After the 2010 Haitian earthquake there was quite a bit of attention on the religion of Vodou, though largely that attention was not positive. Immediately after the quake there were triumphalist smears from figures like Pat Robertson, and allegations that it was Vodou that held Haitians back from progress. While there were emerging “Vodou voices” rising up in defense of the religion, most notably Max Beauvoir, but more often than not the centrality of Vodou to many Haitians was often ignored. So it is a breath of fresh air to read Silvana Ordonez’s piece on Vodou among Florida’s Haitian-American community for the Miami Herald, talking about how the faith brought solace and re-connection after tragedy struck.

“A Voodoo ceremony makes you feel as light as a feather,” explained [Mambo Ingrid] Llera. “That’s where we go for therapy. We don’t go to the doctor, we go to Voodoo.” In ritual ceremonies, which typically last from several hours to several days, Voodoo practitioners pray, sing and dance to the rhythm of drums. “A wonderful combination to get connected with the unknown world, which is the spiritual world,” she added. “That’s where we release it all and find strength.” Since the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake, more Haitians in South Florida have reconnected with Voodoo, according to local practitioners. “They have no choice, but to go back to their roots. It is registered in their DNA, this is who they are, this is where they feel more comfortable, this is where they can forget things,” said Llera. Llera has also witnessed a interesting phenomenon: a wave of young Haitian-Americans joining the religion of their ancestors.”

There’s been a quiet trend of Haitian-Americans re-embracing Vodou for years now, but its been only sporadically covered by journalists. These younger converts seem more willing to speak out about their faith, and a show willingness to fight popular misconceptions.

“Gone, for most, is the shame that used to be associated with the stigmatized religion. Unlike some of their parents who practiced Vodou in secrecy, the newcomers to the religion invite friends to Vodou ceremonies, have altars in their homes and work to shatter the stereotypes.”

While still small, there seems to be a growing number of Haitian Vodou practitioners who are raising their public profiles. For instance, last year saw the production of a Canadian documentary entitled “Real Voodoo” which looks at the effects of anti-Vodou rhetoric in Haiti, and interviews Haitian-Canadian practitioners like La Belle Deesse.

“Based on the people seen in this film, those who practice voodoo seem to be more likeable, more  relaxed, happier in their lives and more open-minded toward others and their beliefs, than the people who rail against it.”

Haitian Vodou in its homeland faces immense challenges, from anti-Vodou violence, to aggressive proselytism by Christian groups receiving federal funding from our government. At the same time, Vodou tourism is held up as a potential economic goldmine for a Haiti that wants to rebuild itself. Lost in this push-pull is the lives of Vodouisants worldwide, and how their faith nourishes and sustains them. As the Haitian diaspora grows, and Haitian Vodou becomes a point of pride within those communities, we could see a new paradigm for this faith, how it is received by non-initiates, and how these practitioners interact with their motherland. It is far too easy to lose sight of how Vodou serves its adherents in the lofty geopolitical and cultural discussions about Haiti and its future, forgetting that Vodou is a source of solace and enrichment. Silvana Ordonez’s article is a welcome corrective to that trend.

On Wednesday the Supreme Court of British Columbia upheld Canada’s law banning the practice of polygamy (multiple-partner marriages). This legal battle was somewhat unique in that a legal alliance of fundamentalist Mormons and a polyamory advocacy group (the CPAA) stood together to challenge the law. In addition, Pagan families and clergy in Canada have filed affidavits of support in the decriminalization case there. The reason for this somewhat unlikely fellowship was made clear during the trial when the B.C. Attorney General’s office made very clear that polyamorous families would be treated like polygamous families in the eyes of the law.

“When multi-partner, conjugal relationships are like “duplicative marriages,” Jones said they are criminal regardless of whether the individuals are heterosexual, gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered.Although he said ‘duplicative marriage’ need not be “exhaustively defined in advance,” Jones said all conjugal relationships involving more than two people are criminal if they go beyond “mere cohabitation” and have some form of imposed consequences related to entering or remaining in the relationship.”

However, while Chief Justice Robert Bauman upheld the law, he did seem to carve out exceptions for informal multiple-partner couplings, and provided a “road-map” for future challenges.

