Just after midnight, the pastor seized a woman’s forehead with his large hand and she fell screaming and writhing on the ground. “Fire! Fire! Fire!” shouted the worshippers, raising their hands in the air.

Pastor Celestine Effiong’s congregants are being delivered from what they firmly believe to be witchcraft. And in the darkness of the city and the villages beyond, similar shouts and screams echo from makeshift church to makeshift church.

“I have been delivered from witches and wizards today!” exclaimed one exhausted-looking woman.

Pastors in southeast Nigeria claim illness and poverty are caused by witches who bring terrible misfortune to those around them. And those denounced as witches must be cleansed through deliverance or cast out.
As daylight breaks, and we travel out to the rural villages it becomes apparent the most vulnerable to this stigmatization of witchcraft are children.

A crowd gathered around two brothers and their sister. Tears streamed down their mother’s face as she cast out her children from the family, accusing them of causing the premature deaths of two of their siblings with black magic.

Read Complete Article @ CNN >>

Between the 14th and 18th centuries, somewhere between 40,000 and 60,000 people on the European continent were tried and executed for witchcraft. Most of these people were burned alive in the public square of the nearest town, and most were also tortured before burning. Between 70% and 80% of all “witches” executed were women, but many men, children, and even animals were executed as well.

What is most strange about the witchcraft trials of medieval Europe is that, despite being studied in great detail by historians and scholars of many stripes and biases, no single persuasive explanation has emerged for why they took place.

What is also interesting is that medieval “witches” had much in common with today’s “abductees”, and the witch hunters also resemble some of today’s abduction “researchers” in surprisingly consistent ways.

Something fairly powerful has to be going on either inside the public imagination or out in the real world or both, in order to sustain nearly four centuries of torture, carnage, and religious persecution. The Church did not simply try and burn witches: It aggressively sought them out to try and burn them.

The infamous Malleus Maleficarum (compiled in 1486) is a detailed instructional Church manual on how to identify a witch and what to do when you find one. Professional witch hunters, employed by the Church, roamed the European countryside searching out witches and delivering them into the hands of Church inquisitors who usually ended up torturing and killing them to save their souls.

Although the Malleus isn’t a word-for-word precursor to Intruders or Missing Time, many elements are similar enough to warrant a closer look.

Read Full Article >>

True spiritual leaders never wish to be known as such, often preferring to downplay their contributions or laugh them off. This certainly seems to be the case with Isaac Bonewits, Neopagan priest and author who passed away last week of colon cancer at age 60. One memorial says Isaac, displaying what appears to have been a characteristic sense of humor, wished only to be known as one of the Neopagan movement’s “better-known, unindicted co-conspirators.”

Who was Bonewits and why should you care? If you’re not a practitioner of modern Druidry, Wicca or various other spiritual paths that take their inspiration from pre-Christian times, it’s unlikely you’ve heard of him. But it’s even possible, I believe, to be a practicing Witch, Druid or some other adventurous spirit and never have heard the name Isaac Bonewits. I don’t know if he would’ve taken delight in that notion or if his ego would’ve taken a hit, but what I do know is that for those of us who fall into the Neopagan camp, we all owe Bonewits a great deal of gratitude whether we’ve heard of him or not.

Read Full Article @ Huffington Post >>

Over the years, Byron Ballard has been a bookseller, writer, actor, PTA mom, pastry cook, theater manager, winemaker, community volunteer, administrative assistant, scenery painter and maker of jellies and jams to give as Christmas gifts.

She’s also a witch. And not just an ordinary witch, but a Wiccan high priestess.

You’ll find no warts on her nose, and the only use she has for a broom is to sweep the sidewalk of her home in the West End/Clingman Avenue neighborhood, where she’s a community leader and the neighborhood historian.

Ballard says her Pagan beliefs are not at war with her role as civic volunteer, and that she is enriched by her friendships with leaders of Catholic, Jewish, Episcopal, Baptist and other mainline protestant faiths.

But she has learned to cheerfully endure the suspicious glances, spoken and unspoken disapproval of those who learn of her Wiccan belief system. She prefers to smile and offer to educate rather than dismiss her detractors. To turn the other cheek, as it were.

