Australia

Pagan Community Notes: Satanic Temple files Lawsuit, New Dead Can Dance Release, Black Witches Convention, and more

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NEW YORK – Last week The Satanic Temple made good on its statement it would sue Netflix and Warner Brothers over the use of a Baphomet statue that bears a striking resemblance to the statue commissioned by TST by filing $150M lawsuit in a New York district court. Court documents filed last Thursday cite copyright infringement, trademark violation, and injury to TST’s business reputation according to a report by CNBC. In a news story published by USA Today, the complaint filed states in part:

“What makes this case particularly striking and significant is that it arises in the context of Defendants who are highly sophisticated media production and distribution companies which blatantly misappropriated Plaintiff’s unique expression of an idea even though they have a long history of vigorously protecting their own intellectual property,”

As we reported last week, TST had threatened legal action against Netflix and Warner Brothers over its use of the statue of Baphomet in its new series, “The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.” Lucien Greaves, co-founder of TST, was unable to provide us comment or a statement upon advice from legal counsel due to the pending litigation. TWH will continue to follow this developing story. *   *   *
AUSTRALIA– On November 2, 2018, Dead Can Dance released its first album, Dionysus, in six years.

News

Turner Entertainment opposes use of ‘Wicked Witch’ in trademark

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TWH – Turner Entertainment Company has filed an opposition with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to stop witch and Pagan elder Dorothy Morrison from trademarking her brand name ‘Wicked Witch Mojo.”  Turner Entertainment, a subsidiary of AT&T’s WarnerMedia, serves as the copyright holder for a large library of productions made by its sister subsidiary Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (aka, Warner Brothers), that includes The Wizard of Oz (1939). In 2001, Turner successfully trademarked the terms “Wicked Witch”  and “Wicked Witch of the West.” In 2008, the company trademarked “Wicked Witch of the East” and expanded that of “Wicked Witch”. Then, in 2014, it trademarked “Wicked Wiches” [sic] It is for this reason that Turner has decided to file an opposition notice in response to Morrison’s own attempt to trademark her business name.

Bell Book and Camera

Book explores witches in film, TV from Oz to Sabrina

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ATLANTA — Almost four decades after the Wicked Witch of the West plagued Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, the green-skinned, bushy-browed one lost her broom on, of all places, Sesame Street. Actress Margaret Hamilton reprised her famous role in an episode of the children’s TV series that aired on Feb. 10, 1976, writes Heather Greene in her new book Bell, Book and Camera: a Critical History of Witches in American Film and Television (McFarland, April 2018, 234 p). “With the exception of Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, the inhabitants of Sesame Street are visibly frightened of Hamilton’s character,” Greene writes. The Wicked Witch also scared the hades out of young viewers, just as she had done for decades since the release of Oz in 1939.

News

Bang a gong: rock music rocks rituals

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TWH — Terry Riley, high priest of the Southern Delta Church of Wicca (part of the Aquarian Tabernacle Church), is preparing a Grease ritual for an upcoming new moon. It will be a “special circle” that will have “a double high priest and a double high priestess so we can get both movies in,” Riley says with a chuckle. “We’re planning on using ‘Greased Lightnin’ ’ to raise the cone of power.”

Movies? “Greased Lightnin’,” that John Travolta song? Grease the movie musical and not Greece the birthplace of Aphrodite, Persephone, Hekate and all those classical goddesses and gods?

Culture

Witch and author Fiona Horne gets naked in new autobiography

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ST. THOMAS, U.S. Virgin Islands — It’s not unusual for Tom Jones to sport a charm fashioned from a four-leaf clover, a piece of amber, and a bone from a fox penis. Well, at least the Welsh superstar singer was gifted such a charm by celebrity Fiona Horne, or “Fiona the Hot Witch,” as Ryan Seacrest once labeled her during a segment on E! News back in the early 2000s. Those are just a few of the revelations in Horne’s new autobiography, The Naked Witch, which will be released in the U.S. Feb.