Yet More Bad Press for Wiccans, Witches and Pagans in General
I'm shocked that this one has struck so close to home. This story is from a neighboring city's newspaper. Apparently, two women conspired to kill another for twisted romantic reasons, and chose her death based on the Pagan religious calendar: they killed her on Imbolc, of all holidays...
It's just more bad press for Pagans in general, I'm afraid, as the tidbit about the killers' professed religion serves no real purpose, and fails to shed any light on their motives or methods. The murder apparently occurred in 2004; I'm surprised that I haven't heard anything about it before now.
Here's the whole, sordid mess, should you choose to read it. How depressing...
Some of the comments below the article are from Pagans who rightfully (in my ever so humble opinion) feel that the mention of Wicca is inflammatory and entirely unnecessary.
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by YarrowSage(the path is changing) on -
I agree with the comments that were left on the site, it's not even so much that the comment was inflammatory (which it is), but rather that nothing about this supposed "significant" day is explained from the suspect's interpretation of them, or from any kind of fact. So what if these events occurred on Imbolc; they don't even try to explain why imbolc would have been important for anything like this to happen. There isn't any kind of education on the holiday at all, something they shouldn't be able to get away with.
It's really just very lazy writing and I don't know how the hell this got past an editor's desk. It's moments like these that really annoy me; if this had been done to just about any other religion that has some main stream acceptance, there would be a fire storm and this site would be apologizing from its arse. Also, wasn't Feb. 1st the super bowl? Why wasn't that seen as important? I know many people who get seven different kinds of nuts on that day...even after excluding family members. How depressing indeed Eishexe, but still something for us to see and think about.
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Permalink Reply by Chris Barnes (Barny Boo) on -
This is very depressing and I feel for Snows family. I agree with YarrowSage this article has not in the slightest had any Pagan research done before writing it let alone Wiccan (except for maybe the last two lines of the reed) and it does seem to be more about Pagan hatred rather than the murder case - which it should be about. Utter disgrase. This writer should be ashamed of their 'work'.
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Permalink Reply by Rachel Ann (EisHexe) on
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Unfortunately, this is the norm as far as scholarship in our local papers goes. But I have to say that this is one of the worst stories I've seen in a while. I hate to sound paranoid, but the way it's written really seems to be a religious jab. Like it's saying, "Oh, yeah. Look at how these people really are!" It's just so ugly... Every religion has its nutcases and fruit loops, but I really do feel like we, as a minority religious group (though we are still growing at an unprecedented rate) don't get any good press. Every time I see the word Wicca in the news, it's because of something ugly like this. The stories are never uplifting or inspirational, they're never about real Pagans. They're always about the crackpots.
Chris Barnes said:This is very depressing and I feel for Snows family. I agree with YarrowSage this article has not in the slightest had any Pagan research done before writing it let alone Wiccan (except for maybe the last two lines of the reed) and it does seem to be more about Pagan hatred rather than the murder case - which it should be about. Utter disgrase. This writer should be ashamed of their 'work'.
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Permalink Reply by Chris Barnes (Barny Boo) on
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I think in many cases it is just that people don't understand and for that reason they assume that it's wrong. We are all guity of this at some point in our lives for one reason or another. I myself jumped to the assumption that satanism was a bad religion because it is 'anti-christian' and, whereas I have utmost respect anyone who worships christ, I'm not in the slightest bit mainstream in my beliefs. We all make mistakes. It's a part of life. Without which we won't learn SO many lessons. But yes I agree they do seem to be picking on the crackpots.
