CHICAGO – This year’s 2021 Parliament of the World’s Religions is slated for October 17 – 18 and will be a virtual event. The theme for 2021 is “Opening our Heart to the World – Compassion in Action,” which “aims to encompass the truly global opportunity provided by the virtual nature of the 2021 Parliament and the critical emotional and spiritual needs of people around the world while acknowledging the critical need of a just and compassionate plan to move the world forward.”
Phyllis Curott, a Wiccan priestess, attorney, and author, is a Trustee for the Parliament and Program Chair for this year. Curott said in an email, “… I recommend proposals for panels, which will receive priority given limited time slots. Panels are also an excellent way to share our community’s diversity and international constituency. For the first time, this convening will also have continuous religious services, prayers, and celebrations so please consider a proposal for a ritual, prayer, or celebration, or a submission to the arts track. In planning to participate, you can pre-record or present live, and in your native language.”
The deadline for submissions is May 31, 2021, and can be done via a webform.
In a statement to TWH, Curott stressed the importance of Pagans participating in the programming and the Parliament.
Since its first modern convening in 1993, Pagans have been active in the Parliament because we believe in interfaith dialogue as a path to peace, because we know how helpful it’s been to achieve greater understanding and public acceptance of Paganism, and because Pagans have a lot to contribute regarding critical issues like climate change and justice.
We’ve had some battles – in ’93 I had to fight the city of Chicago for a permit to perform an outdoors Full Moon Ritual as part of the Parliament, but ever since, our participation has been increasingly welcomed and valued: over the years, we’ve had almost 500 Pagans participate in the convenings and 3 Pagans on the Board of Trustees.
The Parliament gives Pagans a respected, global stage from which to address the world as equals with the world’s other faiths. It gives us a chance to meet religious leaders and practitioners who in turn influence the opinions of billions of people. And sharing our wisdom and values, especially our reverence for Mother Earth, is essential to the global dialogue on the climate crisis as well as critical issues like eradicating gender, economic and racial injustice. The more we participate, the greater our impact.
Curott added, “This year’s convening is unique for two important reasons that affect Pagans: we’re convening online, so our presence and impact can be greater than ever before, and the Program Chair is a Wiccan priestess – I’ve always worked to assure the participation of Pagans, women, and Indigenous peoples and our presence this year could be historic – I can’t say more than that now but check in with me in a few months.”
The World Parliament of Religions which took place during the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago was the first global platform for the engagement of religions from around the world and the point of origin for today’s modern Parliament. The Parliament of the World’s Religions is also a non-profit international non-governmental organization affiliated with the United Nations Department of Public Information.
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A Venezuelan Heathen group, Alþing de Venezuela, which describes itself as a “tribalist community dedicated to the study of Heathenry in the different fields from the foundations of the historical reconstructionism of the Nordic – Germanic Tradition,” released the following statement regarding harassment and related behaviors last week:
The public statement comes after accusations of harassment and inappropriate behavior against Lars Magnar Enoksen were posted online.
The Kvennathing Asatrú México (Assembly of Women of Allthing Ásatrú México) issued a similar public statement on May 12:
The honorable Assembly of Women of Allthing Ásatrú México, states that being of our complete interest and an important part of our functions within the tradition in Mexico is to help create safe spaces and defend women within our organization, from all types of harassment that may rise, we openly denounce:
Due to the fact that in recent days there have been reports of harassment and inappropriate behavior by Lars Magnar Enoksen towards colleagues from our community, who despite the rejection of the affected women, the persistence of the aforementioned reached excessively humiliating and lewd levels. So the Allthing Asatrú Mexico has made the decision to cancel its scheduled visit in Mexico next September 2021.
It should be clarified that we have followed the necessary protocols to carry out this cancellation and have maintained direct contact with all women affected by the disastrous attitude of this sexual predator; over the days we continue to receive more reports of the same nature.
Our community has always had “Zero Tolerance” in situations of this type, regardless of the nationality or rank of the people. As women, men, girls and boys, we deserve a safe, free, respectful place and a heathen community that constantly supports itself; and for this reason we declare Lars Magnar Enoksen, persona NON-GRATA and cut ties of all kinds with this stalker.
Note:
Affected women are supported by our support network. If you are a person who has been in this situation, do not hesitate to raise your voice with the certainty that there is a whole community supporting you.
For a safe and harassment-free space for the Ásatrú community.
At the service and in Defense of Tradition.-Kvennaþing.
Crossings of the Veil
Matthew Jack Whealton, Jr.
November 18, 1956 – May 14, 2021
The SF Bay Area Pagan community and the Kemetic world in particular, as well as many dear friends worldwide, mourn the passing of Matthew Whealton, a prominent member of the Temple of Ra. Matt, a native of Norfolk, VA, was a sophisticated and knowledgeable man, gracious with all he met.
Matt earned his M.S. at Johns Hopkins University, after which he pursued a more conventional professional life in computer science. In recent years, however, Matt became an Egyptological scholar studying at UC Berkeley
After the passing of his friend and mentor Richard Reidy, author of Eternal Egypt: Ancient Rituals for the Modern World, Matt edited and published Richard’s second book, Everlasting Egypt: Kemetic Rituals for the Gods.
Matt, who was multilingual, studied Yucatec, a Maya language, Tibetan, Ancient Greek, Akkadian, Egyptian (with its three alphabetic systems), as well as modern Arabic, French, and German.
