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Modern paganism
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Ethnic movements
Syncretic movements and witchcraft
Related systems
Similar movements
Overarching organisations
Modern paganism, also known as contemporary paganism, and neopaganism,[1] is a group of contemporary religious movements influenced by or claiming to be derived from the various historical pagan beliefs of pre-modern Europe.[2][3] Although they do share similarities, contemporary Pagan religious movements are diverse and no single set of beliefs, practices, or texts are shared by them all.[4]
"Contemporary Paganism" as practiced in the United States in the 1990s has been described as "a synthesis of historical inspiration and present-day creativity".[5] Adherents rely on pre-Christian, folkloric and ethnographic sources to a variety of degrees; many follow a spirituality, which they accept is entirely modern, while others attempt to reconstruct or revive indigenous, ethnic religions as found in historical and folkloric sources as accurately as possible.[6] Polytheism, animism, and pantheism are common features in Pagan theology.
- 1 Terminology and definition
- 2 Beliefs
- 3 Practices
- 4 History
- 5 Historicity
- 6 Encompassed religions and movements
- 7 Demographics
- 8 Paganism in society
- 9 Pagan music
- 10 References
- 11 External links
Terminology and definition
|This section may need to be rewritten entirely to comply with Wikipedia's quality standards, as original research. "Neopaganism", "modern p.", "contemporary p.", "reconstructionism", etc., are all terms invented from self-defined "scholars" and applied to different movements which do not identify as such.. (December 2014)
The term "neo-pagan" was coined in the 19th century in reference to Renaissance and Romanticist Hellenophile classical revivalism.[α]
"Pagan" as a self-designation appeared in 1964 and 1965, in the publications of the Witchcraft Research Association; at that time, the term was in use by "revivalist Witches" in the United States and the United Kingdom, but unconnected to the broader, counter-culture Pagan movement. The modern popularisation of the terms "pagan" and "neopagan", as they are currently understood, is largely traced to Oberon Zell-Ravenheart, co-founder of "the 1st Neo-Pagan Church of All Worlds" who, beginning in 1967 with the early issues of Green Egg, used both terms for the growing movement. This usage has been common since the pagan revival in the 1970s.[7]
The term "neopagan" provides a means of distinguishing between historical pagans of ancient cultures and the adherents of modern religious movements. This category of religions includes syncretic or eclectic approaches like Wicca, Neo-druidism, and neoshamanism at one end of the spectrum, as well as culturally specific traditions, such as the many varieties of polytheistic reconstructionism, at the other. However, some reconstructionists reject the term "neopagan" because they wish to set their historically oriented approach apart from generic "neopagan" eclecticism.[8][9] Scholarly writers often prefer the term "contemporary paganism" to cover all new polytheistic religious movements, a usage favoured by The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies, the leading peer-reviewed journal in the field.
"Heathen", "Heathenism" or "Heathenry" as a self-designation of adherents of Germanic neopaganism appeared in the late 1990s.[β]
In 2005, the American scholar of religious studies Michael F. Strmiska argued that the modern adoption of the term "Pagan" was "a deliberate act of defiance" against "traditional, Christian-dominated society", and that, on the other hand, "Neopagan" is often deemed offensive and not used by many contemporary Pagans, who claim that the inclusion of the term "neo" disconnects them from their ancient polytheistic ancestors.[γ]
|This section may need to be rewritten entirely to comply with Wikipedia's quality standards, as a unified "pagan theology" and a unified "pagan religion" do not exist. Theological views and other beliefs should be discussed in the respective pages of the different "pagan religions". (December 2014)
Beliefs and practices vary widely among different Pagan groups; however, there are a series of core principles common to most, if not all, forms of modern paganism.[10] The English academic Graham Harvey noted that Pagans "rarely indulge in theology".[11]
One principle of the Pagan movement is polytheism, the belief in and veneration of multiple gods and/or goddesses.[10][11] Polytheism was a trait common to the pre-Christian religions of Europe, and is also common to a wide variety of religions around the world, from which contemporary Pagans draw on.
One view in the Pagan community is that these polytheistic deities are not viewed as literal entities, but as Jungian archetypes that exist in the human psyche..[12] Other pagans believe that, like Christianity's Holy Trinity, their god is made up of parts, the god and goddess, but still representing one god. Many Pagans believe adoption of a polytheistic world-view would be beneficial for western society – replacing the dominant monotheism they see as innately repressive.[13] In fact, many American neopagans first came to their adopted faiths because it allowed a greater freedom, diversity, and tolerance of worship among the community.[14] This pluralistic perspective has helped the varied factions of modern paganism exist in relative harmony.[15] Indeed, most Pagans adopt an ethos of "unity in diversity" regarding their religious beliefs.[16]
In Wicca, (especially Dianic Wicca) the concept of an Earth or Mother Goddess, similar[dubious ] to the Greek Gaia, is emphasized. Male counterparts, such as the Green Man and the Horned God, are usually also evoked. These Duotheistic philosophies tend to emphasize the God and Goddess' (or Lord and Lady's) genders as being complementary opposites analogous to that of yin and yang in ancient Chinese philosophy. Many Oriental philosophies equate weakness with femininity and strength with masculinity; this is not the prevailing attitude in paganism and Wicca.[17] Among many pagans, there is a strong desire to incorporate the female aspects of the divine in their worship and within their lives, which can partially explain the attitude which sometimes manifests as the veneration of women.[δ] Other neopagans reject the concept of binary gender roles.
Animism and pantheism
A key part of most Pagan worldviews is the holistic concept of a universe that is interconnected. This is connected with a belief in either pantheism or panentheism. In both beliefs divinity and the material and/or spiritual universe are one.[18] For pagans, pantheism means that "divinity is inseparable from nature and that deity is immanent in nature".[15]
Dennis D. Carpenter noted that the belief in a pantheistic or panentheistic deity has led to the idea of interconnectedness playing a key part in pagans' worldviews.[18] The prominent Reclaiming priestess Starhawk related that a core part of goddess-centred pagan witchcraft was "the understanding that all being is interrelated, that we are all linked with the cosmos as parts of one living organism. What affects one of us affects us all."[19]
Another pivotal belief in the contemporary Pagan movement is that of animism.[11] This has been interpreted in two distinct ways among the Pagan community. First, it can refer to a belief that everything in the universe is imbued with a life force or spiritual energy.[10][ε] In contrast, some contemporary Pagans believe that there are specific spirits that inhabit various features in the natural world, and that these can be actively communicated with. Some Pagans have reported experiencing communication with spirits dwelling in rocks, plants, trees and animals, as well as power animals or animal spirits who can act as spiritual helpers or guides.[20]
Animism was also a concept common to many pre-Christian European religions, and in adopting it, contemporary Pagans are attempting to "reenter the primeval worldview" and participate in a view of cosmology "that is not possible for most Westerners after childhood".[21]
Such views have also led many pagans to revere the planet Earth as Mother Earth, who is often referred to as Gaia after the ancient Greek goddess of the Earth.[22]
A number of pagan religions purport the existence of a spirit or soul that inhabits the human body and that survives bodily destruction. Belief in reincarnation is common, often combined with belief in an otherworld where souls may reside for a while before reincarnating.[23] Some pagans believe, like Buddist Enlightenment, that with reincarnation it I possible for you reach a level of humanism, understanding, and peace that you ascend to a heaven-like place, most commonly called summerland.
Ethics and morality
As with many features of the pagan movement, views of ethics and morality differ widely dependent on the variety.
The most prominent and widespread moral code to be found in Wicca and Witchcraft groups is the Wiccan Rede, which states that those who follow it should "do as you will, as long as you harm none". First developing in the Gardnerian tradition of Wicca, written initially by Doreen Valiente, the Rede spread throughout much of the pagan movement in the 1960s. The wording varies from group to group, but the essential idea remains the same.
The Rule of Three or Threefold Law is also widely, but not universally, accepted in Wicca and Wicca influenced paganism. It states that whatever energy, positive or negative, a person puts into the world they get back three-fold. Some believe this is literally three fold return while others believe it is more generally returned in a magnified form. For those who believe in reincarnation this three fold return is thought to potentially spread over multiple incarnations.
The Wiccan Laws or Ardanes are a more controversial set of laws variously followed or at least acknowledged by certain groups, particularly lineaged initiatory traditions. However, there is considerable debate as to how they came to be and what their intent may have been, and many modern practitioners even among the initiatory traditions disregard them entirely.[24]
Asatru/Volkish/Germanic paganism
Within Asatru a few codified moral and honor systems exist. Most prominent among them is the Nine Noble Virtues, based on the Icelandic Sagas. Specific forms of the NNV vary between Asatru branches, but they are broadly similar to each other in form and intent. Additional systems within the Germanic pagan traditions include the Six-Fold Goal and the Nine Charges.[25]
Other moral codes
Other ethical codes can also be found within the pagan movement. The religious philosophy of Thelema, founded in 1904 by the English ceremonial magician and occultist Aleister Crowley, instead advocated the law of "Do What Thou Wilt", arguing that Thelemites should attune themselves to follow their own True Will, and therefore the Cosmic Will of the universe.
|This section may need to be rewritten entirely to comply with Wikipedia's quality standards, as there are no shared rituals and practices between the different "pagan religions". The section treats "Wiccan and witchcraft" things as if they are applicable to all the "pagan religions". "Erisian plays" hardly represent a common "pagan liturgy". (December 2014)
Contemporary pagan ritual is typically geared towards "facilitating altered states of awareness or shifting mind-sets".[26] In order to induce such altered states of consciousness, pagans utilize such elements as drumming, visualization, chanting, singing, dancing, and meditation.[26] American folklorist Sabina Magliocco came to the conclusion, based upon her ethnographic fieldwork in California, that certain pagan beliefs "arise from what they experience during religious ecstasy".[27]
Sociologist Margot Adler highlighted how several pagan groups, like the Reformed Druids of North America and the Erisian movement incorporate a great deal of play in their rituals rather than having them be completely serious and somber. She noted that there are those who would argue that "the Pagan community is one of the only spiritual communities that is exploring humor, joy, abandonment, even silliness and outrageousness as valid parts of spiritual experience".[28]
Most modern pagan religions celebrate the cycles and seasons of nature through a festival calendar that honors these changes. The timing of festivals, and the rites celebrated, may vary from climate to climate, and will also vary (sometimes widely) depending upon which particular pagan religion the adherent subscribes to (see Wheel of the Year).
