Magic Monday

[ecosophia]

Midnight is just a few minutes away, and so it's time to launch a new Magic Monday. Ask me anything about occultism, and with certain exceptions, any question received by midnight Monday Eastern time will get an answer. Please note:  Any question or comment received after then will not get an answer, and in fact will just be deleted.  If you're in a hurry, or suspect you may be the 143,916th person to ask a question, please check out the very rough version 1.1 of The Magic Monday FAQ here. Also: I will not be putting through or answering any more questions about practicing magic around children. I've answered those in simple declarative sentences in the FAQ. If you read the FAQ and don't think your question has been answered, read it again. If that doesn't help, consider remedial reading classes; yes, it really is as simple and straightforward as the FAQ says.  And further:  I'm going to draw a line, a hard one, under questions involving the evocation of spirits. Down the road a bit I'll be doing a post on the blog about why that's far less important than it's been made to look, and how the way of occult initiation takes a radically different path; in the meantime, I'm tired of fielding repetitive questions from people (or, quite possibly, one person using many sock puppets) that rotate gyroscopically around that one habit.

The image? I field a lot of questions about my books these days, so I've decided to do little capsule summaries of them here, one per week. The book above on the left was my twenty-ninth published book, and remains far and away the most successful of my books from the peak oil era. Its genesis, like most of my other peak oil books, began on the blog I ran in those days, The Archdruid Report, with a series of posts on the appropriate technology movement -- one of the most promising of the movements of the 1970s ecological scene, which attempted to craft advanced technologies that could work within the limits of sustainability. Though it was erased from collective memory by mass media and corporate interests, it produced quite a few useful technologies, and this book was my attempt to bring those back to the attention of those who might use them. Given the steady sales of this book, I still have hope. If you're interested, you can get a copy here.

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I've had several people ask about tipping me for answers here, and though I certainly don't require that I won't turn it down. You can use either of the links above to access my online tip jar; Buymeacoffee is good for small tips, Ko-Fi is better for larger ones. (I used to use PayPal but they developed an allergy to free speech, so I've developed an allergy to them.) If you're interested in political and economic astrology, or simply prefer to use a subscription service to support your favorite authors, you can find my Patreon page here and my SubscribeStar page here. 

 

I've also had quite a few people over the years ask me where they should buy my books, and here's the answer. Bookshop.org is an alternative online bookstore that supports local bookstores and authors, which a certain gargantuan corporation doesn't, and I have a shop there, which you can check out here. Please consider patronizing it if you'd like to purchase any of my books online.

And don't forget to look up your Pangalactic New Age Soul Signature at CosmicOom.com.

With that said, have at it!

***This Magic Monday is now closed, and no further comments will be put through. See you next week!***

Comments

Re: The Reenchantment of the World and Question on the Protestant Church Model in America

[ecosophia]

The difficulties with the Neopagan adoption of the Protestant church model were twofold. The first problem was simply that the people who were trying to impose it were trying to produce a supply when there was no demand. Everybody I knew in the Neopagan scene who wanted to have paid clergy wanted to be paid clergy; there were very, very few people who wanted to do the paying! Nor did they have any particularly new truth, just a desire to be fulltime pagans paid by other people to do what everyone else was doing anyway.

The second problem was more subtle. Successful fringe religions in the US may have some of the basic elements of the standard Protestant church model but most of them offer something the churches don't. Sometimes it's healing (the Christian Science model), sometimes it's contact with spirits via trance mediumship (the Spiritualism model), sometimes it's self-improvement (the New Thought model), sometimes it's something else, but they always have an appeal that's not limited to going to going to church once a week. The Neopagans who wanted white clapboard covensteads and paid clergy never seemed to get that. Most of them were uncomfortable with magic, divination, and casual sex, the three things that made Neopaganism popular in its early days, and didn't have much of anything else to offer.

Re: The Reenchantment of the World and Question on the Protestant Church Model in America

[jprussell]

Hmmm! Thank you for this, some good food for further thought.

Of course, you can also see the first problem at least partially as an outgrowth of the second - no demand because there's no differentiating value offered.

Re: The Reenchantment of the World and Question on the Protestant Church Model in America

[ecosophia]

That was part of it, surely. Another part is simply that the entire ethos of Neopaganism was "you can do this all yourself" -- that doesn't leave much room for church builders.

