

“The modern world had bought into the idea of the limitlessness of money, he suggested. The Greeks warned about just that aspect with instructive mythological exampla. What is the myth of Midas except the terrible story of a man whose whole aspirations are focussed on the ’sign of money’. Greek culture, as Seaford sees it, insisted on the culture of limit. And that has implications for environmental issues too. The modern disregard for the signs of global warming is reminiscent of Greek stories of those who allow their limitless desires to bring about their own destruction (sometimes even when they know what the consequences of their desires wlll be). One of these is the myth of Erisichthon, who first of all destroys a tree in the grove of the nymphs, in such a way that it brings down most of the grove — and then, in punishment, is afflicted with insatiable desire for food in the midst of a famine and ends up consuming his own body. So what can Greek culture do for us in our present dilemmas? It can allow us to see alternatives to our own culture (and cult) of ‘the unlimited’?”

These attitudes shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with ancient Greek culture and religion, after all, the temple of Apollo at Delphi bore the inscription “Meden Agan” (nothing in excess) and the ancient myths are full of punishments for those who are overly greedy or unthinking in their acquisition of wealth, land, or power. Certainly there were/are permitted times of excess, but these are again placed within certain limits, and balanced by forces of order and sobriety. The question remains if we can embrace a new narrative of “limit” regarding our environment in order to avoid a future straight from a Greek tragedy.

ADDENDUM: More on this talk from The Guardian.

“OLYMPUS begins with the Brothers Gemini, 3,000 years after Zeus has granted them eternal life in exchange for eternal servitude, hunting an exiled god, only to stumble upon a greater horror by accidentally releasing one of Hades’ most dangerous prisoners. The results explode as [Nathan] Edmondson and [Christian] Ward expand the mythology of classic tales in a fresh, compelling visual style in an action-adventure driven series unlike any other out there.”

You can see a short preview of the comic, here. The first issue is due to arrive at your comic shop on May 20th. As a fan of Pagan, mythological, and occult themes in comic books, I’ll definately be checking it out.

An advice column for the Washington Times highlights the struggles of a Wiccan military family after the children are outed at their local school.

…my children are being discriminated against by their teachers and administrators because we are Wiccans. It all started when other children at their school found out we are Wiccan. The students now call my children witches and warlocks. I know my children are being harassed, and this is not fair to them. Their grades are now falling tremendously. I have complained about this to the teachers, counselors, assistant principal and the principal. They have done nothing about it. I wanted to use this experience as a learning tool, to teach others about our lifestyle without imposing our views on others. It was my desire to stay calm and educate only to stop the fear and harassment. I asked to do a professional development session for the staff and a presentation to my children’s classrooms. I know this would help others understand, so they would stop judging and name-calling. The teachers would not hear of this. They all said it would infringe upon the rights of other students who do not want to hear about Wiccans.

The columnist “Ms. Vicki” Johnson advises the mother to climb higher on the administrative ladder with her concerns, and to seek counselling in order to deal with the emotional stress, but I fear that this is a far deeper problem than a few uncaring teachers. The military culture has become downright hostile to non-Christian faith expressions, often exploiting loopholes to keep Pagans (and other faiths) from gaining legitmacy and equal treatment. It wasn’t simply because of Bush that the veteran Pentacle quest took so long to achieve victory. I don’t know if there’s an easy solution to this problem, but one can hope that things will open up a bit under the Obama administration.

Darin Najor, who assulted a teacher and threatened to set her on fire for being a “witch” after she assigned the class to read “The Crucible”, is undergroing a competency hearing to see if he can stand trial.

Police said the assignment to read and discuss “The Crucible” apparently set Najor off. The teacher had been discussing the play in class for a while before she was assaulted. Najor questioned the teacher the day before the assault, police said, and she told him she didn’t believe in witchcraft and that the play was an allegory about persecution. The following day, Najor came up behind the teacher chanting what sounded like religious verses and poured water over her that he carried in a Gatorade bottle, Denmark said. Najor was also carrying a large barbecue lighter and told the teacher she was a witch who needed to be purified, police said. Najor ran from the room and the teacher and a security guard followed him outside where he was smoking a cigarette, Denmark said. The suspect ran at the teacher and said he was going to “burn the witch” when he was restrained by the guard, police said.

While Najor certainly seems delusional, one wonders where he got the idea that a witch needed to be purified by fire? It’s too bad this account doesn’t dig a bit into his background. What’s his home life like? What religious instruction did he receive? I would like to know these things, just in case the water-bottle was simply a trial run.

