“I like your pledge drive season much better than NPR’s!” – Snoozepossum

Things are really moving along in my first-ever pledge drive! To everyone who has given, I want to thank you for your generosity and for sharing my vision of a Pagan new-media model that can eventually grow to support not just The Wild Hunt, but a variety of media and journalism projects originating from within the modern Pagan movement. To all my wonderful readers who haven’t had the opportunity or time to donate to this effort yet, please consider taking a few minutes before this week is done to become a part of the growing community of support that has emerged these past four days. Ask yourself, if The Wild Hunt was a magazine or newspaper, what would I pay to have access to it year-round?

“Thanks for letting us donate, and making it easy. I know that sounds weird, but it’s great to be able to be an itty bitty part of what you do here. So many pagan resources crash and burn and never ask for anything until it’s too late.” – Jane H.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank some more Pagan bloggers for spreading the word, and encouraging their own readers to support my mission here. Starting with author Erynn Rowan Laurie, who not only posted about my Winter Pledge Drive, but also encouraged me to offer a monthly subscription service.

“If you’re so inclined, this would be a great way to support a significant news source in the Pagan community. Jason keeps up with all kinds of things of interest to our communities, from news about Pagans to interfaith to politics that might impact our communities locally or globally. I think he’s very worth supporting in this work.”

So if donating a small amount every month sounds more your speed, click here for a $10.00 per month subscription commitment, and here, for a $5 per month subscription. If you would like to donate a custom amount, simply contact me and I’ll set it up. Thanks to Erynn for her generosity and commitment to Pagan journalism.

I would also like to thank Patti Wigington, the About.com Paganism/Wicca guide, for supporting the Winter Pledge Drive, and for pointing out the differences between an ad-supported model and a donation-supported model.

“It’s no secret that About.com is owned by the New York Times Company, which is why we have advertisers all over the place. Their money helps keep the site free for readers (yes, Virginia, that’s why you keep seeing those ads for the Mormon Church). However, the Wild Hunt, which is one of the best resources on the Internet for Pagan news, runs strictly on donations. Jason Pitzl-Waters has put out a call for pledges, and I strongly encourage everyone to go help him out. Even if all you can spare is $5, every little bit helps keep the Wild Hunt ad-free and running daily: The Wild Hunt Winter Pledge Drive“

I think Patti does excellent work at About.com, but as she points out, the price for her platform can include ads by groups who may be directly hostile to modern Pagan and minority faiths. For that reason, and for others, I want The Wild Hunt to stay non-commercial, whether those commercials come from the Mormons, or from within the Pagan community. That isn’t to criticize those who may want to pursue an ad-based model, I think it can lead to some significant successes, but that I think it is important that we have commercial and non-commercial news sources within our community.

Again, thanks to all who have spread the word and given during this week, we still have days to go, so let’s keep the momentum up!  Please support a non-commercial, open, accessible, and daily Wild Hunt.

• Basic – $5
• Reader – $20
• Supporter – $50
• Benefactor – $150

• Affiliate – Consider becoming a Wild Hunt underwriter, with a listing and link on The Wild Hunt’s new “Affiliates” page. Contact me for further details.

I’d also like to take a minute and thank the Pagan bloggers who have taken the time to add their support to this drive by writing about it on their own blogs. First, Pagan chaplain Joseph Nichter wrote about how The Wild Hunt kept him “ahead of the crowd” when it came to the latest in Pagan news.

“I have been a long time fan, reader and supporter of Jason Pitzl-Waters, who is a real Jack of all trades within the pagan community, while at the same time being an incredibly professional Pagan. In my relatively limited experience this is incredibly rare and very very appreciated. The Pagan community has a great need for Pagans like Jason, who provide an invaluable service to us all,for free, because it needs to be done. I just love sitting down at my desk every morning with a hot cup of coffee and clicking in on The Hunt.”

Next, Rowan Pendragon reminds everyone to “donate what you can, whether that’s $5 or $100. It all helps to keep things going”, while Kim Sequoia says that The Wild Hunt is “a vital organ within the Pagan Community”. Finally, thanks to Sara Ferguson and my other loyal Twitter followers for spreading (tweeting) the word there.

Thanks again to everyone who has participated so far in keeping The Wild Hunt open, ad-free, and operating daily, I hope you’ll consider joining them as pledge week continues!

Since it started in 2004, the Wild Hunt has become a vital news source for modern Pagans, and a crucial resource for those outside the Pagan movement who want to explore the issues that are important to us.

The Wild Hunt doesn’t simply alert you to the interesting (or infuriating) stories of the day, but adds analysis, context, and unique features. The Wild Hunt has interviewed movers-and-shakers within modern Paganism like Margot Adler, Starhawk, Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone, as well as relevant religion writers and journalists like Jeff Sharlet and J.C. Hallman, while providing special “Pagan’s-eye” coverage of events like the Democratic National Convention and the American Academy of Religion’s yearly meeting. Upcoming coverage will include the Parliament of the World’s Religions and an interview with Owen Davies, author of Grimoires.

