Posts Tagged ‘Neo-Paganism’

News & Submissions 4/26/2011

Tuesday, April 26th, 2011

Headlines:

Pagan Freedom Day 2011
An ancient pagan Greek historian and author Thucydides (460-404BCE) once wrote “The secret of happiness is freedom. The secret of freedom is courage.” It takes courage to publicly announce ‘I am Pagan’ in South Africa, but that’s exactly what Pagans do every year on Freedom Day.

In January 2004, this initiative was formally chartered as the Pagan Freedom Day Movement (PFDM). Since 2004 Pagans of every religious persuasion, including Witches, Wiccans, Druids, Asatruars and many others, have mingled and shared with other South Africans in celebration of their constitutionally guaranteed freedom to practice their own personal religions, and to gather openly with others of like mind, without fear of persecution or prejudice. Read full story from newstime.co.za

Archeology:

Archaeologists recover massive statue of one of ancient Egypt’s most powerful pharaohs
CAIRO — Archaeologists unearthed one of the largest statues found to date of a powerful ancient Egyptian pharaoh at his mortuary temple in the southern city of Luxor, the country’s antiquities authority announced Tuesday.

The 13 meter (42 foot) tall statue of Amenhotep III was one of a pair that flanked the northern entrance to the grand funerary temple on the west bank of the Nile that is currently the focus of a major excavation. Read full story from washingtonpost.com

Lost City Revealed Under Centuries of Jungle Growth
Hidden for centuries, the ancient Maya city of Holtun, or Head of Stone, is finally coming into focus.

Three-dimensional mapping has “erased” centuries of jungle growth, revealing the rough contours of nearly a hundred buildings, according to research presented earlier this month.

Though it’s long been known to locals that something—something big—is buried in this patch of Guatemalan rain forest, it’s only now that archaeologists are able to begin teasing out what exactly Head of Stone was.

Using GPS and electronic distance-measurement technology last year, the researchers plotted the locations and elevations of a seven-story-tall pyramid, an astronomical observatory, a ritual ball court, several stone residences, and other structures. Read full story from nationalgeographic.com

Arts & Entertainment:

Spout About: Will “Thor” Inspire Neopaganism? Death to Body Swap Movies! Death of a “2001” Influence
Above is a cropped section of a “Thor” bus stop ad posted to BuzzFeed. You can see that someone has taped a religious flyer to it. Intentional? Is there a minor protest going on against the polytheistic themes of the upcoming comic book movie? Does “Thor” have a soundtrack consisting of Varg Vikernes and other infamous neopagan black metal bands? Is there any other reason for people to worry it preaches anti-Christian messages? I sincerely hope this is just a chance occurrence.

Still, apparently some people are seeing too much in a flashy, potentially campy summer blockbuster. Star Foster at the pagan blog Pantheon looks into why “Thor” matters. Remember how people were turned onto Wicca after seeing “The Craft”? Wait, did that really happen? I knew some Wiccans back in high school, but I can’t recall the movie being a huge influence. Anyway, Foster sees a similar thing occurring with “Thor” and neopaganism: Read full story from indiewire.com

News:

Rebuilding Japan’s disaster-hit towns may take a decade
TOKYO, April 26 (Reuters) – The reconstruction of Japanese towns and cities devastated by a deadly earthquake and tsunami last month could take a decade, an advisory panel to the government tasked with coming up with a blueprint for rebuilding said on Tuesday.

The March 11 earthquake and tsunami, which left a large swathe of Japan’s northeast in ruins, killed at least 13,000 people, forced about 130,000 into shelters and is estimated to have caused $300 billion worth of damage.

“The first three years would be needed for tasks like rebuilding roads and constructing temporary housing,” said Jun Iio of Japan’s Reconstruction Design Council, formed after the quake to advise the government’s rebuilding efforts. Read full story from scientificamerican.com

Paranormal:

THE STEYTLERVILLE MONSTER
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa – A monster plaguing the town of Steytlerville struck again over the Easter!

