Witches Brew

If the Big Three religions–Judaism, Christianity, and Islam–are The People of the Book, Pagans are People of the Library (and the Bookstore). In the early days of the Neo-Pagan movement one had to know someone to find a coven. One had to undergo a period of study, often a year and a day, in order to be formally initiated into a Pagan tradition. These days Paganism is one of the fastest growing spiritual movements in the world, and there are far more students than teachers. In many small communities some people have never even met another Pagan. But thanks to books and the Internet seekers can study and initiate themselves.

So I call your attention to Banned Books Week: September 26th – October 3rd. Here is the top 100 challenged books in the order of their rankling:

Top 100 Challenged Books

1. Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz
2. Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
3. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
4. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
7. Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
8. Forever by Judy Blume
9. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
10. Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
11. Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
12. My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
13. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
14. The Giver by Lois Lowry
15. It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
16. Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine
17. A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
18. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
19. Sex by Madonna
20. Earth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
21. The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
22. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
23. Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
24. Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
25. In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
26. The Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard
27. The Witches by Roald Dahl
28. The New Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein
29. Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry
30. The Goats by Brock Cole
31. Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane
32. Blubber by Judy Blume
33. Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
34. Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
35. We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
36. Final Exit by Derek Humphry
37. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
38. Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
39. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
40. What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras
41. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
42. Beloved by Toni Morrison
43. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
44. The Pigman by Paul Zindel
45. Bumps in the Night by Harry Allard
46. Deenie by Judy Blume
47. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
48. Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden
49. The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar
50. Cross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat by Alvin Schwartz
51. A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
52. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
53. Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)
54. Asking About Sex and Growing Up by Joanna Cole
55. Cujo by Stephen King
56. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
57. The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
58. Boys and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
59. Ordinary People by Judith Guest
60. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
61. What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Sons by Lynda Madaras
62. Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
63. Crazy Lady by Jane Conly
64. Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
65. Fade by Robert Cormier
66. Guess What? by Mem Fox
67. The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
68. The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney
69. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
70. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
71. Native Son by Richard Wright
72. Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Fantasies by Nancy Friday
73. Curses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen
74. Jack by A.M. Homes
75. Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya
76. Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle
77. Carrie by Stephen King
78. Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
79. On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
80. Arizona Kid by Ron Koertge
81. Family Secrets by Norma Klein
82. Mommy Laid An Egg by Babette Cole
83. The Dead Zone by Stephen King
84. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
85. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
86. Always Running by Luis Rodriguez
87. Private Parts by Howard Stern
88. Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford
89. Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
90. Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
91. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
92. Running Loose by Chris Crutcher
93. Sex Education by Jenny Davis
94. The Drowning of Stephen Jones by Bette Greene
95. Girls and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
96. How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
97. View from the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts
98. The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
99. The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney
100. Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

The pictures from Pittsburgh show police officers hurling tear gas at black-clad anarchists, or police arresting Greenpeace demonstrators hanging a banner from a bridge. I have to search to find Pagans in the streets of Pittsburgh, but I know we are there. If it’s a global economic summit or climate conference, there are Pagans.

On Monday The Three Rivers Climate Convergence launched a week of action, education and organizing to protest, first, the International Coal Conference (Sept 20-23) and then the G20 Summit. Monday night Pagan Cluster, an activist group, held an “Equinox Ritual calling for the Sequestration of Greed and the Liberation of Abundance” at Schenley Park Overlook. Their manifesto reads, in part:

We gather to honor the carbon cycle that holds the energy of birth, growth, death, decay and regeneration, enacting the world we want in the midst of the one we have.

Our intention is to interrupt the cycle of despondency and destruction by:

— Honoring all those who have died and all that has been lost from years of greed: extraction, pollution, racism and war.

— Awakening everyday solutions for sustainable transformation to a radically different culture.

— Sowing seeds for an abundant and healthy future rooted in clean air, energy, water, land and food.

Our ritual will celebrate the Equinox to bring balance back to our relationship
with the earth. We plan to build altars throughout the city to empower our
intentions and reclaim sacred space. We do this political magic as part of our spiritual commitment, to shift the energy in the streets and offer grounding to the larger mobilization.

