A Pagan Studies Scholar, the Shah of Iran, and a Return to Aryan Native Faith

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As I write this, tens of thousands of Iranians (or let’s call them Persians) are demonstrating against the government of murderous black-turbaned mullahs who let the 1979 revolution and promptly immersed Iran in wars and supporting terrorism.

In many cases, this demand for a government is coupled with a desire to return to the Old Religion, which for them means Zoroastrianism.

Reza Pahlavi, son of the shah (king) who was deposed in 1979 and himself a US resident, has issued video statements supporting his revolution. I read that many protestors are chanting his name. He remains the crown prince, so if Iran becomes a constitutional monarchy, he would be shah.

His father, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (1919–1980) was dying of cancer when he fled the country. He spent some time in a New York City hospital, where a member of his medical team was a nurse named Loretta Orion.

She, in turn, earned a PhD in anthropology, and became interested in the contemporary Pagan movement and in particular She wrote Never Again the Burning Times: Paganism Revived (1994) and It Were As Well to Please The Devil as Anger Him: Witchcraft in the Founding Days of East Hampton (2018), about a 17th-century witchcraft case on Long Island, New York.

I met her at the American Academy of Religion meeting in Philadelphia — 1995, I think, which would fit, since her book was just out then. There was no Pagan studies group yet, for we were just starting to find each other. She and I went out for a pizza slice or something, and she told me about attending to the shah, which all seemed kind of like ancient history by then.

And now the Pahlevi family is back in the news, and my feed on X is full of Persians saying how they can’t wait to get rid of the alien Semitic religion imposed on them by force (Islam) and go back to their Native Faith of Zoroastrianism, which has managed to cling on because it qualified as “heritage.”

Incidentally, “Iran” and “Aryan” (in its original sense) are at root the same word. So the Aryans want their old religion back.

So the (original) Aryans — some of them — want their Native Faith back, only in this case it is more or less monotheistic, but not always. If Iran/Persia is reinvented as a more secular republic, who knows what flowers might bloom?

Revisiting Initiatory Wicca: Are They Still Scourging?

As you can see, this conversation was recorded last spring, but I got around to listening to it only this month.

Both Rufus Harrington and Judith Noble come from initiatory British Wiccan traditions. A psychotherapist by profession, he is also a trustee of the Doreen Valiente Foundation, which protects and preserves many of the original Books of Shadows belonging to Gerald Gardner and Doreen Valiente.

Nobel herself is an artist and professor of Film and the Occult at Arts University Plymouth (UK). “She began her career as an artist filmmaker, exhibiting work internationally and worked for over twenty years as a production executive in the film industry, working with directors including Peter Greenaway and Amma Asante. Her current research centres on artists’ moving image, Surrealism, the occult and work by women artists, and she has published on filmmakers including Maya Deren, Derek Jarman and Kenneth Anger.”

A lot of the interview deals with “What is initiatory Wicca?” and “How has it changed since they were brought in?” — forty years ago in Harrington’s case. So it’s not like nothing has changed since Stewart and Janet Farrar, who were Alexandrian initiates, were discussing these issues.

Esoteric Crossroads: Scholars Meet Practitioners is a spin-off from Stephanie Shea’s main podcast, Rejected Religion, created in collaboration with the Research Network for the Study of Esoteric Practices. Shea herself has studied at Amsterdam Hemetica, the university’s center for “Hermetic philosophy and related currents.”

You can find episodes of Rejected Religion listed at its site, at the usual places such as Apple podcast, or on her Academia.edu home page. There is a Patreon site too, with the usual “the more you pay, the more access you have.” (Some content is free; other content becomes free after a time.)

All Those Witches: Caroline Tully Sorts Them Out

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Caroline Tully, Pomegranate associate editor and long-time denizen of the Australian Pagan scene, gots onto an Australian podcast,The Briefing, as Witch-with-a-PhD to sort of in a very short time the difference between Wiccan witches, Etsy witches, and the rest of the social media witch-fauna. Released on Halloween 2025, of course.

If you want to skip to her, fast forward to about 8:30.

A Heathen Marine Vet Overcomes PTSD with Psilocybin

Clay Martin, Heathen priest and combat veteran, during a podcast.

