Amity Shlaes is worried. She’s worried about what the ever-growing popularity of Halloween might mean. “…as much as we’d like it to be, Halloween isn’t secular. It is pagan. There’s nothing else to call a set of ceremonies in which people utter magical phrases, flirt with the night and evoke the dead. One of my family’s favorite Halloween props was a hand that moved, as though from the netherworld, when you reached to collect a few pieces of candy corn.... Read more
I have a new piece up at the Washington Post’s On Faith section examining the importance of the recent video Pagan media press conference with Republican presidential candidate, and former New Mexico governor, Gary Johnson. Here’s a short excerpt: “What does it all mean? I think it represents two opportunities. First, there’s an opportunity for politicians to realize that America’s religious diversity isn’t simply a stock phrase to pull out when describing the virtues of our country. According to the... Read more
Feminist activist, journalist, and icon Gloria Steinem, the subject of a recent HBO documentary, appears to have outed herself as a capital-P Pagan at a recent speaking engagement with Egyptian-American journalist Mona Eltahawy. httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5ke2Adqqr4 “Eltahawy’s family lived in England for most of her childhood, until her parents moved to Saudi Arabia when she was a teenager. She said she was raised Muslim, but not strictly traditionally, adding that she is now much more liberal than her parents and that her feminism... Read more
Christian radio host Janet Mefferd is not a fringe figure. Her syndicated radio program plays on over 110 affiliates in the United States, and often brings on big-name figures like Herman Cain, Franklin Graham, Rick Perry, and Michele Bachmann. I wanted to make that clear, because one of the first defenses for extreme rhetoric is that this or that person is “fringe” (ie not representative of their movement). I wanted to make that clear before I shared this quote from her show... Read more
On August 19th the West Memphis 3 (Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jesse Misskelley Jr.) were freed from prison in a plea agreement after 18 years of incarceration. The West Memphis 3 case is perhaps the most high-profile trial known in which the 1980s Satanic moral panic played a significant role, using Damien Echols interest in the occult and Wicca as proof of his murderous interests. Now free, the three men attended the New York premiere of Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, the latest, and most... 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. As you may have already heard, Congressional newspaper The Hill picked up the story of presidential hopeful Gary Johnson’s Q&A with Pagan and Hindu media on Sunday. You can read some follow-up and transcribed excerpts, here. Here’s Star Foster’s take. Here’s PNC-Bay Area’s... Read more
One of my favorite non-fiction books published this year was Rob Young’s “Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music,” a wide-ranging, adventurous, and deeply pleasing work that traces the beginnings, rise, and legacy of British folk music. Not content to merely provide discographies and musical influences, Young digs deeper into the romanticism, yearnings, and spiritual dimensions of making a “British” music, mapping an “Other Britain” or “Albion” that exists as an ideal, a repository of the nation’s constructed hopes and aspirations. Young also makes... Read more
Earlier this evening a live Google+ video interview/”hangout” with GOP Presidential candidate Gov. Gary Johnson and members of the Pagan media was held. Pagan media organizations participating in the Q&A with the former New Mexico Governor included Cara Schulz of PNC-Minnesota, Star Foster of Patheos.com, Devin Hunter of ModernWitch Podcast, David Salisbury of PNC-Washinton DC, Crystal Blanton of PNC-Bay Area, and myself. In addition, Ramesh Rao of the Hindu American Foundation also took part. The conference was streamed and recorded by Keith Barrett, and you can watch the entire press... Read more
The publishing industry is in flux right now. The Borders chain has closed down, Amazon is continuing to expand from mere retailer to high-profile publisher, smaller booksellers continue to struggle, and access to ebooks is increasingly becoming something large book retailers and publishers will fight over. In this climate of uncertainty it is more important than ever for authors to have control over their intellectual property, or trust the ones who do. As digital rights become more than a mere... Read more
Modern Pagan religions are growing, this is a fact backed up by surveys and census data, and many believe that we are growing even faster than these somewhat imprecise methods can track. Historian Ronald Hutton has estimated that there may be as many as a quarter of a million Pagans in the United Kingdom, far more than the figure of 40,000 from the 2001 census, and Pagan groups in Australia and Britain have engaged in campaigns that they hope will bring in census... Read more
The Wild Hunt
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