Robert Wickett, the lawyer for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the polygamous community in Bountiful, said the B.C. Supreme Court decision actually offers a “road map” for would-be polygamists on how to avoid prosecution. [...]  “[Judge Bauman] lays out for prosecutors and defendants what is lawful and not lawful,” Mr. Wickett said. “He has not said that three people living together is unlawful, but only [that] three people living together in a form of ‘marriage’ that had a sanctioning event or a religious ceremony. And so people looking at that definition, then, you could imagine how they [could] structure their affairs to stay within his definition.”

The Canadian Polyamory Advocacy Association says it is “relieved” at the exceptions in the ruling, but points out that polyamorous couples who have had a “sanctioning event or religious ceremony” could still be targeted by the polygamy law.

“Many polyamorous women, as well as men, have multiple partners, and polyamorists think men and women have equal freedom to define their relationships. The CPAA says the decision will relieve most polyamorists but, alarmingly, will harm those who make certain formal commitments. “The decision still criminalizes a segment of the polyamorous community if they have a marriage ceremony,” said Zoe Duff, a CPAA director and spokesperson. Duff also represents one of the five polyamorous families who provided evidence to the court. The decision clarifies that she is living legally with her two male partners.”

Considering how many Canadian Pagan polyamorous families have had public marriage/handfasting ceremonies this interpretation of the law places them on the same legal footing as a polygamous Mormon (or Muslim) household. This, in essence, forces consensual multi-partner arrangements to stay in the closet, and avoid anything that might be interpreted by a “sanctioning” event within their community. Thus, monogamy as a relationship structure is privileged above all others, even though the judge in this case acknowledges that this arrangement limits personal autonomy and religious freedom. As Jonathan Korman told me in my last piece on Paganism and polyamory, consensual multiple-partner arrangements present a fundamental challenge to the status quo that isn’t so easily swept under the rug.

“Polyamory constitutes a direct confrontation with questions about how we define our relationships. It says that we should not accept that our loving relationships must conform to a single standard. From that rejection of the cookie-cutter relationship standard follows hard personal and cultural questions about how we want relationships to work. Cultural conservatives find these questions frightening; without the standards they know and recognize, they fear that we would have no ethical standards at all. But many other people feel that the conception of marriage offered to them does not serve their needs but cannot imagine alternatives. Perhaps same-sex marriage has opened the door to more people thinking about these questions, creating an opportunity for a broader cultural conversation about the cultural and legal implications of polyamorous families. We may see a growing fascination with poly families coming, as people respond to them as a way to talk about the questions they encounter in their own relationships.”

This ruling seems to be something of a punt by Chief Justice Robert Bauman, all but acknowledging that this won’t be the end of the matter in his decision, while trying his best to create an understanding of the polygamy law that will only affect “harmful” manifestations of the practice. But his reliance on ceremony as a threshold for illegality creates more problems than it does solutions, and I have little doubt that we will see this issue back in the courts once again sometime soon.

Our modern society is both fascinated and repulsed by the practice of polygamy (multiple-partner marriages), particularly the practices of fundamentalist Mormons, who allow polygyny (one husband, many wives), and who have been given both sympathetic (Big Love, Sister Wives) and critical (any number of documentaries and news reports) treatment by mainstream media. While the custom of monogamy has been called “ridiculous” by some, and perhaps even unnatural by others, non-monogamous relationships have been generally been portrayed as either lurid fantasy, inherently abusive, or yet another step on a slippery slope towards cultural ruin (particularly within the context of the same-sex marriage debate). Recently, Mormon polygamists have been fighting to decriminalize what they see as a consensual relationship model, arguing that allegations of abuse within these structures should be dealt with separately from the issue of multiple-marriage. In Canada a high-profile decriminalization case is currently before the British Columbia Supreme Court, and now the multiple-partner family behind  Sister Wives has filed suit to challenge Utah’s law against bigamy.

“Attorney Jonathan Turley told the Associated Press that he believes the family’s case represents the strongest challenge to the criminalization of polygamy ever filed in federal courts. It builds on a 2003 case in which the Supreme Court struck down Texas’ sodomy laws as a violation of privacy. “We only wish to live our private lives according to our beliefs,” Brown said in the attorney’s statement.”