A recent episode of the Dale Stark Show, hosted by a former A-10 “Warthog” pilot turned regenerative cattle rancher and podcaster, focuses on the work of Clay Martin in using psilocybin to combat post-traumatic stress disorder among American combat veterans. (Photo: Clay Martin podcasting.)

Apple podcasts audio link here. YouTube video link here.

A former Marine and Green Beret, Martin is also a Heathen priest — and a guide to psilocybin-enhanced therapy for other vets suffering from severe PTSD.

In the podcast episode he describes how guided psilocybin therapy can “turn off the suicide switch” for vets suffering from PTSD and a like a purpose, as he once did.

You can almost hear the gears grinding as host Dale Stark, an outspoken Christian, struggles to reconcile his respect for Martin as a warfighter and his discomfort with his Heathen talk. To his credit, he moves through that as Martin insists that he will work with people of any religious background, or none. And there is good discussion of the last thirty years of religious-freedom legislation at the federal and state levels.

Martin’s books include Barbarian Spirit, which “details his journey using psilocybin mushrooms to heal a state of apathy that had plagued him for over a decade since retiring from the military.” Here he discusses “a warrior’s path to spirituality” on YouTube. From the Barbarian Spirit description on Amazon:

There has been a great awakening that we are in a spiritual war, without really understanding what that means. I didn’t know either, so I went to the place I could find out. Barbarian Spirit is what I found walking the spirit realm, both for me and for us. Things are far darker, and the hour far later, that I ever would have dreamed. But we are not without hope. Part personal journey, part prophetic vision, Barbarian Spirit will change the way you see the world around you.

Do You Remember Astro Dice?

Because I am now taking a formal Tarot course, I decided to gather up the various decks scattered around the house. In a bookcase cubby hole with two different decks I found a lidded plastic box containing Astro Dice. Like new!


“The powerful symbolism of Astrology is combined with the random selection of Tarot to create this remarkable New Age Oracle,” proclaimed the little blue (not white) booklet inside the clear plastic box.

The book, as you can see, was published by the “Kansas City School of the Occult.” A quick Web search turned up nothing. I was not surprised.

There are plenty of websites mentioning them though. And you can buy them on Amazon, although often without the little white (or blue) book. One site linked them to a British source, The Wessex Astrologer, but they don’t seem to sell them now.

Grok reported, “While the exact individual or group responsible for the initial creation of Astro Dice in this period is not clearly documented, Wessex Astrologer is credited with formalizing and marketing a simplified version of the tool, consisting of three 12-sided dice representing zodiac signs, planets, and astrological houses.” But all the LLMs are only as good as what is fed into them, so this could be a circular vertification.

I think this set dates to the late 1970s, based on various evidence. I wonder who really invented them.

The Case of the Paranormal Pincushion

In my last post, I mentioned the English writer Mary Ann Norton’s “Borrowers” books, which my sisters and I treated as enjoyable kids’ books. It was a long time before it occurred to me that possibly she made up a story around actual events.

I have had a quite a few experiences in this house, more than I would want to chronicle. But here is one from this past spring.

I had been mending some item of clothing in the living room, sitting in the armchair that has a good, powerful lamp beside it. I had left the thread, pin cushion, and small scissors there on the adjacent TV table.

A couple of weeks later, I had needed to fix something else. I went back, and everything was there —except the pincushion. Looked behind the chair, behind the TV stand, under the nearby bookcases, etc.

No luck. Cleaned and vacuumed the living room. Nope.

The usual suspect is brown and has four paws, and he has a soft mouth when he wants, but with all those needles and pin sticking out? Biting down would be . . . regrettable. 

So I went to Joann’s, the fabric and hobby supplies chain, and bought a pin cushion, pins, and thread for a particular job. Good timing, because then I learned that that chain is shutting down.

A month later, M. is walking from the study into the bedroom. There is a tall bookcase there with all my religious studies books. It’s a brick-and-board bookcase (we still decorate in American Grad Student), with the shelves held up by bricks standing on end. 

Slightly above her eye level, between two of the bricks at the end of the shelf, she saw something. Yep, the pin cushion. Still with floor dust on it, as shown in the photo above. It had moved from the other end of the house. And the dog, even if he had picked it up, would not have placed it five and a half feet above the floor.

They “borrowed” it.

Type your address in the Subscribe box, and I will post another weird experience some time.

Did an English Children’s Author Describe the House Wights?

