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It's still one of the best opening lines that I've ever heard.
A buddy and I had gone over to 'Saint' Paul to check out the new Ethiopian restaurant.
While we were there, I noticed at a nearby table a woman with very intense eyes, giving the waiter a hard time.
Tough customer, I thought.
About halfway through the meal, I looked up to see the tough customer standing at our table. Those intense eyes were on me now.
“I like your pentagram,” she said, then paused. “I have one too.”
For thousands of years, since the very advent of human existence, there has been an evolving trajectory of religious history in Western societies.
The story passes from the earliest animism and ancestor worship to the rise of belief in gods, the consolidation of authoritarian power under monotheisms, and the complete domination of Western societies by Christianity. It continues through the Enlightenment, the steady gains of science shattering the cosmological monopoly of the Abrahamic monotheisms, the increasing tension between orthodoxy and individuality splintering these monotheisms into thousands of sects, and finally, most recently, to the rise of the Nones: those who describe themselves as having no religious affiliation at all, which is well established in most of the rest of the developed world and advancing quickly in the United States.
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Just like other religious communities, Pagans experience births and deaths, pains and joys — the full range of human experience. Every week at Cherry Hill Seminary we hear comments like these:
A Priestess, a minister, and a fat white woman walk into a bar…? Nope, it’s not a joke, it is merely I, Catharine Clarenbach, one of the newer bloggers to come onto Witches & Pagans. I have been blogging elsewhere, as well as at my own site (see below), and I welcome the chance to interact with you her at "Deep to on High."
Another Pagan takes a look at the concept of cultural appropriation and how it applies to our community. BBI Media CEO and Witches&Pagans Magazine editor-in-chief Anne Newkirk Niven talks about the future of Pagan publishing. And a journalist checks in with one of Eurasia's indigenous Pagan peoples. It's Watery Wednesday, our segment on news about the Pagan community. All this and more for the Pagan News Beagle!
The “Roommate Wanted” notice was written in Theban.
In Theban: the “secret” alphabet of the witches.
On a bulletin board in a corner laundromat in a pagan neighborhood in a large American city near you.
A Pagan online journal looks for fundraising help. A solitary practitioner talks about his conversion experience. And we take a look at the side effects of "astral bleed-through." It's Watery Wednesday, our weekly segment on news about the Pagan community! All this and more for the Pagan News Beagle!
