TWH – The Parliament of the World’s Religions (PoWR) Declaration for the Dignity and Human Rights of Women petition which was originally published in 2015, has recently been re-circulating in several groups. This is possibly in response to the recent protests fueled by the unrest in Iran and other places, that center on women and the various restrictions placed on them as a demographic around the world.
The PoWR previously released a statement on August 1 of this year, by the Women’s Task Force of the PoWR regarding the Supreme Court decision that in Dobbs overturned Roe v. Wade.
The declaration outlines the many issues women face around the globe that include, but are not limited to: violence, child marriage, slavery, and forced prostitution, rape and sexual assault, and domestic brutality and abuse.
It also highlights the institutions globally that place limits on women’s abilities to exercise their basic freedoms:
Institutions in which women are given little or no voice impose constraints on women’s basic freedoms to control their own bodies, move about freely, own property, choose to marry or obtain a divorce, retain custody of their children, receive an education, work, or have their testimony given equal weight in court. All over the world, they risk being ostracized, abused, or killed if they try to change these unjust conditions. Even where advances toward equality have been made, women continue to suffer disproportionately from poverty and environmental devastation, from violence and abuse, life-damaging discrimination in access to education and health care, the burdens of unpaid care-giving and unequal pay, and the systematic exclusion from decision-making within religious and other institutions that determine the quality of their lives.
These shameful violations of women’s dignity and human rights are based on the false premise that men and boys are superior to women and girls, an outdated view perpetuated by too many religious leaders and adherents who choose to misinterpret or use carefully selected scriptures, texts, and teachings to proclaim the inferiority of women and girls. These harmful and religiously justified beliefs permeate societies and contribute to the pervasive deprivations and abuse suffered by women and girls throughout the world.
The declaration calls for an end to these practices and for religious and spiritual leaders and institutions to help lead the way by embracing and promoting “equal rights of men and women, and the teachings of the world’s religions universally call for compassionate and equitable treatment of all—both men and women.”
It also calls for “interfaith organizations to work collaboratively with institutions and organizations that are working to advance the well-being, and rights of women around the globe. Furthermore, we call upon the world’s guiding institutions to partner with faith and interfaith organizations working to advance women’s well-being and rights,” and for “all religious leaders and adherents to acknowledge and emphasize the positive messages of dignity and equality that the world’s faiths share.”
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Image credit: Vicki Hamilton from Pixabay
TWH – The interest in Witches and Witchcraft seems to be hitting a fevered pitch for 2022, as evidenced by recent statements issued by the city of Salem in Massachusetts last week.
The city of Salem has been advising visitors to leave their car at home and take the train, the ferry, or even a broom(!) due to the level of congestion being experienced and the shortage of available parking spaces.
Tips for Visiting #SalemMA this Octoberhttps://t.co/rXM1zJgieS pic.twitter.com/cJ5Bi6dakj
— City of Salem MA (@CityofSalemMA) October 21, 2022
News reports from last week highlighted the frustrations of local residents due to the volume of visitors making it virtually impossible to even run simple errands like going to the grocery store.
On the weekend of October 15, the City of Salem with a population of 43,350, saw over 100,000 visitors just that Saturday. Between October 1 and October 15, 466,000 people visited. Last year, the city saw an annual total of 1.9 million people visit Witch City, but as of October 15 of 2022, the tally for the year stood at 1.6 million visitors.
While the crush of tourists might be good for many of the businesses that cater to the seasonal crowds, other mundane businesses struggle financially since most locals stay home to avoid the crowds and traffic.
Some locals have been vocal about suggesting visitors consider timing their visits for November or even other times of the year. If you want to avoid overwhelming crowds, be able to easily get a table to dine at, and take your time exploring the sites, picking a date outside of the month of October is advised.
The City of Salem’s Twitter account posts periodic updates on street closures and which parking garages are full, as well as reminders on how to plan ahead for popular attractions like the Charter Street Cemetery. The City’s website offers more information for visitors.
The City announced last week that Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) added seven more inbound trains and six more outbound trains for the last two weekends in October to provide more transportation options and hopefully discourage visitors from driving.
No matter what kind of warnings the city and residents offer, the City of Salem is on track to have the highest number of visitors in its history this year. Smart Witches (and non-Witches) would be wise to consider a visit outside the madness of October.
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Bees Collecting Pollen – Image credit: Jon Sullivan – public domain
EUGENE, Oregon – Mountain Rose Herbs announced its “Grants 4 Plants Program” winners last week.
Since 2018, the program has awarded four $4,000 grants to projects that promote and reflect the company’s core values and mission which include: Accessibility of herbalism (especially to underserved communities); Environmental stewardship; Herbalism and herbal education: Protection of native and medicinal plants; and Organic and sustainable agriculture.
The four recipients are:
Bottom’s Up Community Garden, which serves as a hub of West Oakland’s Lower Bottoms neighborhood, won a grant for its community-based projects that include a series of workshops where community members can achieve a greater understanding of herbal medicines, that includes the knowledge to grow plants and create their own herbal medicines. Other projects the grant will fund are, community workdays, and the distribution of “herbal products and educational materials through a network of community partners to provide greater access to these remedies.”
Insight Garden Program (IGP), is “a grassroots non-profit led by people who were previously incarcerated and those most impacted by the collateral damage of incarceration.” The grant IGP received will go to furthering its mission to “restore connections to self, community, and the natural world through transformative in-prison programs, circles of holistic support for people reentering back into communities, and advocacy for policy change led by those directly impacted by incarceration.” The program also provides a weekly two-hour session in herbalism education to those incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison and Solano State Prison.
