Top Story: The Amarillo Globe-News reports on a freshman choir member who is sitting out two Christian-specific songs at her school’s Christmas concert, and the church-state issues concerning religious songs being sung at secular schools.

“Fifteen-year-old Katarina Keen won’t sing along to “Silent Night” or “Listen to the Stars,” two Christian songs planned for her choir’s upcoming Christmas concert at Borger High School. But she will sing “Jingle Bells” and “A Carol in Winter.” Katarina and her family are Wiccan. The Borger High choirs have given a concert every December, with traditional religious Christmas songs, but this is the first time in director Johnny Miller’s 23-year career that any Borger student had issues with the religious themes in the music, he said … “We’re doing our best to accommodate everyone’s wishes,” Miller said. “It’s just difficult, because it’s a complete 180 of what I have always done.” … The Keens also have raised concerns this year about prayers in class and a prayer board posted in the choir room.”

The officials at the school seem to be chafing at having to actually make accommodations for non-Christian students, saying they “bent over backwards to be cooperative”, though I don’t see how allowing a student to sit out two songs and inserting some more secular holiday songs can be construed as bending over backwards. As for Christian prayers before class, and a “prayer board” in the choir room, they refuse to stop them because they are a “student-led activity”. Student-led perhaps, but allowed by school officials, and would no doubt be stopped if other non-Christian religions wanted the same consideration.

In Other News: Kris Bradley, from the Confessions of a Pagan Soccer Mom blog, has posted to her Examiner.com account regarding whether UK celebrity chef Nigella Lawson is Pagan (or at least Pagan-friendly).

“In Nigella Christmas: Food Family Friends Festivities, Nigella Lawson makes multiple references to Pagan ideals, traditions and history.  In the introduction to the book, she speaks about how Christ’s birth actually happened 6 months earlier, on Passover.  She also touches on the subject of Saturnalia and the rebirth of the sun being linked to the birth of Christ.  She goes as far to say “But my greatest love, my deepest feelings, are for the pagan rituals that underpin the contemporary Christmas.  In fact, I’d go further and say that my approach to the festival is ultimately pagan.” In another part of the introduction, Lawson describes Christmas as “not just a time when the Domestic Goddess comes into her own but a moment to conjure up the Domestic Druid as well.” She comes back to the subject of Paganism later in the recipe section when discussing her Yule Log, saying that the cake is a “cake-emulation” of the log that Norsemen would burn “in celebration of the winter solstice and to honor the gods”.”

Lawson seems to duck Pagan accusations, saying she “adhere[s] to the Judeo-Christian morality”, and direct questions regarding her religious beliefs on her web site have been removed by the administrator. So, Pagan? Pagan-friendly? None of the above? It remains an open question. For more on Nigella, who seems to be something of a cooking sex-symbol in the UK, you can check out her official web site.

Brand X magazine offers a profile of Santeria, including the reporter receiving a traditional spirit cleansing from a Santero.

“At this point, he addressed the recipient of the limpia, in this case, the reporter writing this story. “Tell Elegguá what you want,” he commanded. “Beg your pardon?” “Tell Elegguá,” he repeated. “Tell him what you need.” “Um, I want to be a good writer. I want to be healthy. I want my mother to be happy.” The santero knelt down, shaking the cowrie shells in his hands, and chanted in Lucumí — a mixture of Spanish and Yoruba, a Nigerian dialect. He released the shells in a spray across the floor and examined them closely. Apparently satisfied with the instructions he’d received from the spirits, he turned his attention to the softly clucking bag in the corner of the room.”

The article also tries to estimate how many adherents to Santeria there are, though I think Ernesto Pichardo’s estimate of 5 million in America alone is something of stretch (maybe 5 million in the “Americas” collectively). In any case, it’s a fairly decent article, talking with experts, other reporters, and adherents about the faith. Now if only the mainstream press can do as well as pop-culture magazines we might get somewhere.

Now for a bit of new-media talk, the Financial Times has an article about  MySpace’s downward spiral. The once-dominant social networking site, once touted as the future of music and media on the web, is now losing its luster, hip cache, and millions of users to sites like Facebook.

