Witches Brew

Wow, the FTC may be monitoring this blog! On Monday 10/5, the Federal Trade Commission announced that its “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials” will cover bloggers. Effective December 1, 2009, bloggers who review a product must disclose any connection with the producer of that product and reveal if they received “compensation” for their review. Reportedly, if the blogger fails to disclose, s/he can be fined up to $11.000.

Now this would be understandable if we were talking about fancy-schmancy Yahoo bloggers, who dispense all manner of advice on exercise, dieting, and improving your lovelife, but it seems to be seriously off the mark when it relates to book review bloggers, and it’s just plain overkill for little folks like me.

The FTC assumes that a book publisher sends an ARC, an Advanced Reading Copy, of a book to me in expectation of a good review. And if I actually keep the ARC after the review, I have been “compensated.” And Goddess forbid that I should provide a link to Amazon or even make a few cents off the purchase of said book as an Amazon affiliate. I must return the ARC to the publisher to be free of guilt. Because–again, Goddess forbid!–I could sell that ARC and make money.

These regulations do not apply to traditional newspaper and magazine reviews because–and I am not making this up–the books/products are sent to the publisher who assigns the book/product to a reviewer. The reviewer is compensated by his publisher. The publisher keeps the book/product. If you have ever seen Andy Rooney’s semi-annual report on all the “goodies” that have been sent to him for review, you know that nationally known reviewers get car loads of unsolicited books every year.

To understand the depth of the FTC ’s delusions, read Edward Champion’s “Interview with the FTC’s Richard Cleland.” Warning: take your Dramamine, because Cleland’s reasoning may make your head spin.

The pictures from Pittsburgh show police officers hurling tear gas at black-clad anarchists, or police arresting Greenpeace demonstrators hanging a banner from a bridge. I have to search to find Pagans in the streets of Pittsburgh, but I know we are there. If it’s a global economic summit or climate conference, there are Pagans.

On Monday The Three Rivers Climate Convergence launched a week of action, education and organizing to protest, first, the International Coal Conference (Sept 20-23) and then the G20 Summit. Monday night Pagan Cluster, an activist group, held an “Equinox Ritual calling for the Sequestration of Greed and the Liberation of Abundance” at Schenley Park Overlook. Their manifesto reads, in part:

We gather to honor the carbon cycle that holds the energy of birth, growth, death, decay and regeneration, enacting the world we want in the midst of the one we have.

Our intention is to interrupt the cycle of despondency and destruction by:

— Honoring all those who have died and all that has been lost from years of greed: extraction, pollution, racism and war.

— Awakening everyday solutions for sustainable transformation to a radically different culture.

— Sowing seeds for an abundant and healthy future rooted in clean air, energy, water, land and food.

Our ritual will celebrate the Equinox to bring balance back to our relationship
with the earth. We plan to build altars throughout the city to empower our
intentions and reclaim sacred space. We do this political magic as part of our spiritual commitment, to shift the energy in the streets and offer grounding to the larger mobilization.

Workshops were scheduled for this morning and tomorrow morning at the Park with marches scheduled for the afternoons. However, the Convergence website is reporting:

CONVERGENCE UPDATE: Pittsburgh’s Department of Public Works has confiscated our tents, chairs, tables and other materials at our Schenley Park Convergence Space. we have moved our workshops to the G20 Artspace at Carnegie Mellon’s campus lawn.

Note that parking near CMU campus is difficult today, since may roads are closed and all CMU parking lots are closed. Check back later for updates.

The Pittsburgh Tribune has pictures of Pagans peacefully leaving a demonstration on Tuesday. –Hardly the kind of drama that is going to appear on network news… Luckily we have the blogosphere.

The Celebrating Earth Spirituality Festival was scheduled for today. I wish, I wish, I wish I had a crystal ball because the emotional stakes increased dramatically this week–and I can’t find “the rest of the story…”

When last I checked out The Wild Hunt, a handful of merchants in Stoudtburg Village–a commercial shopping center in Adamstown, PA, DBA as a faux German hamlet–were planning to close today rather than run the risk of doing business with the Reading Pagans & Witches, who had rented the Village for their festival.

