Actually, this piece comes from the well-known British HPS, author, and academic Vivianne Crowley, and it is worth reading.
On 20 March, druids, witches, and lovers of nature will gather to celebrate the spring equinox, one of the eight festivals of the Wheel of the Year. For millennia, the spring equinox was celebrated across cultures as a time of fertility, creativity, and renewal. But spring celebrations are not just for people who want to greet the dawn at Stonehenge. Here are a few ideas to try out this year at home.
She has a new memoir/how-to out titled Wild Once, which is going on my To-Read list. A tip of the pointy hat to the publicist at Penguin.
In this riveting account, renowned scholar Ronald Hutton explores the history of deity-like figures in Christian Europe. Drawing on anthropology, archaeology, literature, and history, Hutton shows how hags, witches, the fairy queen, and the Green Man all came to be, and how they changed over the centuries.
Looking closely at four main figures—Mother Earth, the Fairy Queen, the Mistress of the Night, and the Old Woman of Gaelic tradition—Hutton challenges decades of debate around the female figures who have long been thought versions of pre-Christian goddesses. He makes the compelling case that these goddess figures found in the European imagination did not descend from the pre-Christian ancient world, yet have nothing Christian about them. It was in fact nineteenth-century scholars who attempted to establish the narrative of pagan survival that persists today.
The book will be out later this spring. For some reason, Yale UP is not taking pre-orders, but you can pre-order from Amazon,[1]If you do, you will help me pay my hosting fee or from several other sources linked on the Yale UP catalog page.
Here, Ross Downing deals with such issues as whether witchcraft and Heathenry were defined differently in the time of King Alfred the Great in the late 9th century, including details as the execution of condemned witches as well as animals accused of being witches’ familiars (although that was not the Anglo-Saxon term), including ethnic and gender issues in witchcraft accusations.
These all look fascinating, and I will have to watch three a week to finish by Candlemas. Read more about the conference, which focused on Scandinavian but here includes Anglo-Saxon and Danish-ruled England.
This interview was conducted by Ethan Doyle White. It also deals with her work on other minority religions in contemporary Russia.
I started my research through esoteric bookstores and stalls as well as inquiring if my Russian colleagues knew any Wiccan groups in Russia. Every way I turned there were hardly any signs of Wicca and questions about the topic usually led to ethnic Slavic Paganism. To be honest, I was initially a bit reluctant to change the topic of my research because it was the feminist aspect of Wicca that had appealed to me. In contrast, contemporary Slavic Paganism seemed emphatically patriarchal and conservative. Moreover, infrequently it was linked to intolerant nationalism. In many respects, this ethnic Paganism with its emphasis on warrior spirit and admiration of masculinity seemed to represent an opposite to the kind of feminist spirituality that had originally drawn me to Paganism. However, gradually I became captivated by Slavic Paganism. First, I have always loved Russian culture and folklore so, of course, being able to gain a new perspective on it was fascinating. Secondly, it was intriguing to notice that Rodnoverie contained many similar features to the forms of Paganism I had encountered previously and which had initially drawn me to it: the emphasis on independent thinking and individual freedom, a connection to nature, the central role of aesthetics and play in religious practice.
A saddle stapler for pamphlets, essential for zine publishers!
I used to have shelves of Pagan zines and a subscription to Factsheet Five, but the air leaked out of zine publishing in the late 1990s as people got used to the “World Wide Web,” which was free (or seemed to be) and where you could post your stuff without having to type or draw pages, take them to the copy shop, then collate, staple, and mail.
Before that, I’d been involved with a couple of literary zines, two Pagan zines not worth mentioning, and finally Fritz Muntean’s new, intellectually ambitious one: The Pomegranate: A New Journal of Neopagan Thought, which ended up as something else. Fritz flattered me by saying he was partly inspired by my short-lived (1984–86) effort, Iron Mountain: A Journal of Magical Religion, which you can now read online, all four issues of it.
Some examples: Edited by Maria J. Pérez Cuervo, who is interviewed here,Helleboreis published in Bristol (UK), and leans heavily towards folk horror, folk witchcraft, myth, and psychogeography. Issues are £6.75 (US $9.58) plus postage.
She grew up in a fertile environment for a zine editor, and she has an MA in archaeology from Bristol University (What do you do with an MA? Write a lot and start your own journal.)