“…by the beginning of 2008, things began to sour. Facebook, a rival social network that was simpler and easier to use, was gaining momentum and starting to grow more quickly than MySpace. Murdoch confidently told the world that MySpace would make $1bn in advertising revenues in 2008 – but the company missed its target. Users began to desert the site, which had become cluttered with unappealing ads for teeth straightening and weight-loss products … Since then, MySpace has shed 40 per cent of its staff, closed many of its international offices and publicly given up trying to match Facebook in the race to become the world’s biggest social network. (MySpace has more than 100 million regular users, Facebook more than 300 million.) A move by MySpace and other News Corp digital businesses into the biggest new office development in Los Angeles was scrapped – after the $350m, 12-year lease had been signed – leaving the company paying more than $1m a month for an empty building. The number of people using the site has also dropped precipitously this year: MySpace’s share of the social networking market has tumbled from 66 per cent a year ago to 30 per cent, according to the online research company Hitwise. The situation is so dire that MySpace recently revealed that it had failed to attract enough online traffic to meet targets set in its advertising deal with Google and as a result would lose $100m this year. An acquisition that had initially covered Murdoch in glory and offered so much promise was becoming an embarrassment to the News Corp chairman and a liability for his company.”

As for folks who do use MySpace (like me), they’ll have noticed that they have rolled out many Facebook-like features trying to recapture some of what they’ve lost. However, I don’t think it will work. The site is too ugly, slow-loading, and teen-focused to ever really compete with the multi-generational and (by comparison) simpler Facebook. So what? Why am I mentioning this here? Because, many Pagan entrepreneurs/organizers have emulated the MySpace model. This includes Covenspace,  PaganSpace.net, and PaganSpace.com (this doesn’t even get into the dozens of Pagan Ning sites).

While I’m a big believer in Pagans creating their own resources, I do wonder if Pagan-focused social networking sites are any better than the Christian-focused networking sites that many of us like to poke fun at. Also, no offense to the Pagan social sites, but when I think of promoting a new project, like Pagans at the Parliament, I don’t immediately think of going to a Pagan MySpace clone to promote it. I think of Facebook, or Twitter, both of which seem to have much larger and active Pagan populations than any Pagan-run start-up. I think the first rule of creating a Pagan resource is finding a place where there is a need and then filling it. Do we have a need for a Pagan MySpace? Especially when it seems increasingly likely that people don’t have much use for the original MySpace?

In a final note, Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada talks about religion in comic books, why pagan myths work so well in comics, while the Christian god/devil doesn’t.

“…the gods of mythology lend themselves more to the superhero genre. They’re much more colorful, they are imperfect and their exploits were really more akin to the exploits we’ve seen done by heroes like those within the Marvel U. All the classic heroes we see in many ways share many traits with the gods of mythology, so it’s an easier transition. Also, in most monotheistic religions, you’re dealing with an all powerful and infallible deity, which, from a dramatic storytelling point of view, really handcuffs you because of their perfection and ability to solve problems as they desire. And there is the sensitivity issue. These are religions that are practiced by the majority of the planet, regardless of where you fall, whereas the gods of mythology are not. I think it’s a sensitive issue, but more than anything, it’s just that the construct of the mythological gods makes for better dramatic storytelling within the pages of a comic book.”

While I agree that pagan myths make great story fodder, I do question his note about “sensitivity”. He does know that millions of people around the globe do indeed worship pre-Christian gods and goddesses doesn’t he? I mean, this is the company that named a super-hero “Wiccan” (he’s the son of the Scarlet Witch), so they must have some inkling.

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

Mythical and Arcadian motifs in opera, classical music, and ballet are nothing new, but it’s always nice to remember that choreographers and composers have been mining these rich themes for generations. For instance, The New York Times reviews the American Ballet Theater’s revival production of “Sylvia” (aka “Sylvia ou La Nymphe de Diane”) and revels in the pure pagan pageantry of it all.

“The crescent, the moon, the horn and the hunt all tie brilliantly into Act I of “Sylvia,” which Ashton choreographed in 1952 and which American Ballet Theater has revived this week at the Metropolitan Opera House. The score is by Léo Delibes. Blow that horn! Or rather, those horns! None of the many hunts in music-drama prepare us for the full blaze that comes with the entrance of this ballet’s huntresses and, finally, Sylvia herself … No character in all ballet — and few in music drama — enters to more splendid music than Sylvia. She and her friends leap and do whipped (fouetté) turns, and the ballet moves into a new kind of scale and energy. Nobody has time to think what this says about gender stereotypes. The huntresses and pastoral hero of “Sylvia” were conceived not by Ashton in 1952 but by Delibes and his Paris colleagues in 1876, when Degas was painting ballet dancers and when, most of us tend to think, ballet stereotypes were thick on the ground.”