WELL! While my attention was focused on mundane things like job hunting, health care reform, and the balance in my check book, some churches in Adamsville were working themselves into a tizzy over this little, constitutionally protected festival. The Gateway House of Prayer somewhere in Lancaster County, PA, put out a call for fasting & prayer. From the Gateway website:

Prayer for the “earth spirituality festival” to be held Sept 12 in Adamstown. See Gateway website for the organized fasting and prayer events to be held in the local churches of the Adamstown area. Isn’t it interesting that in the natural there is construction work on Rt 222 to strengthen the bridges.

“Lord God, we praise you for the truth of your word, for making it clear to us to recognize the wicked and evil practices and instruction to keep our land free of abominations. We declare blessings upon the leaders and pastors of the Adamstown area for coming together in unity to strengthen the ties among the community and to keep their bridges intact, strong and secure.

We pray a hedge of protection around the area, asking for the blood of Jesus to cover their boundaries, gates and bridges, that they would stand strong against the schemes of the enemy. We declare the enemy will have no foothold in Adamstown, or the larger Lancaster County area.

We declare that the attempt to plant seeds of destruction will be uprooted and bear no fruit. We ask that the veil be lifted to those with blind eyes, that the deception would come to the light.

– In Jesus name, Amen.”

Deuteronomy 18:9-14 “When you come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or one who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For all who do these things are an abomination to the Lord, and because of these abominations the Lord your God drives them out from before you. You shall be blameless before the Lord your God. For these nations which you will dispossess listened to soothsayers and diviners; but as for you, the Lord your God has not appointed such for you.”

Well, Goddess Bless America!

And, according to Ron Todt, of the Associated Press (Some Pa. shops close doors to Pagan festival):

[A] dozen or so Christian groups and churches are trying to organize a “wall of prayer” around the village Saturday said, James Horning, executive director of Crossfire Youth Ministries in nearby Eprhata, Pa.

“We are asking the Christians in the community to come out and make a circle around the entire facility and stand there for one hour and pray on behalf of the community, and then go home,” Horning said. “No signs, no shouting, no protests, just a visible sign that we disapprove … of the whole underlying theme.”

So what happened next???? Tomorrow I’ll have to check The Wild Hunt, The Reading Pagans & Witches website, and Witchvox for the next installment.

Watch this space…

I am a regular reader of Utne Reader, “The Best of the Alternative Press”. So when Miller-McCune, “Turning Research Into Solutions,” won the 2009 Utne Independent Press Award for science/technology coverage, I picked up the latest issue at the bookstore. Utne said, “Miller-McCune is…charging forward on an inspired mission to bridge the divide between academic researchers and journalists, to bring some ivory tower to the people via the printed page.”

Utne wasn’t just whistling “Dixie”! There’s a terrific article in the May/June issue of Miller-McCune magazine on why liberals and conservatives have such a difference of opinion on moral values. “Morals Authority” by Tom Jacobs looks at the work of Jonathan Haidt, a scholar at the University of Virginia. Haidt, best known as the author of The Happiness Hypothesis–an exploration of recent research on contentment–is now working on a new book on “the wellsprings of ethical beliefs and why they differ across classes and cultures.” According to Haidt, liberals and conservatives live in different moral universes. And while there are some overlap in liberal/conservative value systems, there are huge differences in what they hold dear.

In an effort to explain liberals and conservatives to each other Haidt has proposed a framework of fundamental moral values. Drawing on definitions by Dan McAdams, a Northwestern University research psychologist and award-winning author, Haidt has identified five foundational moral impulses:

Harm/care. It is wrong to hurt people; it is good to relieve suffering.

Fairness/reciprocity, Justice and fairness are good; people have certain rights that need to be upheld in social interactions,

In-group loyalty. People should be true to their group and be wary of threats from the outside. Allegiance, loyalty, and patriotism are virtues; betrayal is bad.

Authority/respect. People should respect social hierarchy; social order is necessary for human life,

Purity/sanctity. The body and certain aspects of life are sacred. Cleanliness and health, as well as their derivatives of chastity and piety, are all good. Pollution, contamination and the associated character traits of lust and greed are all bad.