The future is bright for The Wild Hunt, and for Pagan journalism as a whole! We’d like to invite you along, as we initiate the first annual Wild Hunt Winter Pledge Drive. Our goals are three:

• To keep The Wild Hunt full-access (no subscription fees or “pay-walls”).
• To keep The Wild Hunt non-commercial (no ads or spam).
• To keep The Wild Hunt daily.

In a single month, this past October alone, The Wild Hunt counted over 44,000 unique visitors, giving this daily news source a very respectable “circulation” in the world of niche journalism. Around 5,000 readers receive The Wild Hunt directly every day, via their Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, LiveJournal, or email.

How:

If you are one of these avid followers of Pagan and religious-minority news, please consider contributing to the site during this year’s Winter Pledge Drive, in one of these categories:

• Basic – $5
• Reader – $20
• Supporter – $50
• Benefactor – $150

• Affiliate – Consider becoming a Wild Hunt underwriter, with a listing and link on The Wild Hunt’s new “Affiliates” page. Contact me for further details.

Click this button to contribute now:

If you are unfamiliar with PayPal or have other questions, please contact me.

When:

This year’s Pledge Drive will continue from November 16th through the 22nd. Feel free to share this post on Facebook, Twitter, and your other favorite social sites! Thanks for being a part of The Wild Hunt.

“Today the Federal Trade Commission revised their “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials” (click here to download), urging bloggers who review products, from a book to a video game system, to disclose if they received the product for free when giving an endorsement. According to the Washington Post, breaking these new guidelines could generate up to $11,000 in fines.”

What’s causing a controversy about these new rules is the double-standard in which bloggers have to obey these new rules, but newspapers and other traditional media outlets do not. In a revealing interview with FTC official Richard Cleland, Edward Champion lays bare the undistilled ignorance and bias of the people making these new guidelines.

“In the case of books, Cleland saw no problem with a blogger receiving a book, provided there wasn’t a linked advertisement to buy the book and that the blogger did not keep the book after he had finished reviewing it. Keeping the book would, from Cleland’s standpoint, count as “compensation” and require a disclosure. But couldn’t the same thing be said of a newspaper critic? Cleland insisted that when a publisher sends a book to a blogger, there is the expectation of a good review. I informed him that this was not always the case and observed that some bloggers often receive 20 to 50 books a week. In such cases, the publisher hopes for a review, good or bad. Cleland didn’t see it that way. “If a blogger received enough books,” said Cleland, ‘he could open up a used bookstore.’”

So if a newspaper receives a book, gives it a good review, and posts a link to purchase it, it isn’t compensation. But if I get a book, post a link to Amazon, and give it a good review, I’m being “compensated” because the publisher has the “expectation of a good review”. It’s simply ridiculous. As if the publisher doesn’t have the same expectation from the newspapers and magazines it sends comp copies to. Do they really think that newspapers were simply keeping these free books in a underground library or returning them to the publisher? It’s a well-known industry “perk” that reviewers get to keep the book/movie/cd they review (and just as often those “pro” unbiased newspaper reviewers sell their comp-copies to used bookstores).

Media critic Jeff Jarvis notes that the new regulations were supposed to target hated pay-per-post “sploggers”, but instead regulates speech and is a “monument to unintended consequence”.

“…the FTC assumes – as media people do – that the internet is a medium. It’s not. It’s a place where people talk. Most people who blog, as Pew found in a survey a few years ago, don’t think they are doing anything remotely connected to journalism. I imagine that virtually no one on Facebook thinks they’re making media. They’re connecting. They’re talking. So for the FTC to go after bloggers and social media – as they explicitly do – is the same as sending a government goon into Denny’s to listen to the conversations in the corner booth and demand that you disclose that your Uncle Vinnie owns the pizzeria whose product you just endorsed. Insanity and inanity. And danger. The regulations raise no end of questions. For example: How much do I have disclose? Before I say anything nice about anyone, do I need to list every advertiser I’ve ever had? Every possible business relationship? You think my disclosures are comical now, just wait.”

So from now on, under the FTC’s assumption that I would be so tickled by Llewellyn sending me a copy of “Priestess of the Forest: A Druid Journey” that I’d have no choice but give it a positive review (when in reality I left it to gather dust because I thought it just wasn’t that good) I will be posting a disclaimer with every review stating whether I received a promotional “compensation” copy. As for the many blogging Pagan book reviewers out there who receive promotional copies, you better start crafting your disclaimer statement now. This, along with plans in congress to exempt citizen journalists and bloggers from the shield law protections is quickly creating a journalism class-system that privileges money and institutions above content and context.

Hesiod (Works and Days 770) designated the Noumenia as the holiest of days, and it appears to have been among the oldest and most widespread of the Hellenic religious observances. Its antiquity is attested by the fact that Homer mentions it in the Odyssey (21.258) – a significant fact when we consider that he names only one other religious festival in his epics. Furthermore, the Noumenia continued to be observed well into the Christian period, since we find bishops in Byzantine Egypt during the 5^th century railing against those who continue to light lamps and burn incense in their homes for the ancestral gods and spirits on the new moon.

The sacred nature of the day can be seen in the fact that no other festival was allowed to fall on the date in Athens and no legislative assemblies of the ekklesia, boule, or tribal associations occurred at this time. In fact, all important business was suspended as we learn in Plutarch’s 25^th Roman Question – though it seems that the markets may have remained opened.

