Pagan Community Notes: Patrick McCollum, Pagan Pride, Pagan Chants, and More!

Pagan Community Notes is a companion to my usual Pagan News of Note series, more focused on news originating from within the Pagan community. I want to reinforce the idea that what happens to and within our organizations, groups, and events is news, and news-worthy. My hope is that more individuals, especially those working within Pagan organizations, get into the habit of sharing their news with the world. So lets get started!

Patrick McCollum’s India Speech: On February 26th, Pagan chaplain and activist Patrick McCollum spoke at the International Conference on Spiritual Paradigm for Surmounting Global Management Crisis at the School of Management Sciences in Varanasi, India. McCollum shared a Pagan perspective toward resolving the questions raised at the conference, and his remarks were captured on video and recently posted to Youtube. You can read McCollum’s account of his India trip, here.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W_Ej71sjVc

Rachael Watcher, Public Information Officer at Covenant of the Goddess (COG), and a trustee of the North American Interfaith Network (NAIN), was also in India at the same time as Patrick McCollum, and gives an account of her trip  to attend a conference produced in part by the International Center for Cultural Studies. You may also be interested in my recent post about the Hindu-Pagan panel at PantheaCon. For more on Patrick McCollum’s work, check out his recent guest-post on the Pew Forum’s survey on religion in American prisons.

2011 Pagan Pride Day a Success: Every year between August and October dozens of local events are held worldwide to educate the public about modern Paganism, build local bonds in the community, and hold food drives to give something back. These events happen under the banner of Pagan Pride Day, an all-volunteer organization that has been coordinating the event since 1998. At the end of February the Pagan Pride Project sent out a press release breaking down the statistics of the previous year, declaring it a “huge success.”

“There were a total of 83 events on four continents: in the United States, we held 66 events, Canada held 8 events in 4 provinces, Latin America saw 6 events in 5 countries, and the European Union held 3 events. In total, 42,799 attended our events worldwide, which was less than 2010, but still much higher than 2009 and 2008. Pagan Pride Day events will continue to grow in 2012 and beyond. These celebrations are free to attend and are geared towards increasing public understanding and acceptance of members of our religion and bringing the Pagan community together.

Pagan Pride Days are also giving back to our communities. At our 2011 events, people gave 29,073 pounds of food for local shelters and food banks in the United States and around the world. People attending Pagan Pride Day events also donated blood for local blood banks, financial donations to the Humane Society, food pantries, the Red Cross, SPCA, Cystic Fibrosis and the Spiral Scouts. Never forgetting our animal friends, 340 pounds of pet food were collected along with pet supplies. Also, some events donated money to charities in their communities, totaling over $1,700.00, in lieu of donations of food and goods.”

The Board of Directors also thanked the local event coordinators, volunteers, and public sponsors for their support in making the 2011 events a success. Events like these destroy the notion that Pagans aren’t interested in giving back to their community, or in joining charitable efforts. While Pagan Pride Day is now almost taken for granted by the wider Pagan community, we should never forget the important on-the-ground work they do every year to change people’s conceptions. If you want to get involved, there are instructions here. In addition, several local Pagan Pride Days have Facebook pages and other resources, consult your local search engine for more details.

Good News for Fans of Pagan Chants: Ivo Dominguez Jr, author of the recently-released book “Casting Sacred Space: The Core of All Magickal Work”, and co-owner of Bell, Book, and Candle in Delaware, has restarted the classic website “Panpipe’s Pagan Chants,” an archive of Pagan chants to be used in ritual and celebrations.

“In the early days (1996) of the pagan internet explosion, I maintained a Pagan chants archive that has long gone to dust. It is now being revived a chant at a time. All the chants need to be re-recorded as they were originally done in a low fidelity Real Audio format. This was fine in the days of slow connections, but it will no longer do. The chants will now be available as MP3 files. I hope you enjoy them and if you are interested in adding your chants here, contact me. Whenever possible I will list authors and if it has been recorded by them.  Please buy their works if they are available. You may use any of the chants I have written for noncommercial purposes.”

So, if you’ve been recycling the same two or three chants during ritual, you now have an opportunity to broaden your group’s repertoire. If you find the service useful, and would like to see it grow, Ivo asks that folks make a donation to the New Alexandrian Library Project.

In Other News:

• PNC-Washington DC covers the recent Persephone’s Masquerade, an event that benefits the now-open Open Hearth Foundation community center. Quote: “Vice Chair of the OHF Sean Bennet mentioned that the foundation is currently living off a decade’s worth of savings and that consistent membership contributions are what’s really needed to make the center survive and thrive long-term.”
• The Pagans Tonight radio team, hosted at BlogTalkRadio, and sponsored by Witch School International, has added two new shows to their weekly lineup: Pagan Priestess (featuring Stephanie Neal, Janet Berres and Traci Logan Wood) and Betwixt and Between (featuring the Amazing Raynbow and Al).
• P. Sufenas Virius Lupus asks the important question: what to do with “new” gods? Chas Clifton has some additional thoughts.
• The latest Thelema Now! podcast rebroadcasts a panel from the 2012 SXSW Music Conference on magick and music(k) featuring Joshua Sharp, Andrew W.K., Erik Davis (author of “Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica”), and Alison Fensterstock. The panel was moderated by Howard Wuelfing.
• Finally, a reminder. International Pagan Coming Out Day (IPCOD) is coming May 2nd! Check out their Facebook page for the latest updates.

That’s all I have for now, have a great day! Happy Easter to my Christian friends.