Beowulf: The Original Epic Transubstantiated

Don Yarbrough

2 Oct 2017

Beowulf: The Original Epic Transubstantiated

            Emerging from the fog of ages past stands a gallant warrior bold and true.  A hero not of flesh and blood but of ink and parchment.  The hero of old, born of legend and song reconstituted into page and writ, withstood the test of time.  Diligent and determined, the ancient script triumphed in the face of destruction displaying the battle scars of its flame-singed edges and scars of lost lines; the epic poem of Beowulf is rewarded with immortality.  However, there is a strangeness to this ancient literary piece as it describes a Pagan, Pre-Christian society behaving, believing and practicing in the obvious Christian fashion.  The two, Christianity and Paganism, could not be more diametrically opposed in doctrine, yet so suspiciously similar in practice, as subtle elements of Paganism lie sequestered underneath, carefully tucked within folds of Catholic/Protestant robes as the poetry of Beowulf proves.

            The story of Beowulf in its originality was an oral tale of the adventures and heroic deeds of a mighty warrior passed from the tongue of bards and retold wherever the Anglo-Saxon peoples gathered in the ancient world of the 5^th to 8^th century.  Long before the advent of Christianity, Old-World heathenry dominated and had always been the way of life.  The Germanic tribes of the Anglo-Saxons were a pagan people with belief in gods such as Odin, goddesses such as Freya, and worship and practice of the elements of nature.  In fact, before the arrival of Beowulf and his band of thanes on Dane shores, the reader will find King Hrothgar and his subjects in the mead-hall of Heorot calling upon and beseeching their gods (not the Abrahamic God) for help against Grendel's nightly devastations. If the Danes were a Christian people, they would have sought the protection of God of the Bible.  The fact they did not is proof that the Danes were first and foremost a Pagan people who may not have even known of the Christian God until the Christian poet much later placed it upon them.  Karl P. Wentersdorf also confirmed the fact that the Danes of Heorot could not have been the dedicated Christian people that the poet portrays them to be in his work, “Beowulf: The Paganism of Hrothgar’s Danes”, by stating, “Hrothgar’s references to the deity as evidence that the poet conceived of Heorot as a Christian or at least a monotheistic society”, and furthermore, “finds the excursus at odds with the whole thrust of the poem . . .” (95-96).  The poet also portrays the Danes singing praises to and glorifying the God of the Bible while reveling merrily with the over-indulgent flasks and tankards of mead and wine – a definite inconsistency since the Christian faith deems the excessive imbibing of alcohol as a sin.  Rather, to expect a rugged, war-like race of the Dark Ages to sing praises to a Christian God in this fashion would be akin to expecting a modern battalion of Marines to sing religious hymns while running in company formation instead of off-color cadences.  As narrator Michael Wood in his BBC video documentary entitled, “In Search of Beowulf” confirmed it, “So the poem’s world and its honored heroes were Pagan”.  Wood identified another major mainstay of Pagan belief in his documentary while interviewing blacksmith Hector Cole as Cole reported that the blacksmiths of Beowulf’s time may have been respected as practitioners of sorcery as the forging process of the weapons and armor required all four elements of nature that were, and still are, essential and integral aspects of Pagan nature worship: fire, water, earth, and air.  Weapons such as Unferth's sword, Hrunting and the giant's greatsword used by Beowulf at the beheading of Grendel's mother were believed to be forged by such enchanting powers.  The four elements of nature are an essential and integral aspect of Pagan nature worship.

It was not until the 10^th century AD that the Danes of Denmark and the Geats of Sweden were wholly converted to Christianity.  It was during this era that an unknown Christian scribe first penned the epic tale of Beowulf into the form of prose we know today, imbuing it so deeply with Christian ideology within the poem as to almost entirely transubstantiate the original Pagan elements that embodied the Anglo-Saxon peoples for centuries.  In this later age, Wood called it, “a world caught between the Pagan and the Christian”.  The Christian world and the Pagan world are two in direct defiance of one another.  Therefore, when the two are thrown together in a work of literature, the result is a misshapen, mish-mashed, and uncomfortable coalition that produces various contradictions and inconsistencies that must be carefully crafted and manipulated so that all the jagged pieces can fit together.  The Christian author of the poem found this task very easy to accomplish by making the poetry of a Pagan Beowulf mirror the story of a Christian Christ by introductory comparisons of the chosen hero tested and proven worthy, the hero’s malevolent enemy, the inevitable battle between the hero being against the enemy, and the final defeat of the enemy and consequent death and “ascension” of the hero.  Therefore, after hearing a story like Beowulf, the heathen peoples of the time would more likely understand and respect the story of Jesus in a similar manner and thus, become instrumental in their conversion.  The answer to the question of how one would know for certain that the 5^th to 8^th century Anglo-Saxons would come to understand an alien religion such as Christianity lies in the heart of the Anglo-Saxon culture.

            To understand the Anglo-Saxon peoples of Beowulf’s time is to understand their way of life, a warrior culture.  In times before large urban civilizations, small tribes abounded and were scattered across the land.  The land was harsh and its people more dangerous.  The constant struggle for survival was the order of the daily life.  Very few communities lived in peace.  Death was ever present and threats of foreign invasion were always at their doorsteps.  Life expectancies were very short and only the strongest among them knew a long life.  Warriors emerged to defend the people.  The best of them were raised into champions, said to be sent by the gods, or were even elevated to god status.  For some warriors, those ablest, determined and dedicated in the practice and study of the art of war, while aspiring to stand on the highest pedestals of honor and glory also sought the love and honored loyalty of the "ring-bearers,” their beloved kings and his most bejeweled rewards of treasure.  To these warriors, honor, glory, and the pursuit of riches were their goal, life-blood, and their wild hunt.  They held stations of authority and importance in their kingdoms.  They honored and defended their kings and rulers while opposing the tyranny of others.  After success in battle, the rewards bestowed by their rulers were great in both value and practicality.  Pritha Kundu, in her academic International Journal of the Huma entitled, “The Anglo-Saxon War-Culture and The Lord of the Rings: Legacy and Reappraisal”, also describes the Pagan Anglo-Saxon warrior culture in like manner as she writes:

