Tag Archives: Shauna Aura Knight

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PMP: Sex, ethics and abuse in the magickal world

KaliSara and RevKess attempted to tackle a very difficult topic tonight, especially in light of the recent news that one of the Pagan community’s most well known elders has been arrested and charged with 25 counts of possession of child pornography. Yes, that topic. The one that is on everyone’s minds and lips right now. Kenny Klein, author, musician, teacher and friend to many has apparently let the community down. He was arrested on Tuesday 25 March 2014 at his home in New Orleans.

Joining your hosts for the show were Shauna Aura Knight, who is becoming a regular contributor to PMPChannel, and Taylor Ellwood of Immanion Press / Megalithica Books. Shauna is an author, artist, and workshop facilitator. Taylor is an author and the editor-in-chief of Immanion’s non-fiction section.

RELATED LINKS

  • Oddly enough, back in late October 2013, Shauna Aura Knight wrote an article for PaganActivist.com covering the topics of sex and ethics in the Pagan world.
  • T Thorn Coyle on her blog Know Thyself speaks to the issues of abuse and ethics in a recent posting, as well as shares two stories of Kenny Klein and makes reference to a series she wrote in 2009 on Gavin and Yvonne Frost (Pt 1, Pt 2, Pt 3).
  • Cara Schulz PNC-Minnesota was one of the first Pagan media sources to release a story on the Kenny Klein case.
  • Jason Pitzl-Waters of  The Wild Hunt also reported.

MUSIC

  1. Celia – Please Bless This Space – Carry Me Home
  2. Heartbeat – Earth Air Fire Water – Bloodmoon
  3. Lia Scallon – Walk in Beauty – The Luminous Pearl
  4. Jenna Greene – Acceptance – Crossroads
  5. Celia – Metta Prayer – For the Asking

QUOTES from the PAGAN BLOGOSPHERE

  • Taylor Ellwood, writing as the Blog Admin for Immanion Press’s website made this announcement on 27 March 2014: “The Flowering Rod by Pagan Author and Musician Kenny Klein is being pulled from our line of Esoteric Non-Fiction books as a response to the recent news that Kenny Klein has been charged of downloading and sharing child pornography. Mr. Klein has admitted his guilt in this matter, and we do not feel that we can, in good conscience, continue to publish his book. We are removing the book from our line-up effective immediately. At Immanion Press we do not believe in knowingly supporting acts of behavior that violate the Pagan community or how it is represented to the world by our authors. We are committed to publishing books that help the communities we are a part of, but we also believe that any author is a role model and should behave accordingly. We offer our condolences to people who have been effected negatively by this situation or any other actions Mr. Klein has done.”
  • Writing about the core values of Immanion Press, Ellwood had this to say: “Our fourth and final responsibility is to ourselves, to make a reasonable profit in publishing books, while also staying true to our values and to the services we provide the communities we are a part of. Our profit should never come before the service we provide our readers, community, or authors, but rather should come about as a natural result of showing that we genuinely care about the welfare of our readers, community, and creative authors and artists.” Read the rest of the blog posting for the first three core values.
  • Over on Pagan in Paradise, Pagan activist, minister and member of Lady Liberty League, Peter Dybing addressed the topic in much more general terms: “Frankly, those who engage in these power over relationships, based on wealth, status or influence perpetuate their privilege and support the subjugation of women. Even worse they reinforce the idea that societal power and status is an appropriate currency to purchase sexual relationships. Such actions contribute greatly to rape culture in our communities.

    The messages sent to young men are that women are objects to be possessed by those who are successful or influential. Confronting our own privilege means standing up and proclaiming that such power based relationships are not acceptable in our communities.

    […]

    Today I call on my fellow “Old White Guys” to confront these beliefs when you witness them in our collective communities. They represent an abuse of power, a perpetuation of un earned privilege and a disregard of the fundamental human rights of women.”

     

     

     

     

     

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PMP: Hypersensitivity & the Pagan

Shauna Aura Knight joined RevKess and KaliSara for a wonderful discussion of hypersensitivity with a focus on the Pagan world. Relaying anecdotes from personal life, ritual situations, and throwing in some armchair psychology, the three had a rather informative talk about how being hypersensitive to their environment and other contributing factors can learn to move through life with a better understanding of how their selves react to the world.

A term that cropped up once or twice in the conversation was “kinesthetic”. In context of the conversation, Shauna was referring to kinesthetic sense. WikiPedia defines that as

Proprioception, the kinesthetic sense, provides the parietal cortex of the brain with information on the relative positions of the parts of the body. Neurologists test this sense by telling patients to close their eyes and touch their own nose with the tip of a finger. Assuming proper proprioceptive function, at no time will the person lose awareness of where the hand actually is, even though it is not being detected by any of the other senses. Proprioception and touch are related in subtle ways, and their impairment results in surprising and deep deficits in perception and action.

The idea of “micro expressions” was brought up just over half way into the show. If you are a fan of TV dramas then you might be familiar with the show Lie To Me. Taking the idea of “profiling” to the extreme of observing the smallest shifts in body language or facial expressions to better understand the emotional state of the individual. The TV show is based on the work of Dr. Paul Ekman.

Towards the end of the show, the focus shifted to Pagan leadership.

ADDITIONAL LINKS

MUISC

  1. Celia – Everyday Goddess – Breathe
  2. Tuatha Dea – Akasha (featuring Spiral Rhythm) – The Tribe
  3. Dragon Ritual Drummers – Heart Beat – Passage
  4. Damh the Bard – Ever with Me – The Hills They Are Hollow

Unfortunately for our live listeners the live stream ended before the show was over. But they didn’t miss much. Shortly after the top of the hour Shauna and KaliSara both lost their connection and RevKess did a quick wrap up. All three will return on February 2nd for a continued conversation about Pagan Leadership: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

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PMP: Shauna Aura Knight & Leadership

KaliSara has an essay coming out in the Moon Books publication Paganism 101: An introduction to Paganism by 101 Pagans, released February 2014. Her essay is in response to the topic of the Pagan priesthood. She shared her essay on the show while encouraging the listener to pick up a copy for themselves, available in Kindle and paperback.

We dived into a discussion of an idea proposed by Christine Kraemer on her Sermons from the Mound blog on Patheos.com. She proposes that bloggers and commenters sit down to coffee or some such and talk face to face. Great idea, but many bloggers and commenters rarely have the opportunity to do so, most of them living long distances from each other. But it does inspire a good idea…. Instead of spending all our time on Facebook, Twitter or wherever, we should spend time with people. Face to face.

Shauna Aura Knight was supposed to join us on the air, but a scheduling conflict came up which prevented her from doing so. We carried on as best we could without her direct input while discussed some of her recent articles on leadership in the Pagan community. Three articles in particular are available in the series as of show time.

In her Grassroots article, Shauna makes reference and links to an article by Ivo Dominguez Jr on the Pagans&Witches site about being the agent of change. She has also recently published an article on PaganActivist in which she talks about that dreaded idea, “paying for services“, which prompted RevKess to remember an article he wrote on the same topic for Off the Beaten Path.

Music

  1. Kellianna – The Ancient Ones – The Ancient Ones
  2. Cernunnos Rising – The Great World Tree – Urban Druid
  3. Frenchy and the Punk – Catapult to the Highlands – Thread & Stone
  4. SJ Tucker – In the House of Mama Dragon – Haphazard
  5. Omnia – Mercy Seat – Poetree