Pagan Culture - Magical Places

Wandering Witch Crosses the Delaware


Sometimes only a stone’s throw to the other side, the Delaware River,
seen here from Jersey, is a gateway to a world of natural beauty.

Wandering Witch
Crosses the Delaware
Article & Photos by Natalie Zaman

Into the Woods

Water skips over stones. Here, it trickles; there, it gushes. In some places, if I’m careful, I can cross with ease. But turn a bend, and the flow becomes wide and deep, swift and dangerous. This is the Delaware River. I’ve traveled its waters by foot and raft, boat and barge, but I’ve come to know it more as a gateway than a means of transport. Whenever I feel world-weary, when I need to refresh my connection to the divine, or wish to escape, I come to the river and let it be my guide. When I pass through or over its waters, I enter another world, a green and magical place.

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Discovering the Sacred Landscape of Glastonbury

Perspectives from our Readers


©2012 daniel boulet www.bouletfermat.com/backgrounds

The Sacred Landscape of Glastonbury
by Michael Conneely 

For over a thousand years, Glastonbury has been a place of pilgrimage. My arrival here was no exception: Janet and I came in 1998 to undertake an anthropological field study of how people in the modern west were using new spiritual forms to understand themselves, and we were as captivated as everyone else.

Our previous home, the Yorkshire Dales, is an austere landscape of glacial valleys noted for rowan trees and circling hawks, and of rugged sculptured cliffs, the underworld filled with endless miles of subterranean water-hewn caves and caverns. Glastonbury was an unbelievable contrast: verdantly green and fertile, filled with tiny rounded hills like those portrayed in medieval miniature landscape paintings; we almost expected to see unicorns.

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A Visit to America's Bible Belt

Byron Ballard calls the Quarters, Beltane 2010 at French Broad River Park, Asheville, North Carolina.

Article & Photos by Hank Eder

Southern, Pagan & Proud

A Visit to America's Bible Belt

Hidden in Plain Sight

Crickets chant their cry of ages. Frogs sing their hearts out in a symphony of pulsing rhythm, blending the high soprano squeaks of tiny tree dwellers with the basso profundo of giant bullfrogs. Somewhere in the distance a bobcat screams like the Bean Sidhe. The night is alive with sound and washed in the ethereal light of the full moon, coyly revealing Her face through the willows. Stars and faerie lights — fireflies by the thousands — drift along the hills, flashing their yellow-green vacancy signs. This is a glorious summer night in the heart of the American South, the kind of night only country dwellers ever get to see.

The snap of a twig heralds a rustling in the leaves. A small band of Wiccans wends its way through the dark trees, emerging into a secret glade. Tonight is a night of wonder and power. They will call the Quarters, invoke the God and Goddess, and partake of wine and cakes and soaring visions.

There is deep magick in these woods. A confluence of cultures mixed and mingled, merging their knowledge of Earth and Her ways into a mélange unique to this enigmatic land. Native shamans once roamed these woods; Africans brought here as slaves brought their tears — and their traditions. The Faerie folk followed the Scots and Irish to these lush mountains and valleys and their paths of power remain to this day all across the South, hidden in plain sight among the steeples of the ubiquitous churches.

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Wandering Witch’s Adventures in the Big Apple

Article & Photos by Natalie Zaman

Wandering Witch's
Adventures in the Big Apple

My initial trips to New York City as a teen (going to “The City” is a rite of passage of sorts for New Jersey youth) were a desperate search for a shop called The Magickal Childe. Several friends told me all about this Mecca and the things I would find there, only... they couldn’t tell me where it was. No address, no phone number, nothing. All that could be garnered were the cryptic, yet tantalizing words, “you’ll find it when it’s ready for you find it.” Needless to say, I spent many a weekend wandering the streets with no luck.

Stumble—Upon Magick

I confess, my adolescence fell in those dark times before the Internet took off; Googling and map—questing weren’t options. There were the yellow pages, but who in New Jersey keeps a New York phone book? These obstacles, along with a naiveté that has long since vanished, built up The Magickal Childe to the point where I was sure that when I found it, it would be a truly mystical experience.

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