Heathen Robert Rudachyk has announced his candidacy for Canada’s Liberal Party of Saskatchewon. Rudachyk ran in 2014 and, in an interview with The Wild Hunt, talked about his goals and his work as an openly Heathen candidate.
He said, “If I am able to become the candidate, I intend to run my campaign on the issues facing all Canadians, not on my faith. I will never hide who I am, but I will also not whip my hammer out in public and shove it into people’s faces.”
This year, Rudachyk is running “to be elected as a Member of the Legislative Assembly ( MLA) for this seat or district as you might call it. It is for the provincial government of Saskatchewan It is essentially the provincial parliament.” The campaign was just announced, and we will have more from Rudachyk in the weeks to come. The election itself will be held in April 2016.
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(Photo: T. Mierzwicki)
On July 17, Professor Sabina Magliocco created a new survey for an independent study on fairy legends in the Pagan community. Magliocco is a professor of Anthropology at California State University – Northridge. Her online survey was titled “Fairies in Contemporary Paganism.” She wrote, “I’m interested in your legends, experiences and beliefs surrounding the fairies, fae, sidhe, Fair Folk, pixies, trolls, and similar creatures from any cultural tradition. What are they? Do you work with them in your spiritual practice? What is their role in the world today?”
Within one week, Prof. Magliocco received over 500 responses, far exceeding the allowances of the technology used. She announced the survey’s closing and began compiling the data. Although the work has only begun, she offered this quick assessment: “a majority of respondents believe fairies are real and associate them with the natural world. Nonetheless, fairies are not central to the majority of respondents’ religious practice — but a substantial number of respondents do interact with them, mostly by making offerings.” The full results will be presented at the Conference on Current Pagan Studies, held in Claremont, California in January 23-24, 2016.
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Coming up this weekend is the brand new conference, Many Gods West. As noted on the event website, it is “meant to be a celebration of [many] traditions, those newly-reconstructed and those continuously-practiced. There are many gods in the world, and many peoples worshiping them.”
Held at The Governor Hotel in downtown Olympia, Washington, Many Gods West will feature three days of workshops, lectures, rituals and more. The keynote address will be delivered by Priest and Author Morpheus Ravenna on Friday at 7:00pm. Rituals include the Bakcheion (Βακχεῖον)’s “Filled with Frenzy,” Coru Cathubodua’s “Devotional to Cathobodua,” and Viducus Brigantici, Filius’ “Kalends Ritual” and more. Many Gods West opens for the very first time on Friday, July 31 and runs to Sunday, Aug 2.
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Over the past few months, there have been some changes to the group Heathens United Against Racism (HUAR). According to various sources, the group experienced internal conflict in June, which led to a split between the various moderators, organizers and facilitators. The disagreements were centered around internal operations and structure.
HUAR is currently still in operation and slowly re-building. In a recent post, The HUAR Team wrote, “We have undergone some recent internal reorganization to be more effective in accomplishing our goals of opposing racism and co-optation of Heathenry by racialist groups and organizations. We’ve learned a lot of hard lessons from the mistakes of the past few years and are working to be more effective now and going forward.” *
In addition, a new group has formed called Heathens For Social Justice (HFSJ), which was created after the June events. HFSJ is run by nine democratically-elected board members. They describe the group as a “safe space” and as being “committed to fighting all oppressions, wherever [they] find them, in service to both [the] heathen community and [their] local, regional and national communities.” Organizers added, “We are about action, not platitudes.”
While the two groups do have some crossover in purpose and goals, their focuses do appear to be slightly different. We will continue to report on both groups as they continue or begin their advocacy and work.
In Other News
- The Sacred Harvest Festival is about to kick-off its eighteenth year at its brand new location in Northern Minnesota. The festival will be held at Atchingtan in Finlayson,MN, which is 90 minutes north of St. Paul. As always, the scheduled is packed with rituals, drumming, workshops and other events. The guest speaker will be Shaman Joy Wedmedyk. PNC-Minnesota has recently published an interview with Wedmedyk, in which she says, “I want the people who attend to know the reason I teach is because I want people to have as much information as possible to be able to move forward spiritually and to know prosperity and abundance in all levels of their life. I love to encourage people to develop their own skill set, and perhaps offer them a different perspective about a practice they may already be doing.” Sacred Harvest Festival begins on Monday, August 3 and runs through Aug. 9.
- Mills College Student and co-founder of the Pagan Alliance Kristen Oliver has been selected as a Chapel Programs Assistant. Oliver said, “I will be working for the interim Multifaith Chaplain and Director of Spiritual and Religious Life (SRL). I will be doing things like managing SRL’s Facebook page, helping to organize and lead activities and events like the school’s multifaith Festival of Light and Dark which happens in December, and being available to students who have spiritual/religious queries.” Oliver added that she “continues to be impressed” by the school’s support of the Pagan Alliance and Pagan students.
