The Wild Hunt (https://wildhunt.org/category/paganism/page/795)
We live in a Pagan bubble. Mostly, we seem unaware that the bubble exists. We talk a lot to ourselves, Pagans do. We talk to ourselves about who we are and who we are not. We talk to ourselves about what we believe, what we do not believe, and sometimes we even argue about whether or not belief is that meaningful.
I am starting this journey in the early days of American cinema; from its inception in 1895 through its development into a viable culturally-influential industry. I’ve dated this period as “pre-1939.” Many of you will recognize 1939 as being the release date of Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM)’s classic film The Wizard of Oz, a film that contains the most iconic Hollywood witch in American cultural history. From 1895 to 1916 moving pictures were just a technical novelty. As film historian Jeanine Basinger said, “No one really took movies very seriously. It was thought that they were a fad.” Most early movies depicted actual events, landscape photography, historical re-enactments or popular stories.
After reading the Wild Hunt article on the Community Wreath, Babette Petiot, a French Polytheist living in the Auvergne countryside, decided to begin a community wreath in France. When I read about this project, called Aureole Païenne, I immediately contacted Babette. I was terribly curious about the Pagan experience in France. Which traditions are prevalent? What obstacles do they face? Where do they make spiritual purchases?
We are chanting, waiting for Lorelei to appear:
Full moon shining bright, midnight on the water
O! Aradia, Diana’s silver daughters
If Coven Pleiades, the Wiccan group I was born into, had only one song, it would be this one. We sing it, our voices growing loud enough to fill my parents’ house with the force of our love, loud enough to fill the dark space where Lorelei waits, her hands bound, her eyes covered, her body naked. This is her initiation ritual, the first we have held in several years – the first, I think, since my own second degree. It’s also the first time I’ve seen an initiation from the other side of the blindfold.
I’d like to introduce you to Duncan Lawrence, a five-year old Georgia native and son of a well-respected local Druid elder. In 2007 Duncan was born 16 weeks premature at 1 lb. 7 oz. and 12.25 inches. The doctors told his parents, Tom and Amanda Lawrence, that Duncan would most likely be blind, tube-fed, wheel-chair bound and uncommunicative.
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