News

Column: UK Pagan Community Confronts Child Abuse

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It’s been a hell of a winter here in the UK. The Pagan community has had to come to terms with the issue of child abuse within our community, as no fewer than four pedophiles, identifying as Pagan, were sent to prison. Generally, there have been many child abuse court cases recently. The British police and justice system has had a change of culture in recent years, and is now proving itself committed to detecting and prosecuting child sex abusers. Well-known British television personalities and even government ministers have been investigated and some convicted.

Paganism

Column: Religious Discrimination in the Workplace

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[Join us in welcoming Manny Tejeda-Moreno, our new monthly columnist. Manny is a professor and social scientist. His scholarship has been focused in research methods, leadership and diversity, and he has a masters degree in psychotherapy. Manny was born in Cuba and and was raised as a child of Oyá. He is a witch and has been in the Pagan community for almost four decades.]

While attending a Pagan conference recently, I was reminded of a behavior that, while is second nature at Pagan gatherings, seems starkly odd in a modern hotel: the no photography rule.

Paganism

Column: Thoughts on Settlement and Place

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“The trees and the grass have spirits. Whatever one of such growth may be destroyed by some good Indian, his act is done in sadness and with a prayer for forgiveness because of his necessities…” – Wooden Leg

We speak and write constantly about connecting to place: to the natural features of a place, the energies of place, the various gods and spirits that inhabit a place. Whether you approach it in a humanistic or archetypal fashion, or whether your relationships to spirits of place are literal and reciprocal, interactions with and concepts of ‘place’ hold a notable importance for the vast majority of us. Some connect by tuning into the seasons, taking nature-walks and learning plant identification, trying to incorporate local foods into their diets, or taking up gardening and otherwise tending to the land. Others interpret messages from the flights of birds, forge connections with the rivers, lakes, and mountains, and make offerings to the spirits of the land.

Paganism

Culture and Community: Evolving Leadership within Modern Paganism

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While the modern Pagan movement is still considered young in comparison to other religions, it has continued to grow and evolve beyond its original container. Today we see multiple generations of Pagan practitioners in various facets of community, from seekers to leaders. The vast diversity within this community has expanded beyond the old images of the middle-aged leader to those on all sides of the age, race and gender spectrum. Ten to fifteen years ago we did not have as many “younger” leaders rising within the ranks of our Pagan community, yet today the halls of any Pagan convention show younger and more diverse populations than we historically are use to encountering. The natural evolution of leadership is something that every community goes through.

Paganism

Column: Voices of Canadian Pagan Activists

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It is hard to ignore the current political climate in Canada. Never before have we been faced with a government that has tried to overhaul and carve up our country quite the way our current Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, and his Conservative government are doing right now. For a country renowned for it’s affable nature and politeness, things are changing. In numbers not seen for decades, people are becoming radicalized and discovering reasons to become activists – for the environment, for our social programs, and now for the basic safety, privacy and security we had come to take for granted. On January 30, 2015, Bill C-51, an “Anti-Terrorism Act” was unveiled in the House of Parliament.