Author: Ophelia Benson

Just two or three more brief quotations from Wicca. My little solstice present for you.

To discourage a poltergeist from remaining in the house put up a list of chores and tell it that if it is to remain in the house it must earn its keep. If it does not, then you will bring in an exorcist.

Errm – okay. But – um – how do I tell it? Write it at the top of the list of chores? But how do I know if the poltergeist has seen the list of chores? Or that it can read? Should I tell it personally, by announcing it aloud? But how do I know where polty is, or if it’s listening? Do I wait until stuff is flying around the room and then quick like a bunny start shouting – ‘Oi, I’m putting up a list of chores for you to do and you have to do them if you want to stay in the house, because you have to earn your keep!’ (Keep? What keep? Does it eat the food? First I’ve heard of it. I thought it just threw things.) I wish these people would give proper directions. It’s like being told to make a Lady Baltimore cake by putting some flour and eggs and whatnot in a pan and baking it. But at least it does say how to threaten the little bastard. ‘If you don’t, I’m bringing in an exorcist! So if that bathtub is not clean enough to eat a Lady Baltimore cake off by this time tomorrow, you’re outta here!’ Because I really know where to find an exorcist, right? And then there’s the tricky business of deciding which chores to give the poltergeist. Making dinner? Hmm…no. Making the beds? No. Doing the laundry? Well…risky. You can see the problem.

Still practiced by some, alchemy can also be practiced to search for an elixir of youth, a universal cure for all disease , the attainment of eternal life, and other accomplishments.

Yup. It sure can. There is no gainsaying that. That is one true statement. Yes indeedy. That is one true, safe statement – alchemy can indeed be practiced to search for just about anything. A way to travel to the far side of the universe without spilling your coffee, a way to travel to 1600 and get Shakespeare to re-write Hamlet with a part for you in it, a way to turn diamonds into lice and bedbugs into Brazilian tapirs. You can practice alchemy to search for such things every waking minute for the rest of your life if you like. Have fun!

This is from an entry on dark side:

The side of life associated with death, decay, entropy…The dark, while unpleasant, is not inherently evil, though evil can take on aspects of that which is evil. For example, the television and movie characters, the Addams Family, were dark, though certainly not evil.

Uh – oh never mind.

Update: Check out Amardeep Singh’s No False Medicine for as he puts it ‘insider updates.’ Amardeep is a Sikh himself, and not best pleased about all this. This post includes part of an email from a Sikh friend in Birmingham:

I am in Birmingham and have been talking to people who were at the protests on Saturday and I can tell you that the Khalistanis in Britain have scented blood and are not going to step down. They have been inciting people in Gurdwaras and on websites and Punjabi radio stations to come to Birmingham from all four corners of Britain to “protest” outside the theatre. It is the raising of a lynch mob, people are talking about thousands being there, and I can tell you, they have got it in their minds that this is their own personal struggle against the enemies of Sikhism, that they are facing down Aurengzeb, and making the last stand to protect the dharma and the Sikh roop. Having spoken to many of the youth who attended the protest a sense of exhiliration came through that they have the eyes of the world on them, and I asked them specific points about what they would be prepared to do. People said repeatedly that they would not mind if Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti was killed or at least hospitalised because of this, and when I asked them that if they play was not stopped, would you be prepared to burn the theatre down to the ground and they said yes. This has been headline national news on every television and radio station in Britain. Needless to say, it has made Sikhs look like fascists and taliban like in their outlook, a disastrous result for a community that has been previously thought of as hardworking, industrious and creative.

Lynch mobs are so, so, so easily raised. Ironically, of course, that thought is exactly the thought behind the religious hatred law – and surely the lawmakers are not wrong to think that. But the proposed cure seems so likely to do more to encourage ever more lynch mobs than it does to calm them down…

Further updates. Harry’s Place has a good comment on the subject here. Insert Joke Here has one here. And Amardeep has this link to the complaints about Behzti and one to an interesting editorial from Asians in Media.

