On Magick and Technology

In my obit yesterday I had overlooked my favorite quote from Arthur C. Clarke, his definition of magick.

It ranks up there with any given by Aleister Crowley or Robert Anton Wilson.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic

Which of course was the logic behind the Technomages on Babylon 5, who quoted Clarke to explain their magick; "using technology to create the appearance of magic". Ah yes Babylon 5 one of the best SF TV programs ever.

And befitting his humanism Clarke leaves this vale of tears as he came.

Clarke's brother was traveling to Sri Lanka for his burial, due in Colombo's general cemetery later this week. Clarke left written instructions that his funeral be private and secular.

"Absolutely no religious rites of any kind, relating to any religious faith, should be associated with my funeral," he wrote.

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Queen’s to host symposium unpacking media representations of witchcraft

August 5, 2021 Zoha Khalid

Augmented reality artwork in-progress, After the Witch of Malleghem, by local artists Jenn E Norton, Emily Pelstring, and Edie Soleil, created for the Witch Institute.

A week-long virtual symposium is organized from August 16 to 22 by The Witch Institute, a one-time symposium hosted by the Department of Film and Media at Queen’s University in Katarokwi/Kingston. The Witch Institute is a collaborative meeting space for people who want to share diverse understandings of witches and witchcraft and “complicate, reframe, and remediate media representations that often continue to perpetuate colonial, misogynistic, and Eurocentric stereotypes of the archetypal figure,” according to the organization’s website.

“We noticed a recent trend in witch-related media across television, film, music, and fashion where the witch is often cast as a feminist icon, and we wanted to understand the significance of this recent resurgence of witch imagery,” said Emily Pelstring, Co-Organizer of The Witch Institute.

The symposium constitutes seven planned events, including 18 roundtables, 14 workshops, and many exciting screenings, talks, and performances. It includes a lecture by Dr. Silvia Federici on the role of witch hunts in colonization and globalization processes; a conversation between the star of the iconic 90s witch film The Craft, Rachel True, and Dani Bethea about the representation of black femininity in witch horror; a screening and conversation around Anna Biller’s feminist satire The Love Witch; and an expanded version of the short film program Spellbound, with an accompanying workshop and raffled multimedia Collective Spell Package, curated by Geneviève Wallen.

“We suspect that this rise in interest in witchcraft and the reclamation of witch-identity is in part a response to the intensification of the conservative politics that we are seeing across the globe. If this is the case on some level, it is worth asking more questions about how these reclamations respond to the current conditions and what witchcraft and related practices mean for marginalized communities,” said Pelstring.

The symposium is free to attend for the public and is virtual, but ticket reservation is required due to limited numbers.

“We hope that this week-long symposium effectively brings together voices from various communities with different approaches to sharing knowledge. We are hosting roundtables and workshops where scholars, artists, and practitioners of witchcraft will come into dialogue with one another. This can only enrich the conversations we have around the roles of media, spirituality, creativity, and political activism in our lives,” said Pelstring.

Visit www.witchinstiute.com for a full schedule of events and to reserve

 tickets.

New Buckland Museum of Witchcraft and Magick Exhibit Demonstrates How Art Can Heal

Posted By Jeff Niesel on Tue, Mar 9, 2021 at 1:59 pm

• Courtesy of the Buckland Museum of Witchcraft and Magick
• Transmutations: Witches, Healers and Oracles is now on exhibit.

Stephen Romano has curated several exhibits for Cleveland's Buckland Museum of Witchcraft and Magick. He was the man behind the following exhibits: the wildly popular William Mortensen's WITCHES, an exhibit that featured a selection from Romano's comprehensive collection of works by the artist; Barry William Hale, the first ever solo exhibition by the world renowned Australian artist who's a member of Ordo Templi Orients; and Apparitions, an exhibit that presented more than 40 works from Stephen Romano's collection on the subject of ghosts, spirits and the paranormal ranging in dates of creation from the early 1600s to the present.

Now, he’s teamed up once again with the museum to present Transmutations: Witches, Healers and Oracles, an exhibit dedicated to the esoteric photographic works of Destiny Turner, Alexis Karl, Courtney Brooke, Lorena Torres Martell and Nahw Yg with words by renowned author Kristen J. Sollee.

“The exhibition features artists who have channeled their life experiences into their art making practice using the languages and aesthetics of the esoteric, witchcraft, shamanism, and other contexts which imply the conjuring and manipulation of forces outside of mundane sensory perception,” reads a press release about the exhibit, which through April 30.

The exhibition will also feature vernacular and historical photographic works, including works from our collection of vintage lobby cards, as well as the early 20th century photography of William Mortensen, Walter Bird, John Everard, Roland Henricks and many others.

"The title of the exhibition, 'transmutations,' came in conversation with the artist Destiny Turner, who is also a poetess, and suggests the action of changing or the state of being changed into another form.. either in actual form from matriarch to witch or shaman (and back again), from darkness to light, from mundane to supernatural,” says Romano in a press release. “The possibilities are endless, and Kristien J. Sollee's texts best compliment how that applies to the works in this exhibition. The show features artists whom I call ‘authentic,’ as they have channeled their true life experiences directly into their art making practice. These artists use the language and claim the imagery of the esoteric, witchcraft and healing to perpetuate what is to me the noblest and highest ambition an artist can have, to use art as a social healing device."

To ensure social distancing, the museum only allows visitors via ticketed appointments. Masks must be worn. Tickets to Transmutations: Witches, Healers and Oracles are available now.

Film Coven of Sisters gets a lot right about

 the terrible 1609 Basque witch-hunt

An engraving of the sabbath from Pierre de Lancre’s Tableau de l'inconstance des mauvais anges. Author provided

Pierre de Rosteguy de Lancre’s 1612 book, Tableau de l'inconstance des mauvais anges et démons (Tableau of the Inconstancy of Evil Angels and Demons), is the most sensationalist account of a sabbat, the nocturnal gathering of witches, ever written. Recounting a witch hunt the judge had conducted in the French Basque country in 1609, the book is replete with allegations of cannibalism, vampirism and a great deal of demonic sex.

Historians have not quite known what to do with de Lancre, who may have executed as many as 80 women and men as witches. They’ve either desperately tried to make him out to be the very “picture of the Catholic Reformation man”. Or they descend into unhelpful denunciations of his “attitude bordering on imbecility”.