The pagan Germanic warriors, as in several other ancient war-like cultures, sought to win glory by doing great deeds in battle. What was interesting about the Germanic ancestors of the Anglo-Saxon warriors, that winning glory for them was not merely personal, but corresponding to the community-virtue and bonds of duty and kinship, in their service to the community and mainly to the chief. The Anglo-Saxon ideal of kinship between a lord and his warrior-thanes bears obvious resonances of the Germanic heroic ethos. (3) 

This kind of status was always sought after by the warrior of both standings of and for good and malice.  Kundu also points to an example within the Beowulf poem itself that presents a glaring specimen of the Anglo-Saxon warrior culture stating, “Beowulf fights Grendel, his mother, and the fire-dragon, but the different strategies and ethics behind these three battle-sequences are real and convincing military affair, which speaks volumes about the war-culture to which the Anglo-Saxons actually belonged” (5). Thus, was the variance of the warrior that lies at the very heart of Anglo-Saxon culture. 

Their warrior culture follows their heroes and reveres them such as the man Beowulf.  On the other hand, the Christians follow and rever their hero in the man of Jesus Christ.  Therefore, to convert the Danes to Christianity, it was easy to portray Jesus Christ as another of these warrior heroes.  It would not have been beneficial to the church to depict the true Jesus of Nazareth as a thin, meek, priestly, conflict-avoiding, armorless and weaponless messenger who suffered and died without a fight.  They would only follow and respect a man of societal warrior culture who was renown and bold, hard, strong and powerful, an action taker, an armored destroyer with elite prowess in battle.  Therefore, in the early works of British Literature, the church made efforts to blend the two personalities together to win over the pagan converts.  Christianity took these pagan concepts and restructured them into a new religion by interpolating, transposing and usurping pagan belief and practices, and events by renaming and re-labeling keywords and titles to Christian names and phrases making them seem to be exclusively Christian ideas much like modern manufacturing does when part products are made by a company in one country then shipped to another company in another country to be assembled into a whole unit and the part makers label replaced by that of the assembler or distributor.  The author’s replacement of Pagan belief and ideology in the poem Beowulf is likely to be evidence of the work of the early church catechumenate, a rigorous Christian training program, acting as a way of winning and “re-programming” Pagan converts to the new faith.  Christianity has often built their religion on Pagan foundations.  In fact, as one particular example, the practice was a law.  Wentersdorf gave one example concerning the Church’s regimen for seizure of Pagan properties by stating, “Instead of attempting to destroy the heathen high places, the missionaries in England adopted a policy, suggested by Pope Gregory I, of converting heathen places to Christian usage” (99).  Further proof of Christian takeover of Pagan place and practice is still evident today such as most American holidays and church ritual practices.  Like cultural appropriation, this is spiritual transubstantiation.

There are a plethora of examples concerning Christian transubstantiation throughout the epic poem of Beowulf.  One only needs to view the similarities between Beowulf, the chosen champion of the gods, and Jesus Christ, the prophet of God.  In early literary works such as the poem Beowulf, the gods set their chosen champion to a foreign nation among the people as a mighty protector or even a demigod sometimes having supernatural strength and abilities.  Very early in the poem, the poet recounts the lineage of the Spear-Danes founder and king, Shield Sheafson, the best of the war-like Germanic society and a champion sent from God.  Line 12 of the Beowulf poem reads, “Afterward a boy-child was born to Shield, a cub in the yard, a comfort sent by God to that nation” (“Beowulf”, 41).  Furthermore, in line 16, “so the Lord of Life, the glorious Almighty, made this man renown” (“Beowulf”, 41).  The very beginning of the poem introduces God’s chosen, born of man, and sent until the peoples of his own nation and God bestowed upon him enhanced fighting capabilities when He made the progenitor of King Hrothgar “renown”.  In comparison, Jesus is also a man and prophet chosen and sent by God to the Israelites to point them toward the Abrahamic God and to save their souls from sin.  So, at the beginning of the poem, the stage is set by introducing and identifying both the god's champion and God's prophet that will later morph indirectly and suggestively into the Swedish Geat warrior Beowulf.

The chosen champion of the gods (God), a man of renown, needs to face an enemy threat equal and opposite in powers and strength.  In the case of Beowulf, a creature of dark natural magicks is labeled a demon, a word unheard of until the advent of Christianity, as line 86 in the Beowulf poem introduces and describes the monster Grendel, "Then a powerful demon, a prowler through the dark, nursed a hard grievance" (“Beowulf”, 43).  Furthermore, the concept of Satan, devil, demon, as Grendel was defined, even angels, Heaven and Hell are all Christian created concepts and were never Pagan concepts.  This is the champion’s enemy and quarry.  In Pagan culture, creatures of this sort are mortal flesh and blood, born of the magic of nature or come up from the Underworld and can be fought and killed by physical means.  Grendal, in this story, springs from a living and corrupted human bloodline, the lineage of the Biblical Cain and Abel, as lines 106 to 108 states that Grendel is derived from, "Cain's clan whom the Creator outlawed and condemned as outcasts.  For the killing of Abel, the Eternal Lord had exacted a price . . .” (“Beowulf”, 43).  In Christianity, demons, devils and the like are ethereal unseen forces of Hell and not of flesh and blood and cannot be fought by physical means.  Therefore, Grendel as a demon does not fit the profile.

