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Philadelphia Conference Diary
Nov. 23rd, 2005 11:45 amJen and I were in Philadelphia so I could attend the 2005 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion and the Society for Biblical Literature. This was a big year for the AAR/SBL and for Pagans at the AAR. That's because this is the last year that the AAR and the SBL are holding their annual meeting together, and the first year that Contemporary Pagan Studies has an official presence at the AAR meeting. Paranoid type that I am, I thought initially that these two events might be loosely connected -- i.e., that the Biblical types were getting tired of hanging around with so many weirdos on the AAR side. This, I am assured, is not the case. But the two events are indeed connected in a different way. The main reason for the split is that the combined conference has become too huge to find venues easily. And indeed, the conference was HUGE. I mean MEGA-HUGE. It seemed as though the Center City area of Philadelphia had been invaded and occupied for four days by members of, and scholars of, every conceivable religion, from Neopaganism to Salafi Islam and everything in between.
This explains the connection between the split and the Pagans' official debut at the conference. You see, as I'm told, the Pagan Studies group, which began as a tiny informal gathering ten years ago, and which has grown over the years into a larger and more structured presence on the fringes of the official meeting, finally had their application for official status at the AAR meeting approved in part because with the split coming, the AAR was going to be able to accomodate more new panels at the annual meeting. This, combined with the enhanced stature the pagans have due to their rising scholarly profile, led to this year's breakthrough.
Now, there may have been a grain of truth to the idea that the SBL people were tired of associating with all the weirdos on the AAR side, but not in the way that I imagined it initially. And this gets me into my personal impressions of the conference. The SBL people ARE actually kind of tired of the AAR weirdos, but the AAR weirdos aren't weird to them because they are pagans and Buddhists and Bahais and whatnot, they're weird because they are mostly anthropologists and sociologists of religion instead of people doing theology and textual criticism and so forth.
It seemed to me as though academic discipline trumped religious affiliation at this gathering. I felt estranged from my fellow pagans on account of the fact that they were mostly sociologists and anthropologists, while I am -- what am I exactly? -- let's say a philosophy-of-religion type. "Contemporary Pagan Studies" = "Studying Contemporary Pagans," a distinction which I do not think I fully marked up front. If pagan theology were a recognized discipline, maybe I'd feel more at home with other theologians, like the people from the SBL. Or maybe not, what with the burning at the stake and so forth.
The first event of the conference for me was the Conference on Contemporary Pagan Studies, which was all day Friday. This is the original group which was founded ten years ago and has met ever since on the fringes of the official AAR/SBL annual meeting, and which continues, even though there is now an official Contemporary Pagan Studies Group at the actual AAR meeting. The CCPS meeting was attended by over sixty people, an impressive turnout. There I met some luminaries in the pagan academic mafia, as it is sometimes known.
The kind of gathering I'd really enjoy would have gathered pagan academics who, rather than studying Neopaganism as a phenomenon, were instead working their way into academic specialties having to do with particular areas -- e.g., Egyptology or Classics or Norse literature or Chinese religion -- of interest to them as pagans and the study of which badly needs the kind of perspective that their scholarship can provide. This was not that kind of gathering; in fact, I did start to get tired of people making cracks about Reconstructionists.
There is a big difference between people who think that the core of the pagan movement is nature worship, and who regard the existence of particular deities as at best a secondary concern, and those for whom the core of the movement is the renewal of contact between humans and the Gods in the wake of Christian and Islamic hegemony. The former are firmly rooted in the 60's and 70's counterculture, and basically see paganism as the religious wing of that movement. Which I used to be fine with, but now I'm starting to see the hair in the egg, as they say. Because the way in which the pagan movement articulated itself in that era is starting to be a stumbling block for pagans today.
