It seems I’m somewhat out of the loop concerning what’s hot in the post-Harry Potter world of young adult fantasy fiction, because producer/director Chris Columbus (who directed the first two Harry Potter movies) is bringing a new series to the big screen, and this one seems more explicitly mythical (and dare I say “pagan”) than the “Potterverse” ever was. “Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief” follows the adventures of Percy (Perseus) Jackson, a son of Poseidon, who, along with some fellow demigods, goes on a series of adventures.

“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.

Blogger Richard Fernandez discusses the “Third Man” phenomenon, when people under great stress feel that someone is with them or helping them.

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.

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

We start off with two film-related tidbits that might interest my readers. First, Warner Bros. is moving forward with a big-budget production of the Odyssey directed by Jonathan “Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning” Liebesman and scripted by Ann “The Chronciles of Narnia” Peacock.

“Warner Bros. has nabbed Ann Peacock’s spec “Odysseus” and set Jonathan Liebesman to direct. Story centers on the Greek lit hero and king of Ithaca who returns to his island after 20 years of fighting the Trojan Wars only to find his kingdom under the brutal occupation of an invading force. Gianni Nunnari (“300”) is producing through his Warners-based Hollywood Gang shingle. Craig Flores exec produces.”

The Warners-backed Hollywood Gang is also producing the Theseus-starring “War of Gods” (and an as-yet untitled sequel to “300″), making ancient Greek legend a hot topic in 2010. Meanwhile, the remake of “Clash of the Titans” (starring Perseus), which is racing “War of Gods” to the theatres, has started filming and you can see some set photos, here. I predicted in the wake of “300″ that we’d see more “sword and sandal” flicks set in a Greco-Roman context, and it looks like the flood has arrived.

Since we’re talking about film and fantasy, you might want to check out a fascinating round of panel discussions by SF Signal that asks about gods and pantheons in fantasy literature.

“In a created fantasy world, gods can proliferate by the hundreds. When building religious systems for fantasies, what are the advantages/disadvantages of inventing pantheons vs. single gods, or having no religious component at all?”

Check out some of the really thoughtful and insightful ruminations on the subject from fantasy luminaries like Marie Brennan, Elizabeth Bear, L.E. Modesitt Jr., and John C. Wright (among others).

Speaking of panelists, Starhawk speaks out against torture at the On Faith site and references the repeated tasering of a Pagan Cluster member and the Burning Times in the process.

“Torture, like a virus, also has a way of spreading. When torture is licensed at the highest levels, it percolates down to every police department and branch of Homeland Security. We may have a black president now, but a black man in this country who is arrested still stands a high chance of being brutalized and beaten. At the protests last summer outside the Republican National Convention, a dear friend of mine was attacked by police at a legal and peaceful rally, thrown to the ground and tasered multiple times. Another young friend was beaten in jail, then marched hooded and shackled through the hospital where he was finally taken for treatment. These are small examples, but they show how a culture of torture, force and bullying takes root and eventually threatens the freedom and safety of us all.”

I’ll ignore the Burning Times references and instead agree that ultimately no good can come from a policy of torture. Most of Starhawk’s fellow panellists seem to agree (except for Chuck Colson). I wonder what they think about the Pew Forum’s recent study linking torture acceptance with increased church attendance.

While I’m on the subject of Pew research, another recent study finds that nearly half of Americans have changed faiths in their lifetime.

“Americans change religious affiliation early and often. In total, about half of American adults have changed religious affiliation at least once during their lives. Most people who change their religion leave their childhood faith before age 24, and many of those who change religion do so more than once. These are among the key findings of a new survey conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. The survey documents the fluidity of religious affiliation in the U.S. and describes in detail the patterns and reasons for change.”

Sadly this data doesn’t go into how many people leave Catholic and Protestant Christianity for “other” religions, but it still gives and interesting snapshot of how fluid religious affiliation in America truly is.

