Asia
China sees the goddess Mazu as key to influencing politics in Taiwan
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Beijing hopes to use the faithful’s adoration of the goddess Mazu to manipulate elections in Taiwan.
Asia
Sea Goddess’s floating temple gets new home
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A floating temple to the Chinese sea goddess Tin Hau, also known as Mazu, has been moved to a permanent location and will undergo an extensive renovation.
Paganism
New government measures curtail folk religion in China
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The Chinese government has instituted a number of new measures intended to curb the practice of folk religions, such as worship of figures like Huangdi, the Yellow Emperor, and Nong Zhigao, a culture hero who resembles Robin Hood.
interfaith
Column: In Defense of Unmindfulness
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“In sports, music, and martial arts, the unbinding of the mind as it focuses upon a specific task is paired with a shutting down of other mental faculties. Senses are simply turned off in a subjectively very real way. Linear thinking evaporates as the Odinnic moment expands.
“Rather than mindfulness, this is a process of unmindfulness.”
Paganism
Column: Resiliency and the Spirit War
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“6-3-6: The concept of politics has then become completely absorbed into a war of spirits.” —Nietzschemanteion
Or as Diane di Prima wrote, “the war that matters is the war against the imagination/all other wars are subsumed in it.” The enemy is despair, but secular ideologies of progress will never be enough to keep the enemy at bay. It takes a certain kind of sympathetic magic to counter despair. The seeds of what one is fighting for must be contained in one’s actions. If you want to live in a world where the relationships between the gods, the ancestors, the land and human beings are in harmony, then you have to put effort into strengthening and balancing those relationships right now.