Posts Tagged ‘Druids’

Sunday Morning Post

Sunday, February 27th, 2011

Welcome to juju nation!
The Citizen Reporter
Dar es Salaam. Tanzania is home to some of the most devout Christians and Muslims in the world. The composition of the population is about 50-50, with the believers enjoying unprecedented peace and harmony, as they go about their worship since Independence nearly 50 years ago. Therefore, the findings of a recent survey that lists Tanzanians among the leading believers in witchcraft and worshippers of traditional African religions in sub-Saharan Africa will come as a surprise to many.

The report has revealed that although the majority are either churchgoers or attend prayers in mosques, a good number of them still believe in witchcraft, evil spirits, sacrifices to ancestors, traditional religious healers, reincarnation and other elements that are the cornerstones of traditional African religions.

More than half of the people surveyed between December 2008 and April 2009 in 19 countries, including Tanzania, in the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures Project of the United States, confirmed that they practise superstition and trust the supernatural world of spirits.  In the five-member East African Community (EAC), Tanzanians were said to be the most superstitious and ranked third after Senegal and Mali, among the 19 countries.  Burundians are the least superstitious in the EAC, followed by the Rwandese and Kenyans. Ugandans are the second most superstitious in the EAC, and came 11th in the survey. Read full story from thecitizen.co.tz

Lafayette gives psychic business evil eye
Lafayette city officials are dusting off a little-known municipal code in an attempt to shut down a self-proclaimed psychic who police say misled customers into giving up thousands of dollars.

On Thursday, the city issued a cease-and-desist letter to Patricia Johns, owner of Astrology Gallery on South Street, said Ed Chosnek, the city’s attorney. If she doesn’t shut down the business soon, the city will consider legal action.

“Not within hours, but within days of the receipt of the letter we expect her to be in compliance with the ordinance,” Chosnek said.

He said Johns is violating a code on the books since at least the 1970s. It bans fortune-tellers and clairvoyants from profiting off those services.

Johns came to the city’s attention after police heard from two of her former customers. They said they were misled into giving Johns cash or items worth $80,000, said Lafayette Police Detective B.T. Brown. Read full story jconline.com

Pagans campaign for Census voice
Pagans are campaigning for druids and witches to declare their religious affiliation in next month’s Census to gain greater recognition for the group.

The Pagan Federation says it wants the same recognition as other faiths.

Secularists say the optional question about what religion people are could lead to artificially large numbers identifying themselves as Christian.

That in turn could lead to an over-provision of faith schools, the British Humanist Association argues. Read full story from bbc.co.uk

Neglected graves home to ‘invisible dead’
Gore, Georgia (CNN) — Duncan Shropshire stops at the edge of the treeline, where the meadow becomes a forest. His yellow linen shirt is misbuttoned and crooked, leaving the bottom of his belly slightly exposed.

His 8-year-old daughter, Mia-Grace, stands a foot or so behind him, wiping her runny nose with the sleeve of her blue sweatshirt. After about a minute, she lets out a sigh of boredom.

Shropshire, 51, clasps his daughter’s hand and begins leading her into the Northwest Georgia forest.

“This is where your ancestors are buried, back here,” Shropshire says. “C’mon, I’ll show you.”

And with a loving tug, Duncan Shropshire shares with his daughter a key piece of their family’s history. Read full story from cnn.com

Ancient child burial site found in Alaska
Alaska researchers have found the cremated remains of a 3-year-old child whose parents were among the first immigrants to North America, crossing over the then-existing land bridge from Asia to the New World through the region known as Beringia.

The 11,500-year-old remains were found buried on the banks of the Tanana River in the hearth of what appears to be a summer home for the early Beringians, the earliest known habitation for these first American settlers.

Archaeologists already know quite a bit about these early people based on sites where the groups gathered briefly to hunt, skin and consume large game, said archaeologist Frank E. “Ted” Goebel of the Center for the Study of the First Americans at Texas A&M University, who was not involved in the current research. Read full story from latimes.com

Listening to dreams can help build self-esteem
Jan Brehm of Portland woke up from a dream confused and shaken to her core. Lisa Espich of Tucson woke so deeply disturbed by a dream featuring her husband that she knew her marriage would never be the same. Jennifer Lambert of Virginia Beach felt such agitation over her dream that she cried for 30 minutes straight when she woke up — and then called her sister, from whom she’d long been estranged.