Magic and witchcraft
The belief in magical rituals and spells is held by a "significant number" of contemporary Pagans.[29] Among those who believe in magic, there are a variety of different views as to what magic is. Many Neopagans adhere to the definition provided by Aleister Crowley, founder of Thelema, who defined magick[sic] as "the Science and Art of causing change to occur in conformity with Will". Also accepted by many is the related definition purported by ceremonial magician Dion Fortune, who declared "magic is the art and science of changing consciousness according to the Will".[29]
Among those who practice magic are Wiccans, those who identify as Neopagan Witches, and practitioners of some forms of revivalist Neo-druidism, the rituals of whom are at least partially based upon those of ceremonial magic and freemasonry.[30]
Not all Neopagans consider witchcraft an acceptable part of spiritual or even magical practice. Some ethnic traditions that can be considered Neopagan embrace the use of charms, healing and other metaphysical practices that benefit their communities, but reject the term witchcraft as they adhere to the traditional view in their cultures that witchcraft describes only harmful magic performed for selfish ends.[31][32][33][34] These variations in nomenclature are one of many ways that traditional and reconstructionist traditions differ from the more Wicca-based Neopagan communities.
|This section may need to be rewritten entirely to comply with Wikipedia's quality standards, as treats as a single "history of paganism" the historical development of different, unrelated, religious movements. (December 2014)
Renaissance and Romanticism
The roots of contemporary paganism begin with the Renaissance, and the reintroduction of Classicism and the resurgence of interest in Graeco-Roman polytheism in the wake of works like the Theologia mythologica of 1532 as well as a revived interest in Greco-Roman magic, studied systematically in Renaissance magic. Although apart from the practice of magic, this was not a revival of pagan cultic practice, the Renaissance was a "rebirth" of the philosophy of pagan antiquity especially Platonism (or Neo-Platonism, Plotinism), but also Epicureanism, re-introduced by Baroque philosopher Pierre Gassendi, described as a "new paganism" in the history of philosophy.[ζ]
The Romantic movement of the 18th century led to the re-discovery of Old Gaelic and Old Norse literature and poetry. Neo-druidism can be taken to have its origins as early as 1717 with the foundation of The Druid Order. The 19th century saw a surge of interest in Germanic paganism with the Viking revival in Victorian Britain[η] and Scandinavia. In Germany the Völkisch movement was in full swing. These pagan currents coincided with Romanticist interest in folklore and occultism, the widespread emergence of pagan themes in popular literature, and the rise of nationalism.[35]
19th century
During this resurgence in the United Kingdom, Neo-druidism and various Western occult groups emerged, such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the Ordo Templi Orientis, who attempted to syncretize "exotic" elements like Egyptian cosmology and Kabbalah into their belief systems, although not necessarily for purely religious purposes. Influenced by the anthropologist Sir James George Frazer's The Golden Bough, several prominent writers and artists were involved in these organizations, including William Butler Yeats, Maud Gonne, Arthur Edward Waite, and Aleister Crowley. Along with these early occult organizations, there were other social phenomena such as the interest in mediumship, magic, and other supernatural beliefs, which was at an all time high in the late 19th century and early 20th century.
Another important influence during this period was the Romantic aesthetic movement, which venerated the natural world and frequently made reference to the deities of antiquity.[θ] The Romantic poets, essayists, artists and authors who employed these themes in their work were later associated with socially progressive attitudes towards sexuality, feminism, pacifism and similar issues.[citation needed]
Early 20th century
In the 1920s Margaret Murray theorized that a Witchcraft religion existed underground and in secret, and had survived through the witchcraft prosecutions that had been enacted by the ecclesiastical and secular courts. Most historians now reject Murray's theory, as she based it partially upon the similarities of the accounts given by those accused of witchcraft; such similarity is now thought to actually derive from there having been a standard set of questions laid out in the witch-hunting manuals used by interrogators.[36] Murray's ideas nevertheless exerted great influence on certain pagan currents; in the 1940s, Englishman Gerald Gardner claimed to have been initiated into a New Forest coven. Gardnerian Wicca is used to refer to the traditions of neopaganism that adhere closely to Gardner's teachings, differentiating it from similar traditions, such as Alexandrian Wicca or more recent Wiccan offshoots.
In the meantime, Germanic mysticism in Germany and Switzerland had developed into baroque forms such as Guido von List's "Armanism", from the 1900s merging into antisemitic and national mysticist (völkisch) currents, notably with Lanz von Liebenfels' Guido von List Society and Ostara magazine, which with the rise of Nazism were partially absorbed into Nazi occultism.
Other Germanic mysticist groups, such as the Germanische Glaubens-Gemeinschaft of Ludwig Fahrenkrog were disendorsed by the Nazi regime. Another of these German neopagan groups was Adonism, founded in the nineteenth century.
Late 20th century
The 1960s and 1970s saw a resurgence in Neodruidism as well as the rise of Germanic neopaganism and Ásatrú in the United States and in Iceland. In the 1970s, Wicca was notably influenced by feminism, leading to the creation of an eclectic, Goddess-worshipping movement known as Dianic Wicca.[37] The 1979 publication of Margot Adler's Drawing Down the Moon and Starhawk's The Spiral Dance opened a new chapter in public awareness of paganism.[38]
With the growth and spread of large, pagan gatherings and festivals in the 1980s, public varieties of Neo-Wicca continued to further diversify into additional, eclectic sub-denominations, often heavily influenced by the New Age and counter-culture movements. These open, unstructured or loosely structured traditions contrast with British Traditional Wicca, which emphasizes secrecy and initiatory lineage.[39]
The 1980s and 1990s also saw an increasing interest in serious academic research and reconstructionist pagan traditions. The establishment and growth of the Internet in the 1990s brought rapid growth to these, and other pagan movements.[39]
|This section may need to be rewritten entirely to comply with Wikipedia's quality standards, as idiosyncratic mix of themes about totally different religious phenomena (ex. Wicca + Theodism + Romuva). (December 2014)
Many pagans and pagan traditions attempt to incorporate elements of historical religions, cultures and mythologies into their beliefs and practices, often emphasizing the age of their sources. Thus, Wicca in particular is sometimes referred to by its proponents as "The Old Religion", a term popularised by Margaret Murray in the 1920s, while Germanic neopaganism is referred to in some of its varieties as Forn Sed ("Old Custom"). Such emphasis on the antiquity of religious tradition is not exclusive to modern paganism, and is found in many other religions. For example the terms Purana, Sanatana Dharma, and the emphasis on the antiquity of the Ancient Egyptian sources of the Hellenistic Mystery religions.
Some claims of continuity between contemporary paganism and older forms of paganism have been shown to be spurious, or outright false, as in the case of Iolo Morganwg's Druid's Prayer. Wiccan beliefs of an ancient monotheistic Goddess were inspired by Marija Gimbutas's description of Neolithic Europe. The factual historical validity of her theories has been disputed by many scholars, including historian Ronald Hutton.
While most pagans draw from old religious traditions, they also adapt them. The mythologies of the ancient traditions are not generally considered to be literally factual by pagans. Eclectic pagans in particular are resistant to the concept of scripture or excessive structure, considering personal freedom to be one of the primary goals of their spirituality.[15] In contrast, some Reconstructionist movements, like those who practise Theodism, take a stricter religious approach, and only recognize certain historical texts and sources as being relevant to their belief system, intentionally focusing on one culture to the exclusion of others, and having a general disdain for the eclectic mentality.
The mythological sources of the various pagan traditions are similarly varied, including Celtic, Norse, Greek, Roman, Sumerian, Egyptian and others.[citation needed] Some groups focus solely on one cultural tradition, while others draw from several. For example, Doreen Valiente's text The Charge of the Goddess used materials from The Gospel of Aradia by Charles G. Leland (1899), as well as material from Aleister Crowley's writings.
Some pagans also draw inspiration from modern traditions, including Christianity, Buddhism and others, creating syncretisms like "Christian Witchcraft"[ι] or "Buddheo-Paganism". Since many pagan beliefs do not require exclusivity, some pagans practise other faiths in parallel.
Eclectic pagans take an undogmatic religious stance,[15] and therefore potentially see no one as having authority to deem a source "apocryphal". Contemporary paganism has therefore been prone to fakelore, especially in recent years as information and misinformation alike have been spread on the Internet and in print media. A number of Wiccan, pagan and even some "Traditionalist" or "Tribalist" groups have a history of "Grandmother Stories" – typically involving initiation by a Grandmother, Grandfather, or other elderly relative who is said to have instructed them in the secret, millennia-old traditions of their ancestors. As this "secret wisdom" can almost always be traced to recent sources, tellers of these stories have often later admitted they made them up.[40] Author quotes Alex Sanders claim of initiation by grandmother as a child in 1933, yet the Alexandrian rituals, "so resemble the Gardnerian rituals [written in the 1940s] that Alex's story of their origin is often questioned". Victor Anderson of the Feri tradition tells similar story. Author adds: "Gardner, for whatever reasons, preferred to maintain the fiction that he was simply carrying on an older tradition. This fiction, wrote Aidan [Kelly], has put modern Craft leaders 'into the uncomfortable position of having to maintain that stance also, despite the fact that doing so goes, I suspect, against both their common sense and better judgement.'" Quoting Ed Fitch, "I think all of us have matured somewhat. After a while you realize that if you've heard one story about an old grandmother, you've heard six or seven just like it." Quoting Gwydion Pendderwen, "Yes, I wrote a fantasy. It was a desire. It was something I wished would happen. Perhaps that's why there are so many of these fantasies running around in the Craft today, and people trying to convince other people that they're true. It is certainly so much more pleasant and 'magical' to say 'It happened this way', instead of 'I researched this. I wrote these rituals. I came up with this idea myself.'"