In a final note, the dreaded H1N1 (the virus formerly known as “Swine Flu”) briefly cast its spectre over famed Pagan goth-rock band Inkubus Sukkubus who were in Mexico City for a concert.

“Tony and Candia McKormack went to Mexico City last week to play a gig to promote their band’s new album — which is ironically about the Mexican Day of the Dead. Authorities cancelled the event after the swine flu outbreak and Tony, 48, and Candia, 42, flew back to England on Monday. They began feeling unwell after arriving at Heathrow and have now been ordered to remain inside their home in Kingsholm, Gloucs, along with their two children Leon, 11 and Carmen, four.”

Luckily it turned out to not be H1N1 and everyone is fine. The band’s new album “Viva La Muerte” is shipping now, and all planned gigs are going forward. For more Pagan-related music news, check out the Twitter feed for my A Darker Shade of Pagan podcast.

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

For as long as I can remember Pagans of various stripes have been quick to point out that they don’t recognize the existence of (or worship) Satan, that an embodiment of pure evil just doesn’t fit into a nuanced polytheistic (or pantheistic, or duotheistic) model of the divine. Well it seems that we aren’t the only ones, according to the evangelical polling outfit The Barna Group, most Christians don’t believe in Satan either.

“Four out of ten Christians (40%) strongly agreed that Satan “is not a living being but is a symbol of evil.” An additional two out of ten Christians (19%) said they “agree somewhat” with that perspective. A minority of Christians indicated that they believe Satan is real by disagreeing with the statement: one-quarter (26%) disagreed strongly and about one-tenth (9%) disagreed somewhat. The remaining 8% were not sure what they believe about the existence of Satan.”

Interestingly, roughly half of the Christians who don’t believe in a literal Satan do believe that there are “demons” or “evil spirits” that can play havoc with your life. Does this mean that in a sizable portion of the Christian mind a pantheon of spiritual forces (good and evil) seems more likely a single living embodiement of supreme evil? Looks like Pagans and Christains have more in common than I thought! Not that it is helping us have better relations, only 5% of Christians have a positive view of Wicca (and by extension, I assume other Pagan faiths) while a whopping 55% percent don’t like us one bit. Still, it does open some interesting doors for conversation don’t you think?

The Associated Press has a profile up of spiritual tours of Egypt that cater to New Age and Pagan clients. The article interviews Heartlights/Wonder Egypt Travel (who work together organizing tours) about their business, and talks to various clients, some who’ve made the journey several times.

“Diane Winkey, 61, who describes herself as 27 at heart, has traveled to Egypt eight times. She keeps returning because she says the ancient sites awaken a dormant part of herself. She describes a moment entering the Temple of Karnak in Luxor and feeling as if Isis, ancient Egyptian goddess of motherhood, was sending her a message. Tears started rolling down her face, and she says was taken back by her strong emotions.”

While an interesting article, I’m disappointed that they didn’t explore the tensions created by a predominately Muslim country hosting “pagan” tour groups who dance, sing, engage in trance-work, and even lay in sarcophagi. We’re only given a small hint that these tours are unpopular with the locals.

“In this predominantly Muslim country, Egyptologist and spiritual tour guide Amro Mounir, 34, said he encounters many Egyptians who criticize his tours for practicing a form of paganism. But Mounir says the tours are about tapping into the energy of the earth and helping people find the truth.”

We have to remember that Egypt is still a place where you can be put to death for the crime of “sorcery”, and Islamic fatwas threaten the safety of the country’s rich archaeological heritage. Are we headed for an international incident if someone decides the “shirk” (polytheism) being tolerated during private tour groups is too great an offense to be ignored? Will the lucrative government-approved tourist trade in Egypt eventually clash with the Muslim leaders who want to see all signs of “paganism” destroyed? It is certainly an issue that needs to be explored.

