Houston Pagan Conference May 2013

Blackberry Circle is hosting the Houston Pagan Conference on May 18, 2013, at the Northwoods Unitarian Universalist Church, 1370 North Millbend Drive, The Woodlands, TX 77380.

Final preparations have been made in securing the venue and guest speakers. We are looking for folks who would like to speak or present at the conference. If this interests you, please read the Call for Papers below.

A CALL FOR PAPERS

Magic and the Search for the Divine

A belief in magic as a means of influencing the world appears to have been common in all cultures. Some of these beliefs crossed over into emerging religions giving influence to their religious celebrations. Over time, religiously-based supernatural events (”miracles”) acquired their own flavor, separating themselves from standard magic. Some modern religions such as Wicca, NeoPagan, Asatru, or Heathenism embrace connections to magic, while others retain only echoes of their distant origins.

Papers, presentations, reports, workshops and lectures are invited relating to the issues of magic within the search for the connection with the divine, whether it is in the form of the Gods, Nature, religion or simply the divine self or god-self. Some ideas related to this theme include, but are not restricted to:

~ Divinity’s place in magic
~ Magic and its relationship to religion (various or single religion)
~ Magic as a conduit to the Divine
~ History of Magic
~ Foundations of Magic

A 300-500 word abstract should be submitted to the committee by 31 December 2012. If an abstract is accepted for the conference, a full draft paper should be submitted by 31 March 2013. The abstracts may be in Word, Rich Text, or text formats. If one of these formats are not available to you we will consider PDF or simply copy and paste it into you email, but only if one of the three formats are not available to you.

Each submission will be in the following format:

a) author(s)
b) affiliation (if any)
c) email address
d) title of abstract
e) body of abstract

Please use plain text (Times Roman 12) and abstain from using footnotes and any special formatting, characters or emphasis (such as bold, italics or underline). We will acknowledge receipt and answer to all paper proposals submitted. If you do not receive a reply from us in seven (7) days you should assume we did not receive your proposal and we suggest, you look for an alternative electronic route or resend.

All submissions should be emailed to paper_submission AT houstonpaganconference.com.

Information will be updated as it comes in at http://www.houstonpaganconference.com/.