Generally, it was seen as a day to stay at home and celebrate with the family. Sacrifices were made to Apollon, Selene, Hera, Hekate, Hermes, Hestia and the household gods. The domestic shrines were cleaned and then wreathed with flower-garlands, and then incense, wine, and cakes were offered anew to the gods. (Porphyry, On Abstinence from Animal Food, 2.16)

The Noumenia is perhaps just as popular and universal for contemporary Hellenic and Greco-Egyptian polytheists as it was for our cultural ancestors. Ours is a diverse community, and though we may have different festival calendars, honor different gods, and even employ different methods of worship – most of us still do at least something to mark the Noumenia. Here are some examples of how different people in the community celebrate this day:

Here is a Noumenia ritual from the group Neokoroi. Here’s another ritual, by Timothy Anderson. Here’s Miguel Oliveira’s thoughts on the Noumenia, and a lovely hymn he wrote for the occasion. Here’s another hymn written by Lykeia. Here is Allyson Szabo (author of Longing for Wisdom) talking about her Noumenia experiences. Here’s some more commentary from Gede Parma, and finally some from Kenn.

In keeping with that, I would like to share some of my own thoughts about this day and how I celebrate it.

To me the Noumenia is a time of new beginnings, of renewal. Each month we are given a chance to start over, to get it right. Living in this fast-paced, hectic world with endless distractions, frustrations, and demands on our time and attention, it is easy to lose our way, to forget the things that are important to us and sometimes we may even become estranged from our gods. We may have set out to maintain a regular religious routine, or to make important life changes like eating better, exercising more, watching less television and the like – only to have life get in the way. It is easy to feel discouraged, to see all the missed opportunities and our life slipping away from us. But the Noumenia provides us with an opportunity to stop, get our bearings, connect with the divine, recharge our spiritual batteries, and renew our commitment to living the sort of life that, deep down, we have always wanted to. It is a time to clear away the old and outmoded, all the things that are cluttering our lives and holding us back, so that we can make room for new and wonderful blessings to enter them.

That is why the first thing that I do on the Noumenia (if I have not already done it on the previous evening, which is the deipnon or dinner of Hekate) is a thorough cleaning of my apartment, from top to bottom. Admittedly, this may not strike some as a particularly spiritual act – but it has taken on great significance for me. There is something deeply rewarding about all of that physical labor, especially when I use the time to think about all of the mental and spiritual “junk” that I need to remove from life as well. It is also a devotional act since by filling my home with numerous shrines to my gods, I have invited them into my life and agreed to share my space with them. The gods should not be subjected to dirty laundry, stacks of dishes, clutter and dust – and in truth, neither should I. By making my home neat and orderly, a fitting place to receive my gods – I am making over my life in a similar fashion, for one’s home is, after all, a reflection of one’s own being. I have noticed, in fact, a strong correlation between my mood and my surroundings. When the place is messy and disgusting I tend to feel stressed, anxious, and sullen – but when it is sparklingly clean and well-ordered (or as close as it gets to that, because come on, I am a guy and a bachelor after all) my heart is light and my mind soars more freely. After I have cleaned my apartment, paying special attention to my shrines and the clearing away of any offerings I may have left on the altars – I begin a series of devotions that can last anywhere from an hour to the remainder of the day.

I begin by lighting candles and incense and pouring libations for each of my household gods. I spend a little time at each of their shrines, reciting poetry and hymns, praying aloud from the heart, or just talking to them in a casual manner. Then I just bask in their presence for a bit, enjoying the beautiful sight of an active shrine full of offerings, thinking about my gods and spirits and what they mean to me, going over past encounters I’ve had with them, and what I hope to do for them in the future. If I have an ongoing oath to them, I will renew my commitment to it and think of ways that I can live up to it over the month to come.

After I have done this for each of my household divinities I next turn to the remaining gods of my rather large multicultural Greco-Egyptian pantheon. This is actually one of the most important things about the Noumenia for me, the opportunity to touch base with all of the other deities. Over the years I’ve managed to collect a smallish pantheon of gods and spirits who receive the bulk of my attention and devotional practice. These are very important gods to me, and I deeply enjoy the intense and personal nature of our relationships. But the other gods are important too, and worthy of my honor even if they haven’t made their presence as strongly felt in my life as the core group that forms my personal pantheon. So on the Noumenia I take some time to honor them as well, making collective offerings to the bunch of them, reciting brief prayers to individual gods, and generally I pause to think about them for a while and all the amazing things they have done and continue to do in our world.

After this I go into a quiet, meditative state, just sort of letting myself be in the presence of the divine. I often come away from this feeling peaceful, calm, collected – ready to face the challenges of life, grounded in an awareness of the all-pervading presence of the my gods and spirits. It doesn’t matter what else is going on in my life – all the anxieties, fears, frustrations and doubts just melt away in the face of the gods.

After that I will sit with my calendar and make plans for the upcoming month. I look at the festivals that are approaching and think about what I would like to do for them and the supplies I’ll have to gather to celebrate them properly. I go over my writing and creative projects, and any other plans I may have either percolating in my brain or carried over from the previous month. I think about my life and what I need to do to make it better. In short, I plot out the rest of the month, making concrete plans of action, because honestly, I’d never get anything done otherwise.

