Archive for ‘Writing’

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June 18, 2013

Writing in the Rain: Towards an English Mythology

The Dorset Ooser: His significance is now obscure.

It is a peculiarity that England – the country to have lead the way more than any other with the contemporary Pagan revival – has in fact no coherent pantheon or ancient mythology of its own. We have a great many pieces of folklore, traditional rites, interesting characters, places and themes, but there has never been – either in Ancient Times or Modern – an attempt to synthesise or unite them in a common set of stories. Countries with a far more vigorously attested ancient mythology – Greece, Iceland, Russia, Italy, Ireland – were all relative latecomers to Paganism. Although there are many good historical reasons why, the problem is that English Paganism has not yet filled this void completely. There is of course a really popular English Pagan myth – that of the Horned God and the Triple Goddess, worshipped by Witches, who are themselves the subject of a myth all their own. And this is the myth I’d like to examine.

I am speaking of course of the myth of the persecution of Europe’s witches by “the Church”, of the fertility cult they enacted and the God and Goddess they worshipped. As myths are wont to, it has captured the imagination of many – but due to its roots in history, rather than mystery, it has had a short-lived efflorescence. Within 20 years of its birth, the “Witch-Cult Hypothesis” was rejected by academe, within 50, it had fallen out of favour in the country of its birth, even amongst Wiccans.

In my view, this myth has boasted other less obvious shortcomings. Firstly, it isn’t truly English. As a “Pan-European” legend, it is not rooted in the rolling hills, grey skies and mirrored waters of this green and pleasant land, but in a much wider ethnoscape – one in which all Christian peoples persecuted by their priests, not just the English, have purchase. As such, it isn’t really the “English” legend that we might like to balance the legends we find in other lands. Rather, it’s the antithesis to the concept of Christendom – a cultural critique of the overarching narrative of a triumphant Roman Christ who liberated our beleaguered continent from itself. Instead, the Witch Cult Hypothesis suggests that the people of Europe aren’t/weren’t truly Christian in their hearts, or that only threats and violence made them so. This may be true in places, but this process was begun and over long before the time when the supposed persecutions were imagined to have taken place, having been more a feature of Christianisation rather than Inquisition.

The other issue I have with the Witch Cult as an English myth is that it owes as much to Victorian conceits of lumping gods and cultures together into ill-conceived, grand categories as it does to ancient history or the worldview of the rural cultures it apes after. Suggesting that all gods are facets of the One, all goddesses are reflections of Her may be a profound spiritual truth, but it’s very bad anthropology. Small-scale, localised societies such as those which make most Pagans misty-eyed often show great interest in particularity; knowing the difference between this and that stream, these and those mushrooms, the season now and the season is given great importance. Gods are not assumed to have universal significance, nor are “our” gods meant to be connected, necessarily, to those of one’s neighbours. Zeus is NOT Thunor is NOT Taranis is NOT Thor is NOT Taran. They are each very different beings, with their own personalities, histories, cultus and spiritus. In this way, the gods are like humans – although emphasising the oneness of Mankind can teach many things, ignoring the fact that we are all different people can have terrible side-effects. Just as I have similarities with other Geminis, so Thunder Gods share certain similarities. In this regard, I see the divine realm as no different to the human.

Another thing that makes me feel a little frustrated with the WCH as a local myth is that it is very limited. In comparison to the huge variety to be found within most traditional cultural worldviews, detail in the WCH is thin on the ground. Two gods. A Great Rite. A single rede. A rumour of genocide, and the promise of grandmother stories. That’s it.

This doesn’t mean that the Witch-Cult Hypothesis and the dimensions of it that modern Wiccans adhere to is bad. It’s only that it’s the beginnings of a tradition, not the whole of one. As for the pseudo-historical witch hunt, it’s certainly not what I’m looking for from Paganism. If I wanted a persecution narrative, I could identify with my sexuality, or my Jewish relatives on my mother’s side. If I wanted one binaristic divinity, there’s plenty of that in Hinduism and Catholicism. What I want is something local.

Now, none of this is to suggest that nobody in England has tried to devise a mythology to go with our homeland. In fact, plenty of people have – but sadly, most (all?) of them aren’t Pagan. C.S. Lewis, despite never setting out to create an English myth, created in Narnia a joyful arcadia that reminds me deeply of my homeland. JK Rowling’s depictions of witches and wizards in the Harry Potter series is – sociologically speaking – sometimes alarmingly similar to the British Pagan community; with batty-named people who all know each other living in secret, keeping the magic alive. Eva Ibbotsen, an Austrian author whose work I devoured as a child, masterfully syncretised all manner of English magical creatures into singular, coherently English bestiaries for her novels. But the two leaders in this field of mythopoeisis are, in my humble opinion, JRR Tolkein and Susannah Clarke.

Notable about their work is the way in which it is designed around the setting, rather than the other way around. Tolkein, whose expressed purpose was to create a myth for the English people, created landscapes, languages, peoples and angelic beings that have proved so captivating that he has literally set the mould into which the majority of contemporary, world-builder fantasy is cast. Unfortunately, though, Tolkein’s work had the weakness (as far as his aim of mythologizing England was concerned) of not being sufficiently rooted in England, its heritage and localities. With my observations about traditional, localised societies in mind, it’s easy to see how Tolkein’s corpus – despite being amazing myth – failed to be an English one. His creativity got the better of him; by re-inventing everything, Tolkein divorced Middle Earth utterly from its roots as a spiritual twin of the country in which he grew up.

What lies beyond the gates: England could do with another good mythos, in my view.

Susannah Clarke has not made the same mistake in Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell; under her pen, Northern England is a place both otherworldly and immanent. It is not some strange dominion named Menegroth that is guarded by mystical woodland, but the city of Newcastle. It isn’t someone we’ve never heard-of named Theoden who is faced by the Storm Crow, but rather Edward III. She captures the essence of what Pagan spirituality is about – a throbbing animism that enchants body and soul, by tugging you down into the very land you live with – and gives it life within her pages. As Liz Williams remarked to me when I enthused about JS&MN: I found myself wishing very deeply that her invented history of English magic, with its carefully footnoted faux-scholarship, had been the real history.

And yet… England does have a rich and well-documented magical history. It isn’t without good reason that Romanticism flourished here, that The Tempest was written here, that some of the English language’s greatest fantasy writers have worked here, and that Paganism, in modern times, was born here. Great magicians – from Dee to Ashmole – have sweated, strained, and spellcast in some of our greatest institutions. Ancient monuments cover the land, as do funny little stories, with more being made all the time.

