Showing all posts in scholarship

In scholarship, witchcraft

Sex, Gender, and Magic 1/n+1

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

Preface

I was already drafting this in my head as a response to a reddit thread—particularly this comment—when one of the bloggers I follow decided to wade into the subject.  It’s something I’ve talked about before from time to time, but usually only in reference to Wicca.  There is a great deal of gender essentialism and heterosexism in the occult community, and the privileged apologia that tends to accumulate when someone calls bullshit makes me fucking furious.

Now, let’s look at the two OPs, first: a woman asking for people to share their experiences of gender difference in different forms of occultism, and gay man exploring the possibility of a huge oversight in the (human understanding of) Hermetic Law.  The first got a few genuinely thoughtful answers, but the response to both (overwhelming in the one case, so far singular in the other) amounts to “how dare you ask that fucking question?”

That response infuriates me.  It drives home the fact that, just as the neo-Pagan community is rife with mainline American anti-intellectualism (a rant for another time, but just look at popular responses to Hutton’s Triumph of the Moon), the occult community as a whole is permeated by outdated and debunked ideologies of sex, gender, and sexuality.

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In scholarship

Madness or Magic: Xerxes and the Hellespont

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

Herodotus relates a tale in his Histories of how the Persian king Xerxes bridged the Hellespont that he might invade Greece.  Initially foiled, he does something that strikes modern historians as very strange:

…[A]fter these bridges had been built, a violent storm descended upon them, broke them up, and tore apart all that work.

Xerxes was infuriated when he learned of this; he ordered that the Hellespont was to receive 300 lashes under the whip and that a pair of shackles was to be dropped into  the sea.

–Herodotus, Histories 7.34-35.1

He goes on to send “others to brand the Hellespont” (Ibid. 35.1), and to chastise it:

“Bitter water, your master is imposing a penalty upon you for wronging him even though you had suffered no injustices from him.  And King Xerxes will cross you wheter you like it or not.  It is for just cause, after all, that no human offers you sacrifice: you are a burbid and briny river!”

–Ibid. 35.2

It’s hard to say, as I’m not up to the original Greek yet, whether Herodotus and his own audience interpreted this scene the way most modern historians I have spoken to interpreted it—that is, as a sign of his barbarous idiocy, or possibly as tyrannical madness.  Given Herodotus’s typical Greek disdain for foreigners—which is slightly ironic, given that Herodotus, himself, was from Halicarnassus, which many Athenians would have hardly considered Greek—this interpretation is plausible.  But it’s also true that Herodotus, having travelled widely, was well and truly impressed by the works of many “barbarians”, the Persians in particular.  And most modern historians wouldn’t know an enchantment from their own assholes.

As I re-read this scene today, after a few years of escalating magical practice and research into the way things were done in the Old Schools…. well, this scene looks like a binding to me.  How about y’all?

Herodotus, First. Histories. Landmark Herodotus.  Ed. Robert B. Strassler, Trans. Andrea L. Purvis.  New York: Anchor Books, 2009. Print.

In scholarship, witchcraft

Possibly Everything You Will Ever Need To Know About Sigils

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

I wasn’t going to repost this at first.  Everyone who reads me already reads Rune Soup, right?

On the off chance that some of you don’t: Gordon has just posted the most clear, concise, and exhaustive explanation of sigils, how they work, and how to use them that I have ever seen.  Fucking read it.

As an added bonus, it also serves as an index to everything else he’s ever written about sigils, so by the time you’ve read them all you may consider giving up any and all other forms of magic.

Dude is fucking genius.

In scholarship, witchcraft

St. Patrick’s Day, Liberalia, and a Modern Neo-Pagan’s Ritual Calendar

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

In the ancient world—in the early modern world, as well, in fact, and to this very day in some places—the liturgical calendar was managed by the state.  That is, in fact, a large part of why we have the records we do.  Although this was not theocracy in any sense, this was not mere public piety, either: in addition to stimulating the economy—food stalls, sacrifices, costume, and the like—state-sponsored religious rituals helped form and maintain community bonds.

Today, in the United States, we don’t quite have state-sponsored religious rituals.  We have “bank holidays” which are not formal religious (or even nationalist) observances, though they “coincidentally” lean strongly in that direction, which are set aside by law so that employees of local, state, and federal governments have a paid day off, and bank employees do as well.  Christmas, Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, Labor Day.  We also have a number of “unofficial” holidays—that is, days when no one can count on a paid holiday, but which local authorities bend over backwards to facilitate.

