Witches Brew

Well, my bus driver, Darnnear Atoad, continues to be his own charming self. But I think I have come up with a hex that will fulfill my my caveats and get him out of my hair.

Let me say that CityLink drivers sign up for their shifts every quarter, so I know there will be changes in rotations come the first week of December. That doesn’t mean I will get rid of Atoad. He could elect to stay on my work route, he could switch to one of my shopping routes, or–horrors!–he could end up on my home route. Or he could end up on one of the routes where I seldom see him. So, I can use a little magic to tip the odds in my favor.

Wednesday morning I was presented with an ideal opportunity. It was a “Stuff a Bus” day: passengers get a free ride in exchange for donating a non-perishable food item to the food pantries. At first I was not going to leave anything in Darnnear’s box, and then I thought, “Well, this is perfect!” I took the food item out of my bag, concentrated, and focused energy on the box, and I laid a three-fold wish on it:

1) Blessings on all who partake of this food. (I don’t want my quarrel with Atoad spilling over on to bystanders.)

2) Darnnear will taste ashes as long as he drives for CityLink.

3) He will hunger for another job far from CityLink and me. (And may he be very happy there!)

I charged food package with my intent and I left it in the collection box. Let him ride around with THAT for a few hours! And when I think of it, I reinforce the wish with a simple nursery rhyme:

Ring around the rosy, a pocket fully posies!
Ashes, ashes, Darnnear leaves town!

Will it work? Well, that, like I say, was Wednesday. Last night, Saturday I was told by another driver, who knows about the feud that Atoad is moving to the night shift. That doesn’t mean that he is off my work route, but it’s a step in the right direction.

One more post for Veterans Day. Here is a link to photographs of seven new tombstones with the recently approved pentacle:dedicated this year to the memory of veterans and their spouses. Each stone is a testament to service to this country, and each stone is a chapter in the Pentacle Quest. Each veteran is worthy of remembrance, but I am going to single out one.

http://www.circlesanctuary.org/circle/articles/circlecraft/QuestSuccess.html

From Circle Magazine:

“At 3 pm on May 23, 2007 about 30 participants gathered around Abraham and Rosemary Kooiman’s burial site at Arlington National Cemetery. They came to consecrate and dedicate the Kooiman’s headstone, which had the newly approved Pentacle on the VA’s emblem of belief list…

“After 10 years of working toward having the Pentacle approved by the Department of Veteran Affairs and their National Cemeteries Administration it seemed only fitting that the first dedication of this kind should be bestowed on this eldest veteran’s marker.

“Abraham Kooiman (Abe) was a veteran of World War II. He had received a Bronze Star Medal for bravery and a Purple Heart Medal for having been wounded in the European Theater of Operations in the US Army. Either of those two decorations would have qualified him for burial at Arlington Cemetery.”

Thanks much to all of the veterans who have defended this country. May they all get the recognition they deserve.

“Kooiman Headstone Dedication,” Debby Morris, Order of the Pentacle, Maryland, Circle Magazine, Issue 99, Fall 2007, p.49.

No one knows exactly how many Pagans are serving in the military. Like cats, Pagans disdain most attempts to organize or enumerate them. In 2005-2006 the Covenant of the Goddess, one of oldest and largest of the Wiccan organizations, conducted a poll of U.S. and Canadian Pagans. Of the 5000+ Pagans who responded, 6% indicated that they had military service records. In the Summer 2007 issue of NewWitch Magazine, Phil Brucato conducted an interview with Army Specialist Duncan Bennnan. In a sidebar accompanying the interview, Brucato estimated that1000-4000 Pagans are currently serving openly in our armed forces, and many more may have chosen to keep their religion private.