The champion and the enemy prepare for battle.  For both Beowulf and Jesus Christ, to prove their worth and find favor among their respective senders there must be a test, a quest, a deed, or a battle.  Beowulf’s quest into a foreign land with his fourteen most trusted thanes sail out to Denmark to face his enemy Grendel was much like Jesus' retreat into the wilderness (a foreign place) for forty days and nights to be tempted and challenged by Satan.  Both Beowulf and Jesus emerge victorious over their enemy.  Jesus begins his ministry acquiring twelve disciples in the land of the Jews.  Beowulf is recognized as the gods’ champion and likewise continues his “ministry” in the land of the Danes.  Satan is sent back to Hell and likewise, Grendel retreats to his lair to die.  Jesus finds favor in God and Beowulf finds favor in his king.  At the end of Jesus' ministry as well as the end of Beowulf’s story comes the death of the heroes.  Jesus is resurrected from the dead and ascends to Heaven on a cloud and Beowulf triumphantly enters death, his body sent off on a floating burning funeral pyre, and his legend is resurrected in song and story.  Both bodies are consumed never again to be found.

There is much the modern reader of Beowulf can take away from the understanding of the poem, but the most obvious is the consistent Christian glossing-over of Pagan themes.  The consecutive chain of events: the champion’s coming, the confrontation with a creature from the damned, the battle between good and evil, and the champion’s victory and retribution mirrors that of the story of Jesus as well as countless other stories of Pagan gods of the past.  The true hero is the unaltered, oral heroic tale of the 5^th century.  The current written version of Beowulf appears to be the Christian author’s way of sending Christianity back in time to a pre-Christian era and staking its claim to a vulnerable and defenseless Pagan oral tradition, supplanting Pagan names, concepts, elements, and ideologies with that of Christian doctrine and to make it as though Christianity was always present in the land and has always been the original religion of man.

Works Cited

Beowulf.  The Norton Anthology of English Literature, edited by Stephen Greenblatt, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 9^th ed. New York, 2013, 36-106. Print.

Kundu, Pritha. "The Anglo-Saxon War-Culture and the Lord of the Rings: Legacy and Reappraisal." War, Literature & the Arts: An International Journal of the Humanities, vol. 26, Jan. 2014, pp. 1-16. Print.

Wentersdorf, Karl P. "Beowulf: The Paganism of Hrothgar's Danes." Studies in Philology, vol. 78, no. 5, Early Winter81, p. 91-119. Print.

Wood, Michael. “In Search of Beowulf.” YouTube, narrated by Michael Wood, British Broadcasting Company, 11 Oct. 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=1C0sFXU0SLo.

The Spiritualist Movement: Roots of Modern Parapsychology and Paranormal Investigation

            The Progressive era of the late eighteenth century to the early nineteenth century sparked a dramatic shift in the American social paradigm.  The Industrial Revolution, beginning before the Civil War, forced the rapid conversion of the nation from agrarianism to urbanization with such magnitude that propelled our civilization into a new reality, and with it, new concepts of being, living, and working that were previously never considered.  Scientific discovery, industrial technology and social reforms of the Progressive era fired the imagination and provided individuals with a new sense of identity and purpose.  New ideas and new possibilities emerged in the minds of men and women once thought as utterly impossible.  Nicola Tesla gave us electrical theory and his precursory electronic inventions inspired the work of other inventors for decades to come.  Thomas Edison gave the world the light bulb, and Tesla's and Edison's combined efforts literally shed new light on a dark world.  Samuel Morse opened the door to instantaneous worldwide, two-way communication, and Guglielmo Marconi’s wireless telegraphy gave us the radio.  Aside from the material, human cognitive machinations reconstituted the age-old quest of human physiological and psychological existential understanding. Regarding that quest, history textbooks list The Spiritualist Movement of the early eighteenth century among the various social reformation efforts during the Progressive Era. However, The Spiritualist Movement was not the only spiritual revolution, nor the most recent, but was merely one of an untold number of metaphysical ideations in a long succession of spiritualist movements throughout history.

While history may record a defined beginning and ending of the Spiritualist Movement, Spiritualism is not so finite as it has no beginning and will never have an end.  The Spiritualist Movement began on a small farm in upstate New York.  In Hydesville, New York in 1847, John David and Margaret Fox and their two daughters, Kate, age twelve, and Maggie,  age fifteen, began to experience a strange phenomenon in their small homestead that had already been thought to be haunted.  The family became increasingly disturbed by strange sounds of unknown origin.  Rappings and knocks on wood and sounds similar to wooden furniture dragged across the floor could be heard almost every night at bedtime.  Considered to be paranormal activity, Kate Fox took it upon herself to question and challenge the source of the knockings and eventually developed a system to retrieve yes/no answers from the supposed entity: one knock for ‘no’ and two knocks for ‘yes’.  Upon discerning the messages they received from the entity, The Fox Sisters, as they would later be called, determined the entity to be the spirit of a traveling merchant by the name of Charles B. Rosner who was murdered in the house five years prior and buried under the homestead’s basement.  Word of the living-spirit interaction got out to the public and had an impassioned ripple effect on and throughout the community. 

Soon after, the Fox Sisters were invited to exhibit their ability of spirit communication to the community leaders, Isaac and Amy Post, who identified the Fox Sisters as spirit mediums.  The Posts helped the sisters proliferate their ability, capturing the attention of a man named Andrew Jackson Davis.  Davis, a self-studied intellectual in the concept of animal magnetism, was so impressed by and believed so whole-heartedly in the Fox Sisters that he developed his spiritualist theories around the phenomena and took the Fox Sisters on tours from city to city showing off the sisters’ psychic abilities.  Davis would then give lectures explaining the esoteric “science” behind the events.  Thus, Andrew Jackson Davis became the “John the Baptist of Modern Spiritualism.”  Within the next few years, The Fox Sisters gained many more notables in following of the new faith such as P.T. Barnum, Edgar Allen Poe, and Arthur Conan Doyle.  Even though Margaret Fox confessed that her and her sister’s promotion of spirit manifestation was a deception, the “exposure did not slow down the growth in spiritualism, nor damage the reputation of the sisters” (Abbott).  The Spiritualist Movement was born, and its adherents were known as Spiritualists. 