It is the belief of modern Pagans that the religious beliefs of pre-Christian Europe "possess continuing value for us in our own time, even after centuries of suppression and neglect". Strmiska asserted that contemporary paganism could be viewed as a part of the "much larger phenomenon" of efforts to revive "traditional, indigenous, or native religions" that were occurring across the globe.[κ]
Encompassed religions and movements
|This section may need to be rewritten entirely to comply with Wikipedia's quality standards, as original research. Some of the movements discussed here ("LGBT paganism" and "Humanistic Paganism") are not religions and they do not exist in reality. (December 2014)
Contemporary paganism encompasses a very broad range of groups and beliefs. Syncretic or eclectic approaches are sometimes inspired by historical traditions, but are not bound by any strict identification with a historical religion or culture; eclectic and syncretic movements freely combine elements of multiple religious traditions. At the other end of the spectrum are the ethnic reconstructionist traditions, which focus on historicity, folklore, and the revival of culturally-specific rites and beliefs. The categories below are not hard-and-fast labels; a given group or faith could be placed in one or more of these categories.
Gardnerian and Alexandrian Wicca, British Traditional Wicca, and variations such as Dianic Wicca are examples of eclectic traditions, as are Neo-druid groups like Ár nDraíocht Féin. These contrast with the culturally-focused, polytheistic reconstructionst traditions like Germanic, Celtic, or Greek Reconstructionism.
Goddess movement
Goddess Spirituality, which is also known as the Goddess movement, is a Pagan religion in which a singular, monotheistic Goddess is given predominance. Designed primarily for women, Goddess Spirituality revolves around the sacredness of the female form, and of aspects of women's lives that have been traditionally neglected in western society, such as menstruation, sexuality and maternity.[41]
Adherents of the Goddess Spirituality movement typically envision a history – or "herstory" – of the world that is different from traditional narratives about the past, emphasising the role of women rather than that of men. According to this view, human society was formerly a matriarchy, with communities being egalitarian, pacifistic and focused on the worship of the Goddess, and was subsequently overthrown by violent patriarchal hordes who worshipped male sky gods and who continued to rule through the form of Christianity. Adherents look for elements of this mythological history in "theological, anthropological, archaeological, historical, folkloric and hagiographic writings".[42]
Heathenism, also known as Germanic Neopaganism, refers to a series of contemporary Pagan traditions that are based upon the historical religions, culture and literature of Germanic-speaking Europe. Heathenry is spread out across north-western Europe, and also North America and Australasia, where the descendants of historic Germanic-speaking people now live.[43]
Many Heathen groups adopt variants of Norse mythology as a basis to their beliefs, conceiving of the Earth as being situated on a great world tree called Yggdrasil. Heathens believe in multiple polytheistic deities, all adopted from historical Germanic mythologies. The majority of Heathens are "polytheistic realists", believing that the deities are real entities, while others view them as Jungian archetypes.[44]
Neo-Druidism forms the second largest pagan religion after Wicca, and like Wicca in turn shows significant heterogeneity.[citation needed] It draws several beliefs and inspirations from the Druids, the priest caste of the ancient pagan Celts. With the first Druid Order founded as early as 1717, the history of Neo-Druidism reaches back to the earliest origins of modern paganism. The Ancient Order of Druids founded in 1781 had many aspects of freemasonry, and have practised rituals at Stonehenge since 1905. The Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids was established in 1964 by Ross Nichols. In the United States, the Ancient Order of Druids in America (AODA) was founded in 1912,[citation needed] the Reformed Druids of North America (RDNA) was established in 1963 and Ár nDraíocht Féin (ADF) in 1983 by Isaac Bonewits.
New Age syncretism and eco-paganism
Since the 1960s and 70s, paganism and the then emergent counter-culture, New Age, and hippie movements experienced a degree of cross pollination.[45] Reconstructionism rose to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s. The majority of pagans are not committed to a single defined tradition, but understand paganism as encompassing a wide range of non-institutionalized spirituality, as promoted by the Church of All Worlds, the Feri Tradition and other movements. Notably, Wicca in the United States since the 1970s has largely moved away from its Gardnerian roots and diversified into eclectic variants.
Paganism generally emphasizes the sanctity of the Earth and Nature. Pagans often feel a duty to protect the Earth through activism, and support causes such as rainforest protection, organic farming, permaculture, animal rights and so on. Some pagans are influenced by Animist traditions of the indigenous Native Americans and Africans and other indigenous or shamanic traditions.
Eco-paganism and Eco-magic, which are offshoots of direct action environmental groups, have a strong emphasis on fairy imagery and a belief in the possibility of intercession by the fae (fairies, pixies, gnomes, elves, and other spirits of nature and the Otherworlds).[λ]
Some Unitarian Universalists are eclectic pagans. Unitarian Universalists look for spiritual inspiration in a wide variety of religious beliefs. The Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans, or CUUPs, encourages their member chapters to "use practices familiar to members who attend for worship services but not to follow only one tradition of paganism".[46]
Occultism and ethnic mysticism
Historically the earliest self-identified revivalist pagans were inspired by Renaissance occultism. Notably in early 20th century Germany with Germanic mysticism, which branched into Ariosophy and related currents of Nazi occultism. Outside Germany, occultist neopaganism was inspired by Crowleyan Thelema and Left-Hand Paths, a recent example being the "Dark Paganism" of John J. Coughlin.
In 1925, the Czech esotericist Franz Sättler founded a pagan religion known as Adonism, devoted to the ancient Greek god Adonis, whom Sättler equated with the Christian Satan, and which purported that the end of the world would come in the year 2000. Adonism largely died out in the 1930s, but remained an influence on the German occult scene.[47]
In the United States, ethnic mysticist approaches are advocated in the form of Asatru Folk Assembly founder Stephen McNallen's "metagenetics" and by David Lane's openly white supremacist Wotanism.
According to historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, occultist currents persist in "neo-völkisch movements", such as neo-fascist and national mysticist neopaganism, since the 1990s revived in the European Nouvelle Droite in the context of the Traditionalist School of Julius Evola and others (Alain de Benoist, Werkgroep Traditie; see Neopaganism and the New Right).
LGBT paganism
In the western world, distinct forms of paganism have been developed by and for members of the LGBT community. Margot Adler noted how there were many pagan groups whose practices revolved around the inclusion and celebration of male homosexuality, such as the Minoan Brotherhood, a Wiccan group that combines the iconography from ancient Minoan religion with a Wiccan theology and an emphasis on "men-loving-men", and the eclectic pagan group known as the Radical Faeries. Similarly, there are also groups for lesbians, like certain forms of Dianic Wicca and the Minoan Sisterhood. When Adler asked one gay pagan what the pagan community offered members of the LGBT community, the reply was "A place to belong. Community. Acceptance. And a way to connect with all kinds of people, gay, bi, straight, celibate, transgender, in a way that is hard to do in the greater society."[48]
Other forms of Wicca have also attracted homosexual people, for instance, the theologian Jone Salomonsen noted that there was an unusually high number of LGBT, and particularly bisexual individuals within the Reclaiming tradition of San Francisco when she was doing her fieldwork there in the 1980s and 1990s.[49]
In contrast to the eclectic traditions, Polytheistic Reconstructionists practice culturally-specific, ethnic traditions, basing their practices on the surviving folklore, traditional songs and prayers, as well as reconstructions from the historical record. Thus, Hellenic, Roman, Kemetic, Celtic, Germanic, Guanche, Baltic and Slavic Reconstructionists aim for the preservation and revival of historical practices and beliefs of Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Ancient Egypt, the Celts, the Germanic peoples, the Balts and the Slavs, respectively.[μ][ν][ξ]
Wicca and modern witchcraft
Modern witchcraft is the largest subset of modern paganism. It comprises different traditions of witchcraft with origins in the United States and Britain. Examples of these traditions are traditional witchcraft and Wicca.
Wicca is a religion of witchcraft created by Gerald Gardner in the 1950s. [50] The Wiccan religion is mainly duotheistic, revolving around the veneration of a Horned God and a Goddess, elements of a variety of ancient mythologies, a belief in and practice of magic and sometimes the belief in reincarnation and karma.
The scholar of religious studies Graham Harvey noted that a poem known as the Charge of the Goddess remains central to the liturgy of most Wiccan groups. Originally written by Wiccan High Priestess Doreen Valiente in the mid-1950s, Harvey noted that the recitation of the Charge in the midst of ritual allows Wiccans to gain wisdom and experience deity in "the ordinary things in life".[51]
The historian Ronald Hutton identified a wide variety of different sources that influenced the development of Wicca. These included ceremonial magic, folk magic, Romanticist literature, Freemasonry, and the historical theories of the English archaeologist Margaret Murray.[30] The figure at the forefront of the burgeoning Wiccan movement was the English esotericist Gerald Gardner, who claimed to have been initiated by the New Forest coven in 1939. Gardner claimed that the religion that he discovered was a modern survival of the old Witch-Cult described in the works of Murray, which had originated in the pre-Christian paganism of Europe. He claimed it was revealed to him by a coven of witches in the New Forest area of southern England. Various forms of Wicca have since evolved or been adapted from Gardner's British Traditional Wicca or Gardnerian Wicca such as Alexandrian Wicca. Other forms loosely based on Gardner's teachings are Faery Wicca, Kemetic Wicca, Judeo-Paganism or "jewitchery", Dianic Wicca or "feminist Wicca" – which emphasizes the divine feminine, often creating women-only or lesbian-only groups.[ο]
In the 1990s, Wiccan beliefs and practices were used as a partial basis for a number of U.S. films and television series, such as The Craft, Charmed and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, leading to a dramatic upsurge in teenagers and young adults becoming interested and involved in the religion.[52][53]
Semitic neopaganism
Semitic neopaganism refers to a group of new religious movements that attempt to construct (or reconstruct) the Ancient Semitic religions of the Near East. Semitic neopagan movements have also been reported in Israel[54] and in Lebanon.[55][unreliable source?]
