This documentary film completed in 2011 will be shown on PBS tomorrow at 7 pm (Check your local PBS affiliate website for times or screening dates in your area). Back to the Garden is a film project that began in 1968, chronicling the “back to the earth” movement that was such closely related to the pagan revival. In 2006, the filmmaker, Kevin Tomlinson, looked in on the subjects from the original film to see what they were doing. The resulting... Read more

I am back from a lengthy hiatus, hope you’re still with me! I was away camping for two weeks at festivals (Sirius Rising and Summerfest at the Brushwood Folklore Center) and have been getting caught up, and caught up in, all kinds of new and exciting things in my life. Festival season was very relaxing and fun. There were some challenges as well, and I was forced more than once to ask myself, what on earth is this thing we... Read more

Honestly, I wasn’t expecting to like this very much. The fact that this free-spirited spitfire had to be a “princess” in order to appeal to audiences really rubbed me the wrong way. There is way too much “princess” branding aimed at little girls these days, and it’s annoying. It also seemed Pixar was having trouble figuring out how to market this: changing the title (It was originally called The Bear and the Bow; Brave seems like a faint echo of Braveheart,... Read more

This story has made the headlines today: A Mexican woman has been charged with gouging our her son’s eyes with her fingers during some kind of “ritual” or “ceremony” performed by an unknown group in Nezahualcoyotl, a suburb of Mexico City. Though no specific group or cult has been named yet, the media coverage is certainly suggesting some kind of occult connection, and several articles mentioned the “narcos-satanicos” killings of the 1980s including the infamous ‘Matamoros Cult’ murders in 1989, in... Read more

Perhaps few films in recent years have been the subjects of more anticipation than Robin Hardy’s THE WICKER TREE. The director (who helmed the cult horror classic THE WICKER MAN, now nearly four decades old) struggled for several years to obtain sufficient funding, and rejected several previous working titles (COWBOYS FOR CHRIST, THE MAY QUEEN and THE RIDING OF THE LADDIE) before settling on the one that conjured at least a ghost of the original. And though there are similarities,... Read more

Well, these stories have been making the rounds for years. But to have a respectable media outlet like the BBC report on it and quote a Lincolnshire horse owner babbling about Satan is starting to get ridiculous. “Nobody knows why someone would do something like this, but you can look on the internet and there are all these Satanic cults.” I’m sorry…there are satanic cults on the internet? Like, advertising themselves? And even if that was true, why must it be... Read more

Oh, you thought *I* conducted this interview myself? Hah, I wish! (Though I did email Mr. Hardy a few months ago and his reply was most gracious) I found two great interviews, actually! The first interview is on Dread Central, and the second is on Crave Online. So, in honor of The Wicker Tree‘s release on DVD and Bluray tomorrow (gee, that was fast, huh?),  here’s some words from the man who, with writer Anthony Shaffer, started it all in... Read more

Recent news stories have me convinced that we’re entering yet another satanic panic…while at the same time entering yet another occult revival. It may not seem odd for these similarly-themed events to occur simultaneously, but unfortunately for those of who are actual practitioners, scholars, or open-minded cultural observers familiar with new religious movements (including neo-paganism, modern pagan witchcraft, Wicca, druidry, Asatru, etc.) the vast majority of people reading about it won’t comprehend or even care about picayunish distinctions such as,... Read more