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Pagan Perspectives
[This column comes to us from our newest columnist, Luke Babb. Luke is a storyteller and eclectic polytheist who primarily works with the Norse and Hellenic pantheons. They live in Chicago with their wife and a small jungle of houseplants, where they are studying magic and community building – sometimes even on purpose.]
1. I am applying for my first membership in a magical order. It’s a strange, charged feeling.
Pagan Perspectives
[Today’s column comes to us from Luke Babb. Luke Babb is a storyteller and eclectic polytheist who primarily works with the Norse and Hellenic pantheons. They live in Chicago with their wife and a small jungle of houseplants, where they are studying magic and community building – sometimes even on purpose.]
The old man likes to corner me. I worked for a while in high end kitchen retail – the sort of small business that can only exist in big cities, where the wealthy come to buy designer pots and “give back to the community.” One of those stores that really wants customers to access those ancestral memories of the general store they saw on Anne of Green Gables as a kid. Playing into that hometown feel, once a year this store participates in a neighborhood street festival and sells something that is only available on that weekend – apple pies.
Today marks the 16th annual Transgender Day of Remembrance. People across the world will be holding various events and vigils, remembering those people who have been lost due to transgender violence. It is a powerful day that is a part of a larger month long awareness campaign. Transgender Day of Remembrance is held every November, marking the death of Rita Hester, who was murdered in her Boston apartment in 1998. A year after that death, which still remains unsolved, writer Gwendolyn Ann Smith held a vigil in San Francisco to honor Hester’s life and bring awareness to the issues faced by Transgender people. The 1999 vigil became the first Transgender Day of Remembrance, which also launched the website “Remembering Our Dead” and several other awareness campaigns and movements.
[Today we welcome Luke Babb. They graduated from Truman State University with a degree in English, and briefly toured Saint Louis University in pursuit of a Masters. They currently live in Chicago with their fiance where they write, participate in the storytelling scene, and work two jobs. This is their first work with The Wild Hunt.]
I have come out as bisexual, trans and queer, but I cannot come out as Pagan. Which means that this is something else.
It is all over the media – the hot story for summer. Caitlyn Jenner makes her first public appearance before the entire world. With help from photographer Annie Leibovitz, Jenner introduces herself on the cover of the upcoming July issue of Vanity Fair magazine. Wearing a white, strapless bathing suit with her brown locks cascading down around her shoulders, Jenner recalls the romantic images of golden age Hollywood starlets. Jenner’s story has captured the media’s attention, from newspapers to ESPN broadcasters.