The most recent of these is St. Patrick’s day.  I’ve heard so many different versions of the history, I’m not even entirely certain which ones to believe.  One thing I am certain of is that the snakes-as-pagans version plays into the historical oppression narrative that we’re a little too fond of—see the Burning Times—and on closer examination, doesn’t fit what I know of Christian myth without being viewed through that lens.  Another thing I’m certain of is that, regardless of its roots, its modern manifestation is harmful only in terms of liver damage and drunk driving.  Not being a fan of the whole “pinching (or punching) people for failing to wear green” thing, and being somewhat terrified of the amateur drunk drivers who come out of the woodwork on St.P’s and New Years.

My attitude about that sort of thing has changed over the last couple years.  For one, I’ve just flat-out loosened up a lot.  When I was younger, I found bars to be painfully over-stimulating on a regular Saturday; these days, I enjoy a little hyper-stimulation from time to time.

Then, late Friday night, I learned, about the festival of Liberalia through one of the above links.  Liber Pater, to the best of my knowledge, is not a god of wine and harvest “like Bacchus”, as the Wikipedia asserts, but one of Dionysus’ Roman cult titles.  Although the Roman reconstructionist source I find emphasize the part where of the festival at which a Roman youth was acknowledged as an adult man, Ovid memorializes it as a festival of fertility and protection under the auspices of Bacchus and formless Numina, of whom I previously had not heard and will need to do some research.

Now, as some of you may know, I count Dionysus among my patron divinities.  He and his representatives have helped me a few times, first at my initiation and during subsequent explorations of the Underworld.  But, other than offering him tastes of every batch of homebrew I make (every time I sample it myself during the racking process), and of most of my bottles of “recreational” wine and mead, we haven’t really worked out a devotional relationship yet.  I don’t know what he wants from me … if anything.

The coincidence of St. Patrick’s day—one of the great US drinking holidays—and a day sacred to Dionysus is too interesting to ignore.  And it seems like a good place to start.  So I made offerings at midnight when I discovered the fact, in the morning, and upon returning from the bar after my revelries.  He seemed to like them, but I (so far) haven’t gotten very … tactile responses for any of the offerings I make—from the gifts I give to Tsu, to the offerings I make to my Kouros and Cyclades figures, or to any of the other gods on my altar.

Besides, I need holidays more frequent than every six weeks.  Liberalia is now officially on my own personal calendar.

In art, scholarship

Orphic Hymn to Phanes

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

As my first solo attempt at translating Ancient Greek raw, the below represents about twelve hours of work.  I’ve included notes on some of the less clear choices I made in the translation, as well as some of the interesting subtext.  Unfortunately, I can’t find any modern or reliable translations to compare mine to—the Thomas Taylor translation, while pretty, is to poetic too aid me.

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In art, scholarship

Sappho Fragment

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

Diehl 94 / Voigt 168b / Cox 48 (Source for the original Greek)

Δέδυκε μὲν ἀ σελάννα

καὶ Πληίαδες· μέσαι δὲ νύκτες,

παρὰ δ᾽ ἔρχετ᾽ ὤρα·

ἔγω δὲ μόνα κατεύδω

The Moon has set

and the Seven Stars;

it is the middle of the night,

and the hour is passing;

but I sleep alone.

The translation is mine, albeit with a great deal of help from my professor and the rest of the class. I have done my best to achieve a balance between a literal translation and maintaining a sense of the poetry.  The “hour” (ὤρα) of which Sappho speaks conveys a strong implication of “opportunity”, much as it can in some English usages.

In scholarship, witchcraft

NY, NY: Help? What? I … Er… Fuck

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

Ask for help?  What?  I don’t need help.  I help other people.  It’s what I do, right?  I’m an endless font of support and wisdom.  Or, you know, funny stories.  Or whiskey.  Or mead.  Whatever the occasion calls for.  I’m your monster.  Er … man.  Goat.  Baphomet.  Or something.

I’m not just bad at asking for help: I’m not even very good at taking it when it’s offered.

Part of my problem right now, of course, is that there’s not really anything going on that people can help me with.  I’m a student.  No one can really help me with the work.  In terms of my personal history, I’ve actually done a pretty good job of asking for help, lately.

When it came to performing the Stele of Jeu, I turned to Jack Faust for advice on sources and those potential problems which somehow never seem to get written down.  Without his generous councelling, those experiments would almost certainly not be going as well as they are.

After wresting with the Registrar for a couple weeks getting my transfer status sorted out a little better, I spent this afternoon talking with my academic advisor, working on my three-year plan.  I really want to spend time abroad, but as a transfer student I don’t have quite as much time for that sort of thing, and the London program doesn’t fit as nicely into my academic requirements as I might like.  Also, it’s never too soon to start planning for my Senior Capstone.

I’ve been employing time-management techniques I learned from Aradia during out time together, and that’s been helping me get caught up..  I’ve been begging my local friends for assistance in the form of patience while I climb out of the hole I’ve dug for myself, falling behind in my course work.  The folks at the local pagan store have been helping me out by providing me a venue to make a little cash on the side, teaching mead-making workshops—even when I only break even, like this weekend, I at least get a concrete reminder that I am a) competent at a lot of things; and, b) already a decent teacher.