Why? Because these hills, springs, woods, and rivers sing. They demand our attention, generation after generation, and insist upon our expressing what we think and feel from living amongst them. And though we have of late wrapped ourselves in the trappings of modern life, that power still has the same grip upon us it always had. All that advanced technology has bought us is the opportunity to put our fingers in our ears, and pretend to each other that we’re not listening. Or, in some cases, write down some sheet music.

—

With this in mind, I think somebody (probably me), needs to set about fusing that history into a mythos. But rather than be “fake” scholarship, as the previous attempt was, I intend to participate fully as a scholar, and then from there embark upon writing works of fiction, clearly bracketed as such. If Tolkein’s life shows nothing else, it proves that fiction can be just as profound as fact. Indeed, it becomes more so, if fact has inspired it.

Posted in Social Anthropology, Paganism, Writing, "Britishness", Narnia | 1 Comment »

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March 17, 2013

In defence of aesthetics: A review of The Spirit of Albion

Although Damh’s folk songs are very popular, I don’t think the film based on them actually reflects authentic Pagan values.

Damh the Bard is one of Britain’s more popular Pagan Folk artists. He’s released seven albums, a whole bunch of songs, and is an experienced ritualist. I’ve never spoken to him at length (though I have chatted to him briefly at a couple of OBOD gatherings – he’s the Pendragon of the Order), but he seems like a genuine, affable guy, with a real passion for music and a great, down-to-earth style.  His popularity, especially down in Sussex where he is based, is not inconsiderable, and a couple of years back of collection of songs were turned into a musical (Mamma-Mia style), which eventually grew into a full-length feature film – The Spirit of Albion.

It’s hard reviewing a film that someone you know, or at least, someone in your social circle, has been involved with. It’s even harder to give a critical review, especially if it’s really critical. So I’ve felt pretty wary about writing what I’m about to pen here – I’ve put it off for months. But the more time has passed, the more I believe what I want to say needs to be said.

The Spirit of Albion was a terrible film.

When I first sat down to watch it, I was wishing very much for it to be good. Sure, I knew the production values couldn’t be that huge, nor would the acting be of Academy Award standard, but, I reasoned, as a member of the British Pagan community, I could surely look past all that, and enjoy it for what it was; a low budget film, expounding views and dealing with themes close to my heart, in a way a more “mainstream” production never could. It’s the charm of the village panto, or the school play – I like it not because it’s “perfect”, but because it’s family. Besides, I spent £16 on the damn thing.

Anyway, before I get out the knives, I’ll give you a brief plot summary. Spoilers ahoy (not that you should go on from this blog to watch it).

Three young people – Esther, Annie, and George – are beset by ever-so-modern problems. Esther is stuck in a boring office job; Annie is a vivisectionist drug-addict; while George is a recently bereaved peace activist. None of them show any interest or enthusiasm towards the landscape or folklore, until three strangers – who turn out to be Ceredwin, Herne, and The Mórrígan – spirit them to a woodland glade, where they are walked through their life stories (and why they’re shit) by Robin Goodfellow and Arianrhod. Along the way, the gods educate their mortal charges about the loveliness of nature, and what this has to teach us. Eventually, it turns out that George is actually dead, and he is taken off into the afterlife, while Esther and Annie are left to carry on their lives with a newfound sense of connection to the world around them.

So what makes it a terrible film? I wasn’t expecting Emmerich, so why should I judge it so harshly? Well, there are two things the Spirit of Albion is. It is a representation of Paganism and it is an amateur film. And it is against both of these standards I’m judging it here.

Return to the Earth: The coming home experience is a pivotal Pagan conversion narrative. So why doesn’t The Spirit of Albion use it?

Firstly, Paganism. What the Spirit of Albion is trying to be is essentially a Pagan conversation narrative. I say trying, because there is nothing remotely Pagan about the structure of how Esther, Annie and George come to be Pagan. What they have is a mystical moment, out in the wild, where they go from being mooks of modernity, if slightly frustrated ones, into full-blown Cauldron Born. But this is a Christian conversion story. It’s Paul on his Road to Damascus. It’s Moses in the Desert. But it sure as shit isn’t Doreen Valiente at Dafo’s table.

The more common Pagan conversion narrative is very different. Rather than feeling transformed by an act of the Divine, most Pagans argue that rather than convert, they are returning to a primordial state – both socially and personally. As individuals, we “come home” to Paganism – rediscovering magic we felt, often as children, in some earlier phase of our lives. As a group, we are revivifying atavistic urges – to paraphrase Andy Letcher, another Pagan bard – in an attempt to bring to life earlier, more authentic forms of humanity. As Pagans, we don’t convert, we re-vert.

Given their use of a basically Christian narrative, it’s rather vexing to see Christianity depicted in an almost uncompromisingly negative, ineffectual light. This becomes understandable, when you realise that this is not Paganism of a non-Christian kind, but of an anti-Christian kind. We Pagans are painted as the opposite of Christians. Goddess vs. God. Priest vs. Priestess. Prayer vs. Magic. Oppression vs. Freedom. Black and White vs. Green and Grey. As Paganisms go, this is film is as simplistic is it gets – Jesus puts on his wizard’s hat, conjuring up characters from myth and literature recast as skydaddies for a modern audience, with little appreciation for history or locality. This isn’t Christo-paganism (a fine and noble tradition), or even cherry picking; this is a superficial cut and shut of both traditions.

There were hundreds of other little details that irked me. How the Horned God – and not a Goddess – was responsible for helping a vulnerable woman find her power. The fact that George was killed off – and told off – for being an activist. How The Mórrígan was depicted as solely a death goddess. Feminism, activism, and the study of history – all crucial parts of the Pagan tradition – being systematically ignored or maligned. It just feels like EgoTrip have not done their homework – that they’ve not bothered learning about what Pagan spirituality actually involves, and have instead stuck firmly to the Waterstones-bookshelf variety of the tradition.

Youtube has helped transform the way in which content creators produce and share their work.

But it’s not just as a piece of Pagan art this film fails to impress. We no longer live in an age when low production values justify a poor product. This is a time of Youtube, where technology has made creating and distributing films a hell of a lot easier and cheaper. Apple, Google, Adobe and other software companies have turned what were once rarefied fields into viable areas for hobbyists. CGI. Video-editing. Music-editing. A new generation of dynamic, skilful, and ingenious content creators have raised the bar for all amateur and low-budget filmmaking, producing great films, even for niche audiences, on a shoestring budget.

And yet still there exists a rump of the for-profit video industry, that has yet to wake up or capitalise (it seems) on this flush of new possibilities. Manufacturers of daytime television, adverts for ambulance chasers, and substandard pornography – and, perhaps, EgoTrip – still seem to be making good money producing content not even half as good as what the likes of Tomska, Kermitcasson and KickthePJ produce with much smaller budgets. But what these Youtubers have done – as their back-catalogue of work demonstrates – is work hard to constantly learn and improve. This has evidently paid considerable dividends, and I wish the Spirit of Albion team had done likewise. Because the unfortunate fact is, that the Spirit of Albion looks nowhere near as polished as Divinity, despite the fact that Drew Casson had precisely zero budget and less years experience than the EgoTrip Media team.

