Pagan Tama
Top stories of the week in Paganism and Shinto:
- UK: Pagan police join fight against far-right extremists
- Germany: ‘Nazi Druid’ accused of hoarding weapons to prepare for society’s collapse
- Japan: Shrine reuses prayer block for 1918 pandemic
Read more below…
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Pagan News
UK: Pagan police join fight against far-right extremists
The Times*
Counterterrorism agencies are calling in pagan police officers to help tackle the growing number of far-right extremists who co-opt the religion’s iconography…
Germany: ‘Nazi Druid’ accused of hoarding weapons to prepare for society’s collapse
Vice
The New Age insurance-agent-turned-druid claimed he was raised by “the great wizard Merlin”. He’s now on trial accused of breaking Holocaust hate speech laws…
US: Spiritual items prove popular in Fayetteville, business owners say
The Fayetteville Observer
Already a lover of crystals, a spiritual Fayetteville business owner decided to add spiritual items to her inventory at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. To her surprise, people loved it…
Celebrity Witches
Patheos (Holistic Spirituality)
Are celebrity witches such as Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey a good thing or a bad thing?…
Shinto News
Shrine reuses prayer block for 1918 pandemic
NHK World
A Shinto shrine in Japan is offering New Year visitors folded strips of paper that feature a prayer for an end to a pandemic…
COVID-19 cluster infection hits Tokyo shrine
NHK World
A Shinto shrine in central Tokyo that was hit by a coronavirus cluster infection is turning away many worshippers arriving there for traditional New Year visits…
Workers pack Kanda Myojin shrine to pray for good business
The Asahi Shimbun
Company employees, many wearing suits, flocked to Kanda Myojin shrine in central Tokyo to offer traditional prayers for “good business” on Jan. 4, the first working day of the year for many people…
Ancient ‘kemari’ football game marks New Year at Kyoto shrine for 1st time in 2 years
The Mainichi
People dressed in colorful historical robes demonstrated a game of ancient “kemari” football during an annual New Year event held at Kyoto’s Shimogamo Shrine on Jan. 4…
Photo of snowy Japanese temple wows people around the world
SoraNews24
Silent serenity speaks volumes with its overwhelming beauty…
Instagram vs reality: The truth behind tranquil photos of Hakone Shrine
PetaPixel
The Hakone Shrine in the touristy town of Hakone, Japan, is a popular photo location for Instagrammers. It’s also a good “Instagram vs. Reality” example of how what’s seen in social media photos often does not tell the whole picture…
I went hunting for the legend of Saitama Inu at the Shinto shrine in Japan linked to the meme crypto — here’s what I discovered
Benzinga
SAITAMA cryptocurrency’s white paper makes mention of a mysterious “ghost dog” said to roam in the mountains of the eponymous region. As per the document, Mitsumine Shrine in Saitama is dedicated to the “wolf-like beast.”..
Other News
Italy sending Parthenon fragment to Athens in nudge to UK position on Elgin Marbles
Euronews
Italy has announced it will lend a fragment of the Parthenon Sculptures back to its native Greece, in what both sides hope will become a permanent return that might encourage the UK to repatriate the Parthenon marbles removed by Lord Elgin in the early 19th century…
30 books about (& inspired by) Greek mythology
Bustle
The enduring popularity of Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles — a 2011 novel that reimagines The Iliad — has sparked a literary trend…
‘Witch Hunts’ Past & Present
UK: Witch apology would ‘send powerful signal’
BBC
A public apology to those accused of witchcraft between the 16th and 18th Centuries would send a powerful symbolic signal, campaigners have said…
UK: Lancaster exhibition lifts the lid on witch hunts
Lancaster Guardian
A ground-breaking new exhibition, I am Witch – Tales from the Roundhouse, to be held at The Storey in Lancaster until January 28, will explore how the European Witch Hunts of 1450-1750 left a wound in our collective psyche that still affects us today – and how it can be healed…
UK: National Trust hunt for witch trials leads to Robert Burns’s birthplace
The Telegraph*
Reference to witches in the poem Tam o’ Shanter results in inclusion of childhood home in review of Scottish properties linked to witchcraft…
Early modern witch-hunts ‘left Britain with collective wound’
The Guardian
Exhibition on witch trials looks at how inherited trauma from ‘the burning times’ still affects society…
India: Two brothers thrashed over ‘witchcraft’ suspicion in Jharkhand village
India Today
A group of villagers allegedly thrashed two brothers in a village in Gumla district of Jharkhand over the suspicion that their parents practised ‘witchcraft’…
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