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Ask Boss Warlock

Dear Boss Warlock:

You call yourself a “witch of the Tribe of Witches.” So, in our relationship with the gods, which is primary: the individual or the tribe?

Philosophical in Biloxi

Dear Phil Bill,

Your question is one, not so much of Who, as of How.

The tribe is the spear; the individual is the spearhead.

Seriously? Evangelicals? At Paganicon?

Now there's something you don't see every day, Chauncey.

Well, I didn't actually see them myself, but I heard the stories.

A couple of guys with that indefinable sense of not-quite-belonging buy day passes to Paganicon 2025. Then, name-tags on lanyards around their necks, they proceed to wonder around, tourist-wise, staring and asking off-the-wall questions.

Well, as a people, pagans value hospitality highly. If non-pagans want to give us their good green non-pagan money for the privilege of hanging around us, so be it.

I heard from the folks at the Sweetwood Temenos Hospitality Suite that the duo stopped in, and wanted to hear in particular about the Sweetwood clothing-optional policy, and the fact that children might be present. One can easily see what their dirty little minds would make of this. To the impure, all things are impure.

Apparently there were no major breaches of hospitality—guests have responsibilities, too—until they came across the Minnesota Satanists' Hospitality Suite. There they barged in with, so to speak, Bibles blazing.

The Satanists threw them out, called Security, and bye-bye fundies.

No refund, either.

(I hear that they caused some disruption at the Pagans of Color Suite as well, but don't know any specifics.)

Doubtless there will be write-ups in the Dysangelical* press about evil, child-molesting Satanist pagans. Nazzes are nothing if not predictable.

Realistically, we can expect more arrogance of the same intrusive sort in the near future. Since the last election, conservative Christians see themselves in cultural ascendancy, with an eye to legislated religion and eventual American theocracy.

Let me say up front that I am not, nor have I ever been—in this life, anyway—an initiate of the Mysteries of Mithras. What follows, therefore, is entirely conjectural.

I am, nevertheless, an experienced New Pagan ritualist who has been through a few ritual initiations himself.

In the absence of evidence, scholars of Mithraism have mostly refrained from attempting to recreate the ancient rites of initiation.

I, however, am not so constrained.

Here's what we know.

Ancient Mithraism was an initiatory path consisting of seven grades—degrees, one could say—each of which corresponded to one of the seven planets of the Ptolemaic universe.

Given, then, what we know about Mithraea—surprisingly uniform across the Roman world—with their church-like layout—narthex (entryway), central aisle, and altar-in-the-front—this is how I would do it.

The Rites of Mithras

Initiation 1°-7°

Opening Rites

Of the Pagan Revival and (Wait for It) Foreskin Restoration

My parents had me circumcised as an infant.

It was a decision that they had no right to make—unless someone chooses it for himself, circumcision is always wrong—and I wish that they hadn't made it.

Still—I thought for years—there's no point in anguishing over something that can't be changed.

Turns out, I was wrong.

Several years ago I embarked on the journey of foreskin restoration.

It's a long, slow journey, and it's been easy to get impatient, but it does—trust me—get results.

The new foreskin will never be exactly the same as the one that you were born with. Some structures, once taken away, just can't be replaced.

What one can create, however, is a workable facsimile: something that looks, and functions, much as the original did—or should have.

Turns out, some wrongs actually can be righted.

Long ago, something intimate and precious—as it were, a part of our own bodies—was taken away from us all.

It's been a long, slow journey to get it back. It's been easy to get impatient.

Our new paganisms will never be exactly like the ones that should, by rights, have been our birthright. Some things, once taken away, can never be replaced.

But given time, patience, and hard work, we can create for ourselves a workable facsimile: something that looks, and functions, much as the original did.

Turns out, some wrongs actually can be righted.

The guy coming toward me on the sidewalk is clearly not pagan.

“Hey, your skirt is torn,” he ingenouses, friendly-wise.

Well, he's half-right. My Utilikilt opens over the leg. In this breeze, with a cooler hefted up onto my shoulder, I'm probably showing a little more thigh than is generally considered polite.

“I hate it when that happens,” I ingenouse back.

He gives me the eye-over: boots, kilt, petroglyph hoodie, torc, baseball cap. Standard-issue pagan festival dress.

“You here with a group?” he asks.

“Convention,” I say.

“Which one?” he asks.

Oh well: in for a penny, in for a pound. I set down the cooler.

“Paganicon,” I say.

“Spell that?” he asks.

“P-A-G-A-N-I-C-O-N,” I say. “It's a pagan convention.”

“Oh,” he says, not unfriendly. “Are you guys, like, devil-worshipers or something?”

Oh gods. Time for a little public relations management.

“More like Nature-worshipers,” I say, gesturing toward the woods across the street.

“So 'pagan' means 'worshiper'?” he asks.

A favorable omen: he's listening and thinking, both.

“Actually, it comes from a Latin word that means 'country,'” I answer. “Back when the New Religion came, the cities converted first. Meanwhile, out in the country, we were still sacrificing to Zeus.”

He looks thoughtful.

“Do you worship Zeus?” he asks.

“Not personally,” I say, “but I know folks that do.”

He quirks his head.

“But Zeus doesn't exist,” he says.

“Depends on what you mean by Zeus,” I reply. “To the people I know, it's just another word for Heaven.”

There's a pause. Time to redirect.

A Matter of Love

“Beautiful pouch,” says my friend.

He's right. The leather is deftly-tanned: supple, golden, fragrant.

My friend has asked me to read the bones for him: the sacred whitetail knucklebones that live in this same pouch in a jar here at Temple of the Moon.

“It's made from a reindeer scrotum,” I tell him, thinking that the fact will interest him, he being an admirer of all things male. The Saami waste no part of a reindeer: a matter both of practicality, and of love.

Instead, he cringes.

“Ow,” he says.

“No need to take it personally,” I assure him. “I think it's pretty cool.”

“Well, how would you feel if it were your scrotum?” he asks.

Point taken, but I think of Hunter's Law, the Word of the Horned that governs the hunt.

Use everything. Waste nothing.

I smile. In the end, it's really a matter of love.

A “Theological” Short

In Bollywood, films about the gods are known as “theologicals.”

The Gods are rehearsing a play.

As the Old Gods act onstage, the Younger Gods stand backstage as chorus. One of the Younger Gods, though, keeps dashing onstage and interfering with the action.

Finally the Great Mother, who is directing the show, can't stand it anymore.

“Knock it off, Yahweh,” she remonstrates. Her mouth twists wryly. “Younger Gods should be heard, but not seen.”

The Old Gods laugh.