The conventional wisdom scattered across Internet sites and tucked into reference
books says that the Easter bunny and eggs are old pagan symbols of fertility and the
end of the dark days of winter.
The word Easter is derived from the name of a northern European fertility goddess,
sometimes spelled Eastre or Oestre, according to the 8th century writings of St.
Bede.
But symbols are subject to interpretation.
"A symbol means what its maker intends for it to mean," said Kevin Orlin Johnson,
a bestselling Catholic author who is working on a book about holidays. "You get
eggs and rabbits and all kinds of other things associated with holidays that are
universal symbols.
"Almost all of our holiday customs are a lot more recent than people think," added
Johnson, whose biography lists a doctorate in architectural history, with minors in
psycholinguistics and international business. "There's no continuity between what
we do today and what some extinct pagan religion did thousands of years ago."
The article is by Tom Heinen, the paper's religion reporter. With the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance estimating between 500,000 and a million Wiccans in the United States alone, not to mention uncounted Asatruar, Santerians, Druids, etc., one could almost say there are no "extinct Pagan religions" anymore. Certainly a religious journalist should be aware of us. Drop him a note below to comment on the article!
If you live in Wisconsin, you may also want to contact them to offer your services as a Pagan correspondent or fact-checker.
4.25.00
The contact url for CBS is
http://cbsnews.cbs.com/now/feedback/0,1611,412,00.html
Member Gwynarion Starseeker writes,
From: Griselda Jarnsaxa
Bright Blessings everyone!
I just wanted to take a moment to let y'all know that I have a mailing list
called "Political Pagans", dedicated to the topic of political issues
around the world, from the Pagan perspective. It's been kind of slow
lately, and I'm trying to revitalize it now. If you'd like to subscribe
and start a conversation there, I think it'll be informative, stimulating
and fun!
You can subscribe at: http://www.egroups.com/list/politicalpagans/
or by sending an e-mail to: politicalpagans-subscribe@egroups.com
Thanks!
Griselda
[Webeditor's note: This is a really great idea! It may be too late to do this on the same day as Susie's group, but any day you choose can be just as effective. It's a really great consciousness-raiser for any time of the year!]
On this day, in support of religious tolerance and freedom just don't speak all day. It really gets a point across, as long as people know why you aren't speaking. This is where we get to the important part. Carry around a little sign that gets the point across, last year ours read:
Day of Silence (big letters across the top)
Please respect the wishes of those who wish not to speak today in memory of the millions of people throughout history and every day that are hurt or killed in the name of religious intolerance. Recall Rome, Mecca, the Holocaust, the Witch trials, think of events such as the crusades. Remember the voices never heard and think of those you are not hearing.
You would not believe the response you get from people. And what is even better, the wording makes it possable to be used by ANYONE. You can have Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and everyone you know doing it with you and it will make them think. Sometimes the best way to get someone to support you is through making them see your side, if they can reach out to their own religion and see the pain of people they can see that
others have pain as well and need help and they will help.
So please, if you don't do anything else, please have everyone you know tell everyone they know and the world will see a problem while it is happening. You can even carry around a little slip of paper that says what the i typed at the beginning of the letter. Thank you, and remember the date is December 18.
> From: "Rev. Robert Brown"
At last, a Pagan private school has been founded. Deep Woods Apothecary will be opening its doors this September in Arlington, Texas. The school will begin teaching grades 7-12 right away, and add kindergarten through 6th as soon as possible. Although it will be officially listed as a private school, Deep Woods will be open to everyone. Director Mindy Purcell hopes to keep admission low, planning a $25/month fee only if their grants don't come through.
Monday, May 04, 1998 at 16:12:12 (EDT)
CyberSitter, one of the most virulent and bigoted net.filtering programs, is now being used as an excuse to delete Pagan webpages. On Wednesday, April 29th, Tripod deleted "Rowan's Pagan Playground" without warning. Upon being contacted, Tripod told Rowan her page was deleted because she had a copyrighted graphic on her site. Confused, she asked them which graphic it was, and they told her it was the graphic that said "This Pagan site is blocked by Cybersitter," as shown here in smaller size:
She was given no chance to protest before they cancelled her account.