Research has shown that liberals tend to feel strongly about the first two but “grudging acknowledge the other three.” Conservatives are big on the loyalty/authority/purity. They acknowledge the first two but don’t have the same passion for care and fairness.

Haidt has two websites Civil Politics promotes “politics in which power and ideas are hotly contested but opponents are respected as fellow citizens who are assumed to be sincere in their beliefs.” YourMorals.Org “is a collaboration among five social psychologists who study morality and politics. Our goal was to create a site that would be useful and interesting to users, particularly ethics classes and seminars, and that would also allow us to test a variety of theories about moral psychology. One of our main goals is to foster understanding across the political spectrum.”

YourMorals.Org is chock full of surveys on moral issues. You have to register; an email address is your user id. They ask demographic questions—age, gender, education, etc–and your political leanings. At the end of each survey they show you how your answers compared to average liberal/conservative answers. Some non-political surveys simply compare your answers to the overall average for the participants. My scores were pretty much as I expected: a little more conservative than most liberals, a lot more liberal than most conservatives.

I have a hard time imagining how other Pagans would answer a lot of the questions. There are very liberal Pagans and very conservative ones, but i don’t know if “purity/sanctity” means the same thing to Pagans as it does to “The People of the Book.” Creating and purifying sacred space are an important part of rituals. Some Pagans practice a purifying bath or shower before ritual and wear ritual robes. Some anoint themselves with essential oils. Some feminist (Dianic) Pagans might use menstrual blood in ritual, other groups might erupt in hissy fits if someone suggested sealing a magical working with a drop of blood from a pricked finger. And–as I pointed out on one survey–”The Charge of the Goddess” includes “All acts of love and pleasure are My ritual.” Many Pagans would consider chastity as “unnatural.”

I finished the main research surveys on the site, but there is another, larger section for the curious. I will visit YourMorals.Org often to look for new research surveys and play with the other questionnaires. And I will encourage other Pagans to add to the research.

Why would a Pagan blog for a free Iran?

1) To support the women who are standing up for their votes. They are being beaten and tear-gassed. Driven back by the militia, they exhort their men to step forward and claim their votes.

I confess, I have long had an admiration for the Persian Scheherazade/Shaharazad who volunteered to marry the crazed King Shahriyar/Sharhryar. who executed his unfaithful wife and then went on to marry, bed, and murder his brides for the next three years. Scheherazade took her younger sister Dinazade/Dinazad/Dunyazad right into the bridal chamber. The girls knew that Scheherazade was to be executed at dawn, but they did not try to overpower him during sex or resist him in any way. After the marriage was consumated, Dunyazad asked her sister to tell a story to fill the time until Scheherazade was taken to her death. That was the first of a 1001 Nights of stories.

On NPR this week Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, compared the women protesters to the iconic storyteller. They were, she said, taking the potential violence of the militia and transforming it. They spoke directly to the troops, encouraging them to change sides. They protected troops from mob violence, and by their presence they forced both the militia and the protesters to hold back. Her words resonated deeply with me, because I knew of a deeper layer in the stories of Scheherazade and Dunyazad.

According to Sir Richard Burton, “Shaharazad” meant “City-Freer” and “Scheherazade” was probably a form of “Shirzad” or “lion-born.” And “Dunyazad” is “World-freer.” Were these sisters Goddesses in another era?

I blog for the resurgence of feminine power in Iran

2) For the family of Neda Agha Soltan: Mourning is an important ritual in Iranian culture, and it is strongly tied to protest. Public mourning rituals are held 3 days, 7 days, and 40 days after a death, and they can turn into demonstrations against injustice. In an effort to discredit/suppress a young martyr, the government of Iran not only buried Neda without her family’s knowledge and banned all mourning rituals for her, but they forced the family out their apartment and cut them off from the community that would have embraced them in their grief. So we must mourn and we must protest for them

This has been quite a month: George Bush out and Barack Obama in, Rod Blagojevich out and Pat Quinn in. It gives a Witch hope for an enlightened leadership.