Dreams can rock us, scare us, and in some cases, inspire us. But is listening to our dreams right up there with calling a psychic hotline? Not at all, say leading experts. “People are now using their dreams as tools to make their lives better,” comments Marcia Emery, PhD, a psychologist at Holos University.

Don’t be robbed of a good night’s sleep! Use these strategies to get your zzzz’s.

This is relatively newfound respect. Many researchers used to believe that dreams simply reflected the random firing of nerve signals while we sleep. “The thinking was that the dreams were meaningless and didn’t serve any function at all,” says Harvard psychology professor Deirdre Barrett, PhD. But today, many scientists feel that dreams play the vital role of clarifying what truly matters to us. “Dreaming is thinking — just in a different biochemical state,” explains Dr. Barrett, author of “The Committee of Sleep: How Artists, Scientists, and Athletes Use Dreams for Creative Problem-Solving — and How You Can Too.” “It’s a mode of contemplation that’s much more visual, intuitive, and emotional, as opposed to the patterns of waking thought.” Read full story from msnbc.com

Voodoo sex ceremony starts fatal fire, officials say
New York (CNN) — Candles used in voodoo sex ceremony caused a fatal five alarm fire after they tipped over and ignited bed sheets in a Brooklyn, New York, apartment, authorities said Friday.

The fire left an elderly woman dead and injured 20 firefighters and three Brooklyn residents, according to a New York Fire Department statement.

A voodoo priest allegedly placed the candles on the floor around the bed on Saturday after a woman paid him $300 to perform a ceremony with a sexual component, that was meant to bring her good luck, fire department officials said. Read full story from cnn.com

Book bound in human skin goes on display in Devon
When Devon murderer George Cudmore was sentenced to hang at the Lent Assizes in 1830, he knew that part of his sentence was that his dead body would be taken to an Exeter hospital to be dissected.

What he probably was not aware of was that a chunk of his skin would eventually be flayed, tanned and used to cover an 1852 copy of The Poetical Works of John Milton.

The book is now housed at the Westcountry Studies Library in Exeter.

It will go on show to the public for the first time on 26 February as part of Devon’s annual Local History Day. Read full story from bbc.co.uk

News & Submissions 12/23/2010

Thursday, December 23rd, 2010

The Medical Power of Ritual
Harvard researcher Ted Kaptchuk trained for five years in traditional Chinese medicine, but then became one of the leading researchers into the placebo effect. In his hands, the fact that patients with some kinds of illnesses get better with dummy pills is a gateway into the ways that other aspects of medicine, including the capacity of doctors to generate feelings of hope, are overlooked in our technology-obsessed health care system.

This morning, Kaptchuk is out with his latest salvo in this research: a study that showed that patients with irritable bowel syndrome improved more if they were given inert sugar pills – even though they were told the pills had no active ingredients and the bottles were labeled “placebo.” Fifty-nine percent of patients who got the obviously fake pill got adequate symptom relief, compared to 35% of those who got nothing. In a press release put out by the Public Library of Science, the medical journal that published the study, Kaptchuk’s co-author, fellow Harvard professor Anthony Lembo, says: “I didn’t think it would work. I felt awkward asking patients to literally take a placebo. But to my surprise, it seemed to work for many of them.” Read full story from forbes.com

An atheist view of December
“Christians don’t deserve a monopoly on holiday cheer,” reads a simple yet loaded statement on the American Atheists’ website.

But how could Christians monopolize a holiday that is based on their beliefs?

It turns out that traditions associated with Christmas have morphed into social norms adopted even among nonbelievers.

Everywhere you turn there are decorations, cookies, and music. But for many of the 5% of Americans who say they don’t believe in God, December is not that different from what it’s like for those affiliated with a Christian religion. Those who don’t believe in the reason behind the holiday still celebrate the season’s concentration on values, family, and kindness. Read full story from cnn.com

Colossal pliosaur fossil secrets revealed by CT scanner
The innermost secrets of a colossal “sea monster” skull are being revealed by one of the UK’s most powerful CT scanners.

The X-rays are helping to build up a 3D picture of this ferocious predator, called a pliosaur, which terrorized the oceans 150m years ago.

The 2.4m-long (7.9ft) fossil skull was recently unearthed along the UK’s Jurassic coast, and is thought to belong to one of the biggest pliosaurs ever found.

The scans could establish if the giant is a species that is new to science.

