Paganism

Column: Uh-oh, it’s Magic

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It’s that time again. We are close to Imbolc (and Lupercalia) and the largest and, I think, most public display of Paganism, is about to get underway.   Personally, I think the event is intentionally inspiring both emotionally and mechanically, and its equal comes only rarely. This gathering is magic. I’m always impressed by the careful planning, attention to detail that a complicated event requires. The organizers must attend — often in painstaking detail — to the varied and storied mystical community that attends the gathering.

Paganism

Column: Twilight in Deity and Spirit Relationships

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In the Midwestern region of the United States, deep winter has arrived and settled in. Two blankets of snow are hugging the land and much of nature has slowed to a crawl or fallen silent. In the period between Yule and Imbolc, I often notice myself reflecting broadly on the gods and spirits whose influence recedes at this point in the wheel’s turning and those thoughts necessarily draw my mind to the gods and spirits in my own practice who have fallen silent. The stillness of this season seems to amplify pauses and silences in communications. The relationships that we had, have, and wish we had come into full relief in the cold stillness of winter and we feel the challenges within those relationships a little more deeply than we might in the hustle and bustle of busier seasons.

Culture

Column: the Magic of the Black Panther

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Within the world of fantasy, magic, superheroes, and villains, the latest installments made for television and movies have created much hype and are generating much excitement. The last two years have brought about some amazing and much anticipated programming that fit into these genres, from new Star Wars films to new renditions of Superwoman. “The world is changing…..” – Black Panther

During the past two years, there has also been some rather exciting developments in the shifting representation of the typical superhero, and this has brought about a wide variety of discussions and theories on the importance of representation in Sci-Fi, fantasy, and superhero genres. With the upcoming February release of Marvel’s Black Panther and the debut of the CW network’s new show Black Lightning, it seems that conversations about much-needed superhero diversity are happening everywhere

A record number of pre-sale tickets for Black Panther were sold last week and threads all over social media started the process of planning group trips to the show.

Paganism

Column: Paganism in the Top End

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Australia’s Northern Territory (sometimes just called “the NT” or “the top end”) is the country’s third-largest federal division, covering over 520,902 square miles (1,349,129 square kilometres). This vast space is made up of rugged coastline, a national park spanning around 12,000 square miles (20,000 square kilometres) and larger settlements in the north; the south has smaller settlements, sacred rock formations and mountain ranges dotted across the immense, red desert. For more than 40,000 years this land has been comprised of a dozen different indigenous language groups, Pitjantjatjara being the largest and best-kept language. The NT’s great spaces are sparsely populated: the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ most recent demographic data have the region’s population sitting at below 250,000, with just under half of that number residing in the capital city of Darwin. What does all this mean for Pagans living in the Northern Territory?

Paganism

Column: Within the Lines

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I have been thinking about land and sacredness, about the idea that we can choose a spot on a survey map and declare it sacred ground. My thoughts are grounded in the Gaea Retreat, the Pagan nature center in Kansas where I most often make my pilgrimages, but thinking about that particular place leads me to think about places like it more generally. What does it mean to call a place “sacred?” What does that mean for our relationship to it? And how do our religious, spiritual, and magickal conceptions of a place sit alongside the legal and social borders of the location?