At that point, it’s usually pretty late and so I make myself a lavish dinner, feasting in the company of my gods and sharing a portion of the meal with them. Then I make a final offering and go out for a walk, usually going on a long, circuitous route that ends up at one of the nearby parks where I do a lot of my outdoors worship. As I stroll through the dark city streets I let my gaze drift up to the heavens and note the lovely sliver of moon, just barely visible through the darkness – yet full of such promise and potential.

This is one of my favorite parts of the Noumenia – and in many ways, one of the most important. By anchoring my religious calendar to the phases of the moon it helps me connect with the cyclic powers she contains as well as the rhythms of nature which are all around me. It’s so easy to lose sight of this, to get caught up in the manic intensity of our modern lives. So much is going on all the time, a thousand tiny things constantly clamoring for our attention, that we’re often not aware of anything outside of our own heads. Weeks can pass by in a blur, and half the time we wouldn’t even know what day it was without the anchors of what show’s on television or what trivial thing is happening at work. The earth and the moon, however, run at a slower pace, possess a deeper and more sacred wisdom, and I have found that pausing to take note of that, slowing myself down enough that I am then able to attune myself to that more divine motion is an incredibly rewarding thing. Many people find it hard to follow the lunar Hellenic calendar, especially at first. But I find it well worth the effort. These energies are real and powerful, and life runs much more smoothly when we slow down enough to be aware of them, open ourselves enough to be conscious of their influence in the world around us – and the world within us as well.

And that, dear friends, is how I celebrate the Noumenia. Often we talk about the more theoretical aspects of our faith – our conceptions of the divine, the importance of ethics and building up community, the interpretation of ancient texts, and the assorted controversies that plague our diverse communities – but I think that it is also important to discuss what we actually do for the gods, how this feels and what all this means to us today as modern practitioners of ancient faiths. Hopefully I have provided some small glimpse into the religious life of a Greco-Egyptian polytheist here in the hinterlands of Oregon. At the very least I suspect y’all won’t be complaining that my entry was too short.

About ten years ago, I met a practitioner of Santeria for the first time. I had already read many books about Santeria, and was very enamored of the Orishas, but he was the first actual initiate I ever met. We started comparing and contrasting our religious beliefs and practices, Wicca with Santeria.

One of the first things he asked me was how I worked with the Ancestors. Like most Wiccans, I replied “Oh, yeah, I give them a nice big feast once a year at Samhain.” He looked startled, and said, “But that’s not nearly often enough. You need to invoke the Ancestors in every ceremony, even before you invoke the deities. If you don’t acknowledge the Ancestors, and give them food and drink offerings, they won’t help you. And they are magically powerful!”

These were interesting thoughts to me: that the Ancestors should be invoked in every ceremony, and that they needed to receive offerings from me to engage their help. I remembered many mentions of “ancestor worship” in ethnologies I read as an anthropology undergraduate. I started pursuing my own connection with the Ancestors, and learning to engage the Ancestors as a force in my magical work, predominantly in my shamanic healing work.

My shamanic teacher Sandra Ingerman supported my interest in ancestral spirits. Sandra likens us—the living—to a sports team currently playing a game, and she compares the Ancestors to the audience in the stadium, watching, cheering, booing….. and sometimes interfering on their team’s behalf. Sandra invokes the Ancestors as well as the Descendants in every ceremony she leads. Sandra believes we live on a continuum of time, the currently incarnate sandwiched between the discarnate Ancestors and the discarnate Descendants. In Sandra’s opinion and practice, both the Ancestors and the Descendants are sources of healing and magical power.

As I worked with the Ancestors over the course of ten years, I began to see a big difference in the results of my shamanic healings, especially in the areas of inherited disease and multi-generational curse breaking. I came to see that Sandra Ingerman and my Santeria friend were onto something powerful: the Ancestors can provide a lot of magical potency if they are petitioned to help their living descendants. This is a practice found almost universally in religions and spiritual paths with a similar world-view to Wicca, but is absent in the modern construct that is Wicca.

My Wiccan priest and priestess in Ireland, Gavin Bone and Janet Farrar, have this to say about the role of the Ancestors within Wicca:

The idea of ‘the Ancestors’ was something that was never talked about when we first became involved in Wicca; there was no reference to ancestral worship within ritual or the Book of Shadows. This has begun to change in the last few years, as many Wiccans have realised that something intrinsic is missing in their practise. Wiccans have begun to investigate the African Diaspora religions, and genuine Native American and other tribal religions, to learn more about how to incorporate the Ancestors into Wiccan ceremonies. We, ourselves, were honoured to be recognised by the Lesotho Sangoma (traditional healers) Ancestors as Elders when we traveled to South Africa to teach Wicca. As more and more western Pagans begin to investigate the Earth aspect of our spiritualities, they are finding that it is meaningless without recognition and contact with their ancestral spirits.

