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Earliest Reference Describes Christ as 'Magician'
A team of scientists led by renowned French marine archaeologist Franck Goddio recently announced that they have found a bowl, dating to between the late 2nd century B.C. and the early 1st century A.D., that is engraved with what they believe could be the world's first known reference to Christ. If the word "Christ" refers to the Biblical Jesus Christ, as is speculated, then the discovery may provide evidence that Christianity and paganism at times intertwined in the ancient world.
Wiccan Prisoner Allowed to Proceed with Court Challenge
Strutton v. Meade, 2008 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 76608 (ED MO, Sept. 30, 2008), involved free exercise and RLUIPA claims by a Wiccan who had been civilly committed to the Missouri Sexual Offender Treatment Center. Plaintiff asserted a variety of infringements of his ability to practice his religious faith and possess religious items. While rejecting many of his claims, the court concluded that there was enough evidence for plaintiff to move ahead on his challenge to the limit on Wicca group worship to one hour per week. It also permitted him to proceed on his Establishment Clause challenge to a requirement that he participate in Christian prayer at addiction support group meetings.
Weather and Joint Pain
Dr. Rob Q: When the weather changes I experience pain in my joints, especially in my knees. Does this mean I will develop arthritis when I get older? A: Though many people experience weather-related pain or discomfort in their joints, it does not predict the onset of one of the more than 100 forms of arthritis (rheumatoid, osteoarthritis, and others). However, “getting older” itself is a risk factor for the development of a specific type of arthritis known as osteoarthritis. And, if you already have this or another form of arthritis, your affected joint(s) might react to a lowering of the barometric pressure (an approaching storm, high altitude) with a temporary increase in stiffness, inflammation, and pain. Weather or not, here it comes ....
Collapse and Elections: Starhawk's Lessons from Katrina
I’ve been meaning to write this essay for three years, since I went down to New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to volunteer with a grassroots organization called Common Ground Relief. I went to New Orleans because for decades I’ve been part of groups holding a few key beliefs, among them, that this current system is unsustainable and will eventually come crashing down, and the other—that small scale, directly democratic grassroots organizing is the most empowering and effective way to take action. I wanted to see what it was like in a place where the crash had come, and to see if our grassroots, do-it-yourself mode of organizing could work in that situation. Now, with the Gulf Coast battered by a new round of storms, Wall Street deconstructing and capitalism in meltdown mode, that prediction is coming true. It seems a good time to review those lessons. In New Orleans, the crash had come. Not just the devastation left by the storm—every major system that was supposed to offer protection, succor or relief had failed. Starting with the faulty levees built by the Army Corps of Engineers, moving on to an evacuation plan that was no plan at all for those without means, to completely inadequate shelter facilities for those who remained, to disorganized and punitive responses for those who survived, nothing official was working. What I arrived, a month after the hurricane, the only systems that were functioning were the decentralized, autonomous relief efforts. Common Ground Relief was started by a local organizer, Malik Rahim, who lived in Algiers, a neighborhood that had not flooded. He sent out a call that made its way into activist circles. And people responded. Nurses, doctors and street medics who had honed their skills setting up emergency clinics for street actions went down and set up a functioning clinic long before the Red Cross arrived. Others helped set up distribution for relief supplies, and later, as residents began to filter back, organized groups of volunteers to gut houses contaminated with toxic black mold and to offer other forms of service. I worked on a bioremediation project, using natural methods to decontaminate soil.
Winning the Battle of Stanton Moor
Emily Dugan of The Independent profiles the tree-sitters and eco-warriors who have spent nine years living in the trees at Stanton Moor in the Peak District National Park. Their goal? To stop the planned re-opening of two mines that threatened the Nine Ladies stone circle. "There has been no shortage of locals keen to dismiss the Nine Ladies protesters as New Age hippies who should "go out and get a real job", but their achievement in saving this idyllic corner of Derbyshire has not gone unnoticed by their nearest neighbours. Geoffrey Henson, a pensioner whose home lies just outside the protest camp, admits that the onset of the dreadlocked army was a shock. But he says he has been pleasantly surprised. "We were a bit taken aback when we saw what looked like these scruffy long-haired layabouts arrive," he explained. "But they stuck it through all winds and weathers for nine years, which is more than we could have done." A friendly vicar also charges their car batteries, and some well-wishers have let them use their showers." Now awaiting the official letter from Local Government Secretary Hazel Blears confirming their victory, the tree-sitters spend their last days saying goodbye to what has become their home, and wondering how they will re-enter normal English life.
