Light It Up like a Roman

Archaeologists at Pompeii are trying to figure out what incense its residents burned in their homes.

The study is part of a growing interest in so-called “sensory archaeology,” which seeks to reconstruct not only objects and spaces from the past but also the sensory experiences associated with them. The aroma of burned incense, mixed with the smoke of local plants and possibly with wine poured as a libation, formed an essential part of communication with the divine in the domestic sphere.

One residue detected is that of elemi, the gum of Canarium Luzonicum, a tree that grows in tropical forest in such locales as Madagascar and Philippine Islands. “It is still intensely fragrant and perfect as an ingredient in solid perfumes, salves, cremes, cosmetics, incense blends and moustache wax recipes,” says one online seller.

So there was quite a journey involved, either across the Indian Ocean or up the eastern coast of Africa through the Red Sea to one of several ports, then overland Alexandria (no Suez Canal then!) and back into a ship to Italy.

Household shrine in the Casa del Larario del Sarno (I.14.7) with statuettes of Lares, a lamp and a censer. Credit: Pompeii, Archivio Fotografico inv. D964

(Household shrine in the Casa del Larario del Sarno (I.14.7) with statuettes of Lares, a lamp and a censer. Credit: Pompeii, Archivio Fotografico inv. D964)

“Grape biomarkers” are also mentioned, so apparently people were pouring out wine into containers on their altars, which seems perfectly normal.

Upcoming Zoom with Robin Douglas, Sasha Chaitow

Two leading scholars of contemporary Paganism will be live on Zoom this weekend: Robin Douglas has a book in press with the Equinox series on Pagan studies: The Pagan Revival A Documentary History of Modern Paganism, 1700-1950.

Sasha Chaitow is also widely published, including in The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies. Lately she has focused on is an independent scholar of Greek cultural history whose work focuses on ancient, Byzantine, and modern traditions. She is the author of Son of Prometheus, a new study of Horapollon’s Hieroglyphica, and forthcoming studies of Byzantine demonology and of living Greek magic.

You can find earlier podcasts in the Coming to the Center series on Cherry Hill’s YouTube channel. This Sunday’s podcast should turn up there later. There is even one of me (looking sleepy out on the front porch) from 2024 and running on about contemporary Paganism.

Are the House Wights Studying the Renaissance?

Most of my stories about how the “critters,” the house wights, the Borrowers (to borrow a term), or whatever they are like shiny objects.

There was the still-missed Norwegian salad-serving fork. Corkscrews vanished a couple of time. Another big serving fork disappeared and then reappeared, lying in plain view in an empty dish rack. Two rings of keys vanished from a spot on top of a filing cabinet. One later reappeared elsewhere (and there might be a naturalistic explanation, I admit), while the second was gone for good.

A few months ago they branched out into books. It was a one-time thing as far as a I can tell. (Well no, what happened to that Allan Kardec book?) There is a kind of a switcheroo in this one.

So I was musing about the history of the Tarot, and I wanted to look for something in Joscelyn Godwin‘s The Pagan Dream of the Renaissance, but I could not find it on the shelf where it was supposed to be.

The Pagan Dream of the Renaissance recounts the almost untold story of how the rediscovery of the pagan, mythological imagination during the Renaissance brought a profound transformation to European culture. This highly illustrated book, available for the first time in paperback, shows that the pagan imagination existed sidebyside often uneasily with the official symbols, doctrines, and art of the Church

I looked and looked. No book. No problem, I’ld order a used copy from the Big River. In due time, it arrived. I opened it and left it on my desk. Shortly after, it disappeared, leaving only the wrappings.

I ordered a third copy, and in a few days it arrived, as seen the photo. Meanwhile, the original book “re-appeared” — I put that in quotes because because it is quite possible that this was nothing paranormal but just me mis-remembering where I had put it. Every little weirdness does not bear the fingerprints of The Other. Sometimes I outsmart myself.

But somewhere there is a copy of The Pagan Dream of the Renaissance, and I would like to know who is reading it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Revisiting Initiatory Wicca: Are They Still Scourging?

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

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

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

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

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

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

All Those Witches: Caroline Tully Sorts Them Out

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

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

A Heathen Marine Vet Overcomes PTSD with Psilocybin

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

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

Apple podcasts audio link here. YouTube video link here.

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

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

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

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

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

Do You Remember Astro Dice?

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


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

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

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

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

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

The Case of the Paranormal Pincushion

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They “borrowed” it.

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

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

A miniature wood stove for sale on eBay.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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