Speaking of innocent teachers and witches, a Texas man has finally been cleared of all charges after being accused of confining two girls to a classroom because he thought they were witches.

It has not been an easy three years for Jose Ramos. The 45-year-old Spanish teacher has been unemployed and under a felony indictment for most of that time, chafing against what he saw as an ongoing injustice he could not seem to clear. Some days, it was hard to tell what was worse: That he was being accused of confining two scared teenage girls to a classroom, or that the Rio Grande Valley thought he’d done it because he thought the girls were witches. On Thursday, prosecutors dropped the last of his criminal charges and, with an apologetic shrug from a county court-at-law judge whose children had been his students, Ramos was once again free, innocent and employable.

In the span of three years the truth slowly came out, the girl’s stories changed, and they no longer wanted to testify. In fact, it seems that it was Ramos who was trying to protect the girls from fellow classmates who accused the girls of casting malicious spells. The tragedy is that this man’s life and livelyhood were ruined while under the shadow of these charges. Resentful, he’s now looking for a job far away from the town in which he once worked.

The Independent gives a decidedly lukewarm review to Gary Lachman’s new book “Politics and the Occult: The Left, the Right, and the Radically Unseen”, calling it “stodgy” and “uncontroversial”.

Gary Lachman has certainly done his research. This history of how the occult has influenced national politics – and not just wacky, fascist politics but mainstream and progressive political movements too … It could be fascinating, but the prose is stodgy, and the actual aims of these secret societies, where revealed, are often uncontroversial and bland – to create a better world, that sort of thing. It’s never entirely clear whether Lachman believes that occult study is a real means of acquiring knowledge, providing an alternative to “the hard-nosed empirical approach [of] science”. This book offers no evidence that it is; but then doubts are raised about Lachman’s commitment to rationality when he claims that “in 1960, aliens took an interest in US politics and backed a candidate for the presidency”.

For more on Lachman’s work (which tends toward the sensationalistic), you should check out this (slightly edited) excerpt from “Politics and the Occult”.

How did ancient Greeks choose their temple locations? According to Gregory J. Retallack of the University of Oregon in Eugene, it’s all about the soil.

No clear pattern emerged until he turned to the gods and goddesses. It was then that he discovered a robust link between the soil on which a temple stood and the deity worshiped there. For example, Demeter, the goddess of grain and fertility, and Dionysos, the god of wine, both were venerated on fertile, well-structured soils called Xerolls, which are ideal for grain cultivation. Artemis, the virgin huntress, and her brother Apollo, the god of light and the Sun, were worshiped in rocky Orthent and Xerept soils suitable only for nomadic herding. And maritime deities, such as Aphrodite, the goddess of love, and Poseidon, the sea god, were revered on Calcid soils on coastal terraces too dry for agriculture. The pattern suggests that the deities’ cults were based on livelihood as much as on religion. And, says Retallack, temple builders may have chosen sites to make the deities feel at home.

So if you’re looking to build a new Pagan temple, better check out the local dirt first.

In a final note, mega-rockstars U2 may be dedicated Christians, but that hasn’t stopped them from wondering if the patriarchy is all its cracked up to be.

“[The song "Get On Your Boots" is] based around the idea that men have f****d things up so badly, politically, economically and socially that it’s really time we handed things over to women.”

You can see the video for the song, here. Careful guys, you keep this sort of sentiment up, and you might lose some of your ardent patriarchy-loving Christian followers (but who knows, you might also gain some goddess-lovers to replace them).

That’s all I have for now, have a great day!

“It is true that they lived with restrictions modern Westerners would find intolerable. Technically they were not citizens. In terms of civil rights, their status differed little from that of slaves. Marriages were arranged; girls were expected to have children in their midteens. Yet, the show argues, the assumption that women lived in a state of purdah, completely removed from public life, is contradicted by the depictions of them in art … it is using art to survey where, within a system of institutionalized restriction, areas of freedom for women lay.”

Where were these areas of freedom? According to the show’s literature, from within a religion that honored goddesses.

“…the exhibition brings together 155 rare and extraordinary archaeological objects in order to re-examine preconceptions about the exclusion of women from public life in ancient Athens. The story told by these objects, and experienced in the galleries, presents a more nuanced picture than is often seen, showing how women’s participation in cults and festivals contributed not only to personal fulfillment in Classical Greece but also to civic identity.”

