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Pagan & Shinto News: SAMHAIN SPECIAL – Press focus on witchcraft & Samhain celebrations during Halloween

Pagan & Shinto News: SAMHAIN SPECIAL – Press focus on witchcraft & Samhain celebrations during Halloween

Last updated on: November 4, 2018 at 2:24 pm by Megan Manson

Pagan & Shinto News: SAMHAIN SPECIAL – Press focus on witchcraft & Samhain celebrations during Halloween 2018-11-04T14:24:01+00:00 Megan Manson

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Top stories in Paganism and Shinto for October 21st – November 4th:

Samhain Special – Press focus on modern witchcraft and Samhain celebrations for Halloween season
New Sabrina TV series provokes mixed reactions
US Shinto shrine holds ceremony for felled trees

Samhain special: Press focus on modern witchcraft during Halloween season

Pagan ancestors knew how to face the darkest times
The Times
One of the most mortifying conversations I’ve ever had was with my late grandmother when, aged 13, I told her that I was giving up Catholicism to pursue witchcraft…

Halloween: An insight into the life of a professional St Albans witch
The Herts Advertiser
For practicing witches, the pagan holiday of Samhain (pronounced sow-inn) is like New Year’s Eve – the biggest party of the year, the night everyone is waiting for…

Faces of modern witchcraft, uncovered: Actresses, authors and a technician reveal how they ‘came out of the broom closet‘
Mail Online
A new photograph collection, ‘Major Arcana: Witches in America,’ explores the idea of who identifies as a witch today…

The spooky season is about more than just costumes and candy for some
Gay Star News
I adopted Wicca as my religion when I was about 14 after seeking a religion I felt comfortable with…

Lakewood’s Coven witch shop wants to empower women
Cleveland.com
Miranda Scott draws on her past when it comes to Coven…

Real-life witches practice everyday magic in the Triangle
The Daily Tar Heel
Many students think of October as “spooky season,” but for Wiccans, witchcraft and magic can be daily undertakings…

Meet the witch of Barkingside
Ilford Recorder
By day he works in the city crunching numbers in the world of finance, but at night he shrugs off his suit and goes down to the woods to practise magic…

Lethbridge Pagans and Witches celebrate the Festival of Samhain and Halloween’s Origins
Lethbridge News Now
While children are dressing up in their costumes, eagerly anticipating the enormous loads of candy they’ll be gorging on tonight – and others are handing it all out by the bucketful, Lethbridge’s Witches, Warlocks, Pagans and Wiccans will be celebrating their new year…

The Druids of Caledon are holding a fire festival in Glasgow – but who are they?
GlasgowLive
The group will be meeting in Rouken Glen Park to observe the beginning of winter…

Not Just Cauldrons And Cats: Women’s Center Coordinator Sheds New Light On Witches
The Advocate
On a gloomy Halloween evening amid mortals, witches and batty professors, one feminist rose in the front of a dim lit room. With every gaze locked upon her, she debunked all the things people thought they knew about witches…

Treasure Valley Witches teach healing and acceptance
News 4 San Antonio
Woventear does not classify herself just as a witch or a studier of Wicca. Instead, Woventear said the group she founded studies everything from New Orleans Voodoo to tarot card reading…

The Witch Continues to Enchant as a Feminist Symbol
New York Times
In film and art, the figure has moved from the edges of the action to become the very plot…

What does it mean to be a witch in 2018?
Dazed Digital
We spoke to Grace and four other witches – London-based herbalist Caroline Rosalie, Nicolette Clara Iles, alchemist Kkingboo, and Herefordshire-based Malcolm Tearle – to find out more…

World of Wicca explained by 21-year-old YouTuber
BBC
A 21-year-old YouTuber is using social media to explain her beliefs as a follower of the Wicca faith…

Modern day witches focus on female empowerment
The Star
Sherri Molloy may be a witch, but she doesn’t fly about on a broom or cast evil spells in a dark basement…

Irish pagans celebrate Halloween precursor Samhain with fire procession
Reuters
Irish pagans gathered at an ancient sacred site on Wednesday night to mark the festival of Samhain – a precursor of Halloween – with bonfires and a procession to honour the dead…

Wayist Druids Celebrate Samhain in Athens Tennessee
Under The Ancient Oaks
What do you get when a Druid decides to hold a public ritual in a small rural town in Tennessee? Controversy that’s not unexpected but still disappointing in 2018…

World of Wicca explained by 21-year-old YouTuber
BBC
A 21-year-old YouTuber is using social media to explain her beliefs as a follower of the Wicca faith…

Witches and Wellness: What to Make of the Growing Numbers
The Humanist
Young people, and especially young women, have begun to turn to paganism and witchcraft in attempt to find identity, forge solidarity, and, sometimes to take political action…

Me Too movements should embrace Scotland’s ‘witches’
The Scotsman
How can a weekend of spooky fun be “inspired” by the gruesome killing of seven people, whose only crimes appear to have been using herbal remedies and forecasting the weather by studying bird movements and cattle behaviour?…

