Culture

Columna: “En Venezuela la brujería está en todas partes”

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Pagan Perspectives

[Today’s column is our first from our new international columnist, Alan D.D. Alan’s column will cover Paganism in Venezuela. In addition to writing for The Wild Hunt, Alan is a journalist, blogger, and novelist. We’re thrilled to have him aboard, and we hope you will be too.]

Pensar en Venezuela y Brujería podría resultar complicado. Antes de conocer a L. J. Tang, suponía que no había nombres que se pudieran considerar a la hora de buscar un referente en el contexto nacional. Sin embargo, el venezolano, que también es Licenciado en Estudios Internacionales con una especialidad en Etiqueta y Protocolo, dedica la mayor parte del tiempo al Arte por sus clientes, cursos que dicta y la escritura de artículos sobre Ocultismo.

Living

Column: Triptych

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Pagan Perspectives

[Today’s column comes to us from Luke Babb. Luke Babb is a storyteller and eclectic polytheist who primarily works with the Norse and Hellenic pantheons. They live in Chicago with their wife and a small jungle of houseplants, where they are studying magic and community building – sometimes even on purpose.]

The old man likes to corner me. I worked for a while in high end kitchen retail – the sort of small business that can only exist in big cities, where the wealthy come to buy designer pots and “give back to the community.” One of those stores that really wants customers to access those ancestral memories of the general store they saw on Anne of Green Gables as a kid. Playing into that hometown feel, once a year this store participates in a neighborhood street festival and sells something that is only available on that weekend – apple pies.

Living

Column: A Pilgrim at Stonehenge

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Pagan Perspectives

My suitcase is an antique, a big red leather monster. It doesn’t do anything that modern luggage is supposed to do. Suitcases today have wheels and collapsible handles, so that there’s no difference between carrying one change of pants or twenty. Mine doesn’t have that, and I kind of like it that way. Suitcases are meant to be picked up and carried, hefted with one’s own arms and back.

Paganism

Column: Obedience School Dropout

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I’m sure we have all seen the recent news from Philadelphia grand jury revealing the abominations by Catholic priests that have spanned decades. I know that many of my Catholic colleagues feel intimately betrayed and are currently struggling to understand the scope of disloyalty and harm unleashed on their church by duplicitous and predatory leaders. To its credit, the Vatican accepted the “shame and sorrow” at the findings and responded with powerful language describing the abusers as “criminal and morally reprehensible”  Followed by Pope Francis’ statement condemning priestly sexual atrocities and asserting that “no effort must be spared to create a culture able to prevent such situations from happening, but also to prevent the possibility of their being covered up and perpetuated.”

The Pope offers a very real hope for change for his flock and hints at a long and drawn-out battle with clericalism. Unfortunately, sexual predation is far too common among powerful clergy of any faith. I don’t need to recount the cases in the Pagan and Polytheist communities.

Culture

Column: the Coming of the Queer Tarot

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Pagan Perspectives

Tarot is a popular divinatory system utilized by many Pagans and Witches of all stripes. With so many variations available to the public (and more being created all the time), we have an opportunity not just to work with an artistic style that we enjoy, but – thanks to the advent of decks engineered with specific communities in mind – we can also “fine tune” the symbolic language utilized by tarot and apply it in a way that speaks more directly to our own experiences and peoples. Enter The Queer Community Tarot. The brainchild of J. Ryan of Queer Street Tarot, The Queer Community Tarot is set to be released this coming November. It intends to speak to LGBT+ practitioners using a common language.