Paganism // Current TV

Citizens United vs. Witchcraft: Witchcraft Wins

Think Progress decided to compare the unfavorable polling of Citizens United with... more

StewSteve
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29 days ago
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Gingrich: Same-Sex Marriage Is ‘Pagan’ Behavior, 'A Fundamental Violation of Civilization'

Thrice-married Newt Gingrich, who has previously described same-sex marriage as... more

coolplanet
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4 months ago
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43 comments

How many American Christians are really atheists?

A lot of Americans think of themselves as “progressive Christians” or... more

hoosierdaddy
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1 year ago
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1 comment

Pagans on the March

Aak it happens every year. Some journo compiling a comprehensive list of everything... more

EclecticBadger
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1 year ago
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1 comment

Kanye West's Banned Album Artwork Decoded

http://tinypic.com/m/dgrq4z/3 Ok so Ye's Album Artwork Got Banned.. But what... more

Wizzane
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1 year ago
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1 comment

50 Best Blogs for Wiccans

One of the most misunderstood minority religions in the world today, Wicca involves a... more

eva2
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1 year ago
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Faith, Druids and Charity

Druidry is to become the first Pagan practice to be given official recognition as a... more

EclecticBadger
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1 year ago
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1 comment

Forgotten Festival of The Faroes

On a tiny group of islands between Scotland and Iceland, a music festival takes place... more

Rowsell
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1 year ago
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The Goddess

Goddess Deck Swap Hosted by Kelly Kilmer A fun collaborative art idea--- If... more

remanns
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1 year ago
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1 comment

Discordianism

http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-51301-Phoenix-Paganism-Examiner~y2010m6d22-Discordia... more

Blake_Hall
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1 year ago
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Blessed Vernal Equinox!

The vernal equinox for 2010 occurred at 1:32 Eastern time. It is a time of planting,... more

JanforGore
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2 years ago
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2 comments

The Real Origin of Christmas

The uncovered truth about our beloved Holy-Day. Follow me on Twitter.com/hoodnews

Hassan
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2 years ago
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Bath & Body Employee Fired For Being A Witch

A Connecticut Bath & Body Works staffer who practices witchcraft claims her boss... more

jmsrmy
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2 years ago
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1 comment

The REAL Origin Of Christmas

Hassan Haze uncovered the lost translation of Christmas and takes you to it's... more

Hassan
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2 years ago
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3 comments

Here’s how All Hallow’s Eve (Halloween) came to be celebrated

The observance of All Hallow’s Eve, which over the years has been contracted into Halloween, has its roots in the end of summer celebrations held by people of pre-Christian Europe, especially the Celts of the British Isles.

Because the Celts believed that the world of the living and that of the dead were so close during this festival, allowing spirits of the dead to more easily return to the land of the living, people set out food and drink for family members who had died the previous year. Of course, if friendly ghosts could return under this night’s cover of darkness, so could evil spirits. To keep these malevolent ghosts at bay, skeletons, presumably of dead animals, were placed at the entrance of each house and in many cases turnips were hollowed out, faces carved into the shells to represent skulls and small pieces of wood wrapped in oil soaked cloths were placed inside each one and set alight. In some places, people dressed in animal skins or wore grotesque masks to frighten away unwelcome spirits.

In Scotland, the young men disguised themselves as spirits by dressing in white and blackening their faces, or wearing masks or veils to confuse and ward off these unwanted visitors. This costume and carved turnip practice lasted well into mediaeval times, when Christianity had long replaced the Celtic religion.

With the arrival of the Romans in Britain, a new element was added to the end of the summer events, when the festival honouring Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and orchards, took place around the same time. Apples played an important role in this celebration.

Another ancient British festival with an apple theme, now known as Snap Apple Night, was celebrated with bonfires, feasting, dancing and itinerant entertainers at this time of year. One of its popular games was to try and bite an apple suspended on a string without using hands. It seems then, that apples and turnips at Halloween time predate pumpkins by many hundreds of years.

