49 Degrees: Canadian Pagan Perspectives

Canadian Paganism has a style all its own. Have a look at events, issues, celebrations, people, trends and events north of the border from the eyes of a Canadian Wiccan and Witch.

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Sable Aradia

Sable Aradia

Sable Aradia (Diane Morrison) has been a traditional witch most of her life, and she is a licensed Wiccan minister and a Third Degree initiate in the Star Sapphire and Pagans for Peace traditions. Author of "The Witch's Eight Paths of Power" (Red Wheel/Weiser 2014) and contributor to "Pagan Consent Culture" and "The Pagan Leadership Anthology," she also writes "Between the Shadows" at Patheos' Pagan channel and contributes to Gods & Radicals. Sable is just breaking out as a speculative fiction writer under her legal name, and a new serial, the Wyrd West Chronicles, will be released on the Spring Equinox this year. Like most writers, she does a lot of other things to help pay the bills, including music, Etsy crafts, and working part time at a bookstore. She lives in Vernon, BC, Canada with her two life partners and her furbabies in a cabin on the edge of the woods.

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

Bullying is a terrible thing.  I was bullied as a child. I was an odd duck of a kid who didn't always know how to behave in public because I grew up with an emotionally-distant father and a mother with untreated bipolar disorder who couldn't get the medical establishment to help her. Besides that, I was a clever kid who was really book-smart and terrible at coordinated sports. It was a classic nerd situation, and my peers made me suffer terribly for it.

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  • Paul
    Paul says #
    Hi Diane, I just read A Plea To End Bullying and my heart began to race. I went through practically identical torments at two diff

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

Tapestry is a long-running and respected CBC Radio program that looks at different religions in Canada.  As far as I know, this is the first time Wicca, or any Pagan faith, has been featured on the show.  I thought it was worth sharing!

Listen here:

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  • Jamie
    Jamie says #
    Thanks for sharing! I'll definitely give this a listen in the near future.

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
Born out of the Water by Виталий Смолыгин. Courtesy Publicdomainpictures.net.
Born out of the Water by Виталий Смолыгин. Courtesy Publicdomainpictures.net.

Okay, I have a Witch's message to share. I'm talking to the Pagans and any sympathetic spiritual paths who care to listen.

I am not prone to making public commentary like this because I often feel that people who do so are being arrogant and pretentious. Nevertheless, this is the vision I was given so I will share it as it was given to me. I'm not telling anyone what to do, but if you care to listen, this is what I feel I was asked to share. If this isn't something you're resonating with at this time, you won't hurt my feelings. But I'll thank people not to crap all over me about it. I'm doing this because if I believe in my faith, my faith moves me to do it, whether I look a fool or whether or not it's popular.

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  • nolongerhere
    nolongerhere says #
    Who cares if many people don't believe you? Someone else will answer the call and improve the relationship with water. Those who s
  • Sable Aradia
    Sable Aradia says #
    Thank you.

Dominique SmithNo, this is not the United States.

This is Canada.

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  • Shawn Sanford Beck
    Shawn Sanford Beck says #
    Greeting friend, I'm wondering if there's anything I can do to help with this campaign. I'm a ChristoPagan, and a priest in the A
  • Durantia None
    Durantia None says #
    This is definitely a hate crime. The failure of the Winnipeg Police Service to address this issue violates her constitutional righ
  • Kenq
    Kenq says #
    I was stunned to learn that there is no legal recognition for Pagans in Canada. We've had it here in the states since I think the
  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    Doesn't Canada have laws against vandalism? Why waste time with hate crime stuff when there is obvious and repeated vandalism goi
  • Sable Aradia
    Sable Aradia says #
    Oh yes, there are laws against all of that. But the police don't spend a great deal of effort investigating and prosecuting rando

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs

2017-01-31 00.03.15

Well, looks to me over here across the border in Canada that the American government is having a meltdown.  I feel a bit like a neighbour listening to a domestic dispute in the next house over.  It’s loud.  Things are crashing around.  People are screaming; people are crying.  I want to help, but I don’t know what to do.  Should I call the police?  I don’t think there’s any police I can call!  Should I go over there and knock on the door to protect the people getting injured?  I suppose I can roundly condemn the abusive person who’s starting the fight, but it’s not like my neighbours listened when I tried to convince them not to marry the jerk in the first place, so why do I think they’ll listen to me now?  I’ve done this much; I’ve tried to keep an extra bedroom open in case it’s needed.

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  • Jamie
    Jamie says #
    Thanks for sharing your Canadian perspective on the mosque shooting. I always enjoy reading your stuff. It's fascinating to see N
  • Sable Aradia
    Sable Aradia says #
    I love the "middle daughter" analogy. By speaking up, you *are* doing something. Just keep speaking up! And anyone can watch C
  • Dragon Dancer
    Dragon Dancer says #
    Oy, late reply. Thanks! That's good to hear, to be reminded of. Oh, awesome! Thanks for the link!
  • Dragon Dancer
    Dragon Dancer says #
    Agree 100% with all this! Except to try to clarify that not all Americans are the gross, abusive assholes that keep speaking up, t

The Year of the Flood (MaddAddam, #2)The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Read for the Women of Genre Fiction Reading Challenge, the Second Best Reading Challenge, and the Apocalypse Now! Reading Challenge.

Method of the world's destruction: ecological devastation, corporate greed, and a mad scientist's bioengineered supervirus.

