{"id":7405,"date":"2015-08-05T08:11:15","date_gmt":"2015-08-05T14:11:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7405"},"modified":"2015-08-05T16:30:22","modified_gmt":"2015-08-05T22:30:22","slug":"the-blue-moon-made-me-do-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7405","title":{"rendered":"The Blue Moon Made Me Do It"},"content":{"rendered":"

A northern Florida sheriff speculates that the deaths of a family were “ritualistic” murders.<\/a><\/p>\n

“The time of death on Tuesday also coincides with what’s referred to as a blue moon, which occurs every three years.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to the Associated Press version, linked above,\u00a0 which “faith or religion” the sheriff had in mind was not made clear. Not so in the local press<\/a> \u2014 in case you could not guess.<\/p>\n

Or is this more like those many instances when archaeologists who cannot explain an artifact’s use label it as a “ritual object”?<\/p>\n

It Gets Better: Wiccans Push Back<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is how today is different from the “Satanic Panic<\/a>” of the 1970s\u201380s. The Internet makes it easier to push back. “Wicca experts slam Florida sheriff for linking triple murder to ‘witchcraft.'”<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Leading experts and practitioners of Wicca and other pagan [sic]<\/em> religions have slammed a Florida<\/a> sheriff\u2019s department after police announced that a triple murder was a \u201critualistic killing\u201d linked to \u201cwitchcraft\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A northern Florida sheriff speculates that the deaths of a family were “ritualistic” murders. “The time of death on Tuesday also coincides with what’s referred to as a blue moon, which occurs every three years.” According to the Associated Press version, linked above,\u00a0 which “faith or religion” the sheriff had in mind was not made […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10,247,261,29],"class_list":["post-7405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-american-religion","tag-crime","tag-florida","tag-witchcraft"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1Vr","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7724,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7724","url_meta":{"origin":7405,"position":0},"title":"Core Books in Pagan Studies","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 4, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I recently completed an article on contempoary Paganism for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion, so when it appears, I can at least say that I have been published by Oxford UP. Yay me. But is there still a market for academic encyclopedias in this day when undergrads must be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"magical religion","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/magical-religion.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":344,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=344","url_meta":{"origin":7405,"position":1},"title":"What makes a creepy movie\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 29, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"What makes a creepy movie creepy The Devil Rides Out, one of the classic Hammer Studios horror films, is supposed to be scary. It's based on a novel by occult-horror writer Dennis Wheatley and stars Christopher Lee (Saruman in Lord of the Rings). I watched it recently, and I learned\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13168,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13168","url_meta":{"origin":7405,"position":2},"title":"The Passing of Jim Lewis, Noted Scholar of New Religious Movements","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 24, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"When I was new to Pagan studies \u2014 actually, \"Pagan studies\" had not even coalesced as a field of study \u2014 Jim Lewis's edited volume Magical Religion and Modern Witchcraft (SUNY Press, 1996) was one of my go-to volumes. I had an essay in it, not something I am proud\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/magical-religion-modern-witchcraft.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/magical-religion-modern-witchcraft.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/12\/magical-religion-modern-witchcraft.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":8160,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8160","url_meta":{"origin":7405,"position":3},"title":"Kicked Back in Time","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 7, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I was contacted a couple of months ago by family members of\u00a0 the two defendants in a Wicca-related murder case. It was big news in the American Craft network((I prefer that word to \"community\"\u2014especially for that era.)) circa 1977\u201380. If you remember it, fine. If not, I am not going\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=soutrocknatub-20&l=am2&o=1&a=1450206948","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9799,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9799","url_meta":{"origin":7405,"position":4},"title":"Feeding My Little Archive to Bigger Ones","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 19, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Brilliant idea of the day: clean my desk. No, I don't mean just shove things to the edges and sweep up the crumbs, I mean uncover some mahogany! I spent the last two weeks of August crashing to meet a deadline for a special issue of the Journal of Religion\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"new religious movements\"","block_context":{"text":"new religious movements","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=new-religious-movements"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7386,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7386","url_meta":{"origin":7405,"position":5},"title":"A History of the Gods of Irish Myth","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 3, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Forthcoming from Princeton University Press, Ireland's Immortals: A History of the Gods of Irish Myth (2016), by Mark Williams. Think of the \"Finding a God\" and \"Finding a Goddess\" chapters of Ronald Hutton's Triumph of the Moon \u2014 but book-length, dealing with Irish material, and the product of numerous quests\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Ireland\"","block_context":{"text":"Ireland","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=ireland"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7405"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7410,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7405\/revisions\/7410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}