Workshops were scheduled for this morning and tomorrow morning at the Park with marches scheduled for the afternoons. However, the Convergence website is reporting:

CONVERGENCE UPDATE: Pittsburgh’s Department of Public Works has confiscated our tents, chairs, tables and other materials at our Schenley Park Convergence Space. we have moved our workshops to the G20 Artspace at Carnegie Mellon’s campus lawn.

Note that parking near CMU campus is difficult today, since may roads are closed and all CMU parking lots are closed. Check back later for updates.

The Pittsburgh Tribune has pictures of Pagans peacefully leaving a demonstration on Tuesday. –Hardly the kind of drama that is going to appear on network news… Luckily we have the blogosphere.

The Wheel of the Year rolls on. This is Harvest Home, also called Mabon, the second of three harvest festivals. Lammas or Lughnasa is the first one at the beginning of August. It’s the Festival of First Fruits. For me, as I said in “Lammas 2009″, Lammas is fair season: gigantic vegetables, prize-winning pies, truck-pulls, the midway, the beer tent, and the politicians tents. Harvest Home is the corn harvest, and Samhain or Halloween is traditionally the meat harvest

Being a City Witch, I will not be celebrating a silo full of grain, nor will I be slaughtering hogs in October–although I do have a book that tells me step-by-step how to do that. (If you ask nice, I might dig it out and outline the procedure for you.) I’ve had to re-interpret Harvest Home for my reality. For me the corn harvest means investing for the future. Now that the Stock Market is looking up, I’ve rebalanced my pitiful 401K. I’m looking at refreshing my job-hunting wardrobe. I am getting ready to winterize the apartment.

For me Harvest Home is also about investing in the next generation. I’m a little sad that Woodruff High School is closing–I’m an old Averyville girl, and my parents graduated from Woodruff two decades before I did. Kingman Grade School is gone also. But I think the school board has made the right decision. I think Manual and Peoria High School should survive.

I think health care reform is a crucial investment in the next generation. It’s been 100 years coming. I think it’s a crucial investment in my generation. I couldn’t afford Cobra when I lost my job–not even with the federal subsidy. I currently have Aflac “if I’m hurt and can’t work” and I bought into the catastrophic illness package, but I doubt if i can continue with the catastrophic.

But Harvest Home is a festival of thanksgiving! I have been relishing fresh produce from the farmers markets, and I’ve been to Tanners and Apple Blossom Farm. I celebrated the New Moon this weekend with a fabulous omlet–onion, spinach, yellow and orange bell peppers, garlic snaps, shrimp and cheese. Major yum! And I am thinking squash tomorrow night with an apple-peanut butter filling–and a nice red wine.

Among the Ancient Celts, the “cross-quarter days”–the solstices and the equinoxes–were springboards for the greater fire festivals six weeks later. So Harvest Home is the launch for Samhain, which is considered by many as the Pagan New Year. This is the one of the times when the Veil Between the Worlds is at its thinnest and we can commune with our ancestors and with the Spirit World. Many people mistakenly think that there was a god of death called Samhain (and that’s actually pronounced “Sow-en”) but the Celtic means simply “the end of summer” or “the beginning of the dark months.” So as I give thanks for the harvest, I will be turning my thoughts toward my departed and the beginning of a new year.

That’s the title of Phillip Pullman’s new book due out at Easter. And yes, it’s

a new account of the life of Jesus, challenging the gospels and arguing that the version in the New Testament was shaped by the apostle Paul.

I’m rolling my eyes here… I love The Golden Compass, but as far as I am concerned, Pullman is sooo last millennium. For decades I subscribed to the belief that Christianity could have been cool if Paul hadn’t screwed it up. But I’m over that, even.

In a review of Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why by Bart D. Ehrman, reviewer Doug Brown (”The Bible Delusion“) cuts right to the heart of Who Screwed Up. Brown says, “In many respects, the Bible was the world’s first Wikipedia article. So many hands have altered and edited the now lost originals that we will never know for sure what those originals said.” LOL and all that. I’ve never heard it put so succinctly.

