‘Do As Thou Wilt’: Contemporary Paganism and The Wicker Man

Judith Higginbottom

 

The Wicker Man was made 21 years after the repeal of the Witchcraft Act and the emergence of Paganism as a spiritual and religious practice. Although The Wicker Man has not been distributed theatrically in the UK since its initial release and has, until recently, been very difficult to obtain on video or DVD, it has become a firm favourite with Pagans over the last thirty years. In this chapter I look at the portrayal of Paganism in The Wicker Man, examine how the film has been received by Pagan audiences, and compare The Wicker Man to other films with Pagan subject matter.

In the 1950s new forms of Paganism emerged as a distinct set of spiritual practices in the UK. Paganism grew from small beginnings throughout the 1960s and 1970s. As Paganism has no hierarchy, contains many different strands, and tends to resist organisation, it is difficult to quantify the number of practising Pagans in the UK. Some recent work suggests the number of those defining themselves as Pagan may even be as high as one million.¹ Paganism is now practised extensively in many countries including the USA, Canada and Australia as well as throughout Europe. Pagan organisations have also forged links with practitioners of traditional Pagan religions in Africa, Central America, South America and Australia.

The key tenets of contemporary Paganism are an understanding of Deity as including both female and male, a reverence for nature and sexuality, a peaceful, permissive morality and the practice of magic. It is both polytheistic and pantheistic. Paganism is a new form of spirituality, not simply a reconstruction of pre-Christian beliefs, although many Pagans draw on historic Pagan traditions.

Paganism has a number of strands, referred to by Pagans as paths. Amongst these are: Wicca (Pagan witchcraft), which was pioneered by Gerald Gardner and colleagues in the 1950s and further developed by Alex and Maxine Sanders and others in the 1960s;² Druidry; the Northern Tradition (the worship of the Norse deities such as Odin, Thor and Freya); and a range of individual practices based on Shamanism and related techniques. Pagans may practise their religion individually, in groups (covens, groves and hearths), or in open seasonal rituals for large numbers of people, usually at well-known sites with long traditions of Pagan worship, such as Stonehenge and Avebury.

The growth of Paganism was accelerated by the 1960s counterculture which seized on its anarchic, anti-hierarchical potential and its critique of patriarchal monotheism. In the 1970s Paganism grew to encompass feminist spirituality based on the primacy of Goddess-worship. Its reverence for nature and commitment to ecology subsequently attracted people from the Green movement, with eco-warriors and road protestors in the 1990s identifying themselves as Pagan. The growth of Paganism has led to its recognition as a religion by governmental and other agencies in the UK: Pagans provide hospital and prison chaplaincy services, work with education authorities and social services providers, and take part in inter-faith groupings.

Despite the growth of Paganism, Pagans can still experience hostility related to their spiritual practices, especially from Christians who erroneously link Paganism with Satanism and/or devil worship. Pagans are at pains to point out that their religion has its roots in pre-Christian spirituality (Satan/the devil being a concept which most Pagans do not believe in), and that it is therefore very different from Satanism, which sits within a Judaeo-Christian moral and spiritual framework.

Over the last three years I have conducted informal research into the reaction of Pagan audiences to films with Pagan content/subject matter, and to The Wicker Man in particular. The Wicker Man is extremely popular with Pagan audiences. When I speak on film at Pagan events I am always asked about The Wicker Man, and it is clear that Pagans constitute a significant component of the film’s cult audience. This is perhaps surprising given that the film concerns human sacrifice, a practice which modern Pagans would strenuously disown. So what is it that Pagan audiences recognise as positive and pleasurable in The Wicker Man and what is it that strikes a chord with their own beliefs?

Perhaps unexpectedly, The Wicker Man does not draw its narrative or imagery from Paganism as practised in the UK at the time of its making. Paganism, and Wicca in particular, had provided salacious tabloid headline-fodder since the 1950s and was the subject of sporadic moral panics. The high-profile, media-friendly activities of Gerald Gardner in the 1950s, and of Alex and Maxine Sanders in the late 1960s and early 1970s, put Wicca well and truly in the public domain.³ Television and press coverage of the Sanders’ activities, for example their appearance on the Simon Dee Show (a popular early evening UK television chat show), would have been easily available to the makers of The Wicker Man, had they chosen to use it.⁴

The British horror films of the 1960s and 1970s, made by companies such as Hammer, Amicus and Tigon, drew heavily on media coverage of Wicca for their source material (Alex Sanders acted as adviser on a number of horror films). In keeping with the moral context of the time, they portrayed Paganism as essentially Satanic, and located it firmly within a Judaeo-Christian moral framework. Such films were popular: The Devil Rides Out (1968) and Blood On Satan’s Claw (1970) are particularly fine examples. Pagan audiences may derive ironic pleasure from these films, or find them hilarious, ridiculous and sometimes offensive.

