Wiccans in the 21st Century
Since the 1970s, neopagans had been organizing what American writer M. Macha Nightmare described as “the occasional conclave of Witches and pagans … [where they became] acquainted with one another, made magic together, shared skills, built trust and solidarity to support one another” (2001: 103). These early events were held in hotels or motels, and later at camps in rural areas. In 1972, more than a hundred and fifty people attended one such gathering organized by Nemeton, the ecopagan group founded by Gwydion Pendderwen of the Feri tradition and Alexandrian Wicca. Another was held four years later under the auspices of the Midwest Pagan Council in an attempt to bring together the different Wiccan traditions who belonged to it. One of the earliest and most influential, and now long-established, neopagan festivals was the annual Pagan Spirit Gathering run by Selena Fox of Circle Sanctuary.
As Macha Nightmare said: “Pagan gatherings were taking place every weekend from May to October. Some of us created a lifestyle of going from one festival to another, weekend after weekend, all summer long. We had good camping and cooking gear, campers and RVs, and elaborate tents adorned with colorful banners or flags bearing the emblems of our traditions and covens. We erected festive temporary villages, which inspired in us a feeling that we belonged to a tribe” (Ibid., 105).
This sense of a tribal feeling attached to the festivals had a significant impact on the established Wiccan community. In the 1970s, it was still fairly insular and enclosed, even though the books by writers such as Starhawk and Scott Cunningham would later create a new form of “eclectic Wicca,” drawing on New Age concepts or based on the solitary practice of witchcraft. One Wiccan told Margot Adler she had been working in a coven where you were forbidden to talk to people from other covens or traditions. When she went to her first neo-pagan festival it changed everything. She said, “The kind of gurudom that tries to censor sources of information is totally destroyed by that kind of event” (Adler 2006: 435).
Because chants, songs, magical techniques, and rituals were taught at workshops and shared and discussed at these large gatherings they spread into Wiccan covens and altered their fundamental nature. Added to this trend came the increasing number of Wicca 101 or do-it-yourself books, often based on the Gardnerian Book of Shadows that was now out there. They were largely written by self-initiates or solitary witches who had not been through the closed, often dogmatic, and authoritarian coven system. As the Wiccan quoted above told Margot Adler, “Meetings [of her coven] became more fluid, there was more playfulness … Our ritual style loosened up. Our ritual garb changed.” Traditional aspects such as skyclad working and the use of the scourge for ritual flagellation were also dropped as belonging to the past. In fact, what was happening was the first signs of the sanitation of witchcraft and the creation of what its critics disparagingly described as “fluffy-bunny New Age McWicca.”
Another Wiccan High Priestess told Margot Adler the public pagan festivals were changing the basic structure of covens. She said, “The coven is losing its magic” (1979). This was because the coven was ceasing to be the primary source of training and teaching and the only entry point to the Craft. People could turn up at festivals and participate in rituals and magical practice without having to undergo a formal initiation ceremony, join a coven, or commit themselves to the Craft in any structured or organized way. This eclectic and liberal approach challenged the old structures and strictures of Wicca based on one-to-one training, loyalty to the coven and its fellow members, and group-based activities.
The Wiccan High Priestess said the festivals also undermined the leadership of covens and their authority. The new leaders of the Craft were the media witches and pagan celebrities who facilitated workshops and gave talks at festivals to hundreds of people. Once just names below the title of a book or images on the television screen, now those who attended festivals could actually meet and interact with their heroes. Wicca had always been dominated by strong personalities, but now the cult of personality was creating new faces and reaching out to embrace people who were not Craft initiates. Wicca would never be the same again.
Part of the sea change in Wicca in the 1980s and 1990s was indicated by this rise of the public pagan festival and also the introduction of ideas, concepts, and techniques of the New Age spiritual movement that emerged from the alternative counterculture of the Sixties. Wiccan High Priests and Priestesses trained as Reiki masters, covens practiced crystal healing and balancing chakras, and introduced urban shamanic techniques into their magic making. As one Wiccan told Margot Adler with some surprise “… our group got exposed to new psychic techniques like Bach Flower Remedies.” Such developments were either warmly embraced by some of the old-school Wiccans or criticized by many as the slippery slope to witchcraft becoming sanitized and whitewashed. They frowned on the nouveau covens who preferred velvet robes to ritual nudity, and abandoned scourging to raise power as an archaic practice that could lead to abuse.
