Free Republic

Kooky, Sexy, Cool – The Rise Of The New Witches [Pics in URL] Forget Kabbalah – paganism is the hot new religion, and thousands of young British women are embracing it By Eimear O'Hagan, 06/09/2009 Witches, covens, dancing around bonfires by the light of the moon and making offerings to goddesses - all the stuff of folklore and fairy tale, right? Wrong. Welcome to the world of paganism. Walk into any high-street bookshop and, alongside the usual chick-lit best-sellers, there's another set of books flying off the shelves, all about how to find your inner witch. Yes, really. Hot on...

POLICE who worship heathen gods will get eight days off a year to celebrate pagan festivals. They are also in line for thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money in recognition of their status as a “community” of pagans.Home Office chiefs this week gave their backing to the Pagan Police Association which will be entitled to public funding, along the lines of that given to other rank-and-file organisations like the National Black Police ­Association.Once recognised as a minority, officers will be given time off for the eight annual pagan festivals, including Halloween and the summer solstice.Last year the Home Office introduced...

What did the Christians cherish from the pagan traditions, and what did they change? How Christians elevated culture What did the Christians cherish from the pagan traditions, and what did they change? They raised the status of women. It's dogma in our public schools today that women in ancient times were oppressed, because women had no voting rights, women had not the same opportunities as men, and so forth. You will be mocked if you deny that this spells oppression. If you're a college professor and you deny it, get ready for the stake. But the charges are anachronistic and...

A witches' coven leader has accused the Roman Catholic Church of prejudice after her group was banned from a parish social club. Sandra Davis, 61, high priestess of the Crystal Cauldron group, booked Our Lady's club in Stockport, Greater Manchester for a Halloween Ball.

A group of British witches is claiming religious discrimination after a Stockport Catholic church banned them from using its social club for their Crystal Cauldron Witches Ball. Sandra Davis, High Priestess at the Crystal Cauldron, had reserved Our Lady's Social Club in Shaw Heath, Stockport for her Pagan group's Annual Witches' Ball, the UK Telegraph reports. But when she rang to make payment arrangements she was told the event could not be held there and, despite already having printed tickets, another venue must be found. The Diocese of Shrewsbury have since confirmed witches are not "compatible with the Catholic ethos."

“Paganism” is a term fraught with all sorts of connotations. It originally meant something like “country dweller”, “rustic”, or even “hick”. That’s because (contrary to popular myth) Christianity did not spread among the Hee Haw-watchers of antiquity, but among the city dwellers and urban folk. The very last people to receive the Faith were the rural folk who clung to the worship of the old gods and the customs of their ancestors long after Christianity had become thoroughly established in the cities. So the term originally referred only to “country folk”.However, because the country folk were devoted to the various...

The media is a abuzed about this, and the lefty blogs are acting as though this being some nuance of the right. Wrong. Let’s not forget that Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, both antisemitic and neither considered spokesmen for the right. But after some research it appears the shooter, James Von Brunn is in fact - despite the protestations of the Kos Kids - a registered democrat from Maryland. So much for the “Right Wing Conspiracy”. Fact is that most of the Holocaust Denier crowd is from the left. Many of the groups follow the writings of Naom Chomsky, the...

‘Having our cake and eating it, too’ is a mindset that all of us fall into from time to time, albeit in differing degrees. Recently a U.S. Senator discovered that the political party he had been a member of for over 40 years had finally started showing signs that support for him was over. The polls were showing that his challenger in the upcoming primary was going to unseat him and this Senator decided that loyalty to his constituents and his party was secondary to his power. Rather than retire with dignity, this Senator decided to change sides and join...

Sunspots could be seen by the Soho telescope in 2001 (l), but not this year (r) There are no sunspots, very few solar flares - and our nearest star is the quietest it has been for a very long time. The observations are baffling astronomers, who are due to study new pictures of the Sun, taken from space, at the UK National Astronomy Meeting. The Sun normally undergoes an 11-year cycle of activity. At its peak, it has a tumultuous boiling atmosphere that spits out flares and planet-sized chunks of super-hot gas. This is followed by a calmer period. Last...

As volunteers with the American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) rallied for traditional marriage in Concord, New Hampshire, a pro-homosexual advocate desecrated a Bible, shouting obscene anti-Catholic slurs.

The announcement that the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, MA, has chosen a lesbian, pro-abortion president to lead the seminary has sent shock waves around the Anglican Communion. The appointment of Katherine Hancock Ragsdale highlights a week that also saw TEC bishop-elect Kevin Thew Forrester replace a reading from the New Testament with a reading from the Quran at St. Paul's Marquette, Michigan. One wonders what Episcopal boundaries and barriers have yet to be crossed that the dying embers of historic Christianity could possibly fan into life. That the Diocese of Massachusetts has a functioning transgendered priest complete with a...