Our CIPS book club is currently reading, The Earth Path: Grounding Your Spirit in the Rhythms of Nature by Starhawk. In Chapter Six “The Circle of Life”, the chapter we have been reading. Starhawk begins, “In the Goddess tradition, all ritual takes place within a magic circle. We ground [concentrate and align ourselves with the power of the Earth] and then create a sacred space, calling air, fire, water, and earth, and that sacred transformative spirit of the center.

“The circle is the pattern of the whole, the schematic diagram that lets us know if something is complete.”

Starhawk is known for her progressive politics, She has traveled around the global, protesting on behalf of social justice, the rights of indigenous people, and care for our planet. I wish all of our policy makers would read and embrace her “Elements of Decision-Making.”

Air stands for thought, for the power of the mind. Fire represents passion and energy. Water represents emotion and our subconscious life. Earth provides the stable foundation on which we stand. And Spirit is the power that connects us to the Web of Life.

“When we want to know,” Starkhawk says, “if we have considered all sides of an issue, we can think about the elements and their corresponding qualities: What do I think about this particular issue? What energy do I sense around it? What do I feel? What is my body telling me? What transformation is possible…?

“When making a decision about sustainability, fo example, we can ask.

“How will this proposed action affect the air, the climate? The birds and insects? Will it bring inspiration and refreshment?

“How much energy will this use, and where will the energy come from? Will it use more energy than we take in? How much human energy will it require? Will it energize or drain us?

“How will this affect the water? The fish, sea-life, and water creatures? Will it use more water than we have? How do we feel about it?

“How will this affect the earth? The health of the soil? The microorganisms and soil bacteria? The plants and animals? The forests?

“How does this affect our human community? Will it benefit the poorest and least advantaged amomg us? Does this reflect and further our deepest values? Will it feed our spirit? Will it create beneficial relationships?”

Wouldn’t C-Span be uplifting if our leaders spent more time asking questions that mattered?

More on the Ceremony of Unity and Blessing in Washington DC (AKA A Clean Sweep in Washington):

Some info from WitchSchool news…

Talking about Pagan news, Don Lewis and I, should everything go
according to plan, will be filming the Ceremony of Unity and Blessing
in Washington DC, and we will have the footage up on MagickTv.com as
quickly as possible. This is part of our overall increase in MagickTV Interviews and coverage. The hosts of the event are asking
people to carry out the ritual at home. You can find it at
http://www.paganreligiousrights.org/ritual.htm and if you do, please
send us photos and even short clips of tape so we can include it in
our very special film about this event.

So what’s WitchSchool, you might ask? WitchSchool is an online academy of Wicca and Magical Education. According to their homepage 206345 students have registered for courses since September 4, 2001. Originally based in Hoopston, Il, WitchSchool has now moved to Rossville. Their students, however, have logged in from more than 80 countries. WitchSchool offers classes in “Living the Wiccan Life,” writing spells, meditation, aromatherapy, tarot reading, dream work, and a lot more.

The new Rossville campus also offers face to face classes and rituals. And it’s the home of the MagicTV studio. The videos are hosted on YouTube. I was surprised by the variety available. There is an interview with artists/writers/Pagan Elders Oberon and Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart. There is a concert from popular Pagan muscian Wendy Rule. They have an ongoing talk show “Living the Wiccan Life,” and a satiric “The Doomsday Show.” There are WitchSchool exercises and an video tarot class.

And I hope, in the next week, we’ll be able to watch Witches clean up Washington, D.C.

On Monday January 19th, before President-Elect Obama takes the Oath of Office, Witches will gather at the Jefferson Memorial to “sweep the town clean” and welcome Obama and his administration to Washington.

“The Ritual of Unity and Blessing is organized by a triumvirate of native Washingtonians, one of whom is the great-granddaughter of slaves, one the great-granddaughter of slave owners, and one the daughter of a populist New Deal Congressman.”

