Horrible Histories – Boudicca
February 23, 2012 in Uncategorized by admin
“Suspicious Activity,” Animal Skulls, and the Perils of Sensationalism
Yesterday, local news reporters in Chester County, Pennsylvania covered what law enforcement and a
Treading Lightly on the Earth
If we value the Earth and nature and if we are trying to work for better communities, both human and
by admin
“Suspicious Activity,” Animal Skulls, and the Perils of Sensationalism
February 22, 2012 in animal cruelty, animal sacrifice, Chester County, occult, Paganism, Pennsylvania, PSPCA, Religion, Santeria, SPCA, witchcraft by jason-pitzl-waters
Yesterday, local news reporters in Chester County, Pennsylvania covered what law enforcement and animal control officials called a “dark and disturbing” scene. The alleged slaughtered corpses of half-a-dozen dogs, surrounded by occult books and paraphernalia.
“Two people are in custody after police found more than a half dozen dismembered dogs inside a Chester County house Monday night. SPCA officers carried out bags and boxes of evidence from a home in the 2400 block of Wayne Avenue in the city of Coatesville. Officials say the scene inside was dark and disturbing with elements of witchcraft and the occult on vivid display. In the living room, investigators say they found two dog skulls and a dog skeleton that had been gold-leafed. They then walked into the kitchen and found two dog skeletons on the counter and a dog’s head in the freezer.“
This seems pretty bad. It’s one thing to tolerate the sacrifice of a livestock animal like a chicken or goat, but dogs? People love dogs, and those who harm and abuse them are usually treated as no better than if they murdered a human being. Plus, “witchcraft and the occult”? You know that local Pagans, not to mention adherents of Santeria or Vodou, will have to do damage control for years because of this. But what if, just what if, those weren’t dog skulls. What if they were something else?
“Since the remains found in Caln Township haven’t been confirmed as canine, [George Bengal, the director of law enforcement for the state's SPCA] said there may not be cause for alarm. In his experience, goat and dog skulls can be easily confused.“
It’s true! If you aren’t an expert in such matters, and if you are full of adrenaline responding to a “suspicious activity” call, it can be quite easy to confuse a goat skull with a dog skull. Here’s a side-by-side comparison with a domestic dog skull and a domestic goat skull.
For the sake of argument, if these were goat skulls, wouldn’t that explain why they were keeping some in a freezer? Why there were charred bone remains in a fire pit? That they were, you know, eating the goats? Now, I don’t eat meat, so goats aren’t on my menu, but I hear that goat is the most-consumed type of meat in the world, and is increasingly trendy here in the United States. So wouldn’t having a decorated goat skull in your house be no more different than the many, many, folks I’ve met who display decorated cow skulls in their homes (particularly in the Southwest)?
Regardless of veracity, because of the “sacrificed dog” angle that all the initial reports have put out, the local occult/metaphysical community is now on the defensive.
“In my 41 years of practicing the occult, I’ve never come across any ritual or activity that involves killing dogs or cats,” [Eric Lee, co-owner of Mystickal Tymes] said. “This person sounds more like a sadistic individual that should be heavily sedated than an occult practitioner.”
Now think of the owners of that house. Even if the remains were goats that they ate, will they ever have peace again? Or will they be forever branded as the “dog sacrifice” family, and be slowly ostracized and exiled from the community? Will the local media do big flashy “exonerated” stories, or will we just get a quiet addendum that nobody pays attention to?
A final question. Why did the local SPCA officials on-scene instantly jump to the conclusion that these were dog remains, comments that were soon walked back after the fact? Could it be that many SPCA officials received training in “occult” matters from biased sources? In fact, state SPCA official George Bengal, who is quoted above, has made odd remarks about animal sacrifice in the past.
“An animal welfare official says a beheaded dog and cat found in Philadelphia appear to be the result of a ritual sacrifice. George Bengal, Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals director of investigations, said the dog and cat were found … near a bike path in Philadelphia’s Olney neighborhood along with three beheaded chickens. He said he believes the animals were killed elsewhere and the remains dumped where a passer-by found them. Mr. Bengal said there is usually an increase in ritual animal sacrifices at this time of year because of “a lot of high holidays that different groups celebrate.” But he said most of those sacrifices involve goats and chickens.”