The Spanish film Akelarre (translated as Coven of Sisters) succeeds where the historians fail, capturing de Lancre’s personality – a blend of piety, curiosity and erotic fixation with the sabbat. It takes the material from de Lancre’s book and asks the simple question: how did de Lancre obtain this wealth of material about the witches’ sabbat? (“akelarre” in Basque.)
Spellbound by the Sabbat

The film, by the Argentinian director Pablo Agüero, centres on the relationship between a Spanish judge called Rostegui (based on de Lancre) and a group of teenagers suspected of witchcraft. In an attempt to evade execution, the six teenage girls decide to tell the judge what he wants to hear. Their leader, Ana, realises that the judge is desperate to prove the reality of the sabbat. They plan to string him along, even offering to re-enact the sabbat, with the hope of winning enough time for their fathers – sailors who had gone to the New World – to return and rescue them from the judge’s clutches.

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De Lancre’s Tableau highlights the contrast between elite French culture and that of the Basque border territory. It even likens the inhabitants to Native Americans from the New World. This clash of cultures is well represented in the film – Basque food, language, and dress are cursed and mocked.


Indeed, the contrast was more profound in real life. Like the film’s Spanish judge, de Lancre did not speak Basque. Every encounter had to pass through an interpreter, causing him considerable distress about possible deceptions. The film also captures this insecurity. The girls speak Spanish but switch into Basque to keep their secrets and undermine the judge’s superiority, just as de Lancre feared.

It might seem implausible that the judge desired to know every intimate detail of the sabbat but many scenes in the film are based on de Lancre’s account. The real French judges (de Lancre had a colleague) had the teenagers re-enact the dances they performed at the sabbat. The judges also asked one witch to fly off in front of them. When she could not, she promised to bring back the necessary potion the next time she went to the sabbat. Even the rather comic scene where the judge inquires about the size of the devil’s penis has roots in the Tableau.
From the “witches” perspective

While the film gets a lot right, it misses two crucial complicating factors.

The film, first of all, presents witchcraft as a novelty. The girls use the Spanish word for witch, bruja, even when speaking in Basque, as if it was unfamiliar to them. Yet Basques had a long, disturbing history of prosecuting witches. When the Spanish Inquisition first dealt with witchcraft in the late 15th century, its officials did not refer to supposed witches as brujas – they used the Basque equivalent sorginak.

Secondly, the abduction of children and teenagers by witches was a persistent part of Basque witchcraft lore on both the Spanish and French side of the border

.

Akelarre film poster. Wikimedia

De Lancre did not consider his teenagers to be witches, he called them “witnesses”. Brought to the sabbat against their will, their role was to denounce those who had abducted them as witches. Although their bodies were searched for the devil’s mark – the film’s most harrowing scene – they were not usually at risk of death.

The French judges executed only one teenager, 17-year-old Marie Dindarte who made the mistake of confessing that she travelled to the sabbat on her own. De Lancre was delighted by her testimony. Marie, totally oblivious, confessed “continuously without torture”, implicating other witches. In vain, she recanted when she unexpectedly found herself on the scaffold.

These comments notwithstanding, Akelarre has got a lot right about the Basque witch-hunt’s most salient features: Pierre de Lancre’s erotic fascination with the sabbat and his strange collaboration with his teenage witnesses. Students of the early modern witch-hunt should take note of this film. And a wider audience might appreciate it more knowing how close to the truth it is.

April 15, 2021 

Author

Jan Machielsen
Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History, Cardiff University
Disclosure statement
Jan Machielsen is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at Cardiff University and a Humboldt Research Fellow at the TU Dresden. He is currently completing a book on the witch-hunt in the French Basque Country.
Partners
Cardiff University provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation UK.

Sirens, hags and rebels: Halloween witches draw on the history of women’s power


Witches have a long history dating back to Ancient Rome. This print from 1815 is by British engraver Edward Orme. (Wellcome Collection)

Notwithstanding the pandemic, witches in pointy black hats appear in the windows of stores and homes across my city this Halloween. Witch costumes are popular with young girls who, in ordinary times, parade the streets collecting candy, reinscribing an ancient stereotype that has roots in misogynistic fears and fantasies about female power and its dangers.

Young women and girls don this costume because it allows them to flirt with the daring possibilities of female agency — expressed as naughtiness and defiance — that is normally off limits to them. But what are the origins and history of the witch stereotype that explain its enduring cultural appeal as a symbol of women’s dangerous power?

My book, Naming the Witch: Magic, Ideology, and Stereotype in the Ancient World, investigates the origins of magic, focusing especially on its association with women in ancient representations.
The first witch

Circe in Homer’s Odyssey has often been identified as the first witch. She lured men into her compound and turned them into wild pigs with a magic potion. Interestingly, the Greek text identifies her as a goddess, affirming that her powers derive from legitimate and divine sources, rather than mageia, associated with the religion of Greece’s nemesis, Persia.

Medea the Sorceress is an oil painting by British painter Valentine Cameron Prinsep (1838–1904) that depicts Medea collecting funghi to make a poison. (Southwark Art Collection)

Medea, another prototype for the witch in ancient literature, similarly derives her power from divine sources: she is a granddaughter of the sun and priestess of Hecate, a goddess from Caria (in modern Turkey), who is identified with magic by the fifth century BCE. Hecate presides over liminal transitions — births and deaths — and was believed to lead a horde of restless souls on moonless nights, which needed to be placated by offerings at the crossroads.

It is likely this association with the restless dead that led Hecate to be frequently petitioned on curse tablets and binding spells from ancient Greece and Rome. By the Renaissance, she had become the witch’s goddess par excellence, as reflected in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
Depravation and witches

The image of the witch begins to take shape in earnest during the Roman period: the Roman poet Lucan’s Pharsalia, which presents an account of the civil war that ended the Roman Republic, depicts a necromantic hag to graphically signify the depths of depravity to which civil war leads. Erictho prowls cemeteries and battlefields, reviving corpses to learn from them the outcome of the war. She gorges out eyeballs, gnaws on desiccated fingernails and scrapes the flesh off crucifixes.

This image of an old hag — wizened, grey-faced and mutilating the dead — provides an important template for later representations of witches.

A print made from an engraving by Robert Threw of ‘Macbeth, the three witches,

 Hecate, and the eight kings, in a cave,’ originally painted by Joshua Reynold. (The Wellcome Collection)

More influential still are the Roman poet Horace’s many depictions of Canidia and her cohort of lusty hags who dig for bones in a pauper’s cemetery and kill a child to use his liver in a love potion.

Scholars have speculated on the real identity of these women, missing the point that they are caricatures. These characters do not illuminate the secret rituals of real Roman women, but are literary tropes that function in different texts to convey ideas about legitimate authority, masculinity and social order.

