In 1993 the Parliament met again for a centennial celebration. I presented Wiccan Devotionals at that event, one of several presentations by practitioners of Witchcraft. Also at that Parliament many groups attending signed a draft Global Ethic calling for mutual respect among religions and an end to religious-based violence.

The Parliament has continued to meet since its centennial. Several Pagan leaders who attended the centennial have continued their interfaith work. Today Andras Corban Arthen issued a call for help for the Parliament. He has asked for a wide distribution – it is reproduced below. Please consider donating to this important organization.

THE PARLIAMENT OF THE WORLD’S RELIGIONS NEEDS YOUR HELP!
(Please feel encouraged to share this message widely)

Dear friends,

The Parliament of the World’s Religions has been promoting peace, understanding and respect among all peoples, religions and nations for a very long time. The Parliament gave birth to the interfaith movement in 1893, and through the vehicle of interreligious dialogue, has spread its message to many thousands of people all over the globe.

For those of us who are pagan, or who follow any of the Earth-centered spiritual paths, the Parliament has provided a welcoming place where we could openly share our practices within the community of the world’s religions: pagans from five continents have been featured presenters & performers at the Parliaments in Chicago (1993), Cape Town (1999), Barcelona (2004) and Melbourne (2009), and at the World Interreligious Encounter in Monterrey, Mexico (2007). Since 2002, three pagans — AngieBuchanan, Phyllis Curott, and myself (Andras Corban-Arthen) — have also served on the Parliament’s Board of Trustees. The Parliament was the first major interfaith organization to give our community a seat at the table.

Now the Parliament needs our help — it faces an unexpectedly immediate, one-time financial challenge, which threatens its very existence. We need to raise $150,000 by 12 April, and the many world-wide religious communities which participate in the Parliament are already mobilizing to help us reach this goal.

This is the time for the pagan movement to show its support for this organization which has welcomed and supported us for so long, and in so many ways. Please give what you can: your contribution, no matter how small, can make a big difference!

To make a donation, please go to:

Pagans for the Parliament

Many thanks,
Andras Corban-Arthen
Spiritual Director, The EarthSpirit Community
Member, Board of Trustees of the Parliament of the World’s Religions
Director & Interfaith Liaison, European Congress of Ethnic Religions

It’s a great size for a con, something like 300 people, small enough to meet the people you want to meet, big enough to fill a ballroom and have a great party. Four workshop tracks offered choice that wasn’t overwhelming. Just like the staff, participants were uniformly sweet. I kept saying, “Either you really are as nice as you seem, or you wait to talk about us until we’re out of earshot,” and the answer was always, “That’s Minnesota!”

Jane and Thracie of Eye of Horus supported the event behind the scenes by bringing books written by presenters and running the till for the art show. Oh, and the art show! It was the first for the con. Paul selected pieces in many styles and media and they were displayed well.

I had the opportunity to talk about two of my favorite subjects, women in magic (“The Woman Magician”) and relating to the gods (“Pagan Theurgy”). I was also able to construct a shrine to Seshat and offer people a chance to connect with the Lady of the Library. What better goddess for a writer?

I was able to catch two workshops by Kiya Nicoll, author of the marvelous romp Travelers Guide to the Duat. I hope to see more work from her in the future. I was lucky enough to sign books next to Frater Barrabbas and learn more about his work. Oh – and the headliner guest of honor, Orion Foxwood, was fascinating, engaging, and deeply sincere. These are all folk I hope to see at the Esoteric Book Conference one of these years!

The Twin Cities turned out to have many attractions in addition to the con. Ted and I slipped out on Saturday to catch Mass at Leaping Laughter Lodge, where our sisters and brothers in the order also made us welcome, and we had the chance to see a lovely Mass. On Sunday we caught a play at the Guthrie Theater, a sophisticated and elegant venue hosting amazing quantities of high quality theater. On Monday Elysia took us by Minnehaha Falls, which I think was Ted’s favorite moment!