Witches have been convenient scapegoats throughout history
The National
It’s that time of year when children dress up as ghouls or witches and go door-to-door innocently collecting sweets. But the history of witchcraft is rather more complex…

Witches in the age of the Me Too movement
BBC
Halloween may now be a fun night for witches and other spooky favourites but Scotland has some very real history in this area too…

How 14 witches and a wizard were executed on Newcastle Town Moor
Chronicle Live
On a grim day in 1650, how 14 women and a man were executed after a major witchcraft trial in Newcastle…

War of the witches: woman are accused while men claim victim status
The Conversation
The witch, so often invoked as a sign of societal disruption through history, is no longer content to be confined either to Halloween or to history – if, indeed, she ever was…

From Ancient Rome to Hollywood: witches as figures of fun
The Conversation
This caricature of the witch predates the sinister medieval version and can be traced all the way back to Roman time…

A Weekend at Witch Camp
The New York Times
It took 500 years, but witchcraft has gone from crime to commodity…

What Is Samhain? What to Know About the Ancient Pagan Festival That Came Before Halloween
TIME
Dressing up in costumes and trick-or-treating are popular Halloween activities, but few probably associate these lighthearted fall traditions with their origins in Samhain, a three-day ancient Celtic pagan festival…

Samhain festival lights up Limerick city skies as hundreds take part in parade
Limerick Leader
There was spook-tacular fun at the weekend in Limerick city, with hundreds joining in the Halloween celebrations…

8 of Halloween’s Most Hair-Raising Folk Legends
History
8 of Halloween’s Most Hair-Raising Folk Legends
From witches to zombies to creepy clowns, the season’s scary legends all formed from decades—to centuries—of lore…

New York’s Oldest Witchcraft Shop Prepares For Halloween
Huffington Post
The owner of New York’s oldest witchcraft shop, Stacey Rapp, says they’ve survived the last 36 years because they’ve never sold or promoted anything to do with black magic…

Halloween’s surprising 2,000 year evolution
Forge Today
It’s Britain 2,000 years ago, the sun is setting and you’ve been working in the fields for weeks now, harvesting crops and storing them for winter…

A brief history of how brutal interrogations of ‘witches’ were all about punishing sex
iNews
Witchcraft allowed outwardly pious moralisers space to obsess about the most depraved sexual acts without ever denting their halos…

The evolving aesthetic of pop culture witchery
Fashionista
Gradually, the sorceresses on our big and small screens have taken back the costume department…

I’m a Real Witch, and I Spend $7,855 a Year on My Beauty Rituals
Glamour
There’s no contradiction between practicing magic and being fiercely passionate about beauty, says Luna—the two are intertwined.

The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina: Mixed media reactions

New Sabrina series’ Pagan set designer defends show’s portrayal of witchcraft
Refinery 29
Set designer Lisa Soper herself is Pagan and said that she took no offense to the show’s depiction of witchcraft…

Introducing Sabrina’s Real-Life Behind-the-Scenes Pagan
Vanity Fair
Production designer Lisa Soper explains how her faith helped create the world of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina…

The Satanic Temple says Netflix’s ‘Sabrina’ stole Baphomet statue design, is ‘taking legal action’
SFGate
On Sunday, Satanic Temple Co-Founder Lucien Greaves tweeted that the group would be “taking legal action” against Netflix and the show for “appropriating” its copyrighted monument design of Baphomet…

The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, reviewed by a real witch
Dazed
Netflix’s latest teen TV series borrows from across the occult world, but how true to life is it, or should it be?…

The witches taking over your TV are more queer, less white—and it’s about time
The Daily Dot
On ‘Sabrina’ and more, witches are finally representing those who best relate to their plight…

The problem with ‘Sabrina’s intersectional feminist witchcraft
Mashable
The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina desperately wants you to know how woke it is…

Hex appeal: how Netflix’s Sabrina taps into the rising feminist passion for witches
The Guardian
Feminists have long celebrated witches as symbols of untamed, angry, joyous and immortal female energy. Now the remake of the 90s teen drama is using the symbol to dramatic effect…

“A witch and a bitch”: Pop culture has embraced the witch, but not without issues
New Statesman
From Shakespeare’s Three Witches to Netflix’s The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, the way witches are represented reveals a lot about the society in which they are created…

Tati Gabrielle Says The Spells They Do Are Real Spells From Wicca on ‘Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’
Just Jared Jr
Turns out, those spells you hear the Weird Sisters reciting in the woods on Chilling Adventures of Sabrina aren’t just random words put together – they’re very real spells…

Science behind the fiction: Where Sabrina’s shamanism and witchcraft come from
SyFy Wire
If one thing is clear, it’s that our fascination with witchcraft is alive and well, despite our shifting, and sometimes painful, relationship…

Other Pagan News

State Lawmaker Plans to Kill Occultists in Leaked Manifesto
Chaos Star Tarot
A state lawmaker has written up detailed plans to kill occultists in the name of God in a leaked manifesto…

