I did another interview with JD Holveck last night for Pagan Podcasting. This time we discussed the mystical, sometimes scary places I visited in my journey during the “tour de France.” I’ll let you know as soon as the link is up. Incidentally, there are new photos up of the fairytale port of Honfleur, where Baudelaire lived with his mother for some time, and the Bayeux Cathedral, a Gothic masterpiece that rivals Notre Dame in Paris. It’s located near that jaw-dropping artifact of medieval propaganda, the Bayeux Tapestry. (No cameras were allowed.)

One of the things I told JD offline was that certain sections of the so-called pagan community are driving me crazy with revisionistic, “fluffy bunny” concepts of various deities in ancient religion and literature. This has always bothered me, but last night I lost all tolerance for it. Here I am, trying to clear up popular misconceptions about the historical documentation of Jesus and there are people who think it’s okay to have small children in a ritual where the participants become possessed by an ancient deity of madness and frenzy.

Yes, you read that right.

I’ve found in the pagan community two extremes in thinking: either one should never deal with a “dark” deity or that said “dark” deities can be diluted to something digestible and nontoxic in our watery ideological porridge. In the former, black-and-white thinking, it’s almost as if we were Pentecostal Christians but with different gods. In the latter, however, ancient religion sheds its scales, rolls over and begs for belly rubs; even if we look at this from a purely psychological perspective — the deities as aspects of our psyche, which is entirely valid — there is a dangerous denial of what human beings are truly capable of. You can turn on the firehose of logic in these situations, but all you get is soggy thinking.

Just remember: Cthulhu Hearts the Little Children. Especially with cream sauce.