A different Pennsylvania-based SPCA official in 2009 harassed a Satanist, accusing him of abusing his pets, despite no evidence that this was occurring. He too was the victim of a “suspicious activity” call. Which makes one wonder, why does the Pennsylvania SPCA think occult practitioners are routinely harming dogs and cats? What data or evidence are they basing this on, and why were officials so quick to exclaim “dog” in Chester County, Pennsylvania when it might have been “goat” instead?
by heather
Treading Lightly on the Earth
February 22, 2012 in change, connection, druidry, modern society, nature, simple living, spirituality by heather
If we value the Earth and nature and if we are trying to work for better communities, both human and non-human, then our values need to translate into actions. It is not enough to believe the right things, it is not enough to think the right things, it is not enough to read the right books (however we define what is "right"). Alone, these are of limited worth. To bring about positive change,
PantheaCon: Unity, Diversity, Controversy
February 21, 2012 in gender, Paganism, Pantheacon, Religion, Thorn Coyle, transgender, Z. Budapest by jason-pitzl-waters
On Monday I returned from the 2012 PantheaCon in San Jose, the largest annual indoor gathering of modern Pagans in North America. This is my third year attending the event, and for me it has become not so much about the panels and presentations, though they are often wonderful, enlightening, and oft-times challenging, but about connecting and reconnecting with the people I write about, network with on social media, or collaborate with in organizations like Cherry Hill Seminary or the Pagan Newswire Collective. PantheaCon is part of the glue that holds “Pagan community” together, that rare occasion when you actually see and experience members of The Sisterhood of Avalon hanging out with Thelemites, Feri initiates sharing drinks with Asatru, and ritual magicians discussing their work with Vodouisants. For that alone, Glenn Turner and the convention staff deserve special praise and recognition.
I think it’s vital to contextualize the uniqueness of PantheaCon, because we can sometimes lose focus on how important this event has become to so many, and just what a hothouse of our movement’s vast diversity and creativity is on display year after year. That PantheaCon succeeds where others fall short in mingling groups that can often have vastly different ideas about practice, theology, politics, and worldview. Because of this success it has become an unofficial annual meeting place of our movement’s leaders, clergy, scholars, and activists. Understandings are built, grudges resolved (and sometimes formed), and new projects hatched from talk over dinner, or in hurried conversations between presentations. If one had the time, and the people-power, a year’s worth of stories could be written from just these four days of intense activity. Due to all this, when controversies do arise, they tend to amplify throughout our movement, our interconnected community.
This year, debate, protest, and controversy emerged around a scheduled “genetic women only” ritual led by Dianic elder Z. Budapest, complicating a dialog begun on the issue of gender and transgender within modern Paganism the year before, re-exposing raw emotions and hurts from both sides that we as a community are still in the process of acknowledging, understanding, and responding to. These events have sparked a lot of comment and reaction by those watching from the outside, and I think it is necessary to begin by listening to the voices that were in attendance, and who directly participated in the events the Pagan community are now discussing.
- First, here is T. Thorn Coyle explaining why she decided to organize a peaceful, silent meditation outside Z. Budapest’s ritual at PantheaCon. Thorn’s reasoning was expanded upon in a follow-up post written after the ritual and protest happened.
- Yeshe Rabbit, High Priestess of CAYA Coven, who this year co-led an inclusive ritual open to all, and who held ritual space between the sitters and the scheduled ritual, has posted about her own reactions to the controversy. Earlier, Rabbit had questioned the need for protest, but now describes the action as “moderated, noble, disciplined, and poised.”
- Z. Budapest has not commented at length since the ritual, though you can read part of the prepared apology she gave before the ritual, and that convention staff distributed, at PNC-Bay Area. Her earlier call for support in the face of silent protest can be found at her Facebook page. The alleged statement from last year that helped fuel protest this year can be found, here. It should be noted that PantheaCon staff is now investigating all comments attributed to Z. Budapest for veracity.
- Robert at the Doing Magick blog witnessed the silent protest, took some photos, and shared his thoughts on the matter.
- Lupa, who attended the silent sitting protest, shares her reactions and reflections, with updates, at her Livejournal. She has also posted a follow-up where she clarifies her stance on cis-women only rituals.
- PNC-Minnesota has posted a letter to the editor from a woman at PantheaCon who wanted to attend Z’s ritual, but was discouraged from doing so by news of the protest.
You can find much more discussion on this across the Pagan blogosphere. As more voices emerge, I will document them and share them with you here. I am committed to giving all involved in this matter an opportunity to share their perspectives, what they think the relevant issues are, and what they think the way forward is from this point. You should also stay tuned to PNC-Bay Area, who are planning several articles and editorials around this issue.