In my view, the dual failure of the Spirit of Albion – failure to be a deep and insightful depiction of Paganism, and failure to be a decent piece of low-budget filmmaking – actually communicates something rather important about the condition of Paganism itself at present, at least in Britain. We’re in danger of losing something rather precious – our authenticity.

Andy Letcher: Argues that hard work has a vital role to play in bardic creativity.

Andy Letcher, who I’ve mentioned above, presented a very good lecture at the Mount Haemus lectures this year in Salisbury. In it, he argued persuasively for a Bardism not just rooted in inspiration, but also in pure and simple hard work. Getting good at something isn’t just about having a nice idea, Andy argued, you have to be sufficiently accomplished at whatever your medium is to actually express that idea so others can enjoy it. Inspiration comes and goes, but in anticipation of its coming we must practice. The ancient bards worked so desperately hard to become the best possible vessels of inspiration they could be. I see no reason why we shouldn’t do the same; to represent the enchantment we feel authentically.

Because that’s what modern Paganism is about, in my view – while Christianity is (or, was) a call to a new morality, the new Paganism is at its heart a defence of aesthetics; claiming as we do that just because something is made-up doesn’t mean it isn’t real. We do this by harkening back; to the days when things like beauty and craft meant something more than an accomplishment that you could put on a dating profile, a hobby, or a way for a fortunate few to make money. To days when inspiration was holy, and a Muse was a Goddess rather than something a state of laughter. We take what was an earnest heartache for the Romantics and give it ontological depth and weight. The Gods are fiction – made up. And so are Men. And they are just as real as anything else, for all that – because they are well-made.

The Spirit of Albion, though, is far distant from this central virtue. Its engagement with its subject matter is appropriative and insipid; showing little care and attentiveness to the true history and culture of the very tradition it seeks to explore. As such, the characterisation of the divinities and humans it includes is flimsy at best. By not having honed their craft as much as other low-budget content creators, the makers of Spirit of Albion have failed to do Paganism justice, and have become a pale imitation of the Pagan movement’s authentic values as a result.

Unlike my previous negative reviews, where I’ve critiqued work whose producers most likely will never read my blog, there is a relatively good chance that the makers of the Spirit of Albion will read what I’ve written here. If they do read this, I’d like to apologise in advance if any of my remarks that hurt their feelings – I know, from your vlog and elsewhere, how passionately you believe in this film, and how you gave it your all. That passion and love is totally beyond reproach; in fact, it ennobles our entire tradition. My aim isn’t to antagonize, embarrass, or upset you. I commend the fact that (unlike myself), you have actually made something. All I ask – nay, challenge – you to do, is this: Do better. Because you can. I know you can.

Posted in Feminism, Paganism, Reviews, Social Anthropology, Writing | 3 Comments »

September 8, 2012

REVIEW: Doctor Who – Dinosaurs on a Spaceship

The Gang’s Girls: But do female characters really stand in the limelight in this episode of Doctor Who?

WARNING: Spoilers, descriptions of misogyny, and critical thinking. Oh, and some swears.

There’s been a lot said on the interwebs recently on how Steven Moffat, head writer of hit BBC dramas Doctor Who and Sherlock, can’t write female characters – to the point of out-and-out sexism. Like too many heterosexual men, Moffat thinks that a strong female character equates to a femme fatale; as such, he chooses to bypass character development in favour of shooting straight for sex appeal. Whether its Amy Pond, River Song or Moffat’s mutilated vision of Conan Doyle’s Irene Adler, it seems that Moffat can’t help but write really shoddy female characters.

To be fair to the Moff, there are plenty of things he does exceptionally well. He has a marvellous sense of fun and suspense, and is deliciously willing to apply the rule of cool when coming up with concepts, which is refreshing given his predecessor Russell T. Davies’ fondness for high drama and the Sorting Algorithm of Evil over mere enjoyment. Moffat is also very, very good at writing eccentric, rather surprising male leads. Now, listening to him interview, it’s not hard to see why – there’s plenty of Moffat’s loquacious charm in both The Doctor and his rendition of Sherlock Holmes. But, again unlike Davies, Moffat’s female characters are just awful. Amy Pond is essentially passive, River Song is a hideous Mary Sue and Oswyn Oswald, Amy’s speculated replacement from last weeks’ episode, is basically an Amy clone – but with more brains, less boyfriend.

Which brings us to last night’s offering – Dinosaurs on a Spaceship. This was written not by Moffat himself, but by Chris Chibnall – yet another nerdy straight white dude; a demographic that seems heavily over-represented in Moffat’s writing team. Befitting this rather dubious statistical anomaly, Chibnall has produced what is even more sexist steaming pile of dirt than his two previous episodes under Moffat’s tenure; The Hungry Earth and Cold Blood.

In Dinosaurs, The Doctor is called by the Indian Space Agency (a cool touch, it has to be said), which has picked up a spaceship that is on a collision call with Earth. Spontaneously decides to form a little “gang” (gangs are cool now), bringing along Queen Nefertiti, an imperial big game hunter named Riddell, and the Ponds, for the ride. They discover the ship is filled with dinosaurs, although their keepers have mysteriously disappeared. With only six hours before a bunch of Indian missiles take the spaceship out, the Doctor has to race against the clock to save the vessel’s precious cargo from destruction, and discover who is responsible for this seemingly abandoned arc…

The episode was enjoyable enough, to be sure. It was well scripted and the plot was brisk and exciting. But as you’d expect from my preamble, Chibnall couldn’t resist doing a Moffat and reducing the major female characters into empty vessels for playing out male fantasies.

Amy Pond was on good form, successfully pressing a couple of buttons at random (because the Doctor does it, too) and miraculously revealing that the Silurians are the absent owners of the vessel. She also manages to shoot a couple of raptors while being supervised by Mr Big Game Hunter Riddell, despite expressing disdain for his harming endangered species earlier in the same episode. I shit you not, she goes from saying “Meh, I just don’t think killing a bunch of rare animals is that worthy of my attention” to “It’ll be better when they [some raptors] go back to being extinct.” (I paraphrase). The reset button clearly activates between scenes now, too.

But the really horrible stuff is reserved for a character who, as a real person from history, deserves a little bit more respect than the miniskirt-wearing product of Moffat’s fevered imagination. Queen Nefertiti is first shown demanding (sexually) the Doctor take her with him following a visit to Ancient Egypt where the Doctor defends the Egyptian people from a plague. Okay, fair enough. Nefertiti is a living goddess, and The Doctor is a Lonely God with a fondness for royal ladies – I can accept that they might feel some attraction for one another. But the story goes on.

