Pagan Community Notes

Pagan Community Notes: exorcism and hexing, Canada Pagan community, Michigan Scholarship Fund, and more.

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BROOKLYN, N.Y. — The Catland bookstore that hosted the Oct. 20 hex action against Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh found itself the target for an exorcism. According to reports, Father Gary Thomas, the exorcist for the Catholic Diocese of San Jose, California, scheduled two masses prior to the hex event in order to stop it. Father Thomas told The National Catholic Register “that he has witnessed people in the satanic world becoming bolder.” He said that the more confident these so-called Satanists become, the more “the general public will be more accepting of the demonic.”

Culture

Review: three Pagan poets for National Poetry Month

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If, as is proclaimed in the Charge of the Goddess, “all acts of love and pleasure are my rituals,” then the pleasure of poetry is among those rituals, too. April is National Poetry Month in the United States. Here’s a look at the works of three female poets: a Wiccan priestess, a pioneer in the modern women’s/goddess spirituality movement, and a priestess in the Welsh Bardic Tradition. The Charge of the Goddess: the Poetry of Doreen Valiente
Doreen Valiente Foundation in association with the Centre for Pagan Studies, expanded edition 2014, 142 p.

Ironically, the Charge of the Goddess included is this collection by the acclaimed “mother of modern witchcraft” is not her rhyming, poetic rendition but rather her far more famous prose version. The late John Belham-Payne, a friend and “working magical partner” of Valiente’s, shepherded her poetry into publication following her death in 1999, thus fulfilling a deathbed request by the Wiccan priestess who had been initiated into Gerald Gardner’s coven by the man himself in 1953.

News

Writer, Welsh Bardic Tradition priestess Kathryn Hinds passes

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DAHLONEGA, Ga. — Pagan musician Arthur Hinds remembers the time four years ago when he and his late wife, Kathryn, were “honored-slash-condemned” – he said with a soft laugh — to lead the main ritual at Pagan Spirit Gathering. “That is a huge thing,” Hinds said from the couple’s home in Dahlonega, Georgia., where they led a circle in the Welsh Bardic Tradition they founded. “We prepared, we rehearsed, we got everybody together. There are hundreds of people in the circle, and you look back and there are hundreds more in a line still coming in.

Culture

Paganism, DragonCon and the fantastic pilgrimage

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ATLANTA, Ga. – Over the past 30 years during Labor Day weekend, fans from around the world descend on Atlanta for the pop culture convention DragonCon. The sprawling event, which began in 1987, offers its thousands of enthusiastic attendees four days of programming exploring a wide-range of pop culture fandom. From lectures and workshops to cosplay, gaming, and the famous parade, Dragon Con has become one of the largest fan-based conventions of its kind. This year, Dragon Con reported a record 77,000 attendees over a four-day period, and its parade was broadcast for the first time on local television.