The movement took America and Europe by storm and eventually boasted over eight hundred million members across the two continents.  The largest amplification of the Spiritualist Movement came during and after the Civil War by which the staggering death toll sent thousands flocking to Spiritualist churches and seances hoping to make contact with deceased loved ones slain in the war.  By the early 1900’s, and as the Spiritualist Movement was sweeping the nation despite serious opposition, such as the great illusionist and magician Harry Houdini who made it his life’s work to discredit the movement, Spiritualism became not only a predominant religious movement but also a new scientific discipline, albeit unempirical.  An editorial of the Journal of Scientific Exploration explains the scientific community’s growing interest in Spiritualism during this period stating,

“One of the reasons this period is so important is that some physical mediums clearly stood out from the crowd. No matter how carefully they were controlled, and no matter how alert, competent, and familiar with conjuring were their investigators, these mediums produced effects that couldn’t plausibly be dismissed as fraudulent or attributed to malobservation” (Braude 220). 

Therefore, debunkers exposed and routed a great number of obvious charlatans, but more than enough undeniable evidence remained that warranted further attention and study.

            Educated followers of the Spiritualist Movement helped to develop this new parapsychological science by referring to and incorporating the theories and teachings of the forerunners of modern psychology such a Franz Mesmer.  In the 1700’s, Franz Anton Mesmer of Vienna, Austria researched astronomy and its magnetic effects on human health as it pertained to his theory of Animal Magnetism.  Mesmer used alternative healing techniques in which the subject would be mesmerized into an altered state of consciousness.  During this half-sleep state, the subject’s ailments reportedly healed through the power of suggestion.  Mesmer’s technique would be later coined as hypnosis by hypnotist John Braid in 1841.  Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), designated as “The Father of Spiritualism” is another major reference source of the Spiritualist Movement.  Further justification of Spiritualism came from the resurgence of Old World, pre-Christian era Paganism.  The basic tenets of Spiritualism are derived from shamanic beliefs and practices of indigenous cultures all over the world and dating back to the beginnings of man.  Humans are naturally hard-wired with gravitation towards spiritual thought, and our evolutional development has always carried with it conscious and subconscious awareness of the mind-body-spirit connection.  It has been the lifelong study of philosophers throughout the ages from Sophocles to Egyptian sleep temples to the Greco-Roman Oracle of Delphi and on.  Over the course of human existence, spiritual philosophy evolved into intricate webs of thought and discipline branching into various organized religions, eclectic and personal spiritual paths, even transforming into concrete, empirical scientific disciplines of sociology, psychology, and healthcare. 

            Technological advances of the nineteenth century has also lent credibility to the Spiritualist Movement as some scientists and engineers converted and redesigned electronic instruments for use in paranormal investigation and spirit communication.  These wondrous technologies produced the world we live in today, but one invention served in quite a different capacity.  Thomas Alva Edison invented the phonograph in the 1870’s which recorded audio on a foil cylinder.  For the first time, music and human voice can be recorded and played back to a fascinated audience.  Edison’s phonograph, designed initially to revolutionize the music entertainment industry, also served a latent function; it may have enabled communication with the dead.  

            Progressivists utilized cutting-edge technology of the times to further the study and practice of communication with the afterlife.  Later investigators and practitioners found the phonograph to be a useful tool for the endeavor. In fact, the first known case, decisively coining the term Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP), was entirely unexpected.  In 1901, anthropologist, Waldemar Bogoras, used a phonograph in Siberia to record the sounds, chants, and incantations of a Chukchi tribal elder during a shamanic ritual.  During the ceremony, Bogoras quietly observed.  When Bogoras played back the audio of the ritual from the phonograph, he heard voices that apparently did not belong.  These voices were not speaking in the Chukchi language but spoken in English and Russian.  Bogoras could not explain where the voices were coming from since he was the only person of Anglo decent present at the ritual.  The disembodied voices remain unexplainable to this day.  Demetrius, the Co-Founder of the Ontario Catholic Paranormal Research Society (OCPRS), mentions Bogoras’ findings in the society’s newsletter stating, “According to some sources, the Minnesota State University continues to maintain and study the recording. Despite examinations by physicist, the recording remains unexplainable”.  Demetrius goes on to state, “Bogoras’ recording is not only the earliest but is the most credible and fascinating piece of evidence considered to be paranormal.”  News of Bogoras’ discovery found its way back to America which sparked the Spiritualist Movement’s increased usage of the phonograph to attempt communication with the beyond.  Groups of individuals conducting seances using the phonograph to play specific musical selections that were thought to stimulate spirit activity wildly proliferated.  After completion of the seances, researchers scrutinized the phonographic recordings attempting to audibly detect subtle verbal utterances from the ranks of the deceased.    

            Inspired by the Spiritualists use of his phonograph, Edison and his assistant, Dr. Miller Hutchinson, embarked upon a project in the 1920’s to invent a telephonic machine designed for the sole purpose of communication with the dead.  Edison announced his development of the device in an article of The Scientific American in 1921, by stating:

 If our personality survives, then it is strictly logical or scientific to assume that it retains memory, intellect, other faculties, and knowledge that we acquire on this Earth.  Therefore, if personality exists after what we call death, it is reasonable to conclude that those who leave the Earth would like to communicate with those they have left here.  I am inclined to believe that our personality hereafter will be able to affect matter.  If this reasoning be correct, then, if we can evolve an instrument so delicate as to be affected by our personality as it survives in the next life, such an instrument, when made available, ought to record something. (Lescarboura 458)

Unfortunately, Thomas Edison died in 1931 before he could finish his project and no other successor appeared to continue his work.  New and improved technologies such as the gramophone and the radio soon replaced the phonograph, and the search for intelligent supernatural afterlife continued through them. (Yarbrough)

            With the film and television industry notwithstanding, technological advances in the late 1920’s leveled off as the Progressive era tapered to its inevitable end.  The stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing devastation of the Great Depression deprived American society of its former glory.  Progressivism and the zeal of social reform lost its luster.  The 1930’s marked the end of the Progressive era as America returned to an isolationist state, and with it, the Spiritualist Movement.  However, Spiritualism was never truly abandoned but only retreated to the shadows of society and reserved for itself the proverbial backseat until it found future favor in the hearts and minds of society once again.  Another major social paradigm shift shook the foundational laissez-faire social attitude and revitalize the U.S. economy as well as the American individual from lowly farmer to factory foreman to federal politician.  The Great War, or World War I, awakened the American spirit and pushed the passive into action.  As the death toll of the war escalated, a revival of the Progressive era Spiritualism emerged just as it did, and for the same reasons, as the Civil War decades prior.  From there, the Spiritualist Movement relocated its path and reembarked upon its evolutionary course. 