There were  two sightings of a terrifying shape-shifting monster reported over Easter in the province of Karoo in South Africa.

“Two men were walking near a tavern when they saw another man wearing a black jacket. One of the men, identified only as Nozipho, went up to the stranger and asked him, “What is your problem?” said Nelani.

When the stranger did not respond, Nozipho went closer and saw that the man had no head. The man then turned into a dog that was “very angry” and “as big as a cow”, Nelani said. Read full story from weeklyworldnews.com

‘Haunted Watauga County’ delves in N.C. withcraft folklore
“Haunted Watauga County” by Tim Bullard will be published by The History Press of Charleston in September.

Bullard, 55, is a Laurinburg, N.C., native with magazine and newspaper clips at his website www.timbullard.com. He is formerly a reporter, photographer and columnist at the North Myrtle Beach Times, as well as a former Morning News reporter.

“Haunted Watauga County” delves into the witchcraft that has been reported through folklore in the N.C. mountains. Read full story from tricities.com

Religion:

Coffee Shop Religion: Interfaith of the Everyday
I never learned much about religion until I started hanging out at Muddy Waters Coffee Shop on the corner of Lyndale and 24th in Uptown, Minneapolis.

I was raised to be a priestess (of Hinduism), grew up surrounded by world scripture and philosophy, and was taught by learned scholars and mystics. But my religious education didn’t really begin until I started talking — and listening — to other people from other ways of life. I had a great foundation but it had to evolve beyond what I could experience as an individual. Understanding is a journey, and it’s nice to have company if you can get it. Read full story from huffingtonpost.com

KCET lot sold to Scientology
The Church of Scientology is has just bought a bigger pulpit.

The church has cut a deal to acquire the historic Los Feliz studio lot that has been home to pubcaster KCET-TV Los Angeles for the past 40 years. In a lengthy statement, the church said the deal allows it to “establish one of the most advanced centers used by religious broadcasters with the ability to harness 21st century broadcast technology and production power to deliver its message to the the largest international audience possible.” Read full story from variety.com

Sathya Sai Controversies and the Art of Guru Bashing
It is not uncommon now that for many Gurus, Rishis or Seers who have emerged from India, there has always been an unprecedented number of vicious attacks launched on them. These have come in the guise of slander, misquotes, false allegations and myriad smear campaigns.

Moreover it is interesting to note that most of these attackers often turn out to be either individuals who have been suffering from dysfunctional complexes or personality disorders, or pseudo spiritualists, fundamentalists and Christian missionaries working at religions conversion of Hindus, or self-appointed- rationalist experts with highly opinionated, insular theories or dishonest television reporters and interviewers sensationalizing and tarnishing the image of Hinduism and Hindu Gurus, keeping with the trend of unprofessional, ignorant reporting and the highly biased- ‘paid news syndrome’. Read full story from chakranews.com

Media:

Bill O’Reilly: Is There a Hell? (Source: YouTube – AtheistMediaBlog)

Blogspot:

Feel free to leave comments regarding the articles posted.

If you’re interested in guest blogging or would like to submit an article or event, contact me at pagansworld.org@gmail.com.

Thanks for stopping by! Well wishes to you all and have a great day!

Lisa

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News & Submissions 3/22/2011

Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011

My Take: Japanese New Religions’ big role in disaster response
Devastating images of human suffering have been pouring in from Japan for over a week now and many of us have wanted to help. When news reports showed store shelves in Tokyo were emptying, I felt the irrational urge to mail necessities like rice, toilet paper and batteries to relatives and friends there.

Ultimately, I knew that by the time my care packages would reach Tokyo, store shelves would have been restocked. An organized relief effort requires pre-existing networks. After the Kobe earthquake in 1995, yakuza – Japan’s organized crime cartels – efficiently distributed food and water.

Since this month’s earthquake and tsunami struck Japan, other types of organized aid networks have also largely been neglected by the news media, including the Japanese news: those managed by religious organizations.

