Buzz Coil: October

We’re buzzing about what is for some of us our most important holiday, and the related topic of death:

UPDATE Oct. 25: Daily Kos: "The War Against Halloween: The Christian Right Strikes Again" by iriswitch; a strong serious diary about lies some Christians tell about this holiday, with many links to get you angry.

Pagan Godspell: Sara Sutterfield Winn writes America a tongue-in-cheek letter about what she considers "the lack of respect given to Halloween" in her Oct. 11 post, "The War on Halloween." In a longy-but-goody Oct. 8 post, "On Breathing Out My Darkness," she contemplates the necessity of darkness and includes her partial rewrite of a Brazilian folktale.

Branches Up, Roots Down: In her Oct. 11 post, "the veil gets thinner," Deborah Oak reflects on the role death has played – and is likely to play – in her life.

Mother of Willows: This blog has a new url: motherofthewillows.blogspot.com. In his Oct 9 post, "And when we die, " Peter Schogol ponders death and concludes that our beliefs influence what we experience when we die.

The Wild Hunt: Jason Pitzl-Water's Oct. 17 post, on "The Business and Controversy of Halloween" has links to a number of different points-of-view.

Evoking the Goddess: In his Oct. 18 poist, "Where the fae are tangible," blogger Paul ponders the relationship between "the call of wild places," particularly in Brighid’s Isles (such as northeast England and Highland Scotland) and Halloween’s popularity.

At Brigid’s Forge: Lunaea Weatherstone’s "blogue" has several seasonal posts. Among them, "Halloween Sparklies" on Oct. 15, about a dozen new Goddess Rosaries she’s made, and "Season of the Witch" on Oct. 5 about putting up her Samhain decorations.

We’re also buzzing about other concerns:

Broomstick Chronicles: M. Macha NightMare writes about what happened when she tried to bring up "the topic of the feminine divine" at an interfaith event in California to which she had been invited as a Pagan in her Oct. 1 post, "Holy Convergence."

Goddess in a Teapot: In Blogger Carolyn Lee Boyd’s Sept. 22 post on how celebrating the "Sacred Feminine" helps people heal from violence, she writes:

Quite simply, when we grow up in a culture that considers Divinity to be exclusively male, as women, we must readjust our thinking to honor our female selves as being sacred. Once we see ourselves as sacred, we begin to understand that violence is never deserved.

Flashes of Insight: In her recently-started blog, Flash Silvermoon writes in her Oct. 9 post about participating in a Yoriba drum circle during a power outage one night in Florida in "African Rhythms/Drumming With the Orishas." In her Oct.8 post, "Dancing with Orisha/Yemonja," Flash tells about her participation in the previous night’s "28th Year Celebration of Yemonja" in Florida.

Hecate: In her Oct. 8 post, "Oddly When You Spend A Generation Acting Like A Bunch of Asses, Young People Grow Up Disliking You," blogger Hecate writes about young people’s disillusion with "xtianity" due to the change of the version of this religion that has come to dominate in the USA in the last 10-20 years. A real good think piece!

The Wild Hunt: "Is Paganism A Major Religion?" Jason Pitzl-Waters asks in his Oct. 20 post, responding to Marshall University’s announcement that it now excuses absences for Pagan holidays due to the finding that Paganism is practiced by a sufficient number of people to be considered a "major religion."

Did we miss an item you think is important? We’d like to know about it, so please leave it as a comment.