“There’s the Satan thing,” she said matter-of-factly. “We don’t worship Satan, and it is the rare Pagan who even has Satan as part of their pantheon of deities.

Read Full Article @ Citizen-Times.com >>

I’ve wanted to post this for some time, but had lost it somewhere along the way. I’m often asked general questions about what it’s like to be Pagan, and I never know how to answer it. That’s like asking what it’s like to be human. There is no simple reply. I’ve always thought that this piece sums it up fairly well, at least in regard to making a general impression, and I’ve long wanted to post it here, if for no other reason than that I think it needs to be preserved. Hopefully you’ll agree. ~ Claire

Pagans acknowledge that there is so much we could learn about the world and ourselves if we would just sit down and shut up occasionally.

Walk out into a forest alone, find a rock or a stump, and sit down. Clear your mind. Sit and listen. Don’t think. Don’t let your normal ingrained patterns of analysis and calculation run amok. Be silent. Sit. Listen. The wind blows softly through the trees, caressing quietly rustling leaves. Somewhere, far in the distance, a hawk calls out.

But this is only the surface. Be still. You’re still thinking. Stop it. Don’t analyze. Just be. Just sit there. And exist. You’re not a person anymore. You are a camera. You are a microphone. You observe and record. You do not analyze. The world is alive. You hear the soft rustle of leaves as a squirrel scurries across the forest floor. Crickets chirp near you. You didn’t hear them before. A lizard bolts silently from a nearby leaf and races up a tree. Your eyes follow it. Recording. And you see, stretched between two limbs, the fragile web of a spider. She busily repairs her damaged web. Near her, a captured moth struggles in its silk cocoon. Your eyes wander farther up the tree. The branches sway ever so softly in the gentle breeze. The leaves dance upon it. Thousands of them. Hundreds of thousands. The forest canopy is alive with movement. The wind reaches down and caresses you, tickles your hair. It brings to your nose the earthy scent of pine. And musk. The sweet hint of new leaves. Life. All around you are minute sounds. Movement; the frenzied life of hundreds of thousands of insects.

This is what the world is like when you are not there. This is what the real world is like. The real world, without human beings, without human intervention, without human precepts and will, without human prejudice and arrogance. The world simply is. Just as you now simply are. And the magick of this life is all around you. It’s in you. You feel it. Breathe it. Your blood pumps it. You are it. It’s a tangible thing almost. Something you could just about reach out and touch. And if you open up, listen, breathe, feel… if you can be quiet… for just a moment… the wind seems to whisper. Something deep within you belongs here. Just like this. And when you leave here, you will never be the same again. Wherever you go, the frenzied living peace of the forest will remain within your soul.

The Earth has given you something that can never be taken away. And in return, you leave a part of yourself behind. The exchange can never be reversed. You are linked. On some subconscious and spiritual level, you have become the Earth. And the Earth has become you. And perhaps for the first time in your life, you belong.

Be quiet. And just be. Be yourself. Be alive. Within your heart the wind is blowing through the trees. And this is all you ever really wanted. Now you have begun to understand what they mean by “Earth-based” religions. Once you have communicated directly with the Divine, you understand that there is no need for churches or priests or organized religions. The Divine is waiting to reach out to you if you can only be still enough for a moment to listen.

~ Wicasta Lovelace

This is not to say that there are not reality-bound Christians out there who are doing everything they can to help stop the oil spill in the Gulf, or Christians who are praying that the apparently Biblical extent of the damage might be limited before we can kill off all life in Earth’s oceans. There are certainly Christians out there who understand that this is a man-made disaster, and that God isn’t likely to swoop down on a blazing chariot to save us from ourselves. But as much as I keep this in mind, the first good news I’ve heard in regard to the spill in the Gulf comes not from Christians, but from Pagans. This doesn’t surprise me (just as I’m sure it doesn’t surprise other Pagans).