I grew up in a fairly bookish home and I don’t remember not writing. As a child I used to make my own magazines, with comics I drew and articles I wrote. My dad was into ancient history and mythology, and my mum has always been a bit of an anglophile, and it probably rubbed off on me. My mum told me a lot of fairy tales, and what really fascinated me was the magic. You know, the witch, the magic mirror, the curses. A bit later I became obsessed with Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books, partly because of the settings (the moors, the Cornish coast, the ancient ruins), and with Sherlock Holmes
I bought issue #3, The Malefice Issue, (“What has been buried ought not to return”) and was reminded of some of the older Pagan zines. The resemblance was intentional, for she says she wanted “the aesthetics to evoke that particular era, the late 60s and 70s, grabbing inspiration from Czech film posters, with a touch of psychedelia, and an old-school fanzine finish.”
Is it typical of connected life today that I followed Fiddler’s Green for months on Instagram before I got around to ordering a sample issue? It is the zine of “Art & magic for tea-drinking anarchists, convivial conjurors & closeted optimists,” with a mailing address in Berkeley, California. I bought volume 2, number 3, “Gods of the Afternoon,” which is $15 + postage.
Speaking of postage, alongwith the articles, listed here, was a table of postal rates, which warmed my heart, and — OMG real zine culture! — several pages of zine reviews! Further explorations await.
And speaking of vinyl, the issue included a 45 rpm flexi-disk of “Mushroom Madness” by Anton Barbeau, so I need to blow the dust off my old Technics turntable and learn what it sounds like.
The famous Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Boscastle, Cornwall, is re-opened post-COVID lockdown and also has a museum journal (I am calling it a zine too) called The Enquiring Eye, “that aims to showcase a wide range of research into all aspects of magical practise, witchcraft and the occult.” Issues are £5, and five have been published so far, with articles like “Wisdom from the Wilderness: Using the Fae to Re-enchant the Landscape in a Time of Crisis.” Table of contents for issue 5 here.
In large part I think that’s the case except with vinyl records. There is something romantic about records, something satisfying about opening the album jacket, seeing the fantastic artwork and studying the liner notes while listening to the album. That’s something that today’s digital files just can’t replace.”
So much of the content we consume these days is digital that print feels like a small luxury. And I wanted to make a beautiful object for everyone who loves these themes, because there wasn’t anything quite like it. Making it limited-run was partly a practical decision, but also, I think, reminiscent of a time when you didn’t have constant access to information. And you could be a little girl, catch a film halfway through on TV, and not know the name of it, but be haunted by it for life. And somehow this invests the film, or the book that you borrowed from the library but never found in any shops, with an almost mythical quality. Maybe in a few years there’ll be people saying “oh, do you remember that little zine?” Who knows?
This is the title of an anthology for which I’ve been gathering essays over the past couple of decades. These are accounts of their journeys from former Christians—especially Clergy—who have left their churches and come over to Paganism and the Goddess.
This whole idea began in a hot tub over 20 years ago, after a CUUPS conference, where we were all sharing our stories of how we found (or were found by) the Goddess. A couple of us were former Christian Clergy, and I found their journeys fascinating, and thought they should be published. I have a couple dozen submissions now on-file, but other things came up over the following years, and I just had to set the whole project aside ‘til later. This is later.
I believe these stories are important to the world and should be told, so if you used to be Clergy in a Christian Church (any denomination), and now serve the Goddess, I’d like to know your story, and potentially include it in this collection. And even if you weren’t actually Clergy, if you were particularly devout as a Christian and then came over to the Goddess, I invite you to tell about your journey.
Here are some things you could address in your personal account:
Tell about your religious upbringing. What was it like for you? Was your family devout? What church did they (and you) attend? How deeply were you immersed in the church, its activities and teachings? Did you take Confirmation or other serious religious education?
As you came of age, did you experience conflict with your church’s teachings on moral issues and strictures, such as dancing, music, sex, birth control, abortion, sin, etc.?
If you were Christian Clergy, tell about your Calling. What made you decide to become Clergy? Did you attend seminary? How did you feel upon ordination?
How was it for you serving as Clergy? Did you experience challenges to your faith? Disillusionment? A “Crisis of Faith”?
And most important—how and when did you discover The Goddess? What was that like for you? How did your family and friends react when you told them?
What was your experience coming into the Pagan community? When was that? How did you feel? Was it with an individual, a small circle, a large gathering? Did you join a particular Tradition or group? And how has it been since?
How do you feel about Jesus now? Do you still hold him in high regard and reverence? Do you feel that you may have left the church, but not necessarily Jesus? Talk about this.
Tell about your present life in Paganism. How are you currently involved? Have you become a Priest or Priestess? How is that for you? Would you ever consider going back to your former church? Why or why not?
