Witches Brew

The 2008 Presidential Race intensifies next week as Iowans caucus and New Hampshire residents vote in their primary. In the next eight weeks we will select our Republican and Democratic presidential candidates. Then comes the long, long haul to the November elections.

The Pagan Voting Project encourages Pagans across the country to be informed and involved citizens, to register to vote and to go to the polls in November. Pagans can go to the PVP to register to vote, get information on issues and candidates, and to download PVP banners to add to their own websites.

13 Reasons Why Pagans Should Vote

“Decisions are made by those who show up”

Aaron Sorkin

• Because Voting is Very Pagan!

Many of us come from proud traditions that used a Council and other forms of the voting process to make decisions. Native Americans, Vikings, the Greeks, and other Pagan cultures valued this right highly, and fought to keep it.

Voting is an ancient Pagan tradition. Apathy, on the other hand, is a modern invention – it suits those in power very well indeed, but it disempowers you!

• Because Pagans Know Our History:

It’s easy to say, “Never again the burning times”, but actions speak louder than words. Let them know we mean it. Vote!

• Because The Opposition Votes…A Lot:

Our government was designed for citizen participation. If you don’t vote, other people are going to make the decisions for you. There are people out there who hate us, and who want to take away our rights and freedoms. They are organized, they are active, and they vote. What about you?

• Because Pagans Honor Our Ancestors:

They fought long and hard for the freedoms we have today. Let us respect this heritage and use the rights they won for us all.

• Because Pagans Have Strong Opinions:

If you are eligible to vote, but choose not to, no one should ever have to listen to you whine about the laws and policies of this country. Don’t vote? Don’t Complain!

• Because Lighting a Candle Isn’t Enough:

The last Presidential Election proved that every vote matters.

• Because “The Supremes” Matter:

The next President will appoint the next (2 – 3) members of the U.S Supreme Court. They dictate what freedoms stay and what freedoms are eliminated by their interpretation of the Constitution. These people have a direct (and final!) say in issues that affect us all

(See Issues List below).

• Because “Everything She Touches, Changes”:

Most politicians think that Pagans are a bunch of apathetic wing nuts who never vote. Why then, should they listen to us? But they watch “voting trends” the way a hawk watches a rabbit. Groups who are known to vote on certain issues have political power which they can use to promote positive change for other like-minded citizens. That said, Pagans do not all have to vote the same way or even vote as a group. What matters is that they know we’re out there and that we vote.

• Because the Personal is Political:

Elected Officials make decisions on things that matter to us personally like the environment, jobs, reproductive freedom, education, and health care. Voting is your chance to tell them what you want.

• Because “As Above, So Below” is Also True in Politics:

The Federal & State government decides who gets to benefit from the tax dollars we all pay. Politicians control these purse strings, and they hand down money from above for things like collage loans, animal shelters, libraries, breast cancer research, and more. Make sure that the causes and services you care about get funded. Vote!

• Because Voting = The Power To Make Social Change:

Don’t believe us? Take a look at women’s lives before they had the power of the vote, and see how different things are now. Then look at the struggle for civil rights (including the right to vote) by people of color No one handed their rights to these folks – they had to demand them. And many were beaten, jailed, and killed in the process.

Today, people in other countries are literally dying for the chance to vote because they know how important it is. Social change is only possible when we stand up to be counted. So stand up!

• Because We Want “No Taxation Without (Equal) Representation”:

In Congress only 13 percent of the members are people of color, and only 14 percent are women. Want to change that ratio? Vote!

• Because That Sound You Hear is a Culture Clash:

Right now, there are two major political parties in the U.S. These parties see the world in very different ways and each will make different decisions. Their choices will directly affect your future. Meanwhile, minority opinions still struggle to be heard.

Question: Who gets to decide what direction we take?

Answer: Only voters decide.

ISSUES THAT DIRECTLY EFFECT US

● Privacy and Technology ● Religious Liberty ● Health Care ●

● Reproductive Rights ● Jobs ● The Environment ●

● National Security ● Free Speech ● Marriage Laws ●

●The Protection of Endangered Species & National Forests ●

● Lesbian & Gay Rights ● Drug Policy ● Energy Policy ●

● Student’s Rights ● Women’s Rights ● Racial Equality ● HIV/Aids

http://www.fullcircleevents.org/pvp/index.html

What does a Witch do at Christmas? I can’t speak for all Witches, but this one celebrates.