Images of depraved women, cravenly committing infanticide, violating their biological role as mothers, making potions to control men and violating male prerogative in a patriarchal society indicate more about the fears ancient writers had regarding patriarchal authority and the proper governance of society.
Magic versus religion

Accusations of illicit magic appear across the spectrum of ancient writings, including early Christian texts. Charges of practising magic functioned to denounce messianic competitors such as Simon of Samaria (also know as Simon Magus) or to delegitimize prophets and priests of alternative forms of Christianity that were subsequently denounced as heresy. Accusing these leaders of wielding magic (rather than miracle) was part and parcel of an effort to delegitimize them in favour of bishops and leaders of churches that came to form the Catholic Apostolic Church.

In Jewish writings also, depictions of using magic occurred within contexts of religious competition and were often linked to charges of heresy. In many cases, men are depicted using magic, but women are universally charged. In fact, the Babylonian Talmud states that most women practise magic.

The burning of three witches in Baden, illustrated by Swiss clergyman Johann Jacob Wick in 1585. (Wikimedia Commons)

Witch hunts and social order

This history of associating magic with heresy and social disruption contributed to the witch hunts of the early modern era. Many people incorrectly assume that witch-burning was primarily a medieval phenomenon but, in fact, witch-hunting peaks in the modern era: The Reformation challenged religious authority, exploration exploded the limited view of the world previously held, and capitalism and urbanization disrupted the social networks that protected people and gave them a sense of security.

Within this context, accusations of witchcraft offered plausible solutions to people’s problems: if a poor neighbour asked for bread, the guilt of denying her might be assuaged by accusing her of witchcraft; if science was challenging belief that God exists, torturing a woman into falsely confessing she had sex with a demon might offer tangible “proof” for the existence of supernatural beings.

Women who challenged male authority might garner an accusation of witchcraft, as could women suspected of sexual immorality. Witch-hunting functioned as a method of social control that sought to channel female behaviour into certain acceptable moulds.
Today’s witches

While witch-burnings and the torturing of women merely for looking or acting different ended in the 18th century, the use of this stereotype to malign women, especially women in power, has not. During the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton was often either satirically depicted as a witch or was outright accused of committing acts, such as child murder, that have been associated with witches for centuries

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Witches are experiencing a resurgence, and not just at Halloween. (Shutterstock)

The shadow cast by Medea, Erictho and Canidia continues to haunt powerful women who question male authority or deviate from traditionally prescribed female roles of subservient wife and mother.

How, then, should we understand the popularity of witch costumes on Halloween? Or the increasingly wide appeal and legal recognition of Wicca as a new religious movement that appeals to both men and women?

Read more: This Halloween, witches are casting spells to defeat Trump and #WitchTheVote in the U.S. election

Wiccans actively reclaim the label “witch” and construct an alternative identity for themselves through a myth of pre-Christian paganism. Witches filter ancient myths through an eco-feminist lens to formulate religious values that prioritize the Earth, elevate the female (without denigrating the male) and promote a non-hierarchical decentralized movement catering to personal needs and expressions of spirituality. This vision of witchcraft appeals to an ever-growing number of people today.

This Halloween, my three-year-old daughter and I are both dressing up as witches. In doing so, I hope to deepen her sense of opportunity and possibility in the world that lies before her.

October 29, 2020 

AUTHOR

Kimberly Stratton

Associate Professor, Humanities, Carleton University

Disclosure statement

Kimberly Stratton received funding from the American Association of University Women (AAUW) and the Josephine de Kármán Fellowship Trust for research related to this article.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY UNCLE AL

MAGICK and the right comprehension and right application thereof. I) DEFINITION. Magick is the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will. (Illustration: It is my Will to inform the World of certain facts within my knowledge.

Magick in Theory and Practice - Introduction and Theorems

sacred-texts.com/oto/aba/defs.htm

A FEAST

 BOOK OF THE LAW

CHAPTER II

34. But ye, o my people, rise up & awake!

35. Let the rituals be rightly performed with joy & beauty!

36. There are rituals of the elements and feasts of the times.

37. A feast for the first night of the Prophet and his Bride!

38. A feast for the three days of the writing of the Book of the Law.

39. A feast for Tahuti and the child of the Prophet--secret, O Prophet!

40. A feast for the Supreme Ritual, and a feast for the Equinox of the Gods.

41. A feast for fire and a feast for water; a feast for life and a greater feast for death!

42. A feast every day in your hearts in the joy of my rapture!

43. A feast every night unto Nu, and the pleasure of uttermost delight!

44. Aye! feast! rejoice! there is no dread hereafter. There is the dissolution, and eternal ecstasy in the kisses of Nu.

Pluto Gone Dog Gone It

Which of these would you say is a dog: a German Shepherd or a Chihuahua? This is the kind of question put before delegates of the International Astronomical Union (IAU) General Assembly who powwowed in Prague over Pluto's planet-hood. No wonder hardly 300 of the 2,700 astronomers at the meet even bothered to vote for, or against, stripping the ninth rock from the Sun of its planetary status and making it a 'planet dwarf' instead.Plot against Pluto Hindustan Times

Cute Pluto as a dog....wait he is.
Of course in India Astrology is a science.


"Indian astrology did not include Pluto as a planet and the latest announcement by leading global astronomers after a marathon week-long meeting at Prague yesterday only endorsed the Indian mathematical astrology of Aryabhatta and Varahamihira in the sixth century," eminent mathematical Astrologer Mangal Prasad told today. Aryabhatta, Varahamihira's mathematical science vindicated

And European and North American astrologers have stated they will still keep
Pluto in their charts.

Now of course the naming of planets is older than current industrial science,
it originated in what was once called natural science or as we know it magick.
In particular the naming of things is the source of our power over them, as
Fraser defines it; sympathetic magic.

Astrology and Alchemy are the mothers of the later sciences.
Though dismissed by current empirical materialist industrialized scientism.

But wait didn't this group of astronomers vote on a definition of a planet.
Giving things names. And taking them away.

Hmm what does Fraser say about that in his work on natural magick
the Golden Bough....

UNABLE to discriminate clearly between words and things, the savage commonly fancies that the link between a name and the person or thing denominated by it is not a mere arbitrary and ideal association, but a real and substantial bond which unites the two in such a way that magic may be wrought on a man just as easily through his name as through his hair, his nails, or any other material part of his person. In fact, primitive man regards his name as a vital portion of himself and takes care of it accordingly. Chapter XXII.Tabooed Words

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Pat Robertson Curses Again

The Man Who Would Be 666

Robertson suggests God smote Sharon

A tip o the blog to Green Knight who posted this story, with a very interesting link to Pat Robertsons Investment scheme in Israel; Gods Fantasyland and Wonder Park.

It appears that after calling for the assassination of Hugo Chavez, Pat Robertson is saying that Ariel Sharon got his just desserts.

US Christian broadcaster says Sharon's stroke divine retribution

But here he is at the point of death. He was dividing God's land, and I would say woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the EU, the United Nations or United States of America. God said, "This land belongs to me, you better leave it alone."

