• Learn all about American religious affiliation from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life — until you get to us. We are in the “Other Faiths” category under (sigh) “New Age.” Notice how the Jews and Hindus score highest in education, the evangelical Protestants and JW’s lowest.
• Utra Press, the publishers of the journal Tyr now have their own web site.
• Isaac Bonewits is starting his own magick school. Jason Pitzl-Waters has the details.
Tim Sebastion, chief of the Secular Order of Druids in the UK, died on February 1.
He was always in the swirl of controversy around Stonehenge. This site, although dated, gives a feel for how that has gone.
His order was formed in 1975 and the acronym was chosen deliberately, or so I have been told. Based on my couple of meetings with Tim (the last in a Bath pub in 2004), it seemed that by appearing to not be totally serious, he was able to be very serious.
He also held the Bardic Chair of Caer Badon (Bath) after founding a gorsedd (poetic competition) in 1995.
A ton of British Druid Web sites exist: Here is a sampling.
Fr. William Melnyk, the Episcopal priest in Pennsylvania who was also an active Druid, has resigned.. His wife, Glyn Ruppe-Melnyk, also a Druid and Episcopal priest (no “-ess” allowed), faces disciplinary action.
My last post on this issue is here. Notice that the man must suffer more; women lead us into temptation, but a man is more morally culpable. Thus says the patriarchy.
I’ve been working on a section about American Pagan Druids today. First, let me say that I am so glad that I do not have to do anything on British Druids, since in the UK there are two hundred years’ worth of self-proclaimed various Druidic groups of all sorts, from the merely fraternal to the seriously Pagan to the almost self-parodying sort. Fortunately, Ronald Hutton has a new book out, Witches, Druids, and King Arthur, which I now have on order.
The best resource that I know of remains Isaac Bonewits’ web site. Although he did not become involved until six years after the “We’re not really a religion” Reformed Druids began at Carleton College, he remains the central figure of the revival in this country, having devoted more nearly forty years to it–editing journals, writing songs, creating organizations, creating ritual, networking and more networking, creating Web sites. . .