UPDATE, May 1st:
To Tripod's credit, they responded to the Pagan community's outrage as quickly as they did to Cybersitter's. Jason Macauley of Tripod's membership services wrote Rowan to say, "After further review of your site and the nature and background of the
complaint, we are inclined to agree with you and have returned the
site to our severs. Your password and everything else about the
account will remain the same, and if you experience and further
difficulties please feel free to contact me. We deeply apologize for jumping the gun on this issue."
Rowan's account has been reinstated and she is currently backing the whole site up. (Which, incidentally, is a very good idea and you should all do it immediately and regularly.) Rowan will be moving off of Tripod if she can find another suitable server, but she emphasizes that "This whole situation has shown a problem that exists. Followup needs to be done in this situation to make sure no one, NO ONE ever goes through
the kind of torment and pain I did. Even if it was for only one day."
We are currently investigating as to the legal use of logos in a "right to protest" situation; if you have any info on this, please email us.
As Wren of Witches' Voice says, "We would like to
have this info readily available to other sites who may face this
situation, so that they can inform their servers and ISP's. A LOT of
Pagan sites are flying'Blocked By CyberSitter' logos and we want to
avoid any further 'acts of deletion.'"
Wren's Nest has more information on this case, including valuable relevant copyright law, part of which states that
(4) The following shall not be actionable under this section:
(B) Non commercial use of a mark.
(C) All forms of news reporting and news commentary.
One of our members, Katarina, writes:
"While channel surfing very late Friday night or very early Saturday
morning (around 3am EST) I came across a program that caught my attention
because of someone who identified themselves as the "White Witch of
Buckingham". It turns out the show, which is a paid advertisement, is
called Let There Be Light and is sponsored by the
International Bible Society. The White Witch of Buckingham and her
comment on the number of occultist and Pagans in Great Britain were part
of the shows description of the "dark" which can be overcome by
Christianity. There was also a comment about some little Hindu girls, in
which the commentator said something about watching them sing and dance
to their Hindu gods. He knew they had received the gospel the day before
and this was a case of "real darkness to real light."
"I was disturbed to see Witchcraft and Paganism classified as dark, but
also by the way the Hindu worship was depicted as dark. As this is a paid
advertisement it is likely to be on again. No email or mailing address
was given, but they did list the following phone number 1-800-476-5917."
The Boston Globe has an article about the FCC changing its rules
so that religious broacasters can now discriminate during
hiring based on religion.
Loch Sloy!
By Diego Ribadeneira, Globe Staff, 03/07/98
Religion Notes
The Federal Communications Commission has adopted a
proposal permitting religious broadcasters to use religious
affiliation or belief as an employment criterion at a religious
radio station.
The proposal supercedes other antibias rules that prohibit
discrimination on the basis of religion.
This story ran on page B02 of the Boston Globe on 03/07/98.
Some of the "adult-oriented content" targeted, according to CNET, includes "Sites with hate speech or those promoting alcohol use, gambling, or sexually
explicit matter or advertisements." On the positive side, Inktomi and N2H2A will create a list of thousands of online educational
materials.
According to Inktomi's web site, their search engine technology is used worldwide, on Hotbot, Microsoft Network, Universo Online, OzEmail Ltd., Goo.
CNET argues that the new search index would offer an alternative for those who want to avoid pornographic sites without banning. "The search engine will simply not deliver any results that fit in the
'objectionable' categories, particularly pornography," Peter Nickerson, a
former educator who founded N2H2, announced. "The kids go to the search
engines and type in 'toys' and they are constantly being bombarded with the
introduction to pornographic sites." Nickerson might be interested to know that in fact, a search on AltaVista for "toys" turned up 89,225 entries, beginning with 21st Century Toys: Related Links, McDonald's Foreign Toys, Net Toy Forum - Spawn and McFarlane Toys, Yahoo! JAPAN - Recreation:Toys, Hands-on Toys, Days Gone By larger picture for Toys Item:B03TY8 (a cast-iron train), Toys Drift Buttle Tournament, Adaptive toys and games, and Days Gone By larger picture for Toys Item:B09TY17 (an old set of Statue of Liberty dominoes). A cheery ad for Toys 'R' Us was featured atop the page. No pornography was found.
