The Pagan Community is one filled with diversity and individuality - characteristics we celebrate. Our religious beliefs are often quite disparate. Yet, although we walk different paths, we do so in harmony with one another. We connect - often deeply - on a spiritual level. And it is through our spirituality that we become more than just a community. We become a family.

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Fear and Propaganda
By Axiom

With the rise of Christianity to dominance within the West, Paganism fell out of favour and under threat. For the last 1800 years practitioners of the old faiths have found themselves persecuted and forced into conversion. Often public ostrasization, torture, exile, and death were used to pressure people into reneging their covenants with the old gods. Much of what was once used is still in existence today....
Extract from Myth, Magic and Madness

Whispers in the Dark
Reader submission by Jane R.

At times, the voice of my god is deafening - I hear her at every moment, notice her in everything I see. It is easy to believe when the evidence is talking within your very being. At those times I do not count faith as a matter of great effort. No harder than breathing, it just exists.

But there are other times when her call fades to a whisper - and those when it seems to falter. Then I find myself wondering, is it that my hearing is overwhelmed by my fear, disbelief, or insecurity? Or is it that at those times I truly hear what is there - the sound of silence?
Extract from Editorials

Child Sacrifice?
By Axiom

For all our vaunted intellegence, we live in a very ignorant time. I think it's the contrast of vast knowledge and ignorant paranoia that makes it so hard. We have so much knowledge available from so many sources - East and West, and everything in between. Many of us have the freedom to learn about philosophy, metaphysics, great literature, and humanities like never before, and yet is seems that so many decide not to avail themselves of what people have fought and died to attain. Instead, they wallow in ignorant propaganda, gleefully collecting and spreading it about.
Extract from Crossroads of the Pagans

Worshipping the Underworld
By Nokomis Dream & Anne S.

...So when you ask why I might choose to write about something so scary and dark as chthonic gods and the Underworld, I respond by asking what is there to be afraid of? Let us consider which gods contain chthonic elements within their natures....
Extract from Holidays Around the World

Spirituality from the Dark Side
   

With the Vernal Equinox, the solar eclipse, and the New Moon there is a lot of lunar energy floating about right now - and much of it is focused upon the shadow paths. The images featured in this issue look at life from the shadows - whether it's sibling murder (aka Romulus) or worshipping Hekate. Take a walk in the dark with us.

Akitu and the Festival of Inanna
By Anne S.

Overall, the festival of Akitu is surrounded by the festivals of Inanna, and I think this is an important feature to be considered in any understanding of the Akitu. It is a time to observe death and resurrection, to cleanse and purify, to renew the fertility of the land and the people, and to honour the sacrifice of the gods to create and preserve humanity. Inanna, the great Queen of Heaven, the god of love, war, and fertility, is the fulcrum about which it all turns. It may be Marduk who destroys Tiamat, but it is Inanna who overcomes death herself, who brings her lover back from the Underworld. She is the gate through which we are able to be reborn.
Extract from Festivals and Holidays

To Follow a Dream
Reader submission by Lisa Guthrie

...As an adult I am better at understanding my dreams, more in tune with their often hidden messages and passages to the soul. I have learned to listen as the Goddess speaks to me. Many nights over the past several months I have drifted into sleep, deep in thought, while I contemplated my life and the path that I was taking. As the moon waxed toward full on Monday night, January 17, 2005, I had a dream.

I stand in the field behind my home, looking up to the early morning sky. I feel the dew on the new grass against my bare feet and the faint sweet smell of the cut hay still lingers on a slight breeze....
Extract from Tools of the Trade

Artwork

Share your visual or written art with the community - guidelines can be found in the Submissions Guide

From the Desk of
Albineus Equinus

Welcome to the latest edition of The Pagan Heart.

Our magazine keeps growing - I'd like to take a moment to welcome all our new readers. And to thank those of you who've begun contributing articles and letters. Your input is helping us to create a magazine that truly reflects our diverse community.

I am beginning to feel that spring is really here at last - the equinox last month was a glorious reaffirmation of faith for my family - I hope those of you who celebrated it found it to be similarly wonderful. I have felt a shift since the equinox - the energies around me are in a state of flux, and the earth seems to be "waiting", preparing to shrug.

For me, this has resulted in changes to my abilities - I am finding that I have both less control over my energy, and greater skill - quite a mix. Formal ritual is not working for me right now, but if I simply go with the flow, things explode into action. I am thinking this may have something to do with the astrological state we are entering. A few issues ago Axiom mentioned the ending of a time of great selfishness and an international spiritual shift towards a more enlightened state.

Considering what some of our world leaders are doing at this time, I hope this is true. I would like to see enlightenment reach the political stage, for the way it is going scares me.

On the personal level, however, I think I am experiencing what she was talking about. Not that I am a greatly enlightened man. But I am finding my spiritual awareness increasing. My meditation is easier yet so much more intense. And I "get" a lot more things metaphysically than I did even a few months ago.

How about you? Are you noticing changes? Wouldn't it be wonderful if worldwide we really are changing, bringing in a new era of conscious mindfulness?

In light and love,
Albi
Managing Editor
   

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