A petition backing a pardon for the UK’s last convicted witch has been launched by a Lothian village.

The Prestoungrange Arts Festival in Prestonpans is organising the petition on behalf of Helen Duncan, a Scot who was imprisoned for witchcraft in 1944.

Mrs Duncan conducted seances throughout Britain but was allegedly arrested because it was feared she would divulge details of the planned D-Day landings.

Source: Scotsman

NEVER has Gary Bouma’s fascination with the soul been more to the point. When the Melbourne academic and Anglican priest heard Kevin Rudd was the new leader of the Labor Party, he fairly hooted with delight at the thought of two of the country’s most public Christians, Rudd and John Howard, going head to head.

“Two Anglicans squaring off against each other!” he crowed. And this within a week of the publication of his latest book, Australian Soul: Religion and Spirituality in the 21st Century, which argues religion is becoming more relevant to public life.

A professor of sociology at Monash University, Bouma also holds the UNESCO chair in inter-religious and intercultural relations in Asia and the Pacific. His commitment to the interfaith movement is widely known and together with Des Cahill, he lobbied long, hard and successfully for Melbourne to be chosen as the host of the 2009 Parliament of the World’s Religions, the largest and most significant gathering of its kind in the world.

This is a big deal. Melbourne beat Singapore and Delhi for the honour, and it is expected the $9 million event will draw up to 12,000 people to the Victorian capital when its turn comes. So when Bouma pushes the line that “God is back” in Australia, it is not just the wishful thinking of a faithful man who has been dismayed by some of the developments in his own religion and within his own tradition: Anglican in-fighting is distressingly prominent. It is the confident assertion of a scholar who defines God more broadly than might be expected.

He is talking about spirituality, the need to identify with something transcendent, rather than with a prescriptive theology that seems not to answer the questions posed by people in the postmodern era.

Diversity, he says, is the watchword for 21st-century Australia. “I have been studying Australian religion for a long time,” Bouma says. “What’s been very clear in the first part of this century is not only the religious diversity but the impact of that for Australia, which has been to produce an increase in religious interest. What’s becoming interesting is religious identification.”

His book’s central argument is that religion is a marketplace, competition is booming and the battle for souls is set to intensify. “What’s not growing is dry, rational Christianity,” he says. “The mysticism is returning to the religious marketplace, a real sense of experiencing the presence of God or the beyond: that’s what spiritualities give people, and usually in a fairly unmediated way.”

But competition does not have to be hostile. “There is a difference between conflict and competitors who respect each other, and it’s a major difference. We have a competitive, open market, so people are displaying their wares: once you have competition and diversity, it becomes interesting.”

The most recent census figures, for 2001, showed that although about 75 per cent of Australians continued to identify with a religious group, the number who nominated the non-Christian “other religions” category was up 33 per cent since the 1996 census.

There was impressive proportional growth in adherence to religions such as Buddhism (up 79 per cent), Islam (up 40 per cent), Hinduism (up 42 per cent), and “nature religions” including paganism and Wicca (witchcraft, up 130 per cent), but these increases were off low bases and in some cases partly attributable to immigration or birthrates.

According to Bouma, people are rejecting highly structured ways of conducting their spiritual lives. “The question of the soul is there: they are tired of materialism and an unexplained universe, they are searching for something that makes sense in the 21st-century environment.”

This does not imply a headlong flight to faiths other than Christianity, although the census shows they are picking up adherents and there is enormous interest in what the 2006 census figures will show when they are released next year. Still, nearly 70 per cent identify with Christianity, although regular church attendance (now defined as once a month) is at 19 per cent and the weekly figure is 8.8 per cent and probably falling.

So, Christianity is still the main game in Australian society.

But, anecdotally, there has been a rise in the number of people who are believers, yet feel no need to attend a church as part of their spiritual regimen. Well known examples of this are Labor’s new environment spokesman Peter Garrett and author Tim Winton.

