Goddess Bless Gabrielle Anwar, Fairuza Balk, Cybil Shepherd and Stevie Nicks

{ May 13, 2009 @ 12:41 pm } · { Uncategorized }
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The sooo-gorgeous-she-can’t-possibly-be-mortal actress, Gabrielle Anwar, slipped into the conversation with a writer during a recent interview that she is Pagan! You GO girl!

The 37-year-old divorced mother of three was discussing her desire not to marry again. “I’m a … pagan and this isn’t for me. This institution that was invented to control women and I’m not willing to be controlled any longer.”‘

Now if all the others would just come out of the closet… I could name loads of famous people who are deists, pantheists and atheists, but to my knowledge, there is only one other openly Pagan actress–Fairuza Balk–who, by the way, looks positively stunning in this photo I found of her recently.

What a contrast from her look in The Craft –a movie I think is worth watching but not meant to be taking too seriously (for obvious reasons).

Some speculate Cybil Shepherd may be a Pagan. Wikipedia has posted a quote attributed to her (I have not verified the validity of this statement nor do I know how to) that has her identifying her religious beliefs as “goddess-worshipping Christian Pagan Buddhist.”

Many of us desperately want Stevie Nicks to be a Pagan. She certainly looks the part. But she has denied that she is, and Stevie doesn’t come across as the type of woman who would be afraid to tell us if it were indeed true.

She can’t really blame us for believing she’s a fellow Pagan. In a Google image search for her I found no fewer than three photos of her wearing three different cloaks, another with her photographed in front of a blown up image of the full moon, and the lyrics in much of her music strongly implies she’s a Pagan.

Take Rhiannon, for example. She didn’t just like the sound of the name Rhiannon (which is very pretty I must admit). She knew the story of this legendary Celtic goddess.

I found this quote from Stevie regarding the song, “Rhiannon is the story of a lady that is from another world ~ called the Bright world ~ and she leaves her kingdom to become the wife of a king ~ a mortal king ~ but goddesses really can’t marry mortal kings, if they do they lose their powers ~ their magic powers.”

Hmmmmm…. Are you sure you’re not Pagan, Stevie?

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Credited for More Wiccans

{ August 27, 2008 @ 3:51 am } · { Uncategorized }
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Count me among the supposed one million plus who have walked away from Christianity since 1989.  But, I assure you, it wasn’t “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” that lead me astray. 

A British study recently released claims more than 50,000 women a year have deserted their churches over the past twenty years because they feel church is not relevant to their lives — and shows like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” have played a role in the exodus.

The research, published in a new book called “Women and Religion in the West,” says TV shows like “Buffy” offer women an appealing message of female empowerment while the old-fashioned attitudes and hierarchies of churches are causing a steep decline in the number of female worshippers.

“In short, women are abandoning the church,” writes Kristin Aune, a sociologist at the University of Derby. “Because of its focus on female empowerment, young women are attracted by [the pagan religion] Wicca, popularized by the TV series ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer.’  Young women tend to express egalitarian values and dislike the traditionalism and hierarchies they imagine are integral to the church.”

Her research cites an English Church census which found that more than a million women worshippers have left churches since 1989, and that women have been leaving churches at twice the rate of men.

Good grief.  OK.  Well, if television shows such as “Buffy” or “Charmed,” or movies like “The Craft” have had anything to do with the increase in female pagans of late, then let’s hope once they started actually studying paganism (and, oh please, Goddess, tell me they studied) they learned that the entertainment industry knows about as much about true paganism as the Pope.  In other words, you don’t want to learn what paganism is all about from television or movies any more than you would attend Catholic mass to learn more about what it is to be a witch.

That’s not to say that there haven’t been some movies that have come close to portraying pagans correctly.  “Practical Magic” wasn’t too far off.  And “The Mists of Avalon” and “King Arthur” are both excellent interpretations of the Arthurian legend with a more pagan flavor than the Holy Grail chasing, Christian-influenced versions of past centuries.  I recommend these films to anyone with the need to watch something about pagans, but one still must take in the content with a grain of salt.

