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If you are a member of a Pagan religion or someone who is interested in learning more about Pagan religions, you have come to the right spot on the Web.
Now that you are here, I want to tell you a little bit about this site, what you will find here, and the community of Pagans and their friends who make this site one of their homes on the Internet. I'm Randall Sapphire, one of the Co-Hosts of The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum.
The original purpose of The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum was to foster a community of Pagans and their friends where we can all learn and grow spiritually and intellectually through discussion and debate -- and have a good time doing so. This was our purpose when we opened our message board on what is now DelphiForums in December 1997 and while we have moved our message board off of DelphiForums and added many things -- like this large web site -- over the years, this is still The Cauldron's main purpose today.
However, we have expanded a bit. Here's a quick rundown of some of The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum's many features (by the way, you can click on the links for more information about many of these features):
- Message Board
 Our message board is still the heart and soul of The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum. It is a very active (often with over 6000 messages posted a month) virtual community for members of Pagan, Heathen, and Neo-Pagan religions and their friends. If you are tired of Pagan discussion areas dominated by fluff bunnies or where serious discussions are hampered by the need to toe the board owner's "party line" and/or to avoid even polite disagreements, you'll want to visit our message board. You can read messages as a guest if you don't want to sign up for a free message board account.
As our board has many very experienced Pagan members and can seem somewhat intimidating for a some members who are very new to Pagan religions, we have a special board (Pagan Religions 101) where people new to Paganism can post their questions and concerns and another special board (Magic and the Occult 101) for people new to Magic If you choose to post on these boards, our more experienced members will realize you are new and try to provide help accordingly. (If you have a question about magick or Pagan religions but do not wish to register for our message board to post, check into our Ask a Pagan program.)
We also have a special board for teens, the Teen Place where teens can discuss their special issues (parents, school, etc.) with their peers -- and with interested and caring adult members who remember what it was like when they were teens.
As of March 2007, our message board runs on a slightly modified version of Simple Machines Forum software. Our older "Archive Boards" ran on Beehive Forums software -- which was very non-standard.
- Live Chat
 Regular live chats are a fairly recent addition to The Cauldron. Our Flash chat room is available 24 hours a day, but moderated chat is only available at scheduled times. Many of our chats are free-form discussions with other Cauldron members, but we also hold special topic chats and even occasional online rituals. A message board account is required to access our chat room.
- CauldronMUX
The Cauldron has another chat area, CauldronMUX. CauldronMUX is a social MUX providing a text-based virtual world where members of The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum can chat with each other, conduct online rituals and classes, etc. in a environment that lets them create rooms and props to use in these activities. If you do not know what a MUX is, this probably means nothing to you so, so you may want to our Chief Wizard's description of a MUX and his examples of what Cauldron members could do with a MUX by clicking on the title link above.
While accounts on CauldronMUX are only available to members of The Cauldron's message board, anyone can access CauldronMUX with a guest account (Type "connect guest" at the login screen) by telneting to mux.ecauldron.net port 4201 with your telnet program or with a MU* client on your machine.
- Monthly Newsletter
 As of this writing, The Cauldron has published an email newsletter, Cauldron and Candle, almost every month for the past three years. As you might expect this newsletter features information on activities at The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum. However, the majority of each issue is book reviews, articles, columns, spells, humor, and other useful information. Our newsletter is handled va Yahoo Groups. The link above will take you to our newsletter archive where you can read back issues and subscribe if you wish.
- Pagan Primer
 If you are just looking for basic information on Paganism and the many Pagan religions, our large web site can be overwhelming. Our Pagan Primer will help you understand what Paganism is (and isn't) and point you to resources aimed at those unfamiliar with Paganism.
- Book and Deck Reviews
 One of the major features of our web site is over 300 book and divination deck reviews. While I've written the majority of these reviews, many of our members have written reviews that we've published here as well. If you are considering a Pagan book or divination deck purchase, you'll want to check our review section first.
- Cauldron CMS
- The Cauldron CMS is a special area which allows members in good standing of The Cauldron's message board to edit and add pages to a section of The Cauldron's web site. Many of our more poetic members use the Cauldron CMS to post their poetry, for example.
- Pagan Webcrafting
- Many Pagans have or would like to have a Pagan oriented web site. Unfortunately, many of the thousands of Pagan web sites are poorly designed and/or very hard to read. (Hint: A black background makes even white text hard to read, but a black blackground with a dark text is almost impossible to read.) This section of The Cauldron's web site is devoted to articles about web sites and web design.
- Humor
 The Pagan Humor section of our web site is one of the most popular parts of our web site. We've collected Pagan humor from around the web and added a few humorous pieces our members have created over the years. If you need a laugh (and who doesn't?) you'll want to visit our Pagan Humor area.
- Spells
 A small selection of simple spells and incense recipes is available in The Cauldron's Grimoire. There are spells for banishing, binding, healing, job hunting, love, money, protection, and more. We evn give a few multi-purpose spells. This is another very popular section of our web site.
- Shopping Mall
 The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum isn't a profit-oriented web site, but we do have to cover the bills if we are going to keep our site available on the Internet. When you shop at Amazon.com or the other stores in our Shopping Mall through the links on this site, a small percentage of the purchase price of the items you buy goes to The Cauldron. This makes it possible for you to help support this site without giving us a dime directly.
The Cauldron: A Pagan Forum has many other features, including pages of articles (on paganism, magick, divination, holidays, and much more), online lessons, and even a cookbook full of some of our members' favorite recipes. I hope you'll bookmark our web site and explore our information and features at your leisure. I particularly hope you'll join us as a member of our message board.
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Member Guide
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Currently Unavailable pending revision for our new SMF message board.
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