Well, here we go again. Another victory for religious sensitivity and obscurantism and shutting people up, another defeat for open discussion of religion and religions. Another victory for clerics, another defeat for playwrights, theatres, actors, and playgoers. Another victory for the principle that if discussion of Subject X is ‘offensive’ to certain easily-offended domineering people, then discussion of Subject X gets stopped, and that’s that. Hooray. (Of course, looked at another way, it’s also a victory of a sort for wider dissemination of Subject X. No doubt a lot more people will be at least reading ‘Behzti’ than otherwise would have, even if fewer will be seeing it. But the terrible precedent is still set.) It’s all so obvious. You know what I’m going to say – there’s not even any point in my saying it. So I’ll just quote from the newspaper and BBC reports instead. From the Independent:

Mohan Singh, from the Guru Nanak Gurdwara in south Birmingham, welcomed the decision. But he said the Rep could have avoided the disturbances more than a week ago. “It’s a sad fact but it’s a very good thing that they have seen common sense on the issue,” he told the Press Association. “But the fact of the matter is that it has taken things to become violent before it happened. What precedent does this set? Will it happen again when people think peaceful protest is not going to work? Those are the answers we need. We were in negotiations with the Rep about a week ago and they didn’t budge. That’s when they should have budged.”

Common sense. Right. Stupid of the Birmingham Rep, wasn’t it. Why won’t people see sense. Surely, whenever people produce a play, write a novel, research an article, make a movie, and some other nice people come along and talk to them and negotiate with them and ask them to stop doing that, surely it’s only common sense for the producers and writers and researchers and movie-makers to negotiate back and say ‘Yes, indeed, we see what you mean, and we will stop at once.’ But no! The horrible willful obstinate people at Birmingham Rep didn’t budge. How very rude and disobliging of them. It’s an outrage – and Britain calls itself a democracy!

Then Mr Singh followed up this excellent argument with more good sense and a threat:

He rejected claims they were stifling free speech, adding: “Free speech can go so far. Maybe 5,000 people would have seen this play over the run. Are you going to upset 600,000 thousands Sikhs in Britain and maybe 20 million outside the UK for that? Religion is a very sensitive issue and you should be extremely careful.”

Well exactly. That’s what I mean – it’s democracy. So perhaps five thousand spoiled ponces might have seen the play – while 20.6 million Sikhs got upset! Can you imagine! So no wonder that note of menace creeps in there at the end. You can hardly blame the guy.

From the Guardian:

Earlier Sewa Singh Mandha, the chairman of the Council of Sikh Gurdwaras in Birmingham, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “In a Sikh temple sexual abuse does not take place; kissing and dancing don’t take place; rape doesn’t take place; homosexual activity doesn’t take place; murders do not take place. I am bringing to the attention of the management of the theatre the sensitive nature of the play because by going into the public domain it will cause deep hurt to the Sikh community,” he said. The author Hanif Kureishi, however, defended the Birmingham Rep’s production of the play. He told Today: “I think the Sikh community should be ashamed of the fact that it is destroying theatres. Destroying a theatre is like destroying a temple. Without our culture, we are nothing. Our culture is as crucial to the liberal community as temples are to the religious community.”

‘Deep hurt.’ We’ve heard that kind of thing before. Just a few days ago in fact, when discussing that column by Polly Toynbee.

Iqbal Sacranie of the mainstream Muslim Council of Britain said that linking the Prophet’s name with this crime “will have shocked Muslim readers” who are “calling for safeguards against vilification of dearly cherished beliefs”.

Deep hurt, dearly cherished beliefs. Religious censors are attempting to use emotional and emotive language to make their case. ‘I feel deep hurt, my dearly cherished beliefs are being challenged, therefore you are obliged to shut up.’ That’s how religious censors think. It’s not a good idea to encourage them in this line of thought.

The attack comes as the government attempts to usher through parliament a law against incitement to religious hatred. Although as a monoethnic religious group the Sikh community is already covered by specific race hate legislation, the Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris has argued that the proposed law on religious hatred creates a climate in which “any religion’s assertion is that their beliefs, leaders, icons and places of worship are protected from criticism, ridicule or parody”.

Just so. This is one of the problems with the law. Fiona McTaggart tells us that private prosecutions won’t be brought, but what about the encouragement the law gives to this kind of ‘respect my dearly cherished beliefs or else’ line of thinking?

From the BBC account:

A spokesman for the Sikh community in Birmingham, Councillor Chaman Lal, predicted there would have been larger protests had the play’s run continued. He said: “The theatre has made the right decision in response to a peaceful protest. There are no winners or losers – common sense has prevailed.” Cllr Lal did not accept that the theatre had bowed to the threat of violence and mob rule. “We have nothing against freedom of speech, but you do not make a mockery of someone’s faith or beliefs. That is oppression.” Earlier, the theatre said short of “blatant censorship” and cancelling the production, it could not have done more to appease the Sikh community.

Free speech, no problem, but of course that doesn’t mean making a mockery of someone’s faith or beliefs. No. You can talk about anything else you like. Food, sport, some tv shows – um – food…

Another dispatch from ‘Hey I’ll believe anything’ land. This time from Celtic Myth and Magic by Edain McCoy.