And its not just Secularists, Libertarians and the Left Wing that is outraged over Robertson. The Conservative blog; Rightwing Nuthouse says;

The modern, secular world no longer has much tolerance for people who claim to talk to God (or, at least have a direct line to what God is saying). They are considered kooks and crazies. If they stand on a street corner in ragged clothes with a sign saying “The End Is Near” we tend to feel pity. But when they go on television dressed in $1,000 suits and claim that illness is divine retribution for being disobedient of God, we are rightly outraged

Robertson is now saying that the biblical G*D of Israel , Yod He Vau He, Jehova, Yaweh, has smote Ariel Sharon, and good on him for doing it. Whoa, there laddie get a grip on yourself. Look in the Mirror and listen to the words coming out of yer mouth.

And it ain't the word of the Lord G*D but of that lil ol devil Pat Robertson the conspiracy monger as Theologian, the man who would be President of them thar United States of America.

Robertson is engaging in that old black magick of the early Catholic Church. It's called the death liturgy and for a few coins would be said by a priest during mass to curse one's enemies. It is the origin of the Black Mass. (See H.T. F. Rhodes, The Black Mass, one of the more definitive and objective books on the subject though now sadly out of print. Rhodes was a Forensic Criminologist.). The Catholic Death Mass or Black Mass, Misae Morte, went out of fashion around the late thirteenth century but has reappeared amongst the penatacostal based evangelicals like Robertson. Its known as cursing, and curse magick. That old hoodoo, good old black magick.

Of course Pat is in good company when it comes to the Lord of Israel, G*D who roared with the voice of thunder with smoke and ash smouldering from his nostrils when he called down the death of his enemies and the enemies of the Isrealites. He literally appears in Psalm's as if he were that other guy, you know the one with the horns and tail......

"Could it be SATAN?"

Psalm 18

In my distress I called on Yahweh,

and cried to my God.

He heard my voice out of his temple.

My cry before him came into his ears.

18:7 Then the earth shook and trembled.

The foundations also of the mountains quaked and were shaken,

because he was angry.

18:8 Smoke went out of his nostrils.

Consuming fire came out of his mouth.

Coals were kindled by it.

18:9 He bowed the heavens also, and came down.

Thick darkness was under his feet.

18:10 He rode on a cherub, and flew.

Yes, he soared on the wings of the wind.

18:11 He made darkness his hiding place, his pavilion around him,

darkness of waters, thick clouds of the skies.

18:12 At the brightness before him his thick clouds passed,

hailstones and coals of fire.

18:13 Yahweh also thundered in the sky.

The Most High uttered his voice:

hailstones and coals of fire.

18:14 He sent out his arrows, and scattered them;

Yes, great lightning bolts, and routed them.

18:15 Then the channels of waters appeared.

The foundations of the world were laid bare at your rebuke, Yahweh,

at the blast of the breath of your nostrils.

But Pat is supposed to be a preacher of Jesus the pacifist, a preacher of the New Testament. Istead he calls for assassinations and curses leaders of Israel for his own investment profit. He not only is groping back to the old testament G*D but he sure does sound like Anton LeVay.

Of the Nine Satanic Statements:

5. Satan represents vengeance, instead of turning the other cheek!1

Now this makes a lot of sense since Pat is a preacher of the old testament G*D.
Pat wants to be G*D's King on Earth, the Caesar of the New Millineum, the President of the Untied States of Armageddon hastening the last days of the Earth. Scary eh.

So now you have met the Anti-Christ and he is smiling in his Armani suits and beaming his vision of the apocalypse around the world on his tax free church of the TV waves CBN.

Put ol blue eyes on vitrola and sing along with his rendition of That Old Black Magic. Cause that's what Preacher Pat is all about.

In keeping with this, Pat's fondest wish is to witness the Tribulation -- the bloody seven-year cataclysm through which God will restore His kingdom on Earth. It's going to be absolutely spectacular. The Lord will finally manifest His divine wrath against the Sodomites, the Feminists, the Secularists, along with all the other blasphemers. But that just can't happen until everything's exactly right. Jesus is waiting for us to restore some of America's godliness. Once that happens, He can get this Armageddon thing started and then it's party time. Until then, we're stuck in a holding pattern for the duration.

Banishing sinfulness and immorality from the United States is going to be no small task. But once we're done, things are going to be a lot different around here. We'll have a theocracy and all that entails: book burnings, compulsory religious services, forced conversions. Think Afghanistan under the Taliban regime, except without the ridiculous wardrobe. Plus, it will be based on the actual word of God, instead of some pseudo-religious cult.

In 1980, Pat announced that the Tribulation would begin in "the Fall of 1982." Unfortunately, this simply did not happen. In his 1990 book The New Millennium, Robertson proposed that the Tribulation would begin on April 29, 2000. Again, no dice. Things like that can be very disappointing.

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God
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Sharon
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Witches Play Mullahs To A Draw

I found this interesting, Iran vs Mexican Witches The Iranians brought out the Koran and the Mullahs still......it came to a 1-1 draw....after the initial half Mexico won 3-1 I found out later in the day. Ha! Witches 1 Mullahs 0.

Black magic

Meanwhile, fans in Mexico have been praying for the success of their team as Mexico plays Iran in their first match of the World Cup.

As crowds follow the matches on giant screens in Mexico City's central square, Zocalo – the witchcraft master - has set up a shrine of Santa Muerte, or Saint Death.

The witchcraft master believes Santa Muerte will help Mexico to a win as a 12th player.

The sprit, representing death, is widely worshipped in Mexico, and has in the past received many unusual gifts, including shots of tequila and burning cigarettes.

Of course the Iranians should have been prepared for this since many African teams also use shamans and witch doctors in the course of their play.

“If you are a goalkeeper, maybe you put an elephant tooth in your boot to make you big and strong.”

Unfortunately Saudi Arabia is probably not anymore prepared for dealing with any pagan charms the Ukrainian Soccer team and their fans may use against them in the Group H playoffs at the World Cup.. In Saudi Arabia they kill witches.

Status of religious freedom in Saudi Arabia
Magic is widely believed in and sometimes practiced, often in the form of fortune-telling and swindles; however, under Shari’a, the practice of magic is regarded as the worst form of polytheism, an offense for which no repentance is accepted and which is punishable by death. There are an unknown number of detainees held in prison on the charge of "sorcery," including the practice of "black magic" or "witchcraft." In a few cases, self-proclaimed "miracle workers" have been executed for sorcery involving physical harm or apostasy.

If the Saudi soccer team hopes to win they might want to free their sorcerors to help out. Since the Iranian Mullahs could only make it a draw against the Mexican Sorcerors.

