Pagan Community Notes

Pagan Community Notes: American Council of Witches, Pagans on BBC Radio, Environmental Statement and more!

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Over the week, there have been online rumblings that the American Council of Witches is trying, once again, to form. A Facebook page was opened on Sept. 11 and has remained fairly quiet until the past two months. And, it wasn’t until two weeks ago that the page began to receive significant attention, both for and against the council. The American Council of Witches (ACOW) was originally created in 1973 by an eclectic group of practitioners, many of whom are no longer living.

Pagan Community Notes

Pagan Community Notes: JD Taylor, Where Witchcraft Lives, Brimming Horn Meadery and More!

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It was announced last week that blues musician and activist JD Taylor has died. Taylor was known to the Bay Area Pagan community, performing at the Berkeley Pagan Festival, PantheaCon, and Elderflower. Although she wasn’t Pagan herself, Taylor was heavily involved in regional “women’s and LGBT activist communities.”  As noted by the Bay Area Reporter, “some would remember Ms. Taylor as the small woman who was the subject of a photo showing her being beaten by a very large SFPD officer during the Castro Sweep police retaliation in the Castro on October 6, 1989.” Taylor was born in New Jersey in 1946, moving to San Francisco in 1975.

News

John Belham-Payne 1952 – 2016

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It was announced on Monday that High Priest, Elder and Witch John Belham-Payne had died from kidney disease. John was Doreen Valiente’s last priest, the co-founder of the Centre for Pagan Studies, and the founder of The Doreen Valiente Foundation. He was a fixture in the UK Pagan community and dedicated to the mission of upholding the values of his teachings and sharing his magical inheritance and all he had learned with others. John was born Jan. 5, 1952 in Dudley. He showed an early interest in music and the arts, which gave him the foundation that inspired his early career choices.

Book Reviews

Book Review: Doreen Valiente Witch

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[Today we welcome guest writer Link with his review of the upcoming Philip Heselton book. A Gardnerian initiate, Link is a member of the Covenant of the Goddess (CoG) and is the US National Coordinator for the Pagan Federation International. The name “Link” is a simple, one-syllable reminder of how all things interconnect. Link’s writing focuses on seeing the sacred and magickal side of everyday life, and has been published in many parts of the world since the 1990s. Jobwise, he has worked for several international telecommunications companies in the US, Europe and Latin America, again a lesson in how things connect. He currently lives in Miami Beach.]

Review: Doreen Valiente – Witch. Written by Philip Heselton.

Culture

A glimpse into history: “A Spell of Witchcraft” radio programs re-released

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SHEFFIELD, ENGLAND –The year was 1971 and, despite the death of Gerald Gardner some years before, Wicca was continuing to gain adherents. The high priest and priestess of the Sheffield coven of witches, Arnold and Patricia Crowther, who had been initiated by Gardner in 1960, were emerging as strong voices of the movement. Their voices were markedly amplified when they produced A Spell of Witchcraft, a show on BBC Radio Sheffield, explaining to listeners through a half-dozen twenty-minute segments what modern witchcraft was really like. Those programs have recently been made available online by the Centre for Pagan Studies (CPS). Patricia Crowther provided the original cassette recordings, which were digitized and, with approval of the BBC, upload for public consumption. Arnold passed on in 1974, and Patricia was on holiday and unavailable to be interviewed directly.