Earlier today (2:50pm 23rd July’12), I had a call on my mobile.. from a lady in Epping Forest area.
She claimed there had been flyers circulating in their area – that pagans are coming to take a local ma and sacrifice in a ritual for Lammas festival. I went a bit intense, and said how ridiculous, and went on to explain my ex-position in the PFL (ex-Events Coordinator) and current Webmaster. I also explained my educational qualification (Physics degree) and said I have a good head on my shoulder, and that we pagans don’t do anything crazy like sacrificing people!
Anyway here’s what she appears to have written – and as usual with Journalists (understandable), only parts of a 15 minute conversation seem to have been written about. But apart from one potential misunderstanding, it looks okay to me.
Funny thing is I have only just seen this online. I thought it was going to be a printed paper later on. In any case, earlier this evening, I had a funny psychic sensation.. almost like an intrusion that I had sensed in the past… and it now makes sense.. It would be the time (4.30pm) when this would have been published online… (I was doing my art blogs then!). Yeap, my `Spider sense’ was tingling…and I now have it calibrated `exactly’ for this sort of thing that touches me!! That’s the biggest favour this event has done for me.
-Mani
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‘ridiculous’ claims of Lammas Day abduction plan
4:29pm Tuesday 24th July 2012 in NewsBy Katie Bamber
PAGANS have dismissed ‘ridiculous’ claims they plan to kidnap a member of the public as part of festivities in Epping Forest next week.
An anonymous leaflet stuffed through letterboxes on Epping High Street on Monday (July 23) warns of a Pagan ‘plan to abduct a male member of the public for use as part of their rituals’.
Pagans traditionally celebrate Lammas Day, the wheat harvest festival, from July 31 to August 1 – the mid-point between summer solstice and autumn equinox.
The 42-year-old has led several Pagan camps at Debden campsite and staged his wedding on the edge of the forest.
He said: “That’s just ridiculous. Nobody is going to catch a man and abduct him. I have got a degree in physics, so I’m not an idiot. Practising Pagans just don’t do that sort of thing.
“I myself have led rituals in forests and I used to tell the police and council – we always do it very carefully and formerly. If anything we just go for walks in the wood.”
Contrary to the leaflet’s claim that next week’s celebrations will involve ‘public nudity, unauthorized fires, sacrifices and heightened risk of kidnapping’, Mr Navasothy said they were likely to entail a ‘drama’-like ritual, with worshippers in masks and costumes acting out the cutting of the first wheat.
“We don’t do animal sacrifices and definitely not people. That would be criminal.”
Simon Webb, the Loughton-based author of Unearthing London: The Ancient World Beneath the Metropolis , said Epping Forest had been used by worshippers of Pagan gods since the Neolithic period.
“The main road from the Neolithic flint mines in Norfolk to London passed straight through Epping Forest and straight through Waltham Abbey,” said Mr Webb, 58.
“Travellers worshipped half-human, half-horned goats and took symbols of their religion with them.
“There are old roads leading through the forest made by Celts. They’re called ‘green lanes’, and they were used as old trackways.”
Mr Webb confirmed Epping Forest was still a draw for practising Pagans: “Not far from the Wake Arms roundabout, there’s a clearing with lots of symbols carved into the trees. You’ll also find traces of fires that have been burning there.
“I don’t doubt for a moment that on Lammas Day there will be people lighting fires and dancing round naked in Epping Forest,” he added.
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