Christmas was a huge affair when I was a kid. My father was a professional Santa Claus at the Great White Store in Downtown Peoria–back when Peoria had a downtown. The whole family, at one time or another worked for the Great White Store. We lived with my grandmother who was a shopping fool. She not only overwhelmed my sisters and me with toys and clothes, but she also shopped for her deceased nephew’s kids. So giving to the less fortunate was ingrained upon my psyche at an early age.

Gram’s sisters-in-law were both widowed (Gram was divorced when Dad was just a tot). Every Christmas they congregated at Gram’s house. So three crones presided every year over our Christmas dinner. And in the afternoon, Gram’s youngest, surviving brother would sneak away from his own family celebration and take a nap on Gram’s sofa.

They are all dead now or scattered to the four winds, but I still carry on in my own fashion. Last night, Christmas Eve, I watched It’s A Wonderful Life (yet again), finished decorating my tree, and then watched (yet again) the Christopagan A Christmas Carol with Alastair Sim. This morning I made a pot of fair-trade coffee, switched on a Christmas parade from Dallas, and sat down with caramel apple turnovers and my new issue of New Witch Magazine (”Cutting Edge Paganism”). Then I went out for the newspaper, greeted some of my neighbors, threw out bread for the birds, celery tops for the rabbit, and ripe hedge balls for the squirrels. Then I came and put some carols on the cd player: Stevie Wonder’s Someday at Christmas, Fa, La, La, La La Doo Wop! (various Motown artists), and Jimmy Buffett’s Christmas Island. Happy Birthday, Jimmy!

Christmas isn’t complete without presents. I am presently watching my new Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and cracking open some mixed nuts. Then I’ll open the rest of my goodies while dinner is cooking. Shrimp, yellow rice, and squash…

So Merry Christmas to All, and May All Your Christmases Be Magical.

I just watched a beautifully filmed documentary on CBS.  Filmmakers Gedeon and Jules Naudet were making a documentary about firefighters in New York City when they found themselves in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.  Their ordeal eventually sent them on a spiritual quest to interview a dozen religious leaders around the world, including the pope and the Dalai Lama.  Most turned out to be old men with long white beards. Only one was a woman.  Only the high priest of the Shinto Temple in Japan made any reference to female deities.

Of course I didn’t expect to see any Pagan leaders.  We shy away from the excesses of most world religions:  no marble and gold temples, no sacred texts, and no spiritual “authorities.”  But when the Muslim and the Jewish leaders said, “Our religion forbids killing.  We would never use religion to conquer other nations, but we will defend ourselves if these people attack us!” I wished that the Naudets had sought out Starhawk, one of our internationally known authors and activists.  In 1994 Starhawk wrote The Fifth Sacred Thing..

Frong the B&N synopsis:

Imagine a world without poverty, hunger, or hatred, where a rich culture honors its diverse mix of races, religions, and heritages, and the Four Sacred Things that sustain all life – earth, air, fire, and water – are valued unconditionally. Now imagine the opposite: a nightmare world in which an authoritarian regime polices an apartheid state, access to food and water is restricted to those who obey the corrupt official religion, women are property of their husbands or the state, and children are bred for prostitution and war. The best and worst of our possible futures are poised to clash in twenty-first-century California, and the outcome rests on the wisdom and courage of one clan caught in the conflict.

Ninety-eight-year-old Maya has helped shape the ecumenical culture of the North by reviving and re-creating an earth-based spiritual tradition. Madrone, the granddaughter of Maya’s longtime lovers, is a healer trying to thwart recurring epidemics that she suspects are biological warfare waged by the tyrannical South. Bird, Maya’s grandson, returns from ten years in a Southern prison with warnings of impending invasion and an urgent request for help from the resistance in the hills. When Madrone travels south to aid the rebels and search for a cure to the deadly viruses, she finds herself fighting for her own life alongside battle-weary guerrillas and beautiful pirates.