Pliosaurs are aquatic reptiles belonging to the plesiosaur family. Paddle-like limbs would have powered their huge bulky bodies through the water, and they had enormous crocodile-like heads, packed full of razor-sharp teeth. Read full story from bbc.co.uk

French village threatens to call in army amid flood of doomsday survivalists
Residents of a tiny French village say it is being overwhelmed by outsiders who are intrigued by reports of aliens in the area and believe that the peak looming above may be a sacred mountain that will be a shelter at the end of human civilization.

Villagers in Bugarach, population 189, told The Daily Telegraph these visitors believe that the end of the world corresponds with the conclusion of the Mayan calendar on Dec. 21, 2012, and that the Pic de Bugarach, highest mountain in the Corbieres wine region, could provide some sort of sanctuary. Read full story from msnbc.msn.com

Do Supernova Explosions Impact Earth Every Few Hundred Million Years?
A University of Kansas research team is exploring the energy of cosmic rays and a possible link to massive prehistoric extinction events. Fossils and cosmic rays appear to have nothing in common. But Adrian Melott, a professor at the University of Kansas, is doing work with high energy cosmic rays to investigate the possibility that one may be linked to the other.

“There are a lot of things that can happen to the Earth that would cause it to get hit by more high-energy cosmic rays,” says Melott. “A supernova fairly nearby (within about 30 light-years) is an obvious one. Another one would be a gamma ray burst in our galaxy that’s pointed at us. And some people think that as we move up and down in the disc of the galaxy, when we get to the top we would get hit by more high-energy cosmic rays. So we don’t know. We have a general idea of the effects on the atmosphere, but people haven’t modeled it very much. Normally they don’t matter, because most of the cosmic rays that hit us are medium and low energy.” Read full story from dailygalaxy.com

Genome of Mystery Human Relative Revealed by 30,000 Year-Old Fossil
A 30,000-year-old finger bone found in a cave in southern Siberia came from a young girl who was neither an early modern human nor a Neanderthal, but belonged to a previously unknown group of human relatives, called “Denisovans” after the cave where the fossils were found, who may have lived throughout much of Asia during the late Pleistocene epoch.

Although the fossil evidence consists of just a bone fragment and one tooth, DNA extracted from the bone has yielded a draft genome sequence, enabling scientists to reach some startling conclusions about this extinct branch of the human family tree. Read full story from dailygalaxy.com

Slideshow: Winter Solstice, lunar eclipse met by Druids at Stonehenge (photos)
The winter solstice, lunar eclipse combination may have been a wonder to some, but for Druids at Stonehenge it was a significant spiritual experience.  The winter solstice occurs when the Earth’s axis is tilted the furthest from the sun and marks the first official day of winter.  The day is often referred to as midwinter and the winter solstice is marked by being the shortest day and longest night.  Winter solstice 2010 occurred on December 21, 2010 at 6:38 pm ET.  The lunar eclipse of 2010 ushered in the solstice as the eclipse was completed by approximately 5:00 am, December 21, 2010. Read full story from examiner.com

‘Christmas is evil’: Muslim group launches poster campaign against festive period
Fanatics from a banned Islamic hate group have launched a nationwide poster campaign denouncing Christmas as evil.

Organisers plan to put up thousands of placards around the UK claiming the season of goodwill is responsible for rape, teenage pregnancies, abortion, promiscuity, crime and paedophilia.

They hope the campaign will help ‘destroy Christmas’ in this country and lead to Britons converting to Islam instead. Read full story from dailymail.com

‘John of God’: Faith healer? (source cnn)

‘Seinfeld’ actor reminices about Festivus (source cnn)

Godless Christmas (source Pat Condell)

News & Submissions 11/27/2010

Saturday, November 27th, 2010

Christopher Hitchens vs. Tony Blair: the full transcript
You may need to set aside the rest of your Saturday to get through this, but here in full is the transcript of the long-anticipated Munk debate between Christopher Hitchens and former prime minister Tony Blair. The motion: “Be it resolved, religion is a force for good in the world”. No prizes for guessing who was arguing for and against.

The debate was hosted last night in Toronto, Canada before an audience of 2,600. Reports suggest that touts were selling tickets for up to five hundred Canadian dollars.

According to post-debate voting on the Munk debate website, Hitchens won the argument against the motion by 68 per cent to 32 per cent. A pre-debate poll showed that 57 per cent were against the motion and 22 per cent were for it — demonstrating, I guess, the impressive debating skills of both men. Red full story from newstatesman.com

My Take: How real interfaith dialogue works
I’ve thought for some time that if more Americans had personal contact, even friendships, with their fellow Americans who are Muslims there might be less mistrust and misunderstanding about the role Islam plays in their lives.

