GROUP UPDATES

Hello everyone.

Since this group was started a few years ago, over time both the owner and the other admins have slowly disappeared. The current moderators have limited availability. While we do keep up on the group, we're also a bit slow at times too.

To help streamline submissions, doing the following will GREATLY help us out, and thus help your submissions get processed faster. PLEASE read the below.

DOES YOUR SUBMISSION MEET THE CRITERIA OF THE GROUP?

As a refresher here's the definition of paganism: "a religion that has many gods or goddesses, considers the earth holy". All posts related to the monotheistic Abrahamic traditions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) will be rejected. Posts relating to Satanism are also rejected. This group focuses on religions that have a multitude of deities, and were worshipped in the ancient past and are being revived, or in rare cases had an uninterrupted flow of religious practice through the present day.

Art is subjective, lots of people submit pictures of a pretty forest, but what does that pretty forest mean to you? This also applies to crafts, how is it an expression of PAGANISM versus your love of dressing up in fantasy clothes, or participating in the Society of Creative Anachronism? When I review submissions I want to know that the artist isn't just trying to get as many eyeballs on their work as possible, but that they thoughtfully considered how their piece fits our community. How does it represent your PAGAN religious practices? If we can't tell, odds are it will be rejected.

GOTHIC does NOT EQUAL PAGAN. Similarly, STEAMPUNK does not equal pagan. You depicted the Goddess Hel in a Gothic way? You wanted to make a steampunk style necklace of the Wiccan symbol? That's awesome. But sending us artwork that's just Gothic, or Steampunk in general, and not pagan specific will be rejected.

Pop cultural representations of deities, mythological creatures, etc. will be rejected, as there's so many other groups out there for that content. Please submit your Thor and Loki artwork, but leave Marvel's Thor and Loki out. Disney's Tinkerbell doesn't belong in our Faerie Realm. This also applies to fantasy books, games, etc. that's not to say that if you have an anime/manga drawing style that your original depiction of content would not be welcome. But this isn't a club for fanart. This distinction was made because we want to keep a clear delineation that paganism is a RELIGIOUS PRACTICE and LIFESTYLE, not just fans of a consumable entertainment media (tv, film, books, comics, games, etc.) having fun.

ALSO, as we have a range of ages following the group we will not accept any submission that features nudity UNLESS it has the mature content tag on the artwork. Failure to do so is an automatic rejection.


WHEN SUBMITTING CLEARLY IDENTIFY IT'S PAGAN THEMES

All submissions should be CLEAR in their title and/or description on HOW they are representative of actual pagan religious practices and lifestyle. If the admins have any doubt your piece will be rejected.

Paganism is a very broad, wide, umbrella. Don't make me google your submissions so I can figure out HOW it fits in at our group. Be clear in either the title of your work or description: such as Norse God Odin, Slavic Mythological Creature Alkonost. Divination Ogham Cards, Ostara Altar, Leather Pouch with Norse God Thor's hammer Mjollnir, etc. Just saying the 'name' of said entity or content isn't always helpful, especially for less well known traditions. Not to mention, because there is such a varying knowledge base I can guarantee someone is learning about new deities and new traditions all the time in this group. We enjoy when someone submits art for a deity we've near heard of before! We love to learn, and many others in the group would value that too.  ^_^


SUBMIT TO THE PROPER FOLDER

Please keep in mind that when you are submitting: the traditional media, digital media, photography, and photomanipulation should be your last resort. See if the subject matter of your submission is a better fit elsewhere first. Do you have a traditional media charcoal sketch of the Goddess Athena? Great, submit it to the Goddesses folder instead.  We know this is almost counter to how many other groups have their folders organized here on DeviantArt.

GODS FOLDER & GODDESSES FOLDER: if your submission features more than one deity and you have both male AND female deities represented, then please submit to the GODS folder. If you have a craft depicting a GODDESSES (maybe you made a statue of the Goddess Morrigan) we'd recommend that you submit that to the GODDESSES folder, before the CRAFTS folder.

The FEATURED FOLDER is dead.

Remember, the front page of the group does have very clear descriptions of EACH folder, take the time to read them.


TEXTUAL SUBMISSIONS

We're sad to say that with limited availability approving textual submissions takes far more time than we have. For that reason we can no longer approve submissions in the POETRY AND PROSE folder. Entries to that folder will be an automatic rejection.

For the SPELLS AND INVOCATIONS folder, as well as any textual submissions to the RITUALS folder we will try as time and availability permits to review those submissions.

TIMED OUT SUBMISSIONS

Sometimes it can be several days, or even a couple of weeks before we have a chance to get online and check all of the group's pending submissions. If an item times out, but we can clearly tell it's Pagan connection we'll send a message to the artist requesting approval to add it to our group. Please don't keep re-submitting artworks. It just bogs down the process.


WEEKLY TOP FOUR NOMINATION INFORMATION
On the front page of the group, there's information about the weekly top four nomination information, and membership spotlights. This is one of the aspects of the group that is officially dead.

IN CONCLUSION

Sorry that was so long winded, but we were trying to be as clear as possible, so that we can collectively help streamline the process a bit so I can get through the review of submissions faster, and everyone else understands what things slow it down, or may not be a perfect fit here. As the old saying goes, the devil is in the details.