Sannafrid—and all my friends, but her in particular—has been doing her best to keep me sane, but that’s a Herculean task at the best of times.  I am not a fun person to be around when I’m stressed out.  Just ask anyone who knew me in St.Louis.  Especially the ones who don’t talk to me anymore.

So we come full circle.  I’m not very good at asking for help, and I’m pretty damn graceless when it comes to taking it as offered.  I’ve been doing better, lately, but unfortunately my problems are largely things that no one can help me with.

Except the gods.  But in the highly ritualized headspace created by my ceremonial studies, I’m not sure how to ask them for help.  I’m still working on phrasing sigils and enchantments.  Any of you folks out there have suggestions for time-management magic?  Charming the shit out of obnoxious professors?  Battering the bureaucracy of the Registrar’s office into submission? Oh, hey.  There’s me being good: asking for help some more.

And fuck it: I’m a witch, I could just try asking nicely; start with some devotional images as a bribe.  (And, fuck, I should probably try out some of my own damn self-care rituals while I’m at it.)

In art, scholarship, witchcraft

Areas of Expertise

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

It seems like I’m writing a lot of “inspired by” posts lately, but there’s just been so much awesome in the air that it just makes me want to participate.  Alison Leigh Lilly and John Becket have been discussing the need for us each to specialize somewhat, rather than to be Experts in All Things Pagan.  Having once, myself, wanted desperately to be such an EiATP, I am more than sympathetic.  Mr. Becket has outlined a variety of disciplines that he thinks people might divide themselves between.  Inevitably, I feel the need to place myself within it.

Mystics. These are the people who are walking between the worlds: the shamans and hedgewitches. They experience gods, spirits and the Otherworld directly, and some of those experiences are as real to them as your experience of today’s lunch.

This is very much the primary direction my practice has been taking over the last several years.  As strange as things have been getting, I know that I am only beginning to push the far edge of “Novice”.  I have a long way to go on this road before I’m ready to get off, and things are only going to get stranger.  Of all my callings, this is one of the strongest.

Magicians. From the high magic ceremonialists to the low magic kitchen witches, these people are all about causing change in conformance with Will.

Readers of this blog know that, having neglected it for much of my life, this is where the majority of my efforts are currently focused.  I will not be one of the great magicians of my generation, but it it my hope to someday be much better than I am.  And I hope that my experiments will be informative and inspirational to others.

Environmentalists. Whether they see the Earth as a living being or simply as the only planet we’ve got, these people emphasize living sustainably and with deep concern and respect for other creatures and ecosystems.

While these issues are deeply important to me, the fact is that they take a back seat to almost everything else.  Although I will strive to live ever-more sustainably throughout my, and recognize the intersectionality of environmental issues, an absolute dedication to environmentalism requires more sacrifice than I can currently afford.

Advocates for Justice. The political Pagans, questing for the rights of religious minorities and for an end to exploitation of the environment and of the poor.

Like environmentalism, this is a hugely important issue that I simply can’t make enough time for.  Unlike environmentalism, I’m trying a lot harder.  My social justice work, so far, consists largely of striving to live a publicly feminist and sex-positive life, and calling out people on issues when I see them.  This is insufficient.  I want to start volunteering with the local Planned Parenthood, and the campus sexual violence and queer organizations.

Artists. Writers, poets, musicians, dancers, painters, film makers, sculptors, liturgists, costume designers and all the people who articulate Pagan concepts and practices and who make them beautiful.

The conection between art and magic is something that I have dabbled in my whole life, but only recently begun to explore seriously.  Devotional images, masks, talismans and tools, even a bit of poetry (people who know me will laugh at this; I hate poetry, and I’m terrible at it).  Tattoo art, sigils, tarot decks, visual meditations.

I’ve been drawing since I was a child.  It is inevitable that would eventually find a way into my magic.

Culturists. Historians, anthropologists, folklorists, linguists and others who study what our pagan ancestors believed and did. Some attempt to re-create or re-imagine ancient practices, while others simply try to understand our ancestors so we can better honor them.

I am currently attending college to study History and Classical Greek.  I have long said that the neo-Pagan movement needs better scholarship.  Happily, we have been getting better scholarship, particularly in the last decade or so, particularly in the reconstructionist quarters, but not limited to that.  I intend to be part of that trend: to help reconnect the neoPagan movement to the Graeco-Roman tradition it so often invokes by advancing the field of scholarship in the mystery cults and providing translations and adaptations that are both accurate and relevant to modern Paganism.

