Pagan & Shinto News: Pagan beliefs common in religious and nonreligious Americans, research finds

Top stories in Paganism and Shinto for October 1st – 7th:

• Pagan beliefs common in religious and nonreligious Americans, research finds
• Inmates sue prison, claim they are unable to practise Asatru
• 1000 Goddesses to gather to balance Divine Feminine and Masculine

Pagan News

Pagan and New Age beliefs common among both religious and nonreligious Americans, research finds
Pew Research Center
Most American adults self-identify as Christians. But many Christians also hold what are sometimes characterized as “New Age” beliefs – including belief in reincarnation, astrology, psychics and the presence of spiritual energy in physical objects like mountains or trees. Many Americans who are religiously unaffiliated also have these beliefs…

Inmates sue prison, claim they are unable to practise Asatru
KWCH12
In the lawsuit, Drake claims corrections officers confiscated notebooks connected with the the Asatru religion due to “questionable material.”…

1000 Goddesses to gather to balance Divine Feminine and Masculine
PR Newswire
On October 20th, 2018, more than 1000 Goddesses will unite on the Washington Mall and within a Global Grid of Sacred Circles around our Sacred Planet…

The US witch population has seen an astronomical rise
Quartz
From an estimated 8,000 Wiccans in 1990, they found there were about 340,000 practitioners in 2008…

Folklorist shares the untold story of Australian fortune teller, Mary Barrell
The Wild Hunt
An academic has recently pieced together the story of Mary Barrell, which is among the earliest documented cases of Witchcraft and fortune telling in the country…

Chippewa Valley Pagans hold Samhain event for families
VolumeOne
The event, geared toward children but open to all ages, will feature mask-making and pumpkin carving, and an opportunity to learn about the third Pagan harvest celebration, a time of honoring the dead and looking forward to rebirth…

Shinto News

Scandals at Shinto Shrines
Mimusubi
While these scandals are very important to the jinja at which they happen, they are of limited significance for Shinto as a whole…

Other News

Salem limits access to cemetery with ties to witch trials
Boston 25 News
On Saturdays and Sundays during October and on Halloween night, no more than 100 people will be permitted inside the Charter Street Burial Ground at any one time…

Crocodile Gods And Warrior Pharaohs Among Ancient Egyptian Artwork Found In Temple
IFL Science
Two ancient sandstone tablets decorated with elaborate inscriptions depicting Egyptian deities and Pharaohs have been revealed by the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities, after being discovered by archaeological crews working to lower groundwater at the 2,300-year-old Kom Ombo temple in Aswan…

Pompeii excavation yields rich garden scene in home shrine
The Spec
Archeologists have uncovered a new treasure in the ruins of Pompeii: a richly painted garden scene in the shrine area of a home that had been buried following the explosion of Mt. Vesuvius in AD 79…

An 8-Year-Old Girl Has Pulled a Pre-Viking Sword From a Lake in Sweden
Science Alert
An eight-year-old Swedish-American girl named Saga Vanecek has sealed her fate as a future queen of legend – in July, she pulled a possibly 1,500 year-old pre-Viking era sword from a lake in Sweden…

Egyptians are upset by Britain’s disregard for gifted obelisk
The Economist
Muhammad Ali Pasha, the founder of modern Egypt, gave Britain a 3,500-year-old obelisk as a gift in 1819. But efforts to honour the bicentennial have fallen on deaf ears…

Afro-Brazilian religions face crackdown amid evangelical Christian surge
TRT World
Roughly a half million people in Brazil participate in religions brought to the Americas hundreds of years ago by African slaves. Practitioners worship ancestral spirits that they say guide people through the world. But these religions are under attack from a growing evangelical Christian movement…

Man in witch’s robe sacrificed cat in pentagram of salt in driveway, Oklahoma cops say
Miami Herald
An Oklahoma man faces animal cruelty charges after police responded to reports of an “animal sacrifice” earlier this year…

Russian ‘witch’ who strangled and burned daughter-in-law in ‘black magic’ bonfire wants custody of granddaughter as ‘witch apprentice’
The Sun
A campaign has been launched to try and stop a “witch” becoming the guardian of her granddaughter whose mother she strangled and burned in a “black magic” bonfire.

Man ‘stabs, stones’ ‘witch’ aunt to death
Chronicle Zimbabwe
A man has been arrested after he allegedly stabbed and stoned his aunt to death, accusing her of witchcraft…

Woman Attacked By Neighbour Over ‘Witchcraft’ Suspicion in Odisha, India
OdishaTV
A woman sustained grievous injures after she was attacked by her neighbour on suspicion of practising witchcraft at Pampara village under Badagaon police limits of the district today…

Lesbians raped and accused of witchcraft in Cameroon
PinkNews
Lesbians in Cameroon have spoken out about being chained up, tortured and gang-raped to ‘cure’ their homosexuality…