The Official newWitch Blog

 ”As long as they don’t allow Stevie Nicks to sing at the funeral, I’m fine with it.”

Use of Wiccan symbol on veterans’ headstones is now approved

After ten years of trying to get the pentacle approved, the Department of Veterans Affairs reached a settlement with Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, who represented the families of several deceased Wiccan soldiers. Under the terms of this agreement, has agreed to add the Wiccan pentacle to a list of approved religious symbols that it will engrave on veterans’ headstones.

(Kudos to M. Macha Nightmare for forwarding this to our attention)

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Hi everyone!

I just wanted to make you all aware of a project that Celia and I are working on.

As most of you know, I am the documentary filmmaker who is producing he film “A Hero Denied” which is the story of Sgt. Patrick Stewart the Wiccan soldier who was killed in Afghanistan‹and the struggle to get the pentacle approved by the VA as a religious symbol.

Celia is the singer / songwriter who wrote the “Symbol” song about Sgt. Patrick Stewart and the Penatacle Quest.

If you haven’t seen the trailer for the film, you can see it here along with Celia’s “Symbol” song.

We have started a project called 1,000 Symbols which is a program to promote the celebration of spiritual diversity in this country, and are working hard to get as many people to participate as possible.

Our primary goal this year is to have the month of June designated as  “National Spiritual Diversity Month.” The US is one of the few industrialized nations that does not have an officially recognized national day/week/month for religious tolerance or spiritual diversity. Well, we are trying to change that.

Here’s the deal. About 30 artists, writers, and musicians from all over the country have donated a piece of their work that in some way promotes spiritual diversity.

All of these works can be downloaded for free from our website during the month of June.

All that you have to do is go to our website and sign our petition to declare the month of June “Spiritual Diversity Month” with your name and email address. The list of supporters will be included with an application for a national declaration and sent to the White House.

Once you add your name to the list of supporters, you will receive an email thanking you for your support.

On June 1st, you will receive another email with a link to the download page so you can download all of the free gifts of art, music, and written word that our nation’s artists have so graciously donated to this cause.

You don’t have to wait until June to sign up, you can do it today by going to our website.

We would also appreciate it if you would forward this information to your friends or anyone else who would like to support spiritual diversity.

In love and light,

Todd Berntson
Witchy Films Productions

According to the latest totals, there are 32 dead in two separate shootings.

May they, and all of us, find our way from the darkness into the light.

The April 14 edition of the Columbia, Missouri Tribune has an interesting and sympathetic piece about Ozark Avalon, a Wiccan Church and nature preserve located in central Missouri, and their annual Triple Goddess Gathering.

Here is a sample quote from Rose Wise, High Priestess of Ozark Avalon:

As Wiccans, we see the goddess as being both within ourselves and around us in nature. Each woman is a goddess and part of the larger goddess that is reflected in the natural order.

Annie Nelson’s article is refreshingly free of snarky comments and silly sensationalism;  she didn’t feel the need to explain that Wiccans don’t worship the Devil or make snide comments about Charmed and Sabrina.  Congratulations to Ms. Nelson and to the Columbia Tribune for treating our religion seriously: here’s hoping that many more journalists follow your lead.

Every April 5, millions of Chinese people celebrate Qingming (”Clear and Bright”) Festival by tending the graves of their ancestors. Paper money and paper coins are left behind as an offering. Those who wish to ensure that their ancestors are especially prosperous can leave them replica bicycles, watches, sewing machines or even laptop computers. A mock Mercedes can be had for 4,000 yuan ($520) while a gazebo-sized imitation house goes for 30,000 yuan ($3,900).

Now some particularly devoted descendants are looking after their ancestors’ … other needs. A brisk trade has developed in paper Viagra(tm) and condoms, as well as paper female figurines.  Some say this is in poor taste: I suspect my ancestors would approve most heartily.

According to legend, Aphrodite was born from the sea foam off the coast of Cyprus.   And if recent archaeological findings are to be believed, Cyprus also gave birth to the perfume industry.  At a sprawling archaeological site on a hillside overlooking the Mediterranean at Pyrgos-Mavroraki, 55 miles south-west of Nicosia, archaelogists have unearthed 4,000 year old alabaster vials named after Greek goddesses and containing fragrances distilled from pine, coriander, cinnamon, parsley, bergamot, bitter almonds and laurel.

The perfumery formed part of a site dating from 2000BC which included a copper smelting works, a winery and an olive press that provided the base ingredient for the fragrances. Fragments of enormous storage jars capable of holding 500 litres of olive oi (the  base of these perfumes) were also discovered, suggesting the scope of this operation.  As Maria Rosa Belgiorno, lead archaeologist at the site said.