Matt was one of perhaps a dozen people worldwide who could sight-read Egyptian inscriptions from the walls of tombs and temples without the use of reference materials. At temples in Egypt and at museums there and in the U.S., Matt enchanted visitors with his knowledge, invocations, and other information about ancient Egypt. He made the spoken language come alive. The close-knit community of scholars at UC plans to honor Matt with a plaque near the Egyptian dictionaries at the Egyptology library there.
Matt’s extensive library will be housed at the Adocentyn Research Library in Albany, CA.
He is survived by his mother Sharron Whealton, sister Karen Marable and her husband Russell, and brother Cole Whealton and his wife Robin, plus numerous nieces and nephews, his colleagues at the Kemetic Temple, and countless friends around the world.
Remembrance was written by Macha NightMare, with contributions from Karen Marable, Holli Emore, Anna Korn, and Don Frew
What is remembered, Lives!
In other news:
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- Last week, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe sought to join the lawsuit that is opposing South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and the lawsuit she filed last month against the Department of the Interior after the National Parks Service denied the state a permit for a 4th of July fireworks display for Mount Rushmore. Chief Judge Roberto Lange of the federal district court of South Dakota has indicated he will rule on whether the tribe will be allowed to join the suit next week. The Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe according to reporting by the Associated Press believe “they should be allowed to take part in the lawsuit because the land on which Mount Rushmore sits is ‘our most sacred site — the Heart of Everything That Is.'” Court documents show that the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and their historic preservation officer, Steve Vance, argued, “The fact that this event could be forced upon us in our sacred lands despite our clear opposition to the event traumatizes us as a people and inflicts grief upon us. To us, allowing this event to occur again is a colonial attack on one of our most sacred places.” Noem’s argument in a filing that opposes allowing the tribe to join the lawsuit against her claimed the tribe lacks standing in what is a “state-federal dispute.”
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- On Wednesday the first total Lunar eclipse of 2021 will take place and be visible in its total eclipse phase from the western parts of North America including parts of Canada, all of Mexico, most of Central America, and Ecuador, western Peru, and southern Chile and Argentina. The entire eclipse from beginning to end will be fully viewable from Australia, and New Zealand, as well as the Pacific Islands, which includes Hawaii. Dubbed a “Super Flower Moon,” due it being as close to the earth as it will get this year (super) and May is the month the majority of flowers bloomed as observed by Native Americans. This is the first super moon and total lunar eclipse to occur in six years. The eclipse begins on May 26 at 1:46 a.m. PDT, with the Moon entering the darkest part of the Earth’s shadow at 2:45 a.m. Part of it will remain in the umbra until 5:53 a.m. To catch totality – the period when all of the Moon’s surface is blanketed by the Earth’s dark shadow – look up between 4:11 and 4:26 a.m.
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- LSU doctoral student Kenetha Harrington may have solved the nearly 200-year-old mystery of what happened to Marie Laveau’s husband, Jacques Paris. Laveau married Paris in 1819. According to well-known author and scholar Lilith Dorsey, he was listed as being a “Quadroon” (ancestry of one-quarter Black and three-quarters European) in archival records. Paris worked as a cabinet maker and had immigrated from Saint Domingue (pre-revolution Haiti), and was listed in the New Orleans City Directory in 1822. After that, there is nothing. Harrington decided to search outside of New Orleans and focused on Baton Rouge using the names of Jacques Paris and Santiago Paris, which is considered an alternative version of his name. Harrington still found no results, and then in 2019, she found in the West Baton Rouge Parish records an 1823 succession listed under the name of St. Yago Paris, (a phonetic spelling of Santiago) who was listed as being a carpenter. Harrington feels the odds are long that there would be “more than one free man of color in West Baton Rouge Parish with that name, who was also a carpenter, living around that time.” She presented her finding to the Louisiana Historical Association earlier this year, and so far no one has challenged her conclusion.
Iceland numbers among the top ten places in the world for volcanic activity. The recent eruption of Geldingadalir on March 19, 2021, has continued to release lava, partially filling the Meradalir valley. It is the first time an eruption has occurred on the Reykjanes Peninsula in over 800 years. Prior to the eruption, the peninsula experienced significant seismic activity between December 2019 and March 2021. In the three weeks preceding the first eruption more than 40,000 tremors were recorded by seismologists.
In addition to attracting tens of thousands of tourists, the ongoing eruption has also attracted volcanologists and other researchers from around the world.
Seismologist Kristin Jonsdottir told 60 Minutes, “With every eruption, we learn something about the structures of the volcanoes. Not only in Iceland, but this has also an impact worldwide.”
In Iceland, where children are named after volcanoes, more than 90,000 people have made the pilgrimage to the world’s newest volcano, Geldingadalir, which burst open in March. People roast hot dogs and marshmallows on the ready-made BBQ. https://t.co/qDiFQCNVWF pic.twitter.com/bslgZ6OgjL
— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) May 24, 2021
Tarot of the week by Star Bustamonte
Deck: Paulina Tarot, by Paulina Cassidy, published by U.S. Games Systems, inc.Card: Major arcana (XIX) The Sun
This week is liable to be full of ample energy that can provide illumination for finding and expressing joy. There is also the potential of an underlying current of being able to move forward, experiencing the simple pleasures in life, while acknowledging the past without becoming mired within it.
Conversely, isolation can result in feelings of sadness, an inability to see the positive potential of the future, and making incorrect judgments.
Decks generously provided by Asheville Pagan Supply.
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