While things unfold, I want The Wild Hunt to be a space where all voices can come to be heard, in hopes of encouraging productive dialog and working towards understandings that collectively enrich us. As someone who sits atop the pyramid of privilege in our society, I hesitate to offer off-the-cuff opinions or solutions, and instead hope to be an advocate for transparency, renewed dialog, and building respect between all parties. Considering the thoughtful responses I’ve seen so far from those involved, I want the emphasis to be on their voices, not mine. In the weeks to come I am committed to listening and documenting, to being a resource for those engaged in the direct work.
In the year leading up to the 2013 PantheaCon, I anticipate that The Wild Hunt will cover this matter extensively. I will also slowly unpack my own thoughts as they develop, and hope that I can offer additional light when it is called for. In addition, you can expect coverage of the many other events, panels, and presentations at PantheaCon, so that their good work is not lost amid this storm.
ADDENDUM: Teo Bishop from Bishop in the Grove, who sat with the protesters, has written up his experience of the evening. Working from notes taken that evening. It is matter-of-fact, and essential reading for anyone who is interested in what exactly happened.
Major Influences Part 3 – Dougie Maclean
February 21, 2012 in dougie maclean, music, myth, mythology, song by damh-the-bard
Well, not so much an influence, as a Kindred Spirit.
Me and Cerri were on holiday in Scotland, travelling to some of the Herbidean Islands when, at breakfast time in one of the B & Bs on the Isle of Skye, I heard this song being played. It was a lovely B & B and I had fallen in love with Skye, but it was to give me an even greater gift on that morning. As I listened to the song I simply fell in love with it.
I write songs that I would listen to myself, I mean, if I wouldn’t listen to it, why would anyone else right? And here, drifting though the speakers of this B & B was a song that was about the closest I had ever heard to the kind of music I was trying to create. I asked the waitress who it was and she told me it was a Scottish folk singer/songwriter called Dougie Maclean.
When we left the B & B for that days trek, one of the destinations was a music shop to see if I could find a CD from this man. There, hidden in the rack I found his album Roif. I popped it into the car’s CD player and I knew I’d found a musician that spoke my language, he even sang in the same key as me. The themes of his songs were certainly rural, and some also held within them a Pagan edge too.
I played that CD all over the rest of our Hebridean holiday (Cerri was admittedly a little tired of it by the time we got home…) but then I bought the rest of his albums, and fell in love with each and every one. A few months later I saw he was playing at a small venue near us in Sussex so I bought tickets, and when I saw him live he even entertained and communicated with the audience like I do!
His voice and songwriting is a joy, and his love of the land, and old traditions is palpable. If you like my music, you would love Dougie. So have a listen and watch these videos and, like me, I think you’ll be drawn into his world, and fall in love with his music too.
by heather
Druidry and Career
February 20, 2012 in career, connection, druidry, jobs, spirituality, uncertainty by heather
As much as I would like to simply hoist on my backpack and wander off through the hills with a trusty staff in my hand, poetry on my lips, and fire in my head, this simply isn't that practical. For one thing, I love books and I have accumulated quite a few of them (more than could fit in my backpack, even assuming I didn't need at least some of that space for food and tools as well), so I need a
by brendan
Guest Post: Circles of Meaning, Labyrinths of Fear
February 20, 2012 in Uncategorized by brendan
[Brendan Myers, Ph.D., is the author of numerous books on mythology, philosophy, ethics, and culture. As far as he’s aware, he is the only openly-pagan philosophy professor in the entire world. Originally from a small town in Ontario, Canada, he now lives in Quebec, where the beer is much better. The following is an excerpt from his forthcoming book, “Circles of Meaning, Labyrinths of Fear”.]