            Over the next four decades, refueled by subsequent conflicts such as World War II, The Korean War, and the Vietnam War, the Spiritualist Movement remained intact even though it never fully recovered its prominent position on the societal stage it once held in the early 1900’s.  Spiritualism diverted on a new trajectory in the 1960’s and 70’s as paranormal studies transitioned from the domain of the general layman to scholarly review.  Scientists in the fields of technology and healthcare began taking a closer look at undeniable and overwhelming amount of unexplainable aspects of supernatural experiences.  Much was reasonably explained away and those things disproven were cast to the side, but much more created more questions than they answered.  With the general but undeclared sentiment of, “If there is nothing to it then there would be nothing to experience,” paranormal studies captured the attention and imagination of the scientific community and thus, furthered its evolution from merely the stuff of fiction and fantasy to serious empirical study.

            A 2013 BBC News article entitled, The people that think they tune into dead voices, investigated a critical moment in paranormal investigation history with the study of early EVP experimentation.  In 1969, a Latvian doctor, Konstantin Raudive, publicly introduced a machine that he had been using for experiments in spirit communication.  Raudive’s technique used basic radio frequency to produce what he called “white noise” as a medium and energy source for spirits to use for communication with the living.  During the sound of constant radio static, the investigator would ask a series of questions, then stop the device and playback a recording of the static session to listen for possible answers to the questions.  Raudive called his technique Electronic Voice Projection or EVP (Jenkins).  His technique proved to revolutionize the field of paranormal research that continues development to this day. 

            Mass media television broadcasts greatly impact our lives today more than any other time in American history.  Reality TV was born in the 1950’s through the 1960’s when producers and directors began experimenting with unscripted drama formats, but it wasn’t until the late 80’s to early 90’s that Reality TV reached its highest apex.  Television producers broke the mold of contrived “perfect family” sitcoms and debuted television shows such as “Cops,” “Survivor,” “American Idol,” and “Keeping Up With the Kardashians.”  From the midst of these new provocative, unscripted dramas in which anything could happen, paranormal reality shows, documentaries, and docudramas specifically focused on ghost hunting took root and began transforming viewer perceptions about the existence of human and other ethereal spirits walking amongst us.  The Travel Channel capitalized on the massive ratings these paranormal shows were producing and became more of a ghost channel than what its name advertises.

            “Paranormal State” and “TAPS” were the first of a long line of competitive television programs featuring groups and societies of paranormal investigators dedicated to serious paranormal research while inspecting abandoned buildings and graveyards attempting to locate, communicate with, and document spirit manifestations.  Equipped with all the latest cutting-edge electronic detection devices derived from the Industrial Revolution and the Spiritualist Movement of the eighteenth century, a new version of the Spiritualist Movement is underway.  Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP) recorders, electromagnetic frequency (EMF) meters, night vision/full spectrum video cameras, FLIR thermal cameras, motion detectors, and ghost boxes are just some of the modern technological adaptations of eighteenth century and early nineteenth century components.  With modern technology in hand, paranormal investigators on and off the record have conducted thousands of cases and captured, documented, and recorded an extensive amount of unexplainable phenomena.  Seeing is believing, and even though paranormal research is still in its pseudo-scientific infancy, the truly scientific community can no longer deny the incontestable evidence. 

            The mysterial trappings of the Spiritualist Movement predates the Fox Sisters by millions of years, ever since man began standing upright and making stone tools.  Existence of the human soul, death and life after death, the Spirit World(s), the mind-body connection, and the mysterious emergent properties of human intelligence and potential have plagued scientists and philosophers for ages.  Driven by technology, the twentieth and twenty-first centuries are the beginning of a new spiritual era as modern scientists conceptualize and theorize on these age-old questions.  As empirical supernatural study moves into the scientific realm, the Spiritualist Movement, in any form, is here to stay and will continue to push the boundaries of human development and enlightenment for many more ages to come.

Work Cited

“History of Modern Spiritualism.” BBC, http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/spiritualism/history/history.shtml. Accessed 20 Mar. 2018.

Abbott, Karen. “The Fox Sisters and the Rap on Spiritualism.” Smithsonian.com, 30 Oct. 2012, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-fox-sisters-and-the-rap-on-spiritualism-99663697/.

Braude, Stephen. "Editorial." Journal of Scientific Exploration, vol. 28, no. 2, Summer2014, pp. 219-227. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=97436411&site=ehost-live.

Demetrius. “The ‘Ghost Box’ Fraud.” Ontario Catholic Paranormal Research Society, Toronto, Canada, 17 Feb. 2011, https://ocprstoronto.wordpress.com/2011/02/17/the-%E2%80%9Cghost-box%E2%80%9D-fraud/.

Jenkins, Jolyon. “The People Who Think They Tune into Dead Voices.” BBC News, 25 March 2013, http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21922834.

Lescarboura, Austin C. “Edison's Views on Life and Death.” Scientific American, vol. 123, no. 18, 1920, pp. 446–460., www.jstor.org/stable/24991827.

Yarbrough, Don. Blog Post. “The Phonograph: The First Paranormal Communication Device.” Blogger.com, 12 March 2018, https://donparadocs.blogspot.com/.