"The percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 points in the past two decades. How that statistic explains who we are now—and what, as a nation, we are about to become."

Perhaps you heard about the NC mom, Lisa Pagan, who was recalled by the army and made the case that there was no one to care for her children. Her husband travels extensively for his job, and both sets of grandparents live out of state. Having exhausted the appeals process, she showed up for duty with her two kids in tow. Perhaps sensing a PR nightmare, the army has promised that she will be discharged. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090302/ap_on_re_us/military_mom Now I have to say that I have mixed feelings about this story. In one way I totally sympathized with this woman, having pulled...

Old Town Alexandria, Northern Virginia — Jogging through this gorgeous, historic town the first Saturday after the Tuesday vote, which elected the most leftist presidential candidate in American history, it isn't difficult to see how the typically Republican state of Virginia went Democrat in 2008... ...the vast majority of self-described non-religious voting Americans went for Obama, and they were decisive. CNN exit polls found that 76 percent of those who answered "none" when asked about religious affiliation cast ballots for Obama. They comprised 12 percent of voters.

Ahmedabad, November 1 : A Priest of a Shiva temple in Bapunagar hanged himself to death inside the temple premises reportedly while performing a sorcery ritual in the early hours on Saturday. B J Maharaj (40), who belonged to Uttar Pradesh (UP), was found hanging from a hook on the ceiling of the Lambeshwar Mahadev Temple, near Ajit Chowk in Bapunagar, on Saturday morning. The Bapunagar police have sent the body for post mortem and are investigating the case. According to preliminary investigations, said the police, the victim died accidentally while performing a ritual to get expertise in black magic...

Lately it seems that many of us are living as if we are over-caffeinated hamsters on well-greased exercise wheels. We run and run as fast as we can and still don't manage to arrive at our destinations. At the end of the day there are still a slew of chores undone on the to-do list. We struggle to find time to savor the company of our loved ones, enjoy life and relax. Our physical, emotional and spiritual needs often are abandoned due to the demands of modern life. Spiritual teacher and author Waverly Fitzgerald believes we'd all benefit by changing...

One can only admire the humanity and wisdom of those Christians, like St. Boniface, who chose to Christianize the pagan festival, instead of outlawing it...[b]ut what can be said about those fanatics who today wish to apologize and minimize Christmas out of a misplaced sense of multicultural sensitivity...?

Dear Ellen, Christmas is disgusting. It’s all pagan worship. Even most Christians don’t realize that all their decorations and traditions come from ancient Babylon. Our family doesn’t cave in to all this stuff and I tell friends at church they shouldn’t either. Signed, Ms. Christian Grinch Dear Ms. Grinch, By saying “all this stuff,” I assume we’re talking Christmas trees, mistletoe, hasty pudding, Yule logs, etc.? I grant that Christmas choices are a matter of personal conscience. I had a similar e-mail conversation with another Christian killjoy last month so I retrieve and relate to you my comments to him....

On Dec. 7, 2007, the movie "The Golden Compass," based on the first book in the fantasy trilogy entitled "His Dark Materials" by atheist Philip Pullman will be released in theaters throughout the world. Pullman wrote his fantasy trilogy because he was so upset by the Christian evangelism of C.S. Lewis in his wonderful series of Christian tales entitled "The Chronicles Of Narnia." Pullman is an avowed atheist who has dedicated his life to undermining Christianity and the Church among young readers. The film's release is only another example of a culture spiraling away from faith, a culture into which...

From ENS: 8 November 2007 The Rt. Rev. Jack Iker The Episcopal Diocese of Ft. Worth 2900 Alemeda Street Fort Worth, TX 76108 Dear Jack, As you are undoubtedly aware, it is my view that recent amendments to your Diocese's constitution violate the Constitutional requirement that the Diocese maintain an "unqualified accession" to the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church. I have now reviewed several proposed constitutional amendments that will be considered at your forthcoming diocesan convention. It is evident to me that several of these proposed changes would further violate the Church's Constitution, while some other proposed changes...

Tamara Morales paid homage to her grandfather on her lunch hour at the fast-food chain Chipotle on Thursday. "I told the guy behind the counter, 'Give me the most 'picante' salsa,'" said Morales, in Spanish. Morales was preparing for "El Dia de los Muertos," or "the Day of the Dead," a holiday when the spirits of the deceased are said to return and reunite with loved ones. Her grandfather, Manual, died six years ago at the ripe age of 87, she said. He had a loud voice and a penchant for spicy food, so Morales was going to savor the...