This ballet of pagan huntresses in love went on to inspire other works, including the more well-known “Swan Lake”. It’s lovely to see this unique gem get some attention (especially with themes that would delight the Pagan soul), if you’re in New York and want to see experience “Sylvia”, it’s running through Saturday at The Met.

Betty Sue Flowers, poet, mythology expert, Jungian, and consultant for “Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth”, is making headlines in Texas as she steps down from her position as director of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum to start a new life with her current partner, former Senator Bill Bradley.

“Sometime in July, Flowers — award-winning teacher of English and religion, expert in mythology, past director of Plan II, confidante of PBS journalist Bill Moyers, consultant to NASA and corporations around the world, author of three poetry volumes — will move away from her home in West Lake Hills to commence a personal and romantic adventure with Bill Bradley in New York City.”

In honour of her leaving, the Austin American-Statesman has reprinted a profile of Flowers from 2002, shortly after she was named as the new director of the LBJ Library. In it, Flowers recalls how the goddesses of ancient myth, specifically Demeter and Aphrodite, helped spur her forward into becoming a powerful woman, and sparked a lifelong love of myth.

“Sometime before the sixth grade, the Bookworm of Abilene happened upon the beauty of mythology. To her delight, Flowers discovered that the women in Greek myth were star players in moral drama. While not always virtuous, the Greek goddesses were spunky and brazen. They wielded power. They were the focus of stories. “The Greek myths were the only stories I could find, in fact, that involved powerful women,” says Flowers. “These goddesses: They throw their weight around! Demeter blasts the world! Zeus has to beg her to stop!” Flowers was so enthralled by the Greek myths that she carried a personal copy of Edith Hamilton’s “Mythology” back and forth to school with her throughout the sixth grade. But since this was West Texas, circa 1958, shy Betty Sue Marable covered her book of myths with aluminum foil — concealing the cover illustration of the naked Perseus, sword in hand, hoisting up the head of the slain Medusa.”

I encourage reading the entire profile, for while Flowers is no Pagan in the formal sense of the term, she lives a life that sings with the virtues of the ancient world. A powerful personal example that refutes the idea of Christianity or moral chaos. An individual who embodies some of the best qualities of the emerging post-Christian cultural reality.

Blogger and classicist Mary Beard reports back from the annual Classical Association conference and relates her experiences at a talk by noted author Richard Seaford concerning the ancient Greeks and what they can teach us concerning wealth, our environment, and global warming.

“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.

If you’re around my age, and you had cable television, you have probably seen the 1981 film “Clash of the Titans” around a thousand times. Based very (very) loosely on the legend of Perseus, the story was truly epic, featuring a wide array of Harryhausen monsters and glowing, berobed gods and goddesses meddling in human affairs.

Harry Hamlin as Perseus

So imagine my surprise (and, I must admit, delight) in learning that not only are they remaking “Clash of the Titans” but the film is in direct competition with another film steeped in Greek myth and legend entitled “War of Gods”.

“The race for “War of the Gods” and “Clash of the Titans,” two rival projects set up at Relativity and Warners, is quickening. Both are close to casting their leads, with “Stardust” topliner Henry Cavill set to star in “Gods” and “Terminator Salvation” star Sam Worthington in negotiations to climb aboard “Titans,” which Thunder Road is producing and Legendary Pictures is co-producing.” In addition, the projects have set start dates. “Gods” would seem to have the edge — it’s tentatively planned for a February shoot, while production on “Titans” is slated to begin in April.”

What is interesting about both of these films, especially from the perspective of Pagans and Greek myth fans, is that they will directly address and involve mythological beings and deities. Breaking a recent trend to secularize or demean pre-Christian religion in films like “300″ or “Troy”.

“‘War of Gods’ concerns the battles waged by Theseus, a warrior from Greek mythology, who leads a fight against the imprisoned titans. Among the hooks is that, unlike some mythological tales, gods fight alongside mortals.”

While I sincerely doubt either film will hew close to actual Greek myth (Theseus never fought Titans alongside the gods), I’m not adverse to seeing new myths constructed for new times. Plus, with today’s green screen technology, you can expect some truly spectacular effects (though Harryhausen monsters will always hold a special place in my heart). Both films are scheduled to be released in 2010. It should be interesting to see who triumphs at the box-office, the son of Zeus, or the son of Poseidon?

If you’re a fan of “Oh My Gods!” and wish there were more Pagan-friendly comic strips, why not check out Mark Weinstein’s “Prometheus”, the wacky adventures of a Titan who was cursed by Zeus to have his liver eaten by a eagle on a daily basis.