Re: The Reenchantment of the World and Question on the Protestant Church Model in America

[causticus]

I suppose the extra value a Folkish Heathen kindred might offer is, "we most certainly won't bully or shame you for being some combination of white/straight/male." If the vast majority of Protestant denominations end up going woke, then there might be an extra growth opportunity for Heathenry.

Re: The Reenchantment of the World and Question on the Protestant Church Model in America

[jprussell]

Maybe I should make up some shirts/bumper stickers that say "It's okay to be heathen" :D

Re: The Reenchantment of the World and Question on the Protestant Church Model in America

[causticus]

Hah! You might cause a few glitches in the matrix with that one.

Re: The Reenchantment of the World and Question on the Protestant Church Model in America

[(Anonymous)]

"The Neopagans who wanted white clapboard covensteads and paid clergy never seemed to get that. Most of them were uncomfortable with magic, divination, and casual sex"

I don't understand this part. I thought the ADF were one of the best examples of the "supplying would-be paid clergy" type, but they practice magic and divination rather specifically, and let's say casual sex hasn't been foreign to their conducts either. I know they originated decades ago, but everything more recent that seems to me to want the same hasn't seemed too different regarding the above. Could you say something about who are those you described?

Re: The Reenchantment of the World and Question on the Protestant Church Model in America

[ecosophia]

ADF is a special case. They would have become a significant denomination in the American religious scene, except that their organizational structure was so stunningly dysfunctional -- it had all the disadvantages of autocracy and democracy without any of the advantages of either, and it went out of its way to encourage ambitious and talented people to become big fish in very little ponds rather than harnessing their energy to grow the organization.

At one point Philip Carr-Gomm, then the head of OBOD, asked Druids and Druid organizations around the world to contribute things to an archive of Druid materials he was organizing. He got some amazing things -- music, poetry, ritual, philosophy, you name it. From ADF, he got their official Policies and Procedures Manual, hundreds of pages thick. (As far as I know British Druids are still chuckling about that.) That, I think, is most of what you need to know about why ADF failed.

As for the groups I had in mind, I'm thinking of the ones who supported Cherry Hill Seminary and who were busy trying to turn Neopaganism into liberal Christianity with a different gender for God. There were quite a few of them, though it's been a while since I've paid any attention to the Neopagan scene.

Re: The Reenchantment of the World and Question on the Protestant Church Model in America

[(Anonymous)]

"harnessing their energy to grow the organization."

If I may;


The Ancient Order of Druids in America has published two books over the past several years, the druids book of prayers ceremonies and songs I and II. From what i understand these books can be purchased from several venues. The contributers were given no special title, payment, and all material was given over voluntarily for both editions. Most recent edition can be found here. https://aoda.org/publications/the-druids-book-of-ceremonies-prayers-and-songs/

Re: The Reenchantment of the World and Question on the Protestant Church Model in America

[ecosophia]

Why, yes. One of the basic principles I had in mine when I was head of AODA, and helped to shape its organizational culture, was this: "Whatever ADF does, we do something different." It saved us a lot of grief back in the day.

Re: The Reenchantment of the World and Question on the Protestant Church Model in America

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, thank you for that consideration and all the work your family put into reviving the order.

As a side note, scrying the path of Huath in the DMG could come with a warning label lol.

Ian

Re: The Reenchantment of the World and Question on the Protestant Church Model in America

[ritaer]

Re Pagan model. It is difficult to grow a religion (or any other movement) if you are forbidden to proselytize, as Wiccans are. It is even more difficult if your religion is so misunderstood that you fear to even publicize it--for every one Pagan wearing a 4" pentagram that might as well have had "ask me about this" emblazoned there were an unknown number who did not wear jewelry, t-shirts, tattoos or bumper stickers identifying themselves as Witches or Pagans for fear of losing jobs, having home or cars vandalized, losing custody of children etc. I knew one Wiccan who went to the extent of removing his license plate when parked at Pagan events. And, in an effort to be bland and acceptable the big-name Pagan authors started denying the real differences: not just casual sex, but sex that was intended to be a sacred experience; not just casual drug use but use of traditional methods of mind alteration. Combine that with watering down the concept of polytheism--gods as archetypes or aspects of the One rather than real and separate entities and there isn't much to attract those looking for something more exciting than the local Unitarian-Universalist congregation.

