Month: April 2011

Community Notes; April 25-May 1

Paganistan now has its own Wikipedia entry. This is just the beginning. Please feel free to make it better. For instance, there are only 21 active groups listed, and we all know that there are far more than that. There is also a 22 year gap in the history section: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paganistan

For the sake of promoting Paganistan, we need a high resolution picture of a local Pagan potluck. If you have a photo that you’d be willing to share for a good cause, please email it to TwinCitiesPagans@yahoo.com. If you have an event coming up with a potluck, please take a picture, preferably staged with lots of Pagan stuff. Or maybe with out-of-the-closet local Pagans holding hot-dishes. This picture will be of historic importance to Paganistan.

It was four years ago that the Veterans Administration agreed to permit Wiccan service members to have pentagrams on their graves. Thank you to all who participated in the pentacle quest.

There’s now a Google map dedicated to the Asatru & Heathens.  You can find it here.

A great many local Pagans fell in love with John Michael Greer at Paganicon, and now there is a movement to bring him back to the Twin Cities for a weekend intensive. If this sounds like something you’d like to attend, please leave a favorable comment wherever you are reading Paganistan Weekly.

The Keys of Paradise grand opening went well with approximately 175 people touring the new space.

Angelina Rosenbush pointed out in the Examiner that local Pagans didn’t have a public Earth Day celebration this year.

Local Pagan JRob Zetelumen was a guest on Pagans Tonight last week, where he talked about Paganistan. You can listen to the show here.

Heart of the Beast May Day celebration is coming up, Sunday May 1 in Powderhorn Park. I’ve heard it argued that Mardi Gras is the largest Pagan celebration in the United States. In that sense, Heart of the Beast May Day is the largest Pagan celebration in the region. When the word Paganistan was originally coined, it referred to the area around Powderhorn Park because of all the Pagans who live there. After the parade, the event culminates with the ritual reenactment of the return of the sun. Usually at least a couple Pagan groups set up booths. Paul Eaves builds a labyrinth. There are food booths, and shopping booths. It’s a beautiful spring day out in a wonderful park. It’s a huge wonderful event.

There will be cocktails, movie, desserts & fun for Pagan Coming Out Day, 7pm May 2, at the Sacred Paths Center.  The award winning documentary American Mystic, which features Pagan, Spiritualist, and First Nations faiths, will be shown as part of the celebration.  http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=167230013331471 & http://pagancomingoutday.com/

Celia will be performing at the Sacred Paths Center, May 21 at 7pm. Celia’s performances are always a major draw. Tickets are available here.

T. Thorn Coyle will be coming to town to do a weekend intensive at the Eye of Horus, May 28 & 29. She had developed quite a following in the Twin Cities, and this promises to be a significant event.

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Pagans in Prison – Wiccan Minister in Minnesota

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George A Edgar, Wiccan Minister and Pagan Prison Religious Volunteer at three Minnesota Correctional Institutions;  Stillwater, Faribault, and Shakopee

How are these decisions about religious civil rights for Pagans in prison made ?

The important decisions about what inmates can have or do in their religious practice are made by those that are least qualified and educated to do so. If you are pulled over for speeding it is the police officer who decides if you get a ticket, not a judge, a specialist in the law. If you say, ” I am on my way to minister to inmates”, they might just say, “Have a nice day”, and let you go. That has happened to me!  It is the same in the prison system, it is the guards and the chaplains who decide what goes on. When you get to the upper echelon, the Warden or the Department of Corrections, and they get excited, you tend to see draconian measures because they don’t want any headaches. They see things very practically, and the Pagans represent a slippery slope. They had to cave into the Native Americans. They allow outdoor ritual, the sweat lodge, the use of tobacco, now what if the Druids want that too? If you can get three or four guys together and a religious volunteer, you become a legitimate religious group. All of a sudden you may have thirty outdoor rituals a week, with special guards and space requirements. Where is the funding, where are the extra staff? They just don’t want the headache. They want to stop this as best they can.

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Pagans in Prison – Religious Volunteer In Wisconsin

Wade Mueller is a religious volunteer for Pagans in seven Wisconsin Correctional Institutions. He is tired, but receives so much from his prison experience, and sees such a need, that he can’t stop if it means letting his people down.

