Essays on pagan
On a winter’s evening in 1967, I drove crosstown in San Francisco to hear Anton Szandor LaVey lecture at an open meeting of the Sexual Freedom League. I was attracted by newspaper articles describing him as “the Black Pope” of a Satanic church in which baptism, wedding, and funeral ceremonies were dedicated to the Devil. […]
Siren is a legendary sea nymph whose song charmed sailors and led them to destruction. Siren is the darkly,lethal,destructive figure. And also supernatural. She is not a Christian figure. She is a pagan culture figure. Opposite to Christianity and immortal. Siren charmed sailor. Charm meaner reasonable limitation also great power within that battle between sexes […]
In Anne Orthwood’s Bastard, John Ruston Pagan focuses our attention on the legalities surrounding a single case of out-of-wedlock pregnancy in seventeenth-century Virginia. Prosecutions for fornication and premarital pregnancy were common matters in early modern courts in Virginia, British North America, and England. Through Pagan’s narrative, this seemingly routine case gains significance for early American […]