Don Yarbrough

Originally authored: 6 April 2018

The Crossroads: what does it mean?

I asked several friends, “What does ‘The Crossroads’ mean to you?” Their answers varied, but even still, there were similar themes.

Decisions and consequences, change and results. Journeys and opportunities, great potential and potentially great loss, letting go, and cycles of life, death and rebirth. Those ideas were present across perspectives. One friend said, “A threshold/ liminal place where the worlds are pinched together.” Another discussed the potential of the space also being frustrating, because to them, the unknown can be frightening, but can ultimately lead to a better place.

Another idea that people agreed upon is that a Crossroads is a place to reflect, then choose a direction – not a place to dwell. Sit, learn, listen, maybe commune with others, then make a decision to move. The option exists to choose a direction from there, and that could simply be to “carry on.”

We each face crossroads fairly regularly. Some crossroads are small, and some are glacial. Another theme that I heard a few times in the answers from my friends was that these decisions we make at each road we cross can affect us greatly as individuals and as a community at large.

When I hear the expression, “The Crossroads,” several things come to mind, but two things stick out more than the others: Supernatural (the hit TV show), and a rap song from the 90s by Bone Thugs-n-Harmony.

In the TV show Supernatural, there are Crossroads demons, and these demons grant the supplicant some request, from saving a wife from cancer, to becoming the world’s best blues player (a long-standing real-life Blues tale from the 1930s), to restoring a brother’s soul from hell back to Earth. There are a lot of rules around these demons, including how to summon them, and the contract itself, which requires the supplicant to give up their soul 10 years from the date of the compact.

The song Tha Crossroads by Bone Thugs-n-Harmony was released in 1996, and met with virtually instant commercial success. It was a tribute to the late Eazy-E, who was a supporter of Bone Thugs-n-Harmony’s early days. What a lot of people don’t realize is that this is a re-imagination of an earlier version of their song, The Crossroads. The original had more explicit lyrics, and never (or rarely?) saw radio play, but also had some lyric gems, such as, “thinkin’ back, in the days when we did some f*cked-up thangs / Now I gotta ask God if that’s the reason my homie’s gone away.” It was a staunch admonishment of the “shoot first” mentality of the 90s gang wars, which they also expressed beautifully in Change the World (not to be confused with Eric Clapton’s song of the same title).

What resounds with me about Tha Crossroads in particular is how many people I know personally who have direct connections to this song. By the time you’re my age (ahem… mid 30s), you’ve certainly lost someone in your life. A family member, a community member, or people you’re close to. When I was 15, my best friend’s boyfriend was struck by a car on his way to pitch in a baseball game, after actively working on turning his life around for the better, and was killed on the scene. My best friend was grief-stricken for months, and it took her into a spiral of so many problems. I remember very clearly at his funeral that a single (tape) of Tha Crossroads was placed in his casket, and that was one of the most meaningful things for all of us. It was a beautiful tribute to a friend and fellow rap fan, and I remember that moment every time I hear that song.

Both of these pop culture references to Crossroads serve to remind us to make the most of the time we have here on this plane. One reminds us that we have limited time here, and the other reminds us to make our decisions carefully because there may be repercussions.

These thoughts and musings on “The Crossroads” bring me to a few conclusions: life is a journey, and what we do matters. Life is short, in the grander scheme of things, and we should make the most of it while we are here, and be deliberate with our choices and our energies. Where have you been? What have you overcome to get here? Which way will you go when you come to the next crossroads? Who will you take on your journey with you? To whom will you wish farewell as your paths diverge? What will you do along the way?

How will you impact the world around you?

By Laura, Accord Editor
Special Thanks to Kait, Darren, Slinky, Lindsey, Xandra, Martin, Amanda, John, Jensen, Rebecca, Willow, Mark, Meagan, Rachel, Julianne, and Kady for their thoughts and input.

The Power of Three

Soft Moon shadows linger
On ancient hilltops of long ago,
As three familiar beings
Unite to make one soul.

Treasured thoughts of yesterday
Secrets safe in time,
As three gather together
To chant their ancient rhyme.

“Mystical magic combined,
With the unity of three
To bring forth the power
By the Goddess, so mote it be!”

I am the Weaver, Enchantress, and Crone,
The giver of magical sight.
Mine are the last before they are first,
In the silent silver sliver of waning moon light.

“Mystical magic combined,
With the unity of three
To bring forth the power
By the Goddess, so mote it be!”

Mother am I to the child come to living,
Teacher am I to the children of the Earth.
My face can be seen in the full silver moon light.
I am the holder of the gates of rebirth.

“Mystical magic combined,
With the unity of three
To bring forth the power
By the Goddess, so mote it be!”

I dance unclothed and alone in the wood,
Under the waxing silver moon of the night.
Maiden am I of idea’s and imagination
Where the fairy play under the crescent moon light.

“Mystical magic combined,
With the unity of three
To bring forth the power
By the Goddess, so mote it be!”

Shadows of darkness,
Pleasure of light,
Death and rebirth,
Wrong into right.

We are the Maiden, Mother, and Crone
In three different beings we stand undone
To find the hidden remains of our hearts.
United by the power of three to become one!

by Stephie Pie

Editorial - Stewardship

Let’s talk about Stewardship for a moment. This is a term I’ve heard all my life. In the Episcopal church, they talked about stewardship as a recruitment tool of sorts, and that all made sense (as much as a concept like that could mean to a child). As I grew older, I began to hear that word used in a more secular context - being stewards of the environment. And further, as I grew into Paganism, I learned more about what Stewardship really meant to me and to those around me.

Webster defines “stewardship” in a few different ways, but the most relevant here is:

"the conducting, supervising, or managing of something; especially : the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one's care."