 Do you actively advocate for an inmates religious rights or requests?

 I have to stay away from that as I have absolutely no power as a volunteer aid, and so am in a very precarious position. I tend to be polite and courteous in order to get entry and or anything at all with the inmates. Once inside I act as a priest, a facilitator, they cannot even get together as a group unless I come in. I tell the guys, “What do you want to do with this time?”. Some really want to do in-depth, hard-core rituals. Then I encourage and help them write their own rituals, and then just watch over and maybe help them. I may facilitate discussion, help with meditation. It is different every time depending on who shows up. There are so many different paths and traditions that show up, and there is often conflict.
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Pagans in Prison – Interview with Patrick McCollum

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This begins a series about Pagans in Prison, and those who ‘minister’ to them.  Religious volunteers report most Pagan prisoners find their Pagan path once they are incarcerated. The loss of freedom that prison represents is a strong motivator to find some meaning in life, and Pagan spirituality often offers the most relevant choice.  Prisoners are invisible to us, unless they get publicity.  I hope this series increases our  awareness of this part of our community for, sooner or later, many will return to our general society, and look for spiritual support.

Patrick McCollum

What is critical to understand within this topic, is the difference between loss of freedom, and loss of civil rights. Prisoners retain some civil rights even while in prison. Our Constitution’s First Amendment is about religious freedom, and within bounds, remains in force for those incarcerated.  I had the opportunity to interview one of the foremost authorities regarding religious civil rights and prison, and Patrick McCollum also happens to be a Pagan.  Read his qualifications at the end of this interview!

 There are prisoners convicted of state and federal crimes, often mixed together in state institutions, does it matter?

The principles are exactly the same in the law. In federal prisons there are some additional provisions that grant additional rights, more than state prison systems, but what I’ll talk about is applicable to both systems.

What are a prisoners civil rights regarding religion in prison?

There was a law upheld by the Supreme Court (unanimous) in 2005, called the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, (RLUIPA)  which laid out the basics of what religious accommodation prisoner of all faiths have right to. What the act says is that the state is required to accommodate each and every inmates religious need.

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PNC Goes International

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The Pagan Newswire Collective, which PNC-Minnesota is a local bureau of, has expanded internationally. The main site for the news organization has also been redesigned to better serve its readers.


The newest bureau of the PNC opened a bureau for South America, featuring writers from several South American countries and a Canadian bureau is preparing to launch. Jason Pitzl-Waters, Project Coordinator for PNC, said he has also had inquires from Spain and other European nations. “We were approached by Yoko Galkan, a writer and journalist from Uruguay about starting a bureau, and decided to expand it to news and views from Pagans all across South America,” Mr. Pitzl-Waters said of the new bureau, “Modern Pagan religions have been growing at a quick pace in South American countries like Brazil, and I’m excited to establish local sources for stories emerging from that region.”  This brings the total number of PNC bureaus up to ten worldwide.

This expansion also necessitated a site redesign for the main PNC website.  PNC Technical Coordinator, David Dashifen Kees, was tasked with the redesign, “The real goal is to specifically highlight the blogs’ and bureaus’ content.   To that end, we figured out a way to pull in the bureau and blog content on the homepage and link back to them to try and act as an information broker helping people find their way to stories that they want to read regardless of where those stories are.”  Mr Dashifen Kees says that although he is pleased with how the redesign looks and functions, there is still work to be done on it, “There’s a lot of work to be done on the pages that aren’t the homepage.   A list of all the bureaus and blogs on their appropriate areas, a better page for special coverage.  While we’re well on our way to a solid web site, there’s quite a bit of work left to do.”

Between the growth of the bureaus, going from zero to ten in about as many months, the addition of International bureaus, and the organizations website redesign, the PNC has made significant progress in its mission to “promote primary-source reporting from within our interconnected communities.”  Pitzl-Waters  says, “My main vision is to grow our network of bureaus as quickly as is sustainable. The faster our bureau network grows, the faster we’ll be able to knit them together into the first international Pagan-focused newswire. I think we’ve been making tremendous progress.”

If you would like to be a part of PNC-Minnesota as a writer or contributor, or if you have stories ideas or announcements, please contact Cara Schulz or Nels Linde here.