Paganism

Pagan Community Notes: Awen-inscribed gravestone at Circle; Starhawk calls for action; Caroline Tully and more.

By |

BARNEVELD, Wis. — Circle Cemetery, a national Pagan cemetery located at Circle Sanctuary, will dedicate its first Awen-inscribed veteran gravestone. In January 2017, the Awen was added to the official list of approved symbols by the U.S. Veterans Administration, joining the pentacle and Thor’s Hammer.  The upcoming memorial will be for Druid Dan Moeller, who was known as Oakbear in the Pagan community. While Moeller has the distinction of being the first to be honored with the inscribed Awen gravestone at a Pagan cemetery, he is not the first in the nation. That distinction goes to Wayne Laliberte of Texas (1954-2013), who is honored at Dallas-Fort Worth National Cemetery in Texas in 2017.

Australia

Pagan scholarly journal to focus on art, fashion

By |

MELBOURNE, Australia — Witchcraft, says Caroline Tully, an honorary fellow in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne, “has become glamorous – and I’m not talking about its traditional faerie glamour, but fashionista glamour.”

That glamour, as well as “Witches of Instagram,” painters, fiction writers, film, music, and more will be explored in a special issue of The Pomegranate: the International Journal of Pagan Studies focusing on Pagan art and fashion. Tully, a Witch and Pagan priestess, will be the guest editor of the issue, and she has put out the official call for papers for that edition of the peer-reviewed journal; submissions are due June 15, 2019. “Paganism is inherently creative because of its this-worldly, rather than other-worldly, focus,” Tully said in an email interview with The Wild Hunt. “There is a wide spectrum of aesthetic expression that manifests in the materiality[sic] of Paganism, in the ritual objects we use, the way we design rituals, our robes (or lack thereof), direct — bodily — contact with deities, ecstatic expression, sexuality, and the general artistic legacy of all forms of ancient pagan religions that we are able to draw upon in order to create our religion and rituals.”

Tully is well-credentialed for her role as guest editor of the Pagan art and fashion issue. Along with being a Witch and scholar, she’s also an artist and writer.

Culture

Was the Quest for the Golden Fleece a Real Event?

By |

A recent article in the Quaternary International suggests that the myth of Jason and the Argonauts took its inspiration from an actual voyage that occurred sometime between 3,300 and 3,500 years ago. A team of geologists, led by Avtandil Okrostsvaridze from Ilia State University in Georgia, report that they have found evidence that the Golden Fleece was real and was the product of ancient gold extraction techniques. But did these scientists find definitive evidence? The Wild Hunt turned to a Ph.D. Candidate in the Centre for Classics and Archaeology at the University of Melbourne, Australia, and a London-based archaeologist and historian of religion to take a Pagan-friendly look at the paper. Mythos of the quest for the Golden Fleece
Although there are different written accounts of the quest, the basic myth is as follows.