Initially, Nefertiti doesn’t seem to be straying into problematic territory. She isn’t wearing a particularly revealing outfit, and she’s employed in something other than prostitution, which is something. She is intelligent, brave and open-minded, which is more than can be said for Riddell, whose primary asset seems to be his *ahem* large gun. And, when Riddell makes a series of extremely creepy, lascivious remarks at her, Nefertiti initially responds as any true feminist would – by telling him where he can stick his Nitro Express. At that joyous, split second moment, I thought “Oh my gods… Chibnall is subverting Moffat!”

I thought too soon, however. Riddell, undeterred, continues his virulent misogyny to new heights by threatening to spank Nefertiti for biting his head off. And then, the smile happens. Nefertiti grins, not in a “What a fucking arrogant cockhead” sort of way, but in a “Oooh, now you threatened to physically abuse me for refusing your advances, I’m actually kindof hot for you!” sort of way. Ugh.

Cue Amy, who tells them to stop flirting. All hopes that I had misread the Lady of Grace’s smile were dashed in that moment. Because putting a statement like that in is a clear bit of writer signposting – a way of making it absolutely crystal clear to the audience what is actually going on is some hardcore verbal foreplay, rather than (heaven forbid) a woman not wanting to sleep with a douchebag. Like that’d happen!

Subsequently, if Nefertiti’s golden legacy hasn’t been besmirched enough, she is appropriated by the main antagonist – a greedy trader named Solomon, who murdered the Silurian residents of the arc and who proceeds to make all sorts of unfair demands on The Doctor, including that he hand over Nefertiti. The Doctor, being an honourable chap, naturally refuses; but The Mistress of Upper and Lower Egypt demands to be handed over, sacrificing herself to Solomon’s lecherous appetites so the rest of the group can go free.

After a bit more creeping over the Lady of all Women, Solomon teleports back to his ship with his prize. The Doctor then concocts a plan, managing to steal on board and rescue Nefertiti, who resolves an impasse between The Doctor and Solomon by knocking the weapon from Solomon’s hand. To top it all off, we’re treated to a little scene at the end showing a ruffle-haired Nefertiti emerging from Riddell’s tent in Africa – clearly having made good on all that flirting from earlier.

There’s so much wrong with this, it’s difficult to know where to start. Quite obviously the damsel-in-distress trope is iffy to say the least, and having the girl do something vaguely assertive by kicking the gun from the villain’s hand might have been a boldly feminist move in the 1950s, but it doesn’t cut the mustard now. Even worse is the entirely odious “love story” (if you could call it that) between Nefertiti and Riddell – as a woman who has amorous designs on the Doctor, and has a God-King at home, settling for a gun-toting, incompetent, disrespectful sleaze from the 19th century seems about as in-character as River Song joining a convent. The similarity between Riddell and Solomon seems to have entirely eluded Chibnall – both denigrate Nefertiti, and attempt to circumvent her dignity in order to have sex with her. The fact that Riddell succeeds where Solomon fails only serves to praise one form of patriarchy over another; owning women as things is bad, yeah, but if you treat them like shit anyway they’ll still sleep with you! Yay!

And none of what I’ve written above even touches upon the troubling symbolic associations of a European colonial wooing and boning a literal African Queen.

But the worst thing about all of this is that Nefertiti has absolutely no character development in the entire story. Her driving animus – which seems to be to find a “man” – remains unexplained and unexplored, as does her ability to happily accept dinosaurs, spaceships and alien worlds despite being from Bronze Age Egypt. In fact, despite her choices being pivotal in the finale (much as Rory and his dad’s relationship, which is tenderly and rather subtly developed), we get next to no insight into her inner life; Nefertiti is just a closed book. Like Pond, Song, Oswald and Adler, Nefertiti is simply a physical embodiment of a straight male nerdy erotic fantasy: a brainy girl with a gun.

Unlike the male characters in the Doctor’s “gang”, who seem to serve the purpose of helping the Doctor by doing cool things – Riddell tranquilizes a bunch of raptors, protects Amy while doing so, then fucks Nefertiti; Rory and his Dad get to talk gadgets, bond and ultimately pilot a spaceship together – Amy and Nefertiti don’t “do” very much. Unlike the male characters, they don’t open up new possibilities through acts of genius or by taking control of the situation. Instead, they move the plot by trying things at random (Amy) or by just being there (Nefertiti), or by joining in with a male character doing something cool (Amy again), or by acquiescing to his wishes (Nefertiti again). To me, this makes the functions of the characters rather clear – while boys are the Doctor’s pals, the girls are mere accessories.

Whether these issues reflect choices made by Chibnall or Moffat, one thing is certain – there is more than one kind of dinosaur aboard this spaceship.

Posted in Feminism, Writing | 5 Comments »

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June 14, 2012

A Faun’s Exile

Narnia is a realm dominated by one voice – the roar Aslan of the East. He has cried out many times in our history, drowning out all others. Sometimes in love, sometimes in anger. Sometimes with great cause. But only ever when it has suited him.

- Cybil of Beaversdam.

There is a deep magic, unknown to most. There is a deeper magic, unknown even to the wise. Then there is the deepest magic – known to everyone.

- Piphallow.

 

 

I first read the Chronicles of Narnia when I was six. The triple volume we had in our house contained the first three books in the series – The Magician’s Nephew; The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe; The Horse and His Boy. I can still remember the front cover now; a thick, starry-blue border, edging around a rolling green landscape that swept up to high mountains beneath a clear sky. In the foreground stood the Great Lion himself; Aslan looking gold and glorious as always. It was an evocative image, and it drew me in.

My parents were surprised and overjoyed when I started reading it off my own bat. I devoured the books; first reading The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, then The Horse and his Boy, and finally The Magicians Nephew. I remember whisking my way through pages and pages of text, whilst my friends at school were still stumbling through picturebooks. Words like “gifted” were bandied about over my head in hushed tones.

 

I didn’t care about that, though. I was worlds away  – dancing with fauns, fleeing from wolves and exploring the lantern wastes. I was in love. In love with Narnia, its people, its places, its culture. It was a vision of a totally animate world; and yet, one that was still earthy – it wasn’t some ethereal Neverwhere, hard to imagine separately to its bookish casings – it felt like (what I now call) ethnography; a thick description of a real place with realistic people. There are plenty of less-than-pleasant parts of Lewis’ vision – the sexism towards adult women, the blatant xenophobia, the authoritarian glint in Aslan’s leonine eye – but I didn’t notice any of it. To my six-year-old mind, the nasty hobby-horses of Lewis’ rode past unnoticed; the Christian allegory, 1950s ethnocentricism and 1930s misogyny moving over my head, perhaps intended to be visible to older children. What did stick with me was the obvious Paganism upon which Lewis drew – the walking trees, the speaking beasts, the divine waters. I recognized them at once as friends and true gods, following them into the wild, forgotten places of the text, whilst Lewis played his Game of Thrones in the wide, open country of chapter upon chapter.

