The Wild Hunt 
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.
- First off, we have an update on the ongoing John Friend Anusara scandal, this time with Friend directly addressing his views on Wicca. It comes from a NY Magazine feature published this past Sunday, and in it he says that “I take Wicca really seriously,” and “I have taken Wiccan oaths over the years where death is actually the consequence of telling the truth.” I’m not sure what he’s implying exactly, that he withheld the truth about his coven due to oaths? That he wasn’t twisting Wicca for his own pleasure? Friend also claimed that Blazing Solar Flames is“just a prayer circle, it’s for healing.” If Friend truly takes Wicca “really seriously,” perhaps he should address the Wiccan and Pagan community directly about what happened in his coven.
- Michel Paradis, defense attorney for Guantanamo prisoner Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, who is accused of orchestrating a suicide bombing that killed 17 sailors, is challenging jurisdiction by citing Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye versus City of Hialeah. That landmark Supreme Court case established legal protections for Santeria animal sacrifice, and is being used here under the idea that the law created to authorize the Guantanamo prison is, like the law that specifically targeted Santeria, “invidiously discriminatory” and “specifically targeted alien Muslim men, in violation of the constitutional guarantee of equal treatment under law.” It remains to be seen if this gambit is at all effective.
- Writer and instructor Tracie Welser has penned an open letter to the Goddess Temple of Orange County regarding a message transmitted during a recent service that, quote, “transwomen are less than women, that they’ve been violated and mutilated and deny the truth of who they are.” Welser urges the Temple “to stand on the side of love and acceptance, not bigotry. I can’t feel safe at the Temple or be part of it otherwise.” In the comments, a link to a Goddess Temple policy on transwomen dated to 2009 is shared, though it isn’t linked from the front page of the site.
- A new survey of religious belief in 30 countries says that “by most measures, belief in God is gradually declining worldwide.” Paul Waldman at The American Prospect pours over the study to see what it says about religious today. Waldman posits that it is America’s religious diversity that has made us stay so religious: “the constant competition for adherents made religious institutions more varied and dynamic. It’s the difference between going into a store that has only one old, tasteless brand of cereal, and going into a store with 1,000 different kinds.”
- Focus on the Family and the Alliance Defense Fund are pushing to have constitutional amendment passed in Colorado that they say is about religious freedom, but critics allege it is really a “licence to discriminate.” Quote: “If passed, this initiative would allow anyone with a religious conviction to deny employment, housing, or services to LGBT people.” Considering the fact that a whopping 12% of state residents are adherents of a New Age, Pagan, or esoteric faith, 40% of Colorado is non-Christian, and a majority of Coloradans are pro-choice and pro-evolution, this proposed ballot initiative isn’t a sure thing, even if allowed.
- Saudi Arabia’s religious police have yet again arrested a foreign citizen, accused the individual of sorcery, and may face the death penalty as a result. Quote: “The daily Okaz reported that a Saudi man had complained his daughter had ‘suddenly started acting in an abnormal way, and that happened after she came close to the Sri Lankan woman’ in a large shopping mall in the port city of Jeddah. ‘He reported her to the security forces, asking for her arrest and the specialized units dealt with the situation swiftly… and succeeded in arresting her,’ Okaz reported on Wednesday.” If you think this sounds like the Salem Witch Trials, well, you’d be right. Saudi Arabia has made the news several times here for its willingness to kill men and women for the crimes of “sorcery” and “witchcraft”. Recently, a Saudi princess living in London blasted her country’s religious police, saying they had a “dangerous effect” on society.
- The Scottish SPCA, commenting on a recent rash of bizarre hair-cutting attacks on local horses, stated that “incidents such as this have also been suggested to be linked with Satanic practices or witchcraft.” Which, of course, made the headline. Not emphasized were the alternate theories of “sabotage by another and criminals marking the horse for theft.” Why go for the mundane explanation when “witchcraft” and “sacrifice” will sell more papers?
- Did “the little ice age” trigger the witch hunts in Europe and America? That’s a theory forwarded by economist Emily Oster, which has gained some new traction recently thanks to the current discussion and debate over climate change. Quote: “When crops failed, ‘people would have searched for a scapegoat in the face of deadly changes in weather patterns,’ she wrote. Thus, desperate people traced their troubles to unpopular neighbors and outcasts allied to the devil.” With freak weather events on the rise, and likely to become even more common, will a new moral panic be sparked to find a scapegoat?
