Erynn Rowan Laurie, an elder of Celtic Reconstructionism and collaborator on the Celtic Reconstructionist FAQ project, has recently made available a PDF file, giving the beginner an excellent introduction to the Ogam and her valuable insight into it. This PDF will be the core of her upcoming book on the subject to be published by Megalithica Press.Though reading several books on the Ogam, I never felt them to be very accessible to me. Laurie’s fresh perspective and insight has unlocked the door and I’m studying this fascinating alphabet with renewed interest.

Although easy to read, Laurie’s scholarship is rigorous for such a brief treatment of the subject. She clearly explains her sources and differentiates them from her personal insights.

After some introductory notes explaining briefly the history of the Ogam and her approach to them, Each Ogam is given one page. The descriptions start with the traditional associations, and then Laurie gives us a few paragraphs of her personal insight, which I have found very edifying. A later section briefly discusses divination methods and other practical uses.

In short, Laurie’s work provides an excellent springboard for a beginner (like me) and I look forward to her completed book on the subject.

Hat tip to Brenda.

A Federal 9th Circuit case was recently brought to my attention. It is in the matter of Faith Center Church Evangelistic Ministries v. Contra Costa County. The 9th Circuit held it permissible for a library to disallow religious groups to hold services in library conference rooms. The problem is that this holding is in direct contradiction to the holding of the 2001 Supreme Court case of Good News Club v. Milford Central School. By the Good News holding, there is no way a library can discriminate based on religion or religiosity of an activity.

I predict that this case will be appealed to the Supreme Court and the 9th Circuit will be reversed. I think it is time for us, as pagans, to test the waters. By the Good News Club holding, Pagan groups cannot be discriminated against if they want to hold rituals or workshops in libraries. I think it is time we took our fight to these public meeting spaces at schools and libraries. If your local library has meeting rooms available for use by public groups, start organizing pagan group meetings to hold in them.

I think however these library meetings play out, it will be good for us. On the one hand, we can use the rooms just like everyone else, cutting our dependence on entities such as the UU church and the private property of individuals for our large-scale activities. We can hold activities even in smaller communities and places without such pagan patronage.

On the other hand, if our meetings fail, there will be grounds to bring to light the inequity through the court system. Either way, our public exposure will be increased and the public will have to learn how to deal with us.

Some pointers for those who would hold these library meetings:

1. Meticulously follow every rule and rules of common curtesy.
2. Remain quiet and unobtrusive.
3. No candles, incense, or other fire.
4. No loud noise.
5. No response to any kind of protest there might be accept to ask that the rules of the library be followed.
6. Nothing anti-Christian or anti-anything on the agenda. Keep a positive focus.
7. Make sure there is some kind of discernible community benefit.

In short, give our critics as little ammunition as possible. If there is any excuse to exclude our activities other than religion, they will use it to hide behind. It must be clear and unequivocal that if we are excluded from using these public resources, it is solely because of religious intolerance.

Good luck, and I’ll be seeing you at the library!

I put out feelers last week about how the relationships were between the UU Churches here and the local pagan community. In Baton Rouge, there was a rough patch about 15 years ago, but most of the people involved had moved on. The Pagans are now accepted and welcomed, and it does not seem there are any real tensions. It seemed to have the character of a “changing of the guard.” The opposers were old, the pagans were young. Those opposed, over the last 15 years, died or moved off to be closer to family while the younger pagans have gained influence, some becoming staff members.

I haven’t heard anything from Shreveport or New Orleans which also have UU churches.

One important fact to keep in mind about UU churches is that individual churches have a great deal of autonomy. Individual churches can be very different from each other and their willingness to harbor local Pagans may vary widely. Each locality is going to have its own way of dealing with things.