It would be folly to forget the avowed atheists, who have among their ranks some great entertainers. The most prominent of these is Englishman Richard Dawkins, who ensured God would receive a great deal of new attention when he published his best-selling The God Delusion recently. A lesser light, but nonetheless a best-selling author on the subject, is American Sam Harris, who also brought out a book this year, Letter to a Christian Nation. Also making a splash was former Jesuit priest Henry Ansgar Kelly’s book on God’s opposition, Satan: The Biography. All very appropriate in the year in which The Da Vinci Code brought Jesus and conspiracy theories about him to news pages across the world as Ron Howard’s film of Dan Brown’s novel earned almost $1 billion at the box office. The churches did their best to explain why it was not true that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were a couple who had a daughter and the rest of Christianity’s history had to be seen in the context of the cover-up. Looking back, it was a lighter note for them, given the challenges they face.

But not all denominations are bleeding supporters, and not all churches within some of the most affected denominations. Pentecostal and evangelical churches, which include the so-called happy-clappers and the mega-churches – those that attract big congregations to a single venue – are growing. “They are engaging with the kind of people who are out there, who want their questions taken seriously, so if all you are doing is peddling answers before they ask the questions, you are not going to get home,” Bouma says.

“Mega-churches are very successful. If you drive to them, you will find a parking place, you will get a cup of coffee and will be treated as someone who can be served.

“In a small neighbourhood church, they will grab you and say: ‘You can help us stay alive for the next 10 years.’ ”

To be fair, the churches are on to this. The National Church Life Survey, which conducts a five-yearly statistical analysis to coincide with the government census, monitors attendance and offers churches feedback on their relative health as organisations. This year the NCLS included a detailed leadership survey, questioning ministers and lay leaders about their qualities as well as asking churchgoers what they think of their leaders. It began a process of gauging the challenge in an era some designate post-Christian.

Another academic group, convened by the Melbourne-based Christian Research Association, released the findings of its Spirit of Gen Y study this year, confirming that the young are about as interested in religion as their baby-boomer parents but, importantly, unlikely to accept much direction from spiritual elders.

The Pastoral Projects Office, run under the auspices of the National Catholic Bishops Conference, came out with research later in the year that showed older Catholics were drifting away for reasons that included continuing fallout from the sexual abuse scandals involving clergy. The good news was that in some cases a warm welcome would be enough to get them back to mass again.

While the churches grapple with their relevance to modern society, the debate about their role and the role of religion generally in political life and government has been heating up. That the leaders of the two main political parties are professing Christians has provided a recent focus for this development.

“Who would have guessed five years ago about religion and politics?” Bouma asks. He was impressed with Rudd’s Faith in Politics essay, which ran in The Monthly journal in October, calling it “carefully grounded”. Rudd’s starting point was the example of one of the 20th century’s best-loved theologians, the German Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was martyred for his stand against Hitler.

Rudd argued for what is called the social gospel, which means caring for the disadvantaged in society and standing up for the weak as well as for the fair-go principle. He made it clear this was a broader responsibility than adopting a conservative stand on personal moral issues such as abortion, euthanasia and embryonic cell research.

The Australian’s editor-at-large Paul Kelly, in this year’s Acton Lecture on religion and freedom, summarised the stances of Howard and Rudd. While the Prime Minister finds religion compatible with and supportive of his values-based agenda, the Opposition Leader appeals to Christianity’s basic commitment to social justice to boost the Labor Party. “The symbolism of Howard and Rudd as competing political leaders is unmistakable,” Kelly told the Centre for Independent Studies. “Its message suggests that while the church as an institution is in decline, the role of religion in politics is being revived and redefined.”

Rudd is not the only one preaching the social gospel. Baptist minister and World Vision chief executive Tim Costello has been on about it for years, and is a close friend of Jim Wallis, one of its chief proponents in the US and author of God’s Politics. A typical line from them is that although there is very little in the Bible regarding personal moral isssues, there are thousands of verses dealing with social justice concerns. Ergo, a balanced Christianity should cover both.

This was music to more liberal Christians who have seen Australia’s version of the religious Right make the running in politics recently. They have watched with concern the rise of the Family First political party and observed the increasing efficiency of pressure groups such as the Australian Christian Lobby.

