My semi-regular round-up of articles, essays, and opinions of note for discerning Pagans and Heathens.

Sun News columnist Issac Bailey asks a woman who has “studied” (whatever that means in this day and age) Wicca “can you live a moral life if you don’t believe in God?”

“I guess the reason that people believe that there can be no objective morality without God is due to the fact that they were raised to believe that they needed some type of authority figure to punish them or reward them for doing what is right or wrong. Have morals changed? Of course they have, but this procedure didn’t just change at the drop of the hat. It took a lot of trial and error to figure out what is right and wrong as we have all evolved in society. Someone didn’t just wake up one day and realize that murder is immoral.”

Along with the spiritual seeker, an atheist was also interviewed. This column is meant to be the “balance” for the previous two columns in which the same question was posed to a fundamentalist Christian.

A “broomsquire” in Medford, New Jersey is servicing more than dirty floors.

“At the art show, he patiently wound wire around sorghum, a big grass that looks like corn but grows no ears. He used a machine he invented to do the binding. The creations could easily pass for a prop in the next Harry Potter movie. Moyer, 72, a retired biology professor from Burlington County College, said he also sells several a year to local followers of Wicca, a form of witchcraft. He said this with a straight face. He calls it art you can use.”

Amazing he was able to keep a “straight face”, what with all those kooky Wiccan customers of his.

Acclaimed comics writer Brian Wood has announced his next writing project with DC Comics.

“At his spotlight panel at WizardWorld: Chicago, creator Brian Wood announced his newest project – an ongoing Vertigo series about Vikings entitled Northlanders…the series, which will be set roughly around 900 AD, will examine life in a time of transition, with the Vikings utterly changing the way of life in Britain, Christianity in it’s ascendancy, as well as unease in Europe and the Middle East.”

Heathen (and Viking loving) comic fans rejoice!

PopMatters reviews an interesting sounding book that focuses on the year 1973 as the birth of post-sixties America, “1973 Nervous Breakdown: Watergate, Warhol, and the Birth of Post-Sixties America”.

“Killen positing 1973 as the “end of the ’60s” and the beginning of the postmodern era is an original and provocative claim. According to Killen, 1973 is the year when ’60s idealism and activism has officially lapsed into widespread paranoia, conspiracy theory, occultism, and obsessive celebrity culture.”

This book may make an interesting companion to Chas Clifton’s “Her Hidden Children” which deals quite a bit with the rise of modern Paganism in the ’70s.

In a final note, Fritz Jung, co-founder and webmaster of The Witches’ Voice (the biggest and most-visited Pagan site) talks about current trends on the Pagan web.

“Quick observations: Many of the bigger ‘community’ sites have gone dead or disappeared over the past couple of years – Countless Personal Blogs, message boards and yahoo groups continue to see most of the Pagan Net traffic. – RSS feeds continue to be big – the combined Witchvox and Wren’s Nest rss feeds see over a quarter of a million grabs/calls a week. Initial testing, reveals that our rss feeds do not work with IE7 beta – We will put some work into that. – Pagan Audio/Podcast sites are also on the rise. – Pagan retailing continues to suffer from the ‘more vendors than customers’ reality of the past 4 years – Pagan ‘shops’ have been ‘dropping like flies’ of late – leaving many a customer NOT holding the bag, they paid for – Be careful with whom you give your money to.”

Looks like Pagan blogs and other personalized media are replacing the clunky ‘community’ sites that ruled some years back. The days when a Pagan site tries to be all things to all people may be over.

That is all I have for now, have a good day!

Tags: Paganism