Meanwhile, in the North debates rage about how to repel the invaders. “All war is first waged in the imagination, first conducted to limit our dreams and visions,” Maya says, and warns that by killing their enemies, they may themselves become transformed by violence and destroy all they have built. Bird champions her alternative vision and becomes a leader of the faction calling for nonviolent resistance. When he is captured and pressured to cooperate with the enemy, the fate of the North hangs in the balance. Richly imagined and beautifully written, The Fifth Sacred Thing is a powerful novel.

I wish all the patriarchs of “The Book” could find wise old women and visionary young men to show them other ways of solving the world’s problems.

It’s Yule, the darkest night of the year.  The Solstice officially occurs just after midnight this year, and I am keeping a very simple vigil tonight.  On the stereo I have George Harrison singing “Here Comes the Sun,” “My Sweet Lord,” and “Something in the Way She Moves Me.”.  I have a white and gold candle burning.  I am replete with pistachios, rosemary and olive oil Triscuits, and chai tea.  Tomorrow night I’ll put together a more elaborate ritual and decorate the little tree I bought.  It’s a live spruce.

“Yule ” means “wheel.”  The Sun is born a-new; though the Earth slumbers, a new cycle of the year has begun.  For Pagans this is often a time of feasting, of visiting with friends, and of quiet reflection.  Pagans may make New Years Resolutions, but those resolutions are written down, embued with magical intent, and burned, sending our resolve into the Multiverse. Some Pagans make practice divination, to see what lies in the year ahead.  Pagans may give gifts, but the gifts may be “magical”.  Incense, bath salts, candles, jewelry, altar tools and decorations, tarot cards or rune sets, books on magic or Paganism…  Treats or good things to drink…   We even sing “Pagan Carols,” familiar tunes reworked to express our joy in the Season.

And now, welcome the Wheel.  Welcome back, Sun!

I stopped reading the Peoria Times-Observer when they started charging money for it. It wasn’t worth 75 cents then, much less the $1 they charge today.. But sometimes The Observer writes something so egregious that I have to look anyway. This week’s issue is a corker.

Northwoods Community Church is a refuge for those seeking spiritual solace.

It is also a potential target, said Northwoods executive pastor Steve Shaffer, that warrants security palns at Central Illinois’s only mega-church…

Shaffer said it is a sad reflection on the American government and culture that churches have to create security plans.

“The U.S. government has made churches a target,” Shaffer said.

“We are not a Christian nation anymore. What is a safe place? The government and the culture has made the church an unsafe place by removing God from our lives…”

EXCUSE ME?

It wasn’t a Buddhist who shot up the New Life Church in Colorado Springs after he killed two people at Youth With a Mission, a missionary training school, in Arvada, a suburb of Denver. And it wasn’t a Wiccan… According to Judith Kohler, Associated Press Writer:

The gunman was identified as Matthew Murray, 24, who was home-schooled in what a friend said was a deeply religious Christian household…

Colorado Springs police said the “common denominator in both locations” was Youth With a Mission.

“It appears that the suspect had been kicked out of the program three years prior and during the past few weeks had sent different forms of hate mail to the program and-or its director,” police said.

A neighbor, Cody Askeland, 19, said [Murray and his brother] were home-schooled, describing the whole family as “very, very religious.”

Murray’s brother attends Oral Roberts University.

Larry Gene Ashbrook is mentioned in the Observer article. In 1999 Ashbrook threw a pipe bomb and then opened fire into prayer service for teenagers at the Wedgewood Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas. You could say that “The government and the culture has made the church an unsafe place” by letting a mentally ill man–a “schizotypal” personality–get his hands on a gun. “Schizotypal” personalities are described as “lack[ing] the spark to initiate action or to participate socially, seemingly enclosed and trapped by some force that blocks them from responding to or empathizing with others. This inability . . . to become a member of a real society, and to invest their energies and interests in a world of others, lies at the heart of their pathology”.

As Ashbrook himself put it, “When I think of those idiots who hold hands around the flag pole every morning at public schools here in Texas, I get an itchy sensation in my fingers that I can’t cure without picking up a gun. Thank the devil we here in Texas still have a right to buy, own and shoot our guns, or I’d go totally nuts!”