Every convention has its particular character. Esoteric Book Conference features book sellers and book creators, people who love not just tex but the talismanic physicality of the form, along with a single track of programming featuring speakers from around the country and around the world. For sheer enjoyability in a fully developed Pagan community, Paganicon must surely be developing a sterling reputation.

Ted at Minnehaha Falls

Bibliography

Betz, Hans Dieter (1986). The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, Including the Demotic Spells. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Clark, Emma C, John M Dillon, Jackon P Hershbell (2003). Iamblichus On the Mysteries. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature.

Kraemer, Christine Hoff (2012). Seeking the Mystery: An Introduction to Pagan Theology. Patheos Press.

Majercik, Ruth (1989). The Chaldean Oracles: Text Translation, and Commentary. Leiden, the Netherlands: E.J.Brill.

Mierzwicki, Tony (2006). Graeco-Egyptian Magic, Everyday Empowerment. London: Megalithica.

Reidy, Richard (2010). Eternal Egypt: Ancient Rituals for the Modern World. iUniverse.

Shaw, Gregory (1995). Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press.

Neoplatonic Lineage

• 204-270 CE Plotinus, Athens
• 233-305 CE Porphyry, Rome
• 250-325 CE Iamblicus, Syria
• 355-405 CE Hypatia, Alexandria
• 373-415 CE Synesius, Libya
• 411-485 CE Proclus, Constantinople
• 458-538 CE Damascius, Syria and Harran

Islamic Neoplatonism

• Geber – Jabir ibn Hayyan .721–c.815)
• Avicenna – Ibn Sina, 980 – June 1037
• Brethren of Purity – Ikhwan al Safa, 900-1000
• Harran – to 1081 CE

Neoplatonic Heritage

• 480-525 CE Boethius
• 1017-1078 Michael Psellus
• 1355-1452 Georgius Gemistus Plethos
• 1433-1492 Marcilio Ficino
• 1548-1600 Giordano Bruno
• 1631-1679 Anne Conway
• 1758-1835 Thomas Taylor
• 1803-1882 Ralph Waldo Emerson

Modern Neoplatonists

• 1863-1933 G.R.S. Mead
• 1848-1925, William Wynn Westcott
• Don Frew, Tony Mierzwicki, Richard Reidy, Sam Webster, Brandy Williams

Intellects

First Principle, creates the Intelligible Order
Demiurge, shapes Sensible Order
World Soul, mediates between First and Second Intellects, source of souls

Teletarchs

Empyrean World, Eros – Aion
Ethereal World, Aletheia – Helios
Material World, Pistis – Selene

Yesterday Nadireh Adeye posted an article titled “Being an Ally Versus Being a Nice Person”. It’s an expansion of a thought in her article “Shedding in Creation” in Shades of Faith, where she said, “I strongly believe it is every person’s responsibility to educate themselves and share what they know with those around them.”

Reading Shades of Faith is a good start on that education. At the Esoteric Book Conference in 2011 I sat at the booth where I was holding the launch party for The Woman Magician and read the anthology end to end. I had the dual experience of being triumphantly proud of having confronted sexism in the magical communities, and being deeply ashamed that I had not yet confronted racism in the magical communities or in myself.

Adeye says, “Being an ally means willing to be uncomfortable, being willing to be wrong…” I’ve been publically confronted about my lack of sensitivity around my own privilege as a European American. It’s hard not to react defensively in the heat of the moment, and I wish I had done better, but it’s important to stay with the conversation and not hide from those revelations. I found that there were people who rushed to my defense and that made me even more uncomfortable. It is important to confront privilege and people who have spoken up to me were brave, and right.

Adeye showed me the way to improving my responses: to educate myself and work to educate other people of privilege. This is exactly what woman feminists ask our male allies to do. So after EBC 2011 I spent two weeks on retreat reading a stack of books about “race”. Here are a few thing I took away from that study.

What is race?