 

Because Lewis did focus upon heroes. Heroes, by and large, I didn’t really care about. Peter, Edmund, Eustace, Jill, and even Lucy seemed rather old-fashioned to the millennial me. I was frustrated by how I was expected to only empathise with a person if they hailed from my own world. I felt patronized even at age six by this authorial choice. It was for this reason that my favourite in the series was The Horse and His Boy; here was a book where those irritating Pevensies and their fellow travelers only got involved at the edges. This book is also, incidentally, populated by characters who have the least interest in Aslan – Shasta and Hwin barely knows who he is, Aravis doesn’t care, Bree doesn’t get him at all despite using him as something of a battle-standard.

But what I really loved about Horse was that it gave a precious insight into ordinary Narnia. Towards the end of the book, Shasta, on his way to the capital of Archenland, manages to find his way into Narnia proper. There, he meets a community of everyday Narnians – dwarves, fauns, talking beasts. Simple people, leading their uneventful, happy lives in the forest. He spends a-few short hours amongst them, eating bacon and seeing what he’s been missing all those years in the south, before rushing off to save the day. The narrative follows him, but my heart remained in those quiet woods. I read that chapter again and again, wishing the pages would open up and lower me down gently onto a bower of golden leaves and celandines; only to be greeted by a band of dwarves with a kettle on the boil.

 

I read the rest of the books only later, receiving them a couple of years later at Christmas. I loved Prince Caspian – the trees and awakening gods avenging themselves on dull Telmarine Narnia struck a chord that still sounds in my heart today. As The Voyage of the Dawn Treader didn’t actually take place in Narnia, and ended in what seemed at the time to be a sort of fuzziness I couldn’t pierce (i.e. Christian allegory) so I didn’t much care for it. The Silver Chair, overwhelmingly bleak, had brief points of relief for me in shedding light on the irascible marsh-wiggles and a positively Bosch-esque winter celebration when Eustace, Jill and co. return to Narnia.

 

Then I read The Last Battle. Each page left me feeling worse and worse. Here was the land I loved being torn to pieces. The trees being felled, the waters stilled, the animals broken as dumb beasts. Things got worse, and worse. And then, when all seemed darkest – Lewis rewarded me with the utter annihilation of Narnia, and most of its people, in fire and death.

 

What replaced it? A heroes reunion. Christian Allegory. More Pevensies. In short, everything I cared least about, was assured salvation!

 

The Narnia I loved – that magical Arcadia half-way between dreaming and waking – was replaced by something I found utterly incomprehensible. Like an onion, but bigger on the inside – what utter madness, I remember thinking, that doesn’t make sense at all! My visual imagination struggled to grasp this eschatological bulb, trying to imagine it as simultaneously England-and-Narnia-and-Everywhere all at once. I failed. The Christian intention of the books, once entirely invisible to me, had now become all there was to see. Sad though it is, Aslan’s Country seemed entirely foreign to me.

 

I was ten at the time, and I cried. I cried because I didn’t understand why Narnia had gone, or if it had gone, at all. I cried because I felt that all those nice, ordinary Narnians – simple people, who asked for nothing except a peaceful life – must’ve been exactly the sort to be tricked by Shift and his idiotic donkey-lion… who (and I really couldn’t believe this part) was allowed into this post-Narnia place, despite the fact that he had shown exactly the same level of ignorance that the others had done; they had been damned, yet he had not. I cried because I knew the Narnia I had believed in, was, in the eyes of the author, gone. And what’s more, he felt that was a good thing.

 

Now I am older. I ended up converting to the faith that Lewis himself followed – Anglican Christianity – in the vain hope of recovering some of the mystery I had felt close to in reading those first books, and that had been thoroughly banished by the Last Battle. Rather ironic really. I now realize that it was at around the time that I read that damn book that the rot to set in – the gradual loss of innocence that was less about becoming interested in stockings and lipstick and boys, as Lewis might have it, and was more about believing the world didn’t actually have any magic in it at all. Lewis successfully broke the spells woven through my Pagan heart, by shattering it in two – for a while, anyway. In the depression that followed, I was vulnerable in precisely the way that Christianity is so adept at addressing. As such, I became a Christian.

In the end, Christianity did little for me. It energized the worst parts of my character – the self-righteous, self-hating, self-denying tendency that I still have trouble with – and left me feeling harrowed and guilty over my sexuality and my philosophical outlook. I spent years worrying about being gay and about possibly doing something that would get me sent to hell. The voices I heard on the wind told me I was safe. But the angry words of other Christians told me something different. I doubted.

 

Gradually, though, I was guided back into Paganism. Those voices in the wind revealed themselves as gods, not one God and saints. Those angry words were shown to be vacuous and fearful by plenty of good education and reflection. At Cambridge and through Druidry, I found my community – my Narnia. And now, after all these years, I’ve found myself again too.

 

Personally, I think authors need to take responsibility over what they write. The impact children’s books have on those that read them can be immense. I am sure that the Narnia books are one of the formative influences in my life. So much of my pleasure and pain has flowed from the triumphs and mistakes of Lewis’ work. His vast knowledge of Pagan, particularly Classical culture, flowed into the Narnia books – where the themes they created helped nourish my love of the same. However, his hamfisted, doctrinaire submission of those themes to Christian allegory helped quicken the despair I felt as I lost the magical sensibilities of my childhood.

 

So: I figure that an update is necessary. A Narnia for the 90s. Or the Noughteens. Regardless, just as I have peeled back my own character’s Christian patina and liked what I saw beneath, so I’m going to try and do the same for Narnia; and see what happens!

Posted in Fan Fiction, Narnia, Paganism, Writing | 7 Comments »

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February 10, 2012

Review: The Last Airbender

The Last Airbender: Colourblind casting, worse-than-blind film-making

I’ll be honest, I’ve never had much investment in Nickelodian’s Avatar: The Last Airbender. By the time it screened on British TV I was too old for it, and so I never really watched it. But what I did know of this Asian-European fusion of an animated series; I liked. The concept was solid, the backstory seemed complex and well-constructed, and best of all, practically the entire cast of characters weren’t white. Culturally, linguistically and physically; the world of the Last Airbender is one in which Europeans do not feature.

