The greatest pleasure of being the weekend editor for The Wild Hunt is working with our magazine’s stable of incredible writers. As we close out 2023, I thought it appropriate to look back at the work our columnists and guest writers have produced over the last twelve months, and to spotlight some of the best work we’ve published in the past year.
But first, a quick plea. The Wild Hunt stands on a number of principles. We are fully independent: our operating budget comes from generous donations from readers like you. We take seriously our role as the “paper of record” within the Pagan community and keep our work free and available to all with no paywalls. And we pay our writers, even when they tell us they would be willing to work for free, because we think it is important that contributors are paid for their labor.
These three principles are in tension with each other. To pay our writers, we need to raise revenue. To raise revenue, we either need ads or reader support. Every time we have experimented with advertising, it has led to a deluge of evangelical Christian ads. Meanwhile, the best way to increase reader donations would be to put some or all of our work behind a paywall, in the same way as legacy publications like The New York Times or, uh, The Atlantic. We’d rather stay accessible to all, but we need your help to do that.
To remain editorially independent, open to all readers, and fair in compensation to our writers, we need your support. If you have found our work meaningful in 2023, and want to see it continue into 2024, please give today.
We hate to keep asking, but it is serious. Costs have hit us too.
We are grateful to our readers for your support, however it manifests. Right now, we need readers who can help fund Pagan journalism to help us continue serving the community. This is the type of story you only see here. This is how to help:
Tax Deductible Donation | PayPal Donations | Join our Patreon
We remain one of the most widely-read news magazines within modern Paganism, and our reporters and columnists remain dedicated to a vision of journalism for and about our family of faiths.
You can also help us by sharing this message on your social media.
As always, thank you for your support of The Wild Hunt!
And now: the Best of the Weekend, 2023!
The grand dame
Ryan Gosling as Ken and Margot Robbie as Barbie in Greta Gerwig’s new film “Barbie” [Warner Bros Discovery]
“Barbie is the New Inanna,” Meg Elison
By far the most popular article we published this year, Meg Elison’s review-cum-mythopoetic analysis of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie delighted scores of readers and also frustrated a few. (I recall “blasphemy” being leveled against us once or twice in the comments.) From the moment I heard Meg’s pitch for this piece I knew it could be something special, and I was not disappointed: in describing the correspondence between the myth and the movie, Meg proved just how vital the Pagan stories passed down to us remain in the modern day.
The best from our columnists
Clio Ajana
4:30 a.m Wake-Up Call – Juneau, Alaska [C. Ajana]
Lyonel Perabo: “Returning to Mythical Times in Ringerike“
Lyonel has developed an amazing new niche in his work for TWH this year as a travel writer. This piece – which really needs to be taken alongside his subsequent two offerings, as they form a trilogy – made me want to pack a suitcase and take off on the same route that he took, exploring all the material traces of the Heathen past to be found in Norway.
Clio Ajana: “A Happy Accident Leads to Alaska“
Clio’s writing for TWH is usually grounded in the seasons and the calendar, but in this article, she took a more embodied perspective, recounting how a work trip to Juneau, Alaska, brought her to a confrontation with her “higher responsibility to the planet, to Mother Gaia, and to my fellow inhabitants – human and non-human.” In some of the most beautiful prose I’ve published this year, Clio not only describes the scenery, but meditates on climate change, industrial tourism, and Pagan ties to the earth.
Luke Babb: “Visibility“
“Monthly column about the particulars of my spiritual life aside,” writes Luke, “I’m a private person.” It’s that very privacy that made this article, written for 2023’s Transgender Day of Visibility, so powerful to me. Luke addresses their experience of gender, its triumphs and disappointments, and treats the ongoing project of self-definition as the complex and sacred magical work that it is.
