While not quite as newsworthy as a shaman finding the missing link, there were a few other notable stories dealing with the modern Pagan community.

A Druid has written an aria inspired by Harry Potter and is working on a full opera cycle based on the books.

“Tiffany Moon, who teaches piano and voice at a Rancho Bernardo home studio, is a wizard of ambition: She sees the Potter project as taking up ‘a good 10 to 15 years of my life’…Even as she pursues teaching, Moon’s still a student herself. She’s now training for the Druid priesthood, and is enrolling in a Ph.D. program in metaphysics.”

Kyle Anderson reports on Pagan fire-spinning group ‘Sphere of Prometheus’.

“Prometheus began when Bob ‘Sheridan’ Brummel, the group’s leader, observed KC’s Vesuvius spinning group at Columbia’s Earth Day and Pagan Pride Day. “The guys I was watching were spinning with streamers,” Brummel said. “The cross between dance and music, it was just something I wanted to do.” Brummel made his first poi, the tool used to spin, by attaching a tennis ball to a small length of rope. Brummel began spinning in the parking lot during breaks while working third-shift at the Tribune Publishing Company and attracted co-workers David ‘Tut’ Tutterrow and Tim Roberts. Four months later, about 15 members join Brummel at the Ozark Avalon Church of Nature near Boonville.”

The Sunday Times reports on Witchfest Scotland.

“After sipping mead from the horn and invoking the gods of the earth, moon, sun and the waves, an audience of several hundred people join them chanting: “Hail Clutha! Hail Clutha! Hail Clutha!” Holding it aloft, a former doctor ? a hulking bearded man known as DC ? implores the crowd to “enjoy your day and honour your gods as you do so”. You half expect a flash of lighting to strike the stage, but instead the motley group of druids, wiccans, heathens and pagans traipse quietly off and head for the River Clyde to cast away the mead. (In case you are wondering, Clutha is the goddess of the Clyde Valley, and the mead is a sacrifice. Obviously.) So begins Witchfest Scotland, the country’s biggest festival of witchcraft, sorcery, magic and all manner of new age mystery. In its fourth year, this extraordinary convocation has drawn together 600 fans of the occult from across the UK and beyond to gather in The Arches, on Argyle Street.”

Have a good Sunday!

Tags: Paganism