Where do we go as a community?
So, I have been thinking about this topic for some time. I often look at other Reconstructionst groups and view how much more “organized” they are in terms of religious practices and ideas and then I look to Celtic Reconstructionism and how we lack any defined set of common rituals and etc. For example, when looking at Asatru, I observe that there is a very established ritual way of holding a blot or a symbel or doing oracular Seidhr. We have very little definition or guidelines in CR. Now, I realize that CR is only in its infancy, but I do believe that this lack of definition is due in fact to some individuals out there who have a fear of “orthopraxy”. I look at a certain individual’s post entitled “An Orthodoxy of Fear” and it is exactly the ideas espoused in this essay which is causing CR Paganism to lack any definition, discipline and ultimately growth. People have no idea what CR paganism is – we have no defined rituals (which are ultimately the outward and visible expression of our belief). These individuals have confused “orthopraxy” and “orthodoxy”. They claim that those who wish to develop an established way of doing things in CR are stifling the “creative process” of others and decry this as an attempt to create an orthodoxy of fear. I find this quite annoying. Where would other reconstructionist faiths such as Asatru be if they had no orthopraxy? We would never have heard of it. Asatru has grown and has gaine adherents, I believe, in part due to the “standardized” rituals and belief system which allow for an outward and visible structure to inner belief. Individuals have a structure which they can follow. So what are we to do?
Wiccans: Protect Your Legal Rights
[This originally appeared at About.com--the blogger acknowledges this in the post.] People often say, “I’d love to practice my faith openly, but I’m afraid I’ll lose my job/my kids/my house/my hamster/whatever if I come out of the broom closet!” While it’s true that there have been cases of discrimination against Pagans and Wiccans in certain parts of the country, the fact is that if you educate yourself about your own rights, it’s a lot harder for someone else to try to take them from you. If you live in the United States, the best place to start educating yourself is to understand the First Amendment and how it affects you. In addition to guaranteeing us the right to free speech, the First Amendment states that the government shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. What this means is that you’re allowed to be Christian, Wiccan, Jewish, Muslim, a Satanist, or a member of the Grand High Order of the Sparkly Toaster Oven, and there’s no one in the government who can prevent you from holding your beliefs. Legally, you can’t be fired from your job, lose custody of your kids, or have your house repossessed SOLELY on the basis of your religious beliefs. However, there are a couple of things you need to bear in mind. First, religion is not a viable defense if you’re doing something illegal. You can’t neglect your children and then claim religious discrimination when someone calls the authorities. Likewise, if you fail to show up at work on time or you demonstrate a lack of competence in your job, saying you got fired because you’re Wiccan or Pagan probably won’t hold much water in a lawsuit.
Tattoos: Pagan and NeoPagan Ink
The history of tattoos is tightly bound up with that of paganism because the first people to create and receive them were pagans or, at the very least, their ancestors whose shamanistic ways gave birth to paganism. Tattoo is one of the oldest forms of art, right after cave and rock art from prehistoric times. In fact, the ancient history of tattoo is so varied and universal that simply picking a spot on the globe reveals a rich history of body art. Throughout history tattoos served many different purposes. Some were rites of passage that marked a person’s journey into adulthood. For some peoples, a tattoo was an attempt at healing or pain relief. Some tattoos labeled a person a criminal. Others were reserved for shamans, priests and priestesses. Still more were exclusive badges of nobility or royalty. Libraries full of books could be written about the history of tattoos but, for my purposes, I’ll highlight the most well-known or popular pagan forms. Currently, the oldest evidence we have for tattoos comes from the affectionately named Otzi the Iceman. His body was found in the Alps and is dated to approximately 3300 BCE; his is the oldest mummified body ever found. And he just happens to have over 50 tattoos. While they are not very artistic tattoos, being only lines and a few crosses, they are numerous and, considering their placement on arthritic joints, are believed to be therapeutic. And the ancient tattoo art doesn’t stop there. Tattooed mummies from Russia dating from approximately the 2nd century BCE have been found with beautiful factual and mythical animals. In ancient Egypt tattoos were restricted to women and were oftentimes placed for therapeutic reasons. For example, a circle of dots or lines was often tattooed over the belly in a pattern reminiscent of the growth of the belly during pregnancy. Also featured on ancient Egyptian women was the god Bes.