Here is a pop quiz: how many races are there? Four – white, black, red, and yellow, right? Well, the “racial” sub-categories came from the cataloger Carl Linnaeus, who divided humans into Americanus, Asiaticus, Africanus, Europaeus. Today this system is called “Scientific Racism” and is discredited science. Here is what the NIH: says today: “…research reveals that Homo sapiens is one continuously variable, inter-breeding species. Ongoing investigation of human genetic variation has even led biologists and physical anthropologists to rethink traditional notions of human racial groups. The amount of genetic variation between these traditional classifications actually falls below the level that taxonomists use to designate subspecies, the taxonomic category for other species that corresponds to the designation of race in Homo sapiens.” Translation: there is only one human race, homo sapiens sapiens.

Why categorize humans into races?

Slavery isn’t new, but, says the United Nations, “The racial nature of this triangular trade between Africa, Europe and the Americas also sets it apart. The trade was supported by a racist ideology that saw white people as being the most perfectly developed and blacks as being at the bottom of the ladder.” Scientific racism was used to justify American slavery. It’s ugly, and it persists for the same reason, to perpetuate privilege.

What does slavery buy a country?

Economic dominance. Sven Beckert & Seth Rockman lay this out in How Slavery Led to Modern Capitalism: “The U.S. won its independence from Britain just as it was becoming possible to imagine a liberal alternative to the mercantilist policies of the colonial era. Those best situated to take advantage of these new opportunities — those who would soon be called “capitalists” — rarely started from scratch, but instead drew on wealth generated earlier in the robust Atlantic economy of slaves, sugar and tobacco.” The cotton gin arguably established America’s industrial dominance, an industry resting on free labor.

Slavery is in the past, right? We’re over it.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 overturned the Jim Crow “separate but equal” rules that perpetuated the black underclass, didn’t it? “The clock has been turned back on racial progress in America, though scarcely anyone seems to notice,” says civil rights lawyer Michelle Alexander. In The New Jim Crow she points to the mass incarceration of poor people of color as the latest incarnation of the cultural rules which continue to enforce the skin color caste system.

This was all before my time, I don’t see color.

Race exists as a social construct and impacts us all every day. It has a great influence on my life. When I walk into a room I may not be seen as a person, but instead as a woman. However, I am seen as a woman, not a woman of color. I have never thought that I wasn’t beautiful because of my skin or hair. I’ve never heard myself described as a member of an unwelcome group. Also, watching television, looking at pictures in the media, I notice that the new face of diversity is a black man and a white woman. This is great for me, less great for women whose relatives came here from Africa instead of Europe.

One retreat, one article, one moment spent in learning and reflection is a good start but not a place to rest. I have the privilege of putting down these thoughts and stepping back into a world where I can ignore the impact of race. If I choose to stick with the conversation and work toward being an ally, what can I do?

Talk about it.

Stand up, point to racism, don’t let it go by without confronting it. We’re going to get it wrong, make mistakes, and get called out for them. As Adeye says, we have to be willing to be uncomfortable. I’ve learned to sit with the discomfort instead of shying away; it’s a great teacher, it pushes me to be a better writer and a better person.

Listen with respect.

I learned this as a feminist, and it’s at least as important as an ally. When someone speaks about their experience it is never wrong. It is never about you. The experience I relate to most in Adeye’s work and the other people who contributed to Blanton’s anthology is the experience of being dismissed. As allies we can at least hear what is being said. Sometimes it is said with anger or pain. It’s hard not to respond defensively, but that is the ally’s task.

I’m glad to see this conversation surfacing in the magical communities. I hope it continues with gentleness and respect to create a space in which we are all seen and heard as we wish to be and can do the work we are called to do.

Saturday, March 16

Pagan Theurgy

10:30 am – 12 pm
Living with the gods – lessons from the ancients in modern practice. Hellenic Neoplatonists called the gods into statues, into each other, and into themselves. Modern theurgists adapt their use of sound and invocation to bring the gods into our lives today.