My much more local Wiccan priest in Delaware, author and teacher Ivo Dominguez, Jr. writes:

Belief in the power of the ancestors is normally associated with a worldview that populates the universe with a complicated ecology of spiritual beings and spiritual forces. Each type of Spirit has its place and merits respect and treatment appropriate to its niche. It is not surprising that interest in working with the ancestors is on the rise in the Neo-Pagan community, as it is an almost inevitable descendant of this worldview. (From Spirit Speak)

So who are the Ancestors? Are the Ancestors different from the ancestors? Again, I turn to Ivo Dominguez, Jr.’s Spirit Speak for enlightenment:

Merely dying does not make you one of the Ancestors. In most traditional cultures, only those people who have led exceptional lives become available as sources for guidance and information after they have died. Exceptional means that they are exemplary, which can mean good, bad and everything in between. A really bad Ancestor makes for a really good cautionary tale. People who become the Ancestors do not fade from memory, because their stories are told and retold.

I began to realize that the Ancestors were not only the dead people in my genetic line, but included diverse dead people from various categories. In his book Spirit Allies, Christopher Penczak highlights this issue:

Ancestors unrelated by blood are kindreds, those people with a similar path, problems, or inspirations as you. They have sympathy for your life and times. Think about those in the past with whom you feel a kinship. If you are a writer, you could feel a bond with a particularly inspiring author from history.

So how do these exemplary Ancestors transition from being ancestors to becoming Ancestors? Again, we can learn more about this from non-Western sources, because the rise of monotheism obliterated the rituals our genetic ancestors used in northern Europe. Malidoma Patrice Some teaches a ritual process he calls ancestralization, based on the beliefs and practices of his tribe, the Dagara of Burkina Faso:

Dagara people’s main job is to look the dead in the face, to treat their bodies not as remains but as temples of grace and beauty continuing from this world to the other. People grieve the passing of loved ones, though in this grief they stress beauty and community and continuity. The handing over of the loved one to the realm of the ancestors is what we call ancestralization. It allows for a sense of completion in the vast array of duties following the passing of a person. In this five-day event, we address this issue of fulfilling our duties toward the dead in the interest of transforming restlessness into rest, discontinuity into continuity and homelessness into homecoming.

One of my dearest friends, astrologer and Wiccan priestess Diotima Mantineia, has studied with Malidoma Some and participated in his ancestralization ceremonies. For a couple of years, I nagged her to set up an ancestor altar as part of her spirit worship. She replied that she didn’t get along with her family very well, and would prefer to exclude her ancestral line from her magical and spiritual practices, except at Samhain. Like water on a rock, I continued to nag in what I hope wasn’t an irritating way. Finally, Dio set up an ancestral altar, and some years later, was called to enroll in Malidoma’s class. Here is her description of the ancestralization ceremony:

For five days, our “village” of 25 people came together to make a remarkable ritual happen. We prepared by lovingly creating sticks and stools, physical representations of male and female ancestors, ritually enlivening them, then connecting with our ancestors in an all-night vigil, to give our ancestors the honor and the place in our lives they (and we!) deserve.

The ritual changed my life in profound ways, despite the fact that I had been working ritually with my ancestors for a number of years already. But the power of the rituals we performed during those five days broke through barriers between me and my ancestors that I was not even aware were there, and that was a great gift….

Diotima’s experience illustrates another point about the Ancestors: we Wiccans have left the spiritual path followed by our most recently departed Ancestors. How do the Ancestors feel about us becoming Pagans, and leaving the monotheistic religions of our families? Here is Christopher Penczak’s take on this issue, again quoted from his book Spirit Allies:

Practitioners also fear that the ancestor will not approve of the new spiritual path because they wouldn’t have approved in life. I’ve heard many times new witches thinking their departed loved ones are angry because they do not follow the family’s traditional faith. Once a being crosses over the veil, he or she realizes the truth to spirituality more than we could while incarnated.

This situation arose for me in an interview I did at Samhain in 2003, with a reporter from The Washington Post. The reporter asked me what my ancestors would have thought about my Pagan religion. The answer I should have given her is this: My ancestors couldn’t possibly disapprove of my Wiccan religion nearly as much as I disapprove of them owning slaves. I am the great-granddaughter of slave owners on both sides of my family, and to my shame, at least one of my ancestors was also a slave dealer.

Now, I have forgiven my ancestors for being slave owners. But still I feel a karmic debt to those slaves owned by my family in the bad old days. And I feel this debt calls for actions on my part today. I have taken actions both practical and spiritual over the years, to attempt to address my ancestors’ wrongdoing. Yet I know that nothing I can do will ever erase the stain of racism and slave-owning on my family line.

Among many other attempts at karmic remediation, I have received ceremonies in Santeria, also known as La Regla de Ocha de Lukumi. I wear the Necklaces and cherish my consecrated head of Ellegua. I proudly hold the Cauldron of the Warriors and two soperas, one for Oya and one for Obatala. I have permanent shrines to the Orishas and also some of the Haitian Vodou Lwa in my healing room. I work with Divine possession through these traditions. All of this has been a joy for me, a joy inspired in part by my family’s painful history.