For instance, it is assumed that the "perennial tradition" of Western esotericism, as manifest in things like ceremonial magick and Theosophy, should naturally be of interest to me as a pagan; and at a certain point it indeed was. But at this point, I'm trying to figure out what, for example, the ancient Egyptians were really saying INSTEAD OF what occultists since the Renaissance have said about them. Occultism was the life-support for the pagan legacy during the long dark ages, just like the counterculture movement was the stimulus for the neopagan revival in the West in the postwar era. But we're off life-support now, thank the Gods, and now, frankly, I think a lot of pagans would just as soon pick up where we left off, if such an idea isn't totally ridiculous after 1500 years. And where we left off was with a paganism which was not a "nature religion" but an EVERYTHING religion. It was the religion of the city and the country and of philosophers and of artists and of elites and of slaves and of everything else, all over the world. Then it was extinguished in the lands conquered by Christians and then Muslims. It has reestablished itself in those lands through a long and sometimes meandering path, and now seeks to reestablish connection with those indigenous traditions that escaped Christian or Muslim domination. Perhaps as books come out like Charles Clifton's forthcoming history of Neopaganism in the U.S., "Her Hidden Children," and other books which help to tell the story of how paganism was reborn in the West, people will start to have a sense that one's past doesn't have to be one's future, and that the elements which kept the embers of paganism in Europe glowing and which rekindled the flame in Europe and America are not, simply on account of that, the essential elements of the movement. This may also be helped by the beginnings of real theological debate in the pagan movement, as evidenced by two recent books by Jordan Paper and Michael York, the latter of whom was a leading presence in the Pagan Studies events at the AAR conference. That's not to say I necessarily agree with the pagan theologies proposed in these two books.
A further dimension of this issue is the "problem" (or pseudo-problem) of affiliation. This became really apparent to me in the second pagan studies event I attended, the first one which was an "official" AAR event, a panel on Eastern European Neopaganism done in conjunction with the New Religious Movements Group. This was a fascinating discussion of the state of Neopaganism in the Ukraine, Lithuania and Russia. It was great to hear the way that Neopaganism is burgeoning in this region, not only in the Orthodox areas, but also in Muslim areas like the Crimea. But it was sad to hear that there is so much racist ideology mixed up in the pagan groups there, especially in Russia. It didn't seem like it was that way in Lithuania, though. Ukraine sounded like it came in somewhere in the middle. Plus, a fellow who wasn't on the panel stood up and said that in Bulgaria, where he's from, the pagans joined some fringe right-wing party en masse and were as a result totally discredited, so I would assume it's a problem there too, unless their right-wingness had to do with marginal tax rates.
Now obviously these countries have a lot of problems in any event, and the pagan movement here has much less racism in it, if for no other reason than that racist discourse is just not tolerated here the way that it obviously is in the former Iron Curtain countries. But here's what worries me. What alternative paradigm do we have to offer pagans in these other countries? Because to my way of thinking, there are really three paradigms for pagan identity. One is that paganism is essentially a universal nature religion, differentiated at most according to bioregions. This is a kind of spiritualized ecology which I don't think cuts it as a paradigm for modern paganism. Another is that paganism is a loose assemblage of ethnic religions. This has some accuracy relative to how ancient paganism understood itself, but it brings in all the baggage associated with ethnicity in the modern world. What if I want to worship the Gods of an "ethnos" I don't belong to? Is there something wrong with that under this paradigm? Something unnatural? Finally, there is the paradigm that puts individual Gods first. One worships the Gods one chooses and to whom one feels called, and it is understood that while ethnic pantheons have value, they are instruments through which the Gods work, not structures upon which the Gods are dependent for their existence. This paradigm is to me the least hubristic, the most accurate in terms of capturing the ontology implicit in most ancient pagan praxis, and the most promising for not getting in the way of individual choice. But it is also the least developed of the paradigms, and one that I did not get the feeling there was a whole lot of grasp of among the people attending the pagan studies events at the AAR. Nor is it a very prominent point of view in Eastern Europe, as I was told point blank by one of the panelists. But not only is a paganism that leaves out the Gods not going anywhere, IMO, but the whole movement is going to be tarnished by an ethnocentrism having no counterbalance aside from a flabby ecocentric universalism.
