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Welcome back to Watery Wednesday, our weekly segment where we take at news affecting the Pagan community and other religious communities around the world. This week we explore a variety of subjects, from upcoming Pagan festivals to an old 1970s hippie commune to a modern-day witch hunt. All this and more for the Pagan News Beagle!
Lots of fun community news in today's Watery Wednesday edition of the Pagan News Beagle. Paganicon guest Lupa; a new Druid college; staying well at festivals; Morning Glory Zell (Memorial Foundation) news; Between the Worlds.
Upcoming Paganicon guest Lupa Greenwolf is featured in this interview by PNB-Minnesota chapter.
Interested in becoming a druid? This new three-year apprenticeship program by the Druid College might be of interest.
...The words we write leave a record. They help define us to others and to ourselves. They tell us where we have been, the struggles and joys we have experienced, and give hints at the future. When I was writing for the Juggler, I began compiling an annual list of the top 10 Pagan quotes of the year. I find it to be one of my favorite projects of the year.
This year we seem to have struggled with identity. Some of that was defining ourselves to the rest of the world, but a good portion of it was negotiation within our intertwining traditions. Honest disagreements flared up now and then, as always, but there were also deeper questions of self-identification and marginalization. In the WTF department, Time magazine compared witches to terrorists, proving that we still have a long way to go in defining ourselves within mainstream culture.
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Today at the Pagan News Beagle we are saluting seven of Our Mighty Dead -- Pagan (and Pagan-allied) leaders who passed over between Nov. 1, 2013 and October 31, 2014.
Who are the Mighty Dead? We defer to the definition given by M Macha Nightmare, “The Mighty Dead are those practitioners of our religion who are on the Other Side now, but who still take great interest in the activities of Witches on this side of the Veil. They have pledged to watch, to help and to teach. It is those Mighty Dead who stand behind us, or with us, in circle so frequently.” Today we remember Donald Michael Kraig, Judy Harrow, Morning Glory Zell, Jeff Rosenbaum, Peter Paddon, and Pete "Pathfinder" Davis. (Addendum: Sparky T. Rabbit.)
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In my view, one of the most comforting activities one can do after a loved one has passed through the veil is telling stories about the deceased. Stories tell us who we are, where we came from, what we might become. They are our primary teaching tools.
“We're all made of stories. When they finally put us underground, the stories are what will go on. Not forever, perhaps, but for a time. It’s a kind of immortality, I suppose, bounded by limits, it’s true, but then so’s everything.”
...Hello there! Thank you to all of you who entered the giveaway! I only had one entry so she got the books! Here's my Google Hangouts on Air video revealing the winner and talking about the next giveaway:
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My old friend Anna Korn and I drove up to the Zell compound in Cotati after I finished with the Wiccan circle at San Quentin, so we weren’t there from the very beginning. When we arrived, there were cars parked up and down both sides of the country road outside their home and the place was packed. There was a proverbial groaning board in the dining room that kept acquiring more and more dishes of food. Platters of ham, beef, chicken for the carnivores. All manner of salads and side dishes – beans, pasta, greens, tomatoes and pomegranate seeds, you name it. Plus veggies, breads and many tasty chips for dipping in many tasty dips. There were also food tables out on the various decks surrounding the house, with plenty of folks outside, too. There was a seemingly endless supply of wines and other potables, including Pyrate Jenny with her lovely basket filled with about a dozen different flasks, each containing some kind of whiskey or rum.
People congregated in the two living rooms, the den, and in several seating clusters on the surrounding decks. During this time Zack Darling, using a fancy video camera with a tripod and a handheld mic, recorded stories about Morning Glory from individual friends and lovers.
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