KANDAHAR, Afghanistan–Members of the Wiccan religion celebrated the arrival of spring outside the Christian fellowship centre at the NATO military base here.

Canadian Maj. Malcolm Berry smiles as he recalls being approached a few weeks ago by a group of soldiers of the Wiccan faith – a neo-pagan religion strongly tied to nature. (read more)

More than 2,000 years after Alexander the Great founded the city, archaeologists are discovering its fabled remains, from the likely site of Cleopatra’s palace to pieces of an astonishing lighthouse that was one of the Seven Wonders of the World

There’s no sign of the grand marbled metropolis founded by Alexander the Great on the busy streets of this congested Egyptian city of five million, where honking cars spouting exhaust whiz by shabby concrete buildings. But climb down a rickety ladder a few blocks from Alexandria’s harbor, and the legendary city suddenly swims into view. (read more)

People accused of witchcraft in America aren’t executed anymore (we are 300 years and a First Amendment away from Puritan Massachusetts). These days they just lose their jobs.

Don Larsen discovered this the hard way. A year ago, Larsen was a Pentecostal Christian minister serving as an Army chaplain in Iraq. But then he converted to Wicca, whose members are self-described witches, and applied to become the first Wiccan chaplain in the U.S. armed forces. (read more)

Magic
1. The unseen motivating power of the universe or creation, and the thread that determines all the laws of nature.
2. The physical practices required to bring about what the practitioners are trying to bring about, and the praying and calling upon the Divine to make happen whatever part they can’t complete. (read more)

At first glance, you’d never know that little Elizabeth Nettleton is Pagan. The vivacious four-year-old cuddles in her mother’s lap, floppy blond bangs dangling in her eyes as she clutches her green stuffed alligator and a red teddy-bear blanket. Then the girl reaches underneath her pink sweater and pulls out a long silver chain bearing a dime-size pentacle.

“Why do you wear the pentacle?” asks Tina, who would pass as a typical San Leandro mom were it not for the tiny silver stud in her nose. (read more)

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. (read 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. (read 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. (read more)

Pagans want to sit alongside Christians, Jews and Muslims on a body which influences how religion is taught in Plymouth schools. Practising Pagan Laura Watters, from St Budeaux, has written to Plymouth City Council, Devon County Council and Cornwall County Council asking for a place on each authority’s Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education (SACRE).

Mrs Watters has even met Cornish council chiefs in Truro to discuss the matter, and all three councils say they are willing to include the issue in talks. (read more)

Mocksville, NC - William Russell Shaver never thought that the MySpace page he shares with his wife would get him into trouble.

But it did.

Last year, he lost his job as a high-school bus driver for Davie County Schools and was asked to leave the Cooleemee Volunteer Fire Department, where he was a volunteer firefighter and emergency medical technician. (read more)