Over at Salon.com Laura Miller has written a fascinating review of two new books that explore humanity’s deep attachment to relics, ancestor worship, and “biddable magical forces”. The books: “The Rite: The Making of a Modern Exorcist” by Matt Baglio, and “Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World’s Holy Relics” by Peter Manseau (co-author of “Killing the Buddha: A Heretic’s Bible”), seem to point to the reality that no matter how secular our culture or transcendent our faith we still find ourselves drawn to an ethically diverse world of strange powers which we engage with decisively immanent devices.

“Relics are potent, largely because the value of these objects lies not in their testimony to the ordinary lot of humanity, but in their promise of transcending it. The devout believe that holy relics can miraculously cure diseases, heal broken relationships, deliver loved ones from misfortune, straighten out misguided children, and so on and so on, ad infinitum. Their adoration is utilitarian. This isn’t about flesh and blood, but about magic. The inclination to believe in biddable magical forces capable of acting for or against us appears to be irresistible to large numbers of people in every nation on the planet.”

Miller seems quite dismissive of Manseau’s attempts to view the world’s relics through a humanistic “circle-of-life” lens, and instead favors the more face-value religious worldview that the figures in Baglio’s book about an exorcist in training inhabit. Of course exorcisms aren’t  just for driving out Christian demons, but (as I’ve pointed out before on this blog) are a part of a larger spiritual struggle against religions that appeal more directly to the desire to control those “biddable” forces.

“The deftest church officials have used the furor to extend the battle for spiritual dominance on other fronts. According to the dutiful Baglio, “occult ties” are listed as one of the primary causes of demonic possession, with “occult” defined as everything from performing satanic rituals to participating in séances, tarot card readings or other forms of divination, the use of “an amulet or talisman,” transcendental meditation, engaging in Wicca ceremonies, using crystals and other New Age paraphernalia, frequenting psychics and even reading the Harry Potter books, which were condemned by the Vatican’s official exorcist. Anything, in short, likely to compete with the church for your spiritual interest and dollars can lead to an infestation by Beelzebub or Asmodeus (names that originally belonged to Middle Eastern gods who were rivals of the famously jealous God of the Old Testament).”

To a certain extent these books seem to underline a point made by Michael York in his book “Pagan Theology: Paganism as a World Religion”, that the “pagan” religious impulse never died out as the dominant monotheisms (and later, post-Enlightenment rationalism) took prominence around certain parts of the world. Instead, to varying degrees, the “world” religions adapted, absorbed, and tolerated just enough of these practices to remain relevant to their geographically and culturally diverse adherents. We shouldn’t be surprised that a variety of relics are still venerated across different faiths, or that the Catholic Church is ramping up the exorcisms to meet a need (and combat competition), these conditions point towards the idea that a polytheist condition is natural for humanity and can only be suppressed for so long. If it’s true that the natural instinct when reaching towards the unknown is to acknowledge a multiplicity of powers/forces, we will never truly see magic, “paganism”, or “superstition” ever really leave us.

One big misconception outsiders hold concerning modern Paganism is that the faith flourishes as a rebellion against Judeo-Christian norms or as a result of secularism’s ills. But such an analysis is not only incomplete, but ignores our own history, and the present state of modern adherents across the globe. For example, British Traditional Wicca emerged in 1950s England, long before there were serious worries about “aggressive secularism” running rampant. While today, modern Pagan communities have sprung up in some seemingly unlikely places, like Greece and South Africa. Now, Haaretz reports that Paganism is alive and well in the state of Israel too.

“Like many other soldiers who took part in the Gaza operation, Omer, 20, occasionally took a few moments to pray, but he did not pray to the Lord of Israel. Omer considers himself pagan, and has sworn allegiance to three ancient gods. During combat, he says they appeared before him, giving him strength during the most arduous moments. Omer is still in the army, and therefore refused to be interviewed for this story. Yet he did say he belongs to a religion whose goal is to revive worship of ancient gods. In an online Hebrew-language paganism forum, Omer’s accounts of his Gaza experience are standard fare. Another user recalled how he prayed to Anat, the Canaanite god of war, while serving in an elite combat unit. The two soldiers are part of a tiny community of pagans that has developed in Israel. Influenced by movements in the United States and Europe, followers believe in multiple gods.”

