Investigating Religious Terrorism and Ritualistic Crimes

Dawn Perlmutter. Investigating Religious Terrorism and Ritualistic Crimes. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2004.

Scholars of new religions have likely bumped up against religious and ritualistic crime. New religions, minority religions, marginalized religions, religions associated with minority populations, are often accused of religious violence and crime. The classic example of such accusations is the Satanic Panic in which alleged Satanic cults were accused the sexual molestation and kidnapping of children across the U.S. And some new religions have perpetrated crimes and committed murders. The two that immediately come to mind are murders and coerced suicides at Jonestown in 1978, and the subway gas attack by Aum Shinrikyo in 1995. Violence has also been perpetrated against new religious groups, such as the attack on the MOVE group in Philadelphia in 1985 and the attack on the Branch Davidian property in Waco, Texas in 1993.  

The Delphi, IN murder case recently brought this all back for me. In 2023, the defense team in the case released a 100+ page memorandum alleging that the murders were committed by a secret cult of Odinists who ritually sacrificed the victims to the god Odin. In a 2024 hearing, the defense brought in Dr Dawn Perlmutter as an expert witness to testify that the crime scene showed evidence of ritual sacrifice. Read my blog post about Dr, Perlmutter's testimony  here.

Dr Perlmutter's book Investigating Religious Terrorism and Ritualistic Crime aims to provide law enforcement officials and criminal investigators a handbook for identifying religiously-motivated crime and violence. Perlmutter has a background in art history and aesthetics, and has leveraged herself as an expert in symbolism, especially interpreting religious symbolism in ritualistic crime scenes - crimes that were committed by religious or cultic practitioners for religious reasons.

When I learned of her involvement in interpreting the Delphi crime scene for the defense, I read her book to try to better understand her perspective. 

Here is a quick summary of the book:

• In Chapter one, Perlmutter tries to define types of religious violence.
• Chapters 2-7 look at several categories of religious or cultic groups. There is a chapter each on Millennialism; Domestic religious terrorism most of which concerns white supremacist groups including Odinism; Islamic terrorism; Satanism; Vampirism; and Syncretic religions by which she means Afro-Caribbean religions like Santeria, Voodoo (her spelling), Brujeria, Palo Mayombe. 
• Chapters 8-10 look at crimes scenes to help investigators discover "clues" to the ritual activity of these various groups, and the symbolic analysis of crime scenes to formulate a "ritual homicide typology."

On pages 231-232, Dr Perlmutter turns her attention to religion scholars. She addresses the issue of religious scholars refuting claims of religiously-motivated ritual crime. Discussing a particular case in Mexico associated with Palo Mayombe she writes, "many scholars have published articles refusing to acknowledge the ritual murders as human sacrifice and relegate the deaths to a form of sadism.. . . Essentially it is difficult for even well-educated, good intentioned persons to recognize religious violence for what it is . . . these murders must be viewed in the context of the belief system they were perpetrated in." Then after describing the terrible spate of murders in the border region Jaurez and El Paso she writes "it is also quite feasible that another Mexican religious cult could be ritually murdering young women." (232)

It is true that many scholars of religion push back against these claims of religious and cultic violence. And for good reason, these claims are often spurious and made without good evidence - the lurid stories of ritual sacrifice and secret occult groups create a sort of vicarious interest that overrides rational and knowledgeable interpretations. The witch trials are a notorious example of this. Scholars who study actually study New Religious Movements are only too aware of the Satanic Panic of the 1980s in which completely false stories of suburban Satanic child-sacrificing cults spread throughout American popular culture with harmful consequences. For the Satanic Panic, you might read Dr, Sarah Hughes' American Tabloid Media and the Satanic Panic, 1970-2000, Palgrave-MacMillan, 2021, or Dr Jeffrey S Victor's 1999 book Satanic Panic: The Creation of a Contemporary Legend. With the Satanic Panic in mind, one can see the similarities with Dr Perlmutter's approach in this book. 

So on one hand, I can take her perspective as a good reminder that religious scholars should be aware of the potential for violence in these religions that we study. At the same time, we should caution people to avoid over-interpretion and misinterpretation which might implicate whole religions as violent and criminal without sufficient warrant. 