The years have convinced me that interfaith dialogue, particularly the one-on-one variety, is a more viable way to break down barriers between people than large-scale efforts. Read full story from cnn.com

“What Do You Ask a Shaman?” on November 30 “Why Shamanism Now?” Radio Show with Christina Pratt
(OPENPRESS) November 27, 2010 — Streaming live on the Co-Creator Radio Network (www.co-creatornetwork.com) on Tuesday, November 30, at 11 a.m. Pacific time/2 p.m. Eastern time, on her show “Why Shamanism Now?: A Practical Path to Authenticity,” shaman and founder of the Last Mask Center for Shamanic Healing Christina Pratt reviews some of the questions posed to her – questions like: Can shamanism help with mental illness? What about my depression? Am I cheating myself out of healing by taking my pharmaceuticals? Can you heal my father’s dementia? Does shamanic healing work long distance? How do I “pay the rent” with powerful psychoactive plants and stay in good relationship with the spirit world? Why does gratitude matter? Read full story from theopenpress.com

Snapshot of a Civilization in the Making
The eastern desert of Jordan is unforgiving, a lunar landscape that races 500 lonely miles from Amman to the outskirts of Baghdad. Along the main road, there are few signs of life: a dusty army base, a desert grouse, the bleached bones of a dead animal. Yet through the sandy silence, the wind carries whispers of luxury. About 50 miles from Amman stands a small, richly decorated bathhouse called Qusayr Amra. It is among the strangest, most spectacular examples of early Islamic art, a solitary monument to la dolce vita in this sun-scorched earth. At Qusayr Amra, we can catch a glimpse of Islamic high culture in the making. The picture that forms is surprising, to say the least. Read full story from wsj.com

White house confirms support of ‘clean Carcieri fix’
WASHINGTON – The White House has reiterated its support for a “Carcieri fix” – legislation confirming the federal government’s authority to take Indian land into trust for general purposes, while the Interior Department has distanced itself from a senator’s proposal that would virtually eliminate off reservation trust land for gaming.

“I think everyone in the administration that’s talked about it has made it very clear that we support the clean Carcieri fix,” White House spokesman Shin Inouye told Indian Country Today Nov. 23. “The president has said that, the Secretary (of Interior) has said that, we’ve said that in all our letters and testimony to Congress. Is there some confusion out there about our position?” Read full story from indiancountrytoday.com

Loch Ness monster: new pictures and sighting of Nessie
The legend of Nessie has resurfaced with a new sighting and pictures of the Loch Ness monster.

Richard Preston, a landscape designer, has been the latest person to spot a mysterious shape that might be the Loch Ness monster and capture a series of images on camera. Read full story from stv.tv

There’s oxygen on Rhea, but aliens? Don’t hold your breath
On its journey around Saturn and its moons, the Cassini mission – jointly run by NASA and the European Space Agency – has made another breathtaking discovery. The findings, published in Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.1198366), show that Rhea, the second biggest moon of the giant planet, has an atmosphere that is 70 per cent oxygen and 30 per cent carbon dioxide. This adds to the picture of Rhea that Cassini has already provided by imaging its craters and discovering its rings. Read full story from newscientist.com

Fun “green” projects from Marc de Vinck
We’ve done a lot of projects on MAKE over the years that use largely recycled or scrounged materials. As we continue our MAKE Green Projects Contest, we thought it’d be fun to feature some of them here. We figured we’d tag some of our own green! Read full stor from makezine.com

Towards a Spiritual future with Celtic beliefs:
In Ancient times, the ancestral races of many European nations today were known as ‘Celtics’ as they shared Iron Age inherent roots and they had many mythological belief’s with a touch of spirituality.

Literary Druids were Celtic priests and legend says that they were possessed by many magical powers.

As the Druidism movement was originally inspired by 17th, 18th, and 19th century Romantic movements, neo druids also developed fraternal organizations modeled on Free-masonry that employed the romantic figure of the British Druids and Bards as symbols of indigenous British spirituality. Read full story from dailymirror.lk

Man not denied chauffeur’s permit because he was a pagan
The man who claimed Vancouver police discriminated against him and refused to give him a chauffeur’s permit because he was a pagan whose sexual practices included bondage, domination, sadism and masochism has lost his appeal to the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal.