This book is part of Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy, and it runs concurrently to Oryx and Crake, which I read and reviewed earlier this year. As others have observed, it suffers by comparison, but that's probably not fair. If it were taken entirely on its own it would have been mind-blowing, but because we already know so much of the story from Oryx and Crake it's merely awesome.

This read to me a lot like what would happen if you crossed Stephen King's The Running Man and The Stand with The Island of Dr. Moreau, except with female protagonists; a younger woman named Ren (who tells us her story in the first person) and an older woman named Toby (who tells us her story in the third person personal,) who at one point were both part of a religious group called God's Gardeners. A third protagonist, whose voice emerges as sermons that separate the chapters, is Adam One, the leader of the God's Gardeners sect that these women are (or were) a part of. It's basically their story of how they survive. While the absurdities of life and the raw humanity of the characters will remind a King reader of his style, Atwood differs considerably from King in her tone. King's characters are like people under way-too-bright lights; their flaws are glaring and jarring. Atwood portrays her characters' flaws as intentional shadows and shading that make the whole more beautiful, like a well-constructed painting. Though there is some pretty bald-faced evil in this book, and some really nasty people who do terrible things; yet Atwood somehow succeeds in making you pity them a little too.

Readers who were fans of Oryx and Crake will be entertained by the many ways in which the lives of Crake and Jimmy (Snowman) intertwine in and out of the lives of the protagonists of this novel, and they might also appreciate how many of the mysteries of the first novel are explained in this, the second. Or they might regard it, as one reviewer put it, as "someone turning on the lights after a really good ghost story." Honestly I don't think that's a bad metaphor, but I don't see it as a bad thing. It really is like that. Oryx and Crake was horrific and bleak. The Year of the Flood restores our hope that humanity just might make it despite itself.

I think one of the most interesting things about this book was the depth of culture that was created for the God's Gardeners. Part Humanistic Christian, part Neo-Pagan, part New Age hippie and part Earthseed, the God's Gardeners hold to a theology in which ecology and the natural cycles of life and death, plus the Earth and all its creatures, are sacred. They remind me of the more dedicated spiritual ecologist types that used to shop at my metaphysical store, and I myself know many of the nearly-lost skills that this sect, obviously regarded as quaint weirdos until a splinter cell dabbled in eco-terrorism, teach. I love that they have made people who were, or are, champions of ecology, peace, and peaceful courage into saints; among them Gandhi, Dian Fossey, David Suzuki, Karen Silkwood, and Terry Fox, to give a few examples who stuck out for me because they are heroes of mine.

She even wrote hymns for the Gardeners based on Anglican and United Church hymns. What's fun is that I found myself thinking, "These are actually pretty cool. With a little adjustment they would work for Pagan rituals. I should find out which hymns they were based on and write some music for them." Turns out I don't have to, because someone else did, in a CD called "The Hymns of God's Gardeners," which you can buy on Amazon or listen to on YouTube. And Atwood invited anyone to freely use them for "amateur devotional or environmental purposes" in her Afterword. Thank you, Ms. Atwood; expect this Canadian witch to take you up on it.

I have three - no, four - complaints, all of them minor and none of them a deal-breaker. The first is that I would really like to read just one post-apocalyptic story in which the women do not get raped. This is becoming so much a part of post-apocalyptic literature that I think men are going to start planning on it as part of their preparations. "Okay, we have to stockpile canned food, water, ammunition, and women for the harem." Listen; all men do not turn into roving rapists as soon as disaster strikes. And while I'm on this subject, it seems to me that Ms. Atwood doesn't like men very much. Almost every male in all three of the books by her I've read thus far have been mostly jerks. I like the way she ultimately resolved it, though. I'm not telling you; that would be a spoiler. ;)

So those two complaints are related. The other two complaints involve reactions to the novel. The Globe and Mail is quoted on the front of The Year of the Flood, calling it "A work of fearless imagination." Which implies that it's totally original and one-of-a-kind. It's not. It's great, don't get me wrong! I'm definitely a fan and I think I'm going to make a point of reading everything Atwood has ever written now because I love the way she writes, but nothing Atwood has done in this novel is anything that hasn't appeared in science fiction before. Genetic engineering, dystopias, post-apocalyptic disaster scenarios, weird creatures, new forms of humanity, strange religious sects, eco-terrorists, climate disasters and evil, all-controlling corporations that run everything while humanity indifferently just tries to keep its head down instead of stopping it; none of this is new. It's all been done before. The key here is just that Atwood does it really well!

Which leads me to my final complaint. Once again, Atwood does not want to admit that this is science fiction. I watched an interview with her on YouTube about this book, and what she said this time was that she didn't want to be accused of false advertising. She didn't want people to think there were going to be "Martians and galaxies" because there aren't.

What is her damage?! As if that's all science fiction has ever been! I think she just doesn't want to admit that it's science fiction because then she might have to admit that her work is not the "fearlessly imaginative" creation that all these reviewers who sneer at science fiction but wouldn't know it if it bit them in the face think that it is.

Well, she may not want to call it science fiction, but we know it when we see it. Personally, I think she ought to be awarded the Nebula for Best Author and the Hugo for Best Novel. It would be fun to watch her squirm, figuring out how to maintain her ultra-literary reputation without alienating 75% of her readers.

Okay; but aside from how angry that personally makes me, this is a beautifully rendered world, rendered in even more detail, with compelling characters and a gripping story and liquid prose that kept me turning pages until there were no more pages to turn. I loved it, and I can't wait to read the final chapter, MaddAddam.

View all my reviews

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