Here are some of my problems with this book:

1) Sources: There are very few footnotesand citations and those that are given do not refer to reliable sources. Much of the information is sourced from the internet, not from reliable and scholarly sources. The book lacks academic rigor and quality sources.

2) Suspicion: The book casts suspicion over a broad swath of minority religions--which are not illegal or criminal but portrayed as if they are. This can lead to or exacerbate unhelpful and false conspiracy theories, Satanic panics, and witch hunts. An example from her book is the chapter on Satanic religious violence. She claims, without any sources, that "Satanism is widely practiced in Western society." She discusses several Satanic religious organizations, but then (very briefly) mentions that none of them have any recorded incidents of violence. The categories that have been associated with criminal and violent activity, "Self-Styled Satanists" and "Youth  Subculture Satanists," are the two areas she spends the least time on in the book.

3) Over-indication: The evidence for ritualistic crime presented in the book is so broad that someone could see it anywhere. If you are looking for it, you will find it, or think you have found it. For instance,  burning candles and candle magic, 268-78. On pages 274-278, she included photos of candles in a New York City botanica  - without any shred of association with criminal activity. Yet this is presented in a way to imply or cast suspicion on it. Perlmutter mentions that burning candles is "the most common form of religious worship" and says "it is important to emphasize that  . . . candles alone may not indicate criminal activity" - yest this is in a chapter in a book on religious crime! There is always the danger of criminalizing or casting criminal suspicion on behavior, religious or otherwise, of which "we" the mainstream culture disapproves, that is outside of mainstream social norms. The book gives the strong impression that the presence of certain symbols and practices indicates criminal activity, when that is not the case--casting suspicion on ritualistic or religious activity that is out outside of the usual secular and Christian mainstream. (269) There seems to be a slippery slope from "weird" to "criminal" that this book participates in. I mention a similar suspicion cast on Norse tattoos in Being Viking--not everyone who has a Valknut tattoo is a neo-Nazi, in fact most are not. But the suspicion remains, as we see in this Delphi case where suspicion is cast onto the shadowy menace of Odinism.

4) Saturation of Pop Culture: She writes "It is important to note that some ritualistic crimes are conducted by individuals who mimic media depictions of the occult but are not involved in any organized group or follow any established belief system" (235). There is so much cultish and occult aesthetic present in the culture, that it can be difficult to determine what it actually indicates. (I have written about the problem of the "witchy aesthetic" here.) I think that occult symbolism may be associated with crimes that are best explained in other ways. For instance, a Santa Muerte image may be associated with a crime that is best explained and investigated through the violent culture, economics, and rivalries of drug trafficking gangs.

Of course ritualistic crimes and religiously-motivated crimes take place. Being aware of the signs of these types of crimes could be helpful in investigating, understanding, and prosecuting those crimes.  But over-interpretation can be just as much of a problem. And this book contributes to that problem.

I think it would be better to read Catherine Wessigner's How the Millennium Comes Violently: From Jonestown to Heaven's Gate  than this book. Hopefully scholars of new religions will have more than an internet, Google-search-level knowledge of their subject matter, which is basically what you will get from this book. A lot of the content was sourced from the internet. Much of the content in the book is just not particularly relevant to the actual social locations of religious violence. Religions that have perpetrated religious violence aren't thoroughly covered - Aum Shinrikyo (31-42) gets about ten pages with several pictures thrown in there - and almost nothing on Islamic-sourced violence - but then there are several chapters focused on other religions that have little to no association with violence. For instance, is it helpful and relevant to have a much longer discussion of Santeria (182-210) in a book about criminal religious activity? And several pages of Vodou Vèvè drawings as evidence of potential criminal activty when there is no actual connection to violence outside of the movies?

 

I, Julian by Claire Gilbert and the Porous Self

Icon by Kara Gillette illustrates
Julian's most well-known shewing
of the world as a hazelnut, as
well as her cat, and the divine
illumination coming through the
 window of her cell

In May 1373, having survived at least two waves of the Black Death, a 30 year old woman fell into a life-threatening fever and illness. After lying sick for seven days and nearing death, she raved, "I raved today. I thought the crucifix bled" (126). But she came to understand these ravings as "shewings" or revelations - direct embodied mystical experiences of Christ. 

Amazingly, these shewings were written down in "the English of the fourteenth century," the same Middle English in which her contemporary Geoffrey Chaucer wrote. The shewings were written in the first person, which suggests that they were dictated by Julian to a priest who recorded her account. 