Part of the Ancestors’ Wall in my altar room, Family Ladder by Katie Dell Kaufman

So, our more recent ancestors may not accord to our taste, in terms of their cultural practices, such as owning slaves and oppressing Native Americans and women, or in terms of their monotheistic religious paths. How about our ancient ancestors? Should we modern Pagans be making ritual overtures to our ancient Pagan ancestors?

My answer is a resounding YES! I have found wisdom and comfort in seeking out Ancestors who were Pagan in ancient times. In shamanism, my Upper World teacher is the last Pagan priestess in my genetic line on my father’s side. In my shamanic journeys, I have seen the tumultuous life she led in 7th century Anglo-Saxon England, when the Old Gods and the Old Ways were being abandoned in favor of the new monotheism, Christianity. Sigfritha, as my distant ancestor refers to herself, says that through our bond in shamanic reality outside of time, our family line of Pagan priestesses and priests is unbroken. Her teachings and her love are vital to my shamanic empowerment and to my magical path. In part through my ancestral connection with Sigfritha, I am a priestess of Freya.

Every shamanic healing ceremony I perform begins with the Ancestors. The Ancestors who come to the ceremonies vary a great deal. Each client brings their own set of Ancestors, and more recently deceased ancestors, to attend the healing ceremony. And then my own Ancestors come to all of my healing ceremonies. They are a motley array of genetic, shamanic, personal, past life and wildly eclectic Ancestors unique to me, a Washington Witchdoctor.

Of all the northern European Pagan paths currently active, the Asatru are taking their connection with their Ancestors most seriously. Here is a nice quote from Steve McNallen of the Asatru Folk Assembly:

Someday we will be dead, whatever that means. Hopefully we have left sons and daughters – and grandsons and granddaughters! – to tell our stories and to pour libations on our graves. As the Havamal says – “Seldom are [memorial] stones erected on the wayside, save by kinsmen for kinsmen.” How will you be remembered? Did you do deeds of worth? Were you true? Did you love much? Did you fight for what was right? Were you Awake, or did you live your life in trivialities? If we lead good lives here in Midgard, we will be good ancestors.

I got a chance to talk about the Ancestors with Steve in July 2007. He told me that he believes we disappoint our ancestors if we depart from the spiritual path they followed in their lifetimes. Obviously, with my extreme eclecticism, I don’t agree with him. But here is a wonderful paradox about working with the Ancestors: one can find ancestral support for Steve’s view, my view, and any other viewpoint as well. The Ancestors are not unitary in their beliefs and loyalties, but various and many. Both Steve and I are working closely and authentically with Ancestors who support our different points of view. Thus, we are not working with the same set of Ancestors. And it’s all good.

Currently, the dismissive way most of us treat our Ancestors in Wicca is all too similar to the way most of us treat our Elders. My esteemed colleague Brendan Myers wrote eloquently about the Elders on The Wild Hunt earlier this week, including how we Pagans can learn from indigenous practices honoring the Elders. We come from a culture that tends not to respect the elderly. We often institutionalize our Elders to keep their needs from intruding on our busy lives. We are missing out on an incredible source of wisdom and knowledge as the generation that won World War II is passing!

Having read this far, you will not be surprised to learn that I spent twenty years taking care of my elderly parents, including six years caring for a parent with Alzheimer’s disease. It was one of the most rigorous tests of my lifetime so far, and one of the most rewarding. And trust me on this one: if you can’t behave lovingly to your Elders while they are still here on this material plane, you are probably unsuited to working closely with the Ancestors.

At this point, I believe that Ancestor veneration is so important that it amounts to a missing cornerstone in Wicca. And since Wicca is constantly evolving, I suggest that now is a great time for us to begin including the Ancestors in our ceremonies all year round. We really shouldn’t wait until Samhain comes around once a year to invoke them, celebrate them and feast them. I will close with the words to the song I use to invoke the Ancestors at the beginning of every shamanic healing session I perform:

Ancestors, Blessed Ancestors, we’re calling you today for healing. We thank you for the strength you showed while you were here, the sufferings you endured and the love you gave to your children. And now we call to you: we are your sons and daughters, sons and daughters calling to you. Through the mists of time, we stretch out our hands to greet you with joy and ask for your help today, in a healing way. Blessed Ancestors, please help us, heal us, guide us, lead us on our paths into the future, where we will meet the Descendants yet to come, those as yet unmanifest, waiting to arrive, waiting to be alive, we call to you. Blessed Ancestors from the past, blessed Descendants yet to come, look on us with compassion here, and make this moment a time of true healing, a gift from the past, a gift from the future, to heal us now. We welcome you!

All Hail the Ancestors, the Mighty Dead! May we bless our Ancestors, and ask for their blessing often, and not just once a year at Samhain! So Mote It Be!

July 14th – Brendan Myers

Dr. Brendan Myers, Ph.D. is the author of several critically acclaimed books on the subject of ethics and philosophy, environmentalism, Celtic and European mythology, folklore, society and politics, and spirituality. They have been used as inspirational and educational resources by college professors, social activist groups, interfaith groups, Celtic cultural associations, and even humanist societies, in many countries around the world. Brendan’s work has appeared in numerous magazines, podcasts, and radio shows (including America’s NPR). He is the 2008 recipient of OBOD’s prestigious Mt. Haemus Award for recent research in Druidry.