A key point here is that these were all horror films: Paganism and witchcraft had become key elements in the horror vocabulary with which audiences had an easy familiarity. Whereas in the 1940s and 1950s witchcraft had featured as a theme in romantic comedies (I Married A Witch, 1942; Bell, Book And Candle, 1958) with portrayals of alluring female witches, by 1970 the association of Paganism and witchcraft with the horror genre was total. It is almost impossible to find a cinematic treatment of Paganism or witchcraft from this period which is anything other than a horror film. This association of Paganism with the horror genre, and especially with films targeted at teen audiences (e.g. The Craft, 1996), continues to the present. The subversive feminine in these horror films is not the subject of this chapter, but there is an obvious link to be drawn between it and the rejection of patriarchal monotheism and radical and explicitly sexual female spirituality espoused by Paganism from the 1960s onwards.

The makers of The Wicker Man have stated that the source material for the Pagan religion portrayed in the film is James Frazer’s The Golden Bough.⁵ At the heart of Frazer’s Paganism is the worship of a Great Goddess and her consort, a God who represents the fertility of the land, and who is sacrificed to ensure the success of the harvest. Many of the customs described by Frazer as survivals of pre-Christian religion clearly express an animistic, pantheistic world-view which contemporary Paganism shares. The linkage of human sexuality with the fertility of the land and the practice of sympathetic magic are obvious examples. Anyone familiar with The Golden Bough will recognise in The Wicker Man an extraordinary degree of faithfulness to the source material, one which is rare in the cinema. The Paganism portrayed in the film is agrarian, enjoyable (unless you happen to be Sergeant Howie), and characterised by sympathetic magic, sexual rites, enjoyment of the good things of life, seasonal propitiatory customs and sacrifice to maintain fertility.

Modern Paganism has drawn its inspiration from an eclectic mix of cultural traditions and reference points and whilst most modern Pagans would not espouse Frazer’s theories, they have undoubtedly drawn inspiration from some of the folk customs he describes. Spiritual practices are not organised logically but evolve organically and experientially. Pagans are enthusiastic participants and spectators at surviving folk customs such as the Padstow Obby Oss, the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance and Mummers Plays, all of which are visual reference points in the May Day procession in The Wicker Man. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the film has increased some Pagans’ interest in folk customs and thus indirectly influenced their spiritual practices.

It is very clear from individual Pagan responses to the film that a key element of The Wicker Man’s popularity with Pagans is its depiction of sexual rites as being central to Summerisle Paganism. Its positive, permissive attitude to sexual expression also accords very closely with the world-view of most Pagans. The ‘Gently Johnny’ sequence and the scene in the schoolroom are cited as specific examples of this.

I have found that it is the overall Pagan sensibility of The Wicker Man which impresses Pagans most. Pagans repeatedly cite The Wicker Man as the only film they know of in which the action takes place in a Pagan context, where Paganism is the norm rather than a transgressive, exotic practice, and where the validity of Pagan belief is accepted. They feel at home in it. The Pagan community portrayed in The Wicker Man is a reversal of the everyday world in which most Pagans live, where they are always in a minority and where their beliefs can often be derided by the majority, so they enjoy The Wicker Man and find it an affirmatory experience.

An interesting response from some Pagans is that The Wicker Man is not a horror film per se, but rather a drama in which knowledge of Pagan spirituality is key to understanding the outcome. It is through the character of Sergeant Howie that this notion is developed. Howie’s devout, sexually-repressed Christianity counterpoints and accentuates the apparently permissive, tolerant Paganism of Summerisle’s inhabitants. For Pagan audiences, Howie encapsulates everything they dislike about Christianity: a repressive morality, an overwhelming insistence that he is always right, and a censorious intolerance of the beliefs of others. As the only non-Pagan on Summerisle, Howie occupies the position of a religious minority whose moral and spiritual beliefs are constantly questioned: this is a reversal of Pagans’ normal experience. There is pleasure for Pagans in the ridiculing of Howie because of his minority beliefs on Summerisle, and his constantly frustrated attempts to transgress the Pagan norm.