Surveys have shown that people with Jewish backgrounds are twice as likely to become Neopagans in comparison to Gentiles (non-Jews).[citation needed] Beit Asherah ("the house of the Goddess Asherah") was one of the first Neopagan synagogues, founded in the early 1990s by Stephanie Fox, Steven Posch, and Magenta Griffiths (Lady Magenta). Magenta Griffiths is High Priestess of the Beit Asherah coven, and a former board member of the Covenant of the Goddess.[56][π]
Humanistic Paganism
Humanistic Paganism is a subset of Spiritual humanism characterized by a naturalistic approach to pagan religion. Humanistic Paganism is an attempt to merge a humanistic respect for science and reason with the sense of religious awe and spiritual values rooted in ancient pagan myth. While embracing empirical science and rejecting supernatural explanations for phenomena, Humanistic Pagans accept the psychological power that Pagan rituals and practices have to deepen our daily experience.[ρ]
|This section may need to be rewritten entirely to comply with Wikipedia's quality standards, as partial coverage. Excessive emphasis given to extremely small numbers of "pagans" in the Anglophone world, even with graphics. (December 2014)
Establishing precise figures on Paganism is difficult. Due to the secrecy and fear of persecution still prevalent among Pagans, limited numbers are willing to openly be counted. The decentralised nature of Paganism and sheer number of solitary practitioners further complicates matters.[57] Nevertheless, there is a slow growing body of data on the subject.[58] Combined statistics from Western nations put Pagans well over million worldwide.
A study by Ronald Hutton compared a number of different sources (including membership lists of major UK organizations, attendance at major events, subscriptions to magazines, etc.) and used standard models for extrapolating likely numbers. This estimate accounted for multiple membership overlaps as well as the number of adherents represented by each attendee of a pagan gathering. Hutton estimated that there are 250,000 neopagan adherents in the United Kingdom, roughly equivalent to the national Hindu community.[30]
A smaller number is suggested by the results of the 2001 Census, in which a question about religious affiliation was asked for the first time. Respondents were able to write in an affiliation not covered by the checklist of common religions, and a total of 42,262 people from England, Scotland and Wales declared themselves to be Pagans by this method. These figures were not released as a matter of course by the Office for National Statistics, but were released after an application by the Pagan Federation of Scotland.[σ] This is more than many well known traditions such as Rastafarian, Bahá'í and Zoroastrian groups, but fewer than the "Big Six" of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Judaism and Buddhism. It is also fewer than the adherents Jediism, whose campaign made them the fourth largest religion after Christianity, Islam and Hinduism.[τ]
The 2001 UK Census figures did not allow an accurate breakdown of traditions within the Pagan heading, as a campaign by the Pagan Federation before the census encouraged Wiccans, Heathens, Druids and others all to use the same write-in term 'Pagan' in order to maximise the numbers reported. The 2011 census however made it possible to describe oneself as Pagan-Wiccan, Pagan-Druid and so on. The figures for England and Wales showed 80,153 describing themselves as Pagan (or some subgroup thereof.) The largest subgroup was Wicca, with 11,766 adherents.[υ] The overall numbers of people self-reporting as Pagan rose between 2001 and 2011. In 2001 about seven people per 10,000 UK respondents were pagan; in 2011 the number (based on the England and Wales population) was 14.3 people per 10,000 respondents.
Census figures in Ireland do not provide a breakdown of religions outside of the major Christian denominations and other major world religions. A total of 22,497 people stated "Other religion" in the 2006 census; and a rough estimate is that there were 2,000–3,000 practicing pagans in Ireland in 2009. Numerous pagan groups – primarily Wiccan and Druidic – exist in Ireland though none is officially recognised by the Government. Irish Paganism is often strongly concerned with issues of place and language.[φ]
North America
|Socio-economic breakdown of U.S. Pagans
Canada does not provide extremely detailed records of religious adherence. Its statistics service only collects limited religious information each decade. At the 2001 census, there were a recorded Script error: No such module "Gaps". Pagans in Canada.[χ][ψ][better source needed]
The United States government does not directly collect religious information. As a result such information is provided by religious institutions and other third-party statistical organisations.[ω] Based on the most recent survey by the Pew Forum on religion, there are over one million Pagans estimated to be living in the United States.[60] Up to 4 ‰ of respondents answered "Pagan" or "Wiccan" when polled.[61]
According to Helen A. Berger's 1995 survey, "The Pagan Census", most American Pagans are middle class, educated, and live in urban/suburban areas on East and West coasts.[59]
|Breakdown of Australians[62]
|Nature Religions
|Witchcraft (incl. Wicca)
In the 2011 Australian census, Script error: No such module "Gaps". respondents identified as Pagan.[62] Out of Script error: No such module "Gaps". recorded Australians,[αα] they compose approximately 0.15% of the population. The Australian Bureau of Statistics classifies Paganism as an affiliation under which several sub-classifications may optionally be specified. This includes animism, nature religion, Druidism, pantheism, and Witchcraft. As a result, fairly detailed breakdowns of Pagan respondents are available.[αβ]
|New Zealander
|Nature religion
In 2006, there were at least Script error: No such module "Gaps". (1.64‰) Pagans among New Zealand's population of approximately 4 million.[64] Respondents were given the option to select one or more religious affiliations.[63]
Paganism in society
|This section may need to be rewritten entirely to comply with Wikipedia's quality standards, as original research and generalisation. The analysis focuses exclusively on self-defined "pagans" of the Anglophone world. (December 2014)
Based upon her study of the pagan community in the United States, the sociologist Margot Adler noted that it is rare for Pagan groups to proselytize in order to gain new converts to their faiths. Instead, she argued that "in most cases", converts first become interested in the movement through "word of mouth, a discussion between friends, a lecture, a book, an article or a Web site". She went on to put forward the idea that this typically confirmed "some original, private experience, so that the most common experience of those who have named themselves pagan is something like 'I finally found a group that has the same religious perceptions I always had'".[65] A practicing Wiccan herself, Adler used her own conversion to paganism as a case study, remarking that as a child she had taken a great interest in the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece, and had performed her own devised rituals in dedication to them. When she eventually came across the Wiccan religion many years later, she then found that it confirmed her earlier childhood experiences, and that "I never converted in the accepted sense. I simply accepted, reaffirmed, and extended a very old experience."[66]
Folklorist Sabina Magliocco supported this idea, noting that a great many of those Californian Pagans whom she interviewed claimed that they had been greatly interested in mythology and folklore as children, imagining a world of "enchanted nature and magical transformations, filled with lords and ladies, witches and wizards, and humble but often wise peasants". Magliocco noted that it was this world that pagans "strive to re-create in some measure".[67] Further support for Adler's idea came from American Wiccan priestess Judy Harrow, who noted that among her comrades, there was a feeling that "you don't become pagan, you discover that you always were".[68] They have also been supported by Pagan studies scholar Graham Harvey.[69]
Many pagans in North America encounter the movement through their involvement in other hobbies; particularly popular with U.S. Pagans are "golden age"-type pastimes such as the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), Star Trek fandom, Doctor Who fandom and comic book fandom. Other manners in which many North American pagans have got involved with the movement are through political and/or ecological activism, such as "vegetarian groups, health food stores" or feminist university courses.[70]
Adler went on to note that from those she interviewed and surveyed in the U.S., she could identify a number of common factors that led to people getting involved in Paganism: the beauty, vision and imagination that was found within their beliefs and rituals, a sense of intellectual satisfaction and personal growth that they imparted, their support for environmentalism and/or feminism, and a sense of freedom.[71]
Class, gender and ethnicity
Based upon her work in the United States, Adler found that the pagan movement was "very diverse" in its class and ethnic background.[72] She went on to remark that she had encountered pagans in jobs that ranged from "fireman to PhD chemist" but that the one thing that she thought made them into an "elite" was as avid readers, something that she found to be very common within the pagan community despite the fact that avid readers constituted less than 20% of the general population of the United States at the time.[73] Magliocco came to a somewhat different conclusion based upon her ethnographic research of pagans in California, remarking that the majority were "white, middle-class, well-educated urbanites" but that they were united in finding "artistic inspiration" within "folk and indigenous spiritual traditions".[74]
The sociologist Regina Oboler examined the role of gender in the U.S. Pagan community, arguing that although the movement had been constant in its support for the equality of men and women ever since its foundation, there was still an essentialist view of gender engrained within it, with female deities being accorded traditional western feminine traits and male deities being similarly accorded what western society saw as masculine traits.[75]
Pagan studies
The earliest academic studies of contemporary Paganism were published in the late 1970s and 1980s by scholars like Margot Adler, Marcello Truzzi and Tanya Luhrmann, although it would not be until the 1990s that the actual multidisciplinary academic field of Pagan studies properly developed, pioneered by academics such as Graham Harvey and Chas S. Clifton. Increasing academic interest in Paganism has been attributed to the new religious movement's increasing public visibility, as it began interacting with the interfaith movement and holding large public celebrations at sites like Stonehenge.[76]
The first international academic conference on the subject of Pagan studies was held at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, North-East England in 1993. It had been organised by two British religious studies scholars, Graham Harvey and Charlotte Hardman.[77] In April 1996 a larger conference dealing with contemporary Paganism then took place at Ambleside in the Lake District. Organised by the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Lancaster, North-West England, it was entitled "Nature Religion Today: Western Paganism, Shamanism and Esotericism in the 1990s", and led to the publication of an academic anthology, entitled Nature Religion Today: Paganism in the Modern World.[77] In 2004, the first peer-reviewed, academic journal devoted to Pagan studies began publication. The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies was edited by Clifton, while the academic publishers AltaMira Press began release of the Pagan Studies Series.[αγ] One of the books AltaMira released was Researching Paganisms, an anthology edited by Jenny Blain, Douglas Ezzy and Graham Harvey in which different Pagan studies scholars discussed their involvement with the subject and the opposition that they've faced.[78]
The relationship between Pagan studies scholars and some practising Pagans has at times been strained. The Australian academic and practising Pagan Caroline Jane Tully argued that many Pagans can react negatively to new scholarship regarding historical pre-Christian societies, believing that it is a threat to the structure of their beliefs and "sense of identity". She furthermore argued that some of those dissatisfied Pagans lashed out against academics as a result, particularly on the internet.[79]
Pagan music
Modern Pagan consciousness has found expression in music more than in any other art, usually by younger musicians who identify themselves and their music as pagan. This music is typically influenced heavily by rock and folk music. Examples of Pagan subgenres are Viking metal, pagan metal and pagan rock. Artists and bands whose music may be considered pagan include Gaia Consort, Omnia (band), Faun (band), Wardruna, and The Moon and the Nightspirit.
