Disposable City by Mario Alejandro Ariza

Mario Alejandro Ariza, author of Disposable City.
  Read the NYT interview here. 

Mario Alejandro Ariza. Disposable City: Miami's Future on the Shores of Climate Catastrophe. New York: Bold Type Books, 2020.

Mario Ariza's book, Disposable City, takes a front line and personal look at the impact of anthropogenic climate change in the city of Miami, Florida. 

I am headed to Miami in a few days for the meeting of the American Academy of Religion Southeast Region. This is an annual gathering of religion scholars and students from colleges all over the Southeastern U.S. to discuss all manner of academic religious topics. This year it happens to be held in Miami, Florida, a city at the epicenter of climate change. So to prepare for my Religion and Nature session, I have just read his book.

Ariza is a journalist and this book is a work of journalism. Ariza takes us with him as he investigates, interviews, and reports on the many facets of this complex issue. Interestingly, the book also came from Ariza's three years as a Michener Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Miami. And that shows. It isn't a dry book, but a work of creative non-fiction. Each chapter is a story in which the reader journeys with Ariza to a new part of the city and region, meeting interesting and compelling people, and getting a close-up, hands-on view of one thread of the climate disaster slowing but inevitably approaching Miami and South Florida. Miami, he tells us, is a "blisteringly new city, even by American standards. Most of the housing stock in Miami-Dade county was built after 1970" (89). He touches on everything from the real estate market, king tides, pythons in the Everglades, water management infrastructure, community organizing in Little Haiti, and to the offices of scientists, politicians, and courtrooms in which climate change decisions are being made . . . or avoided. The reader gets a detailed tour of the city and region, personalities, history, cultures, and inequities. The book is an amazing picture of a vibrant and fragile American city with an uncertain future. I learned so much about Miami, its history and cultures, its optimism and growth, as well as its multifaceted struggle with the most important global issue of our lifetime.

Ariza's intensely local focus is compelling. The book emphatically and unwaveringly points to the real impact of anthropogenic climate change and makes it personal. Ariza tells us how this city is drowning and how these people are impacted. As readers, we are drawn into the stories of those who are both effected by climate change and who are working passionately to pull Miami out of this environmental death spiral. At the same time, the local issues are woven into a global story that affects all of us.  

This map from National Geographic shows how
sea level rise will radically alter
South Florida and the city of Miami.

Chapter 5 "History Is a Swamp" looks at the doubly threatened Everglades, the unique and once massive freshwater wetland known as the River of Grass. Cut off from its water source of Lake Okeechobee and inundated with fertilizer run-off, the Everglades has shrunk and withered. At the same time, rising sea levels are causing rapid "saltwater intrusion" that is radically changing the ecosystem (130).  Ariza introduces us to Michael Frank, an elder of the Miccosukee tribe who is deeply engaged in the struggle to save the Everglades. The Miccosukee, like other Native people, are deeply connected to land in their stories, history, and lifeways. They are land-wise and interact with the landscape as a person and a community of which they are part. When the Miccosukee nation was being hounded and  threatened by the U.S. Army genocidally empowered by the Indian Removal Act, the Everglades embraced the people, hide them, and provided a refuge and home (128-29). Now they have adapted to fight the political and legal battles that will shape the future of their homeland. Although communicating that Native vision and relationship to land is difficult. I wish we could have learned more about this in Ariza's book. However Michael McNalley's Defend the Sacred:Native American Religious Freedom beyond the First Amendment is a great resource to learn more about how Native people have been approaching and fighting these battles at the frontlines of the ecological crisis.

If you are interested in Miami, other coastal cities, if you are concerned about the environment and about climate change, I highly recommend Disposable City. Just remember that what happens in Miami affects the entire nation. Ariza's discussion of climate refugees, displacement, and migration, powerfully communicates how Miami's future with climate change is eye of a hurricane of social change that will spin out in a "massive internal migration" that will reshape the U.S. (231). Yet, he doesn't leave this as an abstract issue. Ariza shares his own personal grief about the devastating impacts of this unfolding reality on the lives of real people (224-25). Ariza's transparency calls us into a more personal involvement and approach to these issues. What are the climate-related stories of tragedy, stress, migration, and upheaval that have impacted our own lives and those of our neighbors? Are we listening and telling these stories.

Ariza definitely does. He ends Disposable City by envisioning a somewhat optimistic future. It is a future in which Miami does not die, but survives and adapts. It is a story of human innovation and cultural creativity in developing new ways of life in the midst of climate change, sea level rise, and ecological stress. This is a story of Miami, but also a story that involves us all. Human-caused climate change is inevitably re-making the world. Will our human communities continue to hold stubbornly to the values, lifestyles, and institutions that led us to this brink? Or can we change, re-make our own relationship to land, ecosystems, and the other beings that we live among? 