Of course no one believes in magic, ahem, until their favorite sports team makes the playoffs.

Guardian Unlimited | Weekend | Hostages to fortune Science has taught us that superstition is just a load of mumbo jumbo. Even so, we carry on with an irrational array of rituals and practices to keep a step ahead of fate. Touch wood? Why bother when we know it makes no difference? By David Newnham.

And all sports are rituals and metaphors. The fans will their teams to win, using rabbits feet, face painting, favorite clothing, etc. This is the meaning of magick; the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will


Chapter 3: The Rendering of Meaning: Ritual, Magic, Myth and Humor

The compelling nature of football ritual is a result of a successful demonstration of the success model. But football not only provides a working demonstration of the traditional success model, it also provides the viewer with ways of monitoring the model. In the real world of the corporation, the actor, who cannot comprehend the structure of the business world, or even the company where he competes for success, cannot directly verify how the system works. In fact he is probably not as successful as he thinks he ought to be, and is confronted with experiences to suggest the system doesn't work. Football, on the other hand, resolves those doubts, and perhaps suggests to those not as successful as they think they should be, that they are not as dedicated, and hardworking as they ought to be. However in football, the accomplishments of individuals are carefully monitored and expressed in the statistics popular with newspaper writers and television commentators:

Football, like chess, laboratory experiments, and the Balinese cockfight, is a dramatic rendition of a metaphor or set of metaphors that represent one way Americans (or at least some Americans) give meaning to portions of their lives. And the ritual validates the truth of that meaning.

There is another aspect of ritual that is not as clear to us in our rituals as it may be when we look at rituals that appear strange to us. Rituals have results that confirm to the participants that the world of ritual and the "real" world are one. That is the rituals "work"; the rituals have real effects.

As I have said before sports is metaphor for war. Especially team sports like soccer, rugy, football (especially in the US where it influences the White House and Pentagon, how many Presidents played football...and generals) and hockey.
And magickal thinking is all about the 'will to win' and that is no more apparent than in sports.

If we Americans have “optimized” rugby according to our notions of progress, there are still things many team owners might like to import from Trobriand cricket. While in football, the home team wins most of the time, in the Trobriand Island sport the home team always wins. There is still consolation for the visitors though, since the home team throws a feast in their honor. Huge differences remain, however. While football, with its fighter plane flyovers and other militaristic trappings often seems to celebrate war, cricket was introduced to the Trobriands in 1903 to replace war. How primitive!The Anthropology of the Super Bowl

Also See:

Magick

Sports

Ukraine

Football



Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Germany, FIFA, Soccer, football, Ukraine, Schevchenko, World-Cup, 2006, GroupH
sports, Mexico, Iran, witchcraft, magic, magick, Saudi-Arabia, sorceror, rituals, rites, superstions,

The Magickal Enchantment of Materialism

Why Marxists Need Neopaganism

by Bruce Lerro / April 25th, 2023

“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people…”

“Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower.” — Karl Marx

Cynical Attacks by Marxists About Neopaganism

“Neopagan Marxists? What are you talking about? We Marxists are atheist materialists. We don’t believe in any gods. Do you remember what Marx said about religion? It is the opium of the people. Why are you bringing superstition back in? Neopaganism is just more decadent 1970s hippie romanticism calling for the return to a preindustrial age. All this Goddess crap is just the lunatic fringe of the women’s movement trying to bring religion back in. Real socialist feminists are atheists. If anything, Christianity was a moral advance over the barbaric paganism of the Bronze and Iron Ages.” Serious charges indeed to be answered throughout this article.

Demanding Workers be Atheists Alienates Marxists from their Base

One of many problems for Marxists in the West is that most people in the working class believe in God, whether they are Protestants, Catholics, Jews or Muslims. Furthermore, whether Marxists like it or not, most people around the world find religious rituals enjoyable, comforting and meaningful. If people treat rituals in a mindless, reified way, that does not mean rituals can be dismissed. In addition, rituals have power not just in religion, but in nationalism and sports which have drawn from religion. Typically, Marxists dismiss religion, nationalism and sports as deriving from false consciousness, simplistic reasoning of the workers or evil machinations of priests or rulers. But this has not stopped working-class people from continuing to be faithful to their religion, country and sports teams. Do you Marxists really want to continue to throw stones at the buildings of churches, stadiums or the bronze cast statues of famous nationalistic generals?

The Structure and Superstructure of Societies

Using a Marxist delineation of social structures, both capitalist and socialist societies have an infrastructure and superstructure. The infrastructure includes the economy technology, methods of harnessing energy and work patterns. The superstructure of society includes the knowledge systems including politics, law, philosophy, art, religion and recreational patterns.  Broadly speaking, superstructural institutions supportthe existing order for better or worse. More specifically, under capitalism these include religious monotheism, nationalism and professional sports.

The Superstructural Mainstream Institutions of Religion, Nationalism and Sports and their Commonalities

Religious monotheism, with all its material configurations (churches, altars, pews) is comprised of social-psychological techniques (sin, confession, guilt) and paraphernalia (rosary beads, crosses on necks) was also used by nationalists to get people to  bind themselves to the state politically. Sports helped to organize people’s loyalty in their leisure time to a sports team. Religion, nationalism and sports all have many commonalties:

• A mythology of origins and destiny
• A founder
• A set of rites the community engages in
• Special holy days and holidays throughout the year
• A place to go for pilgrimages
• A set of buildings – temple, stadium to enact these rituals
• A set of holy objects
• A cultivated songbook of inspiring music
• Very specific set of rules to follow
• A holy book
• A definite attitude to other groups
• Emotional expectations
• Heretics
• Scapegoats
• Specialized language
• Sacred arts
• Methods of altering states of consciousness
• Attitudes towards the senses
• Collective memories – what you remember; what you forget

Monotheism, nationalism and sports are mainstream superstructural institutions of capitalism that are directed mostly atthe working-class. These institutions both alienate them from their social needs while providing them with inspiration, comfort, solace and hope. At the same time, there are superstructural capitalist movements which offer hope not only to working class people but to middle class and upper middle class people.

The Social and Psychological Aims of Capitalism vs the Hopes and Desires of the People

In order to derive maximal profit, the capitalist structure must pulverize social life so that every social and psychological need and desire is for sale. It must also create a consumer individuality so that the person is preoccupied with building and sustaining their individuality through consuming capitalist products. Naturally enough, many people who live in a capitalist society want to get away from this. Some of them flee into the capitalist superstructural institutions such as monotheism, nationalism or sports as a way to:

• Creating an ideal community
• Experience altered state of consciousness
• Develop an individuality that is larger, wider and deeper than what consumer individuality has to offer

Superstructural Movements: Human Potential, New Age and Neopaganism

But the working class is not the only class which seeks another way of life from what capitalism has to offer. The Human Potential movement in the 1970s was an attempt by mostly middle-class people to create alternative communities, to experience altered states of consciousness and cultivate a new individualist identity. So too, in the late 1970s the New Age movement wished to the same thing for the upper middle classes. These included spiritual, political and psychological cults, the paranormal movement (interest in ESP, telepathy, extraterrestrial civilizations) and Eastern mysticism (mediation, yoga) Lastly, also in the late 1970s Neopaganism exploded in both the United States and England.