As this issue over polygamy, and whether or not it should be decriminalized, heats up, some Pagans are wondering how these developments will affect our interconnected communities, and whether our general acceptance of non-monogamous relationship models will cause reverberations we can’t predict. While polygamy is not a common practice within contemporary Pagan religions, polyamorous groups can often be found. Polyamory is a consensual multiple-partner relationship model that rejects the patriarchal, and sometimes abusive, forms of traditional polygamy that most people envision (polyamory widely values transparency and honesty, along with what’s known as “compersion”). Several prominent Pagans are polyamorous, including Oberon and Morning Glory Zell, Raven Kaldera (author of “Pagan Polyamory”), Phaedra Bonewits, and her late husband, the author Isaac Bonewits. Around 30% of poly families identify as Pagan according to one survey conducted in 2002. So as polyamory gets drawn into the polygamy decriminalization battles, it seems likely that poly Pagans will play a role, whether chosen or not. Already, Pagan families and clergy in Canada have filed affidavits of support in the decriminalization case there, and Craig Jones, lead attorney for the B.C. Attorney General’s office, made very clear that polyamorous families would be treated like polygamous families in the eyes of the law.

“When multi-partner, conjugal relationships are like “duplicative marriages,” Jones said they are criminal regardless of whether the individuals are heterosexual, gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered. Although he said ‘duplicative marriage’ need not be “exhaustively defined in advance,” Jones said all conjugal relationships involving more than two people are criminal if they go beyond “mere cohabitation” and have some form of imposed consequences related to entering or remaining in the relationship.”

In talking with several polyamorous Pagan individuals for this article I found some apprehension and mixed emotions about being seen as allied with polygamous Mormon groups. While some, like Natalie Smith, think that if “people on the ‘outside’ were to see two opposite groups like Mormons and Pagans working side-by-side towards a common goal, it is more likely to help someone think.” Others, like Jonathan Korman, feel conflicted about making common cause with polygamists.

“I can conceive of legal efforts which serve both groups’ interests, but I have difficulty imagining it politically. The movements have different cultural aims and have different relationships with the society at large. People in each movement tend to find the practices of the other distasteful, making any alliance fraught. Both groups would hesitate to focus only on tactics which support both groups. Both groups may fear that it will compromise their efforts if the public foresees benefits to the other group.”

That said, all the polyamorous Pagans I talked to supported decriminalization, and were in favor of creating a legal framework for legal multiple-partner marriages. Storm Faerywolf, an initiate of the Feri tradition of Witchcraft, noted that “adult individuals should have the right to enter into whatever contracts they choose,” while Pagan podcaster and metaphysical shop manager Devin Hunter emphasized that “in a perfect world this would not even be a question. The rights of a minority group should never be in the hands of the majority. Plural marriages should absolutely be legal within the system, and at the very least it should become decriminalized.” While none of the individuals I talked to held much credence with the slippery slope arguments put forward by figures like Archbishop Timothy Dolan, one respondent, David Shorey, did point out that the “dominant paradigm still revolves around a polar perspective,” and “those who have adopted the polar perspective will see two men or two women fitting into that.” In short, any relationship that exceeds two partners breaks the mold many are comfortable with.

Shorey’s musings on the “polar perspective” seems to tie into some further comments made by Korman, who broached the question of if this issue of multiple-partner marriages touches on a much larger question of the current legal limitations in defining relationship models outside what some may be accustomed to.

“The law currently supports a very limited vocabulary of personal relationships with enforced rights and obligations. We have legal rules for blood relations, for adoptive parents, and for married couples, but almost no other legal support for personal relationships. I believe that many people sense that this gives us too limited a vocabulary for dealing with the complexity of people’s lives but lack a framework for thinking about it. Many people who reach for same-sex civil unions as a compromise may feel open to more sophisticated ways of thinking about how the law addresses our relationships.

Polyamory constitutes a direct confrontation with questions about how we define our relationships. It says that we should not accept that our loving relationships must conform to a single standard. From that rejection of the cookie-cutter relationship standard follows hard personal and cultural questions about how we want relationships to work. Cultural conservatives find these questions frightening; without the standards they know and recognize, they fear that we would have no ethical standards at all. But many other people feel that the conception of marriage offered to them does not serve their needs but cannot imagine alternatives. Perhaps same-sex marriage has opened the door to more people thinking about these questions, creating an opportunity for a broader cultural conversation about the cultural and legal implications of polyamorous families. We may see a growing fascination with poly families coming, as people respond to them as a way to talk about the questions they encounter in their own relationships.”

