Who will be the gods of future space colonists? Should we be fearful of the divine? And what's it like celebrating a Pagan fertility ritual in Russia? It's Watery Wednesday, our weekly segment on news about the Pagan community. All this and more for the Pagan News Beagle!

Sadly, the Pagan community has lost another luminary. The Wild Hunt memorializes Richard Reidy, a Kemetic author and ritualist. You can read their obituary here.

If we travel to and colonize Mars, as many people who we do, what will that mean for religion? Will we bring the gods of Earth to Mars or find new genii loci awaiting us? Pagan blog Gods & Radicals considers the future of Paganism in space.

It's often regarded as a compliment for a Christian to be called "God-fearing." But do Pagans feel the same about being called "Gods-fearing?" Perhaps not, but there is some appeal/basis to the idea, as John Beckett shows in this article about worshiping "fearsome gods."

In the Anglosphere, we're mostly familiar with Western European or Mediterranean Paganism, centered around the gods of the Celts, the Germans, the Romans, the Greeks, and the Egyptians. But elsewhere in Europe, other traditions continue on. This piece from Vice Magazine discusses the continuation of the ancient religious rites of the Mari people of western Russia.

Today, Pagans in Europe enjoy relatively free lives and there is little legal or open persecution of our kind. But things were not always so rosy. Over a thousand years ago, Christian Francia clashed with the remaining forces of Paganism in Germany and effectively eliminated it. The Norse Mythology Blog has the story.


Top image by unforth