- As we reported last week, Starhawk has ventured into self-publishing for The City of Refuge, the sequel to her novel The Fifth Sacred Thing. To accomplish this task, she will be opening a Kick Starter Campaign to pay for various aspects of the process. The campaign will begin on July 31, as suggested by Starhawk’s favorite astrologer. As she writes, “It’s also the eve of Lammas or Lughnasad, August 1, one of the eight great festivals of the Celtic and Pagan year.”
- EarthSpirit co-founder Andras Corban-Arthen was invited to sit on a panel called the “Indigenous Leadership Talk Issues and Innovation” at the Nexus Global Youth Summit, held at The United Nations. The other panel participants included “Abhayam Kalu Ugwuomo, Chief Kalu Ugwuomo, Tonatiuh Cervantes, Aina Olomo, Ricardo Cervantes, Mary Ann Thompson-Frenk.”
![[Courtesy Photo]](https://wildhunt.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/11755289_1187101881307112_8626637514916991456_n-500x281.jpg)
[Courtesy Photo]
- Ivo Dominguez, Jr will be hosting a new workshop in Delaware to be taught by Byron Ballard. Held on Aug. 29, the workshop, called “Old Wild Magic of the Motherlands,” will be based Ballard’s new research on Appalachian traditions. Ballard’s work is focused on the magical traditions and cultures of her home in the mountains of the Appalachian region. For her next book, she has been studying the various customs that came over from the British Isles. Ballard notes, “The charms, spells and talismans that crossed with those ragged immigrants from Scotland, Northumberland, Cornwall and Cumbria are little known and very interesting. Weather workings, healing charms, curses and blessings–all handed down to us from a by-gone age.” The new workshop will present her findings and will be held in Georgetown, Delaware on Aug. 29.
That is it for now! Have a great day.
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This HUAR stuff looks so messed up…I’ve read some stuff at Glegrumbles and it looks much nastier than how it’s presented here… It is ironic that an ´organization´ that presented itself as The measure of rightfulness was actually not that clean at all…
I am deeply disgusted by HUAR’s decision to oust a large portion of it’s administrative staff for the sole purpose of excluding LGBT+ topics from it’s purview.
It makes sense to me. Racism is a separate issue than LGBT problems; they have different causes and require different approaches. To tackle *every* injustice *everywhere*, as the splinter group is professing to do, is a recipe for failure. You have to pick your battles.
I understand you. I mean, one would think that LGBT rights should be a non-issue among the Pagan/Heathen community. And it’s not like HUAR ever did that much. re-blogging a few posts, denouncing some groups/individuals online…Would it be much harder to do that both for racism and LGBT rights?
I’d say that an MLA is similar to a State Assembly seat. The Ontario (Federal) House of Parliament in Ottawa is amazingly gorgeous.
I was there in 1990 or 1991, and toured a bit of it. The Currency Museum next door might be of interest to anti-capitalists, as there were token worth a loaf of bread, or similar particular items. Canada has had a more varied and broader range of currency than the US. When I was there, Charles de Lint and Mary Ann Harris played in a session at Rasputin’s, which I think was on Bronson–626 S. Bronson–the old addy in LA for Bjo & John Trimble, which struck me as funny.
I hope The Wild Hunt will review the evidence HfSJ is posting, and report in more depth.
It is true that it’s weird TWH did not go that much in depth… On the other hand, avoiding shit is an understandable move.
Why would they report on what’s not much more than a Heathen witch-war? It’s not really news outside of the group.
Vision: Between the original note and the heated comments a picture has built up in my mind, in which: HUAR empowered some members to address intramural racism; those folks found intramural homophobia to be more of a problem and wanted to expand their mandate to include it; that request was denied; and those folks took a hike and organized around the issue they find important.This could be TOTAL bull$#!|. As I said, it’s a mental impression. But mine is not the only mind capable of this. It would be bad journalism to generate such impressions and leave them dangling out here. Good journalism calls for further coverage, if only to get the real story out.
The HUAR debacle is a mess that should be properly reported on TWH. Admittedly, what I’ve seen has been one sided but really does appear an aggressive attack on its LGBT members.
The value of reporting on the event would not only strengthen the integrity of the community but I also think would be a valuable lesson of what not to do in advocacy/pagan groups.
The fairy survey is, like, so three days ago. It’s closed. She hit her university-mandated total number of respondents.