In Chapter 4, Ariza and a filmmaker friend kayak up the Miami River through the heart of the city. This chapter and its epic waterborne tour from Virginia Key to the Miami International Airport is worth reading just on its own. As the pair float around a bend in the river near the airport, they encounter two people standing on the bank under the spreading branches of a poinciana tree. Both are dressed in white, conducting a religious ritual. Ariza's friend quickly recognizes them as "Santeros" (123). They are practitioners of Santeria, one of the Afro-Caribbean religions that emerged from the forced migration and enslavement of West African people. Ariza recognizes something significant perhaps transcendent in that moment and writes, "I can't help but feel like I've entered the realm of Yemaya, the mother of the waters, the Yoruba deity worshipped by African diaspora on both sides of the Atlantic" (123). As a scholar of religion, this scene grabbed my attention with its compelling possibilities. What answer does Yemaya offer to the crisis that faces Miami and her waters? Do these religious practitioners bring a different understanding of water, river, and ocean that offers new possibilities of a more ecological relationship? Ariza describes a religiously inspired connective energy that reaches from Miami, to Cuba, to the coast of West Africa. Could religions help to unite human communities in responding to climate change? Religion can be a dangerously conservative and retrograde social force. But it also is a source of values, ideas, symbols, rituals that can motivate human communities in transformative ways. We need to further explore the ways that religions can be a resource for the species adaption that we must navigate. How can religion help us move into a post-Anthropocene era where we learn to live well in a world we have changed and devastated?

Circe by Madeline Miller

 

Circe by Madeline Miller, Little, Brown and Company, 2018, 385 pages.

Retelling ancient myths for a contemporary audience seems to be a popular form of fiction writing these days, a branch of the fantasy genre. Rick Riordan has had major success with this for children and young adults. Madeline Miller, who has a MA in Classics from Brown University, brings more depth her retellings. It shows in the nuanced story with its host of references to classical literature. Her strengths are her familiarity with the world of Greco-Roman myth coupled with her humanizing approach that fleshes out the two dimensional mythic characters. 

Circe is the story of a nymph, a disappointing daughter of the sun god Helios, banished into exile on the island of Aeaea. The novel follows Circe through hundreds of years of her immortal life - from her time as a solitary witch on Aeaea developing her powers of magic, her struggles with her family and the various gods, her interactions with Daedalus and the Minotaur, Odysseus, her time as a mother raising a difficult son, and her later interactions with Telemachus and Penelope.

What is this book about? Despite the obvious answer of "relationships," there are four important themes in the book I would like to recognize.

First, the transformation of Circe. Circe craves attention and relationship - she takes risks to relate to others. Yet when she is banished to the island, she is thrust into isolation - settling into it, while also craving connection. Her isolation eventually becomes availability - whether for the roving god Hermes,  the bad daughters of the minor gods who are temporarily sent to her island for punishment, or for wandering sailors who happen upon her shores. Her availability becomes vulnerability and is taken advantage of. She suffers manipulation, abuse, and endures various forms of assault. 

When Odysseus is on the island, Apollo appears to Circe with a prophecy. Its delivery is an intense scene of violation and assault. Apollo is aloof and condescending, cringing away from the sound of Circe's human-like voice. When the prophecy comes, it is like an attack of divine violence:

"The wind stuck me across the face. I had no time to cry out. It rushed into my throat, battering its way to my belly as if all the sky were being funneled through me. I gagged, but its swelling  orce poured on and on, choking off my breath, drowning me in its alien power. Apollo watched, his face pleasant. . . . 'You dare,' I said. "You dare to misuse me on my own island? I am Titan blood. This will bring war. My Father _'" (229).

Of course it doesn't bring war. Neither her father, nor Apollo, nor anyone else cares about the assault, the indignity, the violation. As a result, she learns the necessity of creating and maintaining boundaries. Magic is the primary way that she creates these protective boundaries. She hides the island behind illusion to avoid rapacious sailors. She spends her life shielding her island from Athena who has threatened her son Telegonus, conjuring a boundary through rigorous magic working that repulses the gods and their intrusions.

This world of the gods is a world of taking without compassion reminds me of our world. It is at root a spiritual issue. Buddhism has understood the spiritual and ethical problem with taking, possessing, and owning. But Christianity has not. There is an assumption of possession, a supposition that things are ours to be taken within Christianity. Genesis is read to say that everything was created for us therefore it is already ours and can be taken. In the central biblical story of liberation and redemption - the Exodus - there is a taking of the land, wresting it from its inhabitants through violence and force. This centers the posture of taking and possessing. When this assumption gets framed within capitalism, it becomes about owning and using and reduction to commodity.

"Circe the Sorceress," John William Waterhouse, 1911-15

Second, Magic. Miller reclaims or or at least revisits the figure of the witch through Circe. Circe's powers, while impressive and strong enough to make others afraid, are refined and developed through learning, experimenting, dedication, and work. Circe's sister, Pasiphae, is also a witch but her powers are weaker than Circe's. When Circe enters Pasiphae's workroom, she see nothing but a few herb "and rudimentary ones at that . . . . she was lazy, and here was the proof. Those few simples were old and weak as dead leaves. They had been collected haphazardly, some in bud, some already withered, cut with any knife at any time. I understood something then. My sister might be twice the goddess I was, but I was twice the witch" (127). 

Sorcery, she says "is not divine power, which comes with a thought and a blink. It must be made and worked, planned and searched out, dug up, dried, chopped and ground, cooked, spoken over, and sung" (83).

