At the beginning of this year, we discussed at our fourth meeting what we would like to do this year with our new Disability Network. We quickly agreed: we would like to organise activities!

Newsletter

One of our good intentions is a digital newsletter. This newsletter will appear irregularly: only if we have something interesting to report. This year we expect to send about 4 newsletters.

The first newsletter was sent in the first week of February. Do you want to read the newsletter immediately? Sign up here! :-)

(Please be aware the newsletter is written in Dutch. At this moment we aren’t able to provide translations into English. On the other hand, if we receive enough questions for an English version, we will make it happen.)

Shift

At the online meetings, our attention has shifted more and more from sharing our personal experiences to making the pagan and heathen communities more accessible. The participants present are experienced advocates who like to use their knowledge to make a difference. For example, the online meetings increasingly became "assemblies" instead of "sharing experiences".

We do understand that not everyone feels a need for assemblies. That is why we will stop the online meetings. Instead, we will organise a number of other activities in 2020. In our newsletter you can read more about our activities. Or take a look at the Events on the PFI Forum and on the Facebook group of PFI-NL.

Bes Exhibition

Our first activity was a visit to the exhibition about the Egyptian god Bes. It was an interesting exhibition, in which we learned a lot about the little god Bes. Because he was one of the smaller gods, he did not have temples of his own, like Isis did. On the other hand, people often had an altar for him in their houses. In this way Bes played an important role in the daily life of common people.

The god Bes is of extra interest to Disability Network, because he was a little person. Partly because of this, he was a popular god, because in ancient Egypt dwarfism was seen as a divine sign. (In ancient Egypt, little people performed specialised duties and were cherished as luxury assistants at court.)

Bes, along with his female counterpart Beset (not to be confused with the goddess Bastet), was worshiped as a protector of households, and especially of mothers, children and birth. Later he was seen as the protector of all that is good and the enemy of all that is evil.

Upcoming: lecture about gods with a disability

Our next activity is a lecture on gods with a disability on Sunday June 14. Almost every pantheon has one or more gods with what we today would call a disability. Much interesting is to say about these gods…

At this moment, it is still uncertain whether this lecture can go ahead as planned, due to the measures regarding the corona epidemic. Therefore, keep an eye on the announcements on the PFI-NL Forum and in the PFI-NL Facebook group. Or subscribe to our newsletter, so you will automatically receive an message from us, as soon as we know more.