Salish Place of Remediation Education (SPoRE), is a community mushroom cultivation center that is operated in partnership between Metamimicry and the Squaxin Island Tribe. The project is an extension of the Squaxin Island Tribe’s Salish Roots Farm, their community garden. The focus of SPoRE will be to “build a robust medicinal and gourmet mushroom program with the Tribe, contributing to their food sovereignty and community self-sufficiency initiatives” and will “include Tribal youth, Squaxin Island members, and broader community members as volunteers.”
Quail Springs, an “educational non-profit that resides on a 450-acre permaculture demonstration site on the traditional homelands of the Chumash people in Cuyama Valley, California,” with their stated mission, “to empower students of all ages and backgrounds with knowledge, skills, and inspiration essential to cultivating ecological and social health in a rapidly changing world.” The grant will be used to help fund a communal medicinal garden, as well as other community educational programming.
Congratulations to all four winners!
Announcements:
- On October 29, at 7:00 pm (CDT), The Artemis Singers will present their “Samhain – Encounters through the Veil,” to reflect on those who have gone before and honor their legacy. The nonprofit Artemis Singers are Chicago’s lesbian feminist chorus and specialize in performing music written or arranged by women. The concert will be held at the Unitarian Church of Evanston at 1330 N. Ridge Avenue in Evanston, Illinois. Tickets are available through Eventbrite and range in price from $15-20, plus fees.
- A new podcast, Crime Scenes and Culture, featuring anthropologist, Tony Kail, and forensic death investigator, Kent Holloway, looks at the phenomena of culture and its appearance at crime and incident scenes. The podcast will explore what happens when public safety agencies find artifacts, walk in on ceremonies, or discover unfamiliar shrines at scenes, as well as what anthropology has to offer when it comes to understanding religion, magic, and witchcraft. Kail and Holloway plan to draw on cases and incidents from their own files, Crime Scenes and Culture joins anthropologists, forensic professionals, and religious practitioners to give an understanding of the incredible diversity of cultures around us. The guest for their first episode, Paganism & Witchcraft is The Wild Hunt’s news editor, Star Bustamonte.
In other news:
- Excavation at the ancient city of Phanagoria’s necropolis in southern Russia has revealed the burial site of a woman who researchers have identified as a priestess of the Aphrodite. The woman’s remains have been dated as being 1900 years old, and she was interred with a silver medallion measuring 7 centimeters (2.75 inches) in diameter and 15 millimeters thick, depicting Aphrodite Urania surrounded by ten of the signs of the zodiac, but missing the signs of Aquarius and Libra. Researchers are uncertain as to why Aquarius and Libra were omitted from the design. Similar medallions have been found in the region, dating back as much as 2300 years ago. The priestess was also adorned with silver earrings with pendants in the form of doves and rings, but the images are poorly preserved which has made identification so far impossible. Researchers believe they might possibly be images of cornucopia and Eros with wings but are unsure. Other items found at the burial site included a red clay jug that has a twisted handle, scissors made from iron but bronze handles, a bronze mirror, a string of 157 beads, and three bronze coins. Among the beads were two that depicted scarabs made of Egyptian faience, and had hieroglyphs engraved on the bottom: one showing a sitting cat-raptor and the other a cobra-Uraeus with a solar disk. All of the grave goods point to the woman being of high status and a priestess since many of the items, like the scissors would have been considered items of ritual and ceremonial use and not something commonly possessed. This new find highlights the presence of the Greek pantheon, and the use of astrology prior to Pagan Slavic religions being developed and widely practiced.
TWH wants to see your Ancestor altar pictures!
The Wild Hunt is seeking pictures of ancestor altars for inclusion in an article for publication that highlights and celebrates Samhain. We’ve been receiving a LOT of great shots, so we have decided to extend the deadline by several days to include as many of your photos as possible for our annual Samhain article.
Submission guidelines:
- Must be an original picture(s) that has not been published online and that the submitter has taken;
- Include a location and name of the submitter, e.g. – Photo taken in Western North Carolina by S. Bustamonte
- The deadline is midnight on
October 25now, October 28. - Must be formatted as a jpg, png, or pdf.
Submissions can be emailed to pcn@wildhunt.org and must be received by midnight (EDT) on October 28.
The images being captured by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) continue to dazzle and amaze observers. Last week, NASA released images of the Pillars of Creation, located in the Milky Way’s Eagle Nebula, M16, 6500 lightyears away from earth
The images are stunning and reveal the formation of stars from dense gases and dust that can appear more semi-transparent in the near-infrared light of the JWST. Images of the Pillars were first captured by the Hubble Telescope in 1995, but the density of the gases and dust obscured the view of researchers of many of the newly forming stars.
The images from the JWST give a clearer view and will help researchers to both have a more accurate count of the stars that have formed and hopefully promote a better understanding of the process of the stars that are still being formed.
Newly formed stars glow bright red, and as they are forming eject “supersonic jets that collide with clouds of material” and create the pillars. NASA notes that these ejections can create what they call bow shocks, much like the wake from a boat traveling through the water, and that, “The crimson glow comes from the energetic hydrogen molecules that result from jets and shocks.”
Tarot of the week by Star Bustamonte
Deck: The Halloween Tarot, by Karin Lee, art by Kipling West, published by U.S. Games Systems, Inc.
Card: Page of Pumpkins (Pentacles)
This week is likely to offer opportunities for reflection, and stimulating respect for new ideas that are the result of curious exploration. There is also the potential for the delivery of good news, which may have a financial impact.
Conversely, jumping to conclusions without proper contemplation or moving forward on a project without having done thorough research is unlikely to produce the desired outcome and the potential for negative financial impact.
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