Pagan & Shinto News: Japan’s Coming Of Age Day Sees Shifts Following Lowered Age Of Adulthood

Top stories of the week in Paganism and Shinto:

Japan’s Coming of Age Day sees shifts following lowered age of adulthood
Archaeologists in Greece have identified the Temple of Poseidon in Samikon
UK: Archaeologist to help share the secrets of the world’s largest stone circle

Pagan News

‘Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches’ consulted witchcraft experts to ensure it was accurate
Showbiz CheatSheet
Anne Rice’s Mayfair Witches introduces Rowan Fielding, a neurosurgeon who discovers her family legacy in a different sort of craft. To make sure that witchcraft was accurate, the show’s creators also hired consultants…

Ireland: Laois craft group revives pagan goddess Brigid’s scarf tradition
Laois Live
In perfect timing ahead of the very first St Brigid’s Day bank holiday in Ireland, a Laois group has revived an ancient craft tradition going back to pre Christian times…

US: Witches urge alternatives to sage amid concern about appropriation, overharvesting
The Washington Post*
Burning white sage to cleanse a person or space or to attract positive energy has become trendy in recent years, with sage bundles appearing in starter witch kits and even luxury grocery stores…

US: Pagan group seeks public understanding
Yahoo / Tahlequah Daily Press
A new group that meets at the Tahlequah Public Library offers a safe and supportive place for those practicing paganism…

UK: Missing Mother Earth goddess statue is returned to shop
Wellington Weekly News
The power of social media was this week credited with making it a happy New Year for one Wellington shop owner when an item which had gone missing from the shelves was anonymously returned…

Paganism in a post-Christian world
Patheos Pagan (John Beckett)
Religion is our collective wisdom as to how we form and maintain relationships with our Gods, our ancestors, Nature and the spirits of Nature, and our fellow humans…

How witches are fleecing people out of hundreds of pounds with bogus ‘spells’
Mail Online
Self-proclaimed witches, voodoo practitioners and healers are conning ‘desperate’ people out of hundreds of pounds by promising to cure problems like impotency, obesity and even cancer with bogus spells…

Malanka: The pagan-rooted Ukrainian new year festival
The Free Press Journal
The folk holiday that draws on pagan folk tales and marks the new year according to the Julian calendar falls on January 13…

Shinto News

Japan’s Coming of Age Day sees shifts following lowered age of adulthood
The Japan Times*
Following the lowering of the legal age of adulthood to 18 last April, more municipalities have changed the name of ceremonies traditionally held for 20-year-olds on Coming of Age Day, which this year fell on Monday…

Baseball player wins shrine dash to be ‘luckiest man of the year’
The Asahi Shimbun
A university baseball player became one of the “luckiest men of the year” after winning the traditional New Year’s race at a shrine here after a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic…

Torches ‘ward off evil’ at Fukuoka Pref. shrine festival
The Mainichi
A fire festival with over 1,600 years of history was held at a shrine in this west Japan city on Jan. 7 for the first time in three years after it was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic…

Worshippers in Tokyo plunge into ice bath to mark the new year
BBC
Devotees of a shrine in Tokyo welcomed in the new year with an ice-cold bath in an annual tradition that goes back 68 years…

Shinto shrine sells charm offering to cancel this year’s misfortunes
NHK World
Crowds have been flocking to a Shinto shrine in northeastern Japan, wishing to make all the bad things that happen this year into something good…

Miyazaki: Mythological tatami-tossing contest held, again
The Japan News
Amano Iwato Shrine in Takachiho, Miyazaki Prefecture, revived a traditional event of throwing tatami mats based on the mythology of the town…

Police launch investigation after firecrackers go off at Ise shrine before Kishida’s visit
The Japan News
Firecrackers concealed in a bush went off at Ise Grand Shrines about 40 minutes before Prime Minister Fumio Kishida visited the shrines in Ise, Mie Prefecture, on Wednesday…

US: Man wants to put up 6ft penis statue in park as part of a ‘religious display’
indy100
His phallic monument was inspired by Japan’s Shinto Kanamara Matsuri (Festival of the Steel Phallus), which celebrates love, fertility and the male genitalia…

Canada: A free Japanese Setsubun outdoor festival is happening in Vancouver next month
Daily Hive
An outdoor Japanese festival happening next month will help bring the new season feeling a little closer to those needing some “yorokobi” in their life…

Shinto and terminal care
Mimusubi
Christian and Buddhist clergy have been, and are, deeply involved in care for the dying, but Shinto priests are not, and never have been. The contrast needs an explanation…

Hiroshi Sugimoto: ‘The deeper I explore Shinto and Buddhist art, the more it reveals the shallowness of contemporary art’
Wallpaper
‘Hiroshi Sugimoto – The Descendant of the Kasuga Spirit’, at the Kasuga-Taisha shrine in Nara, Japan, sees the acclaimed photographer draw on Japan’s spiritual past and present…

Other News

Archaeologists in Greece have identified the Temple of Poseidon in Samikon
Far Out
Archaeologists working in Greece believe they may have stumbled upon the remains of the Temple of Poseidon…

UK: Archaeologist to help share the secrets of the world’s largest stone circle
The Yorkshire Post
Behind the build of some of Britain’s biggest stone circles is the question as to why someone would create such vast megalithic monuments…

British Museum’s hopes of a ‘loan arrangement’ for the return of the Parthenon Marbles imperilled ahead of Greek elections
The Art Newspaper
The Greek prime minister has pledged to repatriate the 2,500-year-old sculptures if re-elected…

Voodoo dances and rituals wow tourists at Benin festival
Reuters*
On Benin’s national voodoo holiday, performers dressed as guardians of the night swirled in costumes resembling technicolour haystacks, delighting worshippers and tourists alike…

Spellbound: why ‘witch lit’ is the hottest new genre on our bookshelves
The Guardian
Vampires and ghosts have long haunted popular fiction, but now a string of new releases is focusing on marginalised women with hidden powers…

From Enys Men to The Witch: What’s behind cinema’s folk horror boom?
The Independent
Eloise Hendy delves into the genre that turns the pastoral idyll into a place of terror, and asks what’s behind this obsession with the natural world, magic cults, standing stones and feminine powers…