“We are not going to become like the US, because we do not work that way,” says Bouma, who was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “This is not the US ‘disease’ coming here, it’s very much an Australian development. In the next 10 to 20 years, it will play out in health and social services.” He says there will be a religious dimension to deciding policies and delivering services.

But it will be a diverse set of Christian influences. The first signs of it in the modern era was the re-emergence of right-wing Christianity, talking about family values. A significant element of this, Bouma says, was this group’s desire to define itself against other Christians as much as to define itself in politics. Then people from the Islamic community joined the debate and now those on the Christian liberal Left have begun to have a voice once again, “something not evident since the Vietnam War years”.

Those years from the mid-1960s into the early ’70s, when Australia was involved in the Vietnam War, are highly relevant to Bouma’s view of the role of religion in public life. Australia entered that war, he says, “with a lot of religious voices opposing it, but co-incidentally we emerged with a very secular discourse: political discussion became very strongly secular. So every policy put forward by religious agencies was couched in a secular voice, which de-natured and reduced the vitality of the Christian input.”

That is turning again, he says. Further, there is scope for interesting coalitions between Christian denominations and between faiths. He cites the united front over the environment earlier this month. Denominations across the Christian spectrum and other faiths including Buddhists, Muslims and Baha’is issued statements, under the auspices of the Climate Institute, supporting care of the environment as a religious priority.

“If you put up another question you would get a different coalition, for example on family issues,” Bouma says. “The problem is, within each denomination there is a great deal of diversity. People have the misconception of the monochromatic middle suburbs, people who look the same and who vote the same way, but the diversity between groups and within groups is huge.”

The significance of this is becoming apparent in the US, as the solid front of the evangelical Christians – the religious Right – shows signs of wear, at least at the leadership level. In November, Rick Warren, the world-famous founder of California’s Saddleback Church and author of the bestseller The Purpose-Driven Life, found himself in hot water with some fellow evangelicals when he invited Democrat senator and potential presidential aspirant Barack Obama to speak on the subject of AIDS.

The conservative National Clergy Council’s Rob Schenck told media that Warren had no business bringing to the pulpit a man who supported abortion rights. Warren had already emailed members of his congregation saying: “Jesus loved and accepted others without approving of everything they did. That’s our position too, but it upsets a lot of people.”

Evangelicalism has an attractive energy. But with its emphasis on the Bible, it is in a tussle with more liberal interpreters of the faith, who hold the Bible in balance with other elements of the 2000-year-old religion, such as ritual and history. Former Anglican primate Peter Carnley characterised himself as “progressive orthodox”, valuing doctrinal tradition but recognising, as he told The Melbourne Anglican in 2000, that we live “within the tension of what we inherit from the past and dawning kingdom of God”.

Bouma is unfazed. “The important thing to remember about these kinds of movements is usually they are fundamentalist and tend to be very charismatic at the beginning.” But the longer they persist, the more likely it is that adherents will “want to ask more complex questions and seek more complex answers. When people take up a religion, converts are always more interested in sharing their faith and a strict application of rules, and likely to engage in what I call competitive piety; I think competitive compassion is the answer.

“And those things become more tempered and moderate as people become more mature in their faith.” Over the past 25 years, he argues, these patches of revival or growth have occurred in all the major faiths. “It’s not just a Christian thing: look at Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism. These groups are now asking each other questions: OK, you say you are a Christian, what do you believe? I see that as a natural part of the history of religious life: we are coming up out of a trough.”

And, Bouma says, they’re finding the age-old dilemmas remain and that religion is one of the more enduring answers. “Is there more than what we see and touch? Are there ways issues of justice are going to be solved? Or the answer to pain and suffering? Because science has not removed injustice and suffering. Religion traditionally provides the answers and people find great comfort in it.

“What is not going to happen is there is not going to be a single Christian party that will take a spiritual and moral agenda into politics. What’s going to happen is there will be a religious dimension to the discourse that will be part of the contribution to what we want to be as a society.”

Source: The Australian

Winter failed to show up to its winter solstice service yesterday at Second Congregational Church of Greenwich.