Read Brown’s review at Powell.com, and read Misquoting Jesus. If you ever wondered why anyone would want to pass a camel through the eye of a needle, Ehrman will explain it.

“Welcome to the Dark Mountain Project: a new literary movement for an age of global disruption.

We aim to question the stories that underpin our failing civilisation, to craft new ones for the age ahead and to write clearly and honestly about our true place in the world.”

As I wrote in my previous post, The Dark Mountain Project is calling on poets, writers, artists, philosophers, and activists to create a new vision for Post-Industrial Society. Among “The Eight Principles of Uncivilization” the Project states:

We believe that the roots of these crises lie in the stories we have been telling ourselves. We intend to challenge the stories which underpin our civilisation: the myth of progress, the myth of human centrality, and the myth of our separation from ‘nature’. These myths are more dangerous for the fact that we have forgotten they are myths.

The Project is creating a “syllabus” for this new age. On the site blog people are encouraged to create a list of written works that challenge these old myths and embody the new. Having a survivalist mentality, I have for a number of years been collecting books on living self-sufficiently. And, as a science fiction/fantasy geek, I have explored many strange new worlds. So here’s my partial list to prepare for “Uncivilization.”

1) Books by the Pagan author Starhawk. Particularly:

Truth or Dare: Encounters with Power, Authority, and Mystery (1988)
The Fifth Sacred Thing (Fiction, 1993)
Walking to Mercury (Fiction, 1997)
The Pagan Book of Living and Dying, cowritten with M. Macha NightMare and the Reclaiming Collective (1997)
The Twelve Wild Swans: A Journey to the Realm of Magic, Healing, and Action, cowritten with Hilary Valentine (2000)
Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising (2002)
The Earth Path: Grounding Your Spirit in the Rhythms of Nature (2004)

2) A Reenchanted World: The Quest For A New Kinship With Nature – James William Gibson

3) The Elemental Logic series by Laurie J. Marks. Thirty-five years after Shaftal was occupied by an army of Sainnites, a remnant of Shaftal’s suppressed elemental witches seek to end the occupation and restore the magic of the suffering earth. The books are:

Fire Logic. (2002)
Earth Logic (2004)
Water Logic (2007)
Air Logic (forthcoming)

4) Dies the Fire trilogy and The Sunrise Lands tetralogy by S.M. Stirling. A catastrophe of unknown origin alters the laws of thermodynamics Earth and renders high-energy technologies extinct. Survivors in this Post-Industrial world must band together to rebuild civilization. Pagans are among the Good Guys, and the two series develop a modern Pagan culture. The books in the first series, Dies the Fire are:

Dies the Fire (2004)
The Protector’s War (2005)
A Meeting at Corvallis (2006)

The Sunrise Lands include:

The Sunrise Lands (2007)
The Scourge of God (2008)
The Sword of the Lady (2009)
The High King of Montival (forthcoming)

5) Where There Is No Doctor–by David Werner with Carol Thuman and Jane Maxwell (2nd rev. ed. 1992, updated 2009)
“Hesperian’s classic manual, Where There Is No Doctor, is perhaps the most widely-used health care manual for health workers, clinicians, and others involved in primary health care delivery and health promotion programs around the world.”

6) More-With-Less–by Doris Janzen Longacre. (25th anniversary ed., 2000). Recipes and suggestions by Mennonites on how to eat better and consume less of the world’s limited resources.

I believe we can create new, world healing mythologies. These books offer a host of possibilities.

“These are precarious and unprecedented times. Our economies crumble, while beyond the chaos of markets, the ecological foundations of our way of living near collapse. Little that we have taken for granted is likely to come through this century intact.”

To prepare for the coming chaos of the Post Industrialist Society, The Dark Mountain Project is calling upon writers, artists, philosophers, and activists to create “a new literary movement for an age of global disruption.” On the Dark Mountain blog contributors are compiling a “syllabus” of poetry, novels, and nonfiction to inspire and maintain a new “Uncivilization.”

