Culture

Power of art: an interview with artist Laura Tempest Zakroff

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SEATTLE, Wash. — Laura Tempest Zakroff, known to many by the name Tempest, is a Pagan artist and Witch from the Seattle area. She travels the country attending festivals and conferences, sharing her work, teaching, and performing. Her art incorporates her visions of the world as well as creating powerful connections to her spiritual beliefs, to Witchcraft, to healing, and more recently to her own brand of political activism. Raised in the New Jersey suburbs of Philadelphia, Zakroff was the youngest of three children in a mixed-religious family.Her father is Jewish and her mother is Catholic.

Paganism

Column: The Need for Magic in 2017

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New years resolutions, new life goals, savings plans, and losing weight are a few of the common conversations that circulate in social media during January. However, the transition from 2016 to 2017 hasn’t been average. From the highly intense political climate to the most recent celebrity death, the sliding into this new year has clearly been a much bumpier ride for many people. Some have expressed relief from what felt like a year of death, while others have expressed concern and fear for the future. From preparation of protests, to a highly contested inauguration, to lots of knitted “pussy hats,” the start to 2017 has been anything but normal.

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.

Paganism

Community and Culture: Challenging the Narrative (Part 2)

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In my column last month,  we looked at the idea of challenging the narrative, and how this both supports and provokes community. Within this reflection, we were able to look at three different areas in which Pagans were challenging expectations within our own interconnected Pagan and Polytheistic communities. There are many ways that individuals, groups, and subsets are challenging what has become the operation of the over-culture within our community. The inevitable response to constructed boundaries within any segment of society becomes the pushing of barriers. Marginalization and outsider politics happen within every community.