A miniature wood stove for sale on eBay.

When I was 5, my older sisters were 12 and 15. Sarah, then 12, was reading Mary Norton’s “Borrowers” books, as her older sister probably had before her.

Don’t confuse this English Mary Norton (1903–1992) with the prolific American SF/fantasy writer Alice Mary Norton (1912–2005) who wrote as “Andre Norton.”1 (At one time, I did.)

To quote Wikipedia, the original novel The Borrowers and its sequels “feature a family of tiny people who live secretly in the walls and floors of an English house and ‘borrow’ from the big people in order to survive.” I heard my sisters talk about the books, and later I think I read the first one, at least.

To complicate things, my mother had a miniature wood stove and pots on a shelf in my parents’ room, and I thought it had something to do with the Borrowers, like this was their skillet. As an aside, you see these miniature stoves sold as both toys and as salesmen’s models. Dealers will slap on whichever label makes a sale, since the domestic antiques trade is totally unregulated.

Mary Norton also wrote such novels as The Magic Bed Knob; or, How to Become a Witch in Ten Easy Lessons (1944) and sequels, which inspired the Disney movie Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971). “Becoming a witch” seems to have been A Thing in the 1940s.

Given that, maybe she was “telling true lies.” It seems commonplace now for people with an interest in the paranormal or who sometimes have one foot over the edge to deal with their own “borrowers.” I call them “the critters.” Others might say “the house wights.” All much the same, as far as I can tell. Maybe Mary Norton took her own experiences and turned them into children’s lit — why not?

Barbara Fisher, author, artist, editor, and co-host of the 6 Degrees of John Keel podcast,2 once devoted some time talking about the perennial topic: the more look you into the Other, the more it looks back. And getting extra attention from the “tiny people” appears to be part of that. Maybe they are just delighted to have someone who takes the seriously and will give them Skittles and a wee dram now and then. That’s how I pay my “critter tax,” but I’m not buying them household appliances!

I have a couple more stories to tell in upcoming posts. Stay tuned. Follow and subscribe — you know the drill.

  1. Andre Norton’s “Time Traders” series may have been the first science fiction — or at least the first series — that I ever read. ↩︎
  2. Currently on hiatus, but back episodes are available. ↩︎

Will Christians Fulfill a Pagan Emperor’s Plan?

Julian “The Philosopher,” Rome’s last Pagan emperor (mid-360s), would get chuckle out of this. (Although to me he comes across as super-serious, he must have found some things funny. I hope.)

While he was force-fed Christian theology by bishops, growing up in a royal Christian household, he later studied ancient Greek philosophy and literature extensively. Yet he was no bookworm: He was also a blood-and-guts Pagan.

He did not just renounce Christianity by saying the Lord’s Prayer backwards, for her arranged a full tauroboium ceremony to wash away the Galilean stink. After becoming emperor, he brought back large public sacrifices as in the previous centuries:

I worship the gods openly, and the whole mass of the troops who are returning with me worship the gods. I sacrifice oxen in public. I have offered to the gods many hecatombs as thank-offerings. The gods command me to restore their worship in its utmost purity, and I obey them, yes, and with a good will. For they promise me great rewards for my labours, if only I am not remiss.

Some of his coins show a bull on the reverse, and numismatists are still asking why.

Another project that he backed financially was rebuilding the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, which Roman troops had destroyed in 70 CE when they smashed a Jewish rebellion in that province.

Polytheist that he was, Julian had no religious issue with the Jews (so long as they did not revolt against Rome), because their religion was very old. While Gentiles could and did convert, Judaism was not actively seeking them. Christianity was new and militantly opposed to all the old learning and the old gods.

Furthermore, rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem would frustrate Christian teachings that Jesus had predicted its destruction (Mark 13:2) and that the Christian church was itself the “new Temple.” Funds were allotted; then a small earthquake interrupted the work, followed by Julian’s own death in battle. End of story — or not.

But now some Christians want to rebuild the temple — and a sacrifice of cattle, although not a a full hecatomb, is essential!

For years, Texas businessman Byron Stinson has dreamed of a world at peace.

Some evangelical Christians like Stinson, as well as some Orthodox and Messianic Jews, believe the red heifer ritual described in the biblical Book of Numbers could pave the way to rebuilding a Jewish temple in Jerusalem. A new temple, which would replace a temple destroyed by the Romans in the first century, would usher in the kingdom of God, ruled by a messianic figure.

