Post by Joanna on Jul 30, 2014 23:48:05 GMT -5
Margot Adler Dead: Pioneering Pagan Activist, NPR Journalist Dies at 68
Margot Adler, an iconic NPR correspondent and Wiccan priestess, died Monday, July 28, from endometrial cancer at the age of 68.
Born April 16, 1946, Adler began working with NPR as a general assignment reporter in 1979. She reported on many topics and over the decades developed her voice as a journalist who covered far-reaching corners of American life while maintaining a personal commitment to paganism and nature spirituality.
In 1979 Adler wrote Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshipers and Other Pagans in America Today, which became one of the most cited studies of contemporary paganism, and established her position as a leading voice in the American pagan community.
PBS quotes Adler as once saying, “The first time I called myself a 'Witch' was the most magical moment of my life.” As a public figure, Adler was poised to not only report on, but also help shape the neo-pagan community that was nascent at the time she began writing about it.
Adler was also involved in the Unitarian Universalist community and explained her dual faith in a 1996 World Magazine article. In the piece Adler at once described and also helped characterize modern paganism:
A lot of the Pagan movement today, including a lot of the Wicca movement, is based on going back to our ancestors' traditions or creating them anew – since many of these traditions have been lost. It's an attempt to create a vibrant, juicy contemporary culture based on old sources, on what our ancestors were doing, or at least part of what they were doing, or at least a tiny slice of what they were doing thousands of years ago, but it's also an attempt to bring these traditions into contemporary reality, in ways that are in keeping with democracy and freedom.
Source: Atonia Blumberg, The Huffington Post, July 28, 2014.