Peter Hayes had filed a complaint against the Vancouver Police Board and Const. Kevin Barker after Barker refused to give him the permit needed for his employment as a limousine driver in May 2005. Read full story from vancouversun.com

Why is Cthulhu on this 300-year-old gravestone?
The Reverend Ichabod Wiswall (1637-1700) is a historical footnote. When he’s remembered, it’s for giving the first funeral sermon in America, in Duxbury, Massachusetts. So why is there a Lovecraftian cephalopod on his gravestone?

Wiswall was responsible, with the Reverend Increase Mather, for persuading Queen Mary to create the 1692 charter which united the colonies of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay into the Province of Massachusetts Bay, which became the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Wiswall served the town of Duxbury as a minister for 24 years and is buried in Duxbury in the Myles Standish Burial Ground, supposedly the oldest continually maintained cemetery in the United States. Read full story from i09,com

Priest accused of hiring hitman (source cnn)

Sacred Spaces: Meet the mason at the Washington National Cathedral (source cnn)

New Atheist Billboard Up in New Jersey (source cnn)

News & Submissions 11/19/2010

Friday, November 19th, 2010

Astronomers Discover Alien Planet In Our Milky Way
We’ve talked about colliding galaxies on this blog before. But this piece of science news today is a little weirder: The journal Science reports that astronomers have found the first extragalactic exoplanet in our Milkyway. Read full story from npr.org

Ghost caught on camera
People who are open to the supernatural see ghosts everywhere. For instance a speck of dust as it moves on an air current and caught in a camera flash becomes an ‘orb’: a ball of otherworldly energy left by the souls of the departed. Read full story from manchesterconfidential.co.uk

Cherokee Nation News Release
The Cherokee Nation is in the beginning stages of developing a Virtual Library of Cherokee Knowledge, a web-based system designed to provide Cherokee citizens and the general public access to a comprehensive digital space filled with authentic Cherokee knowledge related to the tribe’s history, language, traditions, culture and leaders. Read full story from cherokee.org

Scientists capture antimatter atoms in particle breakthrough
(CNN) — Scientists have captured antimatter atoms for the first time, a breakthrough that could eventually help us to understand the nature and origins of the universe.

Researchers at CERN, the Geneva-based particle physics laboratory, have managed to confine single antihydrogen atoms in a magnetic trap.

This will allow them to conduct a more detailed study of antihydrogen, which will in turn allow scientists to compare matter and antimatter. Read full story from cnn.com

Fox News gets Sitting Bull history wrong
WASHINGTON – In the same week Fox News President Roger Ailes assailed President Barack Obama for being un-American, the Fox News website attempted to paint the president as out of touch for admiring Indian Chief Sitting Bull. But the network got its history wrong. Read full story from indiancountrytoday.com

Stoneham library revisits Spiritualism movement
Stoneham — Séances and medium meetings may sound like the practices of Salem witches, but these rituals were actually common in Stoneham, according to a local historian.

Spiritualism, which supports the idea that the dead can communicate with the living, was a popular belief among middle-class residents in Stoneham in the l870s, according to Medford historian Dee Morris. This Thursday, Nov. 18, Morris, who has been studying spiritualism for the past 15 years, discussed some of Stoneham’s most influential spiritualists in a free discussion at the Stoneham Public Library. Read full story from wickedlocal.com

MORRIS MEN ROUSE SPIRITS
BLOODSTONE Border Morris, pagans and druids gathered at the Longstone last Sunday (October 31) to celebrate the pagan festival of Samhain that falls on Halloween.

First the Morris dancers roused the spirits of the noontime gatherers at the Neolithic monument with a selection of their jaunty dances, incorporating stick brandishing and sparring along with menacing snarls and grimaces. Read full story from wgazette.co.uk

Bridgewater State offers magical course for those who grew up with Harry Potter
BRIDGEWATER —When her 11th birthday had come and gone, Kelsey Bergeron was disappointed that she hadn’t gotten an invitation to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Now 18, Bergeron still loves the Harry Potter book and film series she grew up with, and she has a unique opportunity to study them in college.

The Bridgewater State University freshman is enrolled in “The Ethics of Harry Potter,” a sociology seminar that relates the themes of J.K. Rowling’s fantasy series to the ideas of Aristotle. Read full story from wickedlocal.com

HARMONY – A NEW WAY OF LOOKING AT OUR WORLD (Source harmonymovie.com)

Harmony Movie Trailer from Balcony Films on Vimeo.