I read an article by Nicole Neroulias, writing for the Religion News Service, which opens talking about the bonfires, drum circles, dancing, candlelit meditation and other ceremonial rituals which will help usher in the summer solstice at Circle Sanctuary’s annual Pagan Spirit Gathering in Salem, Missouri, which is now in its 30th year in the United States. Along with celebrating the longest day of the year on Monday (June 21), this year’s weeklong festival at Camp Zoe in Salem will also feature prayers to help the Earth recover from the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

“We always do planetary healing prayers, meditations, and ceremonies on Solstice day itself, and we will be continuing our prayers about the oil disaster,” said Selena Fox, high priestess at Circle Sanctuary, a Wisconsin-based pagan resource center. ”We will explore ways that the various organizations and traditions represented at our gathering can support relief efforts.”

You’d be amazed at how much vitriol has been unleashed upon this effort by Christians, who apparently believe it’s rediculous that Pagans could be praying for anything. It’s disheartening to know that a lot of people would rather sit by and do nothing than accept the well-wishes and prayers of those outside of their own narrow religious path. But I hope and pray that Pagans will continue to rise to the occasion. I also hope that many of them will, unlike a lot of their Christians friends, put their money where their mouth is and head to the Gulf to volunteer and help make a difference.

The Missouri festival, which runs June 20-27, will be the largest organized event in the U.S. Nearly 1,000 people are expected to attend from North America, Europe and Asia, including practitioners of Wicca, contemporary pagan, Druid, Celtic, Native American, Afro-Caribbean, and Taoist faiths.

The main Solstice ritual will feature chanting from 18 Circle Sanctuary ministers, intended to “help heal the wound in the earth,” Fox added.

Links

• Original Article
• Pagan Spirit Gathering 2010
• Pagan Spirit Gathering @ Wikipedia

[I felt compelled to share this article from the New York Times, about a loud Nigerian preacher, Helen Ukpabio, who is waging a war against witchcraft. Keep in mind as you read this that the actions of Helen Ukpabio are not ancient history. ~ Claire]

At home in Nigeria, the Pentecostal preacher Helen Ukpabio draws thousands to her revival meetings. Last August, when she had herself consecrated Christendom’s first “lady apostle,” Nigerian politicians and Nollywood actors attended the ceremony. Her books and DVDs, which explain how Satan possesses children, are widely known.

So well-known, in fact, that Ms. Ukpabio’s critics say her teachings have contributed to the torture or abandonment of thousands of Nigerian children — including infants and toddlers — suspected of being witches and warlocks. Her culpability is a central contention of “Saving Africa’s Witch Children,” a documentary that made its American debut Wednesday on HBO2.

Those disturbed by the needless immiseration of innocent children should beware. “Saving Africa’s Witch Children” follows Gary Foxcroft, founder of the charity Stepping Stones Nigeria, as he travels the rural state of Akwa Ibom, rescuing children abused during horrific “exorcisms” — splashed with acid, buried alive, dipped in fire — or abandoned roadside, cast out of their villages because some itinerant preacher called them possessed.

Their fellow villagers have often seen DVDs of “End of the Wicked,” Ms. Ukpabio’s bloody 1999 movie purporting to show how the devil captures children’s souls. And some have read her book “Unveiling the Mysteries of Witchcraft,” where she confidently writes that “if a child under the age of 2 screams in the night, cries and is always feverish with deteriorating health, he or she is a servant of Satan.”

Read Full Article >>

[This sounds like pre-school stuff from kids, not something adults would come up with. A pox upon their houses, I say. ~ Claire]

From Advocate.com:

To prevent Constance McMillen from bringing a female date to her prom, the teen was sent to a “fake prom” while the rest of her class partied at a secret location at an event organized by parents.

McMillen tells The Advocate that a parent-organized prom happened behind her back — she and her date were sent to a Friday night event at a country club in Fulton, Miss., that attracted only five other students. Her school principal and teachers served as chaperones, but clearly there wasn’t much to keep an eye on.

“They had two proms and I was only invited to one of them,” McMillen says. “The one that I went to had seven people there, and everyone went to the other one I wasn’t invited to.”

Last week McMillen asked one of the students organizing the prom for details about the event, and was directed to the country club. “It hurts my feelings,” McMillen says.