Throughout my teens and early twenties, the concept that the care of the earth is entrusted to us all, and that we should be careful and responsible with it grew and flourished, and programs for recycling, and reminders to “recycle, reduce, reuse!” grew in numbers to such a great (and wonderful) extent that it is very nearly appalling to many people when recycling is not readily available alongside refuse containers.

Then, in the early 2000’s, we were told that the plastic bottles that some of us were diligently recycling were not actually recyclable, and that they were leaching chemicals into our water. Gratefully, this seemed to cause two things to happen: 1. Plastic manufacturers learned how to create better bottles that are less harmful to the consumer, and 2. More people got onto the “reusable bottle” train. Now with the invention of things like Yeti cups, even people in Texas can have cold drinks hours after they’re poured and not generate extra waste in the process. It’s not perfect. We haven’t eliminated plastic bottles altogether.

The statistics are still rather alarming. A quick search on your favorite web search engine will bring up a plethora of “facts” about single use plastics, some with thorough documentation, others whose documentation is lacking detail, or lacking altogether. One of our amazing CMA Members created this document which contains details about the types of plastics available and great information about their recyclability, chemical content, and other interesting information.

Another wonderful CMA Member wrote into the Accord, and had this story to share:

My grandson told me more than 20 years ago that if I threw a cigarette butt on the ground at Heartland, I’d have to pick up 20 butts as punishment. He assured me that would be extremely difficult because pagans simply did not litter and absolutely knew better than to throw CIGARETTE BUTTS on the ground. I loved that about this community. I loved it that after spending the night partying around the revel fire, there was very little trash to pick up and I almost NEVER saw any trash on the roads or around the campsites. People recycled, for crying out loud! It was amazing! There were trash cans and butt cans and bags that distinguished between “recycling” and “garbage”. That was 20 years ago. 

Everyone seems to have varying degrees of commitment to environmental stewardship. When I lived alone, I had reduced my trash collection to one bag of trash per week at most, and my recycle bin was more often full when my trash was virtually empty. The Pack it in, Pack it out rule at CMA was always an easy concept for me, even before CMA stopped providing the dumpster at festival.

Now that my life is a little more hectic, I find myself not devoting as much thought to being a steward of this world we share - generating more trash instead of recycling, making less environmentally friendly choices, particularly when it comes to lunch at work, and buying the occasional plastic bottle when I’ve forgotten my reusable bottle or mug. We definitely recycle as much as we can (if you’ve been to a gathering at our house, or at Dammit Camp, you’ve probably seen me pulling cans and bottles out of the trash and moving them to the recycle bin), but I always feel like I could do more.

I have challenged my camp this festival, and I hope you consider challenging yours, to bring larger containers of water, and leave behind the individual bottles. I challenge you to consider recycling anything that can be recycled when you return to the default world after the festival. And I challenge you to continue that practice for the following week, month, season, year - whatever you can manage. The things we do become a practice, and a practice becomes a lifestyle. Let’s live our truth, and be intentional stewards of this world we call home.

Laura
Accord Editor
With contributions from Bran and Undomiel

Area and Society Updates

Area Reports

Greetings from the Outlands Area! 

☆Did you know??? You are an Outlander ... IF you are Not in a designated area --》Austin, San Antonio, Coastal Bend, North Texas, Central Texas or SouthEast Texas. Please join our CMA Outlands FB Group. We all aspire to Be A Part of a Community.  

CMA Outlands Area FB group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1094520530559051

☆We are looking forward to seeing you during CMA Beltane festival at our Outlands Area Meeting at 11 AM in Volk Ve on Saturday, October 19, 2019.  

☆Are you ready to serve our Village as an Outlands Area Rep?  This would be the time/place to raise your hand and say, "Yes!"

☆If you have any upcoming events in Your area of Outlands, let us know and we can help Boost the Signal. 

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask your Area Reps. It takes community to build community. 

~Alchemy♡, Outlands Area Lead Rep 

& Arrick, Outlands Area Rep

Society Reports

*CMA Family Society Seeks New Lead* 

Hey, everyone! For those that don't know, Candyce is the current de facto lead of this society. As you may have seen if you've read the Meet the Candidates page, she's running for Director of Communications. As such, she would like to pass off leadership of this society to someone that can dedicate more time and energy to building it up. We can vote on a new leader at the Family Society meeting at Samhain. 

Minimum requirements: we're looking for someone that can post relevant content in the FB group, submit content to the Accord, and lead the meetings at festivals. Ideally this would be someone with children that can help bring back activities for children at festivals and maybe even coordinate bringing and caring for children at workends. 

There is a lot of potential for this group, but Candyce is going to be swamped with board stuff and won't be able to help realize it. Please be thinking about if you could be that person! See you at Samhain!

Fire & Flow Performance Society 

Festival Reminders:

Saturday, October 19th @Pan's PlayHouse

PLEASE Attend the All Revel Societies Meeting with ALL of Us at 2pm!!!!  Revel Rousers, F&F Performance, Drummers, Dancers & More!!!

Fire &Flow Performance Society Meeting:  Saturday, October 19th @ 3pm  AFTER the All Revels Societies meeting. We will move across to our established F&F Performance Area by the Maypole at the conclusion of the business portion of the meeting for more skill sharing, practice, etc.

Come find us at the NW corner of Revel Fire --》 Each Night of Festival for Fire and Flow Performance. 

Due to the Fayette County Burn Ban and the extremely dry conditions at the land, our Board of Directors had to make the Hard decision. 

No Fire Toys during Samhain 2019

☆LED/Flow Toys Only☆

Thank you for understanding the safety of our Land and Spirit Haven Family must come first. 

http://www.co.fayette.tx.us/

As always lets make this an awesome (and safe) festival that brings us closer together as a society!

Looking forward to seeing you all again,

CMA Fire&Flow Performance Society Leads: 

Patrick Thomas - Draco Pendragon 

Jennifer Birr - Rogue

Carla Hargrove  - Alchemy♡

Austin Witches Ball

The Council of Magickal Arts proudly presents 

Austin Witches' Ball 2019: Corsets and Kilts! 

