On being a Zebra in a herd of Horses.

Naming ourselves “Witches” paints a great big bull’s-eye on our backs. So why do we keep doing it?

Witches, like terrorists, “threaten to wipe out everything you believe in. If they could, they would overthrow your government, overturn your faith, and destroy your society,” Baker writes. The difference, of course, is that terrorists are real, while witches are not.
— Jennifer Latson (October 28, 2014) Time magazine
Why Witches on TV Spell Trouble in Real Life

It seems safe to say that the U.S. doesn’t suffer from an epidemic of magical evil-doers, but until last week, Americans were far more likely to believe in witches than to worry about contracting Ebola.
— Derek Thompson (October 20, 2014) The Atlantic
The Dangerous Myth of America's Ebola Panic

Why do they hate us so much?” This plaintive query surfaced yesterday during a discussion of the Time magazine essay I’ve quoted above. This puzzled lament came from a mature, well-spoken witch of my acquaintance.

I’ll admit, I punted. “Read my editorial in the upcoming issue,” I responded, thus drop-kicking my response downfield for a later play. Well, time is up, and here’s my response: “You claim the title of witch. Why on Earth wouldn’t you expect to be hated?”

Read more: On being a Zebra in a herd of Horses.

We Are What We Eat: Food Choices in Earth Religion

Nature gave us a world full of beauty and pleasure to delight and nurture us. All She asks is that we appreciate these many wonders, that we dance, sing, feast, make music, and love, all in Her honor.

Editorial Note:
I had not heard from my friend (and former PanGaia columnist) Judy Harrow in several years when she emailed me this essay, which she wanted to submit for this issue. I was so excited to hear from her that I responded by giving her a call at once. During our conversation, she expressed the hope that, since she was feeling better, she would soon be able to write and participate in the Pagan community more. I promised to publish her essay, expressed my enthusiasm for her improved health, and said good-bye.

Less than a month later, I was shocked to hear of her death in her sleep at the age of 69. Judy was one of the most unique, compassionate, and loving Pagans I have had the pleasure to know, and I wish to honor her memory by highlighting her words here.

Good journey to the Summerlands, Judy. Come back to us soon.
Anne Newkirk Niven

I eat every day. You probably do, too. The mundane routines of grocery shopping, cooking, eating, and dishwashing take hours out of each week. There’s no activity more ordinary, none more secular. And yet, these very acts directly connect my body to the body of Mother Earth. By eating, I accept Her gifts. For a tree-hugging Pagan like me, the process of feeding myself, done with care and attention, is profoundly spiritual.

Read more: We Are What We Eat: Food Choices in Earth Religion

The Ocean is in Motion…

When the waters get rough, we might be tempted to throw in the towel on Pagan unity.

But what the fracas really means is that we are growing up enough to realize that we don't all think alike.

There's nothing like trying to be a peacemaker on the Web to give a person a first-rate migraine, and I'm just getting over a doozy. So please forgive me if I "share my pain" with all of you.

First, a bit of background: our Witches&Pagans website now hosts one of the largest Pagan blogospheres on the planet, PaganSquare.com. With over a hundred poets, mystics, pundits, prognosticators, and magicians all rubbing shoulders, there's bound to be a bit of friction.

But earlier this summer, things at PaganSquare got downright testy. It pained me, a Libra Sun Hufflepuff peacemaker, to see my friends going at it hammer-and-tongs in my own house (which is how I rather possessively saw the site). Looking back, I now realize how naive it was to assume that just because everyone on the site was fine with me that they would all get along just peachy with one another.

Read more: The Ocean is in Motion…

Out of the Frying Pan…

When it comes to passion, we’ve got it. Common sense, not so much.


As most readers of this magazine are undoubtedly aware, we Pagans had a wee bit of media attention earlier this spring. A “Fox and Friends” segment in February characterized Wiccans as “compulsive Dungeons and Dragons players or middle-aged, twice-divorced older rural women working as midwives.” The reaction in the Pagan community was nothing short of explosive: within days, more than 40,000 of us signed petitions at change.org and causes.com demanding an apology. In less than a week, a chastened Fox pundit offered his “sincere [ahem] regrets.”

Another triumph for truth, justice, and the American way? Well, maybe. As soon as the brouhaha blew up I was struck by how much attention was being paid to Fox & Friends’ trollish shenanigans and how little to the good news that formed the actual foundation of the story. The decision by the University of Missouri to include Wiccan holidays in their inter-faith campus calendar is a concrete example of the increasingly respectful treatment that Pagan faiths are receiving these days, the fruit of decades of anti-defamation work by groups like the Lady Liberty League. But in spite of this genuinely excellent news, there was hardly a mention of this angle of the story in the coverage by Pagan pundits. With the notable exception of the Covenant of the Goddess — which made a thank-you to the University part of their press release — the buzz consisted almost entirely of righteous indignation.

Read more: Out of the Frying Pan…

An “Airhead” Comes to the Goddess

Witches & Pagans #25 - The Magick of Air An “Airhead” Comes to the Goddess
From the breath in our lungs to the towers of academe, Air affects us all.

The element of Air has a wide range of associations in modern neo-Pagan usage: it is the element of new beginnings, of flying/ feathered creatures, and of the mind. In my personal West-Coast eclectic practice, Air is also associated with the direction of the East. Above all, to me, Air represents the qualities of all things ordered and classified by the intellect. Its emblematic tool is the athame — the ceremonial black-handled, double-bladed, unsharpened ritual dagger of Wiccan regalia — which represents the “sharpness” of the well-disciplined mind.

As a native “Airhead” (my sun and Mars are both in Libra, with my moon in Gemini) religion has long been an intellectual obsession. Even as a child, my tendency to argue and joust over points of theology got me into trouble. (In fact, my first skirmish with fundamentalism happened in third grade, when I got my whole family bounced out of a church for arguing theology with my Sunday School teacher .)

This fascination with religion led me on a merry chase from middle-of-the-road Protestantism through C.S. Lewis-influenced Anglicism to the progressive wing of the United Methodist church. That was where the Goddess found me, deep in the bowels of the Graduate Theological Union library on “Holy Hill” in Berkeley in the fall of 1985.

Read more: An “Airhead” Comes to the Goddess

Paganism and the Planet

Elizabeth Barrette
Impressions by Elizabeth Barrette, PanGaia editor.

Paganism and the Planet
by Elizabeth Barrette

 

Click for full description.I am myself and what is around me, and if I do not save it, it will not save me.
   — Jose Ortegay Gasset

We are a part of the Earth, and the Earth is part of us. We are not cogs in some cosmic clock; we are cells in a body, our lives bound up inextricably with that of the whole biosphere. We can survive outside it to about the extent that our blood cells can survive outside our bodies: briefly.

Right now the chief difference between Paganism and most other religions is that we remember this, while a majority of other religions have forgotten it. Some people really like that cogin-clock metaphor. They like the idea that the world is mechanical: regular, reliable, meticulous. They like the idea that no individual person, animal, plant, or species is unique and irreplaceable. If it wears out or dies out, no problem; you can just throw it out and get a new one. Except the world doesn’t actually work that way.

Read more: Paganism and the Planet

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