The Woman Magician

2:30pm – 3:30pm
Always the muse, never the magician – until now! Western metaphysics assumes magicians are men, with men’s bodies and men’s language. Reshaping the tradition to include women’s language begins the process of opening Western Traditional Magic to peoples of all shapes and cultures.

Devotional to Seshat

4:30pm – 6:00pm
This devotional invokes the presence of the Egyptian Goddess of Writing and Magic. Visit the Altar of Seshat, listen to her stories, and share your own stories and experiences.

Then, amazingly, the writer asked women magicians why they thought that only about five percent of stage magic performers are women. The results are not surprising: advertisements are written for men, women don’t have female role models, historical women magicians get dropped from the record. This one was a bit of a surprise:

“Women have to invent for themselves ways to do things that men do not. Most magic instruction is designed for men with jackets. Women’s clothes don’t have pockets and women can’t reach into their breast pockets.”

When I wrote about not fitting into men’s magical clothes I meant it figuratively, but for stage performers it’s literal!

Reporter Peter M. Nardi concludes: “Although there are many young female magicians entering the field, and despite less overt discrimination in magic clubs and performance venues, the continued male-dominance of magic highlights the entrenched values and social roles in our society today.”

Here’s the article: Why Have Women Magicians Vanished?

I am caught by a particular note of her experience:

Finally, I want to counter some of the malicious and untrue rumors about me that are being spread on the Internet by a few detractors: for example, that I am an infiltrator sent by an outside organization to destroy Paganism from within. These falsehoods impugn my integrity as a scholar and could threaten my ability to continue to work with the Pagan community.

Magliocco does not link this harassment to her gender. I cannot help but think of it. If you are a woman, and you write or speak or blog or speak in any way online, you are much more likely to be targeted for harassment than if you are a man. In her 1/28/2013 HuffPost piece The Digital Safety Gap and the Online Harassment of Women, Soraya Chemaly notes, “A 2006 study found that chat room participants with obviously female names were 25 times as likely to be the targets of sexually explicit, threatening and malicious messages.” She adds, “The intent is to silence women online.”

Chemaly talks about her own experience of receiving rape threats. She links to Anita Sarkeesian’s TEDxWomen 2012 talk in which she details the harassment campaign she was subjected to when she announced her project “Tropes vs Women in Video Games”. Here’s Sarkeesian’s talk:

There are so many examples of women being harassed online. I’m particularly drawn to Mary Beard’s experience. Beard is a professor of classics at Cambridge who appears on TV with undyed gray hair. Internet commentary on her appearance followed. The Guardian notes, “The level of the abuse was so shocking that even those accustomed to the cut-and-thrust of online debate were appalled.”

Beard says, “Classical antiquity is always much more complicated than you think. But the basic position is that elderly men are admirable and elderly women are awful [because] what is the point of a post-menopausal woman? Old women get laughed at. I thought we had moved on.”

Women in the Pagan and magical communities are not shielded from this phenomenon. I have had many conversations with women who were attacked with vitriol every time they posted an opinion. We talk about the chilling effect this has on our willingness to go on expressing our opinions in public. We enlist our male allies to come to our defense in comments sections.

Most of the time we aren’t fielding rape and death threats. What we deal with mostly is an immediate attack on the substance of what we say. That reads like engagement – after all men in the magical communities construct quite a bit of conversation as a form of sparring. This engagement becomes attack when:

1. it persists, not breaking off when requested;
2. it shifts over time, labeling whatever the woman says as inaccurate.

The end result is that the woman goes silent to end the engagement. Which is the point.

This is compounded when the woman who posts is not white. Xochiquetzal Duti Odinsdottir says “Discussion on a post I put up on Facebook (that I have since removed) derailed, HARD”. Her post Things I Wish White Pagans Realized is a must-read.

The magical and Pagan communities are vastly friendlier to women than, say, the tech communities. There is a sense that women are valued, that older women’s voices are valued too. I was asked to speak at Theurgicon twice partly because I am one of the few Pagan women working in that particular field. There are quite a few women who blog, some of whom express opinions which are not immediately silenced.

