The Wild Hunt (https://wildhunt.org/tag/alex-mar)
Now that the season has turned and we are nearing the end of the 2015, we look back, one last time, to review the year. What happened? What didn’t happen? What events shaped our thoughts or guided our actions? In our collective worlds, both big and small, what were the major discussions?
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.
There are lots of articles and essays of interest to modern Pagans and Heathens out there, sometimes more than our team can write about in-depth in any given week. So The Wild Hunt must unleash the hounds in order to round them all up. This month, author and Witch Byron Ballard found herself the center piece of a mainstream news story titled, “Meet the Appalachian spell-catcher.” Local journalist Dale Neal published his article in Asheville’s Citizen-Times, the main paper for the region. Neal wrote, “In her travels, Ballard found many people put off at first by the idea of a pagan priestess …
[Pagan Community Notes is a weekly feature that highlights short stories and notes originating from within our collective communities. If you like reading this dedicated news every Monday, please donate to our Wild Hunt Fall Fund Drive today. We are now 49% funded. Help us raise that number! All of our articles take time, research and money to produce.