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Merrymeet 1997

It's been hot work at Grand Council all day, so I head down to Gull Lake for a quick dip before dinner. What I see there astounds me.

Clearly, word of the wild witches has got out. Every fishing boat on the lake has—coincidentally, no doubt—just happened to drift over to our side, the prospect of naked pagans apparently outweighing that of walleye on this sunny late August afternoon.

Ritual robe hiked up to her knees, a woman sits at the end of the dock, dangling her feet in the water.

Gods, what's with these people? I say, taking off my shirt. I'm half tempted to wave. All this to see a little bit of skin?

Cowans, she commiserates.

Hey, screen me, would you? I ask, crouching.

Anything for a fellow conspirator, she says, raising her arms.

Screened by her back and generous hanging sleeves, I slip out of my kilt and over the edge.

Saw my first topless female bicyclist today.

Now that's brave, I thought.

The Minneapolis authorities finally made the way-too-long-in-coming decision this summer to stop citing women without shirts in public. Time and high time, of course. Cowans and their weird body-shame: I'll never understand it.

Still, Portland and 25^th isn't exactly the friendliest or, shall we say, most enlightened part of town.

I wanted to do something to show my support, but really, what is there that you can do in such a situation that won't come across as a**hole-ism? Sometimes the most supportive that thing you can do is nothing at all.

Well, blessings on the topless bicyclists of the world: one more step, if only a small one, toward the Way Things Ought to Be. Call it Minoanization.

You can't fool us, Mel Gibson. We've been around the maypole a few times, and we've seen your films.

You really like naked guys, don't you?

Well, hey, I'm with you on that one. But here's the other horn of the stang: You really like to hurt naked guys, don't you?

Sorry, Mel, you lost me on that one.

"Holy" Week is coming up, and with the prospect of churches in covid lockdown just like everything else, chances are that lots of Christians will be pulling the old Bible-epic CDs off the shelf.

(No gloating here, O pagan reader: when Beltane rolls around, you'll be dusting off The Wicker Man too, along with the rest of us; admit it.)

No doubt many will be watching that 2004 classic of sanctified pornography, The Passion of the Christ.

(Amazing, isn't it, how that second article transforms an otherwise commonplace phrase into sheerest bombast? And if you think the title is bombastic....)

Give it a look-see, if you can stand it: every lash-stroke laid on with love.

(On second thought, don't bother; just take my word for it.)

And the close-up of the hammer driving the spike through Jim Caviezel's outstretched palm: that's Mel's hands doing the ghastly work. Oh, I see the theological point—laid on, as usual, with the subtlety of a sledgehammer—but, ye gods. To your god you're doing this? Gee, Mel, I'd hate to be your boyfriend.

Years ago I used to date a guy whose flatmate was big into BD/SM. The flatmate had an entire wall covered with dozens and dozens of crucifixes.

Crucifixes and sado-masochism: even a poor hapless pagan boy like me could see the connection.

Ye gods, I'd think every time I went past the crucifix-wall, I'll never understand Christians.

Still, you've got to give Mel credit for genre-bending. A snuff movie with a happy ending: who else but Mel Gibson could dream of such a thing?

Posch, you've lost it. Are you actually saying that skyclad in the modern Craft derives from Christianity?

Well, yes: yes I am. At least in part.

Modern ritual nudity is a cord plaited from many strands, among them Christian thought and iconography. Among these strands, we may number the following:

Naturism. The period between the First and Second World Wars saw a massive rise in movements advocating cultural alternatives, the logic being: obviously the old ways aren't working; let's try something new. Modern Nudism/Naturism first arose in Germany, and spread rapidly.

The Heroic Nudity of Antiquity. The art of antiquity is replete with naked gods and heroes, which of course reentered European consciousness in a big way during the Renaissance. It's fully possible that the heroic nudity of Classical antiquity has its ultimate roots in the martial nudity of the ancient Indo-Europeans, and that the tradition of Greco-Roman heroic nudity is thus genetically akin both to the naked warriors of the Keltic world, and to the ascetic nudity of the jinas and gymnosophers of the Indian Subcontinent (as “spirit warriors”), from which, of course, the term “skyclad” itself derives.

Folk Magic. As Ron Hutton discusses in his seminal essay “A Modest Look at Ritual Nudity,” nakedness figures prominently in European folk magic, a function, essentially, of inversion: raising power by doing things backwards. Witches being quintessential magic workers, ergo naked witches.

