Pagan Community Notes

Pagan Community Notes: theoi.com, Greening of Religion, Mountain Magic, and more!

By |

DEVENTER, Netherlands — The online resource theoi.com, a repository of information about Hellenic myth and practice derived from ancient sources, will be sold rather than shut down. That’s according to site creator and owner Aaron Atsma, who reports getting a considerable amount of email when he briefly announced its closure or sale via a banner on the site. Atsma intends on selling the site through a broker later in the year. “People have been emailing me directly about the sale of the site over the last week which has caught me a bit off guard. Most boil down to, ‘I might be interested, how much?'” he wrote.

Paganism

2017 Wild Hunt retrospective

By |

TWH – Now that the season has turned and we are nearing the end of the 2017, we look back, one last time, to review this historic 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?

News

World Goddess Day: women speak out

By |

TWH –World Goddess Day, the event started by Brazilian author Claudiney Prieto in 2014, will fall on Sept. 3 this year. “The goal of the World Goddess Day project is to grant to the Goddess one day of visibility to share her many myths, stories and worshiping diversity, so everyone will remember or will realize that the first religion of humanity was the worship of the Goddess,” according to the web site. Some of the goddess-focused events already planned for this day can be found on Facebook, and those interested are invited to volunteer as local coordinators. The inclusion of the sacred feminine in Pagan religions is why many women were drawn to them in the first place.

Canada

Threats to Jewish community centers concern Pagans

By |

TWH — Jewish facilities have been targeted with vandalism and bomb threats in recent weeks, and that has some of their Pagan neighbors on edge even as they stand ready to assist. Hundreds of headstones were damaged in two Jewish cemeteries this month, and 100 bomb threats have been reportedly called into Jewish community centers and temples in the United States and Canada in what’s being called “telephone terrorism.” It was enough to get a mention by President Trump during his first speech before a joint session of Congress, although those remarks have been criticized for not outlining to plan to stop the attacks. While most of the bomb threats targeted community centers in the eastern United States, they were located in a total of 33 states as well as two provinces of Canada. The calls may have originated overseas, authorities believe, and used voice-masking technology, as in this example posted online.

News

Pagan chaplains and others share views on the death penalty

By |

TWH –On June 17, 2015, violence ripped through a South Carolina community in one of the worst ways imaginable: the perpetrator joined his victims for a Bible study session at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, and then shot nine people dead, wounding a tenth. The shooter, a white man, hoped to bring about a race war through his execution of his black victims. He was sentenced to death in federal court for those actions, but is now seeking a new trial. The case has received a significant amount of press coverage, and the nature of the crimes themselves — targeting victims during a religious service in the hopes of igniting further racially-motivated violence — appears to typify one of the most serious cultural problems in the United States today. It is in the context of these recent stories that we decided to speak with a number of Pagans to examine views on the death penalty. Like members of the overarching society, those interviewed had varied and nuanced positions on this complex topic.