The speculation is this: that both the Boy Scouts and modern Wicca can trace a significant part of their heritage to a naturalist, mystic, author, and advocate of Native American culture who was popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but mostly unknown today. In the case of the Boy Scouts the history is clear, though largely forgotten for political reasons. For Wicca, it's a foggy connection at best, but there is evidence for some sort of connection. Read more
Screw that. We've got fire, we've got people, we're going to have so much frickin' Fire Circle we're gonna be smiling out our...er, third eyes. Yeah. Read more
Not every instance of touch is a threat to one's boundaries. The stranger who bumps against you on the subway has not violated your rights. I do not violate the rights of the man in front of me in line at the bank when I touch him on the shoulder to get his attention and say "Sir, that teller is open." When a lover puts her arm around me without asking, or her hand on my thigh, or snuggles up against me in bed in a more intimate fashion without a by-your-leave, I have not thereby been assaulted. Read more
We are talking here about a change in human existence as significant as the dawn of civilization, when we went from gatherer-hunters to agriculturalists. And just as that was accompanied by a shift from shamanistic, direct religion to priestly, indirect religion, so this transition will need a new sort of spirituality. Read more
Boundaries in their role as both endings and beginnings are also on my mind because this is both my last column for Agora and my first post for The Zen Pagan as its own full-fledged blog here at Patheos Pagan. But this change too is the crossing of a line, a passing of a boundary. The Romans had a god for that: Terminus, the god of boundaries. Read more
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