PaganSquare
PaganSquare is a community blog space where Pagans can discuss topics relevant to the life and spiritual practice of all Pagans.
In today's Faithful Friday post, the Pagan News Beagle brings you: a secularist convention; yoga: fitness or faith; UK law enforcement confronts witchcraft accusations; does higher education lead to less religious behavior? and five Hindu words for love.
Richard Dawkins and his fellow secularists are having a convention this week, concentrating on the rise of religious fundamentalism, especially in the Middle East.
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When schools teach secular non-religion, then fewer graduates are religious. It so good to know that highly schooled "experts" h
Today's Faithful Friday post includes stories on witchcraft and witchhunting, religious violence (is it inevitable?), and an examination of eco-feminism from a Pagan point-of-view.
Witchcraft in the 16th and 17th centuries has been one of the most popular topics with historians and the reading public for almost half a century. Here's a review of a new book on the witchhunting mania in England at the time of James I.
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A little while back I wrote an article about The Broom Closet in the 21st Century. Recently the New York Times had an opinion article about the persecution of Witches in various parts of the world. In that article the opinion writer argued that the age of the internet has increased the witch hunting that occurs. One of the problems is that many of the people accused of witchcraft may not even be witches. They are accused for reasons that may have nothing to do witchcraft, but nonetheless it is used because it's convenient. In such places, the brutality that occurs involves burning people alive, or beheading or stoning them. The majority of such atrocities occur to women and the the people doing the assault are men doing it for prestige or as a way to enforce dominant social values. I mention all of this make a point: That such atrocities, far from being history, are still happening. In some cases, they are even happening in the U.S. And even here in the U.S. we also see the proliferation of ignorant perspectives about magic, because of how the mainstream religion fears the spread of any spiritual beliefs that run counter to that religion. Now whether every single one of those victims did or didn't identify as a Pagan or a Witch doesn't really matter, because those people were still labeled as such and punished for beliefs they may or may not have held.
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