- ^ Adler 2006, p. xiii.
- ^ Lewis 2004, p. 13.
- ^ Hanegraaff 1996, p. 84.
- ^ Carpenter 1996, p. 40.
- ^ Carpenter 1996. p. 47. 'Paganism,' as I use the term, refers broadly to an emerging spiritual movement comprised of overlapping forms of spirituality referred to by many names (e.g. 'Neo-Paganism,' 'Paganism,' 'Neo-Pagan Witchcraft,' 'Witchcraft,' 'the Craft,' 'Wiccan Spirituality,' 'Wicca,' 'Wicce,' 'Wiccan religion,' 'The Old Religion,' 'Goddess Spirituality,' 'Nature Spirituality,' 'Nature Religion,' 'the Old Religion,' 'Goddess Spirituality,' 'Nature Spirituality,' 'Nature Religion,' 'Earth-Based Spirituality,' 'Earth Religion,' 'Ecofeminist Spirituality,' and 'Euro-American Shamanism'
- ^ Adler 2006. pp. 3–4.
- ^ Adler 2006.
- ^ Adler 2006, pp. 243–299.
- ^ Bonewits 2006, pp. 128–140.
- ^ a b c Adler 2006, p. 22.
- ^ a b c Harvey 2007, p. 1.
- ^ Adler 2006, p. 29.
- ^ Adler 2006, pp. 26–28.
- ^ Adler 2006, pp. 31–32.
- ^ a b c d Adler 2006, p. 23.
- ^ Carpenter 1996, p. 61.
- ^ York 2010, pp. 22–23.
- ^ a b Carpenter 1996, p. 50.
- ^ Starhawk 1989, p. 10.
- ^ Carpenter 1996, p. 54.
- ^ Adler 2006, pp. 22–23.
- ^ Carpenter 1996, p. 55.
- ^ Chauran, Alexandra (2014). How to Talk to Me After I'm Gone: Creating a Plan for Spirit Communication. Llewellyn Worldwide. ISBN 978-0738739250.
- ^ Gerald Gardner (1961). "The Old Laws". The Gardnerian Book of Shadows. Retrieved 14 December 2014.
- ^ The 9 Noble Virtues - OR Site
- ^ a b Carpenter 1996, p. 66.
- ^ Magliocco 2004, p. 9.
- ^ Adler 2006, pp. 335–354.
- ^ a b Harvey 2007, pp. 84–85.
- ^ a b c Hutton 1999.
- ^ de Blécourt, William. 'The Witch, Her Victim, The Unwitcher and the Researcher: The Continued Evidence of Traditional Witchcraft', in de Blécourt et al, The Atholone History of Witchcraft and Magic, Volume 6: The Twentieth Century, 1999, p.151-152
- ^ Kieckhefer, Richard. Magic in the Middle Ages, 1989, 10/p.194
- ^ Black, Ronald. The Gaelic Otherworld, 2005, p.174
- ^ MacKenzie, William. Gaelic Incantations, Charms, and Blessings of the Hebrides, 1895, p.5
- ^ Hutton 1999, p. 22.
- ^ Hutton 1999, pp. 194–201.
- ^ Adler 2006, pp. 178–239.
- ^ Adler 2006, p. ix.
- ^ a b Adler 2006, pp. 429–456.
- ^ Adler 2006, pp. 94–5 (Sanders), 78 (Anderson), 83 (Gardner), 87 (Fitch), 90 (Pendderwen).
- ^ Harvey 2007, p. 70.
- ^ Harvey 2007, p. 73-75.
- ^ Harvey 2007, p. 53.
- ^ Harvey 2007, p. 54-58.
- ^ Hunt 2003, pp. 147–148.
- ^ Official Website of CUUPS
- ^ Hakl 2010.
- ^ Adler 2006, pp. 355–371.
- ^ Salomonsen 2002, p. 44.
- ^ Ronald Hutton 1999, pp. 201–205.
- ^ Harvey 2007, pp. 36–37.
- ^ Berger & Ezzy 2007.
- ^ Johnston & Aloi 2007.
- ^ Ofri Ilani. Paganism returns to the Holy Land. Haaretz, 2009.
- ^ Hanibaael. Paganism and Occultism in Lebanon: These are our beliefs.
- ^ Lewis 2000, p. 162.
- ^ Berger 1999, p. 9.
- ^ Robinson 2008.
- ^ a b c d Berger 1999, pp. 8, 9.
- ^ Pitzl-Waters 2008.
- ^ Pew 2008, p. 12.
- ^ a b PAN results 2012.
- ^ a b StatsNZ affiliation 2006.
- ^ StatsNZ population 2006.
- ^ Adler 2006, p. 13.
- ^ Adler 2006, pp. 15–19.
- ^ Magliocco 2004, pp. 40, 55.
- ^ Harrow 1996, p. 12.
- ^ Harvey 2007, p. 1-2.
- ^ Rabinovitch 1996, p. 76-77.
- ^ Adler 2006, pp. 20–21.
- ^ Adler 2006, p. 19.
- ^ Adler 2006, p. 34.
- ^ Magliocco 2004, p. 7.
- ^ Oboler 2010, pp. 182–183.
- ^ Clifton & Harvey 2004, p. 7.
- ^ a b Clifton & Harvey 2004, p. 8.
- ^ Blain, Ezzy & Harvey 2004.
- ^ Tully 2011, pp. 98–99.
- ^ "The very persons who would most writhe and wail at their surroundings if transported back into early Greece, would, I think, be the neo-pagans and Hellas worshipers of today." (W. James, letter of 5 April 1868, cited after OED); "The neopagan impulse of the classical revival". (J. A. Symonds, Renaissance in Italy, 1877, iv. 193); "Pre-Raphaelitism [...] has got mixed up with æstheticism, neo-paganism, and other such fantasies." (J. McCarthy, A History of Our Own Times, 1880, iv. 542).
- ^ Eric Wodening, We Are Our Deeds: The Elder Heathenry, Its Ethic and Thew (1998), ISBN 1-929340-00-1
- ^ Michael F. Strmiska, Modern Paganism in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives (Religion in Contemporary Cultures) ABC-CLIO 2005 p. 9
- ^ Clifton, Chas. "A Goddess Arrives". Gnosis Fall 1988: 20–29.
- ^ Greenwood (2000) p. 23
- ^ e.g. Johannes Hirschberger, Geschichte der Philosophie vol. 2 (1952), ch. 1.
- ^ "The Viking Revival" by Professor Andrew Wawn. BBC Homepage.
- ^ Myth, Romantic approach Retrieved 14 July 2009 from Encyclopædia Britannica Online
- ^ Telesco, Patricia (ed) (2005) Which Witch is Which? Franklin Lakes, NJ, New Page Books. ISBN 1-56414-754-1 pp.94–8
- ^ Strmska (2005) p. 2
- ^ Letcher (2001)
- ^ Davy, Barbara Jane (2007) "Introduction to pagan studies". Rowman Altamira ISBN 0-7591-0818-8. p.97: "Some pagans embrace the idea of a pan-European Celtic culture, but some practice regionally specific reconstructionist traditions."
- ^ McColman, Carl (2003) Complete Idiot's Guide to Celtic Wisdom. Alpha Press ISBN 0-02-864417-4. p.12: "Some groups have gone even further, trying to use archaeology, religious history, comparative mythology, and even the study of non-Celtic Indo-European religions in an effort to create a well-researched and scholarly 'reconstruction' of the ancient Celts."
- ^ Gallagher, Eugene V.; Ashcraft, W. Michael (2006). Introduction to new and alternative religions in America. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press. p. 178. ISBN 0-275-98713-2.
- ^ Telesco (2005) p.114
- ^ Covenant of the Goddess (Official website)
- ^ Newberg, BT; What is Humanistic Paganism?
- ^ Pagans and the Scottish Census of 2001. Retrieved 18 October 2007.
- ^ National Statistics Office (2001): '390,000 Jedi There Are'. Retrieved 18 October 2007.
- ^ Office for National Statistics, 11 December 2012, 2011 Census, Key Statistics for Local Authorities in England and Wales. Accessed 12 December 2012.
- ^ Butler, Jenny, "Irish neo-paganism". pages 111–130 in Olivia Cosgrove et al. (eds), Ireland's new religious movements. Cambridge Scholars, 2011
- ^ Religion data from the 2001 Canadian census at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Todd, Douglas (December 2003). "University of Victoria chaplain marks solstice with pagan rituals". The Vancouver Sun. Postmedia Network Inc. Retrieved 14 March 2013.
- ^ "Religion Statistics and Publications". United States Census Bureau. Retrieved 14 March 2013.
- ^ "2011 Census QuickStats: All people – usual residents". Australian Bureau of Statistics. Retrieved 13 March 2013.
- ^ Pagan Awareness Network Inc. Australia (2011). "Australian Census Pagan Dash.". Facebook Public Event. Australia. Retrieved 13 March 2013.
The aim is to get Pagans of all persuasions (Wiccan, Druid, Asatru, Hellenic, Egyptian, Heathen etc.) to put themselves on the census form as 'Pagan' or 'Pagan, *your path*'.... Paganism is included in the Australian Standard Classification of Religious Groups (ASCRG), as a separate output category.... The classification structure of this group is: 613 Nature Religions 6130 Nature Religions, nfd (not further defined) 6131 Animism 6132 Druidism 6133 Paganism 6134 Pantheism 6135 Wiccan/Witchcraft 6139 Nature Religions, nec (not elsewhere classified) If a response of Pagan is qualified with additional information such as Druid or Wiccan, this additional information will be used in classifying the response. For example, Pagan Wiccan would be classified as 6135 and Pagan Celtic would be 6133. Pagan alone would be classified as 6133.
