The Wild Hunt (https://wildhunt.org/category/news/europe/page/6)
In this week’s Pagan Community Notes, we share breaking news: Latvia has become the first European Union nation to legally recognize an ethnic religion, passing the Law of the Latvijas Dievturu Sadraudze to affirm Dievturība as a traditional faith and grant it full legal rights — including marriage, education, and spiritual care — within national law.
“Sundrung oozes a sort of dark mysticism which can only stem from a deep understanding of Old Nordic lore,” writes Lyonel Perabo of the new album by Icelandic heavy metal band Nexion.
Russian propaganda blames witches, pagan imagery, “black magic,” and even Celtic festivals for military setbacks in Ukraine, weaving the absurd with the sinister. These tales of “satanic altars” and aircraft-destroying witches mask battlefield failures while mobilizing religious fear at home and abroad.
Lyonel Perabo makes his pilgrimage to the 2025 Midgardsblot festival, partaking in a sweeping day filled with ritual, scholarship, and the heaviest metal to be found anywhere in Scandinavia.
As 2025 sets global heat records, Indigenous wisdom remains sidelined. New scholarship shows that Sámi and Aboriginal knowledge, rooted in generations of lived experience, still struggles to shape climate policy and land use decisions worldwide.