Forest of Bliss | |
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Directed by | Robert Gardner |
Distributed by | Documentary Educational Resources |
Release date |
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Running time | 90 min. |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Forest of Bliss is a 1986 documentary film by ethnographic filmmaker Robert Gardner about everyday life in Benares, India. [1]
Gardnerian Wicca, or Gardnerian witchcraft, is a tradition in the neopagan religion of Wicca, whose members can trace initiatory descent from Gerald Gardner. The tradition is itself named after Gardner (1884–1964), a British civil servant and amateur scholar of magic. The term "Gardnerian" was probably coined by the founder of Cochranian Witchcraft, Robert Cochrane in the 1950s or 60s, who himself left that tradition to found his own.
Gerald Brosseau Gardner, also known by the craft name Scire, was an English Wiccan, as well as an author and an amateur anthropologist and archaeologist. He was instrumental in bringing the Contemporary Pagan religion of Wicca to public attention, writing some of its definitive religious texts and founding the tradition of Gardnerian Wicca.
Fort Bliss is a United States Army post in New Mexico and Texas, with its headquarters in El Paso, Texas. Named in honor of LTC William Bliss (1815–1853), a mathematics professor who was the son-in-law of President Zachary Taylor, Ft. Bliss has an area of about 1,700 square miles (4,400 km2); it is the largest installation in FORSCOM and second-largest in the Army overall. The portion of the post located in El Paso County, Texas, is a census-designated place with a population of 8,591 as of the time of the 2010 census. Fort Bliss provides the largest contiguous tract of restricted airspace in the Continental United States, used for missile and artillery training and testing, and at 992,000 acres boasts the largest maneuver area. The garrison's land area is accounted at 1.12 million acres, ranging to the boundaries of the Lincoln National Forest and White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Fort Bliss also includes the Castner Range National Monument.
Aaron Thomas Bliss was an American politician who served as a U.S. Representative and the 25th governor of Michigan, and was from Saginaw. Bliss Township was named after him.
The New Forest coven were an alleged group of pagan witches who met around the area of the New Forest in southern England during the early 20th century. According to his own claims, in September 1939, a British occultist named Gerald Gardner was initiated into the coven and subsequently used its beliefs and practices as a basis from which he formed the tradition of Gardnerian Wicca. Gardner described some of his experiences with the coven in his published books Witchcraft Today (1954) and The Meaning of Witchcraft (1959) although on the whole revealed little about it, saying he was respecting the privacy of its members. Meanwhile, another occultist, Louis Wilkinson, corroborated Gardner's claims by revealing in an interview with the writer Francis X. King that he too had encountered the coven and expanded on some of the information that Gardner had provided about them. According to Gardner, the faith they followed was the Witch-Cult, a supposed pagan religion that had survived in secret after the Christianization of Europe. This was in keeping with the now-discredited theories of Margaret Murray and her supporters.
D. L. Bliss State Park is a state park of California in the United States. It is located on the western shore of Lake Tahoe just north of Emerald Bay State Park.
William Bliss Baker was an American artist who began painting just as the Hudson River School was winding down. Baker began his studies in 1876 at the National Academy of Design, where he studied with Bierstadt and de Haas. He later maintained studios in Clifton Park, New York, and New York City, where he painted in oils and watercolors. He completed more than 130 paintings, including several in black and white.
Charles Austin Gardner was an English-born Western Australian botanist.
Robert Grosvenor Gardner was an American academic, anthropologist, and documentary filmmaker who was the Director of the Film Study Center at Harvard University from 1956 to 1997. He is known for his work in the field of visual anthropology and films like the National Film Registry inductee Dead Birds and Forest of Bliss. In 2011, a retrospective of his work was held at Film Forum, New York.
Sons of Shiva is a 1985 American documentary film by ethnographic filmmaker Robert Gardner and Askos Ostor, about the worship of the God Shiva, features practices of Hindu worship and devotion, a four-day Gajan ceremony, a Sacred Thread ceremony in Bishnupur and Baul singers of Bengal. It was the first film of "Pleasing God" trilogy of films about Hindu worship produced by Harvard's Film Study Center. It was followed by Forest of Bliss (1986) set in Benaras (Varanasi).
The Bricket Wood coven, or Hertfordshire coven is a coven of Gardnerian witches founded in the 1940s by Gerald Gardner. It is notable for being the first coven in the Gardnerian line, though having its supposed origins in the pre-Gardnerian New Forest coven. The coven formed after Gardner bought a plot at the Fiveacres Country Club, a naturist club in the village of Bricket Wood, Hertfordshire, southern England, and met within the club's grounds. It played a significant part in the history of the neopagan religion of Wicca.
The University of Utah Circle, also known as Presidents Circle, is located on the campus of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978 as a historic district.
Gardner is an unincorporated community in Mercer County, West Virginia, United States. Gardner is located along Interstate 77, 4 miles (6.4 km) north of Princeton. The Gardner Area was home of the Bluestone Land and Lumber Company, the Mercer County Poor Farm, and the Forestry Sciences Laboratory. Organizations that still exist in the Gardner Area include the Mercer County Gardner Center, U.S. Forest Service, West Virginia Forest Products Center, West Virginia Division of Highways, Pikeview Middle School and Pikeview High School.
Timothy Vivian Pelham Bliss FRS is a British neuroscientist. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Toronto, and a group leader emeritus at the Francis Crick Institute, London.
Gary Gardner is an English professional footballer who plays as a central midfielder for EFL Championship club Birmingham City.
Hopemead State Park is an undeveloped public recreation area on the eastern shore of Gardner Lake, 8 miles (13 km) west of Norwich, Connecticut. The state park covers 60 acres (24 ha) in the towns of Bozrah and Montville and is managed by the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
Minnie Island State Park is a public recreation area occupying a tiny island at the southern end of 529-acre (214 ha) Gardner Lake that is split by the townline between Salem and Montville, Connecticut. It is accessible only via boat and offers opportunities for picnicking and fishing as well as general exploration in a largely deserted setting. The 0.88-acre (0.36 ha) island is the state's smallest state park.
Gardner Lake State Park is a public recreation area occupying 10 acres (4.0 ha) on the southern edge of Gardner Lake in the town of Salem, Connecticut. The state park offers opportunities for boating, fishing, and swimming and is managed by the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
Gardner Memorial Wayside Park is a small public recreation area located on Route 4A in Wilmot, New Hampshire. It is part of 6,675-acre (2,701 ha) Gile State Forest. The park offers picnicking, a half-mile hiking trail to scenic Butterfield Pond, and fishing on a brook where a mill stood in the 1800s. A park memorial is dedicated to Walter C. Gardner II, whose father established Gile State Forest.
Gile State Forest is a state forest of New Hampshire located mostly in Springfield. The forest covers 6,675 acres (27.01 km2) and is bisected by New Hampshire Route 4A. It includes Gardner Memorial Wayside Park at the portion of the forest's edge that extends into Wilmot, which features a memorial to Walter C. Gardner II, whose father established Gile State Forest.