Now for personal matters. Philadelphia was cold and distinctly less fun this time than on our last trip there. My meetings with the Neoplatonists, who have groups in both the SBL and the AAR, were pleasant. I got to meet a number of scholars who have just been names on books for me, like Gregory Shaw, Sarah Rappe, and most of all, the eminent John Dillon. I finally met John Finamore, head of the International Society for Neoplatonic Studies. But the big disappointment to me was my paper at Monday's AAR Neoplatonism panel. I wrote an abstract for this paper ("Neoplatonism and Polytheism") which I thought was absolute gold, but then I just couldn't write a paper that lived up to it, for some reason. So as a result, I feel as though I had a golden opportunity to read a paper in front of John Dillon and the paper I wished I was reading wasn't the one in my hands. Well, maybe he'll read my article coming up in "Dionysius", or even look at my dissertation, as he indicated he might when I spoke to him after the SBL Neoplatonism panel on Saturday. Otherwise, turnout was light at my panel; Monday was a travel day for many. No pagan studies attendees, at least not that I recognized.
There was a book fair at the conference which was to die for. There's a brand new translation of the Pyramid Texts by James Allen and a brand new translation of Iamblichus' "On the Mysteries" by, among others, John Dillon. I'm still trying to make up my mind about the frighteningly expensive but mouthwatering giant deluxe edition of a demotic Egyptian text called "The Book of Thoth". No, not the one by Crowley but what appears to be a mind-melting 30 page ritual text straight from the sacred library of Hermopolis. I think it's $160 with the AAR/SBL discount? As Shakespeare wrote, "Exit chased by a bear."
Bought some fun things. From the Nataraj Books booth, a Hindu classic-comics version of the myth of Durga, as well as an animated movie about Hanuman and a movie called "Naag Shakti" which appears to be about the queen of the Nagas, plus a neat little book about Saraswati and a glossy children's book, a guide to the Hindu pantheon. Also a book called "Gardens of the Gods" about, well, trippy gardens, and from the Reading Terminal Market, a beeswax owl for Athena!
Oh and I almost forgot, at the pagan studies conference on Friday they showed an incredible documentary about contemporary Hellenic pagans in Greece called "I Still Worship Zeus" (I learned that in Greece they pronounce 'Zeus' like 'Zefs', isn't that cute?). Greece is a scary country because it's illegal to worship the Olympian Gods EVEN IN YOUR OWN HOME. Plus all the schools teach Orthodox Christianity. There are no secular public schools in Greece. But I appreciated the comment of a woman in the movie who works at a shop that sells replicas of ancient statuary, who said that she thinks it's okay to worship the Olympian Gods "as long as you're Christian."
This explains the connection between the split and the Pagans' official debut at the conference. You see, as I'm told, the Pagan Studies group, which began as a tiny informal gathering ten years ago, and which has grown over the years into a larger and more structured presence on the fringes of the official meeting, finally had their application for official status at the AAR meeting approved in part because with the split coming, the AAR was going to be able to accomodate more new panels at the annual meeting. This, combined with the enhanced stature the pagans have due to their rising scholarly profile, led to this year's breakthrough.
Now, there may have been a grain of truth to the idea that the SBL people were tired of associating with all the weirdos on the AAR side, but not in the way that I imagined it initially. And this gets me into my personal impressions of the conference. The SBL people ARE actually kind of tired of the AAR weirdos, but the AAR weirdos aren't weird to them because they are pagans and Buddhists and Bahais and whatnot, they're weird because they are mostly anthropologists and sociologists of religion instead of people doing theology and textual criticism and so forth.
It seemed to me as though academic discipline trumped religious affiliation at this gathering. I felt estranged from my fellow pagans on account of the fact that they were mostly sociologists and anthropologists, while I am -- what am I exactly? -- let's say a philosophy-of-religion type. "Contemporary Pagan Studies" = "Studying Contemporary Pagans," a distinction which I do not think I fully marked up front. If pagan theology were a recognized discipline, maybe I'd feel more at home with other theologians, like the people from the SBL. Or maybe not, what with the burning at the stake and so forth.