One aspect of this new approach was an alternative and unconventional way of looking at the God and Goddess in Wicca, based on the theories of the Swiss psychologist, Carl Gustav Jung. When Vivianne Crowley’s book Wicca: The Old Religion In the New Age was published in 1989, she presented the deities as Jungian archetypes. David Waldron has said, “The entire text … is replete with references to the work of Jung and the utilization of Wicca as a manifestation of Jungian analytical psychology in practice” (2008: 149). Dr. Crowley was one of the initiates of Eleanor Bone’s coven and she now lectures on the psychology of religion at the University of London. She has written extensively about the group-mind of a witches’ coven or “the level of awareness at which human psyches can communicate directly with one another without the intervention of the usual modes of communication” (2003: 71).
Another important aspect of Wicca, according to Dr. Crowley, is Jung’s concept of the anima and animus, or the female and male parts of the human psyche, in relation to initiation. This is also described in Robert Bly’s classic and groundbreaking book Iron John: A Book about Men (1991), which jumpstarted the men’s movement. The anima and animus can also be related to the God and Goddess in contemporary Wicca in their roles as archetypal images or symbols of the dual cosmic male-female principle in the universe. In contrast to the sexist and misogynistic attitudes Doreen Valiente experienced in her early days in the Gardnerian movement, Dr. Crowley said in present times in Wicca “… women learn to reject beliefs and philosophies that oppress women and to seek roles through which they can function as whole human beings realizing all and not just part of their inner qualities” (1989: 147). However, unlike some of the feminist witches, Dr. Crowley also recognized the significance of the Horned God as both a symbol of male sexuality and the animus (the ideal male) within the female psyche.
An Australian Wiccan, Cassandra Carter also commented on the psychological and feminist significance of Wiccan mythology in a talk given to the C. G. Jung Society in November 1992. She said that in Jungian terms the mythical story of the Descent of the Goddess into the underworld in Wicca taught the need for women to journey on a quest to discover their own animus. Instead of waiting for “a knight on a white charger” to rescue them, women need to make their own life choices and confront the Dark Lord, and solve his mysteries. Carter said women could do this by going, of their own free will, deep into the realm of the unconscious mind. Men in Wicca had to enlist the help of the Goddess (psychologically represented by the animus) to explore their own unconscious. Once this has been achieved the male and female witch can be reunited in the underworld of the unconscious (quoted in Waldron 2008: 156).
Because of the influence of Vivianne Crowley’s books and the lectures she has given in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, and Australia, this Jungian approach to Wicca has become popular. In 2008, Jean Williams and Zachary Cox, the High Priestess and Priest of Gardner’s old coven in Brickett Wood, published a book called The Gods Within: The Pagan Pathfinders Book of God and Goddess Evocations (Moondust Books UK). As the title suggests, they now see the God and Goddess in Wicca as archetypal images clothed in symbolic form by the human mind and imagination. The Lord and Lady represent universal forces existing within the human psyche, society, and the natural world. Their book consisted of evocations, as opposed to invocations, of deities from the ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Celtic pantheons. In the sense they used the word evocations, it was to convey the psychological sense of evoking feelings, images, and ideas from within the psyche.
Another interesting development in the 1990s was the involvement of Wiccans in the new interfaith movement, as mentioned before. This was designed to break down barriers, encourage communication, and end intolerance between the different religions of the world. This was a development welcomed by New Agers who had always followed the Theosophical view that “all religions are one religion,” and all paths to God are valid. However it may not have been seen in exactly the same liberal light by some of the interfaith participants from Christianity and Islam. Considering the ideological gulf between Wicca and orthodox Christianity, the aim of the interfaith movement appeared to be overly simplistic and optimistic. In practice, it meant Wiccans at a local level joining interfaith groups and discussing their beliefs and theological differences with Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhists.
