What is Pagan?

In the Beltane issue of MatriFocus, Sage Starwalker has written an excellent article that touches on Pagan identity, academia and the conflict within Pagan communities. Paganism seems to attract strong personalities, and conflicts between individuals is the norm. We need to start working together - to move past our differences - if we are going to be the change we want to see in the world. And, no, I don't have an easy solution, because if it were easy we would (a) have done it already or (b) have a solution that really doesn't work in the end anyway. Read More

Congrunting: Academic Research

• 6 pagan PdD's in Ottawa, 3 faculty involvement in community vs. researcher of community - one researcher removed herself from the community 7 years prior to research and did no participant observation
• blending the priestess and the academic - take me for who I am
• potential consequences - coming out with less than you have going in
• straddling the worlds - insider/outsider- harder position to do research from outsider position?
• objectivity is an issue
• no research can be exhaustive
• we need to learn the theory so we can protect ourselves
• they need to learn how we do what we do and who we are

Book/Author Recommendations:

• Deborah Campbell - feminist research
• Ezzy/Blain, Researching Paganism
• Witch in Culture
• Coming to the Edge of the Circle
• Earthly Bodies, Magical Selves
• Hutton, Triumph of the Moon
• http://www.paganstudies.org/
• DISKUS
• Pomegranate Journal

Congrunting: Scholar Stream #3

The Soul of Soulless Conditions: Paganism, Goddess Religion and Witchcraft in Canada - Sian Read

• paper will be published in 9 months in book on women/religion/secularism
• religion is not an institution, it is a relationship
• www.canadianpagansurvey.ca

Exploring religious syncretism in Montreal's contemporary Pagan community - Rosemary Roberts

• even if I am wrong, at least I am doing something, and my spirtuality leads me on the right path

Institutionalisation and Contemporary Western Witchcraft: When binaries dance a tango - Jane Leverick

• pagan clergy - taking courses (independent organization) or getting group together to legitimize religion
• spoke of issues with organized, hierarchies - BC Witchcamp, teachers apart from students
• bonobos

Congrunting: Scholar Stream #1

The Portrayal of Witches, Witchcraft and Wicca in Role Playing Games - Frances Bitney

• LARP: Apocalypse (White Wolf, Werewolf)
• character goals, character immersion
• online game: Atlanta Heroes
• does talk about Wicca/Druidism as a religion
• setting - magic as superhero ability
• tabletop: Call of Chutlhu
• secret cults - witch cults
• moving into dark arts as reaction to Spanish Inquisition
• author's intent not important - concern should be the usage of the witch stereotype in the game
• non-intended audience member (i.e. current practitioner) - witch stereotype is harmful
• when a real religion is portrayed in rpg it can lead to curtailment of fun = "more fun to think we are evil"

Quirky Neighbours: Pagans in Canadian Newspapers - Mandy Furney

• benign portrayal of Pagans/Wicca in Canada
• ideas of "do not worship Satan" and "harmless religion" in every article

Monster in the Margins - Katherine Bitney

• creation/development of primeval mother - patriarchy
• boundaries and feminism
• witch at the margins
• witch as spellspeaker
• speaker/listener in patriarchal texts - male
• nature/normal defended by patriarchy - witch dismissed, ignored, marginalized
• witch does not answer to the father, she answers to a much more old/natural existence
• if anyone knows the world is constructed though language, it is the witch
• women as first shamans - women from the outside, spacially and temporally
• if women is superfluous, then is body also superfluous?
• seizing/re-signifying words and concepts
• language is fluid - it does not sit still

Questions/Answers/Comments

• Red Moon Gaming System (1997)
• no answers on what we should do in regards to interviews (COGCOA had guidelines, didn't they?)
• K. Bitney will be publishing her presentation at a later date

Gaia Gathering 2007

I'll be at Gaia Gathering 2007 this weekend and hope to post some of my congrunting, but I'm not sure if they'll have internet access for attendees. (It's at the University of Winnipeg, so you may need a login.) If I can't post immediately, I'll do it when I can, and then I plan to go back and discuss some of the sessions in more detail.

I'm also hoping Pink Gecco does some posting as well so we can discuss perspectives.... hint.