The fabulously wicked DJ Dren Pasht will be spinning WitchWave and other dance-able delights, and burlesque performers will scintillate your senses. There will be divination readers, vendors, a silent auction, and a costume contest, so dress to impress! 

Event Link: https://www.facebook.com/events/376841096241903/

Elysium Nightclub Friday, October 11 Doors at 9pm $10 donation for entry

Death Takes its Own

Welcome to the first post from the Death Walkers of Spirit Haven. We're a newly formed
Society that has come together to explore and honour the work of death. We each come from
different backgrounds and different perspectives, and we're still formulating exactly how we will
serve this community, but we're going to begin with introductions and explanations. In the
coming months, you'll see us speaking about our own histories, our approaches to death and
death work, and our plans as a Society. If you're interested in joining, we have a Facebook
group (Death Walkers of Spirit Haven) and will be hosting our second Society meeting at
Samhain of 2019.

Death Takes its Own

or “How I Became A Grief Priestess”

Submitted by: Rowan Badger

What a lot of people understand in the practical sense, but frequently don’t grasp in the spiritual
sense, is that death chooses its own. We all have some experience with someone that physical
death took from us when we would have willed it otherwise, but when you get into talking about
death work, death magic, and grief practice, there tends to be an expectation that those who do
it sought it out.

I was never the sort of girl who hung out in graveyards; I can count the number of black clothing
items I owned in high school and college on the fingers of my hands easily. Hallowe’en was
about candy, and mostly still is for me. A lot of the people who know me casually would have
no idea, looking at me or even talking to me, that I’ve been doing death work for more than a
decade.

In the early part of 2004, I got the devastating word that my best friend had been in a car
accident and lay in a coma, over a thousand miles away. Every night for weeks I roamed every
plane I could, looking for her spirit to help her find her way back home. I never found her, but a
few days after word came that there was no more brain activity and life support was ending, I
awoke before dawn with a profound sense of peace and completion. Minutes later, the phone
rang with the final news.

Later that year, notice came from my father about my great-uncle, a man who had been like a
grandfather to me: If you want to see him, go now. My mother and I made the cross-state drive
together, offered tacit goodbyes in a sunny nursing home courtyard, and drove home trying to
pretend we hadn’t seen the shadows gathering around and inside him. A month later, he was
gone. So soon upon my friend’s death, it hit me harder than it otherwise would have, and when
a community to which I was connected lost a much-beloved member to tragedy and violence,
that pushed me over a precipice of grief I have no functional words to describe.

I remember almost nothing of that winter, except a soul-deep anguish I carried everywhere I
went. I spent months simply locked into a pattern of mourning. Imbolc came and went, casting
small rays of hope into the spring, and I followed them out of my darkness.

It was a few months later, the first time it happened. Sitting quietly in a coffee shop, I looked up
to find a stranger sitting at my table. “I don’t know who else to talk to,” she said. “What do you
do when you can’t stop missing someone?” She’d lost someone important to her, far too young,
and we sat and talked through her grief, through her pain. Somewhere along the path that
leads through mourning, she’d made a misstep and found herself unable to move on. Gently,
slowly, I guided her steps and gave her a gentle nudge. I never saw her again, but I assume
she found the way back to where she needed to be.

After that, it became a regular occurrence. In the grocery store: My daughter died five years
ago, when will I stop being so angry? At a bus stop: I hope you don’t mind me talking to you,
but I’ve got to take my mother off life support today, and I needed a friendly face. Over and
over: I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but thank you so much for listening. They just kept
finding me, the ones who could not find a way through their own loss, and each time I would
stop, and listen, and offer what wisdom and signposts I had. Each time, they carried away a
small piece of my spirit to light their way. It was nothing I couldn’t spare, but there it went.
I had toyed with the idea of serving as a priestess, but had taken no steps toward it, and it
became clear over the next two years that a path was being laid out and offered to me. Finally,
one night as I sat chatting with an online friend, he asked to call me. Said he just wanted to
chat without text. We laughed, we joked, and...suddenly I found myself heart-deep in the death
of his father, walking with him as he faced and laid to rest demons of incredible pain and loss. It
took hours, and by the end of it he was weeping uncontrollably. He told me, “Thank you, I had
not cried since my father died.” It had been over thirty-five years; his father died when he was in
elementary school, younger than his own youngest child. That night tore a hole in my spirit
almost larger than I could bear.

When I hung up, I sat at my altar and explained that I was not refusing the work, would not turn
my back on it, but could not serve without a balance to replenish. The voices of the grieving
went quiet, and I thought that my request had been refused and the work had been taken from
me. Then, I was asked to officiate my first wedding, and on the flight home I explored the
questioning space in my heart and I agreed that yes, that would serve to mend the balance, that
as long as I had the work of life, I could do the work of death. Not long after, a timid mourner
found his way to me, and through me back to his own way forward.

There are many faces to the work of death. My province is Grief. I’ll offer no platitudes and I
can’t assure you that anyone is in a better place; we all get the justice in death we never saw in
life, for good or ill. I walk the paths of loss, eyes and heart open for those who cannot find their
way, who cannot understand that grief is the final evolution of love, the final distillation of a
spiritual connection, and that its purity is sacred. My gift is the ability to show the beauty in loss,
to hold space and offer permission to experience that loss without expectation, reservation, or

judgment. We do not, in this world, always give tragedy its full import; I carry within and around
myself the space to do exactly that, to give voice to the weeping howl until it screams itself to
peace and the work of living begins again in the following quiet.

Drummers and Musicians Society looking for Lead

CMA Drummers and Musicians society is looking for a new leader since Toni announced he is leaving CMA and has stepped down. Need someone who can lead us in reaching out to increase society membership, participation and doing workshops. If interested please contact Chuck Morris on facebook or email at morris.chuck (at) gmail.com. We will vote at Beltane if more than one person is interested.