Reporter Ofri Ilani talks with several Israeli Pagans both in and out of the “broom closet” including Alon Kobets founder of the Wicca Israel web site.  Kobets estimates that there are around 150 Pagans in Israel, most of whom are living semi-closeted existences, aware of the pervasive religious tensions present. Meanwhile Dr. Marianna Ruah-Midbar, organizer of the First Israeli Conference for the Study of Contemporary Spiritualities, believes modern Paganism could thrive in the holy land.

“At the moment paganism is not a large-scale practice here, but I believe it has very big potential,” she said. “Pagan religions are the fastest growing religions in the West, and it could succeed here too, because Hebrewism and Zionism could connect to paganism due to the emphasis on land and Hebrew holidays. Paganism is a close, unusual parallel of more common practices, like environmentalism or traveling to the East. In practice, it really is not very different.”

So even in places where a single (non-Pagan) religion dominates culturally and statistically (like Judaism in Israel or Orthodox Christianity in Greece), modern Paganism still emerges and grows. This can’t simply be blamed on creeping secularism or an overly tolerant culture. Perhaps, as some have argued, polytheism is a natural impulse. One that humanity constantly returns to, no matter how dominant monotheist (or atheist) impulses may be at a certain time or place. Could the Holy Land of the dominant monotheisms soon find itself, like the prophet Jeremiah, having to face those who would make offerings to the Queen of Heaven once more?

The conservative David Horowitz-edited FrontPage Magazine features an editorial by economist Mark W. Hendrickson defending the honor of monotheism. While mainly a defense against criticisms of Christianity by atheists, Hendrickson takes special care to bad-mouth polytheism to bolster the inherent superiority of single-god worship.

“Authors who condemn monotheism seem oblivious to how much their own comfortable, free lives owe to the historical impact of monotheism. The pre-monotheistic worldview was pagan. Paganism exalted nature above all, and taught human subjection to nature. Paganism was fatalistic; it inculcated resignation to a static social order. To the pagans, individual lives were unimportant, cheap. The welfare of the collective, which in practice was the welfare of the ruling elite, was supreme. There was no theory of individual rights opposed to this arrangement. If you were born a drone, you lived the life of a drone, and if the rulers decided that your life should be forfeited to the sun god or in some military campaign to obtain booty for the rulers, then your fate was sealed.”

It is fairly obvious why Hendrickson is an economist and not involved in religious studies. Any sensible scholar on pre-Christian religions would have given him a big fat “F” if he turned in that summary of polytheism as a paper. Indeed, his description of Paganism is straight from the conservative Christian party-line, a thoughtless reductionism that undermines his own defense of monotheism. A parrot of slurs that have been discredited for years. The truth is that many of the things that we take for granted, that we often falsely accredit to Christian (or Enlightenment) moral advancement actually originated within pre-Christian thought and politics. Capitalism, democracy, social welfare for the poor, and the foundations of science, medicine, and philosophy all had their genesis in pre-Christian thought and culture. While many pre-Christian cultures had a reverent and respectful approach to the natural world, it is a gross exaggeration to say their were “subjugated” to it.

This straw man argument by Hendrickson shows the intellectual dishonesty so often employed by defenders of monotheism. Only by first creating an utterly decadent and morally bankrupt paganism can they then trumpet the vibrancy and ethical superiority of their own religious preferences. The truth, of course, is far too nuanced and complicated to declare monotheism (or polytheism) the truly superior method of belief. Sadly, nuanced discussions of competing religious world-views don’t make for good “red meat” rants designed to reinforce your audience’s preconceived notions and values.