Altmuslim.com recently published an article by Zeeshan Hasan which takes a startling tack at trying to help the world religions get along: point out their common polytheistic roots. “If we accept the historical evidence that Abraham was polytheist, then we have found grounds for a more pluralistic view of Islam in the many verses praising him.”Hasan takes us through the evidence that strongly suggests the polytheism of Abraham and his descendants. By his reading, the Yahweh that appears to Moses in Exodus may actually be a different God, one that wraps up concepts of El and Baal into a neat package for new iron age Israelites.

From a historical point of view, the assertion that Israelite religion was originally monotheist is quite difficult to maintain. The Bible itself tells us that Abraham and his sons, the founding ancestors of the Israelites, lived in a Canaanite, polytheist environment. But we have only the Biblical tradition that Abraham was an immigrant from Babylonia to distinguish him from his Canaanite neighbors. The archaeological impossibility of ever verifying the immigration or even existence of a single individual into Canaan thousands of years ago means that we will never be able to verify this critical Biblical claim. On the other hand, we can see from traces of El and Baal in the Bible that the early Israelites who lived in Canaan actually worshipped something similar to Canaanite gods: so how do we know that the first Israelites were not originally Canaanites? If Abraham really came from Ur, why would he and his tribe speak Hebrew, a dialect of the Canaanite language? Why would his tribe name themselves “Isra-El” after a Canaanite deity?

When Moses introduced the god Yahweh to his people, it is perhaps more accurate to say that they became henotheistic rather than monotheistic. They recognized the possible existence of other gods, but only worshiped theirs. It was appropriate for them to do so, perhaps, because a greater god apportioned the Israelites to their god, Yahweh, just as all people were given their own god or gods. To support this theory, Hasan points us to this peculiar verse, Deuteronomy 32:8-9:

When Elyon apportioned the nations, when he divided humankind, he fixed the boundaries of the peoples according to the number of the gods; Yahweh’s own portion was his people, Jacob his allotted share.

Because the people of the world are divided up by this divine plan, according to Hasan, Islam should be more tolerant, even appreciative of the other religions of the world.

The above seems to imply that the variety of religious faiths that we see in the world may all be part of a larger divine scheme of things. How do we know that all of these are not simply the “sacred rites” appointed to different nations, each corresponding to various divinely-approved “traced-out ways” (shir’at in Arabic, with a similar etymology as shari’ah)? They may seem different and strange to us, but so would Abraham’s Canaanite polytheism. And the Qur’an is very positive about Abraham; so it becomes impossible for us to criticize any religion based on doctrine. As the above makes clear, the only way left to criticize any religion is based on the “good works” of its followers. From this viewpoint, Islam does not become merely tolerant of other religions, but actually appreciative of them.

I say, if exposing the polytheistic roots of the Old Testament can help Islam be more tolerant, then certainly it should do the same for Christianity. Somehow, that seems like too much to hope for.

I read with interest Pitzl-Waters’ recent series of articles concerning the Unitarian Universalist church and paganism. It seems the UU church is often a warm and protected environment, a safe-haven from the vagarities of the outside world. Sort of a greenhouse for our fledgling religious movements. Pitzl-Waters’ articles began with questioning whether the protected environment of the UU Church is really good for us, but in further exploration, learned that all is not as safe and protected as we might have thought. He explores how there may be a deep divide in the church that has been simmering for years.I am not sure what concerns me the most: that maybe we use the shelter of the UU Church too much, or that even the UU church doesn’t really guarantee our activities safety in the long run.

I have been a worshiper at few UU churches here in Louisiana. One in Shreveport recently sponsored a Pagan Pride day. The one in Baton Rouge sponsored a class series on pagan philosophy the second year in a row, taught by our own, lovable Dragon who writes here occasionally. I wonder if these kinds of tensions have been experienced in my own neck of the woods.

Unfortunately, I live too far away from any UU church to be able to benefit from association with them, or to be in the know about these kinds of tensions which I have been blissfully unaware all this time. I plan to contact Dragon and the pagan organizers of the recent Pagan Pride day, and see how things went with them.