As this conversation moves forward, can polyamorous Pagans bring more complexity, nuance, and new ideas to the table? So far, the lion’s share of attention has been on contrasting monogamy with abusive forms of polygamy, but shouldn’t there be room to consider that there are other models of multiple-partner families, and that blanket laws against polygamy also impact their lives as well? In defining polyamory, the poly Pagans I talked to described it as “the admission that honesty is more important than monogamy, “ that “each individual member among the relationship shares in responsibility equally,” and is “focused on the individual and their ability to have mutiple loving relationships.” This seems a far cry from the abusive compound narrative often presented when talk of decriminalizing polygamy comes up, and should not be ignored as this debate continues to gain attention.

Whether Pagans wish it or not, the coming polygamy decriminalization fight will have ramifications that will need to be addressed. Many Pagan clergy members bless multiple-partner marriages, many polyamorous families are Pagan, and in Canada, it has been made clear that distinctions between polygamy and polyamory won’t be recognized should the relationships evolve beyond mere “cohabitation.” While the Utah “Sister Wives” case may be something that Pagan communities in the United States can largely avoid, that is no promise the issue will remain dormant, especially if the Canada legal case ends up in the Canadian Supreme Court and results in polygamy being decriminalized. Many of the polyamorous Pagans I talked to said that the time for more vocal activism on this issue was now, for Devin Hunter “the time has come to become even more vocal, “ while Natalie Smith, when asked about being vocal, said that “the road to equality lies through the fields of visibility.” The question is whether Pagan leaders, clergy, and organizations will be willing or able to join them on that road.

At the end of April a Colville, Washington man and his 14-year-old stepdaughter were found dead, the seeming results of a murder-suicide or mutual suicide pact. The two admitted in letters left behind that they were in love, and much was made of the fact that both allegedly claimed to be adherents of Wicca.

“Ann Lykke, 36, said she found letters after the two disappeared that indicated they were having a romantic relationship. ”I didn’t believe it until I found the proof when she was gone,” Ann Lykke said in a brief telephone interview Thursday from Colville. Lykke said her husband and daughter practiced the Wicca religion, and shot themselves because they believed they would spend the afterlife together. Lykke, a hypnotherapist, said she is a Christian.”

At this point we know almost nothing about the two, what their beliefs actually were, or what exactly happened that led to their deaths. There is certainly no teaching within Wicca advocating, or even mentioning, the benefits of suicide. The investigation into what happened is ongoing. However, none of that stopped the Canadian-based National Post from highlighting a truly offensive and grotesquely distorted anti-Pagan and anti-New Age screed published by MercatorNet that uses these deaths as a bludgeon to paint these belief systems in a negative light.

“The recent case of an apparent double suicide in Washington state by an English man and his 14-year-old stepdaughter is a stark reminder of the risks involved in neo-pagan worship and certain New Age practices. The pair were involved in a romantic relationship and both were Wiccans. Their Christian wife and mother, the real victim of this horrifying incident, believes they took their lives in the hope of spending eternity together. Wicca is a revival of pagan beliefs and rituals which emerge in the 1950s and 60s. It does not endorse murder, suicide or underage sex, though it does list ritual sex as a “magickal practice”. It could be argued, not without reason, that the ill-fated pair were mentally ill. But it would be wrong to conclude that their practice of Wicca was merely incidental to their actions.”

This offensive attack was written by Sue Alexander-Barnes, a Catholic convert who admits to spending a “couple years” exploring “Eastern and New Age religions.” Like many converts, she has a zeal that seemingly blinds her to the massive planks and logs within her own faith tradition. Hilariously, MercatorNet claims to be above the political fray, that they “respond with logic and evidence” and “do our best to be civil and courteous.” Yet, these ideals don’t seem to stop them from publishing an article that positively quotes a Christian scholar who calls the New Age movement a “spiritual version of AIDS,” ironically grabbing the quote from an article that debunks its fear-mongering.

I could stoop to their level and talk about the massive problems the Catholic church has with sexual abuse, despite its (allegedly) theoretically superior ethical framework. But instead let me point out why I feel Sue Alexander-Barnes has done us an injustice.