- ^ "Pagan Studies / AltaMira Press". www.csulb.edu. Retrieved 26 May 2008.
|This section may need to be rewritten entirely to comply with Wikipedia's quality standards, as they are hardly reliable sources. Most of the works used are from American self-professed "scholars" and "experts" who treat "new age" religiosity rather than actual "pagan religions". (December 2014)
Academic books
- Adler, Margot (2006) [First published 1979]. Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers and Other Pagans in America (Revised Edition ed.). London: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-303819-1.
- Berger, Helen (1999). A Community of Witches: Contemporary Neo-Paganism and Witchcraft in the United States. Columbia, South Carolina: The University of South Carolina Press. ISBN 1-57003-246-7.
- Berger, Helen; Ezzy, Douglas (2007). Teenage Witches: Magical Youth and the Search for the Self. New Brunswick, New Jersey and London: Rutgers International Press. ISBN 978-0813540207.
- Blain, Jenny; Ezzy, Douglas; Harvey, Graham (2004). Researching Paganisms. Oxford and Lanham: AltaMira Press. ISBN 978-0-7591-0522-5.
- Clifton, Chas; Harvey, Graham (2004). The Paganism Reader. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-30352-1.
- Gardell, Mattias (2003). Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. ISBN 978-0822330714.
- Hanegraaff, Wouter J. (1996). New Age Religion and Western Culture: Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers. ISBN 90-04-10696-0.
- Hunt, Stephen (2003). Alternative Religions: A Sociological Introduction. Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing. ISBN 0-7546-3409-4.
- Harvey, Graham (2007). Listening People, Speaking Earth: Contemporary Paganism (second edition ed.). London: Hurst & Company. ISBN 978-1-85065-272-4.
- Hutton, Ronald (1999). The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-820744-3.
- Johnston, Hannah E.; Aloi, Peg (2007). The New Generation Witches: Teenitchcraft in Contemporary Culture. Aldershot and Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7546-5784-2.
- Lewis, James R. (2004). The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements. London and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-514986-6.
- Magliocco, Sabina (2004). Witching Culture: Folklore and Neo-paganism in America. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-3803-7.
- Molnar, Thomas (1987). The Pagan Temptation. Grand Rapids, Mich.: W.B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.; 201 p. N.B.: The scope of this study also embraces the occult. ISBN 0-8028-0262-1
- Salomonsen, Jone (2002). Enchanted Feminism: The Reclaiming Witches of San Francisco. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-22393-5.
Academic anthologies
- Carpenter, Dennis D. (1996). "Emergent Nature Spirituality: An Examination of the Major Spiritual Contours of the Contemporary Pagan Worldview". In Lewis, James R. Magical Religion and Modern Witchcraft. Albany: State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-0-7914-2890-0.
- Harrow, Judy (1996). "The Contemporary Neo-Pagan Revival". In Lewis, James R. Magical Religion and Modern Witchcraft. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-0-7914-2890-0.
- Lewis, James R. (2000). Witchcraft today: an encyclopedia of Wiccan and neopagan traditions. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1576071342.
- Rabinovitch, Shelley TSivia (1996). Lewis, James R., ed. Magical Religion and Modern Witchcraft. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-0-7914-2890-0.
- York, Michael (2010). "Idolatry, Ecology, and the Sacred as Tangible". The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies (London: Equinox) 12.1.
Academic journal articles
- Doyle White, Ethan (2010). "The Meaning of "Wicca": A Study in Etymology, History and Pagan Politics". The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies (London: Equinox) 12.2.
- Hakl, Hans Thomas (2010). "Franz Sättler (Dr. Musallam) and the Twentieth-Century Cult of Adonism". The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies (London: Equinox) 12.1.
- Jonuks, Tõnno (2013). "Der Estnische Nationalismus und sein Konzept der prähistorischen Religion: Die Nation als Gestalterin des Religionsbildes". Forschungen zur baltischen Geschichte (Tartu: Ajalooline Ajalooselts) 8.
- Tully, Caroline Jane (2011). "Researching the Past is a Foreign Country: Cognitive Dissonance as a Response by Practitioner Pagans to Academic Research on the History of Pagan Religions". The Pomegranate: the International Journal of Pagan Studies (London: Equinox) 13 (1).
- Oboler, Regina Smith (2010). "Negotiating Gender Essentialism in Contemporary Paganism". The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies (London: Equinox) 12.2.
Technical reports and statistics
- Results of the 2011 Census. PAGANdash.com (Technical report) (Australia: Pagan Awareness Network Inc. Australia). 2012. Retrieved 13 March 2013.
- "Chapter 1: The Religious Composition of the United States". The U.S. Religious Landscape Survey: Religious Affiliation (PDF). Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life (Technical report) (Washington D.C.: Pew Forum Web Publishing and Communications; Pew Research Center). February 2008.
- Pitzl-Waters, Jason (February 2008). "Parsing the Pew Numbers". The Wild Hunt. Patheos. Archived from the original on 16 July 2011. Retrieved 14 March 2013.
- Robinson, B.A. (April 2008), Estimates of the number of Wiccans in the U.S., Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, retrieved 3 September 2012
- Religious affiliation. Census of Population and Dwellings (Technical report) (Statistics New Zealand). 2006. Retrieved 13 March 2013.
- "QuickStats About New Zealand's Population and Dwellings". Census of Population and Dwellings. Statistics New Zealand. 2006. Retrieved 13 March 2013.
Contemporary Pagan literature
- Bonewits, Isaac (2006). Bonewits's Essential Guide to Druidism. New York: Kensington Publishing Corp. ISBN 0-8065-2710-2.
- Starhawk (1989). The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess (revised edition ed.). San Francisco: Harper and Row. ISBN 978-0-676-97467-6.
External links
- What Neo-Pagans Believe (beliefnet.com)
- Neopagan & Pagan religious traditions (religioustolerance.org)
- Wicca and Neo-Paganism (sacred-texts.com)
- The Pagan Federation (paganfed.org)
- The Witches' Voice (witchvox.com)
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text:
Pigz on the Wing
Mark Adler just might have the distinction of having his code running on more computers than anyone else on earth. This is because Mark (in conjunction with Jean-loup Gailly and many more volunteers) wrote zlib - the free library that reads and writes streams compressed with the deflate algorithm.
Of course, this means that Mark's code is used just about everywhere to read and write files in Zip and gzip format - so it is deployed on virtually every desktop, running any O/S. It is also deployed on zillions of embedded systems running Linux and other operating systems.
It's nice to daydream about how rich Mark would be if he had a nickel for every deployment of zlib, but of course, if zlib cost a nickel, it probably wouldn't be so ubiquitous. I think he will have to be content with eventual enshrinement in the FOSS Hall of Hame.
Next Up: Pigz
Apparently keeping his finger on the pulse of multicore hysteria, Mark recently took some time out to produce a nice little program called pigz, a parallel version of gzip. Pigz has been out for a couple of years now, and this month rolled up to version 2.1.6.
Pigz uses the pthreads library to parallelize compression of data, by grabbing big chunks and processing each one in its own thread. Decompression is not so easy to break apart. Pigz will still use multiple threads when decompressing, but it is basically just decomposing I/O and computation.
What the World Needs Now
There are two things we could do to make parallel decompression a reality.
First, Mark points out that specially constructed deflate streams could be used for parallel processing during decompression. Presumably we would need some modification to the deflate specification to add labeling or marking of some sort for these special streams.
Second, there is no reason that most archivers can't start using parallel threads right now when extracting multiple files from archives. Programs like WinZip could be doing this today, but I don't believe it is implemented in many products.
A Challenge
It will be tough to resolve this question, but can anyone make a case for some other library code that is more widely deployed than zlib? I can think of a few candidates, but nothing that clearly beats it. One possible winner would be some O/S code for a super-cheap 4- or 8-bit processor that has been produced in quantities exceeding a billion. Unfortunately I don't have the kind of research reports handy to figure that out.
Author's Note: I apologize for the title of the article, which deliberately mangles the preferred pronunciation of the product as pig-zee.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Offshoring is the movement of jobs by businesses to foreign countries where labor rates are cheaper and there are fewer regulations. Often times, this is done through an outsourcing company like Foxconn, though sometimes open up their own in-house plants offshore. Many manufacturing jobs move from the United States to foreign countries in this manner.
Possible effects of offshoring
Key battleground states for the 2008 Presidential Election included Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Ohio lost 31,800 jobs in goods-producing industries between January 2006 and January 2007, including a loss of 21,900 jobs in manufacturing.[1]
Pennsylvania lost 200,000 manufacturing jobs between July 2000 and March 2007.[2]
Wisconsin lost 8,600 manufacturing jobs between Feb. 2006 and Feb. 2007.[3]
All three states punished Republican candidates in the November 2006 elections.
Experiences of Europe
Thanks to a large number of offshoring projects Europe has experienced a change in its entire economy: manufacturing has been largely moved to Asia, but this has steadily been replaced by what is called "the knowledge-based economy". Anti-offshoring groups have hailed this as a catastrophe, but this has not been borne out by unemployment figures or GDP calculations.
It is important to note that there has been a strong backlash to this offshoring within the UK. Some British companies, including National Westminster Bank, RBS, the insurance firm Norwich Union, Aviva (repatriating 150 out of 7000 jobs) and Powergen have reversed their decision to outsource labor.
The main reasons for offshoring are minimizing costs[4] and maximizing revenue (by increasing productivity[5]), both of which are consistent with the behavior of a competitive firm in a free market. A more specific reason for offshoring may be the relatively high corporate taxes in the U.S. compared to other developed nations.[6][7] Also, some think offshoring is being used as a way to break up unions.[8]
Although some have observed that offshored/outsourced workers are not always as productive as the workers they replace,[9] if this is the case, the reduction in labor costs must outweigh the loss of productivity, otherwise a capitalistic firm would not take this action. Reducing costs by offshoring jobs increases firms' profits, and this increases economic growth according to the trickle down theory, for the same reason tax cuts do. On the other hand, offshoring causes economic hardships for the workers whose jobs are displaced, especially minimally skilled labor jobs.[10] It is debatable whether or not these negative effects outweigh the positive economic effects. In cases where the net economic benefit is positive, it can be thought of as creative destruction, which is a necessary occurrence as technology advances in a free market economy. Indeed, it is technology (communication, transportation, etc.) that often makes it possible for offshoring to occur.