Um, yeah, the post says it’s closed, TWH is reporting to say it happened and when results will be published.
For everyone posting about HUAR and HFSJ, the above note was certainly not meant to be full coverage of the June conflict. This was simply a note to quickly explain to the greater community that there are now two Heathen groups working on social justice issues. If and when we do report on the entire story, we will certainly look at all sides of the story, look at the postings, and hear from all people involved.
TWH is doing just fine. Ignore the small angry mob and report on actual news just like you’re doing.
Dear Heather:
[Please note: a version of this letter with complete screenshotsl is posted at the Democracy in Exile facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/democracyinexile/posts/1610450055911139%5D
I am very disappointed in whoever is responsible for this story… whether that is wholly you or WH or some combination thereof. We had the word of this publication that there would be no publishing of either fauxHUAR or HfSJ’s statements from what occurred. However majority of this article is literally based on public misinformation campaigns and statements that fauxHUAR prepared regarding this. It even borrows language from the statement that was under development at the HUAR page as shown in the screenshot in the version of this post featured at Democracy in Exile (https://www.facebook.com/democracyinexile/posts/1610450055911139)
Also in this screenshot we see Ryan telling his group that he WH reached out to fauxHUAR for a statement. At the time we generously assumed that Ryan was misrepresenting the situation. He had often represented his relationship to you in particular Heather, as one in which you were essentially at his beck and call. Some of this is represented in screenshots attached to the version of the letter posted at Democracy in Exile (https://www.facebook.com/democracyinexile/posts/1610450055911139). Over the years I and the other nine mods worked at HUAR we did see that you seemed quite responsive to putting Ryan’s message, and typically by extension HUAR’s, out there through WH. At the time we believed this was because you were a supporter of social justice. We continued to believe this despite Ryan continuing to act as though WH was his mouthpiece after the destruction of HUAR.
Heathens for Social Justice emailed WH on 6/21/15 asking that if your intention was to publish a statement by Ryan that you kindly publish our statement as well, side by side. We did this not because we wanted the representation to be “fair” but because after reading Ryan’s statement and noting the numerous misrepresentations and outright falsehoods we could not in good conscience allow him to mislead people regarding his actions and the actions of others. At the time your response was quite literally that you would not be reporting on the split other than perhaps noting somewhere that the group no longer existed. These emails are provided as screenshots in the version of this post featured at Democracy in Exile(https://www.facebook.com/democracyinexile/posts/1610450055911139).
Even though you state in the article above that you got information from both “sides” I know for a fact that you never approached any of the nine of us for a statement after you assured us that you were not going to print. Likewise you were not even a member of HfSJ and did not request membership until publishing this article. However, you have been a member of Ryan’s group and saw the statement thread that he posted. Like in all FB groups the names of who has seen a post are recorded and publicly available to anyone seeing that post. Nowhere on that thread did you dispute his claim that WH had approached him for a statement. After all this and your publication of the above “article” (which in reality is little more than a fleshed out version of Ryan’s statement) we cannot help but conclude that you mislead us and that your intention now is to mislead our community. The screenshots documenting your membership, the length of membership and viewing of the thread are available on the version of this post featured at Democracy in Exile(https://www.facebook.com/democracyinexile/posts/1610450055911139).
We ask that this article either be amended to make its bias and actual source clear, that it be removed per your original stated intent to not publish material about the destruction of HUAR, or that per our original request you publish our statement side by side with the expanded upon statement that you published from HUAR above.
In truth and honor, the undersigned.
Jason (Charlie) Everitt
Matti Frost
Josh Gamble
Hilary H Green
Harrison K. Hall
Jae Larson
Michaela Spangenburg
Ethan Stark
Aniuś Talewise
Wherever of injury thou knowest,
regard that injury as thy own;
and give to thy foes no peace.
-Havamal st. 129, Thorpe trans.
To ask well, to answer rightly,
Are the marks of a wise man:
Men must speak of men’s deeds,
What happens may not be hidden.
-Havamal st. 28, Auden & Taylor trans.
Meklorka —
Once you start making up names to demean other people (“fauxHUAR”), you have lost all credibility, as far as I’m concerned. If you seek equality, you must begin with equality, and objectifying others with derogatory nicknames is not a good way to begin.
Fight, fight !
Meklorka, I see nothing in the posted TWH note nor Heather’s replies in the comment section to support your contention that she is quoting one side while ignoring the other. You took up quite a bit of comment space talking about social media, that could have been devoted to a clear, concise statement of your side’s positions, free of snark against the other side.
The above article does not quote either one of the statements that were issued in June. Both quotes were pulled from public pages. If you would like to discuss your concerns further, please send me a message directly.