Suggested works include the poetry of Robinson Jeffers and Mary Oliver and post-apocalyptic novels like Mary Shelley’s The Last Man and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Thoreau’s Walden and the short stories of H.P. Lovecraft are on the list.

Also recommended:

A collection of essays by John Berger, Hold Everything Dear: Dispatches on Survival and Resistance

David Cayley, The Rivers North of the Future: a series of conversations with writer Ivan Illich

Anthropologist David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World: “[an] attempt to understand how language and writing shape our relationship to the world starts from his personal experiences among indigenous magicians in Southeast Asia.”

Hugh Brody, The Other Side of Eden: Hunters, Farmers and the Shaping of the World: “[tribal] people making deliberate choices about which technologies they do and don’t wish to adopt: what is and isn’t compatible with the way they want to live.”

If you are looking for something book club selections for the coming winter, you might want to check out The Dark Mountain Project.

For the last two weeks I have been fighting vertigo. From my own experimentation and the experience of other sufferers, I came to the conclusion that I did not have an inner ear infection but something in my neck was out of place After several days of DIY chiropractic manipulations, I finally seem to have my head on my shoulders and both feet on the ground. Yippee!

In the midst of physically trying to keep my balance, I’ve had some mental & emotional reality checks.

I joined Facebook. Ay-yi-yi! I feel like Pinocchio on Pleasure Island. Gaudy! Mindless! Smiling cats and awards for imaginary farms… People whom I barely spoke to at my old job and never associated with after hours are now my “friends.” And you can’t so much as play an online game without committing your personal information and the personal information of all your “friends” to the untender mercy of the data miners. I haven’t figured out how to unjoin Facebook. I expect I will have to be rude and start ignoring people wholesale.

I went to my 40th high school reunion. Oy vey! I went to my 10th. I had nothing in common with these people when I was in high school. I had nothing in common with them when I went to my 10th reunion; I have nothing in common with them at the 40th–except, maybe, that most of us look old. And they barely remember me: I had long hair, I wrote poetry maybe, and I worked on the yearbook (newspaper, actually.) I can’t imagine that I will go to the 45th.

I don’t remember that I wrote much poetry in high school. I do remember a book report or two that had promise. I did begin writing novels. And I have read so much bad science fiction and fantasy this summer that I have finally been driven back to my own prose. And yes, they were Pagan before I was Pagan… I don’t know if I have the courage to begin again, but I have–for the moment–joined a new email group of writers and readers. So who knows? Maybe I’ll post a sample here.

I have been reading the blogs I have listed on my blogroll–and reading the blogs they have on their blogrolls. After almost two years of diddling around with Witches Brew I think I may finally be getting the hang of this. So I may branch out here, do some organizing, and add some new features.

Watch this space…

All’s well in Stoudtburg. “Bewitched, without incident”:

Witches and pagans who traveled to Adamstown on Saturday for a festival “Celebrating Earth Spirituality” were greeted by a steady rain and praying Christians in a silent protest.

The gathering held at Stoudtburg Village and hosted by Reading Pagans & Witches proved to far less controversial than the debate that brewed in the days leading up to it.

I am feeling proud today of Jen Anderson-Wenger, president of Reading Pagans & Witches.who has been very gracious in print. LancasterOnline.com reported “[She] said several church groups ‘laid hands on us and prayed.’ She said she was pleased at the turnout, and said her group was received ‘very peacefully.’”

I can’t say how I would have reacted to strangers laying hands on me. Prayers–OK, I can be gracious when strangers have the chutzpah to pray over me. A thank you, you, too! and I’m out of there! But, according to Mandy Stoltzfus, staff writer for
LancasterOnline: “Anderson-Wenger said having the church groups come, and pray over them, was an ‘amazing spiritual experience.’”