This work, knowledge, learning, commitment all speak to Circe's virtuous inner life. And even more so, witchcraft might indeed be always an act of resistance, but it is not evil. Miller states that all witches have one thing in common, "they are women with more power than other people - men especially - think they should have" (Reading Group Guide, 4). Circe tells her sister and her readers "You were wrong about witchcraft.. It does not come from hate. I made my first spell for love of Glaucos" (156). Witchcraft, as seen through Circe, is the hard work of love, of protection, and even justice and judgment (Scylla and the rapacious men turned to pigs).

Third, Earth connection. Circe's magic grows along with her connection to the earth. She awakens to the living world, the powerful energetic quality of the earth, plants, springs, and landscapes. When she is exiled, she begins to experience her island in a deeper way - as a place of natural power. She works with the plants, learning from them, learning their properties, how to manipulate and use them. Turning the island into a home involved communing with it, bonding and taming it, the lions and the wolves living in harmony with her. On Crete, she climbs the sacred Mount Dicte in a mystical reverie, feeling the mountain thrumming under her feet. She could feel the herbs "swelling in their hollows, breathing tendrils of magic into the air." She was at one with the power of the mountain "the branches laced over me. The shade rose deep as water, tingling across my skin. The whole mountain seemed to hum beneath me" (128). 

Miller ask her readers as well to become witches in this way. Like Circe, to see the earth as a place of beauty and power - to awaken to its own intrinsic living qualities. To learn to live with the earth and its species. To learn their ways and their secrets, to become part of a community with them. 

Fourth, retelling the Odyssey. The novel revisits a number of intertwined Greek myths, most famously the Odyssey. And Miller puts her own spin on these. She seeks to personalize and humanize Circe as a woman and a witch. She brings a certain critical perspective to Odysseus, portraying him first as the heroic if troubled lover of Circe, but then layering on an anti-heroic twist. By bringing Telemachus and Penelope into the story as the wounded son and jaded wife, we see Odysseus through different eyes. We see his cruelty and its impact on those around him, and his dangerous descent into control, paranoia, and rage. In Telemachus, Miller gives us a Greek hero who rejects the heroic, spurns the gods, and chooses a quiet life without glory. Perhaps we are ready to rethink about The Odyssey, glory, heroism, rulers and their power along with Miller's novel.

Paganism in 5 Minutes is out!!

 

Exciting news this week!! I have three short essay chapters in the newly released Pagan Religions in 5 Minutes. 

Paganism in 5 Minutes is the newest volume from Equinox in their Religion in 5 Minutes series - the same publisher who released my book Being Viking. The volume consists of 70 short essays responding to questions that undergraduates and the general public might have about Paganism. Each essay can be read quickly in about 5 minutes, a scholarly response written in an accessible format without footnotes. The authors are all scholars and are quite varied in their approach, geography, and background, which makes for interesting reading. It was a real treat to be included with such great scho.lars and writers. The authors list is in some ways a Who's Who of Pagan studies, although some scholars outside of the religious studies arena are not included.

I was invited to participate by one of the editors, Dr. Angela Puca, an scholar of Paganism and Esotericism at Leeds Trinity University in the UK, who interviewed me a few years ago about Heathen magic for her Youtube channel, Angela's Symposium. So a big shoutout to Dr Angela Puca for inviting me to be involved with this project! It was great to work with her and Dr Suzanne Owen, a religious studies scholar and  Druidry also at Leeds Trinity University.

The book covers a wide range of topics and questions - from the very introductory "What is Paganism?" in chapter one and "How did modern Paganism begin?" in chapter 4, to more complicated topics such as the relationship between Theosophy and Paganism. Essays cover the relationship between Paganism and non-European religions, technology, ethics, relationship with Christianity, and orientations toward nature. As I have been skipping around in the book, I am continually surprised by the interesting topics that appear in the volume.

My contributions address three questions. 

Chapter 17 asks "What is the difference between hard and soft polytheism?" It was fun to revisit this question. I had addressed it in Being Viking, chapter 5 "Hard Polytheism in a Soft World." But since then, my thinking has developed. I try to define the terms as well as the context that shaped the contemporary origin of these ideas. On the surface, they are just two different ways of understanding divine ontology. But I try to show that these terms also seek to resolve very modern ambiguities generated by the study of comparative religion and mythology. As well, the terms map out certain rivalries within the Pagan world. Finally, I put these terms into the perspective of other ontologies of the divine to reflect on their ongoing development.

Chapter 22 asks "What is Heathenry?" Paganism is a very diverse religious world and the middle section of the volume describes several of the branches of the Pagan tree. Witchcraft, Wicca, Druidry, Slavic Paganism, Lithuanian Romuva, and Paganism in Brazil each have at least one essay. This is a fascinating overview - although the variety of imporant movements is even larger than this. In my essay, I try to briefly sketch an outline of Heathenry - itself a complicated movement of many parts. I also address the term "Heathenry" itself, which is a stumbling block for many who first encounter it. I write about the origins of the term and its reclamation, as well as other terms used to refer to Norse Pagans.