External links
- BCS Site on Off shoring opportunities
- Pro Off-shoring site read with reservations
- Analysis of a trend of reversing off shoring
- ↑ http://jfs.ohio.gov/releases/unemp/200702/UnempPressRelease.asp
- ↑ http://www.centralpennbusiness.com/weekly_article.asp?aID=89156647.9077722.779558.2548748.4307912.688&aID2=59957
- ↑ http://www.wisbusiness.com/index.iml?Article=91717
- ↑ Wadhwa, Vivek; Gereffi, Gary; Rissing, Ben and Ong, Ryan. "Where the Engineers Are." Issues in Science and Technology, Spring 2007. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1015843
- ↑ "Outsourcing Innovation." March 21, 2005. Bloomberg Businessweek. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_12/b3925601.htm
- ↑ Tamny, John. "Hillary Clinton's Backwards 'Progressive Vision'." June 8, 2007. National Review Online. https://www.nationalreview.com/articles/221224/hillary-clintons-backwards-progressive-vision/john-tamny
- ↑ Atkins, Chris and Hodge, Scott A. "U.S. Lagging Behind OECD Corporate Tax Trends." May 5, 2006. The Tax Foundation. http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/1466.html
- ↑ "Outsourcing and the Unions." August 6, 2007. http://www.globalenvision.org/library/3/1712
- ↑ Preston, Julia. "U.S. Farmers Go Where Workers Are: Mexico." September 4, 2007. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/world/americas/04iht-export.4.7380436.html
- ↑ "How Outsourcing Affects the U.S. Economy." http://www.dirjournal.com/business-journal/how-outsourcing-affects-the-us-economy/


text:
I am not a fan of winter. Nope, not a bit. If Mother Nature ever asked my preference, I would happily request about 4 weeks of snow in total, right around the holidays, with a graceful segue directly into Spring, sans the miserable slush that snow invariably turns into. Not holding my breath in anticipation of the possibility, however. Especially in Michigan!
I suppose it's not that I mind the snow itself. It's the obligatory cold that comes with the snow. I've tried to embrace the season. I've tried to find joy in winter activities. Cross-country skiing didn't make the cut, as you'd know if you know Michigan weather, by the time you get your cold gear on and click onto your skis, the temp or the snow has changed! Too picky!
Tried downhill skiing. Once. Which was more than enough. Not quite sure how it didn't occur to me until after I was on the ski lift that my extreme fear of heights might get in the way of my enjoyment of this new experience...
Then, of course, there's snowmobiling. Refer to my strong dislike of the cold. Barreling through the cold at high speeds just makes one more cold!
I've concluded that there are only four positive things about winter:watching my kids enjoy the snow, having a white Christmas, using our fireplace and working on interior remodeling projects.
Once the weather breaks, we are preoccupied with the pool and yard and our
interior projects, completed or not, fall dramatically in our list of priorities. In fact, we are right now on the brink transition, as the sunny days have already
spurred me into starting my outdoor to do list, much to my husband's "delight".
We bought a new house about a year ago. We love the old gal, but she is a bit needy. Well, quite needy, truth be told. Massive updating is called for, but it's slow going. Extremely slow going, especially now that I'm nearly useless while my leg is healing. I'm really only good right now for providing motivation. My husband calls it something else. With each sunny day, the danger of my foyer remaining a construction zone indefinitely increases at an alarming rate. I realized today that we are only about a month away from opening the pool. The foyer has been in remodel mode for months and in the blink of an eye, the weather will be too much to resist! Oh, the wasted winter days...
Fortunately, my furry four-legged son has saved the day! He's about a year and a half, that awkward age when they still have all the zoom of a pup, and haven't quite grasped that they are the size of a small horse. Well, my small horse got stuck under an end table today, chasing his toy goose, and broke my favorite lamp. I was devastated, but quickly consoled myself as to rectify the situation, only one thing would suffice.....SHOPPING!
Oh, yes! In my joyous quest to replace my lamp, I thought I might as well look for my other lighting needs. The old gal's light fixtures are all circa 1966, when she was erected I'm certain. So far, I've only replaced the dining room chandelier and a fixture in the kitchen.
I need to find something fabulous and earthy for the foyer...
and the hallway and the stairway....
to replace the hideous brass and glass fixtures currently in place, not to mention a new, sturdy lamp!
I've just recently become acquainted with a fabulous site that has EVERYTHING!CSN Stores, with over 200 online stores, their selection is beyond compare! If you need it, you'll find it at CSN! Items for human and furry kids, interior and exterior needs, from accent furniture to mailboxes, at fabulous prices!
Stay tuned for a CSN review and more details because I am bound and determined to get all of our half-finished projects completed before the pool opens and get in some long overdue shopping as well!
I will be receiving an item from CSN to explore for the purposes of creating this feature. The opinions above are both honest and my own. Images sourced from CSN.


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Sparkling Spring Water Infused With Organic Ingredients Offers Essence Of Flavor Without The Calories
R.W. Knudsen Family, Chico, Calif., introduces Sparkling Essence, a simple combination of sparkling spring water infused with organic ingredients in four flavors including: Organic Lemon, Organic Cucumber, Organic Blueberry and Organic Mint. They're packaged in 10.5-oz. slim cans and sold in four-pack carriers.
Consumers of all ages are drinking lower-calorie beverages more often than they did several years ago. The largest decrease in consumption of full-calorie carbonated beverages is among women in their 20s and 30s, who decreased their intake by approximately 42 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, released by the American Beverage Association.
Sparkling Essence meets consumers' needs for a light, calorie-free, organic beverage. Each variety provides an invigorating splash of flavor for enjoying while on the go, relaxing or working. To create a zero-calorie yet flavorful drink, R.W. Knudsen uses a unique process. Authentic organic ingredients are brewed in fresh spring water; then the fruit is extracted leaving only the subtle flavor of the fruit without the sugar or calories.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University found that eliminating one serving of sugar-sweetened drinks a day produced weight loss and was associated with a one-pound loss at six months and a one-and-a-half pound drop at 18 months into the study.
Suggested retail price per four-pack is $3.79-$3.99.


text: Use mouse scroll wheel over image or pinch-to-zoom on touch devices. You can also click and drag around on image. Park it 1 1 Follow Diesel, Sometimes An Outcast At The Pumps Parked to Fill 'Er Up by Goodhal Garage Keywords Abandoned Gas Station Sign up to add your own keywords More from this Garage: More from this Profile: Garage Aprilia Motorcycles Garage BMW Motorcycles Garage BSA Motorcycles


text: The University's mission focuses on three key pillars – Education, Research, and Engagement. The Education section of this site focuses on the affordable, accessible, and high-quality education we offer to students. If you are a prospective student, we encourage you to browse these pages for a full understanding of the many options available to you on the campus, online or through a satellite program, as well as the various areas of study offered by the University.


text:
Black Flag - In My Head T-Shirt
click image to enlarge
Code: SSTMT060
Price: $15.00
Artist: Black Flag
Label: SST Records
Quantity in Cart: None
Black Flag "In My Head" T-shirt. 1 color on white. All short sleeve T-shirts are 100% cotton and are available in Youth-Large, Small, Medium, Large, Extra-Large and XX-Large.


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NFL.com CFB 24/7 has counted down the 14 college football players to watch -- and some other college football topics -- in varying categories in 2014. Below are the highlights for Ole Miss and the link to the complete 14 for '14 series.
Most versatile players: Robert Nkemdiche (7)
Particulars: 6-4, 277, sophomore
Buzz: Did anyone else in the country see time on both the defensive line and at running back last year? Show of hands? Nkemdiche can make the claim, although he just got five totes in the backfield, for 32 yards. Short-yardage rushing aside, it's at defensive tackle where Nkemdiche is expected to dominate for the Rebels as a sophomore this fall. He played some end last year, as well, but tackle appears to be his home after making eight tackles for loss among 34 stops last year. But we won't be surprised if he gets a few more third-and-1 carries this fall.
Fastest players: Kailo Moore (5)
Another two-sport star in college, Moore mostly contributed last season on special teams as a freshman. He's off to a good start in 2014 on the track and has times comparable with TCU's Kolby Listenbee and Georgia Tech's Broderick Snoddy in the 100- and 200-meter dashes.
Toughest players: Serderius Bryant (4)
Particulars: 5-9, 215, junior
Buzz: Rebels free safety Cody Prewitt receives more acclaim for his big hits -- he almost eviscerated Vanderbilt WR Jordan Matthews in last season's opener -- but Bryant deserves the honor. He's a 5-9 linebacker (and the 5-9 is his listed height, with emphasis on "listed") who starts in the SEC. Bryant's nickname is "Bird," which he picked up in high school in the Orlando area for the way he flew around the field making tackles and big hits. Yes, despite his size, a guy nicknamed "Bird" really lays the wood. You have to be tough to be a 5-9 linebacker in the SEC who makes big hits.
Most physical players: Cody Prewitt (5)
Particulars: 6-2, 212, senior
Buzz: He led the SEC in interceptions last season with six, but don't let that fool you: Prewitt is a hitter first, and a coverage ace second. He's like an extra linebacker when it comes to run support, and patrols the middle of the field with a nasty streak on passing downs. Recall star Vanderbilt receiver Jordan Matthews vomiting on national TV last year in the first game of the season after taking a brutal hit -- it was Prewitt on the giving end.
Players with best intangibles: Deterrian Shackelford (6)
Particulars: 6-1, 215, senior
Buzz: There are few stories of perseverance in college football to match that of Shackelford, who missed two straight years of football while recovering from multiple surgeries on a devastating knee injury. He returned last year to make 44 tackles -- 7.5 for losses. While not the team's best defender, he's the Rebels' emotional leader and the only two-time winner of Ole Miss' Chucky Mullins Award for courage. Shackelford's injury plight got him a rare sixth year of eligibility granted by the NCAA, and he'll wear Mullins' No. 38 jersey this fall.