Although the arrival of winter and the advent of Christmas were the main themes for the event, the mild weather didn’t conjure an image of any winter wonderland.

“We were hoping for better special effects,” said the Rev. Robert Naylor, senior minister at the church on East Putnam Avenue, as he noted the lack of snow.

Winter officially arrived at 7:22 p.m. last night. To mark the longest and darkest day of the year, Second Congregational held a service of Scripture reading, carol singing and labyrinth walking on its property at the Greenwich Labyrinth for Peace and Healing.

The winding stone path was installed this year as a place to relax and reflect, Naylor said. Last night, it was lined with luminaries to guide the dozen members in attendance.

Naylor said that for Christians, the winter solstice is a sign that the days will be getting lighter and longer. The symbolism is combined with Christ’s birth to “show the coming of light through Christ,” he said. The event also was used as a stress reliever, he said.

“In the midst of all the chaos and noise of Christmas, we get a chance to draw back and have a reflective time,” Naylor said.

Church member Ruth Davidson said she decided to attend the church’s first winter solstice service to be a part of something new and to focus on the meaning of Christmas.

“It adds to the spirituality of Christmas,” she said.

When the holiday’s usual ice-cold temperatures and snowfall will arrive is yet to be seen, according to National Weather Service meteorologist John Cristantello.

He said that as of Wednesday, this has been the third warmest December on record. Yesterday’s high was 54 degrees, or 14 degrees higher than normal, Cristantello said. Today and tomorrow will have similar temperatures, with rain replacing the snow some might expect a few days before Christmas.

For those hoping that Bing Crosby’s holiday tune might come true, “it’s not looking very good right now” for a white Christmas, Cristantello said.

The celebration of Christmas on Dec. 25 — there is no mention of a specific birth date in the Gospels — has direct ties to the celebration of the winter solstice, which has pagan roots as the high holiday Yule.

Witches praise the rebirth of their sun god and burn a Yule log to honor Thor, their god of thunder. The early Christian church chose Dec. 25 to celebrate the birth of Christ to deflect attention from the pagan holiday, according to religious scholars.

For Wiccans, the winter solstice provides a great source of energy as they worship the power of darkness, according to Greenwich Psychic owner Janet Lee, who practices white magic witchcraft. Lee says she does not personally use the negative energy associated with Wiccan black magic but she often interacts with the witches.

“People who usually work with dark magic work then,” she said, adding that the day may be used by black witches to make love and healing spells.

Lee said those witches who use positive energy avoid working on the day of the winter solstice to avoid crossing paths with the work of those using negative energy.

“We tend to take the day off,” Lee said.

Source: Greenwich Time

Pagans were left red-faced when they celebrated the winter solstice at Stonehenge - on the wrong day.

Around 60 people wearing full-length cloaks met at the mystical site yesterday morning to mark the shortest day of the year.

But this year, the solstice was not until today.

One of the revellers said: “We formed a ring and held hands and touched the stones.

“But there were a lot of red faces when we realised it was the wrong day.”

Source: Glasgow Daily Record

People around the Salt Lake Valley plan to welcome back the light this evening as they celebrate winter solstice.

Celebrations of the shortest day of the year date back more than 5,000 years to Ireland’s Newgrange, a stone structure thought to be used to recognize the solstice. Newgrange is built on a hill, and the building contains a chamber with a window that only allows in light from the sun during the winter solstice.

Tara Sudweeks Willgues, a minister at Church of the Sacred Circle, which promotes earth-based spirituality, said while no one knows how the structure was used, it’s apparent it was built for the solstice.

“It was built so long ago that any traditions around it have been lost,” she said.

But not having distinctly established traditions doesn’t stop her and several other Utahns from gathering each solstice to celebrate the impending return of longer days.

She and Edward Slomka are members of the Sun Stave Circle, and Slomka is in charge of planning this year’s celebration. Tonight’s activities will include the burning of a decorated Yule log and feature a living tree, which will be given to a participant to be planted in Heber. The Sun Stave Circle is a “nonorganization” that allows members to come and go and volunteer to host pagan events, such as the solstice celebration.

