Coming to the Center Hosts Jo Carson

Saturday, May 20 at 3:00 PM ET US

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Pagan priestess Jo Carson seeks to create positive visions of the future through Feraferia, A Love Culture for Wilderness. She is Chair of the Board of Feraferia, which she joined in 1972. She also holds the rank of 7th Degree in the Order of the Temple of Astarte, having been initiated in 1970. She was active in a Reclaiming-inspired Wiccan circle called Eye of the Crescent for 17 years.

Jo holds a Masters’ Degree from UCLA in film production, and her professional life has included camera work on many feature films. She directed and produced the documentary feature Dancing With Gaia: Earth Energy, Sacred Sexuality and the Return of the Goddess, plus documentary shorts A Dance for the Goddess about Feraferian rites, and Himalayan Pilgrimage: A Visionary Journey. She authored Celebrate Wildness: Magic, Mirth and Love on the Feraferian Path, an introduction to Feraferia through art. She is currently working on a Feraferia Tarot deck and book.

 

Coming to the Center Hosts Ronald Hutton

Saturday, January 28 at 3:00 PM ET US

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Professor Ronald Hutton is both esteemed and beloved far and wide in the international Pagan community.

He was the keynoter for Cherry Hill Seminary’s first joint symposium with the University of South Carolina in 2013 (Sacred Lands Spiritual Landscapes) and has served on the CHS Advisory Committee since.

An English history professor specialising in Early Modern Britain, British folklore, pre-Christian religion and Contemporary Paganism, Hutton is the author of some 15 books, numerous articles, and has appeared on British television and radio, as well as being a regular conference speaker.

Hutton is a professor at the University of Bristol, was a Commissioner for English Heritage for 12 years, and recently was appointed Gresham Professor of Divinity for Gresham College, London’s oldest Higher Education Institution.

Cherry Hill Seminary Graduate Ordained to Unitarian Universalist Ministry

Photo courtesy of Karen LeBlanc.

Columbia, S.C. — Cherry Hill Seminary is proud to announce that alumna Rev. Karen LeBlanc, M.Div. was officially ordained as a Unitarian Universalist minister and installed as the settled minister to the First Unitarian Church in New Bedford, Massachusetts in a special service held Sunday, October 30.

Members of the congregation, clergy colleagues, officials from the Unitarian Universalist Association, friends and family all gathered to recognize Rev. LeBlanc’s achievements and charge her with her chosen vocation. Congregational President Steve Carmel stated, “Within the Unitarian Universalist religious movement the authority to confer ordination lies wholly with the local church. It is a meaningful and joyous occasion when a congregation joins together, as we have, to recognize one who has chosen the ministry as her life’s work.”

Highlights of the ceremony included the traditional laying on of hands by all present, the gift of a custom-made ministerial stole, and performances of music by the church Music Director Randy Fayan. To view the entire service, including remarks by Rev. Woullard Lett of the Unitarian Universalist Association.

After the ceremony, Rev. LeBlanc said, “I am experiencing a whole new kind of joy right now. I thank everyone who helped get me here, and I certainly wouldn’t have had this opportunity to serve without the education I got at Cherry Hill Seminary.” She further noted that half of the offering collected at the service would be given to Cherry Hill Seminary.

LeBlanc earned her Master of Divinity in 2019 from Cherry Hill Seminary. The Seminary Academic Dean Margo Wolfe said, “A quality seminary education is the bridge between the academic and the spiritual, the mind and the heart. It allows for that liminal space to sit with our own faith and see how it fits within the multiplicities of the many. Those who attain this level of learning through divinity degree programs and ordination can provide that instruction, but also the comfort to others as they find their own path.”

Cherry Hill Seminary is the leading provider of education and practical training in leadership, ministry, and personal growth in Pagan and Nature-Based spiritualities for more than fifteen years. For more information contact CHS@cherryhillseminary.org, 803-862-9088.

Coming to the Center Hosts Caroline Tully

Saturday October 22 at 7:00 PM ET US

or Sunday October 23 at 10:00 AM in Australia

Click to register for this free livestream event

Nature, Shamanism and Psychoactive Drugs in Cretan Bronze Age Religion: What kind of religious activities were practised in the Bronze Age Aegean? Through examination of ancient Minoan visual art, objects and texts, Caroline will explain how aspects of Minoan religion can be considered shamanistic.

Caroline Tully, P.h.D., is a Pagan, Witch, and Archaeologist. Her interests include ancient Mediterranean religions, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Thelema and contemporary Paganisms, particularly Witchcraft and Pagan Reconstructionism. Caroline is an expert on Egyptomania and the religion of Minoan Crete. She is the author of The Cultic Life of Trees in the Prehistoric Aegean, Levant, Egypt and Cyprus (Peeters 2018), and many academic and popular articles. Caroline has curated exhibitions of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman antiquities, and regularly presents lectures and workshops on ancient religion and magic. See her work at: Academia and at her blog:  Necropolis Now