Opening day of Dearborn meeting also features briefing on Church Center reorganization [Episcopal News Service] Members of the Episcopal Church's Executive Council received copies of a proposed Council response to the draft Anglican covenant during private conversation the afternoon of October 26. The Council, the church's governing body between meetings of General Convention, will discuss the draft response on October 27 in another private conversation during the second day of its three-day meeting at the Hyatt Regency in Dearborn, Michigan. Also on October 26, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, during her opening remarks to the meeting, discussed her plan to...

CERNE ABBAS, England, July 19 (UPI) -- A 180-foot-long drawing of Homer Simpson next to an enormous, sacred carving in Dorset, England, has angered pagans, Sky News reported Wednesday. The group has vowed to do a little "rain magic" to wash away the cartoon character, which was rendered with biodegradable paint on a hillside next to the famous 17th Century fertility symbol, the Cerne Abbas giant. The picture of Homer Simpson eating a doughnut was etched alongside the chalk outline of the naked, club-wielding giant as a publicity stunt to promote the upcoming release of "The Simpsons Movie."

History will be created when a Hindu prayer will be recited at the opening of the US Senate in Washington DC on July 12. Rajan Zed, a Hindu chaplain, said that he had been officially asked to say the prayer. He said he believes this may be the first time any Hindu prayer is delivered in the Senate since its formation in 1789. Zed is likely to choose the prayer from the Rig Veda, the Upanishads and the Bhagavad-Gita. He said he plans to start and end the prayer with 'Om', the mystical Hindu syllable. The full text of the...

WASHINGTON, June 21 /PRNewswire/ -- A group of Pagan religious leaders from diverse denominations will gather in Lafayette Square Park on the Fourth of July to advocate for a Pagan military chaplain, request more approved Pagan religious symbols from the Department of Veterans Affairs and call for universal freedom of religious expression. Rev. Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State will also address the crowd. "Until Pagans have the same rights as Presbyterians and Pentecostals, religious liberty is not safe in America. The Framers of our Constitution mandated no preference for any one religion over another...

Two centuries years ago, Voltaire proclaimed, “I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.” Today, our free speech traditions are under assault. Colleges prohibit “offensive” or “politically incorrect” speech. Radical Islamists threaten to kill scholars, artists and even popes who “disrespect” the Prophet. And when we desperately need unfettered scientific debate, intolerant eco-activists have ushered in an era of climate McCarthyism and eco-Inquisitions. Al Gore seeks to muzzle anyone who raises inconvenient truths about climate alarmism. Greenpeace wants “climate criminals” pilloried and silenced. Grist magazine wants “Nuremberg-style war crimes trials” for...

The Diary of Anne Frank was displayed on the judge's desk A suspected German neo-Nazi has admitted publicly burning a copy of Anne Frank's diary, at the start of his trial with six others.The suspects are accused of inciting racial hatred and disparaging the dead. Prosecutors in the eastern German city of Magdeburg said Lars Konrad, 25, threw the book onto a bonfire during a summer solstice party in June 2006. Anne Frank wrote her diary while she and her family hid from the Nazis in an attic in Amsterdam during World War II. The indictment says the public...

BE HERE, OR BE NOWHERE!

A year ago, he was a Pentecostal Christian minister at Camp Anaconda, the largest U.S. support base in Iraq. On July 6, he applied to become the first Wiccan chaplain in the U.S. armed forces

If there was a danger to the dark side that welled in music in the 1960s, it was perhaps best represented by what happened to one of its icons, Beatle John Lennon.  His was a life that symbolized, and took to an extreme, the spiritual struggles -- and confusion -- of a generation.  As previously reported [click here for story], after years of casting about -- swerving as a youth from Christianity to agnosticism to atheism and then all the way to Eastern meditation -- the famed songwriter settled, in the end, on the occult, as sort of a harbinger...

APTara Gruber and staff demonstrating a schoolteachers' instruction session. Teachers claim yoga helps students with attention-deficit disorder and may help lower childhood obesity. SAN FRANCISCO -- In Tara Guber's ideal world, American children would meditate in the lotus position and chant in Sanskrit before taking stressful standardized tests.  But when she asked a public elementary school in Aspen, Colo., to teach yoga in 2002, Christian fundamentalists and even some secular parents lobbied the school board. They argued that yoga's Hindu roots conflicted with Christian teachings and that using it in school might violate the separation of church and state....

