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In Which Our Intrepid Blogger Makes Some Really Bad Puns and Denies Being Anti-Kemetic

Who? Me? Anti-Kemetic? Gods, no. I'm not anti-Kemetic. Seriously, one of my best friends is. Kemetic, that is.

Yes, it's true: I do call him my “effete shaveling.” Hey, he calls me his “vile Asiatic.”

But that's not anti-Kemetism, just what passes for humor in the pagan community.

(Why “vile Asiatic”? Well, because, when the bristles hit the breeze, my sympathies—such as they are—lie with the Hyksos, not the Egyptians. I suppose it's remotely possible that some of my ancestors actually were Hyksos.)

Yes, it's true that I did once describe Kemetic ritual as being “props-intensive,” but that's not anti-Kemetism, either.

Listen, I'll tell you a story.

The Golden Barque of Isis

Say what you will about Odun and the old Sabaean Temple of Chicago back in the 70s—and I've heard the stories, just like everyone else—their craftsmanship was immaculate. They're the ones that made the Golden Barque of Isis: just like the processional shrines that they used to use in ancient Egypt.

When the Sabaeans moved from Chicago to New Orleans, my Kemetic friend Sirius inherited the Golden Barque and he, in turn, brought it to the Return to Avalon festival. The spectacular Barque of Isis procession that he staged there in the 90s was by far one of the most memorable rituals of that festival's entire 13-year run.

I had the honor to be one of the Barque's bearers that day. I'll never forget the sight of the Processional Way, lined with people, all dressed entirely in white. As someone remarked at the time, only Sirius could possibly have turned out so many witches all in white.

Along with the other Barque-bearers, I was kitted out in a white kilt and nemes (= head-cloth: think King Tut). Bare-chested, be-kohled, I looked like something out of C. B. deMille; at least until the moment that we lifted the Barque's carrying poles to our shoulders.

“Um...Sirius...ah...this kilt isn't long enough.”

After a quick reconnoiter, he smiled and patted my shoulder.

Let's face it, Hans Holzer was not exactly the sharpest athame in the circle.

And there's the wonderment of the thing: that even through such flawed tools as ourselves, do They work Their will in the world.

Hans Holzer (1920-2009) was, by all accounts, an interesting guy. Born in Vienna, he PhD'd in Classical Archaeology (assuming this wasn't one of those invisible degrees that occultists are so good at conjuring out of the Air), emigrated to Chicago, and wrote 120 popular-press books on subjects arcane and occult.

In so doing, he gave hundreds of thousands of us our first leg-up into the Old Ways.

Though not exactly the brightest candle on the altar, Holzer had the nose, and the sense, to understand that the rise of the Modern Craft and the New Paganisms were profoundly interesting phenomena, and so—years before Margot Adler did it smarter and better—he traveled across Contemporary Pagandom interviewing the Movers and Shakers who were to become the First Generation of American Pagans. Then he wrote books about them.

In this way, Holzer became an invaluable chronicler of that shining generation of thinkers and doers who created Modern Paganism. In some cases—as with his interviews with Ordún of Chicago's Sabaean Temple—he preserved a record of brilliant and path-breaking work that has since gone largely forgotten.

To be sure, Holzer had his limitations. Often he simply didn't understand his informants. Again and again in his writings, Holzer tries to translate what his interviewees are saying into plain language. Frequently he just plain gets it wrong, transforming the insightful into the banal. That's the danger of interviewing one's Betters.

It's probably an apocryphal story.

Even so, it's so delicious that you really do have to relish it.

The people of Harran in Mesopotamia had managed to hold on to the Old Worship long after all the other cities in the area had been baptized.

But then, in late 639 or early 640, the Muslim army of 'Iyadh ibn Ghanam approached the city.

According to the Qur'an, all pagans are to be be given a choice between conversion to Islam or death. People of the Book, however, are permitted to retain their religion and live, under Islam, as second-class citizens.

Who, then, are the Peoples of the Book? Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians, says the Qur'an. And in one passage it adds: “...and the Sabaeans.”

Who were the Sabaeans? Nobody knows. To this day, there's no scholarly consensus.

As 'Iyadh neared Harran, the gates opened and the city elders rode out to greet the caliph and his army.