The strip is published three times a week, and runs in two Greek publications. To read every strip in order, click here.

The Oregonian reviews a brand new book by Ursula K. Le Guin that explores the perspective of Lavinia (daughter of Latinus, wife of Aeneas) from Virgil’s “Aeneid”. Giving a feminine perspective to the male-centric Roman epic.

“Lavinia, an 18-year-old princess in “The Aeneid,” Vergil’s 2,000-year-old epic poem about the origins of Rome, gets little attention from Vergil as a background figure. He gives her not a single speech in his shimmeringly melodious, 10,000-line poem, despite that she is daughter to King Latinus, who rules the region; that multitudes of men die over who should marry her; and that her eventual marriage is crucial to the founding of Rome. The book “Lavinia” (Le Guin’s 56th!) repairs Vergil’s lapse and is also a loving tribute to the poet. It’s an earthy retelling of the last six books of the 12-book poem, told from the point of view of Lavinia herself.”

According to the review, Le Guin explores her “rich, pagan life”, and brings a feminine “balance” to Virgil’s work while avoiding outright revisionism. A work on par with Robert Graves’s “I, Claudius”, according to Publishers Weekly.

In an interview with Le Guin about the work, the author explains that she isn’t trying to improve on Virgil, merely telling tales he didn’t have time to get to.

“Virgil didn’t have time for little Lavinia,” Ms. Le Guin says. Virgil died in 19 B.C. and many scholars believe he still planned to do some work on the Aeneid. “I didn’t feel I was correcting Virgil, but here was something he didn’t have the time to do, and I did.”

“Lavinia” promises to be an interesting exploration of the early mythic history of Rome. You can read an excerpt of the book, here.

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

Jane Baker, from the Australian paper The Yass Tribue, holds up Hypatia of Alexandria as a beacon of inspiration when confronting various fundamentalisms and maintaining independent thought.

“In a time darker than ours, a time when reason was held hostage to fundamentalism, when only one form of thought and belief was permitted, when scholars were denounced and their works destroyed, Hypatia kept teaching and standing up for reason. “Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all,” she told her students. Those words should stay with us when we read the papers, listen to the news, hear the latest demagogue spruiking his zealotry. We have to think. We have to question. We cannot accept what we are told without thought and consideration. That is what stands between us and the darkness of ignorance and fanaticism.”

Now that Hypatia’s story is being adapted into a film, one wonders if the famous Neoplatonist will indeed become a sort of Pagan saint, invoked against intolerance and religious extremism by a variety of groups.

Students from Pagan/Wiccan club and Native American club at Joliet Junior College, inspired by one of their teachers, joined forces to create a Relay for Life team and raise money for Cancer research.

“Students from the Native American Club and the Pagan Wiccan Club joined together to create the JJC Thunderbirds team for the All-College Relay for Life being held this weekend at Lewis University in Romeoville. In a final push to raise funds for the walk, they created an event – ‘Clips for a Cure’ – on the JJC bridge Thursday afternoon. Anyone donating a foot of hair to Locks of Love was eligible for a free hair cut; others were given a hair cut with a donation as small as $5. Hairstylists from J&M Hair Salon in Joliet donated their time and talent to the cause, cutting both men’s and women’s hair.”

Thanks in part to the efforts of these clubs, Joliet Junior College has raised over $25,000 for cancer research in the past two years. This is a wonderful example of young Pagans involved in making the world a better place, and showing that the future of our religious movement is in good hands.

The Florida Sun-Sentinel re-tells the myth of Eos and Tithonus.

“Naturally Tithonus loved Eos. Who could resist the love of such a beautiful goddess? Just as she does today, in those years long ago, Eos woke the world each morning with curling rings of light, and every morning she mystically brought the world out of darkness. Whenever Tithonus looked at her, he felt a glow, the way so many people feel at dawn – as buoyant as an April morning on those days when the first buds begin to bloom.”

Just the myth. No commentary, no moral lesson, just the story. If re-printing the great stories and myths in newspapers is a new trend, I approve! Perhaps they can run a serial of the Trojan War?

A Druid from Portsmouth has turned in his ritual sword to the police in order to make a statement on the recent growth of stabbing incidents in the UK.

