[Pagan Community Notes is a series focused on news originating from within the Pagan community. Reinforcing the idea that what happens to and within our organizations, groups, and events is news, and news-worthy. Our hope is that more individuals, especially those working within Pagan organizations, get into the habit of sharing their news with the world. So let’s get started!]
On Dec. 4, Crystal Blanton, Wild Hunt columnist, Priestess, writer, and long-time activist, issued a challenge to the collective Pagan communities, saying “This is an opportunity to stand up and support the people of color within the Pagan community, and society, by saying… we see you. We are not ignoring you, we are not staying silent.” Over the past four days, a growing number of individuals, groups and organizations have responded by publishing statements of solidarity, open letters and personal blog posts.
The Wild Hunt will be covering this story in detail in the coming week as others organizations and individuals are currently finalizing their own words. Some of statements already published include those by Starhawk, T. Thorn Coyle, Pantheon Foundation, CAYA coven, Solar Cross, Ár nDraíocht Féin, and more. Stay tuned for more on this subject.
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The New Alexandrian Library announced that it has received its certificate of occupancy. The statement read, in part, “This means we are now ready to do the final walkthrough with the contractor; to begin the process of moving in shelves, furniture, books and artwork; and to think about a grand opening. We want to thank everyone who worked so hard and so long to make this dream a reality, who believed that the ASW could create such a resource for the Magickal Community.”
Additionally, the library has launched a new fundraising campaign for its 2015 Gala to be held at Sacred Space on Mar. 7 at the Hunt Valley Inn in Maryland.
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The Druid Network announced that it has compiled and recreated the shared liturgy of the now closed Solitary Druid Fellowship (SDF). Shut down in September, SDF was an experimental project for solitary Druids and an extension of Ár nDraíocht Féin (ADF). As explained on the Druid Network website, “The Fellowship provided free liturgies for each of the Eight High Days of the Pagan Wheel of the Year, each based on ADF’s Core Order of Ritual.”
In the spirit of digital archiving and preserving important work, members of The Druid Network have uploaded all of these liturgies in one location for easy download. Organizers said, “It was such an excellent resource – not only for ADF druids – but for the whole community.” They also added that, if SDF should re-emerge, they will be happy to pass on the files to the new founders.
In Other News:
- Over the past two weeks, Facebook has shut down several Pagan accounts as part of the enforcement of its “real name policy.” A number of people were targeted in this sweep, including authors Raven Grimassi and Storm Constantine. Speculation continues as to how and why this happens.
- Cherry Hill Seminary has announced the opening of registration for spring classes. This registration is for both the masters courses toward a degree, as well as they four-week insight classes for non-seminary students.
- Rootworker and Orisha Priest Lou Florez will be taking a pilgrimage to Nigeria. In an interview with Erick DuPree, Florez said, “…an invitation has been extended to travel to Nigeria in February with an esteemed elder and teacher, and to take the high priesthood initiation in IFA, the root of all Orisha religions. In addition to receiving this once-in-a-lifetime spiritual elevation, I will also train in traditional medicine making, and herbalism from elder priestesses and priests.” Florez has started a fundraising campaign to help fund the trip.
- The deadline for submission to Paganicon 5 and Twin Cities Pagan Pride annual Third Offering sacred art exhibition is drawing near. As organizers explain, “Inspired to gather and create beauty as our third offering to our Gods and our community, this exhibition welcomes all types of visual media by artists who are capable of expressing a Pagan or polytheistic aesthetic.” The deadline is Jan. 1. The exhibition will be held at Paganicon, Mar.13-15.
- Tea & Chanting Sangha is “is doing 100,000 recitations of OM MANI PADME HUM to create healing and change regarding police brutality:” The organization “integrates Pagan and Tibetan Buddhist practices.” Throughout the month, organizers will tally the number of recitations, whether recited together or individually. They encourage people to participate or join them on line. As of Dec. 7, they have done 13,075 recitations.
That’s it for now. Have a nice day!
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Heather, thanks for this great roundup! I see that Sacred Space/Between the Worlds has announced its schedule, which looks amazing.
It appears that we as a nation are going backward. I have seen more open racism in the last year than in the last twenty years. Racism never disappeared but it did go more underground. I lived though the first battle of civil rights and now I looks like we must begin that struggle again. We have to hit the streets again.
At a time when violent crime rates have fallen for twenty years we are quickly militarized our police forces to the extent they are no longer community police to protect us but occupying armies to control us. What we see happening to our brothers and sisters of color can now happen to any of us. We need to get our police bad under our control or lose what rights remain to us.
Nor is it just racism come back but hatred against women, against the poor, against any that are different some perceived Norm.
It is time to record what is happening and to keep those recordings in a safe place for future generations. It is time to make a change or to lose it all. Let the magic begin ad ever end.
Crystal, I am always happy to see more faces of color in my dance community and in the Pagan (etc) community. It feels weird to me, for reasons I can’t understand (given that I am nominally white, of Arabic ethnicity), to see only white faces.
This evening a young black man came to the door selling magazines for points in a competition. We don’t actually read magazines anymore, and the ones we might want to read are not mainstream enough to be offered that way–and the one time we tried, the service was lousy, which was not the seller’s fault.
We chatted a bit, and when it was time for him to try another house (in the dark), I offered my hand, and said, be safe–not as a command, but as a blessing. He knows there’s one less idiot in the world to worry about.
Our neighborhood has an aging population, and homes that go up for sale attract a lot of families from the Indian subcontinent area (islands, remember). I just wish they’d cook more with the windows open.