The show is divided into three sections: “Goddesses and Heroines”, “Women and Ritual”, and “Women and the Cycle of Life”, each presenting a different vantage point to consider women’s roles, both divine and mortal, in the Athenian context. The show runs through May 9th, 2009. If you’re in the New York, New York area, it certainly seems worth a look. One can only imagine how differently Western culture would have developed if, in the gradual arc towards women’s liberation and equality, we had kept the goddesses around.

ADDENDUM: As if by synchronicity, shortly after writing this, I came across a listing for another goddess-themed art exhibition in nearby Brooklyn.

“Nine extraordinary ancient female figures are the focus of the third Herstory Gallery exhibition in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. The Fertile Goddess explores these objects that served as a source of inspiration for the depiction of the Fertile Goddess at The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago, on view in the adjacent gallery. The exhibition, which will be on view December 19, 2008, through May 31, 2009, includes both the oldest sculpture in the Brooklyn Museum’s vast collection, made by people living in Mesopotamia in the late fifth millennium b.c.e., and a ceramic figure made by Judy Chicago in 1977.”

For more information on this exhibit, click here. You may also want to check out my blog entry on Judy Chicago’s “The Dinner Party”. Looks like the beginning of 2009 is shaping up to be pretty friendly to the feminine divine (at least in the art world).
]]> http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/12/when-we-worshiped-women.html/feed 0 http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/11/first-temple-of-artemis-now-colossus-of.html http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/11/first-temple-of-artemis-now-colossus-of.html#comments Wed, 19 Nov 2008 15:26:00 +0000 Jason http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/11/first-the-temple-of-artemis-now-the-colossus-of-rhodes.html I had no idea that my closing thoughts on plans to rebuild the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus would turn out to be somewhat prophetic.

“Will it signal a new trend in not simply preserving old temples and landmarks, but actually rebuilding them to their former glory? Could we see a new Delphi or Colossus of Rhodes? An embracing of our pre-Christian heritage slipped through the side-door as “tourism”, “art”, and “culture”.”

It seems that on Monday, The Guardian reported that plans are underway to rebuild the Colossus of Rhodes.

Head of the Colossus of Rhodes, photo: The Roman Mysteries.

The new colossus will bigger than the original, will be partially constructed from melted-down weapons from around the world to represent peace, and will be a “light sculpture” designed by German artist Gert Hof.

“We are talking about a highly, highly innovative light sculpture, one that will stand between 60 and 100 metres tall so that people can physically enter it,” said Dr Dimitris Koutoulas, who is heading the project in Greece. “Although we are still at the drawing board stage, Gert Hof’s plan is to make it the world’s largest light installation, a structure that has never before been seen in any place of the world.”

The original Colossus of Rhodes, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, was sculpted by Chares of Lindos, and represented Helios, god/personification of the sun. It was toppled in 226 BCE by an earthquake. It certainly seems like an inspired idea to honor the sun with a sculpture of light. Yet another possible pilgrimage place for a resurgent Paganism?

So that’s two ancient wonders that are getting rebuilt. What’s next? A new statue of Zeus at Olympia? A new Lighthouse of Alexandria? Looks like the New Seven Wonders of the World might have some of their thunder stolen by the original wonders.
]]> http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/11/first-temple-of-artemis-now-colossus-of.html/feed 5 http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/11/quick-note-trivial-questions-for-gods.html http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/11/quick-note-trivial-questions-for-gods.html#comments Fri, 14 Nov 2008 14:47:00 +0000 Jason http://wildhunt.org/blog/2008/11/quick-note-trivial-questions-for-the-gods.html Phil Harland, Associate Professor at York University in Toronto, reminds us that not all questions posed to oracles and other divine intermediaries were matters of great import.

“The questions asked could range from what we would consider quite important political decisions (should be go to war with this or that power?) or important health concerns (how can we conceive?) to what we would consider more mundane matters. In reading Pierre Bonnechere’s chapter on “Divination” (A Companion to Greek Religion, p. 157) today I came across this inscriptional gem in which a man consults Zeus and Zeus’ wife, Dione, about some missing bedding: “Agis asks Zeus Naios and Dione about his blankets and pillows, whether he has lost them or whether someone else has stolen them” (SIG, 3rd edition 1163). Sounds a bit like me consulting the local oracle on a wintery day: ‘Alright, who stole my gloves. Cheryl, have you seen my gloves?’”

So the next time you get scolded for making a request or asking a question that is too “trivial” for a certain deity to answer, just remember old Agis and his missing pillows.
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