Indigenous peoples get representation at this year's PantheaCon. A black Pagan outlines her path for resistance. And another Pagan blogger writes about maintaining spiritual discipline in times of extreme trial and stress. It's Watery Wednesday, our segment about news within the Pagan community here and around the world. All this and more for the Pagan News Beagle!

It's a sad fact that modern Paganism has not had the best of relationships with indigenous peoples. Though many of us have had positive intentions, cultural appropriation and fetishization of native cultures has been a recurrent problem. Nonetheless, the Pagan community has been working hard to do better and this year indigenous voices are going to be featured at Paganicon. You can read more about the story at The Wild Hunt.

Seth is one of the most peculiar and beguiling deities of the ancient Egyptian religion. In many cases depicted as an unholy adversary of the deities Osiris, Isis, and Horus, he's nonetheless also been portrayed as a benevolent god of war and protection in other sources. Perhaps most mysterious are Seth's associations with various animals, which are not as clear cut as the associations of many other Egyptian deities.

For many Americans, the election of Donald Trump on a tide of anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment has been an alarming wake-up call. But for many Pagans of color, the reality of entrenched racism has been a daily fact of life. Lilith Dorsey speaks at Patheos about her complicated feelings on the new rise of anti-racist activism and how she plans to participate.

There's little denying that part of what attracts many of us to Paganism is a sense of danger or the thrill in breaking taboos. How else to explain the popularity of the word "witch," a word that for centuries has been almost entirely associated with negative stereotypes surrounding magic? Meditating on this concept and more Elizabeth Creely considers the allure of the dark and the dangerous in her own life and spirituality.

The last few months, perhaps the entire previous year, have been stressful for many of us. And when life is stressful it's often easy to feel like you're failing your spiritual duties. But it's not so simple; sometimes you have to "take a step back." The Twisted Rope explains more here.


Top image by Jorge Royan