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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...

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... 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...

Witches have returned to the German forests, dancing naked in groups under the full moon and calling to their gods. The covens vary in size and in how seriously they take their calling, but the numbers are rising, particularly amongst the young. Their religious ideas are described as "pagan" rather than Satanist, and many of the older practitioners have a history in the environmental movement, where they learnt a passionate love of nature. In some cases this has led on to a belief in the natural powers of the forests. The women are convinced they can work magic. "The witches'...