Pagan Tama
Top stories of the week in Paganism and Shinto:
- Pagans and witches offer prayers for peace in Ukraine
- UK: Memorial of first witchcraft execution considered in Chelmsford
- Missing 700-year-old national treasure katana found in Australia
Read more below…
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Pagan News
Pagans and witches offer prayers for peace in Ukraine
Religion News Service
After news of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine spread, pagans and witches joined thousands of other faith leaders in praying for peace and for strength…
Pagans respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine
The Wild Hunt
Pagans, Witches, Heathens, and polytheists have been responding in different ways to the crisis, offering emotional, spiritual, and even material support through being boots on the ground…
UK: The rise of hand-fasting services
Eastern Daily Press
Elizabeth Webster, from Thursford, is a white ‘hedge’ witch who has performed handfasting ceremonies – an alternative to weddings – across the region over the last four years. Mrs Webster said there has been a rise in the number of people interested in the service…
UK: Spring Pagan and Spiritual Fayre for witches and druids arriving in Thetford
Suffolk Live
This spring, Suffolk and Norfolk’s witches, druids and shamans are coming together to celebrate the changing of the season…
Shinto news
Missing 700-year-old national treasure katana found in Australia
SoraNews24
Katana was gifted to shrine by samurai lord two centuries ago, but has been missing for decades…
Traditional plum blossom festival, tea ceremony mark history at Kyoto shrine
The Mainichi
The annual Baikasai plum blossom festival was held at Kitano Tenmangu Shrine on Feb. 25, with a tea ceremony staged by geisha and their “maiko” apprentices for the first time in two years…
2011 disaster threatens to end age-old cultural practices
The Asahi Shimbun
When tens of thousands of people fled after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami and ensuing Fukushima nuclear accident, their cultural traditions left with them. But more than 10 years later, with so many communities that have not returned, local officials are warning that many traditional cultural events and practices, some centuries old, are on the verge of vanishing forever…
Giant pyramid of hina dolls wows Japan shoppers
Asia News Network
About 1,600 traditional dolls in colorful costumes make up the pyramid…
‘BTS Shrine’ in Japan draws heavy flak — here’s why
KPOP Stars
Recently on February 21, a netizen took to the Korean online community forum, The Qoo, to point out one certain shrine found at Shizuoka in Japan, which is named as the “BTS Shine,” but is presumably an acronym for “By The Sea.”…
Meet the serpents of Iwami Kagura
Metropolis
Stepping into Japanese mythology in Iwami, Shimane Prefecture…
Encountering the ‘5 elements’ in Japan’s national parks
National Geographic
One way to appreciate the national parks of Japan is to look at them through the philosophy of godai, or the “five elements”…
Other News
UK: Stonehenge Alliance conducts road protest outside British Museum
Gazette & Herald
Members of the Stonehenge Alliance have conducted a protest outside the British Museum in London in a bid to stop a £1.7 billion road improvement…
UK: Stonehenge glories are tarnished by British Museum’s oil giant backer
The Guardian
This great cultural institution’s trustees must refuse to renew its sponsorship arrangement with BP…
‘Spectacular’ discovery of neolithic human figures in Jordanian desert
The Times*
Archaeologists have found a 9,000-year-old ritual site deep in the Jordanian desert near to some of the earliest large-scale human-built structures in the world…
Largest-ever stash of mummy-embalming tools found in Egypt
Business Insider
A deposit of hundreds of embalming tools uncovered in Abusir, Egypt — probably the largest ever found — offers clues into a lavish funeral that likely took place about 2,600 years ago…
Canada: Using science and Celtic wisdom to save trees (and souls)
The New York Times*
There aren’t many scientists raised in the ways of druids by Celtic medicine women, but there is at least one. She lives in the woods of Canada, in a forest she helped grow. From there, wielding just a pencil, she has been working to save some of the oldest life-forms on Earth by bewitching its humans…
‘Witch Hunts’ Past & Present
UK: Memorial of first witchcraft execution considered in Chelmsford
BBC
A permanent memorial to the first woman executed for witchcraft and other victims could be built, a council said…
India: 60-year-old man beheaded on suspicion of ‘practicing witchcraft’
The Free Press Journal
A 60-year-old man was allegedly put to death by five on suspicion of ‘practicing witchcraft’…
Witch-hunting driven by class and gender discrimination in tribal areas of India
RFI
The states of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha – all with sizeable indigenous populations – together recorded 88 murders attributed to witch-hunting…
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