 

As a European myself, I feel fully justified in saying how great this is. For too long, especially in America, white people and white cultural ideas have been given far too great a share of the limelight. When other ethnic communities are present, they are usually demoted to playing a very tokenish second fiddle. This applies both culturally and individually; if white folks or white culture is involved, it usually provides the perspective from which the story is told. The Last Airbender is a glorious exception to this rule. So when I found out that a bunch of white actors were playing lead roles in the upcoming film adaption, I decided to give it a miss.

Unfortunately, unbeknownst to me, The Last Airbender was still lingering on my LoveFilm playlist. Therefore, it was to my utter dismay that last Wednesday I received a rented copy of Airbender in the post, along with the much more welcome, guilty-pleasure rom-dram Letters to Juliet. I treated myself to watching Letters to Juliet last night, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I’ve just finished watching Airbender, and it was even worse that I thought it was going to be.

Not only were a crew of three white kids (Noah Ringer, Nicola Peltz and Jackson Rathbone) tasked with saving a world filled with a far greater level of racial diversity (because that’s what we crackers do best), but yes – you guessed it – the two primary antagonists were played by brown-skinned Cliff Curtis (who is Maori) and Aasif Mandvi (Indian). Utterly lacklustre writing (“We must show the fire nation that we believe in our beliefs just as much as they believe in theirs”) fought to outcompete dangling plot threads (old people threateningly rounded up for no reason, a revolution that people eventually stop talking about because more interesting stuff happens) in the biggest toe-curler stakes. To top it off, the film just lacked spirit. It just seems as though all the life, verve and originality of the source material was sucked out, and replaced with nothing at all.

 

And who is to blame for all this? The roles of writer, director and producer are all filled by the same guy – M. Night. Shyamalan. That’s right. The Indo-American director who gave us such triumphs as The Sixth Sense and The Village. Not only does the overall poverty of the film fly in the face of his past successes, but the hideous whitewash of Sokka and Katara seems to be an incomprehensible step for an Asian director to take. What the hell is going on?

 

Spot the odd ones out.

Shyamalan has given reasons for his choices. But his defence of keeping things “racially diverse” by making the Water Tribes white rings hollow when you notice how the Southern Water Tribe are all played by Inuit actors, apart from Sokka, Katara and their grandmother (the only ones with lines, incidentally), who are white. Although Shyamalan is right to claim that there are a very large number of minority ethnic speaking parts in the film, most of these are minor characters. Having lots of brown faces in cinema doesn’t do anything to shake white privilege if they’re all standing at the back.

 

Personally, I find big-name filmmakers’ resolute refusal to cast artists of colour in leading roles to be not only unfair towards hard-working and talented non-white actors, but is highly insulting towards white people, too. By assuming that Europeans aren’t going to want to witness the trials and accomplishments of “brown people”, those same filmmakers are accusing us of being racist ourselves. I don’t need white actors prancing around to enjoy a good story. One day, I hope to show the world that the nobody else does, either.

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February 5, 2012

“I hate those Ferengi!” Racism in Speculative Fiction

Prominent ears and nose. Lust for money. Just a coincidence.

Prominent ears and nose. Lust for money. Just a coincidence.

TVTropes is an utterly fabulous website, that any aspiring writer must use. Untold hours of my life have been whiled away, as I’ve sat at my computer absorbing the detailed and accessibly-written discourses the contributors have posted up there, detailing every recurring theme and device in fiction.

One of the most important pages, I think, is that of the “Planet of the Hats” trope. It refers to a specific trope – odiously common in speculative fiction – wherein different sentient races are uniformly marked out by a single trait. You have the warrior race. The spiritual race. The savage race. And the race who all wear funny hats.

As TVTropes points out, this technique is all sorts of wrong. Not only is the idea of an entire planet, or nation for that matter, whose population are uniformly anything laughable, but is almost always based on existing, all-too-human stereotypes. Take this description of the goblin race from a World of Warcraft community site:

The cunning goblins are small, green creatures who roam the isle of Kezan, their love of money, explosives, and technology leaves them to be a very dangerous race, most goblins however have a neutral standpoint, preferring to sell their contraptions are knowledge to other races, for a price of course.

Sound familiar? It might help to point out that, like the Ferengi, goblins have big noses, large flappy ears, and (yes, as if it couldn’t get any worse), strong New Yoiker accents. Blizzard might have well inserted clips from Hippler’s The Eternal Jew into the goblin’s opening cinematic sequence.

The same principle can be seen at work in other races. The cannibalistic trolls practice “voodoo”, wear bones through their noses and live on a series of tropical islands. The dwarves live in the mountains, drink lots of beer and have (bad) Scottish accents. The cow-like Tauren live in teepees, carve totem poles and are dependent on a single herd species for survival. And the Undead? Well they all wear punkish hair, experiment with weird technology and have Teutonic-sounding surnames.

To be fair to Blizzard, this sort of thing isn’t all that uncommon, and it’s not as if any race is uniformly painted as “bad”. Much like in Star Trek, supporters have argued that Blizzard’s intent is not to use stereotypes to vilify, but rather to rehabilitate our differences.

Hm. To be honest, regardless of the intent behind all this, I still feel it’s bad anthropology. If my discipline has taught me anything, it’s that there is far more difference within any given society than between them. This somewhat counter-intuitive idea forms the basis of my three-point critique of the DnD-style racio-cultural theory:

  1. No bell-curve?: The biggest problem, as hinted at above, is that many “races” are all touted as having set traits; lawfulness, extreme emotions, interest in pointless badinage etc. In reality, nature doesn’t produce such monolithic qualities. Life exists in bell-curves. It may well be that Klingons are more aggressive on average than humans, but in reality there would be a wide range of aggression levels in both species – potentially so much so, that there would be a significant overlap.
  2. Events, dear boy: Bad world-builders don’t think about why their races are the way they are. So your dwarves love making things, live underground and hate orcs – why? What historical or biological processes caused their society to evolve in such a way? Do dwarves crave gold because of a famous king who loved the metal more than anything, who set the trend? What would their society need to be like for such a fashion to take root? Oftentimes, if the question “why” is asked, it usually comes down to a matter of “Because a god said so”. This is fair enough, but often divine will is used to paste over contradictory ideas.
  3. Where are all the Elven binmen?: Cultures are big, complicated things, with a huge range of tasks that need to be done. You can’t just have a gentry who live in the lap of luxury – you need somebody to plump all those silk cushions and scrub those marble floors. Most fantasy races seem to ignore at least one or two major industrial sectors (such as farming, or domestic service), without any corresponding absence of the goods and services those industries provide.

In all honesty, 1. and 2. are the real flaws, while 3. is more of a particularly common by-product. By not thinking in detail about the range of traits and needs that human societies express, and about the complex causes of such traits, you will end up making your speculative society look entirely 2 dimensional – with the neglect of practical needs being the most likely error. Not only does this process of reflection produce (ultimately) better stories, but it avoids the prospect of falling back on offensive stereotypes in order to provide a bit of colour.

