Culture

Review: three Pagan poets for National Poetry Month

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If, as is proclaimed in the Charge of the Goddess, “all acts of love and pleasure are my rituals,” then the pleasure of poetry is among those rituals, too. April is National Poetry Month in the United States. Here’s a look at the works of three female poets: a Wiccan priestess, a pioneer in the modern women’s/goddess spirituality movement, and a priestess in the Welsh Bardic Tradition. The Charge of the Goddess: the Poetry of Doreen Valiente
Doreen Valiente Foundation in association with the Centre for Pagan Studies, expanded edition 2014, 142 p.

Ironically, the Charge of the Goddess included is this collection by the acclaimed “mother of modern witchcraft” is not her rhyming, poetic rendition but rather her far more famous prose version. The late John Belham-Payne, a friend and “working magical partner” of Valiente’s, shepherded her poetry into publication following her death in 1999, thus fulfilling a deathbed request by the Wiccan priestess who had been initiated into Gerald Gardner’s coven by the man himself in 1953.

Culture

Witch recasts Barbies as goddesses and Pagans

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RIVERVIEW, Mich. — Oberon Osiris walked into a Detroit CVS pharmacy in 2001 and found himself spellbound by the witchy female vision before him. Osiris himself had been a witch ever since, as a 12-year-old in the late 1960s, he checked out Sybil Leek’s Diary of a Witch from a library. “I read it voraciously and said, ‘That’s what I am – I’m a Witch, I’m Wiccan, I believe in nature and I believe in the other gods,’ ” he recalled. Osiris consecrated his path as a 15-year-old when he lit a candle in his small upstairs bedroom and “did the whole scary initiation thing” detailed by Paul Huson in his book Mastering Witchcraft – which required an initiate to recite the Christian Lord’s Prayer backwards phonetically three nights in a row.

News

CalderaFest is cancelled

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LAFAYETTE, Ga. — CalderaFest, a beleaguered Pagan music festival scheduled for May 2019, has been cancelled according to a statement released by festival founder David Banach. The festival debuted May 2016 in LaFayette, and a second one was scheduled there for Oct. 5-9, 2017. On Aug.

Music Reviews

Review: five music albums for Pagans by non-Pagans

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TWH — During a 2002 concert in Daytona Beach, Fla., by Tool, that esoteric prog-metal band, I found myself shapeshifted. “I would totally trance-journey to the underworld if this was played at a Samhain ritual!” I thought. Similarly, while listening to a CD by Sufi singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, I realized: “Wow, this music would blow up my crown chakra at a Beltane celebration!”

Such has been my reaction to hearing live and recorded music many times during the two and a half decades that my Pagan path has coincided with my career as an arts, entertainment and music writer at daily newspapers. Non-Pagan music (however one may define that nebulous term) can unexpectedly transport one into Pagan space-time. With that in mind, here’s a look at five music albums for Pagans by non-Pagans.

News

T. Thorn Coyle conjures the magic of fiction

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[We kicked off our Spring Fund Drive yesterday with no news for the first time in 14 years. Consider joining the TWH sustainers circle and making a small monthly donation to help keep Pagan news and commentary going for years to come, or make a one-time donation toward this vital community media venture. Either way, it is your help and your support that keeps daily and dependable news coming to your doorstep each day. Now we return to your regular news program.]

PORTLAND, Ore. — Four years ago, T. Thorn Coyle was sitting in her home in Berkeley, California, gazing outside at the sycamores swaying in the breeze when she thought, “I hate these trees.”

This is the writer who, in her 2004 book Evolutionary Witchcraft, had proclaimed in its opening paragraph: “In Witchcraft, I found my place in nature, and in nature, I found my connection to all things.”

This is the former Catholic girl who left the church at age 16 to study the Craft, made her way from the Quaker-founded Los Angeles suburb of Whittier to San Francisco, was initiated into Reclaiming, studied with Sufis, studied with Feri tradition founders Victor and Cora Anderson, and then was initiated as a priestess and witch in that tradition in 1996.