News

Richard Reidy 1944 – 2015

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On Novemeber 22 the Kemetic Reconstructionist community was shocked to hear of the death of one of its foremost authors and ritualists – Richard J. Reidy. Richard Reidy received his Master of Divinity degree in 1979 and, then nineteen years later in 1998, he founded one of the first Kemetic temples in the United States,called The Temple of Ra, based in San Francisco. Richard went on to found three more Kemetic temples located in the cities of San Jose, Sacramento, and Denver. He stayed personally active in the both the San Francisco and San Jose temples, meeting monthly for rituals and study. In 2010, Richard published his book Eternal Egypt: Ancient Rituals for the Modern World, which was hailed as the first comprehensive collection of key ritual texts performed throughout Egypt during the time of the pharaohs. At the time of his death, he was working on a successor volume to Eternal Egypt.

Living

The Unique challenges in Pagan prison ministry

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SAN QUENTIN, CALIFORNIA — It has been said that casting a ritual circle describes a sacred place, outside of time and space. Whoever came up with that phrasing likely has never worked within the U.S. correctional system, where space is rigidly controlled by an unyielding culture and where time moves according to the whims of an incredibly complex bureaucracy. However, it’s easier to see how time and space can be folded and spindled by looking through the eyes of Aline “Macha” O’Brien, who is now nearing the end of a quest to get a group of Pagan inmates some incense and candles. It is a process that has taken nine long months. “There’s nothing that’s simple in prison bureaucracies,” she said during a recent phone interview.