He and Willgues see clear ties between pagantraditions and Christianity’s celebration of Christmas. In many ancient cultures, such as the Roman Saturnalia, people brought greenery into their homes and exchanged gifts. Also, the Yule log was a tradition dating back to ancient Nordic cultures to help welcome back the sun.

“We start gaining more daytime again,” Slomka said. “By having light and burning the log, it symbolizes the light of hope and it’s evolved from there.”

Willgues calls the solstice a “fairly major celebration” in paganism, mainly because it has become so deeply ingrained.

“A lot of it has to do with ancient traditions, and now it’s all mishmashed into Western cultures,” Willgues said.

In addition to burning a Yule log, Slomka will offer an activity for people to make pinecone bird feeders, another show of respect for nature.

“You don’t have to be member of anything to come to our group,” Willgues said. “We welcome anyone who is curious about earth-based spirituality or wants to celebrate the solstice.”

—
* SHEENA MCFARLAND can be contacted at smcfarland@sltrib.com or 801-257-8619.

* SUN STAVE CIRCLE: 7 p.m., South Valley Unitarian Church Building, 6878 S. Highland Drive. Bring a can of food for the homeless shelter and an item for a potluck dinner.
* UNITARIAN CHURCH OF OGDEN: 6-9 p.m., Earth-Centered Spirituality Group, 705 23rd St.

Source: Salt Lake Tribune

Shortly after 4 p.m. today, the North Pole will be tipped as far from the sun as it gets during its annual orbit, resulting in the shortest day of the year.

After that, the pole starts tipping back toward the sun, taking the Northern Hemisphere back into summer.

For some Spokane residents, it is more than just an astronomical occurrence – it is a time of religious celebration.

“For me it’s really important to observe Yule because it’s looking back at what this time is really about and sort of escaping the craziness,” said Kevan Gardner, a self-identifying Wiccan and member of the Spokane Unitarian Universalist Church, which is holding its annual Yule celebration tonight.

Gardner said that Yule is a time of hope, best expressed by a line from one of the songs sung during the season: “Even in the deepest dark, the light does shine.”

“We go through the dark, we go through the hard times, but there’s always hope ahead,” he said.

Gardner is part of a smaller group within the church called the Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans. Wiccans fall under the broader umbrella of paganism, said Gardner, who became involved in the Unitarian church after helping organize a Yule celebration 13 years ago.

Covenant education and outreach officer Terri Cailin described paganism as an umbrella faith that includes Earth-centered and non-Abrahamic traditions.

Gardner said he is a pantheist, believing divinity is found throughout the natural world and its inhabitants.

Cailin said tonight’s Yule celebration will encompass elements of various pagan faiths.

“We’re celebrating the dark and then inviting the sun to come back,” she said.

Kim is a Covenant member who asked that her last name not be used because she’s not “out of the broom closet” because of stigma attached to the concept of paganism. She said attendance at the overnight vigil that follows tonight’s service is usually sparse.

Participants stay at the church playing games or performing tarot readings.

“Witchy stuff,” she said.

As the sun rises, participants head outside to cheer, rattle drums, and sing as the sun comes up.

Kim describes the experience as a “very free-form organic ritual.”

Covenant’s celebration is falling after the solstice physically occurs. Washington State University astronomy instructor Michael Allen said the date varies each year due to the Earth’s orbit around the sun, with solstice occurring a few minutes past midnight on Friday, Greenwich Mean Time. With Spokane clocks set eight hours earlier, the solstice actually occurs this afternoon.

Allen said that around the time of the solstice, the sun just grazes the horizon at the North Pole. At lower latitudes, like Spokane, he said, the sun will be closer to the horizon than it is during the rest of the year, never getting directly overhead.

Solstices have been watched for thousands of years, and appear to have been significant to the civilizations that built Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids, Allen said.

Allen said the idea of a winter and summer solstice is a misnomer since today’s event is the Southern Hemisphere’s summer solstice.

Gardner said that while other churches share similar spiritual paths, the Unitarian church focuses on the values that unite the different religious practices of its members.

