10.19.2008
Dutch poet and Voodoo Priestess
The Jakarta Post interviews Dutch poet, and convert to Haitian Voodoo, Maria van Daalen. In Indonesia for the Ubud Writers and Readers Festival, van Daalen discusses her conversion experience, living as a poet, and her definition of a spiritual life.
Maria van Daalen
"I believe in what is real, but that there's also magical things. Say I acknowledge God created the whole world in six days, to me it's magical. But certain science is also magical to me. But as a poet I live in reality. This is like what Helen Vendler, a critic, says, 'The critics love the poem about the red beech tree, but the poet loves the red beech tree.'"
Maria van Daalen is currently planning to publish a "grand essay" on Haitian Voodoo (she claims to have been initiated into the rank of Mambo Asogwe), to be published sometime in 2009. She also maintains a blog at her web site (a rough translation). Maria van Daalen's life provides an interesting look into how the African diasporic religions are gaining interest and converts in "secular" Europe.
Labels: Haiti, Maria van Daalen, Netherlands, poetry, Vodou, Voodoo
7.04.2008
Did Robert Graves Steal "The White Goddess"?
Poet and author Robert Graves is perhaps one of Britain's most famous creative voices. His 1948 work "The White Goddess", a meditation on poetic myth, has been seen by scholars and historians as a direct influence on the modern Paganism movement that emerged in Britain in the 1950s. Now, a researcher at Nottingham Trent University is claiming that Graves may have stolen the idea for "The White Goddess" from his former mistress Laura Riding Jackson.
Laura Riding Jackson
"Dr Jacobs said Jackson accuses Graves of "robbing" her of key ideas which he appropriated as his own for his seminal study of poetic inspiration, The White Goddess, published in 1948. He claimed that the inspiration for the work, which equates God with women, related to an early essay Jackson wrote in the 1930s called The Idea of God and her book, The Word Woman, which preceded Graves's magnum opus. The couple moved from Britain to Spain, where Jackson left her manuscript for The Word Woman when the pair fled the country on the outbreak of the civil war in 1936. Dr Jacobs claims it was this manuscript – which Jackson had asked Graves to burn – that the poet used as the basis for The White Goddess. "Between 1926 and 1939, he was learning from her what she was doing and thinking," Dr Javcobs said. 'He was taking her ideas, her research, he was simply shovelling it in to his own books.... She left her manuscript in Majorca. She later wrote to him [Graves] and told him to burn the manuscript. We now know that he didn't. It all appeared in dribble form in The White Goddess. He used it for his own ends without mentioning it to her. She only found out in the 1950s.'"
The researcher, Dr Mark Jacobs, is currently writing a book about the relationship between Graves and Jackson, and the charges of intellectual theft. Naturally, The Robert Graves Society isn't taking these accusations lying down.
"Professor Dunstan Ward, president of the Robert Graves Society, said there was a host of textual evidence proving that Graves was developing his theory for the White Goddess even before he met Jackson and that a poem called A History, written before the two met, contains 'clear references'..."
Did Graves "steal" ideas from Laura Riding Jackson for "The White Goddess"? Possibly. But one could make the argument that the notion of Goddess religion reborn (or rediscovered) was an idea that had been percolating in British and European culture for some time. Certainly works by Leland, Frazer, Murray, Sharp, Yeats, and several others helped pave the way that "The White Goddess" would eventually tread. I anxiously await the publication of Jacobs' book for further insight into claims that Graves appropriated ideas for one of his most famous works.
Labels: Laura Riding Jackson, Paganism, poetry, Robert Graves, The Goddess, The White Goddess
6.14.2008
Crowley and the Portugal Poet
There is controversy brewing in Portugal over the heirs of famous poet Fernando Pessoa auctioning off his "Crowley Papers", a collection of correspondence between Pessoa and British occultist (and fellow poet) Aleister Crowley.
Aleister Crowley and Fernando Pessoa playing chess.
"When the poet died in obscurity in 1935, he left a trunk full of documents that included extensive correspondence with the eccentric English astrologist and magician Aleister Crowley, a practitioner of the occult said to have inspired satanism in Britain. Portugal's National Library fiercely opposes the private sale of documents considered vital to the nation's literary heritage, and warns it will take all legal measures to stop the sale and dispersal of the archive, the Lisbon daily Publico reports."
Scholars are worried about how this will affect academic study of the poet, while collectors are salivating over the prospect of getting their hands of the papers, which includes a never-completed novel about Crowley's faked suicide attempt.
