American Wiccans realized a rather large victory yesterday, over a very small symbol. Wiccan soldiers can now have the pentacle on their headstones, thanks to a settlement reached with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. (Read more at CNN.) The “Available Emblems of Belief for Placement on Government Headstones and Markers” page on the Veterans Affairs website has already been updated with the addition. In all honesty, as a Canadian, I haven’t been following this whole situation too closely. I have always understood the gist of it, but I never really understood why it was an issue. By that I…
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I’ve been fascinated by Irshad Manji since I first saw her on QueerTV. She is a feminist, proudly lesbian, and also proudly Muslim. But she is also a radical, and thought by many fundamentalist Muslims to be the devil. Her book, The Trouble With Islam Today (originally The Trouble with Islam), details how she feels the Islamic faith is failing women, and, really, all modern Muslims. She says of it: “The Trouble with Islam is an open letter from me, a Muslim voice of reform, to concerned citizens worldwide – Muslim and not. It’s about why my faith community needs…
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I’ve been reading Tarot cards off and on since middle school. For the first little while I was more then happy to do readings for other people, but as I got older I got shyer, and now I never read for anyone other then myself with a few rare exceptions. So, I won’t read for my mom, but I will do distance readings for members of the Aeclectic Tarot Forum. Funny, I know, but I am what I am. Anyway, in an attempt to get a little more practice with Tarot reading (and hopefully increase my confidence), I have decided…
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I’m not a big fan of Witch School. And their stock with me fell even further this morning when I found out about this: WitchSchool.com World’s Largest Witch School for Sale. That’s right, Witch School is for sale to the highest bidder, be it responsible pagans or a Christian evangelical group. And the winner gets access to the private information of every Witch School student, as well as the right to award degrees in one of the flavours of Correllian Wicca. Sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. This, of course, is another in a long line of fun and…
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Last week, in the meditation class I attend every other week, the teacher talked about the different levels of teaching that Buddha presented to his followers. There were teachings aimed at householders (the average people), and teachings for dedicated monks. We began to talk about how many, maybe all, religions are like this too. There are easy to understand teachings aimed at people who are not necessarily looking for easy answers, but are looking for teaching that can be easily applied to their lives. Good examples of this include the Christian Ten Commandments and the Wiccan Rede. For people looking…
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I’ve been attending meditation classes off and on since August of last year. Although my daily practice hasn’t been terribly consistent, I still have seen some benefit from my practice. It is amazing how much of a difference remember to breath can make in times of stress. Today, my wonderful meditation teacher sent me a link to a video on YouTube. It is a music video, but also a Buddhist teaching by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, a highly respected Tibetan lama. Watch it, please, and stick with it until the end. It is a wonderful lesson for all of us.
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Athena is one of the twelve gods of Olympus. She is Zeus’ daughter by the nymph Metis. Athena was actually born fully formed, and fully armed, from Zeus’ forehead, as He had swallowed Metis whole when He learned that any son she bore Him would overthrow his father. Athena is protective of the image of the gods. She supports mortals who are pious, and punishes those who She feels are not. In one myth, She is said to have challenged the mortal woman Arachne to a weaving contest after Arachne bragged of her skill. Both Athena and Arachne produced flawless…
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I’ve written a few times in the past, either here or on The Lotus Pond, about how Wiccans seem to disagree amongst themselves about whether or not they perform magic. I usually say that I am not a witch because I do not perform magic, meaning I do not cast spells. But, there are those that make the argument that Wiccan ritual practice, specifically Circle casting, is a work of magic, and therefore Wiccans can be seen as witches. Without getting into the whole Wiccan/witch debate, I thought it might be interesting to figure out if casting a Circle really…
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The number of people killed during the witch hunts is often misrepresented as 9,000,000 (with at least one site claiming that 85% of which were women).1 Many sites, though, now represent the number as between 50,000 to 200,000 people, including the ever popular Wikipedia. So, where did the larger number come from, and why do many scholar and Pagans now believe the number to be so much smaller? According to Ronald Hutton2, a historian in the small German town of Quedlinburg first reported the number of dead as 9,442,994 in 1793. The historian arrived at this number by taking the…
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There is an interesting conversation going on across a couple of blogs right now. PJ at PJ’s Big Adventure post an entry about how corrupt the Bible Belt states in the U.S. seem to be. (Wikipedia entry about the Bible Belt for those who don’t know much about it.) PJ muses that this paradox might have something to do with the negated statements in the 10 Commandments, making it into more of a To-Do list then a list of things to avoid. An interesting idea, but I wasn’t totally convinced. Maybe, since I am Canadian, it is because Texas and…