Here is an ancient way of casting out demons and bringing new tidings for your friendships and family. Buy a big bag of dried beans and invite all your friends over. In ancient times, many pagan people—from the Greeks to the Incan Indians—believed that beans contained evil spirits.
Ideally performed during an eclipse when that which is hidden is revealed, procure bags of beans and invite your tribe over. Go to your roof, a hill, or wherever you can “get high.” Give everyone a handful of beans and start throwing them down one at a time, with each toss calling out whatever you want to kiss goodbye—a job, a bad relationship, whatever your personal demons may be. After you have discarded all the discord from your life, you and your friends can celebrate the lifting of your burdens.
I really enjoyed watching a movie called Journey to the West: Conquering the Demons ... until its end. It's a fun, comedic takeoff on finding enlightenment and has a good message ... until its end. There it was: the gender oppression.
The plot: two demon hunters are in love with each other, but the male refuses the woman's love because he's trying to find enlightenment and believes that there is great love and small love. When she dies, his remorse brings him to enlightenment, and he realize that there is no "great and small love."
I am sick of plots in which a woman dies in order for a man to become enlightened. Or plots in which her death gives him the apparently requisite rage to finally conquer his enemy—who, of course, killed her.
Women's lives are not props for a man's story or his victory. A woman's death should mean more than its relationship to a man.Think for a moment about the results of a woman's death constantly portrayed in films as having no importance beyond its impact on a man.
Erin Lale
Fellow faculty at Harvard Divinity School posted an open letter to Wolpe in response to his article. It's available on this page, below the call for p...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. The Wild Hunt has a roundup of numerous responses on its site, but it carried this one as a separate article. It is an accoun...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. This one is by a scholar of paganism. It's unfortunately a Facebook post so this link goes to Facebook. She posted the text o...
Erin Lale
Here's another link to a pagan response to the Atlantic article. I would have included this one in my story too if I had seen it before I published it...