Post-Samhain 2020

Today, my mother’s birthday (3 December), and the second day following the end of our second lockdown in London, Richard and I have been able immensely to enjoy The British Museum treat of "Tantra: enlightenment to revolution." Following the Indian Marxist philosopher Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya, I have always resonated with the implicit paganism of the Rigveda that he saw as continuing with Tantra. The BM may have said it the best of all: "Tantra teaches that the material world is not illusory but real and infused with divine feminine power." Consequently, the exhibit was a fascinating presentation of Hindu and Buddhist sacred art that transformed or was used by the India independence movement and more contemporarily with modern feminist aspirations. The museum itself as well as the empty streets of London made everything feel like a ghost town.

And yesterday, Richard’s Permanent Residency card for the UK arrived in the post. And two days before that, I managed to finish Matter Matters: End of Life Reflections on Paganism, my ‘life-story’ autobiography. Figuring out how now to publish it is a next project. Otherwise, with the lockdown and our basically isolating at home, it’s been a quiet period. Just before the lockdown, we saw and immensely enjoyed François Ozone’s nostalgic and moving Summer of 85, have been to a delightful Gusborne wine-tasting at the Sloane Club, had a family dinner on Gowlett Strret during which we talked to Chloë in Bristol for her 31st birthday, had a margarita and Mexican dinner the following night at the Azteca Latin Lounge, and then pizza at Vardo the last night before the shutdown. There’s been two online blóts – one before and one during – plus a moot in which Lil gave a most interesting talk on the Baha’i faith and Vladimir spoke on an esoteric strand of Russian religious culture in which he mentioned “paganistic mentality.” Also before the end of October, I was interviewed by Belladonna Laveau for The Cauldron’s November 11th’s broadcast of “Candid Chats with Bella.” And on the day the lockdown ended, Susan Palmer interviewed me via Zoom for her university class in Montreal on paganism. Two other Zoom participations involved Sophia: two lectures the first of which I missed but Katreya Stroud on Malta I caught, and then the annual two day Sophia Centre postgraduate conference that concluded with Nick’s superlative presentation on entanglement and relativity.

Healthwise, I concluded with my weekly massages by Diana, but when leaving the office I saw her for the first time without her mask and discovered that she is so astonishingly beautiful, I may need to resume. I also have been to Aileen at the Marsden annex for my pelvic exercises check-up and to the GP office for a blood test. For the rest, both Richard and I appear to be holding our own for now.

With the lockdown, our Thanksgiving dinner at the Club was cancelled. Being already to begin the cooking at home, I phoned the butcher about the delivery of our substitute goose. ‘Thanksgiving is not this today,’ they had to tell me, ‘but the Thursday of next week!’ It’s at points like this I find myself repeating that ‘old age can be so much fun’. At least the bird turned out to be delicious. And our Zoom with Barbara, Patrick, Helen and John made it all feel like a Thanksgiving. In truth, Richard and I are aware that we have so very much for much to be grateful. On the 13th of November, Chloë messaged me that the sale of her Carnac Street flat had been accepted to go through, and a week later she and Matt phoned to say ecstatically that they had closed and were therefore finally free from the two landladies that had tortured Chloë for years. We cancelled on going over to Gowlett Street for dinner and ended up watching Paula Murrihy at home in a wonderful online broadcast of Handel’s Ariodante from the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. Two weeks earlier, Gin popped in for an afternoon tea, and yesterday, our first post-shutdown day, we met Padma at the Beaufort House for cappuccini.

The sad event was the massive heart attack that Tina Dare / Bella Mahri, priestess of Bast, recently had. She passed away yesterday on the 30th of November.

Reading-wise, I have finished Gelli’s book on Julius Evola. It was relatively absorbing but did not further my interest in the man. Much more fascinating was Anne Glenconner’s book, a gift from Stephen and Roberto, Lady in Waiting: My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown. She has managed to convey Princess Margaret as a much more likeable character than she came to be portrayed in the press. Anne’s life with a most unusual but highly engaging husband, her loss of two sons and the horrible accident that her third son had had, and her times in the Caribbean have been colourful and/or challenging or both. I found her story utterly captivating and highly recommend her book.

Apart for visiting the magnificent Wellington Monument, statue of Achilles, one day in Hyde Park, it has mostly been domestic bliss. Our 13-day yuletide celebrations begin in eight days on the 11th of December, and I ordered the turkey today. The American elections on the 3rd of November were most disappointing for not having been the landslide for which we had prayed. In this respect, Fintan O’Toole’s "Democracy's Afterlife" in The New York Review of Books (3.12.20) is a must read. In explaining the necromantic appeal of Trumpism, he lets us know that what "Trump stumbled on was ... to embrace and enforce minority rule. This possibility is built into the American system [my emphasis]. The electoral college, the massive imbalance in representation in the Senate, the ability to gerrymander congressional districts, voter suppression, and the politicalization of the Supreme Court - these methods for imposing on the majority the will of the minority have always been available. Trump transformed them from tactical tools to permanent, strategic necessities. ... Voter suppression, gerrymandering, and the use of the Supreme Court to hand electoral victories to the Republicans are no longer dirty tricks. They are patriotic imperatives. They are not last resorts but first principles." In describing "zombie politics," O'Toole allows that the "dominant power in the land, the undead Republican Party, has made majority rule aberrant." Though I remember as well that Gore Vidal said that it does not matter which party is in control because they both work for the same bank. We have a great burden of hope ahead of us but also a great burden of work to do.