A red heifer c is burned on a pyre on a remote hilltop in northern Israel in a practice ritual ceremony, this month (Photo © Boneh Israel via Religion News Serivce)

According to Numbers 19, the sacred ceremony — in which the cow is slaughtered and then burned — must take place on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem with a view of the site of the former temple, said Rabbi Yitzchak Mamo, president of Boneh Israel, an organization that works to build up and revive biblical sites in Israel and oversaw the practice ritual. . . .

Organizers admitted the idea of a red heifer ceremony could be troubling to some. But Stinson said that in the end, it could have powerful effects for the good.

Yes, it will be a little troublesome to thousands of Jewish rabbis, who took over religious leadership from the old Temple priesthood, and also to those Christians who think that what was done is done.

But there is that minority of Christians who believe that the Temple and the nation of Israel must be upheld in order to bring on their version of Jesus’ triumphal return.

Subscribe to this blog to read more on the academic study of Paganism and related Pagan topics.

The Man Behind Chick Tracts

Somewhere I have a small stash of Chick tracts — Jack Chick’s little Christian comics. I had two collecting rules: I wanted the ones that were openly anti-witch, anti-metaphysical or anti-occult, and second, I had to find them in the wild. Sending away for them would not count; I had to them tucked inside a library book on witch trials or something like that.

Amazingly, there is a collection in the library at Yale University.

So who was Jack Chick, and why did he do it? He died in 2016, and here is the write-up he got in Christianity Today:

The biggest name in tract evangelism, Chick distributed more than 500 million pamphlets, nicknamed “chicklets,” over five decades. His signature black-and-white panel comics warned against the dangers of everything from the occult to Family Guy.

And if you ever in New Haven, Conn., stop by the Yale library.

Tarot Thoughts — And Eden Gray’s Surprising Story

I decided to get more serious about Tarot after all these years. Maybe some day people will see me as a wise old man, but I will need some props – 78 of them, to be precise.

I actually learned to use the I Ching in a superficial bohemian way before I encountered the Tarot, The former probably matches the last year of high school, when I was being educated in these things by a 20-year-old from North Beach (San Francisco), who became a sort of honorary big sister, and when all “alternative” spiritual practices came from the East.1

I finally touched Tarot cards as a college freshman, eventually buying my own pack, which given the options of the time was of course the “Rider Tarot” (today better called the Rider-Waite-Smith deck), from Samuel Weiser, Inc. It came with the obligatory “little white book,” but of course a student soon wants more. The most accessible how-to book at the time was Eden Gray’s The Tarot Revealed, which was matched with that deck. She included a section on Tarot meditation, but essentially this was a bigger, better version of the little white book.

That name “Eden Gray” sounded like a pseudonym through: an unusual first name balanced with a plain English last name. I did not think much about it; I wanted the “woo,” not the history. My wish list included reading in a night club, and I did it — once — it went OK but I was not asked back. A slow midweek night, what can I say? And then other things like grad school got in the way.

Mary K. Greer, the grande dame of American Tarot, wrote a short piece about Eden Gray in 2008 (they knew each other). As Priscilla Pardridge she was the good-lookingl daughter of a well-off Chicago businessman. Born in 1901, she defied Daddy’s wishes and ran off to the bright lights of Broadway. She was a reasonably successful actress on the stage, in radio, and a few movies,2 before taking a metaphysical turn in the middle age. (You may have heard that narrative before.)

Mary Greer writes,

Eden Gray ran a bookstore and publishing company called “Inspiration House,” one of the few places where a person could buy tarot cards and take tarot classes in the late 1950s and ’60s. Her customers complained that the available books were not easy to understand, so she spent weekends in the country coming up with a more accessible way of approaching the cards.

Read the rest at Greer’s blog: “Eden Gray’s Fool’s Journey.“

Time passed, and I bought some other books too, getting more interested in the history of the cards. But when my paperback copy of The Tarot Revealed wore out, I bought another one, just out of loyalty/

  1. In another timeline, she was probably my first lover, but not in this one. ↩︎
  2. Eden Gray was in one movie with Ronald Reagan, where they shared their interest in astrology, says Mary Greer in the linked article. ↩︎