Why Newcastle witches love the Spring (Sky News)

"A central part of Pagan beliefs is celebrating the vernal equinox, commonly known as the spring equinox. They attribute the changes that are going on in the world to an increase in the powers of their God and Goddess. At the time of Spring Equinox the God and the Goddess are often portrayed as The Green Man and Mother Earth."

Old and busted: War on Christmas. New Hotness: War on Easter (Bill O'Reilly)

"If you watch The Factor, you know that we won the 'war on Christmas' battle. But the war on Judeo-Christian tradition continues in some public school districts, where you are not allowed to say the word 'Easter.'"

Stonehenge used to promote animated movie in honor of Equinox (GMA News Online)

"In celebration of the Spring Solstice 2013 and in conjunction with the release of Twentieth Century Fox's 3D animation “The Croods” – a family animation centered around the first ever pre historic road trip – a giant monument was erected at Stonehenge at sunrise on Tuesday 19th March. This marks the first time a modern structure has ever been allowed on this historic site."

Witch Persecution Past and Present (Oxford University Press)

"Myths about the ‘witch-craze’ abound. One version has it that millions of medieval women were persecuted by the church, aided by the prejudices of benighted peasants. ... If we in the West have successfully neutralized our most deadly fears and packaged our persecutions as harmless trick-or-treating, then perhaps we should be shouldn’t be too worried about celebrating evil. Recent events in Papua New Guinea suggest that we barely know the meaning of the word."

Review: The Mummy's Curse by Roger Luckhurst (Los Angeles Review of Books)

"In an attempt to unravel the belief in the mummy’s supposed hidden supernatural powers, Luckhurst’s book maps out not the actual country of Egypt as it existed during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but rather the Egypt that existed as a simulacrum within British culture."

"Witches and Wicked Bodies" art exhibition at Scottish National Gallery from 27 July through 3 November (Guardian)

"From hideous hags feeding on babies' blood to silky seductresses weaving spells to bewilder menfolk, artists' fantasies of witches have produced some of the most extreme and blackly fantastical images in art history. ... his summer, witches will be the subject of a major museum exhibition for the first time."

A scathing appraisal of the South African anti-occult school initiative (The Citizen)

"Alternative religions and the occult scare them, and so nobody should be allowed to explore them. ... Yes, the government will officially be discriminating against minority religions such as Satanism, Wicca and religions which may be considered “occult” by a group of Christian and Muslim clerics with too much time on their hands."