I have a few items of interest in my daily scan of the news, starting with a profile of practicing Witch and Australian singer-musician Wendy Rule. Rule is coming to Florida to perform, and the Daytona Beach News-Journal explores her Wiccan identity, and how that influences her songwriting.

A Sydney native who calls Melbourne home, Rule says, “It’s not such an unusual thing for music to have a magical and spiritual purpose. All the ritual music of traditional cultures — Aboriginal Australian and Native American shamans, folk music from across the globe, Gregorian chants and gospel music — share this same goal: to alter our consciousness and bring us in contact with the divine.” But, she adds, “I’m no more a Wiccan songwriter than I am a Scorpio songwriter, or an Australian one, or a female one. I’m just living and writing and singing and exploring my heart and soul — and I happen to be an Australian Scorpio Witch.”

While it’s nice that the paper decided to give some ink to Wendy Rule’s upcoming shows in America, you’d think they would bother to do more than simply cut-and-paste from her web site while implying they interviewed her. Maybe a long-distance phone call was too expensive for their operating budget? After all, these are hard times for newspapers.

If you want to brag once and for all that you’re as smart as (or possibly smarter than) Oberon “Grey School of Wizardry” Zell and Don “Witch School” Lewis you’ll get your chance at the upcoming St. Louis Pagan Picnic. According to a press release, they will be holding a trivia contest about “all things magical” open to all comers.

“Oberon Zell of Grey School and Don Lewis of Witch School have agreed to a trivia contest about all things magical to test their students and all comers. They plan to meet on June 13th & 14th at the St. Louis Pagan Picnic, held at Tower Grove Park. The St. Louis Pagan Picnic is the largest Pagan gathering in the Midwest, and brings together thousands for a weekend of friendship, fellowship, entertainment, teaching and merchants. The Wizards and Witches Trivia contest will be just one of the many parts to this wonderful event, but for the students of Grey School and Witch School, it is a highly anticipated one.”

The winners will receive unspecified “prizes”, one hopes that it isn’t a gift certificate to their respective schools. After all, would the winner of such a contest really need such a thing?

In a final note, workmen in Florence, Italy, while digging a hole for a new water cistern in the courthouse, stumbled across a temple to Isis.

“Workmen inside Florence’s courthouse have stumbled across a spiral column and hundreds of multicoloured fragments that experts believe may have belonged to a Roman temple dedicated to the Egyptian goddess Isis.  According to Roman news agency ANSA, the remains, dating back to the second century AD, were discovered as the men dug a five by three meter hole, barely four meters deep, for a new water cistern for the courthouse’s anti-incendiary system … the remains were “comparable” to others found over the last three centuries in the immediate area that have also been attributed to the temple of Isis, the Egyptian goddess of motherhood and fertility who was later adopted by the Greeks and Romans.  The location of the temple is unknown, but it is believed to have been built just outside the Roman part of the city, near the current courthouse building…”

Florence’s archeology superintendency is currently overseeing the discovery, no announcements have been made as to what will ultimately be done with the find. Interesting that a courthouse was unwittingly built over the temple of a goddess that the Book of the Dead calls “She who seeks justice for the poor people”.

That’s all I have for now, have a great day!

The Sun Chronicle highlights Joel Relihan, a Wheaton College classics professor, who recently finished the first new American English translation of The Metamorphoses of Lucius Apuleius (aka The Golden Ass) by Apuleius in forty years.

“The Golden Ass” is famous for being the only intact full-length Latin novel to survive from ancient Rome to the present day, and equally famous within modern Pagan circles for the speech the goddess Isis gives to Lucius (trapped in the form of a donkey due to meddling in Thessalian magic).

“All the perfumes of Arabia floated into my nostrils as the Goddess deigned to address me: ‘You see me here, Lucius, in answer to your prayer. I am Nature, the universal Mother, mistress of all the elements, primordial child of time, sovereign of all things spiritual, queen of the dead, queen also of the immortals, the single manifestation of all gods and goddesses that are.”

Isis’ speech (here translated by Robert Graves, and included in the essential “The Paganism Reader”) is thought by some modern Pagans and Pagan scholars to be a direct influence on the revival of religious Witchcraft in England, and prefigures many concepts found within today’s Goddess worship communities. A new, easily obtainable, English translation is certainly welcome so that a new generation of students and curious seekers can follow the exploits of Lucius, and hear the words of the Goddess.

You can find the new translation on Amazon.com, here, and audio excerpts of Joel C. Relihan reading from his translation, here.

Ah reality television, that fly trap for those who think they should be famous but lack any appreciable skill for achieving those goals on their own. This insatiable Warholian industry thrives on dysfunctional and driven personalities who lack the self-awareness that they are merely fodder for an increasingly indifferent viewing audience. Sadly, our faith community has been hard-hit by this faux-reality spectacle, and many are the appearances of these often ill-prepared spokespeople for our faiths. So it should surprise no one when I tell you that yet another Pagan has entered the fray.

David from the British version of the “Big Brother” show.

I think the whimsical eye-makeup and leopard-print scarf is a nice touch don’t you think? Gives an air of the “exotic” to modern Paganism. This isn’t the first time that the British reality program Big Brother has put a Pagan into the mix, but she didn’t last long. So it remains to be seen if David’s powers of prediction will hold true and he’ll join the main household for more than just a visit. This latest Pagan appearance all feeds into my theory that Pagans and Witches (especially Witches) have become just another stock character for those casting reality television. Which I suppose could mean that we have truly entered the mass-consciousness (and therefore the “mainstream”) of modern culture.

For some better news (at least in my opinion) concerning television and paganism, they have finally released a complete DVD set of the classic 70s television show “Isis”.

“The live-action show, created as a glamorous complement to hunky Captain Marvel on “Shazam!,” featured gorgeous JoAnna Cameron as Andrea Thomas, a high school science teacher who went on an Egyptian archaeological dig and discovered an ancient amulet — which she kept, of course, like any good tourist — that gave her incredible mystical powers courtesy of the goddess Isis.”

Here is a refresher on YouTube in case you may have forgotten (or were too young to see it when it was on television). Look at all that majesty!