No.  Unfortunately, Hollywood is still a long, long way from truly understanding what wicca and other pagan paths are truly about.  Or maybe they do understand, but the truth wouldn’t sell as well at the box office.  Feeding into that Christian paranoia and creating movies like “The Wicker Man” to demonize pagans and reinforce the propanda the church elders taught us growing up is still what the public at large really wants.  The Church may not be able to get away with torturing or burning us at the stake anymore, but in many ways, witch hunts still continue.

 

 

Witch Hunts Still Exists Today in Kenya

{ August 4, 2008 @ 5:48 am } · { Uncategorized }
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I just read this on RationalistInternational.net:

In Kisii district in western Kenya, eight elderly women and three men, suspected to practice witchcraft, have been brutally killed at the same time. They were dragged out of their houses by an irate mob and were – in separate cases – burned to death. The police arrested 86 villagers in connection with the murders.

Belief in witchcraft is widespread in the area and there have been some cases of attacking and killing suspected witches in the past. But never before, so many victims have been killed at the same time. During the investigations some witnesses revealed that an exercise book had been found in the local primary school containing minutes of an alleged secret meeting of witches. The book listed not only the names of the participants, but also the names of those whom they planned to bewitch next, they said.

Investigations are still on, said a police spokesman, but those arrested may face charges for murder, in some cases also for violent robbery. Five of them were found in possession of property and livestock of some of the victims. Those charged with murder could face death sentence. The court case is expected to start soon.

A modern-day witch hunt.  I have some serious doubts about the accuracy of this report, however.  There seriously was a list of people they were going to “bewitch?”  Oh please.  I suppose it’s possible.  But if this is the case, then what they were practicing sounds a lot more like Voo Doo than Wicca.  But even Voo Doo isn’t nearly as sinister as most people believe it is.  The author of this article seems to have a hard time deciding whether s/he sympathizes with the victims (the witches who were burned alive) or not.  I suspect this “rationalist” has some closet prejudices.

How I Came to be a Witch

{ July 28, 2008 @ 6:03 pm } · { Uncategorized }
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When I was pregnant with my first child, I read the Bible in its entirity…. from beginning to end.  That, of course, scared the begeezers out of me.  Then I did a little research on the origins of the Bible, and it quickly became clear that it was written by power-hungry men with political agendas.

I rejected the idea that the divine is solely masculine…. that there is one god and no goddess.  If we must have a mother and a father to come into existence, why wouldn’t there be both a god and a goddess… a masculine and feminine energy?  

So I started to study religion in general.  All religion.  I became an avid reader.  I enlisted the aide of meditation.  And I found Neo-Paganism.  It spoke to me.  It felt natural.  It made a lot more sense to me than any of the three major monotheisms that dominate our culture.  They’ve worked very hard to extinguish the sacred feminine and they neary succeeded.  But remnants of the sacred femine survived and the goddess is re-emerging.

I don’t adhere in any specific Pagan tradition, such as Wicca or Druidry.  Like so many other Pagans, I’ve carved out my own, unique, solitary path.  That’s the beauty of Neo-Paganism:  There’s no dogma… no doctrine… no holy scriptures one must live by.  One just follows her heart.  “An it harm none, do as ye will.”

Letting go of Christianity and the dogma of the Bible was a gradual process.  It wasn’t easy to undo all the indoctrination I’d gone through growing up (which is really no different than being brainwashed in a cult).  I continued to cringe at the sight of a pentacle, even though I knew it wasn’t a symbol for satanism (that would be an inverted pentacle, much like an inverted crucifix).   But slowly I’ve been able to embrace my true calling.

Since very few people in my life have the time to sit and listen to me ramble on about my chosen path, I find myself talking to myself a lot.  Done in excess, this habit might land me in the psyche ward, so I decided blogging might be the better route.

And so it begins…..