In 1993, the Parliament of World Religions was convened in Chicago and was attended by about two hundred Wiccans and neopagans. They represented such public organizations as the Covenant of the Goddess, Circle Sanctuary, the Earth Spirit Community, and the Fellowship of Isis. Additionally pagans dropped by the hospitality suite in the hotel where the assembly was held during the week-long session of the Parliament. Every day there were two to six Wiccan or pagan rituals performed, and one was held at full moon in a local park. At first there were problems with obtaining a permit from the parks department until a Roman Catholic cardinal attending the Parliament intervened on behalf of the Wiccans. Other sessions of the Parliament followed, and in 1998 representatives from the Covenant of the Goddess and Circle Sanctuary were officially invited to join as members. The next year, in South Africa, the proceedings led to the formation of a new interfaith organization called the United Religions Initiative, with an active pagan component and participation.
The Parliament of World Religions and other interfaith groups and projects tend to attract and reflect the more liberal elements in the established religions seeking contact and dialogue with other spiritual belief systems. However, as is to be expected, the more reactionary majority view is opposed to such developments. In August 1993, The Sunday Telegraph reported the Vatican was worried because allegedly “tens of thousands” of Catholic women were leaving the faith. Many, it claimed, were becoming involved in what it described as “the subterranean cult of neopagan Wiccan worship.” Margot Adler was quoted as saying she had recently attended a spring equinox ritual in Philadelphia where masked Catholic nuns had danced in front of an altar decorated with flowers and goddess images.
Other nuns attending the Women’s Church Convergence were said to have participated in a Dianic Wiccan ceremony. Catholic orders of nuns in the United States were also reported as having taken part in spirituality sessions where they discussed Jungian psychology and the evils of patriarchy and celebrated the “transcendent through female images.” During a recent visit to the United States, the pope condemned those Catholic women who had left the Roman Church to follow “forms of nature worship and the celebration of myths and symbols usurping the Christian faith.” The Vatican ruled that the worship of the “earth goddess” by some American Catholics was “an inappropriate blending of Christianity with the ancient pagan belief of animism.”
Despite the apparent progress marked by the active involvement of Wiccans in interfaith activities, in many countries the Craft was still not officially recognized as a legitimate religion by their governments. As we have seen in some countries, such as Australia, archaic laws forbidding the practice of witchcraft remained on the statute books until recent times. Even in some US states, local laws still exist prohibiting fortunetelling, and in Saudi Arabia anyone found guilty of practicing witchcraft (sorcery) is executed by beheading.
In 1987, Wicca was legally accepted in Canada following a discrimination case fought by Charles Arnold, an American Vietnam veteran who moved to the country after leaving the US Army. Arnold was working at the Equine Centre of the College of Applied Arts and Technology, and made a request to his employer for paid leave to celebrate Beltane and Samhain. The college vice-principal refused and the case was referred to the Ministry of Labour’s Arbitration Board. Bizarrely, Arnold had been told his request would only be reconsidered if he could provide a statement from the Canadian Council of Churches that they recognized Wicca as a religion. The college also wanted a letter from the head of Wicca, saying the specified holidays should be observed by its practitioners.
Charles Arnold told the vice-principal he could not provide these statements because the Christian churches did not recognize Wicca and there was no central Wiccan leadership in Canada or anywhere else in the world. Supported by his trade union, Arnold gave evidence to the Arbitration Board about his personal Wiccan beliefs and practices without breaking his oaths of initiation. Testimony was also given on his behalf by the Reverend Donald Evans of the United Church of Canada, a teacher in religious philosophy at the University of Toronto. He told the Board in his personal opinion Wicca met all the criteria required of any religion.
In its defense, the college attempted to deride Arnold’s claim by misrepresenting Beltane and Samhain as merely parties, and not religious festivals. The Board disagreed with this view and ruled instead in favor of Charles Arnold. The members of the Board said it was obvious Wicca was a religion and “… the modern survival of the ancient pagan religions of western Europe.” This landmark ruling not only recognized and accepted Wicca as a legitimate religion, but also said Arnold was entitled to take paid leave twice a year so he could celebrate its festivals.