You don’t know whether to laugh or cry over “The Larry Gene Ashbrook Anti-Baptist Homepage”:

I don’t wash my hair all that much, and my house is kind of a mess. But it’s a free country and I ought to be left alone to do my own thing. I certainly don’t have much use for my neighbors. Some of them try to wave at me and act all friendly, but I know they’re really just FBI employees trying to get close enough to put electronic transmitters in my brain. I already have enough of those, some of them broadcasting the world wide web into my dreams, so I sure as hell don’t need no more!

My problems with Baptists go way back to when I was young. My daddy always told me never go outside and play with the other kids, but stupid me, one day I decided to break my daddy’s rules. I threw a gunny sack over the concertina wire atop the cyclone fence in the back, climbed over and found myself in the adjacent yard, which turned out to be a fundamentalist Baptist private school. A bunch of kids saw how dirty and unstylish I was and asked if I accepted Jesus as my personal lord and saviour. I said what my daddy always taught me, that God was dead and that Jesus was a common crook like Richard Nixon and it was good the Romans stuck him like the pig he was. The kids were shocked at first, but then they were delighted as they tried to get me to be Christian like them. One of them even took me home, and her Daddy took a special interest in me. He took me into a bathroom to “minister” to me. As I sat on the toilet, he pulled down his pants and whipped out his big Christian pecker and demanded that I suck it and swallow the “saving juice of the Lord.” I couldn’t believe it! I don’t think I’ve quite been the same since.

Recently my Daddy died. It’s been rough for me ever since. The money he saved up has been running out and no one will hire me to do anything. I even tried to get a job as a web programmer, but at my last job interview at a web design firm, the interviewer asked me if I’d ever taken a bath. If I don’t get money soon, I won’t be able to buy any more food. I get grumpy when I don’t eat, and when I get grumpy, I start thinking about how much I hate Baptists. I can’t believe the arrogance of those Baptists. I hear that nowadays they’re holding morning rituals around flagpoles at public schools! I’m really pissed off! I’ve been punching holes in my walls I’m so mad!

Poor Larry follows up with: “And here’s more stuff that makes me reach for my gun:” –But you’ll have to read the list for yourself.

So what does all of this have to do with Witches Brew? Well, four or five years back The Observer interviewed members of the Pagan community for an article on Paganism, and then had the balls to ask several local ministers for ‘comment.” The kindest response was something like, “This is a free country and everyone is entitled to their beliefs but we will Pray They See The Light.” The Observer didn’t even have the grace to run their responses as a sidebar.

It’s a damned shame that DeWayne Bartels didn’t ask a Moslem leader, a Buddhist, or a Wiccan Priestess “What is it about Christianity that makes a ‘very, very religious’ boy like Matthew Murray pop his cork and shoot young missionaries.” We might have been able to give him a few trenchant quotes.

Kohler, Judith, Colorado Church Gunman Had Been Kicked Out,” http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8TEUPFG0&show_article=1

Immelman, Aubrey, “The Likely Motives of Fort Worth Church Shooter Larry Gene Ashbrook,” http://www.csbsju.edu/uspp/Research/Ashbrook.html

The Larry Gene Ashbrook Homepage, http://www.asecular.com/baptist/

Vatican blasts “Golden Compass” as Godless and hopeless

That’s the news today from Reuters reporter Philip Pullella. “The Vatican on Wednesday condemned the film ‘Golden Compass,’ which some have called anti-Christian, saying it promotes a cold and hopeless world without God.”

In an editorial The Vatican newspaper l’Osservatore Romano said, “In Pullman’s world, hope simply does not exist, because there is no salvation but only personal, individualistic capacity to control the situation and dominate events.”

I guess I have a different definition of “hope”. Pullman has created a world where souls are made manifest. Imagine for yourself a world where you were in direct communication with your own soul. Where you could draw comfort, courage, and advice from your soul. A child’s “daemon” shape shifts, exploring all the parts of the child’s potential. At puberty, the daemon settles on its final form. Imagine a world where you can see at a glance the essential nature of every individual. The head master at Cambridge is accompanied by a raven. Lord Azriel walks with a majestic snow leopard. Mrs Coulter has creepy golden monkey the size of a three year old. Servants are often accompanied by dogs. It is difficult to hide who you really are.