In a 2006 article on Witchvox Steph Urquhart suggests that the military is deliberately trying to block an official census of Pagans in the armed forces in order to justify the denial of religious accomodations. According to Urquhart, the media have been lead to believe that there are about 1,800 Pagans in uniform. However only the Air Force officially counts Pagans. They began keeping count in March 2001, but those numbers have been removed from public view. Urquhart says, “That means that the entire Pagan population of 1,800 service members hails exclusively from the Air Force count, leaving all other service branches, authorized personnel like dependent spouses, reservists, and veterans out of the count….If I multiply 1,800 by 5 {5 representing the Air Force, Marine Corps, Navy, Coast Guard, and Army} we get 9, 000 service members. And still that is without counting Pagan service members like me who are no longer active duty, dependent spouses, or reservists or National Guard, all of whom are eligible for religious accommodation and VA benefits. This also does not account for the actual average mean based on the relationship of possible ratios/percentages of Pagans based on the number of members per service branch.”

Urquhart asks, “Why have the service branches waited so long to count us? If the Department of Defense saw a need to publish two chapters in an Army Chaplain’s Handbook in the 1970s detailing the beliefs of Wicca and Gardnerian Wicca, how many Pagans do you suppose were actively known in the Army at that time? It indicates that Pagans were acknowledged on some level by the establishment for the last 30 years and it is known through various articles by publications such as the Stars and Stripes, through letters to commands, and requests by active duty members that our numbers and activities within the ranks have been growing steadily since that time.”

We may soon outnumber Jews and Muslims in the Armed Forces, but if we remain under reported, the Department of Defense can deny the need for Pagan Chaplains and make it difficult for Pagans get time, space, and supplies to celebrate religious rituals . For a decade the Department of Veteran Affairs successfully rejected the request for a Pagan symbol on military tombstones. On July 5, 2006, Donald Larsen petitioned to become the Army’s first Wiccan chaplain. Larsen was already a a Pentecostal Christian minister at Camp Anaconda, the largest U.S. support base in Iraq.

According to Alan Cooperman of the Washington Post, “[Larsen] says he was torn between Christianity’s exclusive claims about salvation and a “universalist streak” in his thinking. The Feb. 22, 2006, bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, which collapsed the dome of a 1,200-year-old holy site and triggered revenge attacks between Shiite and Sunni militants, prompted a decision.”

Larsen “decided the religion that best matched his universalist vision was Wicca, a blend of witchcraft, feminism and nature worship with ancient pagan roots.”

The Army buried Larsen in red tape. “By year’s end,” Cooperman says, “his superiors not only denied his request but withdrew him from Iraq and the chaplain corps, despite an unblemished service record.”

Cooperman notes, “More than 130 religious groups have endorsed, or certified, chaplains to serve in uniform, but the Pentagon has denied efforts by Wiccan organizations to join the list.”

In future posts, I’ll look at some of the organizations who have been fighting for Pagan rights.

“Pagan at War” Phil Brocato, NewWitch Magazine, Summer 2007, http://www.newwitch.com/images/pdfs/nw15duncanbrennancolorforweb.pdf

“Politics, Politics. How a Popularity Contest has Sabotaged our Veteran’s Benefits,” Steph Urquhart, Witchvox,. July 2, 2006, http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=usok&c=words&id=10947

“A Wiccan Army Chaplai? The Bras Wouldn’t Buy It” Alan Cooperman, Washington Post, February 24, 2007, http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003586870_wiccan24.html

Sunday is Veterans Day. September 2, the Journal Star carried a news story about President George apologizing for snubbing Rebecca Stewart, a Nevada Wiccan who was left out of a presidential meeting with relatives of combat victims. Bush was in Nevada for an American Legion Convention. Why was she snubbed? Because she had successfully filed a lawsuit against the Defense Department to have a pentacle, a five-point star inside a circle, placed on her husband’s headstone?

To the best of my knowledge Faith & Values never chronicled Stewart’s two year struggle.to honor her husband’s faith. The Pagan community had been petitioning the Department of Veteran’s Affairs since 1997 to have the pentacle added to the list of approved symbols–which already included symbols for Christians, Jews, Hindus, Native Americans, Buddhists, Muslims, Sikhs, atheists and humanists. Many organizations, including the Military Pagan Network and the Lady Liberty League, rallied support for the Veteran Pentacle Quest. Victory finally came on April 23, 2007. But I never saw a word of this quest in the Journal Star until George W was forced to apologize to Rebecca Stewart.