Although this case was successfully settled to the advantage of Wicca, a similar case was heard in the Green County School District of Tennessee twenty years later. Just before Samhain 2007, a school student named Angel Cogdill asked her principal if she could have the day off as it was a religious festival observed by her family. Her request was denied and at a meeting with her mother, Patti, the principal said his reasoning was based on the fact Wicca was not a real religion. Patti Cogdill had several more meetings with the school administrators, asking them to reverse the decision, but they still refused.
A family friend contacted the Lady Liberty League run by Selena Fox of Circle Sanctuary and she spoke to the school authorities in an attempt to persuade them Wicca was a real religion. When this failed, attorneys from the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State were contacted. Following their intervention, in April 2008, the school finally gave in and said Angel Cogdill could be given an excused absence to celebrate Beltane with her family (news report in Circle magazine #101, Summer 2008 and #102, Fall 2008).
In 1998, a school student in Texas had faced another form of religious discrimination when she was suspended for wearing black clothing and a pentagram around her neck. The school board had tried to say the Wiccan symbol was “gang related,” and the student’s dark clothing violated the school’s dress code. Her parents decided to seek assistance from the American Civil Liberties Union, and once they intervened, the school authorities backed down. They decided to change their policy on what students could wear (Ibid., Fall 2008).
Discrimination against modern Wiccans takes many forms and often affects divorce proceedings where the custody of children is at stake. In 2004 a Wiccan couple in Indianapolis divorced on good terms and then the judge presiding over the case ruled that whoever got the custody of their son could not teach him witchcraft. The boy already attended a private Roman Catholic school and the judge decided teaching him the Wiccan faith would confuse him. The judge prohibited both parents from teaching their son anything apart from what he described as a “mainstream religion.” It was only when the Indiana Civil Liberties Union became involved that the judge’s ruling was reversed and the boy was able to participate in public pagan festivals with his parents if he so desired (Ibid.).
Only three years after the Charles Arnold case in Canada in 1987, US Senator Jessie Helms of North Carolina had attempted to introduce a bill removing the tax-exempt status of Wiccan and neopagan organizations. Helms had contacted the then Secretary of the Treasury, James Baker, and asked why such minority groups should be exempted. In his reply, Baker said any religious group that was sincere in its beliefs and conformed to the “clearly defined public policy” was able to claim tax relief or exemption. For that reason the law could not be changed.
Senator Helms was supported in his demand by Representative Robert Walker of Pennsylvania. One of his aides told the press tax exemption should not be applicable to people “praying for horrible things and sticking pins into voodoo dolls.” Many American Wiccans were outraged by this throwaway remark and saw the attempt to bring in the bill as a direct attack on their beliefs by the Christian Right, and an attempt to outlaw witchcraft by the back door. With the support of the American Civil Liberties Union, the proposed bill was actively opposed by various neopagan and Wiccan groups. They claimed the legislation would infringe the First Amendment and was a throwback to the medieval witch-hunt. Following their protests, the bill was not passed.
Operation Desert Storm to liberate Kuwait after the Iraqi invasion in the 1990s, the events of 9/11 leading to the war on terror, and the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan led to another campaign for freedom of religious expression for Wiccans. As we have seen, several of the pioneers in the modern witchcraft revival had military backgrounds. However, from the 1970s onward, with the political changes in society and Wicca, its practitioners were more likely to express pacifist, anti-war sentiments. This was summed up by a surprising voice, Laurie Cabot, who wrote: “Witches must make peace an important goal. We must do magic to seek for a war-free [world] … We can do binding spells, using white light to neutralize soldiers, their weapons, and especially the military leaders who send them to battle” (1983: 293).
While many Wiccans and neopagans agreed with her, Cabot’s views were not so well received by the estimated ten thousand practitioners of Wicca who, according to the Military Pagan Network (MPN), serve in the US armed forces. In 1997, a group of military personnel at Fort Hood was allowed to conduct Wiccan rituals on the base with the approval of the Christian chaplain. Unfortunately the Pentagon disapproved and a local minister condemned the rituals as “satanic.” Congressman Bob Barr of Georgia urged the Secretary of the Army to ban the performance of Wiccan rites on all military bases, alleging they involved animal sacrifice. In response the American Forces Chaplains Board ruled the practice of Wicca by military personnel was protected under the First Amendment that guaranteed freedom of religious expression. The Board also pointed out that in 1996 the Department of Defense recognized Wicca as a religion that could be followed by its employees.