Chapter 49 asks "Do Pagans practice sacrifice?" I wrote a chapter on sacrifice in Being Viking which explored the revival of animal sacrifice among some Heathen groups. I really enjoyed getting to think a little more broadly about sacrifice as a Pagan religious act. I reflect on the importance of sacrifice in the repertoire of Pagan worship and relationship. I look in a general way at its practice and meaning. I also consider ways that sacrifice has changed in the contemporary Pagan revival in ways that are different from ancient sacrificial practices.

Overall this is a great volume full of interesting and thoughtful essays addressing a wide range of questions about Paganism. Anyone curious or interested in Paganism can learn a lot from the book. 

Christian Nationalism is (not) a myth

Straight White American Jesus argues that Christian
Nationalism is the greatest threat to both American
democracy and Christianity.

Today we heard a talk on campus arguing that Christian nationalism is a myth - by which the speaker seemed to mean that it is made up, not real, just a "bogeyman" used to accuse one's political opponents and to scare voters.

Offered as evidence for this was Mark Hall's book Who's Afraid of Christian Nationalism: Why Christian Nationalism is not an Existential Threat to America or the Church. The book argues that the threat of Christian Nationalism is exaggerated, not that Christian Nationalism is a just a myth.  

Christian Nationalism is the conflation of the state/nation with Christianity, when the interests of the state and the interests of Christianity are fused. It could be briefly defined as “an ideology that idealizes and advocates for a fusion of American civic life with a particular type of Christian identity and culture.” Of course this is a real thing. While we can debate the threat level of this ideology, its reality and role in American culture seems beyond question at this point. It is also a well-documented phenomenon in other parts of the world - such as in the far right Christian movements in Poland.

There is not one Christian Nationalist party or organization that we can point to; it is a more diffuse phenomenon. Catherine Wessinger, the well-known scholar of new and radical religious movements, sees Christian Nationalism as part the "Euro-American Nativist Millennial Movement" which has existed at least since the early twentieth century. It is a milieu, as described in 1972 by Colin Campbell as "an underground region where true seekers test hidden, forgotten, and forbidden knowledge." In this sense, it is a set of culturally proscribed ideas, phrases, beliefs, attitudes, and sentiments that emerge now and again as movements, parties, and groups. 

While Christian Nationalism is a real thing and a real threat, there is no doubt that the term has been used loosely by people on the Left to condemn and shut down people on the right. It has been rolled out too often, finding Christian nationalists everywhere. It has been used reductively to exclude conservatives without allowing them to have nuanced positions. It has played a role in cancel culture and used to discount people without sufficient hearing. 

Denying the reality of Christian Nationalism is disingenuous. The term points to a real problem. However, we shouldn't use it to paint with too broad a brush - not all Christian conservatives are Christian nationalists. 

Hank Hanegraaf tells us that "Wokeism is the most dangerous
 cult in the world.

In this way, it is similar to the way "Wokeism" has been used on the Right.

Wokeism, at its core, is simply becoming aware that one's life is embedded in a field of power relations and that some of those power relations leverage the concept of race as a political tool. 

In this sense, wokeism has its roots in the idea of  "critical consciousness" theorized by Paulo Freire in his Pedagogy of the Oppressed, published in English in 1970. For Freire, critical consciousness is a process by which oppressed people come to understand the social forces that produced or contributed to the disadvantaged and disenfranchised conditions of their lives. By "reading the world" in a way that made power relations apparent, oppressed people could develop agency and work for better lives and a better world. 

In a sense - if I can stretch the metaphor a bit - this is what Thomas Jefferson was doing in the Declaration. His list of monarchical abuses was an attempt to raise the consciousness of colonial Americans by making apparent the social forces that were contributing to their disenfranchisement and then encouraging them to take revolutionary action to change their situation.

Has wokeism been "taken too far" or been overextended and misused? Of course, it has been used to over-politicize situations, to cancel political opponents, and used to find injustice everywhere. It has been disruptive to community life in various ways. It has been weaponized by even relatively privileged people to justify absurdities. 

But it has also been misused by the Right to shut down minority communities and their valid complaints. It has been used in an uncompassionate way to justify not listening to others and not caring for other people and their struggles, and to mock and ridicule political opponents just to win a political point. It has been used to dismiss without consideration the real social and cultural shaping of our reality. It has become a rallying point of disinformation - such as all the controversy on social media over women's boxing at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. 

Both these terms have been unfairly and inaccurately weaponized in the political fights of our day - these political struggles aren't petty, there is actually a lot at stake. But if we value our pluralist democracy, we need to be better about not reducing these idea to shallow tropes and dismissing our opponents with overly-generalized mischaracterizations.

Judge in the Delphi Case dismisses Odinism defense theory

"Meet The New Judge In The Delphi Case!" 
https://youtu.be/vpZfXD7t7ww?si=zlKpisdHZRvCAZkf

I just learned this morning that the judge in the Delphi murders case has thrown out the Odinist defense theory as impermissable in the trial. Here is the report on the judge's decision as reported by the Wild Hunt. The judge ruled that the defense had “failed to produce admissible evidence demonstrating a nexus,” meaning a connection between Odinism and the murders. Hopefully, the judge's action will finally put these speculations to rest. 