Smallest players: Jaylen Walton
Particulars: 5-8, 166, Junior
Buzz: Coach Hugh Freeze clearly likes his running backs small and quick, and that's exactly what Walton brings to the SEC in college football's most physical conference. He made seven starts in the Rebels' backfield last year, picking up 523 yards and six touchdowns. With 29 catches for 322 yards, he was also one of the SEC's most prolific receivers at the running back position. And if that wasn't enough for the two-year letterman from Memphis, he also returned 25 kickoffs for another 515 yards.
Heaviest players: Aaron Morris
Particulars: 6-5, 355, junior
Buzz: What could have been a dominant year for Morris last season never even got started, as a torn ACL put him on the sideline in the Rebels' first game. He had been a full-time starter at guard in 2012, and even saw six starts as a freshman in 2011. Morris isn't just a big body -- he's a player -- and provides a physical presence to an offense known more for finesse than power. A healthy Morris in 2014 would be a major boost to the Ole Miss offensive front.
Remember when the Rebels seemed to come out of nowhere in 2013 and land a recruiting class ranked in the top 10 that included the best player in the country? Kiffin was the chief reason why Laremy Tunsil and Robert Nkemdiche are in Oxford, and he's been the man behind the recruiting efforts of the program that has turned heads recently. Recruiting and the last name Kiffin always seem to go together and it will be interesting to see how Chris will fare going against brother Lane head-to-head.
Biggest hitters: Cody Prewitt (3)
Particulars: 6-2, 212, senior.
Buzz: He is from Bay Springs, Miss. If you're like us, you hear "Bay Springs" and you picture a calm, peaceful place. Well, that's not the way Prewitt plays football; instead, he flies around, making big plays and huge hits. His nicely executed form tackle on Vanderbilt WR Jordan Matthews in last season's opener is a perfect example. (Warning: Do not run a Google search on that hit unless you are comfortable with watching a guy throw up on the field.) But Prewitt, who should vie for All-America honors this fall, is more than a big hitter; he had six interceptions and seven pass breakups to go along with 71 tackles last season. Still, while he is good in coverage, his best trait is his hitting ability.


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Resources >> Browse Articles >> Job Search
15 Top Hospitals That Are Hiring
Georgia Price / NursingLink
We've all heard about how more people are losing their jobs more than ever before, but there is one industry that has remained untouchable: nursing. While thousands of people lost their jobs this past November, the nursing industry actually added over 50,000 positions. As the population ages and new developments emerge, the nursing industry will continue to grow.
This is great news! But it can be difficult when you are first start your job search. Who is hiring? What hospital offers the best perks? Where can I go to look for jobs? Well, we've done the grunt work for you. Here are 15 top hospitals across the nation who are hiring for a variety of positions. Not only can you get information on some of the top nursing employers, you can also search for job openings right here on NursingLink.


text:
imagineinternet needed a new web page design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 84 designs submitted by 26 freelance designers.
Short contest, Museum requires new homepage design - Uncoded $301
Museum Foundation requires a Homepage design. Easy to navigate clean and clear. Layout design should reflect a classy, contemporary, character with a flavor and feel for the WWII era. Short contest,Museum Foundation requires new homepage design - Uncoded $301Please see .pdf
- A clean layout, with details to show the WWII character, maintaining a modern approach to navigation/layout design.
- Item 1...


text:
be sick to death of (something)(redirected from were sick to death)
Like this video? Subscribe to our free daily email and get a new idiom video every day!
be sick to death of (something)
To be or become exceedingly wearied by, bored of, or exasperated with something. I'm sick to death of doing my boss's errands. If something doesn't change soon, I'm going to quit! I was all gung-ho about this graduate program when I first began, but I must admit that I've been sick to death of these boring lectures lately.


text:
Microsoft, Adobe, Oracle unite with massive patch batch
Patch Tuesday Extreme Edition
It was an extreme version of Patch Tuesday as Microsoft, Adobe Systems, and Oracle released updates that fixed dozens of critical vulnerabilities in their wares.
As part of Microsoft's monthly patch regimen, the software giant issued 11 updates that patched a total of 25 bugs. At least three of the vulnerabilities resided in media software and created the possibility of a user getting hacked by listening or viewing a booby-trapped audio or video file. One such bug resided in Windows Vista, which was designed under Microsoft's highly vaunted secure development lifecycle, though the more recent Windows 7 was unaffected.
A separate vulnerability that affects Windows 7 - and virtually every other version of the operating system - made it possible for attackers to remotely execute malicious software by sending end users specially manipulated SMB, or server message block, queries used to share files over networks. Microsoft has been working on the fix since at least November, when researchers warned the new SMB functionality was vulnerable to a nasty denial-of-service attack.
At least eight of the vulnerabilities are likely to be targeted by reliable exploits in the wild Microsoft said.
Adobe, meanwhile, fixed 15 security flaws in its Reader and Acrobat software for viewing PDF files. The software maker rated the update "critical," meaning attackers can exploit the bugs to take control of end users' computers.
Adobe also unveiled a feature that will automatically install Reader and Acrobat updates. It may take as long as seven days for the auto updater to be activated on its own, but users can manually kickstart the process by opening the applications and choosing "check for updates" from the help menu. From then on, the updater will query Adobe servers every three days, which should ensure that patches are automatically installed no more than 72 hours after they're released.
Oracle released 47 updates of its own to patch security bugs in a variety of applications, including Database Server, Fusion Middleware, Collaboration Suite, E-Business Suite, and PeopleSoft Enterprise.
The extreme Patch Tuesday is the result of Microsoft's monthly update release coinciding with the quarterly patch cycle from Adobe and Oracle. Making matters harder for admins, many of the patches will require machines to be rebooted. ®
Sponsored: Becoming a Pragmatic Security Leader


text:
Changing Signs of Truth: A Christian Introduction to the Semiotics of Communication
Crystal L. Downing
IVP Academic, 2012
342 pp., $25.00
Alissa Wilkinson
Changing Signs of Truth
Say "cultural commentary," and semiotics—the study of signs—does not spring to mind. But Crystal Downing, distinguished professor of English and film studies at Messiah College and author of Writing Performances: The Stages of Dorothy L. Sayers and How Postmodernism Serves (My) Faith, believes semiotics is a topic that contemporary Christians can't afford to ignore, especially if they wish to truly be the body of Christ in the various cultures in which they find themselves.
Semioticians don't study street signs (or at least, not exclusively); rather, in its most basic form, a sign is "something that stands for something else," and semiotics is the field devoted to parsing and understanding how these signs operate in our language and culture.
Downing's book, Changing Signs of Truth: A Christian Introduction to the Semiotics of Communication, is a lucid, accessible, and often downright enjoyable introduction to this sometimes esoteric field of study. The book is a sort of hybrid between textbook and cultural commentary, liberally sprinkled with examples from popular culture as well as Downing's own experiences that help illustrate and argue for what she calls the necessity of the "(re)signing of truth."
The basic argument is this: "signs, even among Christians, can have radically different meanings … all signs take their meaning from the particular culture or subculture in which they are embedded." Furthermore,
Most readers … look more at what the signs point to than at the signs themselves. So, I have written Changing Signs of Truth to fill a gap in the conversation between Christianity and culture. For the less we understand how signs work, the more powerfully they control us.
Downing wants readers to "become skilled sign-readers, able to distinguish among diverse cultural powers in order to assess their threat and respond appropriately." She does this by taking us through a comprehensive but plainly written history of semiotics, from Saussure and Peirce all the way through Bakhtin and Derrida. She handles her topic deftly, moving between history, explanation of dense theory, and examples that help the reader step back and see how their own cultural context has colored their view of how to communicate truth.
As she points out, many Christians are unaware of the signs they have adopted as if they were the truth, rather than a way of conveying the truth: "Some Christians feel outrage at the direction culture is taking while never considering how their own protestations end up subverting not only their message, but also the cause of Christ." (She cites, for instance, the shifting of the meaning of the sign "Xmas.") Such misunderstandings—as most of us can sadly attest—lead to all manner of trouble, ranging from overuse of "Christianese" to outright objectionable behavior that throws up walls between Christians and those who do not believe: "While never giving up on the Bible as our God-inspired guide to faith and practice, we need to re-sign how we talk about it in order to break both idols and communication barriers."
Put "changing" and "truth" in the same sentence (or book title), and most evangelicals' dander gets up at least a little (not without cause). Yet Downing is NOT arguing that truth itself changes; rather, she wants us to recognize how the signs or pointers of truth change from culture to culture. Her book helps us see how this happens, and how we might know when to adopt new metaphors—metaphors to "carry us beyond stale, clichéd forms of communication" [her emphasis]. She concludes her argument with what she calls "ten fertile principles" to help readers understand how to (re)sign truth, all of which are rooted in both orthodox Christian theology and a deep concern for those around us.
Downing's great skill is in translation—which is to say, taking ideas that are generally understood (if familiar at all) as rooted in postmodern theory and showing how they are accessible, reasonable, and often, in fact, rooted in much more ancient ideas—not least, in the Bible itself. For instance, when she uses the word hegemony (which many associate with Marxist notions about power and class), she takes care to point out the various ways that the word appears in the Greek New Testament, and explains that "Scripture, then, anticipates theories developed by Gramsci, Althusser and Williams: that ideas can rule powerfully as human leaders … [but unlike Althusser], Christians believe they have a choice: to freely respond to God's summons."
The publication of Changing Signs of Truth is excellent news for professors and students who grapple with how semiotic and postmodern theory fits into robust, orthodox Christian theology; it's also a boon to cultural commentators and laymen who intuit that there's something fundamentally off about the way Christians often discuss culture but can't quite find the language to describe it. Furthermore, Downing's book adds a much-needed dimension to the current conversation about how Christians ought to live in and reach out to the culture around them; Christian students headed to graduate programs in the humanities will find it especially helpful, as will pastors seeking to grapple with this issue. Downing has done the academy and the church at large a great service in a highly readable, often winsome argument.
Alissa Wilkinson edits Fieldnotes and teaches writing and humanities at The King's College in New York City. She is an MFA candidate in creative nonfiction at Seattle Pacific University.
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