The Wild Hunt (https://wildhunt.org/tag/academy-of-arcana)
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. — Oberon Zell has announced that he will be closing the Academy of Arcana by the end of November. “After two years in Santa Cruz, it’s just not really working out here. There’s not enough money coming in to pay the rent and bills; plus we’ve had major thefts, and problems with street people and drugs,” Zell wrote. The lease runs out Nov.
SANTA CRUZ, Calif. — America of the 1960s was in the throes of a renaissance, believes Oberon Zell, and he expects another one will shake up humanity in the coming decade. Zell’s public work as a Pagan began in that decade of cultural upheaval; he conducted his first water-sharing ceremony in 1962. Only a few short years later the Church of All Worlds (CAW) was incorporated. Through its newsletter, Green Egg, the Church of All Worlds became a focal point for contemporary American Paganism.
GASTON, N.C. – Druid Daniel Scott Holbrook, also known as Cú Meala, pleaded no contest last week to the charge of the “dissemination of obscenities.” Holbrook was arrested last fall after police allegedly found “nude photos of children” on his computer. After several dates were postponed due to schedule conflicts, Holbrook saw his day in court Apr. 4. Since the arrest, Holbrook has always maintained his innocence publicly, saying that the photos were placed there by a downloaded BitTorrent. As he explains, he and his family were attempting to download a movie and the photos were hidden in that file.
TWH – The tensions between bloggers and the Patheos company continued this week as former Patheos writer John Halstead announced that he and others would be demanding that their material be taken off the site. Their joint letter begins: “We the undersigned former and current Patheos Pagan contributors hereby request that you remove our names, likenesses, and our intellectual property, including our writing, art, and images, from your site. We previously gave Patheos license to publish our writing, but Patheos is no longer the company that we contracted with.” The letter continues on to list the writers’ grievances and detail why the group feels that Patheos is no longer the company that it once was. In its conclusion, the letter says, “We should not be forced to affiliate with or be seen to support, through our work, organizations which are inimical to our values and which, in many cases, are hostile to our existence…”
Currently eighteen bloggers have signed the document.
TWH – Now that the season has turned and we are nearing the end of the 2016, we look back, one last time, to review this extraordinary year. What happened? What didn’t happen? What events shaped our thoughts and guided our actions? In our collective worlds, both big and small, what were the major discussions?