I have no expertise in this case, nor in ritual killing, and I am not claiming any. I definitely don't want to participate in or be dragged into a true crime drama. I am not an Odinist nor a practitioner of Norse Paganism. I am a scholar of religion and new religious movements, who has researched and written on Norse Paganism and has put in a great deal of effort to understand this religious movement. In my estimation, this defense theory is an example of how marginal, controversial religions can be used and mischaracterized in order to generate fear, doubt, and scapegoating in the mind of the public. We should remain aware of the potential for Odinist violence and hold Odinists accountable for crimes they commit, which are heinous enough without fabricating tales of ritual Odinic sacrifice to stir the pot of conspiracy theory and true crime speculation. 

 
The defense suggested that the evidence was best explained as a ritual sacrifice performed by Odinists - white nationalist Norse Pagans who are devoted to the god Odin. To support these allegations, the defense brought in Dawn Perlmutter as an expert witness. Perlmutter has an expertise in ritual murders and has acted as a consultant to law enforcement agencies who investigate these crimes. She wrote a 2003 book on the subject, Investigating Religious Terrorism and Ritualistic Crimes. I will discuss the book in another post.

At a recent pre-trial hearing on the Delpi Case, Perlmutter offered testimony that the murder were ritual sacrifice, stating unequivocally that "In my opinion, this was a textbook ritual murder. It has all the elements listed there.” According to a Knoxville, Tennessee news station reporting on Perlmutter's testimony, she pointed to several signs of ritualistic murder: (my comments are in italics)

• "The place of the killing was outdoors."  
• This sort of overgeneralization is concerning. It surely does not narrow this down as a ritual sacrifice. What is the percentage of murders (ritualistic or not) that occur outdoors? 
• "February 14 is a sunup to sundown Odinistic sacrificial holiday." 
• I was not aware of February 14, Valentine's Day, as a significant Heathen holy day and have never heard it mentioned by practitioners. A few contemporary Heathen sources mention Vali's blot being observed on February 14, "probably because of the similarity of the name to Valentine." It is sometimes called the "Heathen Valentine's day" and as a spring observance is celebrated as "the returning light, of romance, and of marriage. Even the Odinic Rite called the Feast of Vali a "Festival of the Family" and a celebration of Nature's fertility, planting, and remembering "Frey’s wooing of Gerd," which is another Norse myth of love, desire, and marriage. That said, in the Poetic Edda, Vali was the son of Odin who avenged the death of Baldr. So if someone wanted to find it, there is a theme of violence, murder, and revenge in the Vali story.  However, it is not prominent in contemporary Heathen interpretations of Vali's blot.
• "The symbolism of the sticks and body positions were consistent with Odinistic Runes."    
• First, not sure what "Odinistic Runes" are. And the interpretation of the sticks or branches as runes is really in the eye of the beholder. According to the prosecution, the branches were simply thrown over the bodies to hide them. So is it a rune or a random pile of branches? If you know the runes, the Court TV sketch that has been displayed online is not conclusive. But I haven't seen actual crime scene photos, so who knows what it looked like in real life? Could I rule out that these branches were meant to represent runes? No - but the description that appeared in the defense filing does not sound like Odinism. If you wanted create a runic association or correspondence, why not bring a rune set and leave an actual rune stone at the scene?
• The defense memo claims that the sticks were arranged as a hagalaz rune over one of the bodies. See blood pattern below.
• "Body positioning"  
• I have seen a sketch of the body positioning and the defense is claiming that one body was  positioned intentionally to represent the elhaz or algiz rune. Again, that is an interpretation and the sketch is inconclusive. Certainly, there are mystical connotations to Algiz in runic lore and Volkisch and Nazi esotericism as the life and death rune.
• "Atypical blood pattern" 
• Perlmutter is probably referring to a mark on a tree at the crime scene that allegedly depicts an ansuz rune. The defense memorandum and all the media coverage call this the "F tree" claiming that the blood mark on the tree resembes a letter F. I was confused by this until reading the defense memorandum, which clarifies that this "F rune" is actually meant to be an ansuz. No Heathen practitioner nor anyone with knowledge of the runes would refer to Ansuz as an "F rune." So this is a major strike against this claim, in addition to the inconclusive nature of the mark itself. 
• The defense claimed that the presence of both these runes - the hagalaz made of crossed sticks and the ansuz marked in blood on the tree - are symbolic of "Hail Odin." And that these are a clear indication that this is a ritual sacrifice. Certainly hagalaz is associated with "hail" but usually of the precipitation variety. And there is an associated between Odin and ansuz as the rune of wisdom and insight. These two runes could be an abbreviation for Hail Odin. That said, using these two runes mixes the Elder and Younger Futharks - but that could be a mistake that a new Odinist or an unaware Odinist might make. However, the evidence is highly ambiguous, unclear, and inconclusive. Neither are obviously runes at all. It is a major leap to the conclusion that this marks the crime scene as an Odinist sacrifice. 
• "Cause of Death" 
• I am not sure that the cause of death has been released officially in this case. However, Perlmutter believes that this particular cause of death ("throat is slit with a sharp object") is almost always ritualistic in nature. This is discussed on page 378 in her book. I would just as that there are ritual sacrifices described in Heathen sources, including sacrifices to Odin. There is a clear pattern or typology of Odinic sacrifice in the Lore  involving stabbing with a spear and hanging by the neck. This typology is evident, for instance,in the death/sacrifice of Vikar in Gautrek's Saga, as well as in Havamal 137. If a Heathen wanted to recreate or enact an Odinic sacrifice, they have a symbolic precedent. And this cause of death does not follow that pattern of ritual sacrifice described in those Norse sources. 