Three years earlier, writer Judy Harrow interviewed several Wiccans serving in the armed forces. One, named only as “Paul,” said he did not find it difficult to reconcile his beliefs with military service because he worshipped a “hunter-gatherer god.” He did admit, however, that several members of his coven were anti-military and anti-war. As a result of her studies into the subject, Harrow concluded that military service could be a valid initiatory path in the Craft as the way of the “spiritual warrior.” Dr. Isaac Bonewits disagreed, saying the Wiccan Rede taught “An ye harm no one,” and it was being contravened—he described soldiers as the US government’s “hired killers.”
Discrimination against Wiccans and pagans in the military also continues after their death. Veterans groups, supported by Circle Sanctuary and the Lady Liberty League, fought a long and protracted campaign to have the pentagram accepted as an official religious symbol on the gravestones of Wiccans and pagans who had served in the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps in wars from 1941 to the present day. Finally, in April 2003, the US Department of Veterans Affairs agreed to add the pentagram to its list of recognized religious symbols that can be included as official military grave markers (Circle, #101, Summer 2008).
In a separate development concerning freedom of religious expression, prisoners were also campaigning for the right to practice Wicca behind bars. On October 17, 2005, The Times newspaper reported that “pagan priests” (i.e., chaplains) visiting Wiccan prisoners in British jails could now use wands and wine in the rituals they performed on their behalf. Presumably before this ruling wands were seen as potential deadly weapons, and alcohol is banned in prisons. Under instructions issued to prison governors by the Director of Operations for the Prison Service those inmates who were practicing Wiccans were also allowed to use (hoodless) robes during rituals and own one piece of symbolic religious jewelery. Prisoners would also be allowed to pray, chant, and read Wiccan texts without interference from prison officers.
In October 2008, The Times again reported that paganism was on the rise in the British prison system. In the previous four years the number of inmates claiming to be Wiccans had risen steadily from 138 to 328 in 2007. In the Albany top security prison on the Isle of Wight, the number had increased from twelve to thirty-four in eight months, making Wicca the religion most frequently named in the jail. Wiccan prisoners were allowed to select two days a year from their seasonal calendar of festivals when they can be excused from work duties. If they select Samhain, the Prison Service has decreed it cannot be celebrated with alcohol unless a pagan chaplain is present to administer the ritual. However an apple can be used as an acceptable substitute if the prisoner celebrates the festival alone.
In February 2008, in the United States the Reverend Patrick McCallum, a member of the Circle Sanctuary and the Lady Liberty League, and the statewide Wiccan chaplain for the Californian Department of Corrections, appeared at a Commission of Rights hearing in Washington DC. This was the first time a Wiccan chaplain had been invited to attend such a hearing, and he spoke about the religious rights of Wiccan inmates in the prison system. McCallum cited cases of discrimination suffered by both Wiccan clergy and prisoners. He called for an end to this, and religious equality that would prevent administrators and Christian chaplains from breaking the law by violating the religious rights of Wiccans (Circle #101, Summer 2008).
Another member of Circle Sanctuary, Jamie Hildebrand, was appointed as a Wiccan chaplain in the Massachusetts prison system in 2008. In a report to a meeting of the Lady Liberty League, she said she was working with eight facilities and was attempting to get Tarot packs approved for use by Wiccan prisoners. Hildebrand had also managed to get the prison authorities to recognize the pentagram as a religious symbol that could be displayed by Wiccan prisoners, the ankh by followers of ancient Egyptian pagan traditions, and Thor’s hammer by the adherents of Asatru and Odinism (Circle #102, Fall 2008).
If Wicca is represented in prison it also, of course, has its followers on the other side of the law today. In 1999, Corporal Tricia Mullensky (aka “Lady Kiara”) of the Massachusetts Police Department founded “Officers for Avalon” for Wiccan police officers. It is affiliated with neopagan officers in Canada and Britain, and has expanded to include employees of other emergency services. These include firefighters, paramedics, doctors, nurses, and even security guards. In May 2002, the first international meeting of the OA was held and attended by several hundred emergency response professionals (Rabinovitch and Lewis 2002: 195–196).
