Southern Illinois - A group of slightly less than 30 people, some sporting rabbit ears, stood in a circle around a small wooden floor in the Davis-McCann Center in Murphysboro Saturday night, tracing the outline of their bodies with eggs.

The high priestess of the ceremony, Tara Nelsen, instructed the group that doing this would help pull the negativity out of their lives and breaking the eggs would completely remove it. (more…)

Jacksonville, FL - Walking into Earth Gifts, one is greeted by the soft aroma of Sandalwood incense, calm new age music and smiling faces. Every wall in the store is covered in colorful fabrics or bookcases or ornaments. In the center of the store, there is a spiritual sanctuary motif,fit with stone statues and several meditations fountains.

The “Metaphysical Supplies” store and gift shop located on the Westside sells everything for the spiritually enlightened from incense and smudging sticks to herbs and crystals – a one-stop shop where you can pick up a new dashiki, aroma therapy oils and books on meditation. (more…)

Before playing Tituba, the alleged conjurer and caster of spells from Barbados, one year in the class play at Parkview High, the most mileage I’d logged was a summer road trip’s distance between Little Rock and Baton Rouge. This was during a time when an authentic Caribbean clip was hard to hear in my Arkansas hometown.

Ignorant, I affected an accent I’m certain was astonishingly off kilter, though the drama teacher seemed hardly to have noticed. She gave me wide berth. Down on my knees onstage, I begged for mercy in some dreamt-up voice of a black woman who, in real life and in Arthur Miller’s border-shattering play “The Crucible,” was enslaved on a Barbadian sugar plantation, then carted by the plantation owner, a London-born Harvard grad and self-appointed preacher, into servitude in his Puritan household in Salem, Mass. Based on accusations by the owner’s young daughters, Tituba was the first woman tried in the famous Salem witch trials of four centuries ago. (more…)