“A Druid who had to fight a legal battle to get his sword back after police confiscated it has now handed the weapon in to promote world peace. Merlin Williams used his blunt sword, Taliesin, to create a circle of safety around members of the druid order at ceremonies … He said: ‘The thought to hand the sword in to police came to me when I was meditating and thinking about world peace and the stabbings you read about in the papers all the time. ‘I wanted to show that druids are peace-loving and although the sword was never used for violence, I thought handing it in to the police station where it was confiscated would be a good way of doing this. I also want to discourage others from carrying knives as it can lead to violence and people being hurt.’”

Williams is a member and chief bard of the The Insular Order of Druids, an organization that has had more than one run-in with the law over confiscated ritual blades.

The Oshawa Public Library in Ontario has generated a bit of scandal over providing a tarot workshop to local teens.

“It’s not often that a school librarian takes issue with a library program. But Oshawa’s Susan Packer said she was driven to act last week, after learning Oshawa’s public library will be offering tarot card workshops for teens later this month. “I believe that tarot reading is a dangerous practice. Teenagers who might attend the program offered at the library will be dabbling in the occult,” said Ms. Packer, who is the parent of three teenagers and a teacher-librarian at an Oshawa elementary school … Ms. Packer shared her concerns with the Durham District School Board and sent a letter to the library board and local politicians last week, asking that the program be dropped.”

While such a controversy might have played out differently in America, it seems that Canada has little tolerance for religious hysteria. A librarian at OPL said that “we don’t let small groups of people dictate what large groups of people can see or do or learn”, and they plan to go ahead with the workshop. The workshops are being held on April 19th and 26th, and will feature Zsuzsana, author of “The Now Age”.

In a final note, a couple people passed along a link to a story from late last year that I missed. It concerns an ongoing rivalry between two Baltimore candle stores on the same street “Grandma’s Candle Shop” and “Lucky Star Candles: Home of Old Grandpa.”

“Grandma’s and Grandpa’s have both been caring for the spiritual health of downtown Baltimore for three decades, squabbling like an old married couple the whole time. The feud isn’t as hot as it was when Old Grandpa ran his store, but despite their similarities, there’s no love lost between the candle merchants.”

This story has it all: drama, allegations of intellectual property theft, bad blood, and different religious backgrounds (Grandma’s is Pagan-friendly, Grandpa’s is decidedly Christian in tone). Both uneasily co-exist while selling mojo and magical supplies to the locals. A must-read!

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

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

Spring is (sorta) here, and UU World reprints an article by Patricia Montley explaining why myths are often better received than coldly rational explanations for natural events (like the changing seasons).

“Why this cold, dreary season when birds abandon us and gardens stop producing their fruits and flowers … What have we done to deserve this? Surely someone has offended the gods. “Poppycock!” say the scientists, who propose some lame theory about the Earth going around the sun. But that can’t really be it. What’s the point of misery if there’s no one to blame? Besides, their story lacks imagination. Perhaps an explanation that we might find more appealing is one offered by the Greek poet Homer some 27 centuries ago.”

Montley then briefly retells the myth of Persephone, and explains that without the “gray” of Winter, “there is no joy in color”. While I might quibble with the idea of Winter being “gray” and “fallow”, after enduring a snow storm the other day, I truly hunger for the “joy” of a true Spring.

Meanwhile, in Ohio, a local reporter profiles a Druid group performing their Spring rites.

“The only thing the ritual shared with Easter was timing – and a few brightly colored eggs constituting an offering to the “shining ones.” They purified their ceremony by making a banishment offering to the “out-dwellers and tricksters.” They chanted, their voices ever rising and ever faster, to “open the gates,” a sign they had formed a spiritual center around their three altars. They drank apple juice from a communal horn in accepting the blessings of the “waters of life” from kindred gods and goddesses of the Celts, Romans, Gauls and Norse.”

The Three Cranes Grove is an ADF group, which explains the pan-Indo-European focus of the ritual.

The Beijing Olympic Flame was lit today in the Temple of Hera in Olympia. A ceremony marred by two protesters who managed to break through a cordon of about 1,000 police officers.

Actress Maria Nafpliotou lighting the torch.

“Two protestors breached a cordon of about 1,000 police officers at Ancient Olympia to display a flag demanding a boycott of the Olympics amid mounting controversy over China’s crackdown in Tibet … The incidents occurred despite drastic security measures taken by Greek police to avoid incidents that would internationally discredit the event, which was televised across the world.”

I don’t know about you, but when two protesters are able to break through 1,000 men to disrupt a tightly-controlled ceremony in the temple of Hera, I would take that as a bad omen. Perhaps the goddess is displeased? Too bad the “high priestess” is simply an actress, and unable to interpret the will of Hera.