Caroline Kenner is “a Pagan shamanic healer and organizer for the Sacred Space Foundation.” Katrina Messenger is a Wiccan Priestess, “founder of Connect DC and the Reflections Mystery School, and faculty member at Cherry Hill Seminary.” Caroline W. Casey is “founder of Coyote Network News (the Compassionate Trickster Mythological News Service) as well as the host-creator of Pacifica Radio Network’s, ‘The Visionary Activist Show .’”

Casey says, says, “The word “inauguration” comes from the word ‘augur’, the pattern-tracker, the diviner within us all. The augur would walk out into nature to divine the patterns indicating which human was deemed the most responsible steward of the Common Wealth, the well-being of all our relations. And that chosen person would be ‘inaugurated’ as the ruler who weds the land. We invite you to contribute your medicine blessing to our collective brew, and toast our new President, with whom we vow to collaborate: Barack Hussein Obama!”

Drumming will begin at 2:00 pm EST as Witches with festive be-ribboned brooms dance out the old administration and offer a clean start for the new. Caroline Kenner will invoke the Founding Fathers and ask the Lwa Legba to be the Gatekeeper. In Voudou the Lwa are “Angels” or Guardian Spirits, and Papa Legba allows the other Lwa to enter into the ritual. The dancers will call on their own Deities, and Caroline Casey will call upon the Trickster Coyote to show us how to bring about creative change.

Katrina Messenger will lead the blessing of “all the stones of Washington, focusing on the Jefferson Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, the Capitol, the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress, the Treasury, the Smithsonian and all our Museums, the Federal Reserve, the Archives, all of the Veterans’ Memorials, all of the Embassies, the Kennedy Center, the Tidal Basin and our beloved Anacostia and Potomac Rivers.” A quartz crystal in the shape the Washington Monument will be blessed placed in the Potomac River to carry the magic throughout the world.

A map is provided on the Pagan Religious Rights website so that Pagans who cannot make it to Washington for the ritual can participate at a distance. With the map and images of Washington sites, Pagans around the world can add their will to a clean sweep in our new era.

http://www.paganreligiousrights.org

Rita Moran is Chairperson of the Kennebec County Democratic Committee, and is attending the Democratic National Convention as an official delegate for the state of Maine. Rita, who runs a bookstore in Maine, was outed and stalked last year by a local conservative Christian organization. Since then she has dedicated herself to being an open and positive Pagan presence within the Democratic Party.

Ed Lachowicz is Vice Chair of the Kennebec County Democratic Committee, and a Maine Democratic State Committeeman. In addition, he is a regular blogger with Turn Maine Blue, a progressive state-focused blog that has been granted press credentials at the Democratic National Convention.

Together at http://bluepagans.blogspot.com/ they are offering a perspective on Pagans involved in the political process.

Not all Pagans are liberal. There are George Bush Pagans out there–even though Bush expressed the opinion that Wicca, one of the largest of the Pagan traditions, is not a real religion. Even though his Born-Again, End-of-Times mindset has played havoc with environmental policy and inspired misadventures in the Middle East. Many Pagans are not involved in the political process at all. But, according to Moran, “[T]he Democratic performance (percentage who say they vote Democratic on polls) of Pagans is higher than Catholics and mainline Protestants.”

–Not that the Democratic Party is courting the Pagan vote. Most Pagans–aside from their religious path–lead mainstream lives. Only minority would be considered to be living an alternative life style. But as Moran points out: “[M]ost mainstream Christians don’t understand us very well, and our overt support might well push center and right Christians squarely in the McCain camp.”

http://bluepagans.blogspot.com/2008/08/are-we-included-will-we-ever-be.html

Moran blogs about attending peace rallies and interfaith events. Lachowicz thunders about the current state of “politics as usual”: “Every time that that petulant son of a bitch up in the Maison Blanche (petulance is best expressed in French, according to the Republican Party) stamps His Mighty Feet, Democrats scramble for the quickest way to insert their heads as far up their asses as they can physically manage. The Republicans, meanwhile, manage that which we cannot- unity.”

Blue Pagans offers a lively look at the Democratic Convention–and a view you won’t get from TV or your local newspaper.

By Presidential proclamation, January 16 was Religious Freedom Day.