Unlike monotheism, nationalism, sports and interest in cults, the New Age and Neopaganism are attempts to break awayfrom what seems to be to be the collapse of western religious institutions. What these movements promise the individual is to be swept away from everyday life to an alternative community, radically altered states and an individuality which is not submissive to a god, state or sports team but something higher, deeper and richer. To summarize, there are two components in the capitalist superstructure:

• Mainstream institutions: religion, nationalism and sports – which support capitalism
• Movements: the Human Potential Movement, the New Age movement and Neopaganism which seek to break away from capitalism or at least its corporate version

What both superstructural institutions and movements all seek to create is:

• An ideal community
• Experiencing altered state of consciousness
• Developing an individuality that is larger, far more so than what consumer individuality has to offer

Socialist Infrastructure and Socialist Superstructure

At its best, the socialist infrastructure has an economy that is communist, with workers’ councils deciding what and how much to produce at the local level, federated at the regional level and centralized at the state level. There is advanced technology. The socialist superstructure consists of a materialist philosophy, is pro-science and pro-technology and practices political direct democracy. There is also socialist art and there is atheism.

Socialist Rejection of Capitalist Superstructure

Good reasons for rejection

There are the atheists, socialists, communists and anarchists who think that religion, nationalism and sports are intentional distractions concocted by the ruling class to keep the working class from collectively changing life on earth. Further, the search for paranormal or mystical experience will be understood by Marxists as an attempted withdrawal from capitalist institutions in a fruitless search of meaningful experience. Socialists argue that paranormal experience has never been proven by scientists to be repeatable experimentally, while mystical experience is private escape and rarely produces revolutionaries. “Who needs spiritual a superstructure?” Marxists may say. “We see what happens when superstructural institutions are introduced into the capitalist superstructure by way of monotheism, nationalism, sports. People reify their gods, national heroes and sports figures. They engage them superstitiously and religious participants, citizens or sports fans behave submissively or mindlessly and use these institutions as escapes.

Furthermore, the impact of superstructural movements can also be engaged superstitiously and its leaders reified. The eruption of cults, psychic research and meditation centers produces its share of gurus, groupies and escapism. “Who needs that?” say the Marxists. The problem is that these capitalist superstructural institutions and movements contain 80% of the population (40% working class, 30% middle class and 10% upper middle class).

Bad reasons for rejecting

However, atheistic socialists and communists do not understand that what people who engage in institutions, movements and personal quests also want is not just about what they believe, but what they experience in a ritual-altered state. Arguing with people that science shows the earth is actually a lot older than the bible says is not going to change any fundamentalist’s minds and the evangelical atheists are foolish to try. Attempting to convince nationalists that their country’s crimes are greater than their heroic deeds is like spitting in the wind. Making an effort to convince sports fans that they shouldn’t root for their home team because neither the players nor the owners are loyal to their city will never work. The great weakness of all atheist socialists is that what people believe and the vehicles they use to support their beliefs can’t be argued with because these things all give comfort, hope and community. Communists throw rocks at the churches and stadiums but they are really afraid to go in. What socialists need to do is:

• Understand what people believe and how the rituals work that supports beliefs
• Recreate our own version of the 19 elements I earlier named that religion, nationalism and sports all share

Marxists do not have to Reinvent the Wheel:

The Neopagan Movement can Provide Marxists with a Missing Sacred Superstructure

Enter Neopaganism. At its very best, Neopaganism provides a far more convincing story about the cosmic evolution. It also offers a way to live in a world of conflict without losing heart or enthusiasm. Neopaganism also uses some of the same methodologies as monotheism, nationalism and sports to create altered states of consciousness. It does so relatively successfully and it does not require dogma to do it.

The Neopagan movement can bring life of the sacred into the socialist superstructure in ways that, at their best, are not superstitious, not reified, anti-hierarchical and not escapist. Joining with Neopagans will enable socialist to recruit the population currently embedded in the capitalist superstructure and lure them into a neopagan superstructure that will be in the service of socialism in our fight against capitalism.

Marx’s Criticism of Religion was too Sweeping

Marx rightfully criticized the Catholic and Protestant monotheism as it was practiced by the ruling classes of Europe, but his criticism of monotheism does not cover the polytheism or animism of pagans. In the case of the animism of hunter-gatherers who occupied most of human history, there are a lot of problems with characterizing animism the way Marxism criticized religion in my opening quote. The first animists were politically egalitarian, economically practiced what anthropologist Marshall Sahlins called “generalized reciprocity” and they had no private property. There were no gods and goddesses, just earth spirits, totems and sometimes ancestor spirits. There were no spiritual hierarchies. These earth spirits were treated as humanity’s brothers and sisters. There was no adoration, worship, begging and pleading or faith necessary. The sacred life of hunter-gatherers was no vale of tears, the heart of a heartless world, the soul of a soulless word. The type of magick they practiced was hardly the opium of the people. I am not suggesting socialists return to hunting and gathering times and practice animism. However, the animistic beliefs and practices can be used as a sacred model on which to build a communist future.

Neopagans are Hardly Washed-up Left-over Hippies

According to Margot Alder, in her book Drawing Down the Moon, Neopagans as a group are intelligent, interested in science, creative, imaginative and growing in both the United States and England. They have made inroads into mainstream religious conferences and they have yearly conferences of their own as well as regional celebrations throughout the United States. In fact, in the United States, Neopaganism is the fastest growing “religion”. We Marxists would be very lucky to have them join our ranks.

There is no Contradiction Between Dialectical Materialism and Most Neopagans

Ontologically, I identify as a Neopagan, but this in no way requires me to challenge a materialistic framework. Though some pagans are god and goddess theists, there is a vital community of Atheopagans who are materialists and believe in no gods. While I have a couple of disagreements with Mark Green (author of Atheopaganism: an Earth-honoring path rooted in science), we have enough in common to say that Atheopaganism will answer in a scientific way most, if not all the reservations of Marxists. There are other Neopagans whose goddesses and gods are admitted as psychologicalprojections and have no real independence. This is no threat to dialectical materialism. My criticism of Marxism is an immanentcriticism. It’s that materialism needs to incorporate collective and individual imagination without becoming a vitalist or a pantheist.