Bad boy rapper Shyne goes kosher (Source cnn.com)

News & Submissions 11/18/2010

Thursday, November 18th, 2010

Pastor to N.J. church leaders: Thou shalt not Facebook
NEPTUNE, N.J. — Thou shalt not commit adultery. And thou also shalt not use Facebook.

That’s the edict from a New Jersey pastor who feels the two often go together.

The Rev. Cedric Miller said 20 couples among the 1,100 members of his Living Word Christian Fellowship Church have run into marital trouble over the last six months after a spouse connected with an ex-flame over Facebook. Read full story from lansingstatejournal.com

Fairy DogParents? A Magic Wand for Hard-Luck Families
Jenney Hemboldt was distraught. She had lost her job, had a young child at home and her 11-year-old dog Sable (below, right) wasn’t eating and was very ill. Unemployed, broke and teary, she feared her only choice was to surrender the family’s German Shepherd mix to a dog shelter through the Massachusetts Society for the Prevent of Cruelty to Animals, so that Sable could get the surgery he needed.

Instead, in a stroke of serendipity, she learned of Fairy DogParents, a nonprofit that could intervene, providing the near-fairytale help that would keep Sable with the family that adored her. And just when she needed a little magic, Marlo Manning, the organization’s founder, stepped in with a vet that would do the surgery at a reduced cost and and an offer of dog food so that Sable could remain with the Hemboldts. Read full story from tonic.com

Britain’s Spiritual Inversion
Last month, the Charity Commission recognized druidism as an official religion. Druids in Britain, of which there are about 10,000, can now claim tax exemptions and have access to other valuable “rights.” For instance, druids in prison may now take twigs, or magic wands, into their cells, and can request time off work to worship the sun.

Many are concerned that this decision will crack the door open for Britain’s growing number of witches, warlocks and wizards to seek legitimacy from the Charity Commission.

According to the Pagan Federation, which defends and promotes the interests of witches, druids and other “followers of polytheistic or pantheistic nature-worshiping” groups, there are now 300,000 pagans in Britain. Pagans are in every strata of society too, as one pagan recently admitted: We are “civil servants, teachers, housewives, accountants, university lecturers, farmers, bakers, child-minders, historians … sailors, gardeners, call-center workers, office cleaners and dancers and shop workers.” Read full story from thetrumpet.com

First American in Europe ‘was native woman kidnapped by Vikings and hauled back to Iceland 1,000 years ago’
A native woman kidnapped by the Vikings may have been the first American to arrive in Europe around 1,000 years ago, according to a startling new study.

The discovery of a gene found in just 80 Icelanders links them with early Americans who may have been brought back to Iceland by Viking raiders.

The discovery means that the female slave was in Europe five centuries before Christopher Columbus first paraded American Indians through the streets in Spain after his epic voyage of discovery in 1492.

The genes that the woman left behind have now been discovered in the DNA of just our distinct family lines. Read full story from dailymail.co.uk

Most Americans say Obama’s religious beliefs different than their own
A majority of Americans say that President Barack Obama’s religious beliefs are either somewhat different or very different than their own, a poll on religion and the recent elections found.

The poll report, by the Public Religion Research Institute, identified Obama’s religion “dilemma,” as the institute called it, as one of three significant emerging religious issues to watch toward the 2012 election cycle. Read full story from cnn.com

Consulate works to restore Dia de los Muertos
n many small towns in Mexico, the main export isn’t the local chocolate, coffee or peppers, but labor.

An event Wednesday evening in Yuba City marked a concept to change that trade deficit, while celebrating both small business and a traditional Mexican observance.

Marta Sol, of the Chiapas state in Mexico, beamed as she used a modern coffeemaker to incorporate Chiapas coffee beans and chocolate to make hot beverages — leavened with spirits — to toast deceased loved ones. Read full story from orland-press-register.com

U.S. religious freedom report faults China, among others
Religious freedom remains under threat in China, especially for followers of the Dalai Lama and Muslims in the west of the country, the U.S. State Department said Wednesday in a major report.

China harassed members of religions Beijing does not recognize, and disbarred, harassed and imprisoned lawyers who tried to defend them, the State Department said. Read full story from cnn.com

At 92, Dallas woman is the Johnny Appleseed of herbs
Lane Furneaux doesn’t waste time. “I’m 92 ½ years old, you know.”

