Pagan Community Notes

Pagan Community Notes: Four Quarters, City of Refuge, Pagan Pride Day and more

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Four Quarters Interfaith Sanctuary, a farm and campground located in Pennsylvania, was in the news after a festival-goer reported being attacked. Four Quarters opens its land to a number of yearly external events. One of these events is Big Dub, a 4-Day EDM festival that brings together “40 of the regions biggest electronic dance dj’s to perform and hold workshops.” On the final day of the festival, a women reported to festival security that she had been drugged and raped. Security turned the case over to local police who launched an investigation.

Pagan Community Notes

Pagan Community Notes: American Heathens, Gen-Hex, Starhawk, U.S. Army and more!

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A new book American Heathens: The Politics of Identity in a Pagan Religious Movement will is now available from Temple University Press. Written by Professor Jennifer Snook, the book “is the first in-depth ethnographic study about the largely misunderstood practice of American Heathenry (Germanic Paganism).” Snook traces the trajectory of the movement itself and highlights stories from modern practitioners. Snook is a professor of sociology at the University of Mississippi, and has been a practicing Heathen since the age of eighteen. Because of her perspective, the book “treats Heathens as members of a religious movement, rather than simply a subculture reenacting myths and stories of enchantment.”

Paganism

Column: Ending Silence to End the Bigotry

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[The following is a guest post from Ryan Smith. He is one of the co-founders of Heathens United Against Racism and a graduate student studying modern history. He practices with his kindred in the San Francisco Bay Area.  He has been a Heathen for seven years and a Pagan for seventeen.]

In Pagan and Heathen communities, topics related to discrimination, prejudice and bigotry are often uncomfortably avoided with a telling silence and knowing glance. After all, as goes the common narrative, we are, as a community, accepting of everyone. We welcome people of different walks of life, religion, perspectives, Gods, and forms of worship so how could racism possibly be a problem?

Paganism

Heathen Band Faces Charges of Racism in Pennsylvania

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The Heathen band Norsewind was removed from the Philadelphia Pagan Pride Day (PPPD) schedule after being labeled a White Nationalist [Supremacist] band. In August, Antifa Philadelphia, a “collective of militant anti-fascists committed to opposing the rise of the far-right,” contacted the organizers of PPPD. They claimed that Norsewind, a band scheduled to play at the Aug. 30 event, had “strong ties to the Keystone State Skinheads” and labeled them a White Nationalist band. PPPD promptly dropped the band from its event and issued a statement saying that the organizers find “hate and intolerance in any form abhorrent.”

The Claims
Antifa posted the information that it sent to PPPD on Tumblr. It is titled Norsewind and their ties to Neo-Nazi hate groups.