And in the give and take of the comments she continues to show class:

QUOTE (kd1120 @ Sep 13 2009, 04:39 PM)
as a Christian who has had ties with Gateway House of Prayer, i wonder if Christian organizations would allow Pagans/Witches to come to their event to try to pray over us, or talk us into seeing their point? i highly doubt it. i am glad that the organization with which i have had ties, behaved themselves, but i still find it kind of righteous behavior attending another groups organized meeting to “share Jesus.” something about it just seems invasive to me…..guess that makes me a bad Christian, but if i feel the need to pray for a group, i know that i can do it in God’s presence & not in theirs, and it will still have the same effect! if God decides to move someone’s heart in His direction, He’ll do it regardless of whether i “crash” their event or not!

KD,
I didn’t have a problem with any of the, for lack of a better phrase, “silent protesters” as, I feel, we learned a little more about each other, which was partly what the festival was about. The “distruptive group” was asked that exact question though, and they said they have had it happen and felt it wasn’t disrespectful. I suppose if they didn’t feel disrespected by having someone “protest” them, they wouldn’t find it disrespectful to minister at a Pagan event.

I think yours is a view that is shared by many of my Christian friends and family.

Thank you,
Jen Anderson-Wenger
President, Reading Pagans & Witches

And, darn it! I am proud of KD1120, too. The irony of this dust up while we pause to remember the anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center…. Hello, religious intolerance is only acceptable when your religion practices it?

And just when I am feeling smug about Pagan manners, I click over to The Poltical Pagan, where Maelstrom blogs about Heathenry/the Asatru faith, where OUR conservatives tend to congregate. Maelstrom, a scholar of Norse culture, has spent a number of years in Iceland and Scandinavia. He writes “reverse culture shock”:

I have always thought that the point of spirituality was to rise above anything as limited and confining as nationalism, but in returning to America, I am struck by how pervasive American nationalism is among Pagans that I have encountered. I had a Heathen acquaintance write to me with a kind of patriotic ultimatum: “Are you American Heathen, or not? If so, good. If not, bye!” I have never in any other context been challenged to produce proof of patriotism in order to be accepted as a Pagan; as some say, “only in America.” For me, this ruins the whole point of engaging in Paganism as a spiritual path. If I wanted a religion based on patriotism, I would worship a deified version of George Washington or Ronald Reagan instead of honoring gods out of ancient Europe.

Boink! Maelstrom thwacks me in the forehead. It’s not just being Christian or Pagan that makes us so perversely attached to our religions:

After living in both Europe and Asia, I can no longer share the easy confidence of many Americans that their country is indeed the best, their society superior; “USA #1,” as it often phrased, sometimes in a rather belligerent manner that I cannot relate to at all. There are many things I love about America, but I love many qualities of other cultures as well. To put it in more Paganistic terms, I have walked among the spirits of other lands and received their blessings and guidance, and my sense of gratitude towards those other lands and spirits does not allow me to uphold any kind of narrow, exclusive patriotism.

Any time we slip into that #1 mentality, we lose our way.

Goofiest reported quote from Stoudtburg: Luke Martin, on of the protesters from Ephrata Christian Fellowship, tells us, “People will always try to fill the vacuum of life. Without God, they will turn to other religions.”

Luke, Lady Liberty is just one face of my Goddess. When She says, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…,” She was including folks stifled by religious intolerance. Think about it.

The Celebrating Earth Spirituality Festival was scheduled for today. I wish, I wish, I wish I had a crystal ball because the emotional stakes increased dramatically this week–and I can’t find “the rest of the story…”

When last I checked out The Wild Hunt, a handful of merchants in Stoudtburg Village–a commercial shopping center in Adamstown, PA, DBA as a faux German hamlet–were planning to close today rather than run the risk of doing business with the Reading Pagans & Witches, who had rented the Village for their festival.

WELL! While my attention was focused on mundane things like job hunting, health care reform, and the balance in my check book, some churches in Adamsville were working themselves into a tizzy over this little, constitutionally protected festival. The Gateway House of Prayer somewhere in Lancaster County, PA, put out a call for fasting & prayer. From the Gateway website:

Prayer for the “earth spirituality festival” to be held Sept 12 in Adamstown. See Gateway website for the organized fasting and prayer events to be held in the local churches of the Adamstown area. Isn’t it interesting that in the natural there is construction work on Rt 222 to strengthen the bridges.