“We may have different sort of paths, but we agree on the same basic tenets,” including commitment to human life and stewardship of the Earth, he said.

Source: The Spokesman Review

With an estimated 400,000 members nationwide, and a high-profile fight with the federal government over veterans’ grave markers, Wiccans are moving into a more prominent place in the religious landscape.

And Selena Fox is leading the way.

A Wiccan priestess and founder of Circle Sanctuary, a 200-acre nature center in the Wisconsin woods about 30 miles west of Madison, Fox battles for acceptance of the so-called neo-pagan religion.

Though they are often equated with witches, many Wiccans reject the label because of the baggage it brings.

Fox, whose graying hair flows midway down her purple dress and matching cape, exudes more hippie-esque charm than any kind of Hollywood-conjured witchery. She embraces the task of fighting discrimination against Wiccans.

“Spirituality should be something that lifts the spirit,” she said.

Fox, a 57-year-old psychotherapist, wants to make clear that Wiccans do not worship the devil or engage in Satanism. She doesn’t cast spells, ride a broomstick or wear a pointy black hat.

The golden rule for Wiccans is, “And it harm none, do what you will.”

A nature-based religion, the Wiccan faith is founded on respect for the earth, nature and the cycle of the seasons.

A “yule tree,” which looks identical to a Christmas tree, sits in a corner of the 100-year-old red dairy barn Fox has converted into an office, meeting room and spiritual center.

“We worship the divine and we do that by recognizing that the divine permeates all of life,” Fox said.

The highest profile fight in Wiccans’ struggle for recognition is with the federal government over its refusal to allow pentacles on grave markers issued by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The pentacle, a symbol of Wiccans, is a five-pointed star representing earth, air, fire, water and spirit. Variations of it that are not part of the Wiccan belief have been used in horror movies as a sign of the devil.

Last month, Americans United for Separation of Church and State sued the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs on behalf of Circle Sanctuary and others arguing that the VA is violating the constitutional rights of Wiccans.

Buried at Circle Sanctuary’s cemetery are the remains of two soldiers – a Vietnam veteran from Ohio, and Jerome Birnbaum, a Korean War veteran. There also is a memorial to Nevada National Guard Sgt. Patrick Stewart, who was killed in Afghanistan last year.

The widows of Stewart and Birnbaum are part of the lawsuit.

Fox and others say not including the pentacle on the list of accepted grave marker symbols is especially maddening because the Army Chaplain handbook has listed ways to accommodate Wiccans since 1978 and about 1,800 active-duty service members identify themselves as Wiccans, according to 2005 Defense Department statistics.

Fox said the VA’s lack of acceptance of the pentacle points to prejudice.

“I didn’t want to have to sue the government to try to get the U.S. Constitution upheld,” Fox said. “It’s discrimination. There’s no other explanation I can think of.”

A spokesman for the VA had no comment, citing the ongoing litigation.

People are attracted to the Wiccan religion for its devotion to nature and incorporation of both male and female deities, said Nikki Bado-Fralick, an assistant professor of religion and women’s studies at Iowa State University.

She estimates the number of Wiccans nationwide has increased from about 40,000 in the late 1970s to around 400,000 today.

The Census Bureau, based on a survey in which people self-report their religion, put the number at a more modest 134,000 as of 2001. Fox said she thinks that number is low because many Wiccans fear reporting their religion.

“Oh lord, everyone thinks you worship the devil,” said Joey Bunbury, a 39-year-old property manager from Madison and a Wiccan for about a decade. “People don’t understand.”

Some Wiccans use the name good witch, pagan or neo-pagan, to describe their spirituality, but others say there’s just too much of a negative connotation and prefer to be called Wiccans.

“There’s a misinterpretation that says if you say you’re pagan or Wiccan, you’re weird,” said Jerrie Hildebrand, an ordained Wiccan minister living in Salem, Mass. “Most of us look like Joe or Jane America and you’d never know.”

Hildebrand is assistant director of the Lady Liberty League, a group headed by Fox that addresses discrimination.