- Vice interviews legendary filmmaker and Thelemite Kenneth Anger, though Gallerist NY complains that they asked “all the wrong questions.” Quote: “Hoping to get some insight into his occult practice, we get instead, a desultory exploration of celebrity in Los Angeles […] we thought the interview might take off in this new direction of occultists-in-the-Mediterranean, it’s neatly directed back into an abstract discussion of censorship, scandal and the legality of homosexuality.” It seems Mr. Anger might be a bit tired talking about Crowley, Thelema, and Scientology. Word to the wise for future interviewers!
- Finally, I’d like to give a big official welcome to Pagan, scholar, and media critic Peg Aloi, who has joined the Patheos Pagan channel as a regular blogger. Many of you will be familiar with Aloi as a longtime staff member and contributor to The Witches’ Voice, perhaps the most popular Pagan website in our history. As a commentator on the intersections of Paganism, the occult, and pop-culture, she has contributed to books like “Seven Seasons of Buffy,”“The New Generation Witches,” and “A Taste of True Blood.” Aloi joins an impressively strong lineup of writers and thinkers at Patheos, and I think she’ll fit right in. So please add her to your bookmarks and RSS subscriptions!
That’s it for now! Feel free to discuss any of these links in the comments, some of them I may expand into longer posts as needed.
I saw the mane-cutting headline on WitchVox and linked to the story. I was impressed that almost every single one of 26 on-line comments slammed the story for its sensationalistic treatment of Wicca and Satanism.
Re John Friend on Wicca: I took the statement in NY Magazine to mean that he had taken an oath that gave permission for his coven mates to murder him if he disclosed coven secrets. Sounds more Masonic than Wiccan to me but it’s a big world.
The lettering of “Unleash the Hounds” is very difficult to read, at least to my eyes. There is hardly any space between the lines. Is it possible to convert back to the previous lay-out?
Was thinking as I read these, wow, what a great line-up of links! Then saw your kind congratulations at the end. Thanks, Jason! 🙂 I so appreciate your support in helping me become part of Patheos.
May I also say, I agree with Boris’ comment; this layout is slightly difficult to read with the lines of text being so close together….
Hurrah for the Goddess Temple of Orange County!
Oh yes, it’s truly heartwarming to see that pagans can find common ground with fundamentalist Christians in preaching bigotry and intolerance towards trans women.
Oaths? Nobody told me Wiccans had to take oaths. Did I miss that lesson somewhere? I don’t know. Death for telling the truth seems more xian to me.
It’s sickening to see how ready fascists are to stick a jackboot in.
I took his statement as evidence of what we’ve all long suspected: He’s just basically a tool and self-serving hustler.
I’ll third what both Peg and Boris said about the lines of text being so close together, perhaps it’s the font (Georgia it looks like)?
Also congrats on the Patheos job Peg 🙂
Indeed, this was my thought, as well.
This is probably more to do with the slight changes made when a list is posted. While Mr Pitzel-Waters can certainly change that, you also have a couple options.
If you’re using FireFox, Go to the “View” menu at the top, click “Zoom > Zoom In”, or hold down the control and shift keys and hit the “+” symbol twice. I *think* there might be a similar feature on Internet Explorer and Chrome, but I’m not sure how they’d work.
I don’t see what’s so hard to read, personally, but have you tried zooming in?
I’ve put in a request to my Patheos overlords to tweak the CSS.
Shouldn’t you be watching The History Channel right now, or singing “Tomorrow Belongs To Me”?
I can read it just fine —which, considering I’m half-blind, even with glasses, people who think it’s “hard to read” just confuse me— but there are other blogs and sites that I zoom in on cos of small default typefaces. I only bother to say something to the blog owner when zooming in doesn’t help. [shrug]
Re: Goddess Temple Of Orange County. This right there is is one of the reasons that I continue to refuse to join a lot of goddess centered groups. I think it’s right down disgusting that these groups are so bigoted against transwomen. I personally think that Goddess doesn’t give a damn what you are or who you were underneath , as you worship her sincerely.
I prefer the The Military Channel; they have some excellent programs. And thank you for introducing me to “Tomorrow Belongs To Me”. I had not previously listened to it, but it is a very fine song indeed.
