Pantheacon (3) – Asatru

I’ve been slowly working up to partaking of Pantheacon completely.  I’ve often dined with friends there in the past.  This is only the second year I’ve really gone at the convention full-tilt.  Not quite sure why; maybe a fear of feeling alone there or let-down.  Last year was wonderful—I spent a lot of the con last year trying to find every single Facebook “friend” who was there.  Still, my approach had remained tentative.

I arrived this year after the opening ritual and headed for a workshop on Asatru.  Actually it was a combination workshop/book-promotion.  That was okay with me; I’m also connected with the California Writers Club.

My mind had not quite settled into the convention atmosphere, and I was worrying about an open mic I was to lead later that evening; but I did learn a few things about Asatru—and I was inspired to a little research of my own later.

Asatru is a modern Heathen religion that takes inspiration from the old traditions of northern Europe—the “heath” that includes Germany, Scandinavia, England, and Iceland.  Asatru  (the term was coined in the 1830s) is based on what we know of the traditions of the Goths, Germans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings et al; as exhibited, for example, in the Eddas of Iceland.  These tell the Heathen version of the creation of the world and cosmology, describing deities such as Odin and Freyja.  Several magical systems are represented, including the Runes.  Prominent activities include the Sumbel (ritual toasting) and Blót (community feasts).

I was surprised to learn of similarities with Sikhism:  A belief that men should not cut their hair, and the idea that adherents should carry weapons (as symbols of their spiritual freedom).

I also learned that Heathens are divided into “universalist” and “folkish” branches.  The folkish are more native-ethnically oriented; the universalists accept interested individuals regardless of ethnic or racial background (have I put that delicately enough?)

But this was my first real encounter with Asatru; I may not have understood things perfectly.

The thought came to me, as I listened to the presentation and examined some of the drawings presented, that Northern culture doesn’t particularly appeal to me; perhaps because I grew up with Biblical and Classical stories and films—Mediterranean culture makes more sense to me.  Nevertheless I became a devotee of Wagner operas while still a teenager and knew a little already about the Eddas; so it seems that the Heathen should hold some appeal.

Then again, I’ve absorbed a lot of Christian liturgical style (Catholic, Episcopalian) and mysticism, plus Vedanta and Buddhism—which perhaps facilitated my entry into Wicca.  Wicca feels right to me.  So even if Wagner has become second-nature and expresses a part of my soul…somehow I don’t seem to have a natural “bent” towards Asatru.  And anyway—Wagner (like current neo-Pagans) had a way of redoing mythology to suit his own tastes.

Pantheacon (2) – Pagans? Heathens?? Witches???

So, speaking of Pantheacon, some of you may be wondering just what this is all about?  A convention for Pagans, Heathens, Witches and such?  Surely this must be a joke.  Perhaps you cannot imagine what such an event would be like.  You can’t imagine people in the year 2013 calling themselves Pagan and the other names.

I’ve been a Pagan for over thirty years.  You may ask:  How can that be?  Surely these things have been left behind long ago, hundreds or even thousands of years ago, by civilized people.

No.  I was baptized a Lutheran and grew up hearing Bible stories, it is true.  Then, in grade school, I also heard the legends of Greek heroes.  In high school I heard about Greek tragic heroes.  So that I was familiar with the so-called “Pagan” authors before I ever got to college.  About the same time, I became interested in Wagnerian opera, eastern religion, and the psychology of Carl Jung.

I was inclined towards nature and mysticism.  When I discovered books about Wicca, and Margot Adler’s Drawing Down the Moon, it didn’t seem particularly foreign to me.

I confess, I read Adler’s book because I’d been studying mythology.  I’d spent a lot of time with Joseph Campbell’s four-volume The Masks of God.  I was interested in modern approaches to myth.  When I noticed that most of Adler’s book dealt with modern-day witches, I was a bit put-off.   Witches?!  I wasn’t interested in witches!  I thought that anyone calling themselves a witch nowadays must be either extremely shallow or extremely weird.

But it appealed to me.  It was not what I had expected.  I’d believed stereotypes.  You may have ideas of who these people are; and you may be wrong.

I’ve been surprised, over the years, by how many other people have also felt attracted to these things.  

So—I’m going to tell you a bit about Pantheacon—what I saw and heard there.

Stay tuned.