1. She provides no evidence that Wicca condones, encourages, or  accepts murder, suicide, or underage sex. In fact, she even admits this point in the article.
2. She provides no evidence that the fact of some Wiccans consensually engaging in “ritual sex” in any way promotes illegal or harmful acts. She simply says it “could be argued,” but anything “could be argued,” I could argue that the author’s lifestyle will lead to horrible things but I wouldn’t be right simply because I’m capable of arguing it.
3. She wrongly conflates New Age and New Thought belief systems with modern Paganism. This is a common rookie mistake (perhaps she should read some academic material that doesn’t come from the Vatican). There may be overlap on certain topics, and some Pagans may exist within both cultures, but they are very different and very separate movements. The fact that she veers so quickly from Wicca to The Secret undermines any real argument she may have had against the religion. It would be like me criticizing Catholicism by invoking the New Apostolic Reformation.
4. By wrongly conflating the New Age movement with modern Pagan religions she makes sweeping statements that have no foundation in fact. To apply the claim that Pagans have “little time for reason, science or technology,” for instance, shows a massive misunderstanding of our faiths, which largely embrace modern technology and scientific advances.
5. She cites no credible evidence for any of her claims against us. The only Wiccan document she cites is the 1974 American Council of Witches’ ”Principles of Wiccan Belief” to supposedly bolster her assertion that we “encourage the cult of the self” (which then leads to murder-suicides). Yet that very document consistently undermines the idea of a “cult of self.”

In short, it’s a hit-piece, and a sloppy one at that. If that’s the route MercatorNet wants to go down, fine, but it’s sad that a supposedly mainstream journalistic outlet like the National Post would promote it at their religion blog. Using a tragedy in this manner undermines the credibility of both outlets, ensuring that we should not put any weight into their views regarding modern Paganism, or indeed any topic dealing with non-mainstream permutations of faith or belief.

Today is Easter/Pasha/Resurrection Sunday, when it is said that Jesus rose from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion. Rather than give a barrage of “how pagan is Easter” type stories, I thought I’d leave you with a few non-Easter related links to look over today when you’re not busy finding eggs, eating candy, or dressing up like a witch.

Easter Witches in Sweden.

The Ganges in New York: The New York Times reports on how Hindus near Jamaica Bay in Queens, New York have turned the body of water into a local Ganges, a place to leave offerings for a variety of rituals. The problem is that the large number of offerings are disturbing the local habitat and creating an eyesore for park officials.

“We call it the Ganges,” one pilgrim, Madan Padarat, said as he finished his prayers. “She takes away your sickness, your pain, your suffering.” But to the park rangers who patrol the beach, the holy waters are a fragile habitat, the offerings are trash and the littered shores are a federal preserve that must be kept clean for picnickers, fishermen and kayakers. Unlike the Ganges, they say, the enclosed bay does not sweep the refuse away. The result is a standoff between two camps that regard the site as sacrosanct for very different reasons, and have spent years in a quiet tug of war between ancient traditions and modern regulations. Strenuous diplomacy on both sides has helped, but only to a point. “I can’t stop the people and say, ‘You can’t come to the water and make offerings,’ ” said Pandit Chunelall Narine, the priest at a thriving Ozone Park temple, Shri Trimurti Bhavan, who sometimes performs services by the bay. “We are at a dead end right now.”

The article does a good job of capturing the tensions as both sides try to find a workable compromise. I feel that as religions that engage directly with nature grow these tensions will continue. I anticipate that this will not be the last story I read about religious groups and law enforcement confronting how offerings impact a particular area.

A Queer Theology: In his latest Patheos.com column, P. Sufenas Virius Lupus confronts the “queerness” of theology within modern Paganism.

“I mentioned in an earlier article in this column that some modern Pagans have suggested that theology doesn’t really have a place in modern Paganism, and that Paganism as a religion isn’t really appropriate to the concerns of theology.  It was mentioned on that earlier occasion, though, that ancient Pagans in Greece and Rome invented most of the vocabulary of theology—including the term itself. The reservations of some modern Pagans on theology are understandable, and the ways in which Christianity has dominated the discourse on theology for the past several millennia are certainly a concern and something of which any Pagans actively engaged in theological work should be aware. Nonetheless, it is an area that is not only historically relevant to Paganism and polytheism, but one that is quite necessary to confront for modern Pagans.”