Our world is utterly saturated with fear. We fear being attacked by religious extremists, both foreign and domestic. We fear the loss of political rights, a loss of privacy, or a loss of freedom. We fear being injured, robbed or attacked, being judged by others, or neglected, or left unloved. We fear succumbing to an exotic pandemic disease, or losing our homes to catastrophic storms induced by climate change and global warming. We fear the social breakdown that abortion, divorce, and same-sex marriage will supposedly cause. We fear foreign immigrants with their strange customs, coming to our neighborhoods to take our jobs, drain our welfare state, or commit crimes. We have existential fears such as the fear of death, fear of freedom itself, fear of the afterlife, fear of being ‘unreal’ (a surprisingly common one, although difficult to describe), and fear of loneliness and isolation. You might boast of having none of these fears. Yet there is a part of your mind which knows that certain boundaries must not be crossed. We see certain consequences befalling the unprepared, the disbeliever, the nonconformist, the Socratic gadfly. And so we supervise ourselves. We subscribe to moral and political values that separate us from each other, instead of unite us, such as competition, and individualism. We immerse ourselves in escapist mass entertainment, such as ‘reality TV’ programs. We support fanatical politicians and preachers. Our politicians, in turn, support dictators and tyrants in other countries, all in the name of ‘security’ and ‘stability’. And we arm ourselves to the teeth, and pray to God to be saved. Thus even when we say we have no fear of these things, fear still governs our minds.
But life does not have to be that way. There is nothing natural, inevitable, or necessary about the labyrinth of fear. We can liberate ourselves. There are better ways to live. Someone has to take the initiative to love and trust her fellow living creature, and set us all free.
Yet this book is not just about social and moral problems. It is about people and relationships. It is about what our lives might look like if we were not so profoundly governed by fear. As we have seen, fear tends to emerge from disordered and dysfunctional relationships. For one of the deepest and most debilitating fears we endure is the fear of other people. We fear what they might do or say, how they may act, whether they will judge you, harm you, steal from you, interfere with your life, perhaps kill you, or simply ignore you. The liberation from fear requires a better understanding of our relationships, and a rectifying and a healing of our relationships. In that sense, this book offers not one way, but twenty-two ways, to escape the labyrinth.
I also think that liberation from fear requires a sense of the sacred. For just as our fears emerge from our relationships, so does the sacred.
When we think of the words ‘the sacred’, we do not normally think of relationships. We mostly think of ‘things’. We look to sacred places, like the mountain of Croagh Patrick, in Ireland; sacred buildings, like Khajuraho Temple, in India; sacred music, such as Gregorio Allegri’s Miserere, and sacred texts, like the Tao Te Ching. Sometimes we speak of sacred people, like priests, prophets, saints, shaman, seers. Or we might say someone is an elder, or that he is somehow ‘very spiritual’. Sometimes we treat non-religious things in a sacred way, such as a national flag, or the trophy cup of a professional sports league. But as I hope this book will show, these things are sacred not simply because of what they are. They are sacred because of the relations between people which involve them. The sacred, I shall say, is that which acts as your partner in the search for the highest and deepest things: the real, the true, the good, and the beautiful. The name I’d like to give to the kind of relationship that gives us a chance to find such things is a circle of meaning.
“Circles of Meaning, Labyrinths of Fear” (ISBN: 978-1-84694-745-2) is published by Moon Books, in March of 2012, in both paperback and kindle/eBook formats. Click here (or here) for more information, or click here to pre-order your copy. And click here to find out about Brendan’s other books. Oh, and Brendan has two other books coming out in March! Watch this space, or this one, to find out more, or just to say hi.
Many thanks to Jason for letting me promote this book here on The Wild Hunt! You rock!
And now, here’s some links that are completely unrelated to the book, just for fun.
If you can’t get to Pantheacon, then perhaps you can attend Canada’s first pagan winter camping festival: Northern Lights Gathering.
Evidence is emerging that the science behind the denial of climate change and global warming isn’t science at all, but is (mostly) ideology. Here’s a recent example of that evidence.
Just about everyone knows about how Stonehenge was designed for the play of light, with its solar and stellar alignments at special times of year. Now a new theory suggests it was also designed for the play of sound. Have a look here, and here.
BB!
Haunting sounds at ancient Peruvian site
February 20, 2012 in Americas by stone-pages-archaeo-news
More than 3 millennia ago, people came to Chavin de Huantar, a village in a high valley in the Peruvian Andes, to hear the oracles speak - in the voice...
Solent’s Stone Age village
February 20, 2012 in England by stone-pages-archaeo-news
Excavation work continues on an 8,000-year-old Mesolithic settlement under the surface of the Solent - the straight which separates the Isle of Wight from the south coast of England. At...
Origins of human culture – Mesolithic South Africa
February 20, 2012 in Africa by stone-pages-archaeo-news
The Still Bay culture was one of the most advanced Middle Stone Age groups in Africa when it emerged some 78,000 years ago. Archaeologist Chris Henshilwood's excavations at Blombos Cave...
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