Gods&Radicals is now open to the public! While not ‘active’ yet, there’s plenty of stuff to see there. I recommend particularly perusing the list of fantastic writers therein!
Also, Many Gods West has announced an initial selection of presenters. Also, a fantastic list.
Sannion’s got a great (I mean very, very great) series regarding honoring the land and the ancestors of that land. This piece is quite good, and this other piece is quite very good. Few have done much work to compile the theoretical framework of an anti-colonialist localized worship, and he’s on it.
And speaking of anti-colonialism and anti-racism. did you read this piece by Brennos? I’m surprised it didn’t get much attention–it’s a great piece, and also points to some questions about the (de-)politicisation of religion, particularly Paganism.
Those questions are beginning to be asked again, and I suspect much of the underlying conflict between (mostly white middle-class) establishment folks and (much more diverse) ‘radicals’ in Paganism comes from these questions finally being asked. Those who are asking those questions get horrible flak, sure. But there’s enough of us now, in all traditions, who are refusing to remain silent.
That’s fucking awesome. And it will probably be messy.
Hold on to your wands, yeah?
Rhyd Wildermuth 
Shake it up. Tear it down.
Reblogged this on Sable Aradia, Priestess & Witch.
Reblogged this on Urban Meliad and commented:
Lotsa links about anti-colonialism & anti-racism in Paganism. Go check it out! 😀
You might want to check your link for Gods & Radicals. My computer can’t get there– but perhaps it’s just my internet connection.
Rhyd, have you read Margaret Atwood’s “Maddaddam” trilogy? I love it, and it dovetails with your rending observations about our species. It is strange to say that I love something so dark and violent, but writing that tells that truth is beautiful, even when confronting the terrible and bathed in horror. Like yours.
Somehow, though, Atwood still manages to be funny through it all. Bless her fuzzy, curly head.
Hey, look, I replied to the wrong post, and I mis-stated myself. Nifty.
I should have written writing that tells the truth is sometimes beautiful, at least to me. Truth itself (or what I recognize as true) seems not to have much in common with the aesthetics of beauty otherwise. It is often as not quite unpleasant.
Thanks for the intro to these bloggers. I’d agree with the importance of seeing and noticed Sannios has written quite a few books including ‘Ecstatic’ on Dionysos that looks interesting.
Religion and politics being inseparable… hmm… this is my personal view too but I know it’s one that has caused alot of bloodshed so is quite questionable…
Precisely.
I’ve had this idea for awhile that our present situation is one of an uneasy ‘secular’ compromise which, when it comes down to it isn’t very secular either.
I’d written elsewhere, I think on The Wild Hunt, that belief is safe as long as it’s personal and you don’t do anything about it. If I believe, say, that fracking is destroying the earth and harming land spirits, I’m still ‘safe’ as long as I do nothing about it.
But that begs a question–if you merely ‘believe’ and don’t respond to that belief, isn’t it mere opinion? This, of course, opens up all sorts of horrible conversations about belief, though–for instance, the American Christians who kill abortion doctors due to their belief that they’re murdering children–they’re the counter example.
Ultimately, the secular compromise protects against that sort of thing, but it also ensures that Capitalism (the ‘civic’ religion) continues unchallenged. Attacking the secular compromise opens up all sorts of horrible possibilities, but not-attacking it ensures the death of the forests, the poor, and eventually everyone.
Sigh.