Alan U. Dalul: “Brujería – and Pop Music – is in the Air“
I love sitting down to edit a column and finding out more about one of our writers’ magical practice. In this case, Alan’s description of how pop music fits into his goes beyond simply describing how much he loves music – rather, he gives a real set of ideas and practices that describe how that music leads to magical effects.
Storm Faerywolf: “Ecstasy and the Craft“
Sometimes a column is just incredible prose. Word for word, this might be the most moving thing I read this year, a column that led me to think deeply about my own approach to the Craft. Rereading the opening passage now, I’m swept back into a flood of memories of drums and dancing and ecstasy, and it’s like discovering I am a Witch all over again.
Sheri Barker: “Midnight Musings and the Round-Bellied Bowl“
What I love about Sheri’s work is that it’s exceedingly tactile, grounded not just in a specific place, but in specific plants, animals, even movements through the world. “I process one bundle of herbs at a time, slowly stripping dried leaves from stems and crushing large leaves into smaller pieces,” she writes. “Those actions released rich, fragrant aromas that transported me away from the chilly night to warm days when I had my hands in the soil, working in my gardens, immersed in earth, air, water, and fire.” In this piece she connects those singular movements to the larger world, showing that one’s own soul-work is not a retreat from greater problems but one part of responding to them.
Karl Seigfried: “An Urban Heathen in an Urban Forest“
If there’s a theme in my favorite pieces from this year of The Wild Hunt, it’s that much of our best work comes from being rooted in place. As Pagans, exploring our connection to a specific landscape will always be a great source for inspiration and ideas. Karl’s article on the forest within the city of Chicago shows there is no contradiction in looking for a connection to nature within the bounds of a great city, that there is magic to be had everywhere we care to look.
And a few more favorites
Orange, cinnamon, star anise, sugar, and other spices [Couleur,Pixabay]
I had two projects I wanted to work on in 2023 for the weekend section. First, I wanted to reach out to new guest writers and publish new perspectives in our pages. We have had some great success here. I’m still crowing (get it? birds!) about publishing a guest piece from National Geographic’s Christian Cooper, as well as fun and heartfelt pieces from writers like Diana Helmuth and Lauren Parker, the latter of whom braved the depths of WitchTok on our behalf. I also enjoyed work by Sprocket Wagner and SianLuc Heart, who brought TWH some articles that I could never have predicted this year.
Perhaps my favorite article of all this year, though, is from Siobhan Ball, who gave us an article that appears at first to be a simple recipe for spiced tea and mead, but turns out to be a quietly devastating contemplation of our role as Pagans in the globalized economy. “The world we live in is a miracle that’s killing us all” is the best strand of words I’ve published this year.
The second project I launched this year is Classics of Pagan Cinema, our retrospective film review series that aims to establish a canon of essential films with Pagan themes. The aforementioned Meg Elison has been killing it with this series, with dynamite entries on films like The Craft, Eye of the Devil, and even Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather, among others. I did save The Wicker Man for myself, though – call it the editor’s prerogative. By all accounts, Classics of Pagan Cinema has been very well-recieved by our readers, and I can’t wait to publish more of them in 2024.
As for me: although I “retired” from my own column at the end of last year, I have actually written more articles for TWH than I did in 2022, though mostly news rather than the columns I used to write. That said, I did write one column in my old style this year, “An Emperor in Bronze and a Satyr in Gold,” and it was good enough that an old creative writing professor of mine reached out to say he liked it, which is really all any of us can ask for in this life.
Onward and upward
And with that, let’s close the books on a great year for writing in The Wild Hunt. Thank you to all of our writers to offering such great work, and even moreso, thank you to our readers for reading, sharing, discussing, and supporting that work.
Happy new year, and see you again tomorrow.
The Wild Hunt is not responsible for links to external content.
To join a conversation on this post:
Visit our The Wild Hunt subreddit! Point your favorite browser to https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Wild_Hunt_News/, then click “JOIN”. Make sure to click the bell, too, to be notified of new articles posted to our subreddit.