“Lord God, we praise you for the truth of your word, for making it clear to us to recognize the wicked and evil practices and instruction to keep our land free of abominations. We declare blessings upon the leaders and pastors of the Adamstown area for coming together in unity to strengthen the ties among the community and to keep their bridges intact, strong and secure.

We pray a hedge of protection around the area, asking for the blood of Jesus to cover their boundaries, gates and bridges, that they would stand strong against the schemes of the enemy. We declare the enemy will have no foothold in Adamstown, or the larger Lancaster County area.

We declare that the attempt to plant seeds of destruction will be uprooted and bear no fruit. We ask that the veil be lifted to those with blind eyes, that the deception would come to the light.

– In Jesus name, Amen.”

Deuteronomy 18:9-14 “When you come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or one who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For all who do these things are an abomination to the Lord, and because of these abominations the Lord your God drives them out from before you. You shall be blameless before the Lord your God. For these nations which you will dispossess listened to soothsayers and diviners; but as for you, the Lord your God has not appointed such for you.”

Well, Goddess Bless America!

And, according to Ron Todt, of the Associated Press (Some Pa. shops close doors to Pagan festival):

[A] dozen or so Christian groups and churches are trying to organize a “wall of prayer” around the village Saturday said, James Horning, executive director of Crossfire Youth Ministries in nearby Eprhata, Pa.

“We are asking the Christians in the community to come out and make a circle around the entire facility and stand there for one hour and pray on behalf of the community, and then go home,” Horning said. “No signs, no shouting, no protests, just a visible sign that we disapprove … of the whole underlying theme.”

So what happened next???? Tomorrow I’ll have to check The Wild Hunt, The Reading Pagans & Witches website, and Witchvox for the next installment.

Watch this space…

“Avoiding Pagan Dollars“: This weekend Jason at The Wild Hunt is reporting on Christian merchants in Adamstown, PA, who–in these tough economic times–are willing to reject Pagan money.

A great many Pagan groups celebrate Pagan Pride Day in September, some time around Mabon, the Fall Equinox. This year on September 12th, Reading (PA) Pagans and Witches are holding their Celebrating Earth Spirituality Festival at Stoudtburg Village.

According to the Stoudtburg Village website Carol and Ed Stoudt own “a 62-acre farm in Adamstown on which Ed built a microbrewery, a fine-dining restaurant, a beer garden and a huge complex under roof where antique dealers could share and sell their pieces of eras-gone-by. That complex is still thriving today as Stoudt’s Brewery, The Black Angus Restaurant & Pub and Black Angus Antique Mall.”

Then they set aside 27 of those 62 acres for Stoudtburg Village: “an old-fashioned European Village; a self-contained hamlet with shops on the ground floor and living quarters above. Their idea was to have many travelers come, visit and enjoy the ambience of this quaint hamlet, and the residents could live and shop for their needs without leaving the Village.”

Ok, so they have two little museums, a coffee shop, a hair salon, a couple craft stores, a wine store, a bunch of knick-knack shops–all in this faux hamlet from the Kingdom of Far, Far Away. No one has suggested burning witches in the “public square” but a few merchants have decided not to open that Saturday or to close before the festival.

Controversy sells newspapers, of course, so the negative comments are “above the fold.” However deLyn Alumbaugh, owner of deLyn Gallery and president of Stoudtsberg’s advertising committee, had placed an ad for his shop on the Reading Pagans & Witches website. Alumbaugh sells fairies and mythological art. Pagans love pretty, shiny things. They liked his shop, they liked the Village and they decided to rent it for their festival.

Reading Pagans & Witches is a registed non-profit organization. The Stoudtberg event committee and the advertising committee approved the rental–indeed, they couldn’t legally discriminate against the organization, but some of the merchants seem to feel that the festival has been forced down their throats.

One wonders what they would have made of a Jewish celebration?