Science Fiction’s Gifts to Paganism: talk video and footnotes

I am pleased to be able to post the video of my 12 February 2015 Treadwells talk on ‘Science Fiction’s Gifts to Paganism’. My huge thanks to the Treadwells staff as always, especially to Marco Visconti for filming and editing the talk.

The YouTube video went live on 27 February – tragically, this was the day Leonard Nimoy died. Out of the huge respect I had for the man, and how he embodied the concepts of IDIC which I explored in the talk, I waited to post this until now.

(And, not long after, Terry Pratchett also died. I’m glad to have given both these gentlemen some small tribute here.)

As some of the audience requested, I have a few footnotes on the talk below.

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When is a Celt…

… Not a Celt?

A fine article of this title by Joanna Hautin-Mayer just crossed my path (via the Naked Woad Warrior‘s blog). It’s a harsh-but-fair look at the level of pseudohistorical invention punted as fact by some neopagan writers. Informative and fun – take for example this gentle dig at the claims made in “Witta: An Irish Pagan Tradition” by Edain McCoy. After noting Ms. McCoy’s claims that the potato as an ancient Irish symbol (having somehow not been aware it was imported from Peru in the 16-17th Centuries!) she also points out this gem:

McCoy goes on to claim that “the famous epic poem Carmina Burana was a manuscript found in an Italian monastery which clearly glorifies the Mother Goddess”(p.4). What exactly this statement has to do with anything, I cannot determine. But in fact, Carmina Burana is the name given to a collection of bawdy drinking songs in Latin probably written down in the tenth or eleventh centuries, the manuscript of which was found in a Bavarian monastery. If pieces such as “It’s my firm intention in a barroom to die” are to be considered as hymns to the Goddess, then all country music must be pagan.

Ouch!

Have a read, tho’ it be longish.