The New York Times has posted a review of the newly opened exhibition “Worshiping Women: Ritual and Reality in Classical Athens” at the Onassis Cultural Center. According the the article, a main goal of the show is to correct the misconception that women led a passive existence in Athenian society.

“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).

The Sacred Tribes Journal, a predominately Christian study of New Religious Movements, has posted its latest issue online. The journal, which was initially formed to provide a different approach to Christian missiology than the old-school anti-cult apologetics, can offer some interesting outsider perspectives of Pagan religions. In this latest installment you can read an examination of “vampire religion”, and two reviews of the Pagan-Christian dialogue book “Beyond the Burning Times” (check out my interview with the Pagan participant Gus diZerega). In particular, I would like to examine a portion of Gerald R. McDermott’s review of “Beyond the Burning Times”.

“I hope this is not the last book on Pagan-Christian dialogue. For the best inter-religious dialogue is based on deep respect, which means exploring the deepest differences in an atmosphere of civility. While this book does get at some of those deep differences such as monotheism, fallenness, transcendence and the uniqueness of Jesus it gives short shrift to others. For example, God’s relationship to gender is touched on but largely skirted. While diZerega says the divine is feminine, and Johnson replies that the Christian God includes the feminine, there is no concerted attention given to why the Bible presents God in largely male terms. Or why Pagans deny the normativity of heterosexuality and Christians affirm it. The underlying assumption in diZerega and even in (Christian) Petersen’s response is that sexual differences are either arbitrary or irrelevant yet Christianity has a long tradition saying quite the opposite. In an era when sexuality’s relationship to the divine is so pressing, this discussion between Pagans and Christians needs to begin.“

McDermott’s critique gets right to the heart of an issue I’ve been bringing up quite a bit in the last year, the religious dimensions of the gay civil rights struggle, specifically gay marriage. Too often the debate around gay marriage is portrayed as a conservative monotheist vs secularist/liberal monotheist battle (what I affectionately call “Lefty Jesus vs Righty Jesus”), when in fact the issue is far more complex. There are faiths that have a completely different theology concerning the matter, and their voices are being drowned out amidst the shouting. Perhaps if Mr. McDermott can see that this is a conversation worth having, other Christians too will realize that their are moralities and worldviews on this issue outside of their own. Such a discussion could change how we approach the issue of marriage.

As for McDermott’s contention that Pagans “reject” heteronormativity, I must respectfully disagree. A Pagan outlook isn’t built on the binary of “either-or”, it instead embraces an ethic of “and-and”. Just as we accept the existence (and more importantly the co-existence) of numerous possible divine powers/entities, so too do we accept that there is a valid heterosexual “normalcy” and a homosexual “normalcy” (and a variety of other possible “normals”). An individual Pagan may personally dislike or disagree with homosexual marriage, but unlike the dominant monotheisms that attitude isn’t one that is founded on a core scriptural truth that all Pagans must believe in, he or she has no mandate to enforce a ban (legal or spiritual) on someone else’s marriage or belief system.

The often unsaid adjective in arguments concerning the “breakdown of the family” is “Christian” (or “Mormon”, or “Muslim”, or sometimes “Jewish”). It isn’t so much a fear that heteronormativity will be destroyed (and the “family” along with it), but the idea of a “Christonormativity” losing prominence as other faiths, ideas, and philosophies grow in stature. Clinging to their appeals to tradition or “natural law” (which, of course, ignores nature when convenient) these groups fight to reinforce their own consensus reality by denying us ours. Such an action seems madness to the polytheist, who knows that wildly different religious and cultural ideas can and should co-exist (and even borrow and blend amongst themselves over time). We can only hope that the dialogue started by “Beyond the Burning Times” (and advocated by McDermott in Sacred Tribes) spreads beyond its small group of Christian and Pagan supporters and takes on the challenge of peaceful co-existence and mutual respect.