Just a few quick news notes for you on this Tuesday. Margot Alder on Witchcraft, Cults, and Space Travel: Margot Adler, NPR correspondent and author of the seminal 1979 book “Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America”, talks to the Daily Camera in Boulder, Colorado about her life and work in advance of her presentations at the 64th Annual Conference on World Affairs. Of special interest to my Pagan readers will be the story of how she... Read more
I was somewhat shocked to discover that the 1985 Australian documentary about Pagan and occult religions, “The Occult Experience,” had been posted to Vimeo (Last year!) by one of the co-producers. Up till now, if you wanted a copy, you either had to track down the out-of-print VHS, watch it in low-quality VHS-ripped pirate copy excerpts on Youtube, or obtain it (illegally) through torrent sites. But now, here it is, a very nice (legal) digital rip from a VHS copy... Read more
Pagan Community Notes is a companion to my usual Pagan News of Note series, more focused on news originating from within the Pagan community. I want to reinforce the idea that what happens to and within our organizations, groups, and events is news, and news-worthy. My hope is that more individuals, especially those working within Pagan organizations, get into the habit of sharing their news with the world. So lets get started! Patrick McCollum’s India Speech: On February 26th, Pagan chaplain and activist Patrick... Read more
For decades there has been a quiet war against the teaching of evolution in American science classes, fueled largely by conservative Christians who think the theory is heretical and flawed. Ever since the 1987 Supreme Court case Edwards v. Aguillard, teaching creationism alongside evolution in a federally-funded science class has been outlawed. The justices ruled that “creation science” is an inherently Christian religious construct and would violate the Establishment Clause. Since then, Christian activists have sought to find a loophole, most notoriously with... Read more
While covering last year’s American Academy of Religion’s Annual Meeting in San Francisco one recurring theme I noticed when attending the sessions for Contemporary Pagan Studies, and listening to more informal discussions, was how scholars could better interact and communicate with the Pagan community. Since many Pagan scholars are themselves Pagans, the disconnect between their work and the wider Pagan community, or worse, the misapplication or misunderstanding of their work, has been an ongoing concern. One of the reasons I... Read more
The United States of America is a secular, pluralistic, nation that is home to hundreds of distinct faiths, philosophies, and traditions living, working, and playing side-by-side. Our diversity has often been touted as one of our great strengths, that we don’t succumb to endless internal wars, chaos, and strife, that the American experiment largely “works.” That said, no matter how “pagan” our democracy, our republic, is, we can’t but acknowledge that Christianity has been a driving force in our collective history, and... Read more
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. In wake of the recent record-breaking Mega Millions jackpot, The Baltimore Sun checks in with Ellwood “Bunky” Bartlett, a Wiccan who won over 40 million dollars in the Maryland state lottery back in 2007. Bartlett says that he made mistakes “giving money to help... Read more
Journalist Beth Winegarner has written an excellent how-to piece for Poynter, an institution dedicated to improving journalism, on covering stories that may involve Santeria, Palo, Paganism, or other esoteric religions. While the whole piece is well worth the read, and contains relevant examples, I want to excerpt just the “rules” for the sake of simplicity. Don’t take what police or other sources say at face value. Find & interview real experts. Write carefully, with attention to relevant details. Over the... Read more
On Friday, a friend of Pagan author and elder Grey Cat announced that she had passed away. In November of last year, Grey Cat told friends and followers on Facebook that she had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and had less than a year to live. Her last post was made on March 8th, where she said that “the oddest thing about knowing you’re about to die is that there is so little to say about it.” Already, her profile... Read more
Welcome to the latest installment of a new supplemental feature here at The Wild Hunt, The Wild Hunt Podcast (focus groups loved the name). This weekly podcast will take a deeper look at stories, links, and personalities that I feature in my daily updates. In this second episode of The Wild Hunt Podcast we chat with PNC Managing Editor Cara Schulz and resident Theodism expert Nick Ritter about the congressional candidacy of New York City Councilman Dan Halloran. Then, in the second segment,... Read more
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