Pagan Freedom Wins In Athens, Tennessee
Chris Aldridge’s Blog & Website
When a local citizen, Angela Wilson, an ArchDruid, announced that she would be hosting and leading a public Samhain rite on October 27th, Christian church groups and individuals bombarded her with hate messages…

Russian neopagans move their faith from the fringes
Washington Post
Russia’s first pagans were largely wiped out by the Russian Christian church 1,000 years ago. But a modern iteration of the movement was reborn during the collapse of the Soviet Union…

Neopagans and Libraries
American Libraries
Most neopagan populations are in California and the Great Lakes region, but every library should be aware of the best ways to serve its neopagan community…

Here’s Why This Witch Is Preparing for Midterm Elections by Hosting a Hex on Brett Kavanaugh
TIME
The New York witches who hosted a public ritual to hex Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh just two weeks ago are planning on having another hexing event ahead of the midterm elections next Tuesday…

Cyber cemetery honors the Radical Faerie dead
The Wild Hunt
Over the past twenty years, one member of that tribe has been building a special website, a cyber cemetery, dedicated to all those that have died. It is called Faerie Ancestors List…

Shinto News

US Shinto shrine holds ceremony for felled trees
Shusse Inari Shrine of America
Shusse Inari Shrine of America holds Kodama Shizume no Matsuri (Tree Ceremony) on Sunday, November 4th in Los Angeles, CA…

‘Moe’ character worshipped in Nara
The Japan News
Kisshosoji temple in Nara Prefecture has enshrined a “moe” girl character based on the patriarch of Shugendo, a form of asceticism incorporating ancient mountain worship, Buddhism and other religious beliefs…

United Japanese Society of Hawaii “Tsukimi No Kai – Moon Viewing Party”
The Hawaii Herald
Festivities will include a tamagushi offering and blessing, traditional tea ceremony, koto and shakuhachi performance, taiko drumming, odori, tsukimi dango tasting and a variety of food vendors…

The death of a Japanese countryside festival
The Japan Times
Back when houses stood pristine, well-maintained and proud, those who couldn’t participate would stand outside their homes along the road leaning on their canes, or waving from their wheelchairs as each precinct paraded past with their festival float. But they no longer do this…

Other News

Archaeologists in Bulgaria Discover An 8,000-Year-Old Figurine Of Mother Goddess At Prehistoric Settlement
Inquisitr
Archaeologists in Bulgaria have made the remarkable discovery of an 8,000-year-old ceramic figurine of the veiled Mother Goddess close to a prehistoric settlement located in Mayor Uzunovo in the Vidin District, which is near the Danube River…

Seventeen women are arrested for taking part in a Halloween party in Saudi Arabia
Mail Online
Seventeen Filipina expats were arrested after they took part in a Halloween party in Saudi Arabia, the Philippines foreign ministry said…

Folk dancers defend tradition of painting faces black
Mail Online
Cornish folk dancers have defended their ancient tradition of blackening their faces to celebrate Halloween…

Will the London obelisk return to Egypt?
Egypt Independent
We need to take a stand on the condition of Egyptian antiquities abroad…

The ghosts that have been haunting cinema-goers in Japan for over a century
The Japan Times
Unlike the horror flicks of Hollywood, with their voracious zombies and inhuman serial killers, J-horror was typically populated by vengeful female ghosts who would attack their victims with single-minded implacability. The roots of such characters lay in kaidan, ghost stories from Japan’s past…

Shibuya’s Halloween havoc may tarnish future festivities
The Japan Times
Less than a decade ago, finding any sort of Halloween celebration in Tokyo would have been tough…

Japanese hospital installs ‘Mouth of Truth’ disinfector
NHK World
They set up a device that features a replica of the famous Mouth of Truth relief in Rome, which depicts the ancient Greek sea god, Oceanus…

Canadian Women Are Being Arrested For Witchcraft — But What’s Really Going On?
Refinery29
The offence in question is not practicing witchcraft (which hasn’t been a crime in Canada since before the criminal code was written), but faking it for the purposes of fraud…

The dark side of Halloween: Greater Manchester’s real life ‘trick or treat’ crimes
Manchester Evening News
Police dealt with 10 ‘trick or treat’ cases – including assault, robbery and harassment over Halloween night last year…

Happy Kataloween: the spooky celebration in the Paris catacombs
The Guardian
Every Halloween partygoers descend into this mysterious underworld where – from occult art shows to obsessive ‘cataphiles’ – a secret subculture is flourishing…

Let’s give two hoots for owls this Diwali
The Hindu
As Diwali celebrations peak in India, so does the number of owls illegally trapped and sacrificed for tantric rituals and ceremonies during the festive season…

Mob burns down family house over witchcraft claim in Kenya
Standard Media
A family has been left homeless after a mob burnt their home, accusing one of their members of engaging in witchcraft…

Villager charged with witchcraft murdered, 7 detained in Assam
The Hindu
The police in western Assam’s Goalpara district have detained seven personsfor interrogation in the case of a witchcraft-related killing four months ago…

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