Heathens, Pagans and Witches discussion

Watkins Books have just published their annual list of the 100 most Spiritually Influential Living People http://www.watkinsmagazine.com/watkin...
What does everyone think of the list? Is there anything in it for Pagans? Who would be in your top 5?

It's an interesting list, but doesn't strike me as being particularly paganish. It strikes me as a best seller list—but I guess that's what they mean by influential.

My personal list wouldn't sound very pagan either, probably—except maybe in an archetypal/mythological/shamanistic/Jungian way. Patrick Harpur, Carl Jung, James Hillman, Joseph Campbell, Demetra George, Liz Greene, Julia Cameron, and the novelist Elizabeth Cunningham. And oops, I couldn't limit myself to five. :-)

What would your top five be, Sarah?

Well the people who first got me thinking about my whole belief system and start to look at the alternatives are Gareth Knight and Phil Rickman!

I read Gareth Knight's book A History of White Magic in the 1990s, and while I was amazed by the depth of information in the book I found it all a bit overwhelming and didn't actually finish the book.

Then a few years later I came across Phil Rickman's novels which enabled me to follow up various individual threads in more palatable chunks - for example mythological figures, local landscape features, spirit of place and so on.

I just finished Rickman's Bones of Avalon and loved loved loved it. I plan on reading much more of him.

But it's funny and wonderful how a novel can bright light to a subject. Elizabeth Cunningham did that for me with her book The Passion of Mary Magdalen, where she did this intricate weaving of pagan goddess belief and Judeo-Christian.

That sounds like an interesting book Peejay.

I think in a novel you can engage with the emotional aspects of a subject through the different characters which as you say can bring a light to it in a way that non-fiction can't.

It's true. I have read nonfiction which really set a fire in my brain but that's a rare thing.