Religious Freedom Day
Each year, the President declares January 16th to be Religious Freedom Day, and calls upon Americans to “observe this day through appropriate events and activities in homes, schools, and places of worship.” The day is the anniversary of the passage, in 1786, of the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom.

The goal of ReligiousFreedomDay.com is to promote and protect students’ religious expression rights by informing educators, parents, and students about these liberties.

The Religious Freedom Day Organization offers a downloadable guidebook for students, educators, and administrators. According to the guidebook, “Religious Freedom Day is not ‘celebrate-our-diversity day.’ Freedom means the freedom to respectfully disagree. Freedom Day is first and foremost a time to acknowledge one of our most important civil liberties. Schools that promote students freedom of religious expression are not promoting religion but are promoting civil liberties. The main message students need to hear is that they should not feel inhibited to express their beliefs at school.”

http://religiousfreedomday.com/images/RFD_Guidebook.pdf

That sounds fair enough. But it ignores a fundamental difference between Christianity and Paganism. Jesus send his disciples out into the world to spread “the Good News.” For too many Christians it is their mission statement. Pagans eschew proselytizing So Christians feel free to inundate Christians and non-Christians alike with religious messages. There is never an inappropriate time to spam us with “Good News.” Ironically yesterday morning when I was doing the most prosaic data entry, I opened the warranty card for a television manufacturer, and out popped one of those little tracts. This one was not one of the noxious ones. Entitled “Road Map to Heaven” it asks “Who has sinned?” What is the penalty for sin?” yada, yada… Nothing like the noxious one that was handed to me in the hospital many years ago when my mother was dying of cancer. That was one of the little comic book tracts about teenagers dying suddenly in a highway accident and finding their unprepared souls in Hell. Though it would be another decade before I found my path as a Pagan, that evil little book was probably the straw that broke my last, tentative link to Christianity.

I pitched “Road to Heaven” in the trash. And then I pulled it out. As so many members of the Christian Right have pointed out, freedom of religion doesn’t mean freedom from religion. Even in the privacy of my own little cubical, I am not free from unwanted Christian proselytizing. We are constantly bombarded with messages from the religious majority. Most we can ignore, but when non-Christians bark back, “Sit down, shut up, back off,” then Christians feel persecuted. After all they are just following their mission statement.

Then there is the other side of this mission run amok. Because Christians are–well, cursed–with this need to foist their religion upon the world, they are convinced that other religions are intent upon foisting THEIR beliefs upon Christians. Particularly upon innocent Christian children. So we have endless warnings about Harry Potter or The Golden Compass leading children to Witchcraft or Atheism. I have come to the conclusion that Christians are so anxious about their children because their mission statement compels them to steal the souls of OTHER PEOPLE’S Children.

Many years ago when my nieces and nephews were young, I was invited to go to church with them. One of them was participating in a religious program. Their little piece was just a side bar to the main attraction at that Sunday’s service. Two missionaries had just returned from a glorious mission in Africa. They had gone to an African village where–horror of horrors–the adult Christian congregation believed in adult baptism. This Central Illinois church applauded and praised their God as the missionaries told how they had thrown a party for the children of this little village, played games, and given them presents, and then baptized them all. When Christian denominations are willing to cannibalize the congregations of other denominations, it’s no wonder that they are convinced that non-Christians are eager to gobble up little Christian boys and girls.

These evangelists can’t believe that Pagans, as a rule, are NOT interested in proselytizing. That most flavors of Paganism are only open to adults. That children of Pagans may or may not be trained in Pagan beliefs. That children of Pagans are free to seek other paths. That children of non-Pagans are NOT recruited. That children of non-Christians are NOT considered for religious training until they are sixteen or eighteen years old. That younger children are NOT accepted unless they have permission from their parents. Evangelists can’t believe that Pagans do not have mixed emotions about the commercialization of their beliefs by toy companies, book publishers, and film and television producers. Like any minority we like to see ourselves represented in popular culture, but we do NOT have a MESSAGE to broadcast to a non-believing world.

So, on Religious Freedom Day let’s put the “civil” in civil rights. And let’s remember another of Jesus’s commandments: Do unto others as you would have others do onto you.”