Pagan Chess
I plan to go to ConVocation this Saturday to see what's up with that. It led me to recall this old Livejournal entry of mine:
The inventor of Pagan Chess tried to theme this chess variant by making two boards, on one of which, dead pieces continue to operate after being captured. The "pagan" piece can cross between the living and dead boards. The game involves no pentacles, no sun wheels, no obelisks, and no talismans. The pieces are all different types of humans, not spirit quest animal totems as some other chess variants have used. Actual Neopagans would know better than I how well it corresponds to actual paganism, modern or ancient. I don't care whether it does, and I don't think it's seriously intended to, but it leads to questions I find interesting.
Can any variant of chess even potentially be pagan?
1. Liberality: It's a symbolic form of warfare between male monarchies. That's not very fluffy or politically liberal.
2. Polytheism: It was probably at its most popular in an age when "god is on our side" and the divine right of authority figures were prevalent-- not very polytheistic.
3. Nurturing: In chess you start with the army you're given: there's no economics or resource management, which would be more nurturing.
4. Divination: No randomness is created in this game by cards or dice, associated in popular perception with divination.
5. Sex: Nobody has sex in this game, at least not as far as I know.
Does chess represent an oppressive masculinist paradigm of zero-sum authoritarian logocentric determinism? ;^)
Or...
what if all chess has always been pagan? Paganism is involved with ritual... Rituals involve moving around in certain ways... Chess pieces move around in intricate patterns which could be interpreted as drawing symbols on the ground. If rituals really tapped into a spiritual realm, what if you could perform a certain bizarre series of chess moves and accidentally summon a Lovecraftian horror to eat your soul?
Is paganism, as found in the diverse forms of Wicca, Druidism, Shamanism or Asatru, even definable enough to ask these questions in a meaningful way?
Comments
lorrraine on Feb. 17, 2005 6:01 AM
Hi,
I'll see you at Convocation this weekend.
Til Then,
Lorrraine
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