Imagine a world where we can interact with another sentient species. The armored bears, the Panserbjorne, are warriors and metal workers. They consider their armor the equivalent of the humans daemons. Imagine a world where “dust,” mysterious particles filtering through the multiple universes, can be filmed in all its glory, showing us that we are all connected in a web of life.

The great gift of science fiction and of fantasy is the ability to imagine other ways of life. And once we have imagined another way of living we can reach for that experience. We can’t actually produce external daemons, but we can establish deeper communication with our most essential nature. We can contemplate how to best live from our essential nature. We can acknowledge that other species on this Earth have souls. We can reconnect with the Multiverse.

You can read the rest of the Reuters report at http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071219/film_nm/compass_vatican_dc.

For grins and giggles, read “Is ˜The Golden Compass’ Too Anti-Christian, or Not Anti-Christian Enough?” one of several essays at New York Magazine. http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2007/10/is_the_golden_compass_too_anti.html

Brilliant British satirist, Terry Pratchett, creator of the skewed Discworld, announced this week that he has early onset of Alzheimer’s Disease. This is a blow to Pratchett fans. Terry is only 59 and should have decades of bestsellers ahead of him.

Our science fiction/fantasy book club at the Peoria Public Library discussed Pratchett’s Hogfather on December 10th. Publishers Weekly has already written a pithy review so I won’t try to top them. From the Amazon site:

From Publishers Weekly
The master of humorous fantasy delivers one of his strongest, most conventional books yet. Discworld’s equivalent of Santa Claus, the Hogfather (who flies in a sleigh drawn by four gigantic pigs), has been spirited away by a repulsive assassin, Mr. Teatime, acting on behalf of the Auditors who rule the universe and who would prefer that it exhibited no life. Since faith is essential to life, destroying belief in the Hogfather would be a major blow to humanity. It falls to a marvelously depicted Death and his granddaughter Susan to solve the mystery of the disappeared Hogfather, and meanwhile to fill in for him. On the way to the pair’s victory, readers encounter children both naughty and nice; gourmet banquets made of old boots and mud; lesser and greater criminals; an overworked and undertrained tooth fairy named Violet; and Bilious, the god of hangovers, among other imaginative concepts. The tone of much of the book is darker than usual for Pratchett for whom “humorous” has never been synonymous with “silly” and his satire, too, is more edged than usual. (One scene deftly skewers the Christmas carol “Good King Wenceslas.”) Pratchett has now moved beyond the limits of humorous fantasy, and should be recognized as one of the more significant contemporary English-language satirists.

In one of my favorite scenes, Death, filling in for the missing Hogfather, is outraged when he comes upon The Little Match Girl lying in the snow. Albert, his bah humbug elf, tries desperately to explain: “But.. little match girls dying in the snow is part of what the Hogswatch spirit is all about, master… I mean, people hear about it and say, ‘We may be poorer than a disabled banana and only have mud and old boots to eat, but at least we’re better off than that poor little match girl,’ master. It makes them feel happy and grateful for what they’ve got, see.”

But Death doesn’t see. He’s got the notion that Hogswatch is all about jolly and holly and “other things ending in -olly.” IT IS HOGSWATCH, said Death [who always speaks in CAPS], AND PEOPLE DIE ON THE STREETS. PEOPLE FEAST BEHIND LIGHTED WINDOWS AND OTHER PEOPLE HAVE NO HOMES. IS THIS FAIR?

By accident I found a Pagan tribute to Pratchett this evening. The entry from Full Circle was written March 1, 2007. Sia wrote:

If you haven’t found this wonderful writer yet, check out the work of Mr. Terry Pratchett. I recommend starting with the Witch Books in his world famous Discworld series. Why? Here’s why: Lots of people write books about what they think witches do. Terry Pratchett knows what witches are. Best of all, he know what witches are for.

