Skip to main content

Hooray! Deo's Shadow Returns

In case you missed it, after a five month hiatus, Deo's Shadow is back!

Deo's Shadow has no competition in the world of Pagan talk podcasting. (In the world of Pagan musical podcasting, I must put in a word for Jason Pitzl-Waters' A Darker Shade of Pagan, a really professional mix of "Pagan Sounds from the Underground"; and more and more Pagans have already discovered the high-quality Pagan news commentary of Jason's Wild Hunt blog.)

A long hiatus from Deo's Shadow was disappointing, of course. Still, it's no surprise--full time graduate school has competed with the unpaid work of running a talk show for the Pagan community, and is likely to continue to do so. Alas! The price of having such articulate and intelligent hosts is that Deo and Mandy have lives beyond the podcast. Go figure.

Given the hiatus, a good deal of this return episode is a discussion of the ins and outs of running a Pagan podcast and managing relationships with a sometimes ornery and demanding Pagan public. (Someday I will figure out why doing something for free makes so many people think they are entitled to you continuing to do it, for free, and with bigger and better product. Is this just a Pagan thing? I haven't encountered it yet in the Quaker world, but I bet this demon lurks in that community, too...) So, if you're not yet a fan of the show, I'd recommend starting your addiction with an earlier episode. (I'm especially fond of the show which features an interview with Gus DiZerega, the show which featured the Dragon Ritual Drummers, and the somewhat controversial discussions of firepit behavior at Pagan gatherings.

Though for fans, and for those of us who have also experienced that special category of hostility that the Pagan community reserves for those who offer real labors of love free of charge, the current episode is well worth a listen as well. And Deo and Mandy give the folks behind "The Secret" the benefit of a little critical thinking (in more ways than one) as well.

Apparently more content is on the way--a continuation of the interview with Dr. Brendan Myers, and some material from discussions on the Deo's Shadow forum are both in process. I've got my fingers crossed that more episodes come out soon--and plenty of suggestions for future interviews, in case Deo and Mandy ever run short of material. Meanwhile, I'm just glad to welcome them back, and blessed be!

Comments

That was great -listening to Pagans take the bloody Secret apart!

I'm a huge fan of Jason's podcast and download it every Sunday, which is really funny as I'm not a music-mad person, or at least I wasn't.
Love,
Terri in Joburg
Unknown said…
~wow!! Thanks for the kind words! I stumbled on the blog in a google search - had to take a peek :) Thanks for being so supportive of the show, and yup.. most definitely more coming out! Cheers! ~Mandy (the one from deo's Shadow )

Popular posts from this blog

Peter on Grief and Communities

Well, that was unexpected. For the last year, ever since my mom's health took a sharp downturn, I've been my dad's ride to Florence Congregational Church on Sundays. That community has been important for my dad and the weekly outing with me was something he always looked forward to and enjoyed, so I didn't mind taking him there. It meant giving up attending my own Quaker meeting for the duration, but I had already been questioning whether silent waiting worship was working for me. I was ready for a sabbatical. A month ago, my dad was Section-Twelved into a geriatric psych hospital when his dementia started to make him emotionally volatile. I had been visiting him every day at his assisted living facility which was right on my way home from work, but the hospital was almost an hour away. I didn't see him at all for three weeks, and when I did visit him there, it actually took me a couple of seconds to recognize him. He was slumped forward in a wheel chair, lo...

A Quaker Pagan Day Book: Testimonies and Queries

Pagans often argue about how to define who we are.  What are the boundaries--between Wicca and Witchcraft, between Heathens and Pagans, between polytheists, pantheists, and non-theists...  While I could do without the acrimony, we're a new as well as an old religious movement, so it makes sense that like any adolescent, we are fascinated by questions of identity. I will admit to preferring the Quaker approach to identity, though: rather than trying to create the definitive checklist of belief that make someone a "real Quaker," Friends typically share a body of testimonies and questions for reflection with those who are drawn to the Religious Society of Friends. "Do you feel this same sort of spiritual leading?" Friends ask one another.  "Does this speak to the condition of your soul, as it does to ours?" Queries, not checklists of doctrine, hold the ways Quakers approach discernment, including around membership.  And though no individual can declar...

Red in Tooth and Claw

When Nora, Peter's grandmother, lived with us , our household was the nucleus of an active local Pagan community. Over time, dementia eroded more and more of Nora's ability to retain anything she learned about in the present, so she wound up discovering again and again that she was living in a family of Pagans. Over and over, we would have made some reference to our Paganism, and Nora, having forgotten about it for the time being, would ask us to explain again what it was we believed. We would explain, yet again, about all of life being sacred to us, and nature being the source of our inspiration. Each time we did this, we would reach the point in our discussion where she would protest, quoting the line from Tennyson about " Nature, red in tooth and claw ." Nevertheless, we would insist that that was where we looked for the holy, and eventually, she would exclaim (just as she had the time before that): "Well, then, you're all heathens!" When we ...