These charitable efforts include more than traditional Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines that many rightly associate with Japan. The thriving Japanese religious landscape is much more diverse than most outsiders realize, with many so-called New Religious Movements, in addition to Christian churches and Islamic centers. Read full story from cnn.com

Among the Unbelievers
It has long been assumed that Western society in the modern age—with the rise of science and the broad intellectual legacy of the Enlightenment—must become increasingly secular. What is modernity if not the movement from the authority of tradition to the authority of reason? In this view, made famous by the German sociologist Max Weber, the “disenchantment” of the world is the price one pays for leaving the charms and consolations of religion behind. The non-believing Weber was himself nostalgic for an age when faith imbued life with meaning and purpose. But he never ceased to identify secular thinking with a decisive advance in human self- understanding.

In “Holy Ignorance,” the French social theorist Olivier Roy sets out to modify this secularization theory and to overturn its triumphalist message. He begins by noting that religion, though still obviously an important part of modern society, has been relegated to the private sphere, becoming mostly an “interior” search for spiritual well-being. In such a world, “faith communities” of every stripe increasingly withdraw from the broader culture, defending their doctrinal purity against the onslaught of coarse secular trends, what Mr. Roy calls “neo-paganism.” This withdrawal, though understandable, is a danger in itself. “Faith without culture,” Mr. Roy says, “is an expression of fanaticism.” Read full story from wsj.com

Seconds Before the Big One
Earthquakes are unique in the pantheon of natural disasters in that they provide no warning at all before they strike. Consider the case of the Loma Prieta quake, which hit the San Francisco Bay Area on October 17, 1989, just as warm-ups were getting under way for the evening’s World Series game between the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland A’s. At 5:04 p.m., a sudden slip of the San Andreas Fault shook the region with enough force to collapse a 1.5-mile section of a double-decker freeway and sections of the Bay Bridge connecting Oakland with San Francisco. More than 60 people died.

Over the years scientists have hunted for some signal—a precursory sign, however faint—that would allow forecasters to pin­point exactly where and when the big ones will hit, something that would put people out of harm’s way. After decades spent searching in vain, many seismologists now doubt whether such a signal even exists. Read full story from scientificamerican.com

My Voice: Abortion bill aims to halt coercion of women
The editorial roundup of the Argus Leader and Rapid City Journal have displayed many false allegations of what House Bill 1217 does and what it is intended to do for the women of South Dakota.

This is an entirely different bill than anything proposed in previous legislation and in statewide referendums.

This bill does not outlaw abortion. Its intent is to prevent women from uninformed and coerced abortions. Up to 64 percent of abortions are coerced against a woman’s will.

It is in response to Planned Parenthood’s sworn testimony under oath that abortions are scheduled with no history or examination of the patient by a doctor or even a nurse. The surgery is scheduled over the phone.

If a woman wants to discuss abortion, a non-medical worker schedules the surgery without determining whether it is appropriate, whether or not the woman is being coerced and without any assessment of the woman’s circumstances at all. Read full story from argusleader.com

Sammy Hagar says he was abducted by aliens
LOS ANGELES — No doubt Sammy Hagar, a former lead singer for Van Halen, has enjoyed a lot of far out experiences in life, but on Monday, the rocker told perhaps his farthest out tale to MTV. He was abducted by aliens.

Or, at least, his brain was.

In an interview for his new book, “Red: My Uncensored Life in Rock” at mtvhive.com, Hagar lets go of what even he admits might make him “sound like a crazy person” to some readers.

He and the reporter are talking about dreams he claims to have had about UFOs, and when asked whether he believed he had been abducted, Hagar answers: “I think I have.” Read full story from msnbc.msn.com

Experience: I feel other people’s pain
When I watch a film, I feel as if I’m in starring in it. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was horrific. My friend invited me to see it, and I had no idea what it was about – I normally try to avoid dramas and thrillers. When the character Salander was tortured, I felt as if my body was being beaten; I could physically feel the sensation of being attacked. It’s the same with emotions. If someone is happy, it’s like hearing an orchestra and I feel extreme excitement and joy. This is the reality of living with “mirror-touch” synesthesia, a rare neurological condition that causes sufferers to hyper-empathise.

