Witches & Pagans – It’s what you’ve been waiting for!

So a little while ago I posted letting everyone know that newWitch and PanGaia were expecting a baby! Shortly thereafter Witches & Pagans, the love child of BBI Media’s newWitch and PanGaia magazines, was born. And it was a wonderful occasion to be celebrated for sure!

Like I said in the past, I loved both newWitch and PanGaia. I was an avid reader of both and have saved every issue of newWitch that was ever published (they’re all in a nice big plastic file box at my book shelves, and yes, I do actually refer back to them). And I did lament the loss of it, even though I was never in the demographic for it. I also have always enjoyed PanGaia and the thought of the two coming together to create something new was exciting.

Late last week my copy of the premiere issue of Witches & Pagans arrived and like the giddy geeky Witch I am I tore open the package and started reading right away. This issue, as a first issue, is very strong and should draw in a lot of readers and should definitely quell the fears of any PanGaia readers who were worried that the absorbing of the newWitch audience would lessen the quality of material in the new rag. This is a great balance of the two and, I think, will do a few great things. It will bring some more serious and thought provoking material to the newWitch audience and show the PanGaia audience that some of the younger Pagans that are up and coming have a lot to offer the community.

As I’d mentioned in my previous post, Witches & Pagans will publish 4 times a year with each issue having a central theme. This first issue was “the faery issue”. On the Witches & Pagans site they have the themes for each issue planned through 2011 (me thinks I’m going to need to sit down and write some things to send in…hehe). Witches & Pagans has absorbed staff from both previous publications so many of the writers and contributers will be familiar to long time readers of the previous publications. In this first issue there is a fantastic interview with S.J. Tucker and a wonderful interview of R.J. Stewart done by T. Thorn Coyle, something that I thought was fantastic, one faery trailblazer interviewing another. The Wandering Witch column from newWitch has remained and tackles Renaissance Festivals. There is a great piece on the origins of the Celtic faery faith and a number of articles written from a variety of view points and places of experience on the faeries, from working with them to the simple belief in them. This issue truly becomes a guide for anyone interested in the fae and the faith and practices that surrounds them.

The overall feel of the magazine, to me, is a more grown up version of newWitch. It’s as though newWitch turned 28 and is about to approach 30 as apposed to just turning 21. There are hints of PanGaia with some of the other more intellectually geared pieces, but overall I still feel a strong newWitch connection. And with the inclusion of things like the “Good Witch/Bad Witch” column from newWitch, a personal favorite of mine, but not including the debate/opposing views column that ran in PanGaia, I could see this being a little isolating to some. The visual appearance has a less “cutesy graphic” feel than newWitch and seems to be more like PanGaia in that regard, which adds to the “we’re growing up” feel. And it was nice to see that in the “Give & Take” (i.e. Letters to the Editor) column they did a great job of wrapping up things from the last issues of the preview two magazines.

Personally, I love this. This was a great idea to save two the best of two great individual publications that needed to evolve. I am positive that there will be people from the readership of both newWitch and PanGaia that will not be happy with the transition, but you can’t please everyone. Overall I think this is magazine will not only keep the better portion of the previous readers but I’m sure will pull in a good number of new readers that may have found PanGaia too Pagan and newWitch too young and “Witchy”.

Get out there and get this! It’s what you’ve been waiting for!