Two students with learning difficulties were among the seven people at the country club event, McMillen recalls. “They had the time of their lives,” McMillen says. “That’s the one good thing that come out of this, [these kids] didn’t have to worry about people making fun of them [at their prom].”

In March, after the Itawamba County School District refused to allow McMillen to bring a female date to the prom, the district canceled the event altogether. McMillen and her lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union challenged that decision in court, and a judge ruled the district could not bar McMillen and her date.

The judge declined to force the school district to hold the prom because a parent-sponsored, private prom was being organized — and the understanding was that McMillen and her date were invited to that event. But Hampton says McMillen was never invited and organizers made it very difficult for her to find information on the time and location. That prom was later mysteriously canceled, with the Friday night event at the country club officially replacing it.

• Original Article

[I posted this in 2009, but discovered that it's been getting such a response this year that I thought I'd re-post it. ~ Claire]

Ever one to ruin the fun, I couldn’t let today go by without making a few comments about Saint Patrick and the annual holiday that’s held in his honor. Most of the people I know will be wearing green in some form today, thinking of all things Irish, drinking green beer, and possibly honoring that ancient Irish tradition of getting drunk and fighting. In other words, Saint Patrick’s day is a good excuse for partying, and few people will put any more thought into it than that. That’s fine. It’s a secular holiday in the United States, even if the day is named after a Catholic bishop and missionary, and so it should all be taken with a grain of salt.

If most people know anything about Saint Patrick, it’s that his one claim to fame is that he drove the snakes from Ireland. What most people don’t realize is that the snake is a Pagan symbol, and that the snakes referred to in the Saint Patrick mythos are not meant in the literal sense, but refer to Pagans; i.e., Saint Patrick drove the Pagans (specifically, the Druids) out of Ireland. So what is celebrated on Saint Patrick’s Day with drinking and much cavorting is, ironically, the spread of Christianity throughout Ireland and the subjugation and conversion of the Druids.

I have a perspective on Saint Patrick that most Americans do not. If you don’t know already, my surname is Mulkieran. That surname is associated with the parish of Clonkennkerrill near the small modern village of Gurteen, in Galway. It was first recorded in the early 11th Century, and other early recordings include Maelisa O’Mulkieran who died in 1197. My mother was a passionate genealogist, who traced our family farther back than that. So you might say that my Irish bonafides have been well established.

I mention this for no other reason than to be able to point out that my perception of Saint Patrick when I was growing up was vastly different from the popular secular view. My mother was a seventh generation hereditary witch, from a long line of women who rejected the Christian tradition of assuming the names of their husbands and kept her family name. There’s not a hyphen among the seven women who preceded me, and each one of them passed down the Pagan traditions which I hold dear today. Among these was a distaste for Saint Patrick (to say the least – my grandmother would spit at the mention of his name), who my family saw as a Christian invader, a missionary who was instrumental in the subjugation of the Irish isle to the Christian church (and who, worst of all, wasn’t even Irish).

It wasn’t arbitrary that the day honoring Saint Patrick was placed on the 17th of March. The festival was designed to coincide, and, it was hoped, to replace the Pagan holiday known as Ostara; the second spring festival which occurs each year, which celebrates the rebirth of nature, the balance of the universe when the day and night are equal in length, and which takes place at the Spring Equinox (March 22nd this year). In other words, Saint Patrick’s Day is yet another Christian replacement for a much older, ancient Pagan holiday; although generally speaking Ostara was most prominently replaced by the Christian celebration of Easter (the eggs and the bunny come from Ostara traditions, and the name “Easter” comes from the Pagan goddess Eostre).

I don’t celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day. I don’t begrudge those who do, and it doesn’t bother me that a lot of my friends will be drinking green beer and wearing buttons that say “Kiss me, I’m Irish”. Saint Patrick’s day in practice has become a secular holiday, much like Christmas, that has only the vaguest hints of its religious underpinnings still intact. So if you want to drink green beer and act like an idiot, please do. It won’t bother me in the slightest.