And finally, what message would you like to convey to other Christians (Clergy or otherwise) who are still in the Church?
There is no word limit, but essays will be subject to editing as may be needed. I will, of course, need your permission to publish your account, so please provide your contact info, and I’ll send you a permission form to be filled out.
While I would like to use real names, if you don’t want your name printed, no problem; just give me a pseudonym you’d like us to use. Also, readers would love to see your face, if that’s OK with you. If so, please include a 300 dpi jpeg portrait photo to print with your story.
I have added another link to the list of Pagan podcasts in the right-hand sidebar: Ravens at the Crossroads, by Mistress Prime and Tyler Matthews, who “realized the stories of our community, especially of our elders, were being lost and forgotten. In an effort to preserve many of those stories the podcast was created.”
If you are not seeing the sidebar, click the banner at the top of the page (the photo and title) to go there. Or click here.
The podcasts are mixtures of interviews with notable Pagans such as Ivo Dominguez, Jr., and Macha Nightmare, and personal reflections.
If you have read anything on ancient Paganism(s) in Britain, you have probably read about the Cerne Abbas Giant, the huge figure made of chalk (crumbled into ditches) with an upraised Hercules-style club and an upright Cernunnos-style penis.
You probably read that he was prehistoric, or at least pre-Roman — although some dissidents claim there was no record of the giant’s existence before the late 1600s CE.
Now archaeologists have been working to date the site, and they are coming up with a different age.
I am thinking of starting a series called “What You Can Do with a Master’s Degree,” such as be a lecturer or start your own online school. There was a time, pre-television, when well-known authors went on lecture tours, city to city, speaking to local literary societies, school groups, and the like. John Cowper Powys, author of A Glastonbury Romance, was one of many.[1]“Powys had success as an itinerant lecturer, in England, and in 1905–1930 in the US, where he wrote many of his novels and had several first published. He moved to Dorset, England, in 1934 … Continue reading
And I can think of one very popular Pagan-studies YouTuber who just completed a PhD, so there goes my titl — (except she started her YouTube channel first.
I continue to take an interest in polytheistic religions. The most recent direction of the StJ project since 2016 has been population genetics, with focus on the culture, identity and religion of the Indo-Europeans. My videos are based on thorough interdisciplinary research, drawing from archaeology, linguistics, historical sources, comparative mythology and population genetics — particularly archaeogenetics.
“Powys had success as an itinerant lecturer, in England, and in 1905–1930 in the US, where he wrote many of his novels and had several first published. He moved to Dorset, England, in 1934 with his American partner, Phyllis Playter.’ [Wikipedia]. No master’s degree though.
Head of the Shigir Idol, the world’s oldest wood sculpture, discovered in a Russian peat bog in 1890. Photo courtesy of the Sverdlovsk Regional Museum.
The Shirgir Idol, a wooden statue that you may see at the Sverdlovsk Regional Museum of Local Lore has now been re-dated, pushing its age back to 12,500 years before present. In North American terms, that is about the time of the “Clovis culture,” when hunters with big spearpoints pursued big animals that no longer exist.
In 2018, more advanced accelerator mass spectrometry technology testing the pristine core of the larch wood statue—rather than the surface, which had undergone numerous conservation treatments over the more than 100 years since its discovery—determined that it was actually even older: closer to 11,600 years old.
Now, a new study published in Quaternary International has pushed that date back by a further 900 years—making it more than twice as old as Stonehenge or the Egyptian pyramids.
The idol is nine feet tall, made of wood, with humanoid faces and geometric markings. It survived because it was in a peat bog, where gold miners found it in 1890s. There might be others still unfound.
In regions with large forests, wood would have been readily available to Paleolithic artists, but quick to deteriorate over the centuries. That means that our understanding of these ancient peoples is shaped by preservation biases, and might have been very different had more wooden artifacts like the Shigir Idol survived.
“Wood working was probably widespread during the Late Glacial to early Holocene,” the paper argues. “We see the Shigir sculpture as a document of a complex symbolic behavior and of the spiritual world of the Late Glacial to Early Mesolithic hunter-gatherers of the Urals.”
To be fair, as British historian Francis Young pointed out on Twitter, “And even if [the Shengir idol and similar] did serve a religious purposes, are they gods or ancestors? Was there a distinction? I rather doubt it. We certainly can’t impose our Classically-derived assumptions about gods with distinct personalities and names, etc.”
Actually, this piece comes from the well-known British HPS, author, and academic Vivianne Crowley, and it is worth reading.
I have added another link to the list of Pagan podcasts in the right-hand sidebar: 