I enjoyed the Pagan convention and even more, I made money. I didn't expect to make a cent, but I sold a good number of prints and made a surprising amount, even though there were fewer than a hundred people there. I also gave three talks, one on Zoroastrianism and two on my own art and how I design things. Each of these talks had a nice handful of people in the audience, and the group was small enough so that everyone had a chance to ask questions and participate in discussions.

One of my art talks was about how I am trying to use scientific and mathematical themes and elements in my painting. I demonstrated on a piece of notebook paper how conic sections provide most of the curved lines I use in my art. I also use other mathematical curves such as exponential curves, switchbacks produced by numbers raised to the third power, and spirals. I showed my viewers the particle trails that appear in many of my physics-oriented paintings. I remember one Friendly Scientist quite a while ago explaining to me that those particle trails actually follow paths defined by conic sections! There is also the spiral (actually a helix, according to the Scientist) which is traced by a speeding electron under a strong magnetic field. Even simple conic section curves give me enough material for a whole gallery full of designs. When I mix these forms with Art Deco, then I have splendid design opportunities.

Since I was given the precious chance to talk about my art "live" to interested people, I went on a bit of a rant about what I felt was wrong with almost all the "scientific" art I see. This is really the subject of another Electron posting in the future, but I feel the need to react in my own work against what I consider an impersonal and often dull aesthetic as well as poor color choices. What works as a "false-color image" for scientists to study looks awful as an artwork, for instance. Even the famous images from the Hubble Space Telescope as well as other telescopes have been color-enhanced to make them more attractive. If I say too much about this, I will run into trouble with other scientific-minded artists, so I better stop now.

Towards the end of the talk I turned the table (so to speak) and asked my Pagan audience questions. What was the Pagan attitude towards Creationism and other perversions of science done by religious entities? Did they believe in a divine creation or the intervention of a divinity in the history of the material world? Did the Goddess have anything to say about evolution or genetic engineering or cloning?

Perhaps I asked too many questions too fast, but I didn't get any clear answers from them. The night before, I had a long and interesting discussion with the author guest of honor, a Wiccan priestess who has written many books on popular magic and what might be called "urban shamanism." I asked her whether the Neo-Pagan movement, which is by now more than fifty years old, had any trained philosophers or theologians, and whether they had any social and political programs. Yes to the second, she said; she was involved in many social causes which Pagans supported. But as to the first, Paganism had a serious deficiency.

There have been plenty of academic and intellectually "respectable" books written about Neo-Paganism and other "new religious movements," but few have been written from within the community aimed at providing Paganism with a coherent and logical body of belief and thought. The reason for this, according to the author, is that Neo-Pagans shy away from anything they fear might turn into "dogma" or "doctrine," which they equate with oppression and lack of freedom. This is understandable, given the dreadful problems that mainstream religions have had with the working out of doctrine. Neo-Pagans prefer to "work out their own truth" from their own experiences, which means that no Pagan will have quite the same set of ideas as another. In practice, this usually sorts out to some basic similarities, such as the veneration of female divinity and the sacredness of the Earth. But it also is so formless and non-structured that it's hard to make any coherent philosophical or theological statement that would answer questions such as I asked.

The author said that this formlessness and lack of intellectual structure was something she saw hindering the progress of Neo-Paganism. While it's comforting to know that you have escaped the spiked chains and iron bars of dogma, it also means that you do not compete in the hard public arena of ideas. This is why Neo-Pagans are still regarded at best as tree-hugging hippies lost in pretty dreams of a rainbow utopia, and at worst as Satan-worshippers. The author said she longed to write books that went into more depth and added more intellectualism to the Pagan movement, but her publishers weren't interested. They only wanted cute books on how to do kitchen spells.

Two thousand years ago and more, Paganism of the philosophical sort had a profound intellectual tradition. After all, both Pythagoras and Plato were "pagans." I mentioned to my audience that if I were to become a Neo-Pagan, I'd like to be a Pythagorean, meditating on the magic of numbers and entering into altered states of consciousness through the sides of a triangle. (Though I wouldn't want to be a strict vegetarian as they were.) In the early centuries of Christianity, "Pagan" philosophies such as Stoicism and Neo-Platonism flourished side-by-side with the Church Fathers and had a great influence on them. But somehow this ancient heritage hasn't become prevalent in modern Neo-Paganism. If the movement doesn't develop a stronger intellectual tradition, it will stay marginalized while other more rigorous, aggressive ideas prevail, both for good and no-good.

Posted at 3:17 am | link