I actually strike quite a figure on Saint Patrick’s day. When nearly everyone else is wearing green in some fashion, I usually wear red and black, in various degrees and styles. For me, the red represents the blood of my ancestors, who were driven out of Ireland or were subjugated by any one of many zealous Christian missionaries. The black is for the darkness that fell over the world with the rise and dominance of the Christian church and the forced installation of patriarchy that replaced the ancient reverence for the feminine divine.

The only green I wear on Saint Patrick’s Day is a pendant that was handed down from my great-grandmother. It’s an oak leaf made of silver, the leaves of which are inlaid with emeralds. Family tradition holds that the gems were brought over from Ireland when the family came to America in the mid 1800′s, and before that were passed down through the generations for centuries.

The significance of the oak leaf should be obvious to most Pagans. It was a crime to fell an oak tree in Pagan Ireland. The ancient Druids wouldn’t meet unless an oak tree was present. The old expression “knock on wood” comes from the Druids, who would knock on the oak tree to say hello to the tree spirit. And my family tradition holds that an oak leaf worn at the breast, touching the heart, will protect the wearer from all deception and the world’s false glamour. Oaks are protectors, and to me they represent strength and renewal; that spark of the old ways that can never be fully stamped out by Christianity, and which keep popping up in the least expected places.

Why not wear a shamrock? Simple. Legend credits Saint Patrick with teaching the Irish about the concept of the Christian Trinity by showing people the shamrock, using it to highlight the Christian belief of “three divine persons in the one God”. Wearing a shamrock to me is tantamount to wearing a Christian cross. I don’t begrudge those who do, but I know the meaning behind it, and I can’t follow you there. You might as well ask a Jew to wear a swastika.

In closing, all I’ll say is that instead of celebrating Saint Patrick’s Day, I’ll be looking forward to Ostara. It’s usually about this time of year that I feel the first stirrings of Spring in the air, and it really begins to feel like the Earth around me is beginning to reawaken from its long sleep. You’ll see it in the step of every young person you see, as their bodies respond to the marshaling of energies and their hormones start raging. The Wheel of the Year keeps turning, and this time of the year is all about renewal. It’s the reason we all find ourselves flirting shamelessly with one another.

If I’ll be celebrating anything on Saint Patrick’s Day, it’s that my world is passing from Winter into Spring. Flowers will soon be popping into existence all around me. And there’s no better time of the year that you can feel so alive. I’d much rather celebrate that than the subjugation and extermination of Pagans in Ireland.

Links

• Original Post

The first thing that bothered me is that the leaflet came to light because a young girl in Bristol, Virginia, who was working in the drive-through at a burger joint called Hi-Lo Burger, was handing the leaflet by a customer. She wasn’t standing on a corner or bouncing through the local mall with her goodies half hanging out. One would assume that if she was working in a fast food burger joint, she wasn’t exactly dressed like a skank.

More than anything, though, what bothered me most was the unimaginable contention that a woman who dresses in a manner which the American Taliban believes is “ungodly” is partly at fault if she is raped. Think about that. Isn’t that the old mentality that a lot of women are familiar with from our unrelenting Christian neighbors? If a woman is raped, wasn’t she asking for it in some fashion? Shouldn’t she have taken better precautions? If someone smashes down her front door and rapes her as she tries to flee in the bathroom, shouldn’t she have installed better locks on her house? And if she works in a public place and ever wore anything the least bit suggestive, wasn’t she responsible for that man wanting to come there and rape her in the first place?

All you need to know about this leaflet can be summed up by the following quotes;

“Scripture tells us that when a man looks on a woman to lust for her he has already committed adultery in his heart. If you are dressed in a way that tempts a men to do this secret (or not so secret) sin, you are a participant in the sin.” It also states. “By the way, some rape victims would not have been raped if they had dressed properly. So can we really say they were innocent victims?”

I think all victims of rape who read those words will find a knot twisting up in their stomach. We’ve all put ourselves through that self-recrimination game, wondering what we might have done to deserve such hatred from another human being, that they would do such things to us. Reading such filth as the “Women & Girls” leaflet makes most of us feel like we’ve not only been raped, but we’ve been spit upon by those who we thought might empathize with us.

Read The Original Article >>