Characteristics of Neopaganism

There are at least fourteen characteristics of Neopaganism which have literary roots going back to mid 19^thcentury Europe. These characteristics would work very well with Marxism.

• Perception of divinity as immanent (as opposed to transcendent)
• A multiplicity of deities (polytheism) while for a few there is one deity, a single goddess (this is opposed to patriarchal monotheism)
• The deities are female as well as male
• A commitment to ecological responsibility as the most practical way to engage nature
• Appreciation of science, science fiction and technology (as opposed to superstition and luddism
• Creative approach to ritual with singing, dancing, music, drawing, and mask-making
• Emphasis on imagination in guided visualization as essential in creating altered states of consciousness
• Orientated to the tides of nature and circle of the seasons and the four directions
• Devotion to hedonism or the sanctification of pleasure
• A focus on the local places (as opposed to large spaces or beyond space)
• No concept of sin or salvation
• No need of proselytizing
• Sacralization of psychology through Jungian psychology or the sacred psychology of Jean Houston
• Living in the here and now, not seeking escape in heaven or nirvana

The Neopagan movement in Yankeedom largely came out of the feminist sacred movement, which was also political. Some Neopagans are liberal, but many are radicals. Generally, thanks to Starhawk and Z Budapest, many witches integrate their magickal rituals with political activity. As for Marxism, there might be a smattering of Marxists who were pagans. But for the most part, they were isolated and didn’t constitute any identifiable subgroup within Neopaganism. Then, at the turn of the century, feminist Silvia Federici wrote Caliban and the Witch that brought a feminist understanding to the witch hunts. More recently, about seven years ago, a practicing Marxist Neopagan named Rhyd Wildermuth began a small publishing house called Gods and Radicals. One of his books was All That is Sacred is Profane: A Pagan Guide to Marxism. In this work, Wildermuth tried to make a Marxian understanding of capitalism understandable to pagans. However, he did not try to make Neopaganism attractive to Marxists. That’s what my book is about – The Magickal Enchantment of Materialism.

What is Sociohistorical Paganism?

Sociohistorical Neopaganism has no inconsistency with the tradition of dialectical materialism. It understands that both nature and society are products of the dialectical forces of Darwinian natural selection, combined with chance and – with the emergence of the human species – teleonomy (the internal planning of the human species). It also understands human society as an evolving process riddled with class contradiction tensions between the structure and superstructure of society which result in qualitative leaps in political organization and economic systems. It accepts uncertainty as a way of life. Opposites are understood as polar. Because of the conflict between opposites, a new higher emergent synthesis comes about historically, socially and psychologically

Sociohistorical Neopaganism is inclusive of all socialist groups, and welcomes dialogue with Atheopagans, soft and hard polytheists, as well as Evangelical atheists (of which hardline Marxists are one type). The similarities and differences between evangelical atheists, Atheopagans, soft and hard polytheists is the subject of the first chapter of my book.

We respect the process philosophy of Whitehead, Hartshorne, and David Ray Griffin in their attempt to argue that there is an internality in nature all the way down. This does not make us panpsychists since we believe there is an internality (what Whitehead called prehensions) long before there was any consciousness in nature. We believe with Engels that there is a dialectic in nature that goes all the way back to subatomic particles, and that evolution must be understood as a spiral with ever-new emergent properties emerging from conflict. Western humanity’s conception of heaven and hell are sociological projection of alienated humanity. When and if socialism becomes predominant in the world, it will approximate heaven on earth. This will go a long way towards dissolving infantile notions of heaven as a place to be taken care of or a hell as a place to suffer.

Unlike all other groups, sociohistorical pagans are committed to discovering a fifth stage of cognitive development beyond Piaget’s formal operations. Originally called “dialectical operations” by Klaus F. Riegal, preliminary work has been done by Michael Basseches Dialectical Thinking in Adult Development and Otto Laske Dialectical Thinking for Integral Leaders. A fifth stage of cognitive development will be necessary to synthesize Marxism and Neopaganism in creating a socialist future.

Sociohistorical Neopagans have big plans for rituals. Following the lead of Starhawk and Z Budapest, sociohistorical paganism wishes to incorporate ritual, not only into specific protests and strikes, but also into an ongoing political practice. In addition, we attempt to do once again what the French revolutionaries did: change calendars and populate them with socialist holidays, socialist birthdays, pilgrimages, and rites of passage. We want to bring theatrical practice and collective imagination to socialism.

Unlike so many hardline Marxists, we want to live completely in the present. We believe that the choice for anyone joining us is not made as a result of guilt or morality, but simply that as people we are irresistible. People want to be like us and want to be part of what we are cooking up. For us, altered states of consciousness in a magical ritual is not some kind of monolithic experience of all members. Different social classes will have different altered states because of their class position. Rituals producing altered states will be opportunities to work through some of the class conflicts between working class, middle class, and upper middle class participants.

Unlike any other Neopagan group, our perception of reality will depend on the kind of society we come from and the point in history we which we live. As I have said in a previous book, From Earthspirits to Sky Gods the primitive magic-mythology in tribal societies will be very different from the secondary magic of agricultural states. The difference between the high magic of Renaissance Italy is very different from the low magic of witchcraft, as you will see in Chapter 21 of my book.

Neopagan Marxists work with other pagans’ gods and goddesses psychologically and sociologically, even though for us, these gods and goddesses are not ontologically real. Ghosts, ancestor spirits, and earth spirits can be claimed by Atheopagans and Jungians to be psychological projections. For us they are also sociological and historical projections of human social life and the differences between classes. The characteristics of gods and goddesses – that they all have strengths and weaknesses – are projections that are worth working with but with the understanding that there is a danger of reification. Humanity can have gods, but the gods cannot have us. The characteristics of the gods and goddesses, their identification as departments of life, should be worked in as part of our socialist plans. For example, rituals to the god Hermes could accompany socialist transportation meeting plans. Rituals to Demeter, the goddess of agriculture, accompany the meetings of socialist farmers.

We agree with hardline Marxists that consciousness cannot be reduced to the brain, but we disagree with some other pagans that consciousness is rooted in nature or in a spiritual world. After the existence of the brain and a central nervous system, consciousness arises (as in bonobos and chimps) as the result of toolmaking, social life, and culture that is the inheritance of social animals. However, self-reflective consciousness is the result of the development of a sociohistorical envelope wrapped around the Earth over the biosphere, which Vernadsky and Chardin called the noosphere. Self-reflective consciousness is rooted in sociohistorical activity in creating and sustaining the noosphere.