Anthems (2) – The 1812 Overture and a Few Inaccuracies

Just finished listening to (about half, actually, of) Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture.”  I was listening to a version including cannons—not too unusual, that—but one that also included choirs to sing the prayers at the beginning and end, “God Save the Czar,” and the children’s song that occurs about halfway through—this is not so common.

At the end I was simply stunned.  Of course, I was also watching an accompanying slide show of paintings dealing with Napoleon and his invasion of Russia.  But I just sat there for about half a minute afterwards, recovering.

This is probably the first piece of classical music I ever heard.  I think I listened to it on 78 rpm vinyls, back when I was around five (ie. 1956).

One of the things about anthems is that they can transport you into a patriotic or religious space.  Tchaikovsky’s overture certainly has done that for me, over the years.  During the years I was growing up at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, every Fourth of July my family would drive the few miles to Fort Monroe for the Independence Day celebration, including the Overture and the cannon.  It was years before I understood that Tchaikovsky had incorporated national anthems into his music.

In time, while learning French, I also learned “The Marseillaise,” the French national anthem, alluded to several times by Tchaikovsky.  Much later, I discovered that one of the themes Tchaikovsky used at the climax of his overture was the Russian national anthem, “God Save the Czar.”  So the “1812 Overture” symbolically pits the French anthem against the Russian.  And how stirring it is!

But—Tchaikovsky is technically inaccurate in both cases.  “The Marseillaise,” after becoming France’s first national anthem during the French Revolution, was discarded by Napoleon.  During most of the 1800s it was actually not France’s anthem—and was actually banned some part of that time.  So it would not have been used by the French during their invasion of Russia.

Russia, meanwhile, did not yet have a national anthem in 1812.  “God Save the Czar” was chosen as the winner of a competition and became the anthem in 1833 – twenty-one years after the French invasion.

So anthems can stir us, can arouse us to great passion—but can also perhaps mislead us.  Not a bad thing to remember.

Introducing Pantheacon

I spent the U.S. Presidents Day weekend (especially long for me, since I got both Friday and Monday off of work) attending Pantheacon at a hotel in San Jose, CA—only about seven miles from my home in Sunnyvale.

I’m not sure how to describe Pantheacon to folks who know nothing about it.  It’s a four-day convention…and I think I’ll say that its focus is contemporary American Paganism.  If that sounds puzzling, superficial, or immoral to you, I’ll add the word “religious”:  American Religious Paganism.  If you’re the type who say’s you’re “spiritual” not “religious”…then let’s say “American Pagan Spirituality” or something.

Pantheacon (this was its 19^th year) has described itself thus:  “We are a conference for Pagans, Heathens, Indigenous Non-European and many of diverse beliefs that occurs annually over President’s Day weekend. Well over 2000 people attend more than 200 presentations that range from rituals to workshops and from classes to concerts.”

I arrived on Friday afternoon, after lunch.  My wife also attended.  Every day we drove over, spent part or all of the day there, and returned home to sleep.  We left finally around 4 p.m. Monday afternoon.  I guess that’s only three days, elapsed.

I’m pretty sure I’ve at least dropped by to visit friends attending this conference over the past 19 years.  However, I can’t swear I actually attended any workshops until 2011, when I dropped in long enough to watch a documentary and have dinner with friends.  Last year, as far as I know, was the first year I more or less attended the entire weekend.  My main memory of last year, however, is of looking for everyone there who I had met previously only on Facebook—which turned out to be a sizeable number of people!

This year I must have been wandering the hallways at totally different times.  I didn’t meet any “Facebook People.”  And whereas in 2011 the hospitality suites were crammed with people, this year whenever I went to the suites, the crowd was sparse.

I’m planning to spend some time now summarizing the events I experienced.  We’ll see how far I get!

First Thoughts About Anthems

When I was about eight years old, living on an Air Force base in Virginia, I stopped one afternoon, at whatever time they did this, and watched the lowering of the American flag at, I guess, the base headquarters.  This ceremony was performed every day.  Somewhere in the middle of “The Star Spangled Banner,” I whispered something to my friend along the lines of “Pretty long, huh?”  My friend replied with something like “Be quiet.”