July 15th – Elysia Gallo

Elysia Gallo is an Acquisitions Editor at Llewellyn Worldwide, the oldest and largest independent New Age publisher in the United States. She acquires books for publication in such topics as Witchcraft, Wicca, Paganism, magic(k), herbalism, and the paranormal. She lives in St. Paul, MN with her husband and two cats.

July 16th – Cat Chapin-Bishop

Wiccan since the late ’80s, Cat Chapin-Bishop has also been Quaker since 2001. Cat’s essays have appeared in Laura Wildman’s “Celebrating the Pagan Soul”, “The Pomegranate: The Journal of Pagan Studies”, the Covenant of the Goddess newsletter, and “Enchante: The Journal for the Urbane Pagan”. In addition to her work as a Wiccan HPs, Cat is the former Chair of Cherry Hill Seminary’s Pastoral Counseling Department, and she currently serves on the Ministry and Worship Committee of Mt. Toby Quaker meeting. Cat and her husband maintain Quaker Pagan Reflections, a blog dedicated to exploring the connections between Pagan spirituality and Quaker practice. They reside in Northampton, Massachusetts, where they attempt to live peacefully in the midst of chaos.

July 17th – Lupa

Lupa is the author of “Fang and Fur, Blood and Bone: A Primal Guide to Animal Magic” and “A Field Guide to Otherkin”. She’s also the co-author of “Kink Magic: Sex Magic Beyond Vanilla” with Taylor Ellwood, and a contributor to the “Magick on the Edge” anthology and “Manifesting Prosperity: A Wealth Magic Anthology”. Additionally, Lupa works as an associate editor, layout tech, and nonfiction publicity/promotions manager for Immanion Press/Megalithica Books. Lupa uses the term pagan for simplicity’s sake, though more accurately she describes herself as a totemist, an animist and a pantheist. She has been studying pagan religions and magical topics for twelve years and practicing for ten years. Currently she is developing and training in therioshamanism.

July 18th – John Morehead

John Morehead is a researcher, writer, and speaker in intercultural studies, new religious movements, theology and popular culture. He has an M.A. degree in intercultural studies from Salt Lake Theological Seminary which included a thesis on Burning Man Festival. He also has an avid interest in aspects of pop culture, particularly myth and archetype as well as the social, cultural and religious dimensions of fantasy, sci fi,and horror. John lives in the greater Salt Lake City area with his wife and two children. Be sure to check out his excellent TheoFantastique blog!

July 19th - Caroline Kenner

A longtime Washington D.C. activist in in feminism and environmentalism, Caroline Kenner now uses her skills to advocate for modern Pagans. In 2006 and 2007 Kenner called pan-Pagan rallies in Washington D.C. to demand religious freedom and equality. The 2007 rally was particularly auspicious as it celebrated the recently-won right to place the Pentacle, equivalent to the Cross, Star, or Crescent, on military grave markers. The event united several large Pagan organizations working to establish Pagan military chaplains and the approval of other specific Pagan symbols worn by Pagan and Heathen veterans. In addition to her activism, Caroline is a graduate of The Foundation for Shamanic Studies‘ Three Year Program in Advanced Shamanism and Shamanic Healing. Caroline also holds an A.B. from Bryn Mawr College and a M.S. from Boston University. She has practiced shamanism since 1989.

July 20th - Chas Clifton

Chas S. Clifton has been blogging since 2003, when he converted his Pagan magazine column, “Letter from Hardscrabble Creek,” into a blog. A widely published Pagan writer, he is the author of “Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America”. He also edits “The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies”.

July 21st – James R. French

James R. French has been interested in Magick and Paganism since adolescence. He is an Adept of the Open Source Order of the Golden Dawn and a Reiki Master. (Mr. French wants us to understand that “Adept” and “Master” are titles within these respective lineages. They do not necessarily indicate anything beyond that.)

July 22nd – Thorn Coyle

T. Thorn Coyle is a magic worker, mystic, musician, and author of “Evolutionary Witchcraft” and “Kissing the Limitless.” She teaches internationally. Her blog can be found at yezida.livejournal.com or http://www.thorncoyle.com/musings.html.

July 23rd – Sannion

H. Jeremiah Lewis, also known by his religious name Sannion, is a Greco-Egyptian polytheist who has been actively honoring the gods since around 1993. He has lived all over the country, including Alaska, Nevada, New York, Montana, Washington and Oregon (where he currently resides), and has worked the standard assortment of odd jobs that every aspiring author needs to get by with. Mr. Lewis divides his time between an insanely intense religious practice, writing, research, helping to organize the activities of Neos Alexandria, and directing the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. There isn’t much time for anything else.

July 24th – Peg Aloi

Peg Aloi is a Pagan and a scholar who works in both the academic and popular arenas. She is a writer on Paganism and the media for Witchvox, is the co-editor with Hanna E. Johnston of the new volume “The New Generation Witches: Teenage Witchcraft in Contemporary Culture” (Ashgate, 2007), and is currently co-authoring a book with Hannah titled “The Celluloid Bough: Cinema in the Wake of the Occult Revival”.