And Wicca in particular does not scale up to congregational size. Covens even of the traditional 13 are rare; covens any larger are unwieldy. But 10 people with average income are not going to be able to support a full-time priest or priestess, let alone both. And, as JMG has observe, the people pushing for paid clergy did, indeed, intend to fill that role if it came into existence.

Others, such as Isaac Bonewits, had inflated ideas of the amount of training that should be expected for the priesthood that they wanted to create. I remember an outline published in the ADF magazine, that if followed in full would have been the equivalent of earning 2-3 PhDs. No one can do that while also supporting themselves for the mere possibility of ADF priesthood becoming a viable career.


Rita

Re: The Reenchantment of the World and Question on the Protestant Church Model in America

[charlieobert]

This has me chuckling...

I used to live in a fourplex in Minneapolis we nicknamed, Pagan Place, since all four units were people into the neopagan scene. I lived across the hall from Doc and Faun Bonewitz - Doc is Isaac's brother.

I briefly met Isaac late in his life, in his brother's living room one evening - the bext way to describe it is that it felt like he was presiding over the room.

Before I starting hanging out on these blogs, if you mentioned Druid that was what came to mind.

Re: The Reenchantment of the World and Question on the Protestant Church Model in America

[causticus]

On that second part, I noticed a few "new" American Neopagan groups who certainly fall into that trap. I'm thinking particularly of an eclectic (though primarily Greco-Roman) pagan group based out of Kentucky that is very loud about its right-wing political views. I think their original name was Temple of the Hermetic One but they have some other name now, as the group has already been through about 2-3 schisms (LOL). The current group's organizational structure reads like a wannabe-ADF, only this one is overtly-authoritarian. There's maybe 30-50 members at most, but their stated ecclesiastical hierarchy (purely aspirational, of course) is basically something "Hey ADF, hold my beer!" The leader (who was raised Catholic, surprise surprise) calls himself the Pontifex Maximus and had a rather humorless personality, to put it lightly. Oh, lately, he's been signing off his internet posts as "His Holiness" :D This all harkens back to your main blog post where you chuckled about American readers taking the writings of European authors like Rene Guenon dead seriously lacking the cultural background to understand that half of the time these authors are just pulling your leg and being intentionally-performative.

At the end of the day, after cutting through all the smoke and bluster, the actual religious information and practical instructions this group has to offer isn't anything I can't already find in some $20 Llewellyn paperback on Hellenic paganism. So why on Earth would I want or need to join this group? All that's unique about it is the leader's incendiary political rants (like a good Southern preacher), which I can read entirely for free online ;)

To be fair, I think this group and their several offshoots do offer some decent rhetorical pushback against the Marxist entryists who have taken over most organized Neopagan groups. And I find their eclectic approach to be both intelligent and respectful and a good counterpoint to pedantic reconstructionism. Too bad the guy in charge comes off as a complete blowhard with delusions of grandeur.

Re: The Reenchantment of the World and Question on the Protestant Church Model in America

[ecosophia]

That's really unfortunate.

Re: The Reenchantment of the World and Question on the Protestant Church Model in America

[jprussell]

You had mentioned this organization in passing somewhere we were talking, but yowch, that sounds pretty bad.

The really ironic thing is that Winifred's comment later about how godhi became religious leaders by being rich enough to spend on "extras" like religious rituals was also how much of the Republican Roman religion worked (and Greek, as JMG pointed out), and so "give me respect, my hat is very impressive!" is not even especially culturally/religiously accurate.

Re: The Reenchantment of the World and Question on the Protestant Church Model in America

[causticus]

If only this group could be some rich guy who builds elaborate shrines, brandishes snazzy ritual paraphernalia and invites his buddies over for the best pagan ritual one can attend for many hundreds of miles.

But no, just some late 20s something dude of modest means calling himself "the Pontifex Maximus" in an Appalachian drawl and ranting online about "mRNA GMO mutants" ;)

Re: The Reenchantment of the World and Question on the Protestant Church Model in America

[ecosophia]

You know, all this is inspiring me. If I ever manage a bestseller and end up with much more money than I can use, I now have some definite ideas about what to do with it!

Re: The Reenchantment of the World and Question on the Protestant Church Model in America

[(Anonymous)]

"Everybody I knew in the Neopagan scene who wanted to have paid clergy wanted to be paid clergy; there were very, very few people who wanted to do the paying!"
This reminds me of the old joke about the commune already having a poet.
This seems to be a problem in a lot of more fringe religious, or political movements. It's one of the reason many of them remain on the fringes.