Renaissance Art. The iconography of the naked witch first arose among Renaissance print-makers. The Renaissance saw the rise of print-making, the first modern art-form that regular people could afford and, as we all know, nudity sells. Classically-derived nudity was already big in Renaissance art, and it was the Renaissance, not the Middle Ages, which saw the worst of the Great Persecution. If the witch is popular, and nudity is popular, the naked witch has got to be a winning combination.

The Renaissance's naked witch has deeper roots, however. With the rise of the concept of the Witch's Sabbat in the 15^th and 16^th centuries, print-makers quickly adopted the inverted world of the Sabbat, in which nudity figured prominently, as a favorite motif. Although there is as of yet no definitive study of the development of the Sabbat motif in art, to my eyes it clearly derives from Medieval precedents: the Last Judgment and the fate of the Damned in Hell.

The Pagan Festing season generally runs from May until October and usually takes place in campgrounds that are reserved for this purpose for anywhere from a weekend to a week. In Ontario, notable campgrounds that host Pagan Festivals include Raven's Knoll,Mythwood, and Whispering Pines.

Some of these Festivals feature Clothing Optional areas so that people have the option to be naked if they so wish. This is because some Pagans like to cast-off their wrappers and be caressed by the sun and the wind, while others consider their nudity to be part of their sacred relationship with the Gods and a Pagan event is a place where they can feel comfortable enough to explore that relationship.

However, because not everyone is comfortable with that, Clothing Optional areas can be restricted to certain areas, including:

• campsites
• the beach
• the firepit area after 10pm

The important word in "Clothing Optional" is the term "Optional". A Clothing Optional area is not zoned as a Strip Club. You have the option to be as naked, clothed, or a variety of both as you wish and it's nobody else's business.

I cannot believe I must state this so blatantly, but this is also means that no one has the right to pressure you to be clothed or naked. No one has the right to tell you how naked or dressed you must be based on other people's decisions to be naked or dressed. No one has the right to express opinions about your character, your values, or your sexual identity. No one. No exceptions.

Now I know that sometimes people can unintentionally cross this line. In their minds, they want you to know that you are beautiful and valued and they want you to know that they are not judging you for any reason, so if you want to strip down, they are ready to support you in this decision. The problem is that it's very difficult to express this idea without it sounding like they are pressuring you into coming to this conclusion.

A person's state of nudity is NEVER an invitation for people to touch, stare, or make sexual references about. EVER. A person's nudity can be an expression of their relationship with the Gods, but it is not meant to be a show for other people to ogle or make snide remarks upon. However, if you want to quietly appreciate the beauty of the human body, that can be okay, but you need to be subtle in your appreciation.

Unwanted, unwarranted, unasked, uninvited contact with a person in a state of undress can constitute assault or sexual assault. The fact that the person is naked does not justify anyone's actions without EXPLICIT permission being given. It also does not give you the right to pressure anyone into being more naked or less naked, for any reason, even in jest. If you think you have accidentally crossed this line, take the person aside (probably better when they are dressed), apologize sincerely, and then learn from it.

Whether it is intentional or unintentional, here are some statements you should NEVER make to someone about their state of dress or undress:

It's Watery Wednesday at the Pagan News Beagle: the day we share stories of our many communities.

The Wild Hunt offers a report from this year's PaganSpiritGathering (Circle Sanctuary.) http://wildhunt.org/2014/07/guest-post-the-heart-and-harmony-of-pagan-spirit-gathering.html

I’ve read it so many times in books and blogs – now is the season for making love out of doors, jumping naked over Bel fires and generally doing your Paganism in a carefree, unclad sort of way. It is warm enough to be barefoot outside, I grant you, but far, far too cold for nudity. A traditional British summer brings more rain than it does cavorting options. The naked dancing Pagans are either far tougher than me, or don’t actually do as much of the cavorting out of doors as they imply.

As a species we obviously didn’t start out wearing clothes, but have got into the habit over thousands of years. It’s allowed us to extend our habitat far beyond the balmy zones our hairless and not that blubbery bodies could otherwise tolerate. So the trouble with viewing nudity as natural, and thus desirable, is that you aren’t budgeting in what we’ve been doing for a long time purely because we can and do wrap up.