That said, I know how much I have been affected by the harassment I have experienced online, and it was far less intense than what Anita Sarkeesian or Mary Beard or Xochiquetzal Duti Odinsdottir have experienced. I wonder how many women are not speaking because the internet is still policed as male space. I wonder how many women are pulling our punches because we don’t want to experience (or experience again) the gut-punch of being attacked.

Here’s what to do about it:

• Read women bloggers.
• Repost from women bloggers.
• If you are a male blogger or a white blogger, become an ally. Give women and Pagans of color guest blog space. When you encounter an attack, defend the woman and/or Pagan of color.

Sabine Magliocco has a right to do her work – let’s defend that.

Chemaly says “it will take more than any action that individual women take to change this manifestation of misogyny in our culture.” Even if our online communities were entirely safe for everyone, they exist in the context of the internet which is decidedly not. Keeping this issue on the front burner is necessary for all of us to be able to exercise our right to speak freely.

My ordination closed a loop. I was raised Roman Catholic, and at sixteen I felt a calling to the priesthood. I loved watching the priest, I coveted his fantastic robe, and I wanted to stand where he was standing. With some dismay I realized that I was the wrong gender for the role – the church didn’t want me. I can’t help but wonder how many women like me there are who would have been Catholic priests if we could.

Reading about Witchcraft felt like coming home. Here was a place where women could be priestesses, where women led groups and congregations, and our insights were not just tolerated but welcome. We could be in charge. I enthusiastically jumped into the role of ritual leader, researching ancient rituals to recreate them, writing contemporary rituals, and gathering large groups of people together to worship.

When I joined the O.T.O. it was a form of magical retreat. After years of ministering to the needs of others, I wanted to spend some time on my own personal magical development. At my First Degree initiation the master of the body turned to me and said, “You like ritual. You should consider being a priestess.”

The Gnostic Mass knocked me out. What a ritual! It amazed me that the same ritual was being performed a hundred years later, and is performed all over the world. Putting the priestess up on the altar was a shocking thing to do a hundred years ago and it’s shocking today. Unless you’re an Alexandrian Witch you may never have seen it.

Horizon Oasis has an excellent training program for priestesses. I attended classes, listened to other priestesses, got a chance to sit on the altar. My first ritual role was as a child (there are two in the Mass). Today ritualists progress from Child to Deacon, but in my case I jumped straight to Priestess.

When I became master of Vortex Camp (now Oasis), I was Priestess for several years. I got a chance to learn the role thoroughly, to relax into it, and to experience a deepening of understanding as I took successive initiations.

After my ordination I had occasion to walk into a Catholic church. I felt the palms of my hands burning where I had been marked as a Gnostic priestess. The church had little pamphlets in the pews begging ex-Catholics to return to the fold. You don’t want me, I thought. I serve Nuit now. I found a way to answer the calling and a church that welcomes women into the clergy.

Although, I have to say, I still want to wear one of those glorious robes.

Golden Dawn badges

The Open Source Order of the Golden Dawn is a game changer. Open source ritual, what a great idea! In the early 2000′s Michael Osiris Snuffin pulled together a group of people in Seattle to work the Neophyte ritual. In just a few years Temple of Light and Darkness had bylaws and a functioning ritual system.

Osiris redacted the rituals (open source, remember?) We picked roles and pulled together to rehearse. The Neophyte ritual took some time to get down, but after that it didn’t take many rehearsals to block. We did the initiations in bootstrap fashion, rotating roles, including the candidate role. It took about a year per degree to get us all through the initiations. As I write the group is preparing to move from Portal, where we have paused, to the Vault itself.

Performing the initiations has let me experience the energy of the system as well as benefitting from its knowledge. This is one of the wellsprings of the Western magical tradition. I’m especially pleased to associate with the women of TLD and OSOGD who have been supportive of my feminist ceremonial presentations. I’m grateful to all the people who put together the OSOGD for opening that door.