The first event of the conference for me was the Conference on Contemporary Pagan Studies, which was all day Friday. This is the original group which was founded ten years ago and has met ever since on the fringes of the official AAR/SBL annual meeting, and which continues, even though there is now an official Contemporary Pagan Studies Group at the actual AAR meeting. The CCPS meeting was attended by over sixty people, an impressive turnout. There I met some luminaries in the pagan academic mafia, as it is sometimes known.
The kind of gathering I'd really enjoy would have gathered pagan academics who, rather than studying Neopaganism as a phenomenon, were instead working their way into academic specialties having to do with particular areas -- e.g., Egyptology or Classics or Norse literature or Chinese religion -- of interest to them as pagans and the study of which badly needs the kind of perspective that their scholarship can provide. This was not that kind of gathering; in fact, I did start to get tired of people making cracks about Reconstructionists.
There is a big difference between people who think that the core of the pagan movement is nature worship, and who regard the existence of particular deities as at best a secondary concern, and those for whom the core of the movement is the renewal of contact between humans and the Gods in the wake of Christian and Islamic hegemony. The former are firmly rooted in the 60's and 70's counterculture, and basically see paganism as the religious wing of that movement. Which I used to be fine with, but now I'm starting to see the hair in the egg, as they say. Because the way in which the pagan movement articulated itself in that era is starting to be a stumbling block for pagans today.
For instance, it is assumed that the "perennial tradition" of Western esotericism, as manifest in things like ceremonial magick and Theosophy, should naturally be of interest to me as a pagan; and at a certain point it indeed was. But at this point, I'm trying to figure out what, for example, the ancient Egyptians were really saying INSTEAD OF what occultists since the Renaissance have said about them. Occultism was the life-support for the pagan legacy during the long dark ages, just like the counterculture movement was the stimulus for the neopagan revival in the West in the postwar era. But we're off life-support now, thank the Gods, and now, frankly, I think a lot of pagans would just as soon pick up where we left off, if such an idea isn't totally ridiculous after 1500 years. And where we left off was with a paganism which was not a "nature religion" but an EVERYTHING religion. It was the religion of the city and the country and of philosophers and of artists and of elites and of slaves and of everything else, all over the world. Then it was extinguished in the lands conquered by Christians and then Muslims. It has reestablished itself in those lands through a long and sometimes meandering path, and now seeks to reestablish connection with those indigenous traditions that escaped Christian or Muslim domination. Perhaps as books come out like Charles Clifton's forthcoming history of Neopaganism in the U.S., "Her Hidden Children," and other books which help to tell the story of how paganism was reborn in the West, people will start to have a sense that one's past doesn't have to be one's future, and that the elements which kept the embers of paganism in Europe glowing and which rekindled the flame in Europe and America are not, simply on account of that, the essential elements of the movement. This may also be helped by the beginnings of real theological debate in the pagan movement, as evidenced by two recent books by Jordan Paper and Michael York, the latter of whom was a leading presence in the Pagan Studies events at the AAR conference. That's not to say I necessarily agree with the pagan theologies proposed in these two books.
A further dimension of this issue is the "problem" (or pseudo-problem) of affiliation. This became really apparent to me in the second pagan studies event I attended, the first one which was an "official" AAR event, a panel on Eastern European Neopaganism done in conjunction with the New Religious Movements Group. This was a fascinating discussion of the state of Neopaganism in the Ukraine, Lithuania and Russia. It was great to hear the way that Neopaganism is burgeoning in this region, not only in the Orthodox areas, but also in Muslim areas like the Crimea. But it was sad to hear that there is so much racist ideology mixed up in the pagan groups there, especially in Russia. It didn't seem like it was that way in Lithuania, though. Ukraine sounded like it came in somewhere in the middle. Plus, a fellow who wasn't on the panel stood up and said that in Bulgaria, where he's from, the pagans joined some fringe right-wing party en masse and were as a result totally discredited, so I would assume it's a problem there too, unless their right-wingness had to do with marginal tax rates.