Overall, I don't find this testimony to be persuasive. The main issues I have are 1) the so-called evidence is too general - I mean, "outside"? Come on. 2) The evidence is too ambiguous - are they runes or piles of sticks? 3) Dawn Perlmutter and the defense team are not experts in Odinism or Norse Paganism and they are making connections that aren't accurate - from the February 14th thing to the "F rune" the evidence doesn't seem like a pattern of Norse or Odinist activity. 

 

It points to the importance of scholars of religion who have developed a rigorous methodology and studied religions in some depth. An attorney, scrupulous or not, can see what they want in the evidence if it helps their case. But it the interpretation actually consistent with the religion in question? A scholar of religion hopefully knows the religion well enough,  and knows its symbols, discourses, and culture to make strong interpretations.  

Zachary Babitz and the AFA

Zachary Babitz as a Heathen
and member of the AFA

Last week, I was contacted by a reporter from Santa Fe, New Mexico who wanted to talk about the Asatru Folk Assembly (AFA) and the case of Zachary Babitz.

Here's the story: Zachary Babitz was arrested in Las Cruces on August 11th after robbing an Arby's restaurant. He had recently been released from prison on parole in March (which of course has local politicians calling for tougher sentencing.) He has also been charged for an earlier bank robbery in Albuquerque on July 31, 2024 as well as a carjacking in which he shot and killed an elderly man. Just horrible stuff. This statement from the U.S. Attorney General District of New Mexico contains a link to the official criminal complaint. So evidently, Babitz was released and tried to stay straight. He lasted for about four months and then fell back into criminal activity. Babitz's prison tattoos indicate his white supremacist connections. He has "1488" tattooed on his fingers: "14" stands for the 14 Words of infamous racist murderer David Lane, and "88" represents the double letter "H" the eighth letter of the alphabet, signifying "Heil Hitler."  

The reporter contacted me because Zachary Babitz was a member of the AFA. Not only that, but in mid-July just a couple of weeks before all this went down, Babitz had been named an apprentice Folkbuilder for the AFA in New Mexico. (All references to this had been deleted from the AFA's social media, soon after Babitz went on the lam. A Google search found links to those posts, but they had been deleted on the actual webpages.)

 

Screenshot of my Google search results
for the Folkbuilder announcement

So what happened and how was the AFA involved? Please note that I did reach out to a local Folkbuilder for a comment about this case, but have received no response. What I am writing here is my own current interpretation based on what I know, although could and probably will change. I think the case shows us a few things about the AFA as an organization.

The Asatru Folk Assembly has always been a folkish Asatru group, meaning that they interpret Heathenry as a religion for those of Northern European heritage. It was founded specifically as a folkish group by Stephen McNallen in the mid-1980s, primarily to combat the rise of "universalist" Asatru as represented by the Ring of Troth organization, now The Troth. (See my book Being Viking for more discussion of this history.)  For the AFA, this has come to mean "white Americans" in particular. So they have always been attractive to working-class people with a racial or a racist worldview. Since 2016, the AFA under Matt Flavel has been very open about this and has sought to raise its profile on the far-right, by appearing on far-right internet shows and courting white nationalist groups.

However, the AFA has always presented itself as a family-oriented religious group, a church so to speak. That is, it has never been a skin-head group like the Hamerskins, nor a militia like the 3 Percenters, nor a far-right white nationalist group like the KKK or Proud Boys, nor a neo-nazi group like the National Socialist Movement. 

Babitz (on the right in cowboy hat)
at the AFA New Mexico moot

Babitz is actually pictured as a family man on the AFA social media in a photo of the New Mexico moot on July 1,2024. The photo shows two seemingly happy families enjoying a social event. The photo tones down, or even washes out the white supremacist and violent felon image of Babitz. This is in keeping with the AFA ethos. The photo in no way signals what Babitz was about to do one month later. (The day that Babitz cut off his ankle bracelet and began his crime spree, he actually left a note on the door of his home stating that his wife knew nothing about what he was about to do.) 

Babitz likely made contact with the AFA while in prison and formalized that connection after his release on parole. I believe that he became a part of the AFA in his attempt to re-enter society, jump start his family life, and stay straight. But in the end he couldn't hack it - he ditched his family, went on a drug-fueled crime spree, murdered an innocent man, and significantly embarassed the AFA.

When Stephen McNallen talked about "coming home" to Asatru - he had in mind middle-class white American families. McNallen started his Asatru Community Church in a branch of the local library, after all! That says a lot about his intended audience. He believed in mainlining Asatru for the average white American nuclear family. 

