Paganism

Column: The Violent and The Dead

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For a couple of hundred years we have been telling ourselves that we can dig the midnight black remains of other life forms out of the bowels of the earth, burn them in massive quantities, and that the airborne particles and gases released into the atmosphere–because we can can’t see them–will have no effect whatsoever…. …At every state our actions are marked by a lack of respect for the powers we are unleashing–a certainty, or at least a hope, that the nature we have turned to garbage, and the people we have treated like garbage, will not come back to haunt us. Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything (p.166)
Is it any wonder that a society which denies the Dead is destroying the earth? Excrement and Exclusion

In Lacanian psychoanalysis, there’s the concept of the Excremental Remainder — the thing which fails to fully integrate into the total. Yes, I’m gonna be talking about feces here, but bear with me a little.

Paganism

Column: Alchemical Capitalism

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There is a dark magic within Capitalism, rarely spoken of and often missed, by both Pagans and materialists alike. This is not mere fairy tale nor conspiracy, and I suspect we miss it because we’ve set up boundaries between the spiritual and the physical; between the observations of theorists and the wisdom of occultists. And I do not mean the pablum published as “wealth magic,” which is too often re-marketed prosperity magic. Usury and Wyrd
Most know the history of banking in Europe to some degree, that the Catholic Church forbade the taking of interest between Christians. However prohibitions against taking interest started earlier with the Greeks–both Plato and Aristotle were opposed to it, and it was likewise forbidden in the Torah.

Paganism

Column: Against Fascists and Liberals: Radical Pagan Identity

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The cobbles outside are slick from a chill September rain, and I’m a bit unsteady on my feet, even with the aid of the large staff of Alder I’d been carrying for several days through the streets of Quimper. Also, I’m inebriated. Pour a libation to Dionysos at a Breton gay bar the night before you intend to climb a sacred mount known to be both a Druidic site as well as hosting likely shrines to Brighid and Maponus, and it’s near impossible not to get drunk. I’m on my seventh beer, and my limit is normally two. I hadn’t bought a single one.