With the arrival of Christianity, early church leaders, realizing they couldn’t simply ban these old customs, wisely chose to give them a Christian interpretation and the day remembering Christian saints was moved from May 13 to the end of October and All Hallow's Eve came into being, with the day following called All Saints’ Day (“hallow” is an old English word for holy one or saint).

In parts of 9th century continental Europe, people went from door to door early in November “souling,” because it was believed departed souls needed help on their journey to Heaven. The “soulers” begged specially made little “soul cakes” from each family visited and in return would promise to pray for family members that had recently died. Eventually the day following All Saints’ became All Souls’ Day.

While the Christian aspect of this holy day (holiday) remained strong in the old world, the other old traditions began to fade after 1500, but not before British settlers arrived in Canada and the U.S.A., bringing the old ideas with them. Where now the Christian aspect has become muted, the earlier pre-Christian customs remain strong.

(I shortened the article. More detail at link)The observance of All Hallow’s Eve, which over the years has been contracted... more

hpseaton
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2 years ago
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3 comments

Pagan cult mosaic found under a cathedral

A Roman mosaic floor filled with scenes depicting pagan rites and oriental gods has... more

AwesomeJosh
added this
3 years ago
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36 comments

Lammas: history of the Pagan celebration of the Harvest

In the last entry the harvest rituals of Ancient Egypt were explored. In this entry,... more

JanforGore
added this
2 years ago
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3 comments

Do Pagans Have More Sex?

"Wouldn't it be great to be back in hunter-gatherer days? Back before the human spiritual quest had been corrupted by the "relentless onslaught of Western scientific materialism" and "dogmatic male-dominated religion"? Back when there were shamans—spiritual leaders—who could plug us into "the realm of the magical," show us "the reality behind apparent reality," and thus lead us to understand "how the universe really works"?

The quotes come from Leo Rutherford, a leading advocate of neo-shamanism, which is a subset of neo-paganism, which is a subset of New Age spirituality. But the basic idea—that there was a golden age of spiritual purity which we fallen moderns need to recover—goes beyond New Age circles. You see traces of it even in such serious scholars as Karen Armstrong, who wrote in A History of God that early Abrahamic religion had created a gulf "between humanity and the divine, rupturing the holistic vision of paganism."

As the author of the just-published book The Evolution of God, about the history of religion, I'm primed to do some debunking. But before I start, I want to stress two points: 1) I think it's great for people to find spiritual peace and sound moral orientation wherever they can, including neo-paganism; 2) I don't doubt that back before Western monotheism took shape there were earnest seekers of a "holistic vision" who selflessly sought to share that vision.

What I do doubt is that these earnest, selfless spiritual leaders were any more common in the heyday of shamanism than today, or that the spiritual quest was any less corrupted by manipulation and outright charlatanism than today, or that there was a coherent philosophy of shamanism that makes more sense than the average religion of today.

if shamanism is so crude, how did it get glamorized? In 1951, the esteemed scholar Mircia Eliade published a book called Shamanism. While he didn't whitewash shamanism, he did his best to see its more refined side. He wrote that Eskimo shamanism and Buddhist mysticism share as their goal "deliverance from the illusions of the flesh." And shamanism, he said, features "the will to transcend the profane, individual condition" in order to recover "the very source of spiritual existence, which is at once 'truth' and 'life.' "

f you try neo-shamanism, don't be under the illusion that you're helping to recover a lost age of authentic spirituality. Religion has always been a product of human beings, for better and worse.""Wouldn't it be great to be back in hunter-gatherer days? Back before the... more

St_Alia_10191
added this
2 years ago
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15 comments

Pagan police to get Halloween as holiday

Police who like to indulge in a spot of witchcraft have been given the right to take... more

AnnieMole
added this
2 years ago
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2 comments

King Arthur booted out from Stonehenge

You might say; that's no way to treat the King of the Britons, but it's... more

emmahill
added this
3 years ago
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