My earliest memory of mirror-touch is standing in my parents’ garden in South Africa, aged six, watching butcher birds hang mice on the wire fence. I felt the tug on my neck and spine; it was as if I was being hanged. I remember crying to my mum, trying to explain what had happened. I wanted her to understand that I could see emotions as colours, and feel sounds; that someone else’s anger felt like heat running between my chest and stomach. “You’re just oversensitive, Fiona,” she said.

Eventually, she took me to the doctors, but they didn’t have any answers. My GP told my mum I had a lot of nervous energy. After that, she turned to the church. She’d take me in and have people place their hands on my body and pray for me. Read full story from guardian.co.uk

The science of spring: Plants rely on internal alarm clocks to tell them when to wake up from winter
Just in time for the birds and the bees to start buzzing, the flowers and the trees somehow know when to open their buds or start flowering. But the exact way that plants get their wake-up call has been something of a mystery.

“Why should plants care?” The general answer to that is that there are a lot of situations where it’s important not to do something developmentally until spring has arrived,” said Richard Amasino, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin Madison. “Trees want to make sure that their buds are protected until spring.”

Sibum Sung, a molecular biologist at the University of Texas Austin has an idea of how this protective action works on a cellular level. He discovered a special molecule in plants that gives them the remarkable ability to recall winter and to bloom on schedule in the spring. Sung published his results last December in the journal Science Express. Read full story from physorg.com

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News & Submissions 10/28/2010

Thursday, October 28th, 2010

Lifestyle?
Pagan Lifestyle? Christian Lifestyle?  Gay Lifestyle? Heterosexual lifestyle? Hippy Lifestyle? Green Lifestyle?

Huh?

I can’t speak for others, but I don’t have a ‘lifestyle’, I LIVE a LIFE.  No, not just A life, I live MY life. Read full story from fernsfrondblogpost.com

Anglesey Druids open book of the dead for Halloween
They will be holding a mourning tea at Glynllifon Mansion, Llandwrog, near Caernarfon, on Saturday to remember and celebrate loved ones who have died.

They believe this is the time when the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest. Read full story from bbc.co.uk

Druids Recognised; Daily Mail Angry
Druidry is to become the first pagan practice to be given official recognit­ion as a religion in the UK. After a four-year fight, the Druid Network has been granted charit­able status by the Charity Comm­ission for England and Wales, making it the first pagan group to be recognised under the 2006 Charities Act. This guarantees the group, set up in 2003, valuable tax breaks, although it doesn’t currently earn enough to benefit from this. It could also pave the way for other minority faiths to gain charitable status. Read full story from fourteantimes.com

Trick or Treating Debate: Saturday or Sunday?
There is a bit of a controversy brewing in this year’s Halloween cauldron over when to Trick or Treat. Each October 31st, little vampires, witches, ballerinas, and astronauts know it is time to head outside to fill their baskets, pillow cases, and buckets with candy.

But what happens when Halloween falls on a Sunday? Read full story from cnn.com

What, no pumpkins? Before Halloween went to Hollywood. .
Say the word ‘Halloween’ in most parts of the world, and the reaction will be: pumpkins, candy apples, trick or treating, lanterns, fancy-dress parties, and of course, teenagers getting sliced and diced in leafy Californian suburbs by masked maniacs with mommy issues.

Halloween, after all, is as American as apple pie and the Fourth of July, right? Read full story from independent.ie

Baltic diaspora and the rise of Neo-Paganism
RIGA – An interesting follow-up to last week’s article on the status of religion in the Baltics concerns the religious beliefs of the Baltic diaspora. Not often discussed, the religious tendencies of Latvians abroad do differ from Latvians in the homeland. In addition, the revival of ancient religions and neo-pagan movements also tend to have their base, not in the land where they began, but in the U.S. and Canada.