The search engine has yet to be named and is planned to launch sometime this spring, doubtless showering us with another round of fascinatingly spurious and paranoid net.pornography articles.
Inktomi has a high-profile name in search engine technology, and
N2H2 has brand power in the educational market. This is the company which brought us Bess, a server-based net.filtering program which censors not only web pages but also chat rooms and newsgroups.
Inktomi has no problem with this; their general manager, Alex Edelstein, says,
"We were impressed by N2H2's real comprehensive grasp of how to run
filtering as a service with a focus on constant updating, and a really good
track record with school districts, and people who care about this, like
parents and educators. Typically search directories [for children] use a
process of 'inclusion'--they hand-picked the sites. But there is a limit to
what you can do even if you put a lot of people on it. Our site will add a
whole new dimension."
Inktomi will essentially block all the sites Bess does.
Last updated April 11, 2000.
"The Witches of Gulfport"
8:00pm et/pt
"How many of you sat down in your break room at work and
started talking to your coworkers about what a terrible thing the
papal apology was and then answered questions about paganism for two
and a half hours? How many of you are walking around today when half
of the American population is getting drunk or looking forward to it,
telling them what an awful man Patrick was and all of the abuses that
he committed against the pagan peoples of Ireland out of a petty
desire for revenge? (wear a helmet and a cup if you do.)
How many of you have called your local news organizations to give
them your name and number so that they can call you in case they have
any questions or want to check their facts on something?"
http://members.tripod.com/~Elderpaths/graphics.html
Banner themes include "Pagan Unity," "I'm Pagan and I Vote For My Rights," "Proud Patriotic Wiccan," "Vote: Make Magick Happen," and many others. Wear them with pride!
Religious Right Director, Pagans In Action Council for Truth
It just occured to me to suggest to people an idea I've been doing for quite a while, this year we choose Dec. 18th as the date. It's a Friday.
How could you make a difference?
Dear Folks,
Bright blessings,
Elizabeth Barrette
> Our ministry at Cornell would be (and is) willing to coordinate such an
> endeavour, and lend it the stability of our staff/faculty commitment
> plus the administrative boon of our anchor in Cornell United Religious
> Work. The challenge is primarily one of finding the contacts and
> keeping them current enough to pull it together.
>
> Jerrie has been gracious enough to tip me off to other groups when her
> web gets word of them. . . Tara and I connected through this list
> itself. Does anyone else have groups (either student groups, campus
> ministries, or otherwise) that they work with who might be interested in
> this effort? Feel free to pass along my contact information to them.
> However we eventually pull it together, I do think it's a great idea if
> it works.
> Rev. Robert Brown
> United Pagan Ministries
> Cornell United Religious Work
> Anabel Taylor Hall
> Cornell University
> Ithaca, NY 14853
>
> rwb4@cornell.edu
Thanks to
Michelle for the info!!
(A) Fair use of a famous mark by another person in comparative commercial advertising
or promotion to identify the competing goods or services of the owner of the famous
mark.
The American Family Association recently (March 11, 1998) sent out an action alert to its members, asking them to contact various Senators towards getting Internet censorship bills passed. They say that Senate Bill 1619, which would require net.filtering software in school libraries, is not enough. Members are pressed to support Senate Bill 1482, which would place strict restrictions on (S. 1482) that would require commercial
pornographers on the World Wide Web to shield their pornography from children.
Subject: Be warned All Wiccans and Pagans
Date: Mon, Mar 16, 1998 21:47 EST
From: ALFEN86557
Message-id: <19980317024700.VAA29017@ladder01.news.aol.com>
Lowell McFarland
*********************************
The Boston Globe
THE SPIRITUAL LIFE
FCC lets religious broadcasters use faith as hiring criterion
CNET news tells us that Inktomi, "one of the hottest online search technology companies" has announced a partnership with blocking software maker N2H2. Together they plan to build a Net index for children that excludes links to pornography and other adult-oriented content.
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