The newswires are exploding with hints that the West Memphis 3 (Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jesse Misskelley Jr.) may be released from prison today, the results of a behind the scenes deal. “Lawyers representing three men convicted of killing three 8-year-old boys in a notorious 1993 murder case have reached a potential deal that could allow the men, known as the West Memphis Three, to walk free on Friday, people familiar with the deal said. […] The deal being discussed... Read more
Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee has added four Pagan holidays to its calendar, meaning an excused absence can be obtained by students for religious observances. A local-interest story on the adoption of these holidays in the Tennessean has since been picked up by USA Today and the Associated Press. The Vanderbilt policy says students must be excused from classes and other academic activities on days when their religious traditions put restrictions on labor or forbid it outright, like Eid al Fitr for... Read more
The Miami New Times reports this week that Santero Carlos Valdes is pushing to have a violent stalking case prosecuted as a hate crime, which, if successful, would make it the first official hate crime charge involving anti-Santeria sentiments. httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b3pQdaE5no Santero Carlos Valdes performing a ceremony at his home. Prosecutors contend [Kellyd] Rodriguez has terrorized Valdes’s family for four years. It began with anti-Santería rants on the phone, Valdes says, and escalated into death threats, rock-throwing, drive-by shootings, and even heart-stopping phone calls... Read more
Top Story: In the second part of a six-part series on the geopolitical ramifications of global warming in the Arctic, NPR’s Morning Edition focuses on Russia’s aggressive push to claim waterways and resources becoming available as the Arctic ice melts. One group that is particularly concerned over the rush to claim the Arctic is the indigenous Saami people, a group native to the Kola Peninsula of Russia. NPR interviews traditional singer Nadezhda Lyashenko, who discusses the environmental consequences of this rush to exploit... 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! Vivianne Crowley joins Cherry Hill Seminary: Pagan author, former Pagan Federation secretary,... Read more
A few quick news notes for you on this Sunday morning. Protecting Sacred Lands: The Environmental News Network reports that the Biodiversity Institute at the University of Oxford, in partnership with the Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC) and World Database on Sacred Natural Sites (SANASI), is creating a world map that will display sacred and holy places, including forests in an attempt to raise awareness for biodiversity conservation. A team of scientists from the University of Oxford are working on a world... Read more
Last year at this time the popular HBO cable television series “True Blood,” a show loosely based on a series of novels by Charlaine Harris, announced that 2011 would be the “year of the witch.” The cast of (generally sexy) vampires, werewolves, and the humans they interact with would be joined by an array of spellcasters of various inclinations. The previous season had already introduced a Wiccan character, Holly Cleary (played by Lauren Bowles), and this season they’ve introduced a small coven lead by Marnie... 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. If the embryonic Rick Perry candidacy has done one thing of real merit, it has been to inspire mainstream media coverage of the New Apostolic Reformation. Wednesday’s edition of Rachel Maddow’s show on MSNBC featured an interview with Forrest Wilder of the Texas... Read more
I’ve been writing about Christians a lot lately. It seems largely unavoidable, as the influence of Christianity often haunts even the most Pagan of stories. We may be slowly moving into a post-Christian era, and some may question if the United States is really Christian at all nowadays, but the facts on the ground show that the vast majority of Americans (and Britons, Canadians, and Australians) identify as some flavor of Christian. Contrary to the fear-mongering of some about the evils of secularism,... Read more
For those of you who have been following my coverage of the fight over expansion of a ski resort on the San Francisco Peaks in Arizona, a process that would pump treated wastewater snow on the mountain, I would like to direct you to Censored News and Indigenous Action Media, who covered a week of planned protests and actions that just took place at the peaks. httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApvVnlBOufU “The action we took today is one part of a series of events... Read more
The Wild Hunt
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