Word: paganisms
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...Wicca. The modern witch sees the year as a great wheel, with a cycle of eight festivals that fall on the solstices, the equinoxes, and certain points at the heights of seasons. Samhain or the Hallows is still the most important one, the New Year celebration of the pagan cycle...
...collision between Catholic faith and morals on the one hand and Masai tradition on the other is spectacular. Perhaps the flies had come to seem to Davis the outward sign of the devil's presence here in the Masai enk'ang, home of polygamists and breezy pagan fornicators. But the goat was an ancient symbol of the devil. The theology was confusing. Perhaps Davis merely intended to endow one fly-free little life in the dense air of the boma...
...visitor had decided, in vague tracery, that the gazelle's grace was associated in the Masai mind with God's grace, a profound though punning link, and that by eating of the flesh of the gazelle, the Masai thought to partake of the grace of God. A pagan chinging of the altar bells, a transubstantiation...
Despite that ideal, the Pope's audience was aware that Assisi symbolically went well beyond the ceremonial friendship accorded other faiths by any previous Pontiff. The assemblage included not only monotheists but believers in creeds once labeled "heathen" and "pagan" by a church that for centuries had preached unambiguously that there was no salvation outside its walls. The astonishing variety of the invited group also raised suspicions among some Christians that Assisi represented a heretical step toward syncretism, the amalgamation of various conflicting religions. For this reason, U.S. Fundamentalist Gadfly Carl McIntire branded the meeting the "greatest single abomination...
...attack in the air reflected an increasing sense of anarchy in southern Sudan, which the rebels have virtually severed from the rest of the country. Since 1983 the insurgents have violently resisted efforts of the Muslim-dominated government in Khartoum to impose its customs on the Christian and pagan south. Led by John Garang, a Christian from the Dinka tribe, the rebels have especially chafed against the "September laws" of former President Gaafar Nimeiri. Imposed in September 1983, the Islamic laws have been applied with unusual severity to all Sudanese, whatever their religion. In 1984 alone, hundreds of people, including...