Who are your ancestors and how should your honor them? Pagan organizations seek aid from the community in the form of fundraising. And a Pagan icon is mourned. It's Watery Wednesday, our weekly segment on news about the Pagan community. All this and more for the Pagan News Beagle!
Annika, the reason you found only older Pagans at the PWR meeting was because only older people came, not because younger folks weren't welcome.Don Frew spoke about the history of the PWR because he had expected people unfamiliar with it to be the ones who came.That turned out not to be the case, but for you.Had I known it was going to unfold as it did, I wouldn't have needed to come.I already knew most of what he had to say, and in fact have given talks on it to Pagans around the country myself.Also, there were a few people there who were older, Pagan but not Witchen, new to interfaith involvement and who had never attended PWR and who came for that reason, to familiarize themselves with what it is and how it works.
This year’s PantheaCon nourished me.I printed out a schedule ahead of time of events on the official schedule, as distinct from the many programs being offered in various suites throughout the weekend, that I wanted to be sure to attend.I left plenty of space for serendipitous encounters.
I knew I had some responsibilities in the Pagan Scholars’ Den -- I dislike that term – for both Cherry Hill Seminary and the Pagan History Project with which I’m involved.And I was scheduled to sit on one panel, “Tradition vs. Innovation.”Beyond those things, I was open to see what arose.
In today's Airy Monday post, we've got PaganStudies at the AAR; new classes at Cherry Hill; the New Alexandrian library; buzzards (tracked from space); and a look the Orion mission.
“The AAR annual meeting is a huge intellectual energy infusion, not to mention a social occasion with Pagan Studies scholars from around the world,” reports Chas Clifton, co-chair of AAR’s Contemporary Pagan Studies Group. The Wild Hunt has the rest of the story.
Cherry Hill Pagan seminary announced its slate of upcoming spring classes last week. They include offerings in subjects including Sacred Cycles; Ministering to Military Pagans; Paganism and the Body; and much more. Check the whole list out here.
A lovely bumper crop of community news today at the PaganNewsBeagle! Heathens in politics, the New Alexandrian Library, Oberon Zell talks to Vice, changes at Cherry Hill, and a run at the world record for largest gathering of witches. Enjoy your day!
Wild Hunt staff member and Heathen polytheist Cara Schultz is running for city council in her hometown of Burnsville, Minnesota.
May the sky make the sunlight strong for you, may you rise up to the sky as the Eye of Ra, may you stand at that left Eye of Horus by means of which the speech of the gods is heard. Stand up at the head of the spirits as Horus stood at the head of the living; stand up at the head of the spirits as Osiris stood at the head of the spirits. – Pyramid Texts, utterance 523 (Faulkner)
The Pyramid Texts are said to be the oldest extant religious texts in the world. Right off the bat, this makes them very difficult to understand, for they are full of more than 4,000-year old idioms, metaphors and jargon which are meaningless, at first glance, to us. The prayer above is one of the more accessible verses (“utterances”), but that is mostly because I have lifted it out of context and we read it with a modern slant.
In this installment of the PaganNewsBeagle, we have Pagan interfaith activism, the death of Lorean Vigne, an announcement from Cherry Hill Seminary, Pagans organize in Italy and life in a socialist community in Spain.
Last week, Pagan sanctuary Isis Oasis in California announced the death of their founder, Lady Lorean Vigne. Jason Pitzl-Waters at The Wild Hunt offer a remembrance of her life and work.
Erin Lale
Fellow faculty at Harvard Divinity School posted an open letter to Wolpe in response to his article. It's available on this page, below the call for p...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. The Wild Hunt has a roundup of numerous responses on its site, but it carried this one as a separate article. It is an accoun...
Erin Lale
Here's another response. This one is by a scholar of paganism. It's unfortunately a Facebook post so this link goes to Facebook. She posted the text o...
Erin Lale
Here's another link to a pagan response to the Atlantic article. I would have included this one in my story too if I had seen it before I published it...
Janet Boyer
I love the idea of green burials! I first heard of Recompose right before it launched. I wish there were more here on the East Coast; that's how I'd l...