Matt Flavel, the current Alsherjargothi of the AFA, has a slightly different idea. For him, "coming home" refers to the "lost" boys - down-and-out young white Americans with racist tendencies who are struggling with life, who can't hold a job, who struggle socially, perhaps have been in prison or in racist groups. Coming home means finding the AFA, entering a community that will accept and affirm them, that will give them a structure, a sense of meaning and community, order and purpose, help them get on their feet, find a job, start a family, and become a productive and contributing member of society. And the AFA hofs serve as these regional face-to-face communities where people can come and connect with a strong community of "like-minded" others. Probably, Flavel sees himself and his own life trajectory in that story. This means that the AFA is reaching out and taking risks with people on the margins, with racist, violent, and criminal histories. They see those lost, overlooked whites as their own people. They believe that Asatru can help. They see the struggles and criminality in part as a result of anti-white sentiment in America - that America has turned against white people, especially working class whites. That is part of the social narrative the AFA is telling. Largely, this strategy has been successful for the AFA - many of their members were struggling, lost in life, then found the AFA and are doing better. 

So the AFA became that for Babitz - a struggling guy who wanted to go straight. He evidently had someone in the AFA vouching for him, to account for his rapid appointment into an entry-level leadership position. The apprentice Folkbuilder in the AFA is sort of a test-run, trial position. So I think that the AFA was trying to help Babitz aspire to a better life. But obviously, they misjudged him and couldn't really help him. This can happen to an organization that is expanding too rapidly and promoting marginal people into leadership positions without significant vetting and time. 

Review of Eruption by Michael Crichton and James Patterson

My phone camera is done

This month our book club read Eruption, by Michael Crichton and James Patterson.

To a great extent the book reads like a screenplay. Short chapters sketch out the action, each ending with a small cliffhanger of some sort. It is a thriller and much of the action is compelling, with some intense and engaging descriptions of volcanic eruptions, fiery death, and havoc. The pace of the novel is inescapable, with an "hours until eruption" countdown at the top of most chapters. Of course, it is not just the eruption that drives the plot. There is a military cover-up that amps up the stakes to an apocalyptic level, the fate of all life on the planet hangs in the balance. 

Only a few heroic characters stand in between us and the impending destruction. These heroes are made for the movies, as Rob Merrill writes in his AP review, "The book’s characters are straight out of central casting."  Ron Charles' review in The Washington Post points out that the "casting suggestions are embedded right in the text," which at various moments compares characters to a certain generation of movie stars like George Clooney, Pierce Brosnan, and Halle Berry. The protagonist is the passionate, no-nonsense, chief scientist of the Hawaii Volcano Observatory, John MacGregor, aka Mac, who has a soft heart for those he loves. He teams up with the rugged, take-charge General Rivers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has flown to Hawai'i to coordinate the disaster response. The beautiful but overlooked planetary scientist Jenny Kimura hangs around in the background waiting for moments to console love-interest Mac. And so on, with a host of other made-for-cinema characters including a young, gorgeous demolitions expert; a young, gorgeous NYT reporter; and a few young, handsome Hawaiian surfers ready for a few scenes catching the waves on Hilo beach.

The book becomes more interesting if we turn to some questions that can be raised adjacent to the storyline. Here are a couple I've been thinking about that tie into religion:

This is a doomsday story about the impending destruction of the world - literally a fire and brimstone scenario of biblical proportions that is about to be unleashed on humanity. It is an apocalyptic story. While the eruption of the volcano is a natural phenomenon, it enacts a sort of justice on human foolishness and hubris. The volcano chasers - arrogant, rich, attention-seeking dilettantes - are the first to go in a morality play sort of way. But the potential for worldwide destruction is the result of a military experiment-gone-wrong. Hidden away on the slope of Mauna Kea are hundreds of canisters of a secret military herbicide code-named Agent Black, an unstable chemical agent that makes Agent Orange look like Kool-Aid. Contact with the lava would release a chemical plume so toxic that it would contaminate the entire globe and wipe out all life on earth. The impending apocalypse draws this human flaw into focus, this sin of military-industrial hubris, the urge to control and to wield death as we would choose, now threatens all life. 

This really is the religio-ethical function of apocalyptic literature - to draw attention to the sins, flaws, immorality that we tend to overlook or accept as normal, especially the structural and systemic conditions that subjugate, dehumanize, and inflict suffering on common people. Apocalypse pulls back the veil of normality and reveals the hidden ethical tensions, the fatal flaws -  that are embedded in human societies. Apocalypse reveals how power is distributed and flows in ways that perpetuate injustice, violence, and evil. By revealing and condemning these inequities, forecasting their imminent destruction, apocalyptic literature calls us to pay attention to our social injustices in one way or another. Too bad this book will be taken for simply a thriller and its implicit critique of the military-industrial complex and the long-term global environmental damage we have done will be ignored or lost to most of its audience. Likely, it will not compel its white conservative American readers to take stock, reject militarism, acknowledge the real environmental crisis we have created, and to come together around real solutions and social change.

The second religious theme is that of animism. The book explores or at least references a good deal of volcano and earth science, very interesting stuff. The use of popular fiction to explore science along with its triumphant and horrific implications is Crichton's specialty. However, the book also puts forward the possibility that despite everything the scientists know, there is another way to look at the volcano, another frame of reference that is preserved in the animism of the Native Hawai'ians. The best description of animism comes in a conversation among the Native youth surfers as they argue about who really knows about the volcano. Lono, a Native teenager who is mentored by Mac the chief scientist of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, takes the side of science but not without some cognitive dissonance. 