When Bush introduced the idea of turning social services over to faith-based organizations, he was once asked if Pagan organizations would be eligible for federal funding. Bush opined that Wicca and other Pagan traditions were not “real religions.” During his administration Pagans in the military have been snubbed and ignored, but they have not gone away. This week I’ll talk about other issues of concern for military Pagans.

A new animated version of The Ten Commandments is playing in movie theaters. According to the article in today’s Faith & Values in the Journal Star, this retelling features a “more compassionate Moses…urging people to be faithful because ‘God loves you..’

“The love story in this movie is not the romantic triangle between Rameses, Moses, and Princess Nefertiri that DeMille added to widen his audience in his 1956 film. It is the love between God and God’s peope, a side of the deity that has often been missing in biblical epics.”

Now I grew up on the old Ten Commandments, and I have a love/hate relationship with DeMille version. I love the care that DeMille took with the Egyptian details. I found a book by DeMille one time at the Bradley Library about the research and production decisions that went into his costumes and sets. I love the plagues. I even love some of the cheesy dialog. I hate Charlton Heston, I hate his pompous, bombastic Moses. But most of all I love the orgy scene with the Golden Calf.

T he Golden Calf has a name. He’s called Ihy, and he is the son of Hathor, the Egyptian Goddess of love, beauty, and music. She is my own personal Goddess. Ihy is a child of primal energy. According to Alison Robertson, author of Hathor Rising: The Power of the Goddess in Ancient Egypt, Ihy “is invoked as a ‘Bull of Confusion’; or as a new-born child who breaks out of the primeval egg. To ‘become Ihy’ a person must be prepared to experience the raw materiality of existence–blood, faeces, and bodily fluids–all the messy substances and liquids which are there when life is pushed forth from the womb.. This child [...] is like the animal whose tracks are followed by travellers in difficult desert terrain–indeed a guide for those in the difficult passage to a new birth.”

Roberts continues:

How his zest for life drives out all fear is touchingly encapsulated in an Old Kingdom tomb relief showing a herdsman fording a stream with his cattle. The herdsman must somehow overcome his cattle’s antipathy to the water where unknown perils and dangers lurk, and for this purpose he carries on his shoulders a young bull calf [..] Knowing Ihy’s ability to entice others into making difficult journeys, the herdsman has armed himself wih an incarnation of Hathor’s fearless child. Through this ruse, which must have been much used by Egyptian herdsmen, his cattle’s affections are stirred, their fears forgotten, as they boldly plunge into the water, lured to their new pasture-land by the frisky young bull.

Commenting directly on the story of Exodus, she reports, “According to Hebrew tradition, the Israelites saw a vision of a bull before them as they made their perilous crossing over the Red Sea. Once they had arrived safely on the far side, they proceeded to make a golden image of the calf in joyful celebrations..Old habits die hard. And not even the fear of Jahwe’s wrath could prevent such backsliding into familiar customs.” (p.30-32)

Backsliding or giving credit where credit was due? In Chapter One, “Introduction: The Wild Goddess,” Roberts mentions in passing, “To Hathor belong the gifts of sexual attraction, radiance, fertility and love. Of all the [Egyptian] pantheon it is she who sparks the desire for relationship and life.

“Her warmth and colour penetrate even into the deepest depths of the mountains, even into the interior and the heart of the earth. In the inhospitable desert regions of Sinai she was venerated by the miners who came in search of the turquoise which was hers to give. Shrines were built there in honor of the ‘Lady of Turquoise’…” (p.9-10).

The Egyptians have no record of the Exodus. We have no historical proof that it actually happened. And here is glimmer of another story: how the calf Ihy, “the Bull of Confusion” led the Israelites out of Egypt into his mother’s land in the Sinai where they celebrated Hathor’s gifts of love, sexuality, and fertility.

Three cheers for the orgy!.