She said the group receives more than 100 complaints a year, and only a handful ever get amicably resolved.

Complaints range from school children being told they can’t wear jewelry with Wiccan symbols to workers who face harassment.

Source: San Diego Union Tribune

Some commonly held Wiccan beliefs and practices include:

_ The Wiccan religion and related pagan religions incorporate revivals, continuations, and adaptations of customs, mythology, symbology, folkways, worldviews, and spiritual practices from pre-Christian Europe.

_ Those who follow the Wiccan religion refer to themselves as Wiccans. Some use the ancient term for wise ones, witches, but others avoid this term because of negative connotations. Groups of Wiccans sometimes are called circles or covens.

_ The major branches of paganism include the Wiccan religion, Unitarian Universalism Paganism, Druidism, Teutonic Paganism (Asatru), and Eclectic Paganism.

_ Honoring nature is considered central to Wiccans’ spiritual practice. Humans are viewed as part of nature, not as its dominators or owners.

_ Wiccans worship “The Divine,” or god, in one or more forms, often as a Mother Goddess and Father God.

_ Wiccans recognize eight holy times during the year, known as Sabbats, which are marked by rituals and feasting, and which include the Solstices, Equinoxes and mid-points between.

_ Wiccans invoke the elements of nature — earth, air, fire, water — at the start of rituals and thank them at the end.

_ Most Wiccans and pagans believe in an afterlife and some form of reincarnation. They believe it is possible to contact and communicate with dead people.

_ Some pagan holy places include Stonehenge in England, Newgrange in Ireland, and Delphi in Greece.

_ Some of the ceremonial tools used by Wiccans for their worship include the pentacle, chalice, incense, candles, herbs, wands, crystals, and Tarot cards.

_ The predominant form of ritual and social space for Wiccans and most pagans is the circle.

Source: International Herald Tribune

I confess I missed the “War on Christmas” last year. I work in retail and it is obviously our busiest time. I didn’t notice many skirmishes but we did have a few customers who seemed reluctant to say “Merry Christmas” and one who insisted on wishing me felicitations of the holy day in a way that suggested she was not happy nor did she care if I had a jolly time or not. So after last season’s furor over holiday greetings and decorations, I had hoped we’d come to some sort of understanding about the winter holidays but, alas, I was wrong.

One of the world’s largest retailers has bowed to the will of its demographic and has returned “Merry Christmas” to the lips of its employees and the plastic signs of its sale bins. Lest I be buried with a stake of holly through my heart for not saying “Merry Christmas,” I’d like to offer an olive branch — or more appropriately a mistletoe bough — in this pernicious little skirmish so that I and you may get on with celebrating our holidays this year.

Like many cranky middle-aged Southerners, I acknowledge that I live in a world gone topsy-turvy. My grandmother taught me good manners and I mostly still practice them—yes, sir; no, ma’am; please pass the tofu. I try to remember which religion my friends adhere to and I wish them greetings appropriate to the season. My grandmother didn’t hold with forcing your religion onto other people and would have been appalled at Southerners with the bad manners and incivility to force a holiday down everyone’s gullet, whether they celebrated it or not.

Both my cultural upbringing — my raising, as we term it here in the mountains — and my spiritual tradition enjoin me to offer hospitality. Most people’s religions do the same. Here at the darkest time of the year, we are faced with many expressions of our souls’ hopes and fears in the dregs of the old year, expressions that have come to this country in the hearts of immigrants for centuries, as well as those that were here in the indigenous populations to begin with.

As we come to the White Solstice in December, we stand with the harvest behind us and months to go before anything can be grown to feed us. The nights grow darker and the daylight hours shorten—we ingather to conserve energy and to cheer our hearts. We share stories out of our cultural past as well as the bounty of what we have stored to see us through the winter, whether we canned from our own gardens or went by the grocery store for eggnog on our way home from work.

These cultural and religious expressions take many forms. The dominant one in this country is related to the dominant religious force here, Christianity.