In the 1990s, a new phenomenon was recorded in the form of “teenage witchcraft” and so-called “teen witches.” This was largely the result of the popularity among teenagers, mostly girls, of such television series as Charmed, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Angel; the Hollywood movies The Craft and Practical Magic; and, to a lesser extent, the best-selling Harry Potter books. The interest was so closely linked to the promotion of these series, books, and films that many Wiccan old-timers were doubtful it would survive and they dismissed it as just another teenage fad its devotees would grow out of eventually.
Reaction to this development was mixed because, as with the satanic ritual abuse scare, the introduction of underage children to the Craft was not welcomed. The Pagan Federation UK had restricted its membership to those over eighteen years of age, and attempts to lower this age limit met with resistance. However, until it closed down in 2008, the PF did become associated with a contact network for young people called Minor Arcana set up in the 1990s. The PF also appointed a youth officer to deal with enquiries and give support to young people interested in Wicca and neopaganism.
Others embraced the new trend for teen witches, including Silver RavenWolf, who wrote a book specifically aimed at this new audience. Although she admitted “ninety-nine percent of adult Crafters will not teach WitchCraft [sic] to minors,” her book contained love spells, which sadly is what most teenage girls who are attracted to witchcraft are interested in, and a “Back off Baby Spell” to be used when “a romance wrecker comes sniffing at the heels of our loved one” (1998: 141). RavenWolf translated some of the text into so-called “teenspeak,” and assured her young readers that “There’s nothing scary in the Craft” (Ibid., 19).
During the 1990s and the early years of the new century, where statistics are available, it seems that the numbers of people either interested in or involved in Wicca is growing. In 1989, the Occult Census organized by the Sorcerer’s Apprentice mail order company in Leeds, Yorkshire, using a small sample of one thousand respondents, came up with a rather optimistic figure of 250,000 witches based on the then population of the United Kingdom. About 42 percent of those who completed the census declared they had a committed belief in the Craft. Other estimates of the number of practitioners of witchcraft in Britain in the 1990s ranged from 20,000 to 80,000. Most of the respondents to the Occult Census had been born in the 1960s, 37 percent had received some form of higher education, and another 21 percent possessed university degrees. Only 10 percent were unemployed, and most had responsible jobs in journalism, business management, the computer industry, engineering, and the civil service.
In 1991, the Reverend J. Gordon Melton of the Institute for the Study of American Religion in Santa Barbara, California, estimated the total neopagan population of the USA, including Wiccans, was about 130,000. In 1999, the figure was put at 200,000, and by 2001 this had increased significantly to 750,000. By 2005, a survey by the Covenant of the Goddess revised the figure down to between 150,000 and 200,000. A year later the Pagan Education Network estimated there were between 150,000 and 600,000 neopagan believers in the States, which seems a wide and variable figure. Another, more academically based survey (date unavailable) carried out by the City University of New York put the estimated figure at around 135,000.
Leading neopagan and Wiccan magazines such as PanGaia and SageWoman had a readership of between 7,000 and 20,000 in the 1990s (Lewis 1996: 303). Oberon Zell-Ravenheart (Tim Zell) of the Church of All Worlds claimed that based on the average readership of their magazine Green Egg, there must be at least 500,000 pagans in America. This figure was backed up by the Wiccan Pagan Press Alliance, who estimated between 500,000 and 600,000 based on magazine sales and readership. Certainly sales of neopagan and Wiccan books increased from 4.5 million in 1990 to over 100 million in 2000. In recent years this may have dropped, as in the UK at least, mainstream publishers have switched away from such books toward more general New Age subjects.
In 2001, for the first time, a question was included in the British National Census about religious affiliation. According to the results that were published by the government, 30,569 people declared their religion as paganism. How many of these were Wiccans or witches is not known. In a largely secular country where less then 10 percent of professed Christians attend church services on a regular basis, this figure ranks paganism as the ninth most-popular religion, behind Roman Catholicism and Spiritualism (The Times, December 14, 2004).