Lastly, historical sacred oppression is very important to us. Like Neopagan feminist witches, we don’t forget nor forgive what Christianity did during the witch hunts. Neither do we forget nor forgive what the Christians did to the Alexandrian library and how the Church terrorized the likes of Bruno, Galileo and Spinoza. We reject any reconciliation with Protestants, Catholics, Jews and the whole patriarchal 5000-year albatross. Neither are we seduced by Eastern mysticism, whether it be Hindu or Buddhist, cousins of the Western patriarchal family. As a feminist titled one of her plays many years ago, Your 5000 Years Are Up. As sociohistorical Neopagans, we neither forgive nor forget. We will treat the rulers of patriarchy with the same sacred hatred that we treat the capitalists in the secular world. Far from being an advance in sacred life, as many traditional Marxists think, Christianity is a slave religion, a degeneration of a once vital pagan love of life.

What is Magick and What’s With the “k”?

The word “magic” means many things to many people. The technical breakdown of the word is to shape or make vigorous. In this book magic is not a) a secular art of creating perceptual illusions as in stage magic. Neither is it a literal individual and group technique that can directly impact physical reality. What I am calling magickal is a socio-psychological technique for altering individual and group consciousness through ritual by saturating the senses through the arts of singing, dancing, and the use of guided visualization. At its best there is nothing superstitious, reified or escapist in this. As I describe in my book, The Magickal Enchantment of Materialism it can be a guide towards group and individual evolution.

Genesis of this Book

This book really snuck up on me. Over the last five years I have been writing articles for our website, Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism. In some of these articles I pointed out how religion, nationalism and sports were very big for working class people, but that Marxists had failed miserably to understand what the appeal was, let alone what socialists could do about it. In later articles, I identified rituals, the non-superstitious use of symbols and making of talismans as tools for creating, socialist altered states of consciousness. It wasn’t until the past 15 months that I realized I had written enough articles that I could turn them  into a book. Furthermore, I realized that I could add four chapters about magick from my previous books. One chapter is on the place and misplace of goddesses in the Stone and Metal ages. Another chapter is on the differences between primitive magic, secondary magic and religion that was also part of my book Power in Eden. Finally, I included a discussion of high magic in early modern Europe. One chapter was on Renaissance magick as seen through the eyes of Jungian James Hillman. The other chapter was how the Protestant religion, mechanistic science and commercial capitalism teamed up against the high magick of Paracelsus, Bruno, John Dee and the low magick of witchcraft. Both these chapters came out of my book Forging Promethean Psychology.

My Literary Sources

In this section I only want to draw from the books that have most influenced my thinking about this subject. The first is Starhawk’s book The Spiral Dance which I read in the early 1980s. Next was  Margot Adler’s great book Drawing Down the Moon which gave me a historical window into the enchanting world of Neopaganism. Throughout the 1980s I read books by Israel Regardie which were excellent in combining magickal work on the Tree of Life with psychology. He saw magick as applied psychology with nothing supernatural about it. Around 1990 I met Madonna Sophia Compton and read her book Archetypes on the Tree of Life. She taught me how to apply the Tree of Life to actual daily practice to the work on psychological problems. I had my own solitary practice for some time. Since the middle of the 1990s, until about two years ago I turned to other projects. But in 2020, my partner Barbara and I joined the Seattle Atheist Church. One of the board members really wanted to get more ritual into our group. We wound collaborating on a Fall ritual by changing the liturgy and making it more magickal. For me this meant introducing Neopaganism into the Church. This led me to start an Atheopagan book club in which we read Atheopaganism by Mark Green; Godless Paganism, edited by John Halstead and Wakeful World by Emma Restall Orr.

Why I Wrote this Book

The purpose of this book is not to convince Neopagans that Marxism is a worthy enterprise. Neither is it to convince Marxists to become Neopagans and leave Marxism behind. Rather it is to convince Marxists that Neopagan practice might breathe charm, heart, play and inspiration into the political practice of Marxism, by bringing in ritual and the arts.

Usually, Marxists naively lump animism and polytheism with Marx’s criticism of religion. The purpose of this book has been to show why this is a mistake. In my three chapters on socialism and my chapter on The Power of Magic I show how Neopagan rituals can be worked into a Marxist political practice. These changes in ritual are far more likely to bring back working-class people to socialism who have stayed away up until now because Marxism in the United States has no heart or soul.

So long as Marxists dismiss religion, nationalism and sports as merely false consciousness, simplistic reasoning or blind superstition we are left out in the cold. Dismissal has not worked before and it will not work now or in the future. Marxists will continue to be alienated from working class people who are religious and at least somewhat patriotic and enthusiastic about professional sports. Neither will the middle and upper middle class explorers of cults, parapsychology or New Age mysticism be drawn to Marxism.

Red Emma was Right: If I can’t Dance, I don’t Want to be Part of Your Revolution

Marxists need to sing, spiral-dance and celebrate socialism on a weekly, monthly, seasonal and yearly basis. On a regular, weekly basis we could have a  “socialist mass” that must answer the same big questions religion asks and answers:

• What are we?
• Where have we been?
• Where are we going?

During these large-scale and small-scale events, we must play and sing to socialist songs from around the world, not just IWW songs. Just as religion has its patron saints, nationalism has its revolutionary heroes and sports has its Hall of Fame. So socialists could regularly commemorate the lives of great socialist leaders, great socialist strikes and revolutionary takeovers of states. Just as religion has its temples, sports has its stadiums and nationalism has its presidential memorials, so Marxists need their own buildings to commemorate, mourn and celebrate the past and anticipate future days of triumph.

The socialist movement is not a night in which all cows are black. Socialism consists of individuals of different classes who have unique lives. Some are red diaper babies and some are new to the movement. In true socialist form, we celebrate the commonalities that all socialists go through from birthdays, coming of age ceremonies to marriages and funerals. During a portion of most socialist rituals, we should acknowledge rites of passage and support people in the milestones of their lives.

To those Marxists who remain cynical I want to remind them that the labor organization of the Knights of Labor in the 19^th century had many rituals celebrating the events of the individual life cycle. My article The Mythology, Ritual and Art of Romantic Socialism discusses all this. The image at the heading of this article comes from the social graphic artist Walter Crane who did much work for the Knights of Labor. In addition, the Communist Party in the United States had many cultural institutions such as book clubs, dances and plays that speak to the ritual-like needs of human beings.  We have a great deal we could learn from them.FacebookTwitterRedditEmail

Bruce Lerro has taught for 25 years as an adjunct college professor of psychology at Golden Gate University, Dominican University and Diablo Valley College in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has applied a Vygotskian socio-historical perspective to his three books found on Amazon. He is a co-founder, organizer and writer for Socialist Planning Beyond Capitalism. Read other articles by Bruce, or visit Bruce's website.