(Pagan ) News of Note
My semi-regular round-up of articles, essays, and opinions of note for discerning Pagans and Heathens.
A group of Pagans and other well-wishers gather in the UC Berkeley campus to celebrate the one month anniversary of three tree-sitters living in an oak tree.
“About 50 well-wishers turned out Saturday afternoon to commemorate three tree sitters’ monthlong perch in an oak tree just outside Memorial Stadium on the UC Berkeley campus. Part of a group called Save the Oaks, they say they will stay in the tree until the university agrees to abandon its plan to cut down 38 oaks to make way for a new athletic training facility…They chanted “Om,” someone began drumming and then it began: an ancient pagan ritual known as the spiral dance.”
Their legal request for an injunction is scheduled to be heard on Thursday.
Anna Kaplan of Recordnet profiles Rick Nafzinger, a convert to Hinduism, and leader of a local interfaith Goddess-worshipping group.
“Nafzinger leads the Circle of the Feminine Divine, a Stockton group that takes an interfaith approach to revering the feminine side of deities ranging from the Virgin Mary to the Hindu Goddess Radharani to the Wiccan Earth Goddess…Nafzinger is currently the chairman of the Interfaith Council of San Joaquin County, where he uses his experience with these different faiths to bring people in the community together.”
The article also states that he has “ordinations” in Wicca, Christianity, and Hinduism, but doesn’t mention exactly what traditions or groups he received these ordinations from. A little more checking on his credentials would have been nice.
The Italian police and the Vatican have created a new special forces unit to deal with the problem of Satanism in Italy!
“A specialist Italian police squad has been set up to combat a growing tide of Satanism sweeping the country. Vatican officials have become worried at the number of churches being desecrated by Satanists and there have been several grim murders linked to devil worship. As a result, church officials have given Italian police help to set up a special unit to deal with the phenomenon, named the Squadra Anti Sette (SAS) Anti Sect Squad…. officers… will go undercover to infiltrate the sects, the SAS units will work with psychologists. They will have help from Vatican experts on Satanism and a special freephone hotline has been set up to report occult activities.”
A Vatican official claims there are “8,000 Satanic sects across the country with more than 600,000 members”. I would love to see the hard data for that figure. It looks like Satanic panic is alive and well in Italy. Though, I can’t help but think this would make a great television show. Imagine a “Law and Order” but with priests instead of lawyers.
Guillermo del Toro, writer and director of “Pan’s Labyrnith” is still awesome.
“I love writers and artists who are concerned with the pagan as a form of knowing the subconscious…I’ve circled this theme all my life, with ‘Cronos’ with ‘Devil’s Backbone.’ And I felt that it was finally a time to be brave and try it, you know?”
Conservative Catholic Susan Beckworth continues her hunt for heretics within the Church and names the “Enneagram” and “Centering Prayer” as pagan/Satanic things of Witchcraft!
“Centering Prayer is neither Catholic nor prayer, yet it is offered at most retreat centers. Nowadays, most retreat centers can scarcely be called Catholic and are notorious for adopting New Age and other non-Catholic techniques and philosophies. The New Age practices offered at retreat centers are insidious, but remember, Satan thrives in subtlety…Tarot card reading and use of the Enneagram are witchcraft and purely demonic; yet most people do not even know that all of these “New Age” practices are entirely forbidden by God in the First Commandment.”
Clearly Catholics must burn the witches remain ever vigilant against these Satanic temptations.
Finally, speaking of Catholics and Satanic temptations, an Italian scholar is fed-up with the re-purposing of Mary Magdalene for “new age” groups and has written a stern book decrying the heretical notions.
“Mario Arturo Iannaccone, an Italian scholar whose previous works have touched on themes of Gnosticism and alleged Biblical conspiracies, reports that in modern times Mary Magdalene – depicted in the Gospel as a repentant sinner and follower of Christ – has emerged in a new light as the representative of ‘the sacred feminine and a spirituality of the goddess.’ This radically altered view of the Christian saint…has been promoted by pagan influences including Wicca and New Age spirituality, the book says.”
No doubt Iannaccone hopes that his book will inspire Catholics to burn the witches remain ever vigilant against such heretical notions of Mary Magdalene.
That is all I have for now, have a good day!
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