Throughout the film Howie is offered knowledge, and at one point sexual initiation, by female characters who could save him. He cannot accept this, however, and goes blithely on to his death. It is Howie’s repeated rejection of feminine wisdom (and, by extension, the concept of the Goddess which is at the heart of Pagan spirituality) which marks him out to Pagan audiences as foolish and wilfully ignorant. In order to survive, he would need to gain both sexual experience and self-knowledge. He fails to recognise, however, that the acquisition of this knowledge would render him useless as a sacrifice. Pagans seeing the film for the first time have remarked that they are not surprised by Howie’s death: from a Pagan perspective it seems logical because Howie has rejected the knowledge which would enable him to escape his fate as the virgin sacrifice. It is perhaps for this reason that Pagan audiences do not view The Wicker Man purely as a horror film, but rather as a drama within a Pagan context.

How does The Wicker Man compare with other films which have overtly Pagan subject matter? George A. Romero’s Season of the Witch (1973), the films of Kenneth Anger, and Night of the Demon (1957) by Jacques Tourneur are very different films which provide interesting comparisons.

Season of the Witch (1973) by cult horror director George A. Romero is something of an oddity within the director’s body of work. It was made after the successful Night of the Living Dead (1968), and in the same year as The Wicker Man. It is a very low budget film which shares the visual characteristics of Romero’s earlier work, such as Night of the Living Dead. Originally entitled Jack’s Wife on its US release, the films tells the story of Joanie, a depressed middle class housewife in post-1968 California who becomes a Pagan witch. It characterises witchcraft as female rebellion against the patriarchal order, and identifies the spiritual, magical realm as a refuge from stultifying domesticity. Patriarchy renders Joanie powerless in the world of the everyday and invades her dreams: she has recurring nightmares in which she is attacked in her home by a male intruder wearing a Green Man mask. Her husband is boorish, frequently absent and, it is implied, violent towards her. The film’s claustrophobic domestic setting mirrors Joanie’s restricted interior world.

Witchcraft becomes Joanie’s means of fighting back, for it allows her to exercise power over people and events. She uses witchcraft to seduce her daughter’s boyfriend, an arrogant, sexist Berkeley radical. As her commitment to witchcraft increases she takes control of her inner life. At the climax of the film Joanie kills her husband and gets away with it: thinking he is the intruder from her nightmare, she shoots him when he returns home early from a business trip. Scenes of his death are intercut with her initiation into a Wiccan coven, where she is creating a new identity for herself. At the end of the film we see Joanie moving confidently as an independent woman and witch in the outside world and making her Wiccan identity clear to the other oppressed housewives she has left behind.

What sets Season of the Witch apart from other ‘witchcraft’ films of the period is the way in which Romero utilises Wiccan source material. The scenes dealing with Wicca have a documentary appearance, and feel as if the actors are speaking verbatim the words of real Wiccans. Wiccan rituals are depicted in a non-sensationalist way. In this respect Season of the Witch is unique: I know of no other film which portrays Wicca in a manner its adherents would recognise as accurate, and which does not present it as exotic.

Season of the Witch is rarely seen and has seldom been written about. Romero’s cult fans find it a difficult film as it is not a horror or zombie movie, and other reviewers have seen it as a feminist social satire.⁶ When I have shown the film to Pagan audiences the reaction has been one of strong surprise at what they have seen as an authentic and unsensational portrayal of Wicca. For a Pagan audience, it is the way in which Joanie takes control over her inner life that enables her to overcome the restrictions patriarchy places on her. Although the narrative of Season of the Witch does not take place within a community where Paganism is the norm (as does The Wicker Man), it establishes a Pagan/Wiccan spiritual and moral framework for its central character, so that we can read her actions as consistent with this context.

Like The Wicker Man, Season of the Witch culminates in a death caused by Pagans. With both films, Pagan audiences either applaud this death or are at least ambivalent about it. They tend to read both films in a way very different from non-Pagan audiences.

Kenneth Anger’s films are made from a very different starting point. Anger has not made feature films. He is a central figure in the American Underground avant-garde film movement which emerged in the mid-1940s. The corpus of short films which Anger made over 30 years from the late 1940s onwards are held in high regard by avant-garde, arthouse, gay and Pagan audiences amongst others, and have been extensively discussed by theorists of the avant-garde and gay cinema.⁷ Anger’s work is much more widely known than that of other avant-garde and underground film makers: in the 1960s his films became a key part of the counterculture (largely though his association with The Rolling Stones) and are well-known amongst non-specialist audiences. Anger’s work is made from a very individual viewpoint and draws its inspiration directly from his personal life.