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December 22, 2011

Interstellar Iconoclasm: Stargate SG-1’s war on religion.

It's theocide - IN SPACE!


Stargate SG-1 was one of the longest-running science fiction TV-shows in American history. It remains massively popular since its cancellation, and has produced a huge variety of spin-offs and has been syndicated globally. It depicts an intrepid team of all-American commandos, sent to explore other worlds using a mysterious network of interstellar portals called Stargates, and forced to battle the scary alien empires they find there. It’s a good show, and I’d recommend it. The downside? The major antagonists are based on the gods of Earth history. Many mythologies are represented, although the Egyptian Pantheon seems to be a hot favourite. In addition to Ra, Apophis, Anubis and Bastet, we see Cronus, Kali, Baal and even the Morrigan being transformed into decidedly campy villains, of which any pantomime would be proud. I could rant about this being heinously offensive, but I’m a firm believer in freedom of speech and besides; my gods are big enough to respond themselves, if they so desire. I’m not even too bothered that the richly complex personalities of myth are transformed into simplistic monsters of the week, who to a man (or woman) are a bunch of weasily, treacherous bastards, with very little variation in terms of personality. Again, it’s an issue of creative freedom – if the producers want to pillage mythology to window-dress some easy nefariousness, that’s up to them. And to be fair, it is emphasised that the Goa’uld adopted pre-existing (human) divine archetypes in order to take control, rather than humans simply responding to their advanced technology of “Anubis” by making him into a deity. Small favours, I suppose.

What gets my goat, though, is the fact that almost every major pantheon is represented, but the Judeo-Christian/Islamic God is conspicuous in his absence. Even the Devil (who is “revealed” to be the same, particularly nasty Goa’uld who earlier portrayed himself as Sokar – that’s right, the Egyptian falcon god of salvation) is represented. But not YHWH. And in one episode – “Demons” – we find out why: According to Teal’c, a former slave of Apophis, no Goa’uld would be capable of showing the necessary compassion to pass as the Christian God. Yes, that’s right. Bastet, the Egyptian goddess of hearth and home – manageable. Isis, the benevolent Egyptian queen of marital love and protection of innocents – no problem. Lord Yu, the heavenly Lord of the Chinese pantheon – easy peasey. But YHWH? He of the seven plagues, he who rained fire down on Sodom and Gomorrah, he who has shed blood in all seven continents (something that even Baal was unable to manage), he who has suppressed and oppressed gays, women, witches, artists, intellectuals and other free-thinkers for generations? No, he’s much to nice.

Now, I’m not saying that YHWH is nastier than the pagan gods. Most of the pagan divinities have their darker side. Even my patron Sulis is a most expedient deliverer of curses (something I do not ask of her). But the point is, that like every other divine force in the cosmos, YHWH is both powerful and (potentially) very controlling. If that isn’t enough, then why the hell are the more beneficent gods and goddess included in Stargate SG-1s stable of villains?

Of course, the show does make a side-swipe at extremist Christianity – through the religion of Origin. Led by yet more “false gods” (the Ori – ascended beings of much greater power than the Goa’uld), this religion promises Enlightenment, but delivers only slavery. But I find it irritating that while the writers are only too happy to make a direct pop at the darker side of Pagan faiths, Christianity needs to be critiqued from behind a swift name-change. It’s yet another instance of Monotheists getting special treatment, and it marrs my enjoyment of an otherwise tremendously good franchise.

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November 30, 2011

Meek’s Cutoff: America’s Manifesting Destiny [Spoilers]

I don’t much care for Westerns. As I kid, I always found them traumatic – I empathised with the Indians, and didn’t understand why it was expected that I side with the settlers. The Indians, with their bare-chests, determined stoicism and the ability to melt, ghost-like, into the desert was far more beguiling to my seven-year old self than the fresh-faced bravado of the cowboys and their impractically clad ladyfolk. Besides, I always thought, it’s the Indian’s land. Why shouldn’t they defend it? As I got older, I found out about colonialism, genocide and manifest destiny; and my hatred of those cocky, wide-brimmed bastards who defended the endless wagon-trains from native assault became solidified.

With this in mind, I wasn’t expecting to enjoy Meek’s Cutoff, a film about just such a wagon train, winding its way westwards through the north-eastern corner of Oregon. But from the off, it was clear that this was no action-packed cowboys n’ Indians flick. The pace is positively glacial, and the director Kelly Reichardt has clearly no romantic delusions about the old west. Dialogue is kept to a minimum through much of the first twenty minutes; the setting really speaks for itself. Great care is taken to use intimate shots of the settlers to convey the emotional depth of their situation; expressing the uncertainty, fear and despair of a life on the trail with little more than an etching on a broken caravan, or the absence of a once treasured pet canary. Before too long, though, the central plot emerges from the general atmosphere of exhaustion – the train desperately needs to find water, and only have the vain and seemingly incompetent frontiersman Meek (Bruce Greenwood) to help them find it. That is, until they capture an enigmatic Native American (Rod Rondeaux), who soon is ordained as the guide in Meek’s place. In the end, the film gives little resolution to the plot’s overarching questions – something that usually irritates me intensely about American indie cinema – but I nonetheless thoroughly enjoyed it.

Why? Simply because this film is the perfect antidote to all those godawful Hollywood Westerns. Much more subtly than the blunt moralism of Dances with Wolves or the brisk nihilism of No Country for Old Men, Meek’s Cutoff is quite simply a complete and thoroughly satisfactory deconstruction of the American frontiersman. The swaggering, thick-bearded adventurer Meek is gradually measured out as a purveyor of nothing but tall tails and male bravado; a reassuring and charismatic figure in the comfort of a frontier town or a 60s living room, but a deeply unconvincing prospect for the settlers, who gradually lose their trust in him and, in the case of Emily Tetherow (played beautifully by Michelle Williams), actively grow to hate him. By the end of the film, Meek’s empowered-outsider status has evaporated, becoming by his own admission little more but a follower of the elder of the three settler patriarchs, Soloman Tetherow (Will Patton), who persuades the rest of the caravan to follow the path made by the Indian instead.

However, the Indian is not presented as the wise noble savage to Meek’s hubristic barbarian. Rather, the Indian is entirely inscrutable – a figure who neither the audience nor the other characters have any understanding of. His appearance is mysterious – we do not know if he is a scout, a medicine man, a lunatic or an outcast, as his occasional mutterings in a Native American language are left untranslated. The audience, like the settlers, are left to interpret his enigmatic movements, gestures and speech; but throughout his motives and ultimate objectives remain obscure. Here is no stereotyped Indian, existing only to underscore the virtue or depravity of white men. He is a true to himself, existing on his own terms and following his own path, whatever that may be. Whites are merely left puzzled in his path, making their own varied interpretations of his role in their own egoistic lifeworld.

