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South African authorities rule that laws enacted against witchcraft are unconstitutional. Greek Pagans dedicate a new temple in their native country. And what does it mean to be an "armchair magician?" It's Watery Wednesday, our weekly segment on news about the Pagan community! All this and more for the Pagan News Beagle!
My spiritual journey, as a South African born Pagan, began at the age of six. Both my parents worked full time and I was raised by a Zulu nanny in their absence. Virginia would walk me home from school in the afternoons. One afternoon as I was about to walk into the kitchen, Virginia shouted to me to stand still. She had never before raised her voice at anyone. I froze. Seconds later a lightning bolt struck the top of the metal door frame, slid down and up the doorway, and disappeared. I remember the smell of pure electricity. She took me by the hand and sat me down at the kitchen table. While she poured a cup of tea and placed the sugar bowl in front of me, I wondered how she had known about the lightning strike before it happened.
This memory has remained vivid for me to this day. It served as the first small awakening for what has become a life-long quest to know more about and understand the occult - the hidden. Over the last 40 or more years I have explored and studied Shamanism, Traditional African religions, Druidry, western and eastern magical traditions, occultism, divinations, medicinal and magical herbalism, folk-lore, mythology, European 'pagan' religions and Witchcraft. I consciously identified as a Witch by the age of 20. As I near my fiftieth birthday, it's become easier to quantify my personal belief system as a combination of animism and pantheism.