Notes upon Sacred Space: The Witch's Altar
Being Witch means giving careful thought about those ways in which we create and acknowledge sacred space. Many religious traditions have traditions which recognize a special quality inherent to certain places, and most traditions have ritual means by which they consecrate an area, especially the ground beneath and around temples and graveyards. Over the coming months, I hope to make an informal survey of leylines, nexuses, and other naturally occurring places of power. For today, though, I will discuss those places which we as Witches and Magicians create ourselves for religious worship and magical endeavors. Among permanent and semi-permanent structures, the most basic expression of sacred space is the Witch's altar. Whereas some among the ancient religions employed tables crafted from stone or wood for the purpose of blood sacrifice, I maintain an altar space as one focal point for meditation, and as ground where I can make somewhat less sanguinary offerings before my chosen expression of Deity. Many books on Neo-Paganism suggest that the altar should be set aside from the surrounding environs. As consecrated ground, so the argument goes, this space should not be used for mundane purposes, lest the special nature of the altar be forgotten. With all due respect, I cannot endorse this view of sacred space, although I can recognize and appreciate what its advocates are saying. Rather, I believe the practicing Witch or Magician should keep an altar which blends into the existing home.
"Brida," by Paulo Coelho
Fantasy as a genre is a titan in literature, all encompassing and with multiple manifestations. Fans have encountered sword & sorcery, epic fantasy, historical fantasy, urban fantasy, paranormal thrillers and romances. I for one always classify novels into some degree of fantasy if even one detail strays away from the pattern of logic and reality. Paulo Coelho is known for writing books about life, the type of titles that hit hard topics and problems, we have to face every day. However his approach is always directed towards spirituality and among one of his techniques is the involvement of mysticism. Paulo Coelho writes of alchemy, visions in dreams and ancient traditions and every tale he writes staggers the mind with truths about life and complicated themes taken directly from life and developed into brilliance. That is why I classify his work mostly as philosophical fantasy, because it makes you think, increase your sensitivity towards different nuances of life or simply broaden your horizons by a centimeter or two. Utilizing the veil of the unknown, paranormal, magical Coelho pierces the veil of the human mind and soul and always gets to the point what his characters think they want and they need; only to realize that later. “Brida”, although I thought was a new title, is a reprint from 1990 and centers around Brida, a young Irish girl, who is determined to become a witch and since then experiments with different traditions to achieve her goal. I have always been interested about the etymology of names and seeing how everything in Coelho’s books means something, I searched the web for any meaning of the name Brida. As it turns out Brida is a long winded transformation from the Irish Brighid, a name borne by a popular Irish goddess of wisdom.
Read a good book lately? Thank a librarian
This is Banned Books Week - sadly, an annual event recognizing that some would seek to limit our access to ideas. And this editorial is our annual recognition of the efforts of those who note it. Those guardians of our liberty, the members of the American Library Association, say, "BBW celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one's opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met." What books were put at risk this year? Dr. Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was challenged due to sexual references. Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, for its depiction of how blacks were treated by a racist white community. All of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books, because the series "promotes the Wiccan religion." John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men because of concerns about profanity. Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a perennial on the list, because of its depiction of racism.
Witch Hunt or Woman Scorned at the Eco-Minded Green Train?