The Manchester Evening News interviews popular novelist Sara Paretsky about her new novel “Bleeding Kansas”, and the real-live Wiccans who served as the inspiration for the Wiccan characters in the book.

“For eight years, I’d fiddled with this concept, on and off, of writing about the part of Kansas where I grew up,” explains Paretsky, ahead of a visit to book stores in Manchester and Cheshire. “When my parents got frail they sold the house to two women who were both Wiccan – followers of pagan religions – and lesbians. They thought that they could lead an anonymous life in the countryside, where their nearest neighbour was over a quarter of a mile away. “But they were wrong. There was talk of pagan rituals. Some people said they were naked and one neighbour started pursuing them in a really angry way, and my brother, who was a lawyer, decided to represent them on a pro bono basis.”

It’s rare that a novelist as popular as Paretsky makes a lesbian Wiccan a major character in a novel. “Bleeding Kansas” may open more minds than a dozen titles in the metaphysical section.

In a final note, Scottish hares (as opposed to “silly old rabbits”), which have been steadily dying out, seem to be on the rebound due to a variety of efforts.

“The problem was that – while Scottish rabbits were happily breeding with the enthusiasm for which they are renowned – the “bunny” we have historically associated with Easter is actually the hare, a creature whose prospects were for a while far more precarious. Long before the rather mixed-up imagery we now see on Easter cards of cute bunnies bearing baskets of eggs, the hare had a far more potent symbolism. In pagan mythology the creature represented love, growth and fertility … for the true meaning of the original celebrations surrounding the vernal equinox, only the hare will do. Wild, abandoned and universally appealing, these beautiful creatures are at long last reclaiming their rightful place.”

So welcome back to one of Britain’s (and Europe’s) sacred animals,

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

Pope Benedict XVI has released his newest encyclical on the theme of Christian hope. Entitled “Spe Salvi” (saved by hope), the work muses on Christian salvation, redemption, and the role of prayer in Christian life, but it wouldn’t be Benedict (the artist formerly known as Cardinal Ratzinger) without inflating the triumphal claims of Catholicism at the expense of polytheist forms of religion!

“Paul reminds the Ephesians that before their encounter with Christ they were “without hope and without God in the world” (Eph 2:12). Of course he knew they had had gods, he knew they had had a religion, but their gods had proved questionable, and no hope emerged from their contradictory myths. Notwithstanding their gods, they were “without God” and consequently found themselves in a dark world, facing a dark future … Here too we see as a distinguishing mark of Christians the fact that they have a future… Myth had lost its credibility; the Roman State religion had become fossilized into simple ceremony which was scrupulously carried out, but by then it was merely “political religion”. Philosophical rationalism had confined the gods within the realm of unreality. The Divine was seen in various ways in cosmic forces, but a God to whom one could pray did not exist.”

There are quite a few problems with Benedict’s argument, a primary one is the confusion of mythological stories with the living and breathing religion being practiced at the time. The assumption that Roman polytheists had no hope for a pleasant afterlife, when in fact they had a systematic afterlife that included judgment, rewards, and punishments, and the characterization of Roman religious ritual as a clockwork obligation that had no belief or passion. The bugbear here for Benedict is the specter of “philosophical rationalism”, which along with relativism leads (in his view) to all manner of horrors, including the destruction of Christianity (and which, in his view, drained the life out of Roman polytheism).

Not that we should expect a fair hearing from the Pontiff, after all, this is the same Pope who claims that the Nazis were a “Neo-Pagan” invention, and not a product spawned from centuries of Christian antisemitism. Having said that, there were some other interesting things said in the Pope’s latest missive to the world, including some words on prayer that won’t make certain evangelical Christians very happy.

“He emphasized that prayer should not be isolating and should not focus on superficial objectives. Nor can people pray against others, he said. “To pray is not to step outside history and withdraw to our own private corner of happiness,” he said.”

It seems very likely that he is pointing his finger at prosperity gospel folks and certain stripes of “prayer warriors”, who “target” people of influence with prayer. It should be interesting if any reporters pick up on this jab at non-Catholic forms of Christianity. As for the Pope and Paganism, you would think that a man as learned as Benedict would hesitate to create religious straw-men to bat down. There are plenty of valid criticism of polytheistic systems, but portraying Roman polytheists as without hope and “lost” to nihilistic darkness is petty and untrue.