Living

Column: A Canadian Pagan Winter

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Canada is a country known worldwide as a snowy and cold winter wonderland. Our national identity is forever marked by images of hockey players, snowmobiles, dogsleds and toques (a French Canadian word for a wool hat). By the time we reach Winter Solstice, the dark of winter is upon us. Sub-zero temperatures and cruel wind chill drives people indoors to keep warm. In the depth of winter, average temperatures vary from zero degrees Celsius on the West Coast and minus ten degrees Celsius on the East Coast, with the deep freeze of minus 22 degrees on the prairies in the middle of the country.

Editorial

Editorial: Navigating the Witches of America

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When I first learned of Alex Mar’s book, Witches of America, I was eager to read it. Considering my own studies in Witch and Witchcraft representations, I was interested in her take on the subject. Before the book’s release, I had absolutely no externally-derived expectations, and my limited contact with Mar did not reveal the nature of her project. Therefore, I assumed that this book would catalog or survey the practice of Witchcraft in modern America. And the title appeared to corroborate this assumption.

Paganism

Column: Gates of The Abyss

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“When you hunt for souls in the winter rain
I shall listen in the gaps between towns knowing
Your face is the night storm of the underworld
And you shall bring terror to end all terror.” From Enchanting The Shadowlands, by Lorna Smithers

The Hunter Of Souls
Recommended listening while reading:
Undertaker by Disemballerina

Waiting for a band to play, I thumbed through a Nihilist tract and remember what it means to be mortal while silver-and-black antlers sharpen against flesh. I remember: it’s from the Dead we weave our lives. It’s from the Dead we weave our Meaning. The Cauldron of Awen is as Black as the Cauldron of Annwn, and from both spring the songs of Meaning.

Cuba

Column: To Live like a Refugee

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So, I’m a refugee. I don’t mean that as a statement of solidarity like Je suis Paris or Je suis Charlie. I mean it literally. I and my family came to the U.S. as refugees. And make no mistake.

Paganism

Column: The Fire Is Here

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Five people protesting the police killing of Jamar Clark, a 24-year-old black man, are shot and injured by a group of white men in Minneapolis. A candidate for the United States Presidency says that a database for all Muslims is “certainly something we should start thinking about.” When asked the difference between such an idea and Nazi Germany’s registration of Jews and other minorities, his only reply was, “You tell me, you tell me. Why don’t you tell me.” The same candidate’s white supporters physically attack a black heckler at a rally; the candidate states in an interview, “Maybe he should have been roughed up.” In Greece, the neo-fascist political party Golden Dawn, which has no relation to the occult organization, became the third leading party in the country by winning 7% of the vote in the elections this September, approximately 500,000 votes. What do Pagans and Polytheists see when they read the news; when they look at history? Do they see deviations from an inevitable progressive march from animism and polytheism to monotheism to atheism, from savagery to barbarism to civilization?