Nashville’s Green Train, an eco-educational non-profit run by Merle Haggard and restaurateur Bob Wolf, had a witch in its ranks until recently. Or, to be more precise, a pagan. Not the kind historically drawn and quartered or burned at the stake, but rather the contemporary tree-hugging, Birkenstock-wearing, vegan variety. That was until Wolf charged this Wiccan ordained minister, Susan Hunter, with creating Green Train’s MySpace page. The personal networking catastrophe that followed-- replete with online earthy salutations and pentagrams--saw Hunter canned in spectacular fashion back in mid-September. She’s crying discriminatory foul. He’s got his hands up, as if to say, “Hey, read our mission: We’re a-political, a-religious, a-everything except the environment.”
Balancing on Air
“Yeah, but what about balance?” I’ve been asked that question many times, sometimes even stopped in the street or interrupted in the middle of a talk. The questioner no longer needs to explain what he – or occasionally she – means: a belief that it is wrong to work only with goddess, “excluding” the god. Particularly since the Goddess Temple opened in Glastonbury I - and others - have been accused of riding roughshod over the concept of balance as A Good Thing, apparently involving nothing more strenuous than placing a token representation of any male deity in the Goddess Temple. I’d like to reach for my sword, symbol of air, of clarity and truth, and look at this idea of balance in some detail. A good definition of balance would be “a state of equilibrium”, and of course equilibrium, as any physicist will tell you, does not necessarily involve an equality of forces. In any case this can only be achieved if nothing else is changing, which is never the case in human societies. Yet, if you ask the questioner what is meant by balance, the answer normally involves equality of some kind; there is usually also a mumble of “being as bad as before” which I take to mean that the lack of a god, a male figure, in the temple suggests a matriarchal turn of mind, that the god is being ignored in precisely the same way that goddess has been overlooked for the past few thousand years. Of course, we haven’t even considered reclassifying male deities as demons (see any Old Testament for evidence of this done unto goddess)! It should hardly need to be pointed out that a Goddess Temple exists for a reason – in part to redress, in a very small way, thousands of years of complete imbalance, by providing a place where our love of goddess can freely be expressed and celebrated. Why have a token male deity in such a place? Surely that would simply be an afterthought, even an insult, in the same way that a concept of deity as female is a postscript in the sort of Christian churches who have, very late in the day, introduced phrases such as Our Father/Mother (or even Our Parent, which always makes me giggle). Altering the Lord’s Prayer does nothing to reassure me of the good will of the Church towards feminine spirituality.
Raising a witch?
As I sat with my son this morning and read to him, I was rather delighted to see that he is showing a lively interest in books. It particularly struck me, however, that he loved to listen to me chanting some of the Wiccan chants that I know and use occasionally. We just sat and rocked as I chanted a few different ones. He especially enjoyed We All Come From the Goddess and The Earth is Our Mother. It is my hope that when he gets a little older, he will perhaps have an interest in witchcraft. I can't say that I'm 'raising' him to be a witch. I detest the concept of forcing religion upon a child. While I agree that children do need to have structure to build from and grow with intellectually and spiritually, I can't condone forcing religion upon them. As such, I've been taking a careful look at how I want to approach this topic. My dear husband has told me that he trusts my judgment and is going to follow my lead on this matter. While witchcraft may shape elements of how we raise him, I believe I'm going to keep as many of the options for him to explore open as I can.
Myth and History in Modern Paganism
Some comments on the tendency of many neo-Pagans to bend history in order to make it accommodate their modern myths: I believe it is safe to say that from a pagan perspective – or better from a generally premodern point of view – mythological reality is by no means less real than historical reality. For exactly this reason does a truly Pagan spirituality – that is one which among other things re-awakens mythos in order to profoundly challenge modernist ways of thinking and organizing knowledge - not primarily depend on historical figures, historical founders, historical prophets and so on. However, this should not lead one to believe that our Pagan ancestors did not distinguish between the one and the other side of reality. Even though on occasion mythos might have been drawn upon to justify claims to political power it is quite unrealistic and arrogant to assume that ancient Pagans did not know of the distinction between mythological and historical reality. There is enough evidence by anthropologists to suggest that even those traditional cultures who up to this day live isolated and on the technological level of the palaeolithic do indeed draw a clear line, say for instance, between everyday-consciousness and the shamanic realm of non-ordinary reality.

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