New excavations near the mysterious circle at Stonehenge in South England have uncovered dozens of homes where hundreds of people lived -- at roughly the same time 4,600 years ago that the giant stone slabs were being erected. The finding strongly suggests that the monument and the settlement nearby were a center for ceremonial activities, with Stonehenge likely a burial site while other nearby circular earthen "henges" were areas for feasts and festivals. The houses found buried beneath the grounds of the Stonehenge World Heritage Site are the first of their kind from that late Stone Age period in Britain,...

A clutch of modern pagans honored Zeus at a 1,800-year-old temple in the heart of Athens on Sunday — the first known ceremony of its kind held there since the ancient Greek religion was outlawed by the Roman empire in the late 4th century. Watched by curious onlookers, some 20 worshippers gathered next to the ruins of the temple for a celebration organized by Ellinais, a year-old Athens-based group that is campaigning to revive old religious practices from the era when Greece was a fount of education and philosophy. The group ignored a ban by the Culture Ministry, which declared...

Religion News Solstice rite held early at Stonehenge Dec 22, 2006 LONDON, England (UPI) -- Around 60 people turned up to celebrate the Winter Solstice at Stonehenge Thursday - on the wrong day. After negotiating with site managers, the crowd performed traditional solstice activities and left peacefully. One reveller, who wished to remain anonymous, said: 'We formed a ring and held hands, and touched the stones. The man with the green cloak was there. But there were an awful lot of red faces,' she said. The Pagan Winter Solstice celebration is one of the oldest winter celebrations in the world....

Pseudo-Knowledge and "Pagan Christmas" Time was when I, like most people, took it for granted the winter solstice and, in particular, the Roman Feast of the Birth of the Unconquered Sun were simply pagan celebrations that hung around into Christian times. In fact, when I set out to write this book I still thought this. But I discovered the reality is far more complicated and interesting. Indeed, it turns out this widely assumed "fact" that "everybody knows" is probably another sample of pseudo-knowledge. For according to William Tighe, a church history specialist at Pennsylvania's Muhlenberg College, "the pagan festival of...

The Origin and Practices of Christmas: Christian or Pagan ? RELIGIOUS HOLIDAYS AND CALENDARS - AN ENCYCLOPAEDIC HANDBOOK, 1993 Christmas Day December 25 Christmas Sermon - "Is Christmas A Perversion?" I preached the abouve noted sermon at Dayspring Christian Fellowship on Christmas Day, 2005. It is an important message for the body during this season. Check it out at [url]www.lifeandlibertyministries.com[url] Christmas is the day on which Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. The Roman Catholic Church designates it as a day of holy obligation on which members of the Church must attend services. Originally, the birth of Jesus was...

Hundreds of Pagans serving prison sentences are to be given the day off work for Halloween out of respect for their religious beliefs.Prison Service bosses have instructed staff to grant the convicts, who include Devil worshippers and Satanists, special privileges on Tuesday.While fellow prisoners sew mail bags and undertake other jail work, the Pagans will be allowed to celebrate their 'holiday'.They can use certain artefacts, including rune stones, flexible twigs and hoodless robes, provided they are kept in their cells or worn during communal worship. Robes with hoods are banned for 'security reasons', however.The move is revealed in Home Office...

To the ancient Celts, the end of October marked the conclusion of one year and the beginning of another, a time when the usual barriers separating the past, present and future became blurred. On Samhain, the pagan harvest celebration on Oct. 31 that eventually became Halloween, the Celtic shamans used burnt animal bones, retrieved from festival bonfires, to predict what the coming year would bring. Over the centuries, people have continued such divination practices on Halloween, using mirrors, tossed apple peelings and blobs of candle wax to peer into the future. For some, it's an annual bit of fun. For...

WAUKESHA, WI (AP) -- A Pagan Student Alliance club has been organized at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha as Halloween approaches. It was officially recognized by the student government about two weeks ago and its approximately one dozen members hope to promote understanding of paganism through public information efforts and demonstrations."We're coming out of the broom closet," said Amber Braun, 20, of Waukesha, who is president of the group. "We're not trying to preach, and we're not trying to convert," she added. Braun, who describes herself as a witch, said she plans to request about $1,500 in student fee funding. David...

http://vampirefreaks.com/gallery.php?u=fatality666

... And then there's Dever's upbringing in the Jehovah's Witness church. ... The actress has created a new life outside the church's strict system of beliefs, "and she's making it work for her," [film director Matthew Van Vlack] said. Dever has transformed herself from a sheltered St. Charles [MO] teenager forbidden from celebrating her birthday or attending prom into the celluloid star of horror flicks such as "Sasquatch Hunters" and "Mangler Reborn."... Conflicting feelings as a youth The Jehovah's Witnesses, which began as a small Bible study group near Pittsburgh in 1872, has more than 6.5 million Witnesses around the...