As always, Lupus is thoughtful an well-worth reading. Be sure to also check out his wonderful personal blog.

Who Gets Their Religious Freedom Protected: There’s a general election being held in Canada on May 2nd after the conservative government collapsed in a no confidence vote. It is in this context that Canadian Pagan and philosopher Brendan Myers looks at Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s plan to create an Office of Religious Freedom, and wonders whose freedoms it will work to protect.

“…given the Christian fundamentalism that dwells in the Reform Party’s agenda (pardon me, the Conservative Party’s agenda), therefore you can bet that this office will almost certainly not be used to help voudouisants in Africa, Tibetan Buddhists in China, Jews in Palestine or Muslims in Israel, or for that matter any religion at all which is not Christian. The only exceptions, the only non-Christian religions which this office might support in other countries, would be religious communities that are wealthy and well-organized enough in Canada to pressure the government to help their co-religionists in other countries.”

It seems that conservative Christian outlook in Canada isn’t too dissimilar from their brethren in the United States.

That’s all I have for now, have a happy Sunday, no matter what your activities or beliefs.

The always-informative Religion Clause blog points to a Vancouver Sun article about closing arguments in the B.C. Supreme Court case concerning Canada’s law banning the practice of polygamy. I’ve taken an active interest in this case because Pagan families and clergy in Canada had been filing affidavits in support of decriminalizing the law under the assumption that it affects polyamorous families in addition to the stereotypical fundamentalist Mormon groups. Indeed, the Canadian Polyamory Advocacy Association has sought clarification for some time as to whether governmental defenders of the anti-polygamy statutes  think polyamory falls under their definition of polygamy.

“The CPAA wants to know if polyamorists will be caught under Section 293 should it be determined that the section is constitutional. CPAA lawyer John Ince told Bauman the attorneys general for Canada and BC have not delineated what their thinking is on the polyamorists.”

However, the Canadian and B.C. attorneys general have been tight-lipped on the subject, until now. In his closing remarks, Craig Jones, lead attorney for the B.C. Attorney General’s office, made very clear that polyamorous families would be treated like polygamous families in the eyes of the law.

“When multi-partner, conjugal relationships are like “duplicative marriages,” Jones said they are criminal regardless of whether the individuals are heterosexual, gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered. Although he said ‘duplicative marriage’ need not be “exhaustively defined in advance,” Jones said all conjugal relationships involving more than two people are criminal if they go beyond “mere cohabitation” and have some form of imposed consequences related to entering or remaining in the relationship.”

So now we know the true stakes in this decriminalization effort, and very likely why they kept this viewpoint under wraps until the very end. They aren’t simply seeking to crack down on abusive forms of polygamy, they see all “duplicative marriages” as criminal and potentially open for prosecution. Never mind that polyamory isn’t the same as polygamy, isn’t patriarchal, isn’t intergenerationally normalized, and isn’t restricted by gender pairing or sexual orientation.

“This law is not just about people living in Bountiful, British Columbia as the media and the Attorneys General would have us all believe.  This law impacts many many people who have loving healthy families and live right next door to us.  This law would break up families who are doing no wrong and just dare to love and build solid healthy empowering relationships in a different manner than perhaps you do.  This law impacts our rights and paints us with a wide brush that is both terribly unfair and terribly inaccurate.” – Dear Polly Amorie

If you think that since you’re not Mormon, you’d never get prosecuted under the polygamy law, think again. Canada has had no seeming qualms charging people with antiquated laws against “pretending” to practice witchcraft, so tacking on a polygamy charge when you’re already under arrest for something else isn’t out of the question. The failure to end criminalization of polygamy could have far-reaching impacts on Canadian Pagan poly families and Pagan clergy willing to perform multiple-partner ceremonies. However, even if this current effort at decriminalization fails, I think the defense made a tactical error by lumping all “duplicative marriages” together. This may create more outrage, new activists, and new trials now that the scope of the law is interpreted as expanding beyond a fundamentalist Mormon context.

Closing arguments continue through this week. You can see live-streaming of the trial, here. Hundreds of transcripts and documents from the trial are available online. I’ll update you once I have more.

