Paganism

Rosemary Kooiman, 77, a self-described witch who won the legal right to perform pagan weddings in Virginia, died March 5 of a heart attack at her home in Laurel, Md. Kooiman, a retired government worker and high priestess of a group she founded called the Nomadic Chantry of the Gramarye, sought to marry a Virginia couple in 1998. She was denied a clergy license after a Fairfax County judge ruled that the pagan Wicca group did not qualify as a religious organization. A judge in Alexandria, Va.

It was no surprise that Los Angeles Verbum Dei standouts Richard Chaney and Tai Turner turned in big performances Friday during the Eagles' Southern Section Division IV-A boys' basketball championship game. But Michael Pagan? A 5-foot-7 point guard who couldn't sleep the night before because of derogatory comments about him on the Internet? A little-known sophomore who said he had "dinosaurs" in his stomach because he was nervous?

College professor Nguyen Ngoc Hung had spent nearly three decades searching for the remains of his brother, who died at age 20 fighting U.S. troops. Hung had scoured battlefields in Vietnam's Central Highlands and talked to military commanders and pored through archival records, always coming up empty-handed. Finally, in desperation, he went to a psychic here and explained his grief. "This is easy," Pham Thi Hang said. "I can help."

A Senate Republican leadership aide in Washington and a conservative political group are circulating a harsh "open letter" that says Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis is not really a Christian, calling him an "apostate" and a "pagan" who uses his membership in the Greek Orthodox Church "as just a convenient (political) prop."

From descriptions of the nighttime ritual and objects in thehouse, it appears that Federico Padres Mexia was not part of an identifiable religious movement, according to people familiar with various spiritual traditions. Rather, he appeared to combine religious practices from Christianity and folk, or neo-pagan, beliefs that might appeal to struggling people seeking to change their luck.

I need a word of reassurance. Please tell me that Janet Phelan's Social Climes column entitled "Pagan Rituals" (Oct. 4) was a tongue-in-cheek look at a support group for people who were deprived of participating in Halloween as children and feel the need to act out some type of cosmic fantasy as adults. Honestly, these people cannot be serious, can they? I mean, glass wands filled with dirt for healing and the "Goddess Guild." Oh, and hey, check out the crowd this place draws--witches, psychics--and, of course, what would a pagan coffeehouse be without your token college philosophy professor?

Aleksei Fedorchenko's beautiful "Silent Souls" finds ancient pagan rituals thriving in the modern world; the film is a rich, sensual contemplation of the relationship between life and death. Set in western-central Russia, a region of vast open spaces settled by the Merjas, an ancient Finno-Ugric people, 400 years ago, the film tells the story of Aist (Igor Sergeyev) and Miron, two friends who embark on a journey to bury Miron's wife Tanya (Yuliya Aug) according to Merja traditions.

It takes exceptionally fluid performances to maneuver through the intricate, emotional steps of "Dancing at Lughnasa," Brian Friel's achingly eloquent memory play about an impoverished rural Irish family facing a pivotal end-of-summer harvest season in 1936. Ventura's Rubicon Theatre Company proves up to the challenge, with a stellar cast that evokes a bygone era in a foreign land with convincing naturalism.

Maryland archeologists digging at the ancient city of Caesarea in Israel have uncovered the foundations of King Herod's celebrated temple, dating from the 1st Century B.C. The temple is the pagan counterpart to Herod's widely acclaimed temple to the Jewish God in Jerusalem. The size of the stone-block foundation, which measures about 100 feet by 180 feet, indicates that the temple was one of the largest in Israel and surrounding countries.

A group of pagans and witches is holding a festival in a rural, deeply religious village, and not everyone is welcoming them. Members of the Reading Pagans and Witches group are holding their Celebrating Earth Spirituality Festival today in a picturesque section of Adamstown known as Stoudtburg Village, about an hour northwest of Philadelphia. Some shop owners say they plan to close for the day because they don't agree with the Reading group's beliefs. A church is organizing a wall of prayer around the festival in protest.