Priests. Priests and priestesses serve their gods and goddesses and they serve their religious communities. They are the glue that holds covens, groves and other groups together. They do the planning, organizing and leading of our seasonal celebrations and other rites.

Some day I hope to build a temple.  Until then, I will do what I can to aid other priests.

Theologians and Philosophers. (added on prompting from Alison Lilly) The people who study our beliefs and practices and organize them into a rational framework that helps us understand and explain our experiences.

As much as it fascinates me, this is not really my work.  I don’t have the mindset for formal logic, nor the patience to write apologia for an unsympathetic world.  Instead, I will provide the primary sources for those theologians and philosophers to contemplate and cite: “Here’s the crazy shit I did.  It was awesome; I’m’a gonna go do it again.  Someone else make sense of it.”

That’s an awful lot of areas of expertise for me to try to lay claim to.  Life will probably whittle me down a bit further.  But no one achieves greatness without trying for something more.  Fame happens by accident, but not greatness.

In scholarship

Heraclitus of Ephesus

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

ἦθος ἀνθρώπῳ δαίμων. – Heraclitus, Fragment 199*

“ethos anthropo daimon”: a dative noun sandwiched between two nominatives.  No verbs, of course: the being verb εἰμί is often implied.  The first word in a sentence is often given a certain emphasis … but so is the last.  Heraclitus the Obscure, indeed.  The passage is traditionally rendered something to the effect of “A man’s character (ethics, moral standing) is his guardian spirit (fate, destiny, guardian angel, tutelary divinity)”, with the understanding that character (ἦθος ) is what is important here.  A man’s ethical nature determines his fate.  But this reading seems to take for granted that a man’s (and we’re going to use the male noun here because there was nothing like feminism in 6th Century Greece: when they said “man” they meant “man”.) δαίμων was not a real thing.  If one assumes, as I see no reason to believe Heraclitus did not, that individuals do, in fact, possess a tutelary diety who oversees their destiny, that implied being verb between the two nominative nouns works as an equals sign:

ἦθος ἀνθρώπῳ δαίμων.

ethos = nom. masc. sing. noun “character”

anthropo = dat. masc. sing. noun “for humans” (appears to be dative of interest)

daimon = nom. masc. sing. noun “guardian spirit”

esti = 3rd per. sing. active. “he/she/it is” (implied)

[for humans] character == guardian spirit

A man’s character is his guardian spirit, and vice versa.  A good moral character and a good fate/guardian are synonymous.

This semester, I am taking a survey class of Ancient Greek philosophy.  Last week we covered Heraclitus of Epheseus, a philosopher from southern Italy in the 6th Century BCE.  His work only remains in the form of testimonia, making everything a little sketchy, but his works seem to provide me with my first look at Hermetic thought—or, at very least, its predecessors.

Heraclitus’ core thesis revolved around the universal λόγος (logos: word, account, speech, reason), which governed all things.

“…[A]ll things come to be [or: happen] in accordance with the logos…”[1]

“Listening not to me, but to the logos, it is wise to agree that all things are one.”[2]

The λόγος was common to all, but most people could not comprehend it even after long study.  It governed a κόσμος (cosmos) which “…the same for all, none of gods nor humans made, but it was always and is and shall be: an ever-living fire, kindles in measures and extinguished in measures.”[3]

To those who could understand the λόγος, Heraclitus attributed noos**[4 ] , understanding, and σοφρῆν (sophren)[5], right-thinking.

He spoke of the gods in general and in particular, but also of το σόφον  (to sophon), Wisdom or the wise, which “…is one alone, both unwilling and willing to be called by the name of Zeus.”[6]

Clearly, I don’t know enough of Heraclitus or Hermetic thought to draw any stronger conclusions than “Hey!  Look!  Noos, logos, sophia!  A parallel!”  But it’s interesting, and gives me my first hints of the directions these ideas will later take.

 

* My source for the original Greek; I really don’t like their translation, though.

** Sadly, I cannot find the original Greek noun.

[1] Curd, Patricia. A Presocratics Reader: Selected Fragments and Testimonia. 2nd ed. Trans. McKirahn, Richard D. and Patricia Curd. Heraclitus1. (22B1) p. 40

[2] Ibid. 11. (B50) p.42

[3] Ibid. 45. (B30) p. 45

[4] Ibid. 8. (B104) p.41

[5] Ibid. 35. (B116) p.44

[6] 47. (B32) p.46

In scholarship, witchcraft

Relevant

Author Satyr MagosPosted on

Phil Hine posted recently.  You should read it.

Interestingly, it contained a link to a post which I had not read, but which was fascinating and fairly relevant to the possibility of gods experimenting with us.  Also: mmmm…. Baphomet.

In turn, that post linked to another which I had read before but which I try to link to whenever it comes to mind.  It also happens to be relevant to the subject of sacred sexuality.