Anger has been closely associated with OTO (Ordo Templi Orientis), the magical order led by Aleister Crowley. For Anger, his films are magical acts which are intended to work directly on the consciousness of his audience. This is most apparent in Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954), Scorpio Rising (1963), Invocation of my Demon Brother (1969) and Lucifer Rising (1972). In these films, actors embodying Pagan deities act out magical rituals in which myth, symbol and complex visual effects work to alter the consciousness of participants and viewers. Of the films cited here, Anger’s are the only ones which are made by a professed magician and which contain a Pagan standpoint, but as essentially non-narrative avant-garde works, they fulfill a very different function for their audience. Anger goes much further than The Wicker Man: he makes films as a magician and invites his audience to participate in them as cinematic rituals and magical acts. Although made outside the mainstream of narrative cinema, Anger’s films offer a very challenging and rewarding experience for audiences interested in Paganism. Pagans who would not usually be interested in avant-garde cinema are familiar with Anger’s work, and have described it as both enjoyable and influential for them.

Night of the Demon (1957) presents very interesting parallels with The Wicker Man. An adaptation of an M. R. James short story made by an extraordinary master of low budget horror, it concerns an ultra-rational male American scientist who comes to England to investigate a ‘devil cult’.⁸ The cult’s leader places a hex on the hero: he will be killed by a fire demon unless he can return the hex, a runic parchment, to the sender. In order to survive, the hero has to overcome his rationality and believe in the magic and Paganism he despises. He chooses to do so and is able to defeat the hex. He does everything that Sergeant Howie cannot: he learns about the world of magic and Paganism, overcomes his rational scruples, believes in the irrational, and uses it to defeat evil and survive. Crucially, he achieves this by learning from two central female characters, whereas Howie rejects every instance of ‘feminine knowledge’ offered to him. Pagan audiences watching this film identify with the hero and, in screenings at which I have been present, cheer him on as he battles for his life.

The Wicker Man occupies a crucial position within the corpus of films that may be defined as ‘Pagan’, or as having Pagan content. Pagan audiences read films with Pagan content in a very specific way, and their reading of The Wicker Man differs from readings of the film by non-Pagan audiences. The Wicker Man offers a unique experience to Pagan audiences because its narrative takes place within a Pagan spiritual framework. Pagans have claimed ownership over The Wicker Man and form an important element of its cult audience.

Bibliography

Adams Sitney, P., Visionary Film (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974).

Brown, A., Inside ‘The Wicker Man’: The morbid ingenuities (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 2000).

Fujiwara, C., Jacques Tourneur: The cinema of nightfall (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1998).

Gardner, G., Witchcraft Today (London: Rider, 1954).

_____, The Meaning of Witchcraft (London: Aquarian Press, 1959).

Hunter, J., ed., Moonchild: The films of Kenneth Anger (London: Creation Books, 2001).

Hutton, R., The Triumph Of The Moon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).

Internet Movie Database, The, www.imdb.com [Accessed June 2004].

Johns, J., King of the Witches (London: Pan Books).

Romero, G. A. (Director), Season of the Witch (Redemption Films, 1973).

Sanders, M., Maxine The Witch Queen (London: Star Books, 1976).

Season of the Witch. Dir. G. A. Romero. Redemption Films. 1973.

Tourneur, J. (Director), Night of the Demon (Not currently in distribution, 1957).

 

¹ Author’s ongoing research into 2001 census returns; Pagan Federation, 2003. (The Pagan Federation is the umbrella body for Pagans in the UK and provides networking, resources and information about Paganism: BM Box 7097, London WC1N 3XX, UK).

² Gerald Gardner is credited with beginning the revival of Witchcraft/Wicca with the publication of Witchcraft Today and The Meaning Of Witchcraft; he actively sought media coverage for Wicca until his death in 1961. Alex and Maxine Sanders came to prominence within Wicca in the UK during the 1960s as the leaders of a new form of Wicca which eventually became known as ‘Alexandrian’ (to distinguish it from the established Gardnerian form). The Sanders publicised their activities and beliefs widely through press interviews and television appearances, and both had mass market paperback biographies/autobiographies published: Johns, King of the Witches; Sanders, Maxine the Witch Queen.

³ Gardner, Witchcraft Today, Gardner, The Meaning of Witchcraft and Sanders, Maxine the Witch Queen.

⁴ Alex and Maxine Sanders’ appearance on the show in 1970 generated immense interest, tabloid press coverage and complaint from the religious right.

⁵ Brown, Inside ‘The Wicker Man’, p. 24-26. See the papers by Koven and Harper elsewhere in this volume.

⁶ The Internet Movie Database; peer group reviews.

⁷ Adams Sitney, Visionary Film and Hunter, Moonchild.

⁸ Fujiwara, Jacques Tourneur.