Julian became an anchoress - a solitary religious dwelling in a room connected to a church in Norwich - entombed or encased, bricked into the room from which she did not emerge. As an anchoress, she contemplated her revelations - they became the sacred text from which her theology emerged. After years of contemplative life, she gained further spiritual insight in the deeper meaning of her visions.  In chapter 86 in the Long Text she writes, "from that time that it was shewed I desired oftentimes to learn what was our Lord's meaning. And fifteen years after, and more, I was answered in ghostly [i.e. spiritual or mystical] understanding, saying thus: Wouldst thou learn thy Lord's meaning in this thing? Learn it well: Love was His meaning. Who shewed it thee? Love. What shewed He thee? Love. Wherefore shewed it He? For Love. Hold thee therein and thou shalt learn and know more in the same. But thou shalt never know nor learn therein other thing without end. Thus was I learned that Love was our Lord's meaning."

I, Julian is a fictional autobiography of the 14th century anchoress Julian of Norwich by Claire Gilbert. Gilbert wrote a 2018 PhD dissertation on Julian, Restoring Porosity and the Ecological Crisis: A Post-Ricoeurian Reading of the Julian of  Norwich Texts, at King's College London. During a cancer diagnosis and more than two years of treatment, Gilbert turned to Julian as more than an academic interest, as a spiritual guide through her own experience with illness, facing death, and walking through grief. She drew close to Julian in a new way, as she says "almost experiencing the visions herself." She felt "a call" - perhaps her own mystical experience - to "tell Julian's story in the first person, in homage to her."  

The book deals with the problem of epistemology - how do we know things and what counts as knowledge? Julian's visions - were they ravings or divine revelations? Are they hallucinations or do they show something real and important? A knowledge of reality not obtainable in any other way? When Julian first awakens from her illness, she says to the priest "I raved today." But the priest did not laugh. "You did not laugh. You will not dismiss my visions. And so I do not dismiss them either. I was shocked then and I am still shocked at how easily I could have rejected them, had you not looked so serious." 

Mystics and mystical experiences have fallen into disrepute, and perhaps have always been regarded with skepticism. Yet for those who experience them - they hold a visceral power. The mystic sees something that alters their perspective about reality. Julian's theology begins neither with the Bible nor with her social context - nor does she proceed in the way of logical discourse or syllogistic reasoning. Her approach is far from that of Thomas Aquinas (1225-74). Her theology emerges from the visionary experience and her mystical contemplations of them. She continues to be anchored in the "showing" - God showed me and I came to learn . . . " 

And although she is not a visionary herself, Gilbert agrees - if we let Julian's visions in, they can reshape our consciousness and our relationship to the world in a way that would be better for ourselves, others, and the world. Recovering Julian is a step towards a more porous sense of self that sloughs off the facade of autonomous agency and turns outward toward a relational way of being. 

In the novel, Julian has an audience with a noblewoman named Isabel. Isabel begins to share her hidden grief over her many miscarriages - secretly she has given each lost child a name and has held all this inside herself. Now, in Julian's presence, she opens and the grief comes out. In response, Julian models and experiences the porous self. "I listen. I receive her words. . . I feel like a sponge, not just Isable's words but the hot pain that sites inside them, a pain that stays hidden from the world and is intense form its suppression. As the words and the pain enter me, enter my hears and, it feels, my whole body, even as a part of me is wondering at what is happening and fearful for myself, the pain is so hot . . . it is not I who can determine how to receive and relieve the pain, but Jesu, Love herself, and I must allow this soft porosity to open to the healing love that is waiting to serve. So I sit quieter still, wondering, and trusting and unknowing" (145-46).

It is a sharing of selves that occurs, within the matrix of emotions. Isabel's pain bleeds into Julian's empathetic receptivity where it meets with Jesu's healing love. That communion becomes an efficacious and holy ground, "It sems to me," Julian says, "that as each name is called out, a child appears between us and before God, shines, is seen, just for a moment, and then lies down and sleeps" (146). Gilbert feels that the healing we need - personally, socially, and ecologically - needs this porous self, this porous humanity to really encounter the world and its beings as more than Other, as part of ourselves. 

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

Madeline Miller, Circe,
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.