Bartolo Longo takes a more necromantic role The Vatican has officially declared Bartolo Longo a saint, recognising a man who once immersed himself in spiritualism and occult rituals before becoming a pillar of Catholic charity and devotion.  Pope Leo XIV canonised Longo during a ceremony in St Peter’s Square witnessed by 70,000 onlookers, many drawn by the astonishing trajectory of the former law student turned religious icon. Longo was born in 1841 in the town of Latiano in southern Italy. Raised in a Catholic household, his life took a sharp turn when he enrolled at the University of Naples in the 1860s. At that time, spiritualism and anti-clericalism were hot across Europe, and Longo found himself swept up in the intellectual and occult trends of the time.  He participated in séances, spiritist circles, and ritualistic practices that the Church later labelled. He even claimed to have been "ordained" in one of these groups, though it is unlikely that it was a formal Satan...

Russian despot Vladimir Putin has dumped his most loyal witch in jail, even after years of magical devotion and magical support for his regime. Alyona Polyn, 45, known in less enchanted circles as Elena Sulikova, has been sentenced to two years behind bars for “extremism and insulting the feelings of believers.” This, after she organised covens of self-proclaimed witches to cast spells boosting Putin and sending his enemies “back to the abyss.” We are not sure that the intention is correct. Enemies of Putin are unlikely to have come from any abyss. Ukrainian intelligence didn’t see it as harmless hocus pocus. Kyiv’s SBU security service said she was “not only involved in magic and esotericism, but also recruiting new members… outside Russia on the instructions of the FSB.” Her witches were allegedly told to spy on Ukrainian troop movements and feed the data straight to Moscow’s spies. It's unclear when everything went pear-shaped for Polyn. For some reason, the Russian security f...

  Australian pagan singer Wendy Rule [ pictured ] has publicly dumped New Orleans-based self-styled “warlock” Christian Day's Hexfest after he made a repellent crack about starving Palestinians. Despite watching Day hurl online abuse across the Pagan community like a drunken bard, Rule had initially agreed to perform at his Hexfest event next August. Her usual stance is to remain neutral, moving between Pagan factions without kicking off. But that plan went up in smoke this week whena revolting Watchers of the Dawn quote from Day about the plight of those in Gaza surfaced on the WitchesWorkshop page. For those who missed it:   “They can always dine on one another. I'm surprised they haven't eaten the hostages yet.” Given the chance to deny or explain the remark, Day instead clammed up. Rule then sent him a polite email withdrawing from the festival. No contract had been signed and no cash had changed hands. She didn’t explain her decision, having seen Day’s flair for ...

South African doomsday enthusiast and part-time preacher Joshua Mhlakela has once again shuffled the celestial calendar, claiming the “Rapture” is now pencilled in for early October. This comes after his original divine RSVP for 23 or 24 September, which, rather embarrassingly, didn’t go off. Speaking on the Centtwinz TV YouTube channel, Mhlakela bravely addressed the minor inconvenience of the world not ending, confidently announcing that it was all a mix-up between calendars. Jesus is apparently a Julian calendar guy, not a fan of the more widely used Gregorian one. “The 7th and 8th of October is the real Feast of the Trumpets. I’m a billion per cent sure,” he declared, with the same level of certainty one might reserve for misplacing their car keys. Mhlakela explained that after a spiritual debrief with the Almighty, he was told: “Days from now, I will Rapture my church.” Based on his hotline to heaven, the new deadline for Earth’s expiration is 7 or 8 October. No need to cancel ...

Patricia Crowther, one of the last surviving High Priestesses initiated by Gerald Gardner, died yesterday. She was 97. Born Patricia Dawson, she arrived in a household already brushing shoulders with the unseen. Locals claimed she had clairvoyant sensitivities from a young age. A neighbourhood fortune-teller, known as Madame Melba, supposedly encouraged her mother to develop the girl's talents. She took the name Thelema within Craft circles, but her birth name remained tethered to her earliest hauntings. Before she could scry her future, she gave herself to the stage. Singing, dancing and acting all became tools that would one day serve her magical workings. Somewhere in those theatrical years, she crossed paths with a hypnotist who led her through what she later described as past-life regressions. It was a curtain-raiser to the deeper spiritual business to come. In the mid-1950s, she met Arnold Crowther, a stage magician and ventriloquist. Their meeting was chalked up by many as f...

After about 100 years of realising that they should shut the fuck up, Christian Nationalists are crawling out of their holes to demand that anyone who disagrees with their weird take on Christianity (including Jesus) should be burnt at the stake. In a new book,  The Pagan Threat Confronting America's Godless,  Pastor Lucas Miles reckons pagans are coming for your pew and your passport. He says only his Bronze Age certainty can stop them. Miles already penned Woke Jesus: The False Messiah Destroying Christianity . That book says the whole loving and tolerant Christ idea is woke nonsense and claims Jesus would cheer on right-wing Christian Nationalist morals that felt old in the 19th century. Now his latest tome, which will be in the bookshops soon, is more explicit about how much he hates occultism and paganism.  The book is introduced by the caring, sharing man of God, who is apparently now beloved of all, the "unalived" Charlie Kirk. Kirk called Miles a fearless warrior ...

Anyone who had the unlikely event of Marco Visconti and Ike Baker appearing together publically to bury the hatchet on their bingo card can collect.  The pair have been banging each other's heads together in text posts for ages sat down for "face-to-fate" chat in Brian Gathy's  Liminal Currents   vblog to see if they could sort matters out, and much to Watcher of the Dawn 's surprise they did. The conversation focused on a recent outpouring of the pair which followed the Charlie Kirk assassination, both of their reactions , and those of their followers.  Most of it appears to be a break down in communication after Baker posted“Alea iacta est” [the die is cast]. When asked if he was really calling for civil war, he snapped back: “it had already started.” Anti-fascist Italian writer Visconti sparked a storm after accusing broadcaster Baker of echoing far-right rhetoric when he used the phrase Alea iacta est . He argued that in Rome, where he grew up, fascists...