“Your son and daughter might be the next Hansel and Gretel,” should have been the warning label on the Guide to Paganism supplied to British prison governors by the Pagan Federation. Michael Spurr, director of operations of the Prison Service, approved the new norms, which allow pagan British inmates possession of incenses and an amulet, the services of pagan “chaplains,” and the practice of rites and chants in their cells, London’s Times reported on October 17th of last year.  Pretence of Antiquity Witchcraft and paganism have been growing worldwide, especially the practice of Wicca, for which courses one can now...

AUSTIN - When classes resume at the University of Texas at Austin this week, 90 impressionable undergrads will file into an ecology class taught by a chatty zoology professor known — not always out of earshot — as Dr. Doom. His real name is Eric Pianka, and students enrolled in his Ecology, Evolution and Society course will hear a sad synopsis of Earth's vanishing species and habitats — coupled with an apocalyptic warning about humans racing obliviously toward the edge of a high cliff. If he models his lectures on previous ones, Pianka may remark that the planet would be...

CLEVELAND -- It was probably not a defense the court had heard before. A suburban Cleveland man accused of sexually assaulting nine disabled boys told a judge Wednesday that his apartment was a religious sanctuary where smoking marijuana and having sex with children are sacred rituals protected by civil rights laws. The admitted pedophile offered a surprising defense Wednesday to 74 charges of rape, drugs and pandering obscenity to minors. Appearing in an Ohio court for a pretrial hearing, Phillip Distasio, 34, of Rocky River, Ohio, said he was a pedophile. He told the judge, "I'm a pedophile. I've been...

DUXBURY - She doesn’t always wear the robe and the cloak, but the Rev. Kendra Vaughan Hovey is never without her priest’s collar. As the elder high priestess of the First Church of Wicca in Duxbury, the white collar is more than a symbol of her beliefs. She says it provides an opportunity to educate others about those beliefs. Sitting in her home office, where she prepares sermons, answers e-mail and prays at the altar neatly set in the corner beneath a window, Hovey recalls a recent interaction at her daughter’s dance recital. ‘‘One of the other mothers said she’d...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Syrio-Aramaic_Reading_Of_The_Koran Judges 1:1 Now after the death of Joshua it came to pass, that the children of Israel asked the LORD, saying, Who shall go up for us against the Canaanites first, to fight against them? 1:2 And the LORD said, Judah shall go up: behold, I have delivered the land into his hand. 1:3 And Judah said unto Simeon his brother, Come up with me into my lot, that we may fight against the Canaanites; and I likewise will go with thee into thy lot. So Simeon went with him. 1:4 And Judah went up; and the LORD delivered...

Toledo - A United States jury on Thursday found a Roman Catholic priest guilty of the Satanic rite-style murder of a 71-year-old nun, which went unsolved for more than 25 years. Father Gerald Robinson was immediately sentenced to a mandatory jail term of between 15 years and life. There were gasps in the court and some applauded in the hallway outside after the verdict was read, but the 68-year-old priest remained passive. Sister Margaret Ann Pahl was found murdered on a chapel floor in April 1980. She had been strangled, covered in an altar cloth and stabbed 31 times in...

The Pagan Origin Of Easter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Easter is a day that is honered by nearly all of contemporary Christianity and is used to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The holiday often involves a church service at sunrise, a feast which includes an "Easter Ham", decorated eggs and stories about rabbits. Those who love truth learn to ask questions, and many questions must be asked regarding the holiday of Easter. Is it truly the day when Jesus arose from the dead? Where did all of the strange customs come from, which have nothing to do with the resurrection of our...

The shocking thing about this story is that it's not particularly shocking anymore: Now, thanks to some research by commenter Liz at TitusOneNine, it turns out that Maury Johnston, author of Gays Under Grace: A Gay Christian’s Response to Homosexuality and the recent widely-publicized essay "Facing the Spectre of Schism", is also known as "Shadwynn" and belongs to a Wiccan order called "Keepers of the Cauldron." The coven is described as being in the "grail quest tradition," based on the Arthurian legends and featuring a strong Eucharistic theme. Mr. Johnston claims to have "married" nine couples in his 18 years...

We need to have some of that sense of urgency of St Paul who said, "Woe is me if I do not preach the Gospel." The aim is not simply to win arguments, but to win hearts. The best way to conquer your "enemy" is to make him your friend. Few people see the turn of a century and fewer still the turn of a millennium as we have. Sad to say, many of those who were privileged to experience this awesome shift of time did not take note of the reason for it all. Very few realised it was...