Breitbart discovers the existence of feminist witches

TWH – The conservative media outlet Breitbart published an article Dec. 17 titled #MagicalResistence: the Rise of Feminist Witchcraft. Since posting, the article has gone viral, earning 5,087 comments and attracting the attention of other media outlets and the Pagan online community. “From organizing mass hexes to setting up witch-themed Etsy stores, the feminist movement and witchcraft are becoming increasingly entwined,” observes Breitbart writer Charlie Nash. “The two scenes have become so intertwined that the term ‘witch has even started to become synonymous with ‘feminist.'”

In a subsequent radio interview Dec.

British Occultist Florence Farr honoured by Theosophical Society

LONDON —  On April 29, The Theosophical Society in London hosted a memorial day to honour the late 19th century occultist Florence Farr. For years, Farr has been seen merely as an adjunct of the men of the period due to her being the mistress of George Bernard Shaw and a friend of W B Yeats, among others. But Farr is now taking her place in academic study, as well as occult history, as a polymath in her own right. Actress, magician, novelist, composer, musician, director and teacher, Farr was an instrumental part of the esoteric society of the Golden Dawn. Born in 1860, Farr was initiated into the Isis-Urania temple in 1890 under the motto Sapientia Sapienti Dono Data, or “Wisdom is a gift given to the wise”, and she remained an integral part of the organization for some years. During that time, she also continued with her acting career and was well known in her day; she was the first actress to perform in Ibsen’s plays in Britain.

Discovering occult painter and mystic Hilma af Klint

LONDON — The Serpentine Gallery is currently exhibiting the work of Swedish artist and mystic Hilma af Klint (1862 -1944). Over her career, af Klint painted nearly 1200 works, at least 200 of which were created during trance rituals and inspired by her esoteric beliefs. Af Klint’s paintings, which have only been exhibited a few times and in limited numbers since the 1980s, are regularly compared to other famous abstract painters of the era, including Wassily Kandinsky, František Kupka, Robert Delaunay, and Piet Mondrian. Over the past decade, as af Klint’s work has become better known, art historians have been questioning whether it is af Klint, rather than Kandinsky, who is actually the true pioneer of abstract painting. As noted in BlouinArtInfo, “[af Klint] painted in near isolation from the European avant-garde, forging her own singular path motivated by her interest in nature, the spiritual realm, and the occult.”

Jean Williams 1928 – 2015

On Saturday, it was announced the Wiccan High Priestess Jean Williams had died on Friday, Dec 25. The announcement read, “Gracious, sociable and non-dogmatic, [Jean] relished the variety of paths and personalities in paganism. Also in some ways a very private person, in her personal spiritual life she was a Wiccan high priestess of the Gardnerian tradition, with a quiet and close-knit coven who are very much her intimate family.” Jean Elen Williams was born in the village of Berkeley, Gloucestershire, and was the third child of a Church of England vicar. From a very early age, she attended private boarding school, and then later enrolled at theUniversity of College London, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology, then want on to have a very successful career as a social researcher.