    "I know what I heard and what I saw," Lono said. "These guys are scientists. They know what they're talking about" 

    "Haole scientists," Dennis said. (1)

    "I'm telling you, they were talking about something loa big," Lono said. "And loa bad." (2)

    Lono, kama'aina like his friends, knew all the myths and legends about volcanoes, the way old people like Dennis Lee's grandmother thought of them as powerful living creatures who were not to be interfered with for fear of their response. (3)

    (Crichton/Patterson, Eruption, 168-69, italics are in the original text)

I bought this poster of Pele, by Herb Kawainui Kāne, 

when I was at Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park in 1995.

This short passage is not a bad description of animism. The Native elders (aka Dennis Lee's grandmother) are the keepers of traditional knowledge. They comprehend and relate to the volcano not as a thing and not through the physical data of science but as a person, a being. To them, the volcano is "a powerful living creature" as Crichton/Patterson puts it (although I would use the term "being" instead of "creature" - the volcano is a goddess, a creator more than a creature.) This description is consistent with animism and works better than the older terminology of "spirit" or "spirit being" which tends to overly spiritualize the sacred being as somehow otherworldly or ethereal.) We are not talking about a spirit that lives in the volcano, but the volcano itself in the world as a being of immense power, presence, and agency capable of giving and creating land and life and also capable of acts of great, cataclysmic destruction and violence. The human beings dwell on the island with this powerful living being, in the presence of and in relationship to her. In the course of this relating, this powerful being is sometimes thought of and addressed as the goddess Pele. She is the volcano, or the volcano is the embodied aspect of Pele. 

Despite this quick glance, the book missed the opportunity to present a more robust and compelling picture of animism. None of the main characters expresses or supports an animistic view. The passage relegates the animist perspective (rather than entrusts it) to a very minor character's grandmother who never actually appears in the book. In a later passage,  animism appears again, in the one brief appearance of Lono's fundamentalist, anti-science, fatalistic Native mother. Despite the impending danger, she "stubbornly refused" to listen to reason and evacuate. (Eruption, 400) Note that the  authors use the word "refused" three times in a row here to characterize Lono's animistic mother as both ignorant and contrary). Instead of evacuating in the face of imminent danger, she tells her son:

    "The goddess has always provided for us . . . . It is Pele's will at work now. Not mine or yours. Not your friend Dr. MacGregor's."

    "Are you saying it's her will for us to stay and die in this house?" Lono asked.

    "You must have faith," she said. "You were raised in the ways of the natural world, and you were also raised in the ways of the spiritual world."

    But I'm growing up in the world of science, he wanted to tell her. In the real world.

(Eruption, 401, italics are in the original text.)

      

This passage seems wildly out of touch with the actual lived animism of Native Hawai'ian people. This artificial conflict between "faith" and "science" is more characteristic of the conservative Christian stance against evolution, and even there it is more nuanced. Unfortunately, Native Hawai'ians have been characterized frequently and unfairly in this way. During the protests against the Thirty Meter Telescope on the slope of Mauna Kea where so much of this book takes place, scientists called the protestors “a horde of native Hawaiians” and wrote stupid things like "It seems to me that it's an argument about returning to the stone age versus understanding our universe and it'll be interesting to see who wins in the end." Yet as Native spokespeople made clear: "The conflict was never between our culture and western science,” said Wong-Wilson, who is executive director of the Lālākea Foundation, a group of cultural and spiritual practitioners. “We’re as fascinated with our view of the heavens, our view of constellations, and our relationship [with them] from the Native perspective as anything.” Rather, she said, the issue was “the use of particular areas of land, of which there may be conflicting interests.” 

Ultimately, there are no strong or compelling Native Hawai'ian voices in the story, even though the book is set in the geographical heart of Native activism in Hawai'i. The traditional Native religious perspective is circumscribed and misrepresented despite the fact that Maua Kea has been the site of Native activism and organizing for years and despite the many articulate explanations of Native Hawai'ian spirituality. Yes, the Thirty Meter Telescope protests occurred from 2014-22 and Crichton died in 2008, so his original story predates that event. But Patterson's rewrite could do a lot more to frame the story in light of Native Hawaiian worldview, religion, and resistance. Yes, the novel includes a protest in Hilo - but it is quickly coopted by the two main haole characters - the scientist Mac and the army general Rivers, whose voices and perspectives dominant this book, subverting the alternative visions, identities, and solutions of Native people and religions. 

Notes:

1. The Hawai'ian language term haole emphasizes that these are white scientists, outsiders, who shouldn't be completely trusted.

2. Loa is an important Hawai'ian concept of distance and measurement. After reading this article, I think it is communicating the sense of something cosmic, an event with a magnitude that transcends human comprehension and scale, beyond the human ability to control and handle. It signifies the sacred nature of the volcano and the magnitude of its agency.

3. Kama'aina literally "child of the land" refers to those native to the Hawai'ian islands. According to Kiope Raymond at the University of Hawai'i, the word carries connotations of the Native Hawai'ian animistic relationship to the kalo plant, from which the Hawai'ian staple food, poi, is made.