Ruta, age 86, came to Minnesota from a German displaced persons (DP) camp sponsored by the Lutheran church in 1950. Her story is nearly identical to thousands of others from Balts seeking to start a new life abroad after World War II. She explains in her own words what religion means to her. Read full story from baltictimes.com

Hitler, The Holocaust and the Vatican’s Blood Libel Against Paganism
Today, many people erroneously believe that there is a vast difference between Paganism and the Occult. This is a common and understandable misconception; therefore I shall try to shed a little more light on the subject.

Paganism is an earth-orientated way of intimately synchronising oneself with the planet that we call home and the changing seasonal cycles, for the benefit of self and others. Read full story from ufodigest.com

Burning Holy Books Is A Loathsome Act: Prof. John Hare
Prof. John E. Hare is the Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical Theology at the Yale University’s Divinity School. A British classicist, philosopher and ethicist, he is the author of several well-known and best-selling books in religion and morality including “God and Morality: A Philosophical History”, “The Moral Gap”, “Ethics and International Affairs”, “Why Bother Being Good” and “Plato’s Euthyphro”.

John Hare has in his background the experience of teaching philosophy at the University of Lehigh from 1975 to 1989. In his “God’s Call” book, Hare discusses the divine command theory of morality, analyzing texts in Duns Scotus, Kant and contemporary moral theory. Read full story from eurasiareview.com

A Peek Inside a Haunted Mansion (Source mercurynews,com)

Zen at your desk: how to meditate (Source cnn.com)

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News & Submissions 11/18/2009

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

Martin Lecture Series explores Neo-Paganism
Magliocco is an old friend of Wheaton Professor of Religion, Jonathan Brumberg-Kraus. Magliocco was recently inaugurated into a group of Neo-Pagan “witches,” after years of researching the Neo-Pagan reclamation movement in San-Francisco Bay Area. Read full story from thewheatwire.com

How the Nazis tried to take Christ out of Christmas
For the perfect Nazi Christmas you had to hang glittering swastikas and toy grenades from the pine tree in the living room and, in your freshly pressed uniform, belt out carols urging German women to make babies for the Führer rather than worship the Jewish Baby Jesus. Then came the moment to light the pagan candle-holders — hand-made by labourers at Dachau. Read full story from timesonline.co.uk

Witch School Moved
The Witch School witches prepare their brooms for a long flight because Witch School is on the move. The mostly witches’ virtual school has been operating from Roseville, Illinois for the past several years. They’ve been trying to teach live classes in Roseville, but apparently it’s not the most witch friendly town in the USA. Read full story from examiner.com

Northern California tribal leader airs concerns with Obama
(MCT) – Leslie Lohse, leader of a small band of Indians in Tehama County, recently found herself speaking directly to President Barack Obama – one chief of state to another. Read full story from indiancountrytoday.com

Choosing a domestic deity for the Pagan household
Every domestic witch will eventually look into the subject of a household deity. Traditionally, there are two types of domestic deities: a major god or goddess or the minor or local entities called animistic deities. You’ve probably heard of at least a few of the goddesses used as deities in the household: Hestia, Frigg or Brigid are some of the most popular used today. But have you heard of the tomte, domovoi or cofgodas? These are but a few of the animistic deities that have been worshipped in the past. Read full story from examiner.com

Yoga helps even little ones channel energy, emotion
Decatur, Georgia (CNN) — Gigi reaches up into her sun salutation. She steps back into her high lunge and kicks her legs straight into plank pose, a push-up she holds without wobbling for 10 seconds before looking up impatiently at her yoga teacher. Read full story from cnn.com

The Evolution of the God Gene
IN the Oaxaca Valley of Mexico, the archaeologists Joyce Marcus and Kent Flannery have gained a remarkable insight into the origin of religion. Read full story from nytimes.com

(MCT) – Leslie Lohse, leader of a small band of Indians in Tehama County, recently found herself speaking directly to President Barack Obama – one chief of state to another.

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