Monthly Archives: August 2015
Where the gods are found
This is an important article on regional cultus and the importance of letting it evolve organically. Lots of food for thought here.
Source: Where the gods are found
Available for Pre-Order: the God Sin by Basil Blake
(This card needs both a prayer and a sponsor for printing. If anyone is interested in either, please contact me at krasskova at gmail.com).
For my Ancestors
Check out my new tattoo. This is a piece to honor my collective dead. It’s an image of death resting and whimsically blowing bubbles. the bubbles symbolize the fragility of human life. The whole thing is taken from a bit of 17th century molding from a hospital in Bamberg Germany.
Local Polytheist and Pagan Meet up
Every third Sunday from 7:00-9:00pm a group of Polytheists and Pagans from Beacon and the surrounding area are going to get together to discuss our diverse traditions and practices and the Gods, Spirits, and Ancestors that we honor.
Refreshments will be provided and all levels of knowledge and experience are welcome, though we recommend leaving children at home as there will be no supervised activities for them.
If there’s interest we may end up offering rituals, classes, workshops, book studies and have guest lecturers brought in though for now we’ll just be meeting for networking and socializing. We’ll be gathering downtown off Main street – for location and directions send inquiries to sannion@gmail.com.
If Your Paganism is Anthropocentric, I Don’t Want Your Paganism
quite a good rebuttal to quite an awful piece.
With articles such as this, it is even more clear to me why polytheists need to speak up within and without the Pagan Umbrella.
With respect to discerning John Beckett from John Halstead, I will use their last names.
Beckett wrote a post about the future of polytheism and the importance of ‘keeping the Gods at the front’. Halstead’s article is the response to this.
‘John Beckett has recently written a post about his vision of the future of Polytheism- the future of the “polytheist revolution” -and the importance of “keeping the Gods at the front”. To me, this sounds disturbingly like the Christianity I left behind 15 years ago – with its rejection of this world or at least its relegation of the concerns of this world to a place of secondary importance. It sounds too much like the monotheistic condemnation of “idolatry” and the “gods of…
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Reaching Out
There are 1,403 people subscribed to receive e-mail notifications for this blog. I have a huge number of followers on Twitter and a thousand or so friends on Facebook and wouldn’t even begin to know how to calculate the rest of the folks who keep up through other avenues.
Love or hate me, you at least find my work interesting enough to engage with it on that level – why not go a step further and contribute a dollar each month to keep it going. If even half of you pledged that much to my Patreon account think about what we, as a community, could accomplish for our Gods and Spirits. Because every cent I raise is going to get funneled right back into devotional or community-building projects such as my book on pilgrimage (i’m thinking about doing a class too), my calendar, my prayer card project, my two conferences that I put together last year and more.
I want to be doing more – not just to benefit our Holy Powers, though that is my primary concern, but also to support and patronize the various polytheist and pagan artists who make these projects possible and right now the money for all of that is coming out of pocket, which means that it’s not sustainable.
But if you were able to pledge a dollar to my Patreon account, or five or even twenty a month it could be.
Together we can make a difference.
Thank you for listening to this plea. Maybe it’s just my generation and upbringing but I find it really difficult to ask for help. This work is too important for pride however.
(and thank you to those who have already decided to offer their support! )
EDIT: wow. i was so tired this morning when I posted this, that I left my links and numbers out. Sorry folks! It’s been a hell of a week already and it’s only Monday!
Temple of Ba’al Shamin in Palmyra Destroyed.
Today I read that Daesh, may they suffer, has blown up the temple of Ba’al Shamin in Palmyra. This is a week after the slaughter via beheading of the custodian of Palmyra, Khaled al-Asaad (may his ancestors favor him. He lived his life and gave his death protecting a polytheist site). I read this and it actually made me vomit.
May all those culpable in this act (including those in our government who allowed this group of filth to come into being) suffer. May they and all they love rot. May their bones be laid open to the sun. May plague, famine, and disease be their lot. May their lineages be damned and destroyed root and flower. May they be expunged from the earth. May they be called to answer at the feet of Ba’al Shamin.
We have made this. We have done this. By our apathy and indifference, by our god damned exceptionalism and interference. It should be our duty to right. This is ours to fix. I go to grieve. This sacred site was worth more than every single one of this shit eating filth will ever be.
The Last Witch of Pennant Gofid
This poem moves me immensely.
I journeyed for weeks
through mist and hunger
to find the split rack of her bones,
bones stripped, flesh burnt
and boiled in the cauldron,
blood drained and bottled in two jars.
I plundered the ashes where the cauldron stood,
sniffed for blood where the jars were filled.
Played maracas with her bones,
made intricate arrangements,
chanted and sung
but could not raise her ghost.
“She is amongst the spirits of Annwn now,”
spoke the god I called instead.
“Lay her bones to rest. In the fire of poetry
console her burning spirit.”
***
I’m laying her bones to rest. The Last Witch of Pennant Gofid. Her name was Orddu. It meant ‘the Very Black Witch’. Whether she had black skin, black hair or used black magic seem irrelevant now. All that is left is her scapula split in twain, her shattered pelvis, two arms, two legs, her broken skull…
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How to Ship a Painting
Ok, I know this has nothing to do with theology but it does have to do with shipping religious paintings and the like. I’m writing this because over the past couple of months, I’ve repaired two that arrived damaged (technically I’ve only begun working on the second), and I know of several other cases where the painting arrived with the canvas torn, punctured, and/or the frame broken. For those Polytheist and Pagan artisans out there, I thought this might be helpful. No one ever actually teaches us, after all, what to do here. It’s just assumed that we will figure it out and we do, but often only after damage has been done. I co-own a gallery and I’ve had to ship my own paintings across country before, so here are a few suggestions.
If you have a canvas:
- First wrap it completely in saran wrap. This protects the texture and paint, which can be damaged even after it’s dry.
- Bubble wrap all around it.
- Take two pieces of cardboard slightly larger (by an inch or two) than the canvas. Put one in front, one in back of the canvas and tape them all around.
- Bubble wrap the hell out of it.
- Get yourself a big box, larger than the canvas. Put some Styrofoam peanuts in the bottom. Put the wrapped canvas in. Fill it all up with peanuts (I hate these things, but they do help).
- If you really want to be diligent, put that box in another box full of peanuts (I never do this though).
Tape it up and ship. If you’re working with something framed with glass, I would get cardboard corner protectors (any mail and ship should have them) to secure the corners.
I’d do pretty much the same thing for a painting on canvas board, though you can often skip the peanuts with the canvas board.
If you just send a canvas in a padded envelope, it’s going to get torn. If you send it just in a box without padding or with only a little bubble wrap, it might also get torn. I’ve had them arrive torn and with the frame broken. This can usually be repaired but it’s a pain in the ass and the damage will always be slightly visible.
If one has the money, one can just take it to UPS and have them pack and ship, but this is not cheap. It’s much, much more economical to pack the artwork oneself.
There it is: my helpful artistic hint for the day. Go out and make devotional art, people. ^___^
Gangleri's Grove 