Column: Questioning the Dragon

Luke Babb ponders how individuals and communities share their knowledge of the spiritual world, and thinks of what it would take to build a Paganism that sharpens every individual Pagan’s wisdom.

Column: Beowulf and Modern Paganism

I first met Beowulf on a field trip. My grade school class had a special engagement to see a stage version of the story, performed – I think – by St. Louis’ Metro Theater Company. The spare production featured only a few actors and a set of props that, like those of The Fantasticks, were few enough that they could have been brought on stage in a gunnysack. A central platform at the center of the stage doubled as all the locations of the poem – the darkened hall of Heorot, the haunted mere, the dragon’s cave.