"The dossier includes voluminous correspondence with Crowley, and hundreds of pages of an unfinished novel about Crowley's faked suicide. The work is called Boca do Inferno, (Hell's Mouth) after a rocky inlet near the Portuguese resort of Cascais. Pessoa, intrigued by Crowley's mysticism, struck up a correspondence with the Englishman. The flamboyant Crowley visited Lisbon in 1930, and the friends played chess together. Crowley then disappeared, leaving his cigarette case and a handwritten suicide note on the clifftop above the crashing waves at Hell's Mouth. It was a trick, apparently to elude a discarded lover ... Pessoa mounted a polemical play about the "suicide" and doubts swirled over his role in the affair, and the nature of his relationship with Crowley."
Poets? Jilted lovers? Faked suicide? Sounds like a far better premise for a movie about Aleister Crowley than the recent "Chemical Wedding" train-wreck. As for the papers, the Portugal National Library is considering invoking laws that prohibit the international sale of documents thought to be of "national heritage" value if a private arrangement can't be reached with Pessoa's heirs.
Labels: Aleister Crowley, Fernando Pessoa, occult, poetry, Portugal
10.30.2007
(Pre-Samhain) News of Note
Some last minute essays, opinions, and stories (some of it dealing with the upcoming holiday), for discerning Pagans and Heathens.
The Times reviews Emily Wilson's new book about the death of Socrates. Entitled, appropriately enough, "The Death of Socrates: Hero, villain, chatterbox, saint", the book looks at the different perspectives through history of this famous free-thought martyr.
"For some Romans, Socrates talked too much while dying a rather comfortable death. According to Plutarch, Cato the Elder called him "a big chatterbox"; the painless demise was contrasted with the hideous suicide of Cato the Younger. As an explicit act of political protest, inspired by Socrates, Cato stabbed himself till his innards extruded; after his wound had been sewn up, he tore it open again and ripped out his bowels. This scene is illustrated, along with numerous versions of Socrates' end."
The book goes on to illustrate how Socrates ended up a hero to Christians (thinking that Christ was the culmination of the philosopher's teachings), and being used as a popular character in a string of recent novels.
New DNA evidence was filed Monday in hopes of overturning the convictions of the West Memphis 3. The three teens were convicted for the murders of three children back in 1993, the case has long been criticized for using "Satanic Panic" to frame the teens, bringing up Damien Echols' interest in Wicca and Heavy Metal music, and using an "occult expert" to gain a conviction.
"Defense lawyers say two hairs -- evidence that looms large in a case long devoid of physical evidence -- link the stepfather to the crime scene where the bodies of three 8-year-old boys were found nude and hogtied in a watery ditch ... The prosecution's theory of a satanic motive was key to the convictions ... However, forensic reports offered by the defense attribute nearly all those injuries to predators -- possibly dogs or raccoons -- that fed on the bodies in the hours after the murders."
In fact, according to a report filed in July, none of the genetic material found at the scene could be trace back to the three teens. It remains to be seen if this new evidence will in fact clear the teens (now in their 30s) or save Echols from execution.
The Idaho Statesman explores the famous witch-trials in Salem through three women descended from victims and accusers at that time.
"'I lived this for about two weeks - what would he have said, what would she have done - and I literally entered her skin,' Judith Alexander said. Judith Alexander, Rebecca Bowen-Odom and Lila Hill. The three women recently portrayed their ancestors in a dramatization of the Salem witch-hunt era for Pioneer, the local chapter of the National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution."
The article thinks ergot poisoning was the most likely culprit for the witch hysteria, though there are several theories out there.
Mexico's Roman Catholic Church has gone on record as saying it doesn't like Halloween.
"Those who celebrate Halloween are worshipping a culture of death that is the product of a mix of pagan customs," the Archdiocese of Mexico said in an article on its Web site yesterday. "The worst thing is that this celebration has been identified with neo-pagans, Satanism and occult worship."
No word on if this includes Dia de los Muertos celebrations as well, or if the death-haunted holiday is significantly free of "occult" influence to remain safe.
Finally, a somewhat strange attempt to enter the Guinness Book of World Records was attempted by a group in Somerville, MA.
"The witches were urged on by Lesley Pratt Bannatyne, the Somerville author of the new children's book Witches' Night Before Halloween and an authority on the holiday. Witches' Night (Pelican Publishing) is her fourth Halloween book, but her first for kids. Pratt Bannatyne wanted to celebrate Halloween in a new way, and Somerville -- with its eclectic festivals and "the willingness of people to come out and do something different" -- seemed like the place for the first known Guinness attempt for the 'Largest Gathering of Halloween Witches (Reciting Poetry).'"
No word on how many of the "witches" were also Witches (of the religious sort), but they did succeed in winning the record. Maybe a Pagan group can work towards 'Largest Gathering of Pagan Witches (Reciting Poetry)' sometime in the near future.
That is all I have for now, have a good holiday in the coming days!
Labels: Christianity, Halloween, I drank what?, Mexico, Pagan News of Note, poetry, Salem, Socrates, West Memphis 3, Wicca, Witch