To those of us who are having a challenge reading TWH — you may be able to enlarge the font / type on your own computer. I’m not sure exactly how — if you use Microsoft products, on the Control Panel somewhere is a device that adjusts viewing on the screen for people with visual handicaps. Anyone?
On Windows (I’m currently using firefox but it should work for most browsers), hold down Ctrl and hit + on the number pad to increase text size.
hold Ctrl and hit – on the number pad to decrease.
This is what I have been doing for years, but in the text I am referring to the space between te lines is still too smal for easy reading.
There are many different kinds of visual handicaps. I have a slight hyperphoria. Text seize does not matter very much, but to follow the lines I need a clear contrast between de line and the space between the lines. Most of the Wild Hunt is excellent, both typographically and content-wise.
Fair enough.
It’s also pretty ugly. I agree, the readability suffers–and zooming does not help. (I don’t have vision problems, but I do appreciate good graphic arts and layout skills, and miss them when they’re absent.)
It’s called “leading” (pronounced “ledding”)…setting the space between the lines.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_leading
While I’m at it (talking about the new design of the website), I can’t find a contact email address for you, Jason, anymore.
If it comes as a surprise to you that Wiccans take oaths, either you don’t know very much about Wicca or you are using a different definition of Wicca than I am. Maybe you’ve been reading some of the writings about Pop Wicca that say Wicca has no rules.
I’m an initiate of three Wiccan traditions, and each one of them required an oath from me at each initiation. In some cases I knew in advance what I was going to be asked to swear to; in other cases I had to make my mind up on the spot. The practice is modeled on Freemasonry, as another poster wrote, and perhaps also on feudal oaths of fealty and on the Mystery cults of the classical world. In ancient Athens, revealing details of the Eleusinian Mysteries was a capital crime and people were tried for it.
Many Wiccan oaths include vows of secrecy on certain matters (what is secret varies from tradition to tradition). I’ve never read of nor taken an oath that outright required me to lie. However, some oaths forbid revealing the identity of other witches, and if asked a direct question about someone who is a witch, one might have to lie to avoid outing them. In ordinary circumstances (i.e., not in the middle of a witch hunt) one avoids getting into that kind of situation by not talking about witches or witchcraft at all with nosy or hostile outsiders.
Penalties for oath breaking vary as well. Severe penalties would ordinarily be left to the gods to exact. Human-inflicted penalties would be in proportion to the actual harm caused by the oathbreaker. The most I’ve ever seen or heard of is kicking the offender out of the group and letting anybody who cares know that he or she is an oathbreaker. What John Friend is quoted as saying strikes me as BS with a grain of truth in it, which is the most effective form of BS.
Text size and lack of white space are two completely different issues. I also find the new links list hard to read, because of the lack of white space. Zooming just creates bigger letters with the same lack of white space. The font size is fine. The spacing is a problem.
Generally speaking, a lot of people online find it visually exhausting to read a giant hunk of text with the lines jammed together and no breaks between list items/paragraphs. Haven’t you ever seen comments about giant text-walls?
Yes, but every time I’ve personally seen a comment like that, it’s been about a big run-on paragraph with no breaks, which clearly defies current convention. There didn’t used to be that convention of breaking up paragraphs, and there’s a form to properly-written paragraphs that the “wall of text” folk seem to have a tendency to ignore.
I’ll take your word for it, that some people find that habit visually exhausting, but I’ve never had that problem, nobody I know has ever expressed having that problem to me in the twenty-eight years I’ve been reading, and so naturally, having never heard of such a thing before, I’d previously assumed that as long as the writing/font is legible and things are spaced evenly, that’s all that mattered and that everything about leading is just an aesthetic argument and double-spacing was just a cheap way to meet a minimum page count for an essay in high-school. Now I know better.
I’ve been lurking this sub-thread but interested. I can verify that there are a lot of people with text-reading problems that go beyond the aesthetic. Strong light will give me a migraine, and some text outlays will push me in that direction even without an excess of brightness. I know someone from a UU connection who can’t read ordinary email without some special arrangement.
There are a lot of various vision problems out there that did not seem to be triggered by books, but were pushed out into the open by monitors, and the one-size-fits-all approach of the early machines didn’t help much. These days there are both software and hardware fixes, as described above.
AIH I have no problem with the present layout though I do wish the art at the top were not obscured by the headline — but that *is* aesthetics. But I do not doubt that some folks are having problems.