No matter what your personal celebration may be, your world-view in December is dominated by the trappings of Christmas and runs the gamut from Santa and his reindeer to the Blessed Virgin and her Child. But Christmas is not the only holy day celebrated by your neighbors and co-workers and friends.

In any given year, we might see December celebrations of Yule, Solstice, Hanukkah, Ramadan, Divali and Kwanzaa, in addition to Christmas. And the “Christmas” season itself — which until Dec. 25 is correctly called the Advent season — holds different cultural celebrations, including but not limited to St. Lucia’s Day, St. Nicholas’ Day and Los Posadas.

None of these celebrations diminish our own understanding of what our ancestors did and the traditions we follow to honor them and the season. Rather than risk the ire of my southern grandmother’s mannerly spirit, it seems better to be a good neighbor and wish someone a “happy holiday” if you don’t know which one they celebrate than to snap a mean-spirited “Merry Christmas” because you feel threatened and put-upon. Where’s the threat?

Each one of these spiritual expressions, these holy days, has its own trappings of decorations and food and greetings and its deeper teaching about family and survival and how to treat strangers who come to your door, whether they bear tamales, mead, fruitcake or frankincense. The way we survive the season, no, the way we thrive in this season, is to remember that we are not alone, that there’s something cooking in the kitchen and that we are blessed beyond measure by both. It is a time to remember what we have and to share the bounty, if we can.

The young sun of the winter solstice promises crops in the summer to store for next winter, and our tribe, however we define it, will be fed.

Full bellies, gracious hospitality.

And so the wheel turns and the cycle continues, by whatever name you call it.

Byron Ballard is a Dianic Wiccan high priestess with Notre Dame de l’Herbe Mouillee. She lives in Asheville.

Source: Asheville Citizen-Times

The trial for custody of a seven-month-old boy began Monday with claims of witchcraft, drugs and an unexpected request for guardianship from the boy’s biological grandmother.

“It is my grandson at the mercy of this court. I have been quietly and patiently watching this situation and see no indication of his inherent First Nation rights being acknowledged,” the grandmother told Justice Shawn Smith moments after the trial began in Saskatoon Court of Queen’s Bench.

“I’m not taking this step lightly,” she added. “I’m afraid for my grandson if his heritage is not recognized, so I ask that he be returned to me so I can raise him among his extended family and ensure he will not lose that identity.”

The biological father, who wants his son returned to him by the couple who adopted him, is not aboriginal.

The grandmother’s request stunned several people in court, since she had been called to support the father’s parental claim.

“Your plea is well-taken and your response is totally appropriate as the grandmother, but your request is not at all on the court’s radar,” Smith said.

The judge pointed out the woman has no custody application before the court.

The child’s biological mother is a woman with whom the man seeking custody had a sexual relationship. She arranged for a couple in Prince Albert, Sask., whom her family had known for 14 years, to adopt the child. But the father found out the woman was pregnant a few weeks before the baby was born.

The mother stated she didn’t know who the father was, but a DNA test confirmed the man is.

However, the contract between the mother and the Prince Albert couple is recognized as law. The adoptive parents have given the baby their surname and are seeking child-support payments from the dad.

A publication ban has been imposed on all names to protect the baby’s identity.

Smith must decide, in the best interests of the child, who should raise the boy.

The grandmother testified the baby’s mother knew who the father was. She testified the woman often spoke of her intention to tell him “but it gradually became clear she didn’t want to raise the child with him.”

The biological father’s lawyer asked her to explain why the Prince Albert woman is unsuitable to raise the child.

The grandmother accused her of practising witchcraft. “Years earlier, (the adoptive mother) was not feeling well and transmitted pains from herself to my older daughter.”

Lawyers for the mother and the adoptive parents jumped at the grandmother’s about-face.

“So have your feelings changed? You no longer support (the biological father) having custody?” asked Rick Danyluik, the couple’s lawyer. “You support you having the baby?”

“Yes,” the grandmother responded. She stressed First Nations customs have been around longer than Canadian courts and empower her to raise the child, or at the very least, decide who should.

But Danyluik noted she is not aboriginal. She has a European background and married a band member.

Source: ChronicleHerald.ca