The socio-economic make-up of people who follow Wiccan beliefs was, according to Reverend Melton, “white-collar professionals.” Dr. Tanya Luhrmann’s research in the 1980s among British Wiccans also indicated they were mostly middle-class. Leo Ruckbie has claimed recent research in the UK indicates Wiccans are “predominantly working to lower middle class,” but he gives no source for his information. He also said they “subscribe to attitudes and values usually associated with the middle classes, tending to be more radically and politically left-wing.” They are also predominantly white in ethnic origin, and this is also reflected in the racial identity of their American cousins (2004: 163–164).
Writing in 1993, Anthony Kemp said: “[The] majority of witches I have met are in their thirties, and they own homes, and have two children. Both partners are likely to be employed … and probably vote for the Green Party” (Kemp 1993: 133). However, he also identified a younger, nonconformist faction of Wiccans and neopagans. They were involved in alternative activities such as rock festivals, agitprop, visiting Glastonbury, and “drinking in the pubs of bed-sitter land.” They spent their money on expensive biological soap powder and whole foods (Ibid.).
Today Wicca is dominated by the 1970s concept of witchcraft as a nature religion. The majority of pagan magazines published today devote several pages of each issue to environmental issues, ranging from animal welfare to genetically modified crops and they promote a green agenda and message. In fact many modern followers of paganism firmly, and sometimes almost fanatically, believe it represents the spirituality of the environmental movement and is the only hope for the future of the planet. Not all agree, and senior Wiccan elder Fred Lamond is on record as saying the increased interest in environmental matters among the general population owes more to pressure groups such as Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace than it does to the influence of pagans (quoted in Greenwood 2000: 112).
Ecopagan groups such as the Dragon Environmental Network (DEN) have emerged from the Wiccan scene to support the recent anti-road campaigns that threaten the countryside and ancient woodlands. DEN was founded in the 1990s by Adrian Harris, a member of Friends of the Earth. He was an initiate of the “Progressive Wicca” group in London, a mixture of Alexandrian and Gardnerian traditions with a radical outlook. Harris was also involved in interfaith and worked with the Creation Spirituality movement in the United States founded by the Roman Catholic priest Father Matthew Fox.
In the 1990s, many pagans and Wiccans became involved in the struggle to stop the government’s road-building plans at Oxlea Wood and Twyford Down in southern England. Protesters dug underground tunnels, chained themselves to trees, lay in front of bulldozers and earth-moving equipment, and fought with the police and private security guards in a failed attempt to stop the destruction of woodland by construction workers.
It is a problem that the vast majority of modern Wiccans are usually urban dwellers who practice their rituals indoors and have very little, if any, experience living in the countryside. For this reason they are likely to have a sentimental “townie” view of nature. The anthropologist Dr. Susan Greenwood, who carried out research into Wiccan groups in London in the late 1990s, said most of their members were concerned with their own personal inner spiritual development and were not interested in environmental activism. She claimed two of the covens she joined “showed no interest in nature other than as a backdrop for their rituals and imagery for their sense of interconnectedness” (Ibid., 113). Dr. Greenwood quoted one Wiccan who said she did not watch nature documentaries on television because they were “boring.” Another refused to go for a walk because it was raining and he might get his feet wet!
In the last ten years, the interest taken in Wicca, its beliefs, practices, and historical background by anthropologists and historians has led some of its modern devotees to reevaluate it. Many of them have begun to question “the gospel according to St. Gerald” concerning witchcraft that has been passed down to modern practitioners by the senior guardians of the tradition. In an interview published in 2007, Janet Farrar and her present partner Gavin Bone said of Wicca, “… some may claim ‘ancient origins,’ [but] it is really a new religion, a mystery tradition, which since its conception in the 1950s has created its own theology and ritual practices.” They added that Wicca was only “fifty years young” and, although it had gone “mainstream” and become a more acceptable religious path within modern culture, there was a danger it would now lose its “mystery tradition” aspects (“An Interview with Janet Farrar & Gavin Bone” in The Cauldron #125, August 2007).
