Paganistan: Notes from the Secret Commonwealth

In Which One Midwest Man-in-Black Confers, Converses & Otherwise Hob-Nobs with his Fellow Hob-Men (& -Women) Concerning the Sundry Ways of the Famed but Ill-Starred Tribe of Witches.

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Steven Posch

Steven Posch

Poet, scholar and storyteller Steven Posch was raised in the hardwood forests of western Pennsylvania by white-tailed deer. (That's the story, anyway.) He emigrated to Paganistan in 1979 and by sheer dint of personality has become one of Lake Country's foremost men-in-black. He is current keeper of the Minnesota Ooser.

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 

Beads on a necklace, memory-amber

 

Call them Northern Songlines.

Some remember by books, but for us the Land itself bears memory. All landscapes are mythic, at least potentially.

I've traveled Route 61 south along the Mississippi to the pagan land-sanctuaries of the Driftless Area for so many decades now that it has become, for me, a pilgrimage-route.

So I've re-cast the journey along the lines of the list of place-names in the Táin that recounts the way taken by Medb's army to fateful Cúailnge.

Each place a bead on a necklace, memory-amber.

 

Journey to the Driftless

 

This was their route, east, south and east again from Minneapolis on the Mississippi, Father of Waters:

 

eastward through Pig's Eye of the Sow, called St. Paul,

southward through Newport of the Red Rock,

through Hastings,

through Red Wing of the Clays, under Barn Bluff,

through Lake City on Pepin, where the water-horse swims,

through Wabasha,

past Trempeleau, Rattlesnake Island, where the Horned came down from Heaven,

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 

When, on the morning after

the witches' sabbat, the Horned

leads us up out of the woods and,

to the singing of meadowlarks,

mounts the horizon and,

lambent with white flame,

disappears over the edge,

I've always wondered whether

he sinks down into Earth

or walks off into the Sky,

or maybe both;

but now I know.

 

I, Steven of Prodea,

Steven son of Russell,

with my own eyes have seen

the Gates of Heaven swing

wide to admit him, and lo!

to the sounding of horns

and trumpets he entered in,

and lo! the gates were shut.

This with my own lips I tell you,

and what I tell is true.

 

Myth meets myth.

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 The Egypt Game - Wikipedia

How many of us can honestly say that we got our start in pagan ritual from a kid's book?

I can. The book was Zilpha Keatley Snyder's 1973 The Egypt Game.

In an unnamed California college town, a disused storage yard becomes, for a small group of kids, the magical Land of Egypt, “a land of mystery and mud.”

There, in imaginative half-play/half-seriousness, they enact rites for the ancient gods of the Nile.

Then unexpected things begin to happen.

 

Illuminated by Anton Raible's charming drawings, The Egypt Game tells a large-hearted tale of the lived imagination. It has everything: likeable, flawed characters, mystery, even murder. Oh, and Halloween, too: that patronal holiday of children, which no kid's book would be complete without.

In 1973, assembling a diverse cast of White, Black, Asian, and Latino characters, as Snyder does here, was pretty radical for a children's book. Even at the time, I knew it was the Way of the Future.

And then there are the rituals.

Snyder captures, better than any other author that I know, the excitement, the mystery, the sheer joyful exuberance, of creating and enacting ritual.

You read about what the Egypt Gang does, and you know that ritual matters. You think: “I could do this too.”

So you do.

 

Modesty is not a pagan virtue; truth, though, is. Fifty years on, I can say truthfully that I'm one of Pagandom's ace ritualists.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 

A Tale of Sexual Awakening

 

“I'm soooo horny! I wish you were a girl!”

Two adolescent boys, sleeping in the back of the family station wagon. In retrospect, I realize that that night could potentially have been my first shared sexual experience.

Thank Goddess, it wasn't.

 

Looking back, I can see that that night in the car wasn't the first time that my cousin had orchestrated the two of us into a potentially sexual situation. Though a year younger than I, he was by far the more sexually precocious of the two.

He was also—even at the time, I knew it—self-centered and immature. He would have been a terrible partner to discover sex with.

Sheltered, trained by my parents to obedient compliance, I would almost certainly have been the loser for the experience.

 

Instead, my ignorance, and naivete, saved me—at the time, I had no idea that sex between males was even possible—and I didn't respond to my cousin's clumsy overture, if that, indeed, is what it was.

When, years later, my first dorm-room fumblings with another guy finally flowered into sex, transmuted by the alchemy of first love, they came as magical, a revelation.

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 Peppermint Oil | NCCIH

I swear, it's the same every time I get back from a pagan festival.

Next morning, I get out of bed. I go downstairs to put the kettle on.

I get out the teapot and load the tea ball. Then I head for the back door to get a sprig of mint from the garden.

(Nothing says “Summer morning” better than fresh mint in your tea.)

Suddenly, contextual awareness kicks in.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    Not so sure about "culty," though. Many--if not most--peoples with a collective sense of identity have a term for the "not-us peo
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    Heard and registered. Thanks!
  • Mark Green
    Mark Green says #
    OK, this is funny. But could we [i]please[i] stop using that word (or, worse, "Muggles")? Having a down-putting term for people
  • Katie
    Katie says #
    Been there. Done that. Almost took off the T-shirt.

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

Goreyesque # 1


A certain young person named Tanya,

exploring the wilds of España,

while fording the river

she called "Gwoddle Quiver,"

was devoured by a school of piranha.

 

Goreyesque # 2


A certain young person named Tanya,

exploring the wilds of España

in the footsteps of Hannibal,

through the Valley of Cannibals,

was transformed to a pan of lasagna.

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Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 

A Tale of Thor?

 

The roads were slick that night. When my friend's car spun out and landed in the ditch, he knew he was in trouble.

The blizzard was getting worse. He was miles from anywhere. (This was B.C.: Before Cell.) The temperature was dropping fast, and the snow was piling up.

Help! thought my friend.

 

He hears the sound of an engine. Out of the swirling snow, a big red truck drives up, spins around, and stops.

The door opens. A big, red guy with a big, red beard gets out of the big, red truck. He doesn't say anything.

My friend didn't recognize him. This was strange. When you live in the country, you mostly know people.

The big, red guy still doesn't say anything. He chains the vehicles together, and gets back in his truck. He pulls my friend's car out of the snow-filled ditch.

He gets back out, unhooks the chain, and throws it in the back of the truck. Then he drives off into the snow.

He hasn't said a word the entire time.

When my friend gets home, he pours out an entire bottle of liquor in libation.

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