That was probably my first experience with public anthems.  Of course I’d recited the Pledge of Allegiance probably every morning in school.  But now we were standing outside, away from the adults, watching airmen lower the flag.  We were watching, not participating; not singing the song.  But my companion must have been surprised, maybe embarrassed, maybe actually shocked when I spoke during the Anthem.

Ten years later, as a senior in high school, no longer living on an Air Force base, my father now in Vietnam, I attended a pep rally for the school basketball team.  The rally began with the National Anthem, which was met with a general “Ho-Hum.”  The rally continued.  Towards the end, the band struck up a brisk version of “Dixie.”  I was amazed at the enthusiasm of the students.  They hadn’t particularly cared either way about the National Anthem; they’d only been moderately interested in the basketball team; but they sure went wild about “Dixie.”

This was awhile back:  1969.  The year before, during the election, I had sat with the other Hubert Humphrey supporters towards the rear of the school auditorium during our “mock election.”  I think Nixon won at our school, with George Wallace coming in second.  Very few students supported Hubert Humphrey.  They were mostly black; I was one of the few whites.

Five or six years later, in Graduate School, I would see “Triumph of the Will” for the first time, and hear the “Horst Wessel Song,” the Nazi anthem.  I had already learned “The Marseillaise” in my French Class.  I knew “Deutschland Uber Alles” from studying German and living in Germany.  I knew the Japanese National Anthem from having lived in Japan.  And I’d spent a summer “up north,” and had heard “Oh Canada.”  Of course I had heard “We Shall Overcome.”  In time, I would learn the Marxist “Internationale” as well as the so-called Black National Anthem “Lift Every Voice and Sing.”

I’m a musical person.  These tunes all moved me.  I’ve now heard Czarist anthems and Soviet anthems.  These are more than just songs.  I would suggest than these songs are stirring because they represent an identity beyond personal identity.  They bind us to a larger group, for good or ill.  And sometimes, even in spite of the words, the music possesses us.

Conflicted Feelings: Literature, PoliSci, Anthems

Some upcoming themes.

Proust is drawing me back.  There’s a wonderful reading of the Madeleine event on YouTube—runs over nine minutes.  I’ve listened to it two nights running.  Tonight I added the All-England Summarize Proust Competition (Monty Python).  Yep—Marcel is luring me back.  Probably not the best way to begin a brief Summary of Coming Events.  But I have my tea and cookies here (grin).

It’s difficult to write about conflicting feelings, but will try.

This morning I finished reading Andrew Holleran’s Dancer From The Dance.  Curious that this book should have appeared in the late 1970s, just before the arrival of AIDS.  Holleran writes beautiful prose but, like Edmund White and Felice Picano, pulls me in opposite ways all at once.

Politics—or at least Political Science.  Earlier today I was thinking I should have majored in that.  Then again, theory is never the same as practice.  

The thoughts came because I’ve been listening to various national (and other) anthems.  And tonight I watched some archival footage on YouTube.  I saw Stalin and Khrushchev and Che Guevara.   Somehow, I like to hear historical figures speaking, in their own language—whether I understand the language or not.  I’ve listened to Hitler and Mussolini—can’t remember for sure about Franco.  Of course, this is connected with my interest in languages.

Yesterday, I attempted to learn something about Anarchism—unsuccessfully, I think.  I’m more and more interested in how people organize to get things done.  Can that be “anarchism??”  I suspect not.

Indeed, theory is never practice.  Awhile back, I stumbled on a recording (again on YouTube) of Paul Robeson singing the Soviet National Anthem.  More conflicting feelings!  The melody is the same as the current Russian National Anthem, but the words come from Stalin’s time, the time of the Nazi invasion of Russia.  The old words move me—even the ones about the “Soviet Fatherland”—but I’ve studied Russian and Russian history, and know that the Russian word soviet means “council,” with a history and context predating the Bolsheviks.

Meanwhile, along with these conflicting feelings, there still lurks the essay I began last year, “On Affection.”  Somehow I must get on with it—but the contradictory thoughts and feelings:  Love and Fear; Attraction and Repulsion; Trust and Disinterest.

Tonight I sat glancing, inexplicably, through the Santa Clara County Verified Home Services Free Service Guide.  Behind me, someone was watching No Country For Old Men.  Meanwhile, in the living room, someone else was watching Bad Santa.  Conflicting feelings!  But one must move forward.

I’ll be elaborating on some of the above themes soon.