To me, this dichotomy – between Great Mystery and Great Men – reflects the driving goal for the American Dream, and this film represents its recent apogee. The American people, like the settlers, are faced with two great visions of the road ahead, one requiring them to put their faith in the supposed hero of Manifest Destiny, now exposed as nothing more than a brutal and vainglorious charlatan. But as they gradually run out of the most basic of necessities, the alternative remains as elusive as ever. What direction the American people will take now is, to me, highly uncertain. But personally, the most enduring image I have of Meek’s Cutoff – of how out of place these ordinary Victorian whites looked in the middle of the wild – suggests the key question to be asked now is not “where are we going?”, but “how well are we adapted to the world as it is?”

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October 15, 2011

Moaning about Merlin

The title character

Keep the magic secret - really, must we?


We’re only two episodes in to season 4 of the BBC’s Merlin and I’m already experiencing the familiar nadir of my love-hate cycle for the show. By that, I mean when I hear that a new series is coming up, I convince myself it was never all that bad, and I should give it another go. Besides, Bradley James is gorgeous. So I get myself all excited, before being thoroughly disappointed when I actually watch an episode or two.

Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a fantastic production. I think the balance of emphasis on CGI, costume, make up and location really makes for gorgeous end product. The acting is great, and the directing is fantastic too – indeed, it’s these things that keep me coming back for more. The only thing that lets it down, according to the Guardian’s Daniel Martin, is the writing. And I kinda have to agree.

Bad writing is pretty common, because it’s easily overlooked. Bad producing is invisible but usually lethal, bad special effects look tacky, bad acting looks hilariously obvious while bad direction looks like Star Wars Episode 1. Especially if you’ve got good actors and reasonable (or better) production values, audiences will overlook plodding, functional dialogue or a trite concept. Just look at Avatar. Often, studio execs even favor a banal storyline, and are happy to skimp on getting good writers – thinking that the better caliber actors/director involved in the project will be able “make it work”. I have to say, even the dialogue doesn’t bother me so much in Merlin. The actors handle what might otherwise be clunky lines so well that you don’t even notice. However, the concept and plot are really what I find unavoidably irritating.

Firstly, it feels like they’ve just flicked through British mythology and picked out beings to act as Monster of the Week. Almost everybody who uses magic other than Merlin is therefore cast as a villain, making the assertion that “magic isn’t evil” rather hollow. That said, the show does feature benevolent Druids (which made me very happy), but as looming big-bad Mordred is a Druid, it remains to be seen how long this lasts. Secondly, and more importantly, the overarching plot and emotionally-driven characterisation of Merlin clash horribly. Instead of striking me as a believable, likeable young hero, Merlin comes across as weak; unable to make tough decisions if it means hurting those he loves.

Ultimately, I think Merlin ticks the “Saturday Night Fantasy Romp” box very well, but I feel it could be so much more. I just wish TV execs didn’t feel so compelled to fit to the formula – because the formula is getting old. Relying upon evil to provide tension clashes with the postmodern desire for realistic, “complicated” protagonists. Mythology, if it is to relevant, needs to be sincerely re-engaged with, not pillaged for characters. Utilizing tired plot devices like “keeping the magic secret” and “chosen ones” is just boring. Just once, I’d like a fantasy TV show with a plot more original than the impending Destruction of Everyone by Somebody Nasty, who must be fought by a Chosen One.

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March 27, 2011

Beginning with a protest…

Okay, so my first post on wordpress! I should probably introduce myself – my name is Jonathan Woolley – I’m 22, and I’m currently an MPhil student at the University of Cambridge. I’m a practicing Pagan Druid and I’m gay.  I was at the cuts protest yesterday, so as you can guess – I’m a raging lefty.

What can you expect to see here? Well, I plan on writing on articles that cluster around three areas in particular: social anthropology, paganism and authorship.  They’re the three things that dominate most of my time, and are what I’ve been interested in since a very early age, even if at the time I didn’t really have a word for the first two!

Social (or cultural) anthropology has about a billion definitions depending upon who you ask, but is basically the study of the human condition through the method of ethnography – the creation of textual or visual representation of a culture, developed through living and studying with that culture. I happened on social anthropology thanks to my mum suggesting that it might be good option for me at undergrad, as I was interested in both natural science and religious studies. That proved to be a winning suggestion, as I’m now planning on going on to do a PhD in the damn thing. My main interest is in the anthropology of religion, particularly in the religious experience and moral interaction with the environment. I’ve also got an interest in elements of political economy.

My anthropology posts here will probably deal with these topics, but only very generally – in the end, I more see this blog as an outlet for the more general musings I have on anthropological themes. So it’s going to be “academically informed” rather than academic, and the ideas I air here won’t be as rigorously worked-out as the ones you’ll find in one of my essays or articles. I’ll also try to keep to clear, non-technical language to make good on my promise to myself to make anthropology “accessible” – whatever that means.

Paganism is an umbrella term for a collection of nature-revering spiritual movements and traditions. Some people stretch this to include Indigenous Religions, Hinduism, African Traditional Religion, Shinto, Daoism etc but usually Paganism is used to refer to the rejuvenated practice of pre-Christian forms of spiritual practice in Europe and the Near East. In my case, I’m an initiate of the Bardic Grade of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, one of Britain’s largest druid orders. I’ve been a member for about a year, and I regularly attend the camps OBOD members hold down in the west-country. Like many Pagans, I’ve always felt like a Pagan, it’s just that in the past couple of years I’ve taken to changing the way I define my religion to better reflect my beliefs and practices. I incorporate activism, creativity and theology into my practice – so expect to see articles on all the following here.

Authorship is my primary creative medium. As of now, I have just finished my first novel, working title A Frog Among Men. I love writing so much, and find the work of crafting a story, setting and characters to be exhilirating in the extreme. I’d ultimately like to be a professional writer, but considering how competitive writing is I’m also keeping several other irons in the fire. My primary interests in literature are fantasy, sci-fi, historical, spiritual and dystopian/utopian fiction. However, I’m utterly terrible at listing what books I’ve read and/or like, because my memory for title-dropping is so poor. I’ve read my way through half a forest by now, but ask me to name who I read last and who my favourite author is, and I’ll have to sit down and think about it. I might write an article on this in the future, but primarily I’ll be discussing my creative process on this blog.

So that’s what you can expect from me. Updates… let’s say Mondays and Thursdays. See how that goes.

Posted in Daily Life, Paganism, Social Anthropology, Writing | 1 Comment »

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