Now obviously these countries have a lot of problems in any event, and the pagan movement here has much less racism in it, if for no other reason than that racist discourse is just not tolerated here the way that it obviously is in the former Iron Curtain countries. But here's what worries me. What alternative paradigm do we have to offer pagans in these other countries? Because to my way of thinking, there are really three paradigms for pagan identity. One is that paganism is essentially a universal nature religion, differentiated at most according to bioregions. This is a kind of spiritualized ecology which I don't think cuts it as a paradigm for modern paganism. Another is that paganism is a loose assemblage of ethnic religions. This has some accuracy relative to how ancient paganism understood itself, but it brings in all the baggage associated with ethnicity in the modern world. What if I want to worship the Gods of an "ethnos" I don't belong to? Is there something wrong with that under this paradigm? Something unnatural? Finally, there is the paradigm that puts individual Gods first. One worships the Gods one chooses and to whom one feels called, and it is understood that while ethnic pantheons have value, they are instruments through which the Gods work, not structures upon which the Gods are dependent for their existence. This paradigm is to me the least hubristic, the most accurate in terms of capturing the ontology implicit in most ancient pagan praxis, and the most promising for not getting in the way of individual choice. But it is also the least developed of the paradigms, and one that I did not get the feeling there was a whole lot of grasp of among the people attending the pagan studies events at the AAR. Nor is it a very prominent point of view in Eastern Europe, as I was told point blank by one of the panelists. But not only is a paganism that leaves out the Gods not going anywhere, IMO, but the whole movement is going to be tarnished by an ethnocentrism having no counterbalance aside from a flabby ecocentric universalism.
Now for personal matters. Philadelphia was cold and distinctly less fun this time than on our last trip there. My meetings with the Neoplatonists, who have groups in both the SBL and the AAR, were pleasant. I got to meet a number of scholars who have just been names on books for me, like Gregory Shaw, Sarah Rappe, and most of all, the eminent John Dillon. I finally met John Finamore, head of the International Society for Neoplatonic Studies. But the big disappointment to me was my paper at Monday's AAR Neoplatonism panel. I wrote an abstract for this paper ("Neoplatonism and Polytheism") which I thought was absolute gold, but then I just couldn't write a paper that lived up to it, for some reason. So as a result, I feel as though I had a golden opportunity to read a paper in front of John Dillon and the paper I wished I was reading wasn't the one in my hands. Well, maybe he'll read my article coming up in "Dionysius", or even look at my dissertation, as he indicated he might when I spoke to him after the SBL Neoplatonism panel on Saturday. Otherwise, turnout was light at my panel; Monday was a travel day for many. No pagan studies attendees, at least not that I recognized.
There was a book fair at the conference which was to die for. There's a brand new translation of the Pyramid Texts by James Allen and a brand new translation of Iamblichus' "On the Mysteries" by, among others, John Dillon. I'm still trying to make up my mind about the frighteningly expensive but mouthwatering giant deluxe edition of a demotic Egyptian text called "The Book of Thoth". No, not the one by Crowley but what appears to be a mind-melting 30 page ritual text straight from the sacred library of Hermopolis. I think it's $160 with the AAR/SBL discount? As Shakespeare wrote, "Exit chased by a bear."
Bought some fun things. From the Nataraj Books booth, a Hindu classic-comics version of the myth of Durga, as well as an animated movie about Hanuman and a movie called "Naag Shakti" which appears to be about the queen of the Nagas, plus a neat little book about Saraswati and a glossy children's book, a guide to the Hindu pantheon. Also a book called "Gardens of the Gods" about, well, trippy gardens, and from the Reading Terminal Market, a beeswax owl for Athena!
Oh and I almost forgot, at the pagan studies conference on Friday they showed an incredible documentary about contemporary Hellenic pagans in Greece called "I Still Worship Zeus" (I learned that in Greece they pronounce 'Zeus' like 'Zefs', isn't that cute?). Greece is a scary country because it's illegal to worship the Olympian Gods EVEN IN YOUR OWN HOME. Plus all the schools teach Orthodox Christianity. There are no secular public schools in Greece. But I appreciated the comment of a woman in the movie who works at a shop that sells replicas of ancient statuary, who said that she thinks it's okay to worship the Olympian Gods "as long as you're Christian."