Apparently, in a last-ditch attempt to preserve this mystery tradition for future generations, Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone have followed in Gerald Gardner’s footsteps and created a new form of witchcraft called “Progressive Wicca.” Its aim is to give Wiccan beliefs and practices a fresh attitude, looking to the future and discarding those things from the past that are no longer relevant to spiritual growth and the progress of the Craft in the twenty-first century. One aspect where this has manifested in Progressive Wicca is the traditional duotheistic nature of a single God and Goddess as a couple. Instead Farrar and Bone see a much wider belief in the many faces of Deity represented at a practical level as polytheism (Ibid., and 2008: 166). In this sense, Progressive Wicca takes a similar view to many modern traditions of neopaganism who revere many gods and goddesses.
What we have seen over the years since the days of Gerald Gardner and his followers is a gradual movement away from the rigid dogmas that once existed in Wicca. This has accelerated in recent years due to the corresponding cultural changes in society as a whole. According to Farrar and Bone, such concepts as lineage are becoming less important with a rise in more experiential training and an emphasis on solitary working. They say they have personally moved away from doing just lectures and now prefer workshops where participants can get involved at a practical level. This has extended onto the Internet where they offer courses for solitary practitioners who have been unable to join a coven or do not want to commit themselves to one. The courses run for seven months and are based on working with the elemental forces of fire, earth, air, water, and ether, or spirit. They also include shamanism and other traditions to “give a workable magical system for the twenty-first century.”
While progressive Wiccans like Farrar and Bone are interested in reclaiming the modern Craft as a mystery cult, others see its future more in terms of its relationship to the wider neopagan movement and its aspirations to become a future world religion. After all, that seems to have been the reason why Gerald Gardner decided to go public with his version of witchcraft in the 1950s. For instance, from exclusively being “a priesthood without a congregation,” as when a witch was initiated he or she traditionally became a priest or priestess of the Craft, many modern practitioners support the neopagan idea of a professional pagan priesthood or clergy administering to other followers. This is already being put into practice through the Pagan Federation in the UK and the Circle Sanctuary in the USA, who are providing pagan chaplains to prisons, hospitals, and the armed forces to minister to Wiccans.
In 2005, Selena Fox of Circle Sanctuary put forward her hopes for the development of neopaganism as the twenty-first century progresses. These hopes included an increase in the number of pagan study courses in higher education at colleges and universities. She also wanted to see more Wiccans coming out of the broom closet, including prominent ones in the fields of entertainment, sports, science, business, industry, and politics. Another of her wishes was to see the establishment of pagan churches, libraries, research centers, seminaries, schools, and cemeteries, and the general recognition of pagan seasonal festivals by other faiths. Finally, Fox hoped that one day soon paganism would receive recognition as a legitimate world religion (quoted in Adler 2006: 454–455).
No doubt such future developments would be welcomed by the vast majority of solitary Wiccans who follow a more eclectic path than those within the traditional and established coven system. Even some of those who belong to the Wiccan establishment might also agree. Alan Tickhill (b. 1955) of the Galdraheim Coven in southeastern England was initiated into both Gardnerian and Alexandrian Wicca in the early 1980s. Writing on his website in 2008, he optimistically predicted Wicca was poised to become “a spiritual way that will enrich, inform, and empower the lives of millions.” Unfortunately, he also said that, in Britain at least, Wicca suffers from a lack of a reliable communication network, poor support between covens, and the lack of a referral system for new seekers. Part of this problem, Tickhill claims, is that as an initiated tradition, despite its rituals having been published and publicly available, modern Wicca still adheres to secrecy about its beliefs and activities (www.galdraheim.kirion.net).
Toward the end of her life, Doreen Valiente’s views on the secrecy and dogma in Wicca changed. She said in the past there was a need for a hierarchy who could impose discipline, as then it was a matter of life and death. For the same reason there was also a clear requirement for secrecy and to punish breaches of it. Now, she said, “the Old Religion of the past is growing and changing into the new religion of the future.” Valiente predicted this neopagan religion would be a happy and constructive one involved with nature and the biosphere. It would also “take its stand against greed, cruelty, and social injustice, and feature rituals with colour, music, and dancing, as well as meditation and healing.” She concluded “this new religion will enable every man to be his own High Priest and every woman to be her own High Priestess in the coming Aquarian Age” (1989: 218). We will have to wait to see if either hers or Selena Fox’s predictions come true.