It was decades ago that she earned the unofficial title of Dallas’ pioneering herb advocate, and she has not let her cause lapse. She’s adamant that the knowledge she has accumulated must live on after her. Furneaux (pronounced fur-NO) feels the need urgently now to educate the public about herbs: their fragrance, their flavor, their symbolism; how they grow, where and why; to pass the language of herbs on to the next generation. Read full story from dallasnews.com

Science of Winter (Source National Geographic)

News & Submissions 10/28/2010

Thursday, October 28th, 2010

Lifestyle?
Pagan Lifestyle? Christian Lifestyle?  Gay Lifestyle? Heterosexual lifestyle? Hippy Lifestyle? Green Lifestyle?

Huh?

I can’t speak for others, but I don’t have a ‘lifestyle’, I LIVE a LIFE.  No, not just A life, I live MY life. Read full story from fernsfrondblogpost.com

Anglesey Druids open book of the dead for Halloween
They will be holding a mourning tea at Glynllifon Mansion, Llandwrog, near Caernarfon, on Saturday to remember and celebrate loved ones who have died.

They believe this is the time when the veil between the living and the dead is at its thinnest. Read full story from bbc.co.uk

Druids Recognised; Daily Mail Angry
Druidry is to become the first pagan practice to be given official recognit­ion as a religion in the UK. After a four-year fight, the Druid Network has been granted charit­able status by the Charity Comm­ission for England and Wales, making it the first pagan group to be recognised under the 2006 Charities Act. This guarantees the group, set up in 2003, valuable tax breaks, although it doesn’t currently earn enough to benefit from this. It could also pave the way for other minority faiths to gain charitable status. Read full story from fourteantimes.com

Trick or Treating Debate: Saturday or Sunday?
There is a bit of a controversy brewing in this year’s Halloween cauldron over when to Trick or Treat. Each October 31st, little vampires, witches, ballerinas, and astronauts know it is time to head outside to fill their baskets, pillow cases, and buckets with candy.

But what happens when Halloween falls on a Sunday? Read full story from cnn.com

What, no pumpkins? Before Halloween went to Hollywood. .
Say the word ‘Halloween’ in most parts of the world, and the reaction will be: pumpkins, candy apples, trick or treating, lanterns, fancy-dress parties, and of course, teenagers getting sliced and diced in leafy Californian suburbs by masked maniacs with mommy issues.

Halloween, after all, is as American as apple pie and the Fourth of July, right? Read full story from independent.ie

Baltic diaspora and the rise of Neo-Paganism
RIGA – An interesting follow-up to last week’s article on the status of religion in the Baltics concerns the religious beliefs of the Baltic diaspora. Not often discussed, the religious tendencies of Latvians abroad do differ from Latvians in the homeland. In addition, the revival of ancient religions and neo-pagan movements also tend to have their base, not in the land where they began, but in the U.S. and Canada.

Ruta, age 86, came to Minnesota from a German displaced persons (DP) camp sponsored by the Lutheran church in 1950. Her story is nearly identical to thousands of others from Balts seeking to start a new life abroad after World War II. She explains in her own words what religion means to her. Read full story from baltictimes.com

Hitler, The Holocaust and the Vatican’s Blood Libel Against Paganism
Today, many people erroneously believe that there is a vast difference between Paganism and the Occult. This is a common and understandable misconception; therefore I shall try to shed a little more light on the subject.

Paganism is an earth-orientated way of intimately synchronising oneself with the planet that we call home and the changing seasonal cycles, for the benefit of self and others. Read full story from ufodigest.com

Burning Holy Books Is A Loathsome Act: Prof. John Hare
Prof. John E. Hare is the Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical Theology at the Yale University’s Divinity School. A British classicist, philosopher and ethicist, he is the author of several well-known and best-selling books in religion and morality including “God and Morality: A Philosophical History”, “The Moral Gap”, “Ethics and International Affairs”, “Why Bother Being Good” and “Plato’s Euthyphro”.

John Hare has in his background the experience of teaching philosophy at the University of Lehigh from 1975 to 1989. In his “God’s Call” book, Hare discusses the divine command theory of morality, analyzing texts in Duns Scotus, Kant and contemporary moral theory. Read full story from eurasiareview.com

A Peek Inside a Haunted Mansion (Source mercurynews,com)

Zen at your desk: how to meditate (Source cnn.com)