This is not really new news, but the growth of religions of the African diaspora attracted the attention of this reporter.
From what I hear elsewhere, it is actually the new converts–not all of them necessarily of African descent–who are most insistent about purging Voudoun, etc., of syncretized Christian elements in order to make them purely Pagan.
After a hiatus of nearly two years while we sought a new publisher (a process that began at the American Academy of Religion annual meeting in Denver in 2001), The Pomegranate: The Journal of Pagan Studies has a new publisher and will resume print publication in May 2004.
As the new editor, replacing Fritz Muntean, I have signed a contract with Equinox Publishing, a new firm started by Janet Joyce, formerly academic editorial director at Continuum’s London office. The Equinox Web site is not fully put together yet; check it at the end of August.
–The Pagan Studies book series
–The daylong Pagan Studies conference at AAR-SBL in Atlanta
–And now the return of The Pomegranate, heir, in a roundabout way to Iron Mountain: A Journal of Magical Religion and to Gnosis: A Journal of the Western Esoteric Tradition.
This will be the year that Pagan Studies happens at AAR-SBL, a slow process that has been building since 1995, when Dennis Carpenter and Selena Fox organized (and then dropped out of) the first Pagan scholars’ meeting there.
I have been reading High Priestess: The Life & Times of Patricia Crowther, which, admittedly, is a reworking and revision of two earlier autobiographical books by this English Wiccan priestess, Witch Blood! and One Witch’s World.
Why do American Witches never write their memoirs? The nearest I have seen is Margot Adler’s Heretic’s Heart: A Journey through Spirit and Revolution, and even it is more about her “Red diaper baby” childhood and adolescence, dealing with the Craft only toward the end. Are we afraid of being put down for being “self-centered”? I can think of some people whose memoirs I would love to read, frankly.
Quiz: The removal of bronze plaques bearing Bible verses from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon is a defeat for Christian hegemony and a victory for
A. Secular humanism
B. Covert federally supported nature religion
C. The American Civil Liberties Union
D. Fundamentalist fundraisers
E. All of the above
F. None of the above
Bringing back the woolly mammoth would be a good thing. I want animals to go with my religion.
And in Australia, self-identified followers of nature religion grew 140 percent between 1996 and 2001, say census officials.
Scottish Pagans are seeking increased civil recognition for their religion.
A telephone call from Graham Harvey on the 9th confirms that our anthology of important Pagan texts is going into production at Routledge. Here is the latest version of the cover–really, Graham’s name should come first, as it was his idea to collect important texts from the Pagan revival, reaching back to the Homeric Hymns, the Eddas, the Mabinogion and others, and also collecting such things as Rudyard Kipling’s song that begins “Do not tell the priest of our art,” from Puck of Pook’s Hill, which when I first encountered it was presented to me as a genuine relic of underground Pagan religion! (I had not read that particular book of Kipling’s, and I did not know better.)
How does Saddam Hussein appear in a Pagan blog? Simple–he or one of his accomplices ripped off the art of Jonathon Bowser, who works with images of the feminine divine, to illustrate a novel published over the Iraqi dictator’s name and found in one of his presidential palaces.