Here’s what I mean: In a recent interview (1) Terry said this about Tiffany, a young witch in training, and the main character in Wintersmith:

“Certainly witchcraft for Tiffany has very little to do with magic as people generally understand it. It has an awful lot to do with taking responsibility for yourself and taking responsibility also for the less able people and, up to a certain point, guarding your society. This is based on how witchcraft really was, I suspect. The witch was the village herbalist, the midwife, the person who knew things. She would sit up with the dying, lay out the corpses, deliver the newborn. Witches tended to be needed when human beings were meeting the dangerous edges of their lives, the places where there is no map. They don’t mess around with tinkly spells; they get their hands dirty.”

The Hogfather himself is wonderful Pagan spirit–though not the Holly King that many Pagans associate with Yule.  On the Full Circle blog, Sia gives a list of other Pratchett books sure to delight Witches and Pagans. And check out her list of memorable quotes from his books.  You’ll want to read them aloud to your friends, you’ll want to put them on bumper stickers.

http://fullcirclenews.blogspot.com/2006/10/terry-pratchett-and-witches-discworld.html

I am waiting on pins and needles for the opening of The Golden Compass on Friday, Dec.7th. The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman is one of my favorite books! I’ve read it at least three times. The trailer for the movie looks good. The cast is fantastic! I will be sick if they screw this up.

The synopsis is simple: A 12-year-old girl tries to rescue a kidnapped friend and winds up on an epic quest to save her world. But Pullman has richly imagined this alternate earth and created some of the most satisfying characters in modern fantasy. It’s hard not to compare The Golden Compass to The Wizard of Oz. I’m talking about the Baum book, not the various movie and stage adaptations. In the classic Judy Garland film, Dorothy’s deepest feelings are reserved for Toto and the Scarecrow. The Baum book is about Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion. The Golden Compass is also about a girl and her Beast.

In Pullman’s world, every living person has a totem-type companion, an animal manifestation of that person’s soul. Lyra Belacqua’s companion is Pantalaimon, part voice-of-her conscience, part partner-in-crime. Lyra is prepubescent, and Pantalaimon has not yet taken his mature shape. One moment he is a wild cat, the next moment he is a moth. The two are literally inseparable. If Panatalaimon wanders more than a dozen yards from her, they both feel dreadful anxiety and physical pain. Like Toto, Pantalaimon is Lyra’s animal nature writ small. Like the Lion, Iorek Byrnison is Lyra’s animus writ large.

I confess, I adore the tragic, bad-tempered, hard-drinking Iorek. He is the John Wayne of polar bears, exiled from his rightful kingdom by Ragnar Sturlusson, a bear who wants to be human. I adore Serafina Pekkala, the beautiful, free-spirited Queen of the Witches. And I fear for them. The casting is good, it’s good. I don’t know Eva Green, who plays Serafina, but Sam Elliott is the only actor who could play Lee Scoresby, the man who loves her. Ian McKellen is the voice of Iorek, and Ian McShane is the voice of Ragnar. Good, all good… Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig are both good choices–if not the first actors I would have pictured in their roles.

I am uneasy about the plot changes. The Golden Compass is about a great many things–but the story is not a quest to find the compass. I can’t help wondering what else has been mucked up.

There has already been a great deal of controversy about the Magisterium, the theocratic dictatorship that pursues Lyra and her companions-in-arms. The Catholic League has denounced the movie for anti-Catholic themes and called for a boycott. . Screen-writer/Director Chris Weitz has tried to soften the Magisterium–one of the reasons why the focus of the movie seems to have shifted from the kidnapping and torture of children to “the quest for the Golden Compass.” Still, there is likely to be a Harry Potter type hysteria over the Compass–which is the first of a trilogy.

Honestly, I think The Golden Compass is a (pick your superlative) book. The second volume, The Subtle Knife, is interesting, but not as compelling, and The Amber Spyglass has some wonderful characters and memorable scenes–but I did find its anti-religious theme offensive. I thought the conclusion of the trilogy stunning in its lack of originality. I’d go so far as to call it puerile. Needless to say, I am not waiting for the film incarnation of The Amber Spyglass…

But I will be off next week to see The Golden Compass and I will report back on it.