We were astonished at how big the place was … Perfumes must have been produced on an industrial scale. No wonder the island got its reputation for possessing the skills of Aphrodite.

Police in Orlando, Florida arrested 21-year old Eric Montanez, a member of the charity group Food Not Bombs, for violating a law which prohibits feeding large groups of homeless people in the city center.  According to the arrest affidavit, Montanez served “30 unidentified persons food from a large pot utilizing a ladle.” A vial of the stew was also collected as evidence.

The cities of Las Vegas, Dallas, Fort Myers, Fla., Gainesville, Fla., Wilmington, N.C., Atlanta, and Santa Monica, Calif., have passed similar laws restricting or outright prohibiting the feeding of the homeless.  Other cities, including Miami, are considering similar anti-feeding measures.  Says Maria Foscarinis, executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, NLCHP, a non-profit in Washington, D.C.

We’ve seen cities going beyond punishing homeless people to punishing those trying to help them, even though it’s clear that not enough resources are being dedicated to helping the homeless or the hungry

A 2006 report on 67 cities by her group and the National Coalition for the Homeless, a nonpartisan, non-profit network, found an 18 percent increase since 2002 in laws prohibiting aggressive panhandling; a 12 percent jump in laws outlawing “passive” begging; a 14 percent rise in laws defining sitting or lying in public places as criminal acts.

Perhaps those Orlando residents who consider themselves Christian should, on this Good Friday, remember what Jesus is quoted as saying in Matthew 25:41-45

41 Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

42 For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink,

43 a stranger and you gave me no welcome, naked and you gave me no clothing, ill and in prison, and you did not care for me.’

44 Then they will answer and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?’

45 He will answer them, ‘Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.’

We will be following this story and will provide information on how you can donate to Mr. Montanez’s defense fund and work to help the homeless and hungry in your community. 

For quite some time, archaeologists have speculated that the story of Atlantis was inspired by a massive volcanic eruption on Santorini, an island located approximately 125 miles (200km) from modern-day Greece.   New research suggests that blast was even bigger than previously supposed - and that its devastating effects were felt hundreds of miles away in Egypt.

Using techniques previously used by oil companies to locate petroleum deposits,  a team of Greek and American researchers found that the Santorini archipelago was ringed with volcanic deposits averaging 100 feet (30 meters) thick and extending about 19 miles (30 kilometers) in all directions.  This suggests that the Santorini eruption involved approximately 60 cubic kilometers of magma - or six times the amount released during the devastating Krakatoa eruption of 1883!

To give some idea of the sheer size of this event, Egyptian archaeologists have unearthed traces of solidified lava on the northern coast of Sinai that date to around 1500 B.C.  The archaeological team, led by Mohamed Abdel Maqsoud of Egypt’s Supreme Council for Antiquities, found houses, military structures, and tombs encased in ash, along with fragments of pumice, near the ancient Egyptian fortress of Tharo,  near where the Nile Delta meets the Sinai peninsula.

The Santorini eruption would have massive tsunamis: the much smaller Krakatoa eruption caused 100 ft. (30m) high waves.   These would have carried with them “overwater flows,” scalding debris composed of pumice, hot ash, and superheated gases.   The Minoans, a seafaring people living on nearby Crete, would have been caught unawares by the blast: famine and disease would soon claim many of those fortunate enough to survive the initial shockwave.   

According to Haraldur Sigurdsson, a volcanologist at the University of Rhode Island, this event inspired not only the legends of Atlantis but also a passage in Hesiod’s Theogony describing an epic battle between giants and Greek gods that took place out at sea.   Written some 800 years after the Santorini eruption, Sigurdsson believes Hesiod was inspired by folklore based on survivor accounts.

He uses all the terminology one would use in describing an eruption.  The people who lived close enough to see that it was a volcano were all killed. [The rest] could only describe it in supernatural terms.

Bahucharaji, the patron deity of eunuchs in India’s Gujarat province, has a new devotee: a  transgendered Englishwoman named Pamela.  While residing in London, Pamela encountered a few Gujaratis who told her about Bahucharaji.  Intrigued, she went to the Internet and later had Bahucharaji’s image tattooed on her arm.

Today Pamela (also called “Prema” by Hindu devotees) resides in Bahucharaji’s temple in Becharaji, a town in northern Gujarat.  Clad in a saffron sari, she grants blessings to pilgrims, attends ceremonies and has become a strict vegetarian.  While she has inspired a bit of professional jealousy among some of the other eunuchs residing in the temple, the pilgrims accept her with no qualms.

Indiasnews has a fascinating article on Pamela: let’s hope she gets her visa renewed and is able to continue her work in the service of her goddess.