There are lots of articles and essays of interest to modern Pagans out there, sometimes more than I can write about in-depth in any given week. So The Wild Hunt must unleash the hounds in order to round them all up. Before I begin, let me just remind everyone that the Pagan Japan Relief project, an initiative to raise 30,000 dollars for Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières is just over 3,000 dollars from its final goal! That the Pagan community has been able to collectively raise nearly 27,000 dollars already is a monumental achievement, but lets do a final push, spread the word, and prove that serious fundraising for worthy causes can happen among our interconnected communities. For more background on this initiative, and why it’s important, check out Peter Dybing’s blog.

Now then, unleash the hounds!

• As if to underscore the recently released Australian Human Rights Commission survey on religion, which found that there is pervasive distrust of modern Pagans in that country, the Ballan Autumn Festival has banned a vendor’s wares under a clause forbidding “products or services relating to the occult, black magic or devil worship”. The festival secretary says the matter is resolved, but the Wombat Regional Arts Network says it’ll withdraw support until the regulations are reviewed.
• The New York Review of Books (paywall link) tackles “The Last Pagans of Rome” by Alan Cameron, a book that seeks to prove that Western paganism went out with a “whimper,” and that “the acceptance of classical literature, learning, and art by most elite Christians may actually have helped the last reluctant pagans to finally abandon the old cults and adopt Christianity.” This sounds like a book that tries to dismantle the idea of survivals, and resistance, that have grown up around this period. I’ll have to get my hands on it once the price ($85) comes down a bit.
• As the James Arthur Ray “death lodge” trial drags on, and is estimated to hear testimony well into June, court proceedings have drawn a wide variety of spectators. “A mix of family members of Ray and the victims, American Indians who have long valued the sweat lodge tradition and others wondering about the lure of Ray’s teachings” according to the Associated Press. With testimony about Ray’s business practices scheduled soon, expect that interest to only ramp up.
• Why did police in Queens confiscate colored powder from Hindus celebrating Holi? Parade organizer Vishnu Mahadeo said “they walked around and started grabbing from anyone they saw [...] they said the law said you can’t have powder.” Hindus in Richmond Hill have been holding this parade for 25 years without incident. They can’t still be scared of Anthrax, can they?
• PNC-Minnesota has just posted part 4 in their video series on creating a community Sacred Space. Previous segments of this series can be seen here: Part 1 (Getting started), Part 2 (Challenges and Construction), Part 3 (Funding).
• CNN’s Belief Blog rounds up various faith perspectives regarding the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and while I’m heartened that some Buddhist voices were incorporated, I’m disappointed that Shinto was not represented. Religion News Service coverage is still, sadly, overly focused on the Christian experience within Japan. It’s a sad commentary when the Baptist Press has more coverage of Shinto than mainstream news outlets.
• The B.C. Civil Liberties Association is siding with polygamists and polyamorists in the controversial case to decriminalize the practice of polygamy in Canada. Monique Pongracic-Speier, lawyer for the BCCLA says that “this law is a Victorian statute. It is time for it to be relegated to the scrap heap of history.” For my full coverage of this case, and why it’s important to modern Pagans, click here.
• Did you know that Witchcraft and black magic ruined Dave Mustaine of Megadeath’s life? True story. “It wasn’t that I was a bad guy or that I had a big mouth, it was that I got into witchcraft and black magic and it ruined my life.” See? So remember kids, don’t mess with Witchcraft of black magic, or you might end up like Dave Mustaine.
• Yoruba leaders in Nigeria are warning against the extinction of their culture and traditions. At a recent book launch and presentation Chief Mathew Ogedengbe noted that “we have allowed foreign languages, cultures and traditions to rule us.” Participants in the discussion called for the teaching of vernacular language in schools, and criticized the Nigerian film industry, which often demonizes traditional beliefs and practices.
• The new evidentiary hearing in the West Memphis Three case is scheduled to begin on December 5th. The WM3 (Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jesse Misskelley Jr.) have long been considered by many to be victims of panic-fueled miscarriage of justice, and winning the right to new evidentiary hearings provides them their best chance yet of overturning the convictions.
• The next Parliament of the World’s Religions will be held at Brussels in 2014.
• Congratulations to P. Sufenas Virius Lupus on his new Patheos.com column “Queer I Stand!”.

That’s it for now! Feel free to discuss any of these links in the comments, some of these I may expand into longer posts as needed.