Please give all of them a warm and hospitable welcome, I’m certain they will all contribute something special to The Wild Hunt. The gods and my new DSL service willing, I should be back to my regular posting schedule by July 25th. Make sure to keep things respectful and polite in the comments while I’m gone, the assorted hells hath no fury like a vacationing blogger who has to log in to a WiFi spot in Idaho to engage in some blog moderation.

Oh, and thanks to the precise wordsmiths who wrote the Declaration of Independence.

Certainly the Pagan community hasn’t been immune to this rough transition. Several anecdotes seem to point to strains and belt-tightening, and the recent merger of Pagan magazines PanGaia and NewWitch mirrors the troubles faced by the larger less-niche publications. As Pagan commentary and journalism has (seemingly) contracted in the print world, it has exploded on the Internet. Thousands upon thousands of Pagans hit the Pagan blogosphere’s “A-List” (Gus diZerega, Chas Clifton,  Patti Wigington,Thorn Coyle, and myself, among several others) on a regular basis for news and opinion, while the ever-timely (and unafraid) Pagan Centered Podcast has racked up over 150,000 downloads of its show. However, the question remains of how journalism aimed at the Pagan community will ever “pay” in the same manner that the once-dominant publications do. Some, like Thorn Magazine, have attempted to create a print-online hybrid, but it’s too early to tell if that project will continue to thrive in the longer-term.

So what is the future of journalism, and what does it mean for “professional amateurs” like myself who service niche information markets like the modern Pagan community? Two recent essays really give some clarity as to the extent of what’s coming, why it will almost certainly get worse before it gets better, and why we have reasons to hope for a brighter media tomorrow. The first is from author Steven B. Johnson who reminds us what informaiton gathering, especially niche informaiton gathering was like before the Interent, and why the tech and political news worlds are showing that the future isn’t a barren news desert but a rich news rainforest ecosystem.

“The metaphors we use to think about changes in media have a lot to tell us about the particular moment we’re in … today’s media is in fact much closer to a real-world ecosystem in the way it circulates information than it is like the old industrial, top-down models of mass media. It’s a much more diverse and interconnected world, a system of flows and feeds – completely different from an assembly line. That complexity is what makes it so interesting, of course, but also what makes it so hard to predict what it’s going to look like in five or ten years. So instead of starting with the future, I propose that we look to the past. To use that ecosystem metaphor: the state of Mac news in 1987 was a barren desert. Today, it is a thriving rain forest. By almost every important standard, the state of Mac news has vastly improved since 1987: there is more volume, diversity, timeliness, and depth. I think that steady transformation from desert to jungle may be the single most important trend we should be looking at when we talk about the future of news. Not the future of the news industry, or the print newspaper business: the future of news itself.”

Johnson sees a future in which the “old media” establishment become massive filtering organizations, using their editorial skills to provide clear and accurate narratives on important news. Becoming part of a “bottom-up” news distribution system and economy, that advertisers and news agencies will eventually find a way to make the new media economy work for them (though not without further casualties in this unnatually hastened transition). While Johnson talks about a hopeful media future that includes all players at the table, New Media consultant and teacher Clay Shirky bluntly reminds us that when you’re in the middle of  revolution all bets are off.

“That is what real revolutions are like. The old stuff gets broken faster than the new stuff is put in its place. The importance of any given experiment isn’t apparent at the moment it appears; big changes stall, small changes spread. Even the revolutionaries can’t predict what will happen. Agreements on all sides that core institutions must be protected are rendered meaningless by the very people doing the agreeing. (Luther and the Church both insisted, for years, that whatever else happened, no one was talking about a schism.) Ancient social bargains, once disrupted, can neither be mended nor quickly replaced, since any such bargain takes decades to solidify. And so it is today. When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to. There are fewer and fewer people who can convincingly tell such a lie.”

One thing I rarely see mentioned by defenders of “old media” is that proponents of  new media rarely want newspapers or magazines to fail, or for journalists to lose their jobs, they merely understand that the current upheaval is going to play out no matter what we do. You can’t unring a bell, and you can’t stuff the genie of digital media back into its bottle. As Shirky says, we are in the midst of a revolution, and we have no idea what exactly the future will look like. I hope for Johnson’s lush ecosystem, but we can’t be sure.

What will the “pro” model of Pagan journalism look like in the future? Will it be the slick and academic-minded site Patheos? The corporate-backed blogs of Beliefnet? The massive “everyone gets a say” editorial page of the Newsweek-backed On Faith? Maybe even a renassaince of Pagan periodicals? Perhaps it will be something none of us ever saw coming. Looking at the last few years, I can’t say what the future of media and journalism will truly be, but I do know that Pagan journalism has grown in a variety of ways. Our community is more personally empowered than ever to inform, communicate, and ignore ineffecient gatekeepers. In the “old” mainstream media Paganism was treated as a fad, or a joke, or a “human interest” story stuffed into the “lifestyle” section. We had to wait for months for any news from our own periodicals, and those were often (due to the nature of scheduling) more interested in “evergreen” material than in what is happening in the here and now. Thanks to the citizen journalists and determined aggregators we have more “news” for Pagans than ever before, and if we’re lucky, a successful business model will emerge in that will allow for timely Pagan reporting that actually pays.