There’s a great long section in the middle of this book about ‘Pathworking.’ Pathworking, we are told, is another name for ‘guided meditations.’ Okay and what are guided meditations? Apparently they are pre-scripted daydreams. What you do is, you read one of the stories McCoy writes out for you, then you do the relaxation/meditation thing (you know: get comfortable, do breathing stuff, empty your mind, all that), then you have a daydream in which you are the protatgonist of the story you’ve just read (complete with pronunciation guide, because we wouldn’t want to be mispronouncing all those Celtic names in our daydream, now would we – Maeve and Cuchulain might get annoyed). Got that? You read a story, you lie down and empty your (already probably not overfull) mind, you have a daydream about the just-read story. Okay. Sounds a little childish and pathetic for a grown-up (I mean come on, grown-ups ought to be able to come up with their own daydreams, am I right?), but okay; whatever floats your boat, as the saying goes.

But of course ‘pathworking’ is not at all the same thing as a scripted daydream, even though that’s what it sounds like. No, it’s More.

Pathworking, as guided meditations are called, is a term which comes to us through ceremonial magick. It is one of the most potent tools we have for aligning ourselves with the energies of deities and mythic figures. The term ‘pathworking’ has been adopted by Pagans who define it as a guided journey into the inner-world, or universal/archetypal/astral plane, for the purpose of acquiring a lasting change on both the conscious and sub-conscious mind of the journeyer.

Ah. It’s a daydream, but one that takes us on a real journey, to the astral plane (aka the universal or archetypal one). Oookay. And don’t be in any doubt – these deities and mythic figures whose energies we get to ‘align ourselves with’ (what does that mean?) are real. Not pretend, not imagined, but real. Understand?

The inner/astral world should never be mistaken for being somewhere which is not ‘real,’ or where the inhabitants are also somehow less than ‘real.’ The archetypes we humans have created on these inner-planes over the centuries are indeed real, and even sentient, creatures. If they were not real, then how would we be able to go to these places, draw energy or information from them, and bring that change or knowledge back into our concrete world?

Er – by making it all up? Because things like ‘energy’ or ‘information’ that someone claims to have found or ‘drawn’ on the astral plane are a little on the intangible side, you know? It’s not like coming back with a carbon-datable dagger or slice of tea-cake. Oh dear oh dear. And the people who write this kind of stuff are allowed to drive cars and vote and have children. It’s scary.

And then it gets even better. McCoy reassures us and tells us not to be fearful, and then she warns us – leaving at least one reader with a feeling of profound confusion and mixed-message-reception.

There are a lot of people, some Pagans included , who have an unnatural fear of altered states…and especially of inner-world journeys. Possibly this is because they have been taught…that they will ‘lose control’ of themselves or even become lost in the inner-worlds, or not be able to awaken to deal with emergencies. All of these fears are basically groundless.

That’s page 117. On page 118 we find this:

Some persons have experienced or read about others who have become ‘stuck’ on the astral plane and unable to return to their bodies. Generally this does not happen…Being stuck ‘out’ is a mental blockage caused by one’s own fears and it can almost always be overcome by relaxing…

Wait. ‘Generally’? ‘Almost always’? But you said all these fears are basically groundless. What exactly does ‘basically’ mean? Is it a new synonym for ‘not’?

Getting lost should never be a problem. If you find it is, you might consider seeking psychiatric help to find the cause of the blockage.

Yeah, I look forward to that little chat with the shrink. ‘Well, see, I was having this daydream, and…’ Not to mention all this confusing stuff about should, and never, and if it is. ‘Your fears are groundless, there is basically no danger, but if you do burst into flames, we’ll do our best to extinguish them.’

And there’s an even better bit.

Some people also excessively fear the creatures they meet in the inner-world. While it cannot be over-emphasized that the inner-planes are in the mind but are still a very real place, there is no more to fear than there is in your own home. You must always be respectful of the deities and other beings you encounter on the inner-planes, but you should never overtly fear them. Most of them are benevolent or, at worst, neutral to your presence.

Most of them. Most of them. Okay, but what about the others, however few? She doesn’t say, you’ll be unsurprised to learn.

If you do encounter a being in whose presence you feel uncomfortable, simply move yourself slowly away from it.

Okay. As I would if it were a tiger, right? and I just hoped I could move myself away before it springs. And this ‘uncomfortable’ thing – do I feel uncomfortable because it is walking quickly toward me swinging a large axe? Or just because I think it doesn’t look quite friendly or even neutral. Well, she doesn’t say.

I think I’ll just stay here.