1.

Paganism and Prejudice

IN THE LAST FORTY-FIVE YEARS, alongside the often noted resurgence of “occult” and “magical” groups, a diverse and decentralized religious movement has sprung up that remains comparatively unnoticed, and when recognized, is generally misunderstood. Throughout the United States there are thousands of groups in this movement, each numbering anywhere from several to several hundred. Eclectic, individualist, and often fiercely autonomous, they do not share those characteristics that the media attribute to religious cults. They are often self-created and homemade; they seldom have “gurus” or “masters”; they have few temples and hold their meetings in woods, parks, apartments, and houses; in contrast to most organized cults, the operations of high finance are rare; and entry into these groups comes through a process that could rarely be called “conversion.”

While these religious groups all differ in regard to tradition, scope, structure, organization, ritual, and the names for their deities, they do regard one another as part of the same religious and philosophical movement. They have a common name for themselves: Pagans or Neo-Pagans. ^a They share a set of values and they communicate with one another through a network of newsletters¹ and Web sites, as well as regional and national gatherings.

Most Neo-Pagans sense an aliveness and “presence” in nature. They are usually polytheists or animists or pantheists, or two or three of these things at once. They share the goal of living in harmony with nature and they tend to view humanity’s “advancement” and separation from nature as the prime source of alienation. They see ritual as a tool to end that alienation. Most Neo-Pagans look to the old pre-Christian nature religions of Europe, the ecstatic religions, and the mystery traditions as a source of inspiration and nourishment. They gravitate to ancient symbols and ancient myths, to the old polytheistic religions of the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Celts, and the Sumerians. They are reclaiming these sources, transforming them into something new, and adding to them the visions of Robert Graves, even of J.R.R. Tolkien and other writers of science fiction and fantasy, as well as some of the teachings and practices of the remaining aboriginal peoples.

Most of these groups have grown up in cities, where the loss of enrichment from the natural world is most easily perceived and where, also, the largest number of intellectual tools to enlarge such a perception exist. Fueled by romantic vision, fantasy, and visionary activities, empowered by a sense of planetary crisis and the idea that such a nature vision may be drowned in an ecocidal nightmare, Neo-Pagans have often allied themselves with other philosophical and political movements.

Since 1972, I have moved freely among a large number of Neo-Pagans. I have visited groves and covens across the country and have attended many festivals and gatherings. I have also visited groups in Canada and the United Kingdom. This book charts the resurgence of these contemporary nature religions.

In the late 1960s it was fashionable to characterize the counter-culture and the psychedelic movement as a visionary, “neo-sacral,” “neotranscendental” ² movement which joined a mystical view of the cosmos to a countercultural lifestyle and worldly politics. In the last decade that movement has virtually disappeared and its place has been taken by large well-financed religious groups usually characterized by authoritarianism and asceticism. The Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon and the International Society of Krishna Consciousness of Swami Prabhupada are two examples among many.

In contrast, the Neo-Pagan groups described in these pages have something of that original “neo-sacral” impulse of the 1960s. They do not regard pleasure as sinful, nor do they conceive of this world as a burden. While many of their members lead quite ordinary, and often successful, lives in the “real world,” they are able to detach themselves from many of the trends of the day, maintaining a sense of humor, a gentle anarchism, and a remarkable tolerance of diversity.

I have noticed that many intellectuals turn themselves off the instant they are confronted with the words witchcraft, magic, occultism, and religion, as if such ideas exert a dangerous power that might weaken their rational faculties. Yet many of these people maintain a generous openness about visionaries, poets, and artists, some of whom may be quite mad according to “rational” standards. They are fascinated by people of diverse professions and lifestyles who have historical ties with, let us say, the Transcendentalists or the Surrealists, as long as the word occult is not mentioned.

If Neo-Paganism were presented as an intellectual and artistic movement whose adherents have new perceptions of the nature of reality, the place of sexuality, and the meaning of community, academics would flock to study it. Political philosophers would write articles on the Neo-Pagans’ sense of wonder and the minority vision they represent. Literary critics would compare the poetic images in the small magazines published and distributed by the groups with images in the writings of Blake and Whitman. Jungian psychologists would rush to study the Neo-Pagans’ use of ancient archetypes and their love of the classics and ancient lore.

But words like witch and pagan do not rest easily in the mind or on the tongue. Although reporting on Paganism and Wicca has improved in the last decade, pop journalists often still present a Neo-Paganism composed of strange characters and weird rites.³

The reality is very different. This religious movement of people who often call themselves Pagans, Neo-Pagans, and Witches is only partly an “occult” phenemenon. Often it is interwoven with the visionary and artistic tradition, the ecology movement, the feminist movement, and the libertarian tradition.

A few scholars and specialists have studied and come to understand Neo-Paganism, but the public continues to have an inaccurate picture of it. Misunderstandings begin at the most basic level, with the meanings of words used to describe beliefs and attitudes. Let us take the word magic. Most people define it as superstition or belief in the supernatural. In contrast, most magicians, Witches, and other magical practitioners do not believe that magic has anything to do with the supernatural.^b

Here’s an example that illustrates the depth and complexity of these differences. During my travels I came across a coven of Witches living on a farm in the plains of Colorado.⁴ This small group was led by a couple who called themselves Michael and Judy. On their farm livestock were raised and sold, goats were milked, pigs were slaughtered, vegetables were grown, canned, and put away. The seasons turned and work proceeded. Michael and Judy were Witches—that is they were members of a polytheistic nature religion who worshipped a goddess and a god and regarded themselves as priests and priestesses of the Earth-Mother. Outside of this, they lived quite ordinary lives, like their neighbors, who also grew crops and raised animals. Unlike most of their neighbors, however, they had no television and spent their few hours of spare time each day studying music and reading books on mythology, Celtic history, or the history and philosophy of magical practice.

Their rituals marked the seasonal turnings of the year and provided a focus for various creative activities—from the writing of poetry and drama to a large number of activities that, in this society, are usually the work of artists, not farmers.

They planted by the phases of the moon (as do thousands of farmers), they used herbal remedies to heal wounds in their animals, they used ritual to unite themselves with the natural world. They experienced the deaths and births of animals and plants.

Now, what did magic mean to this group of Witches? And how would their definition differ from the notion commonly held by the public and from the views of scholars? What, in fact, was a real instance of magic at the farm?

Although this group has now disbanded, I visited the farm in 1974 and 1976. On a hot and dry day, four of us—myself, two weekend volunteers who were studying with the coven, and one full-time member— were asked to go down to the river, which habitually dried up in the late summer until, by September, nothing remained but a cracked riverbed. Each year as the river dried up, the fish inhabitants died. Our project was to catch the dying fish in two buckets and fill an entire small truck with the creatures, which would then be used as composting materials for an organic garden.

A few of the fish were floating on the surface, but most were still quite lively and dashed away to survive a few more hours, perhaps days. It was slimy, messy, and unsuccessful work. At the end of three hours we were caked with mud up to our thighs. We returned with only two buckets of fish. It seemed an impossible task.

When we arrived back at the farm, Michael said that he would go back with us to the river, that the job was possible, and that, more to the point, the fish were needed. I was skeptical. In the truck on the way to the river he spoke a few words about magic (this may have been the only time I heard the word during my stay at the farm). “Magic,” he said, “is simply the art of getting results.” He noted that the fish were dying and that they might as well be put to good purpose fertilizing the earth. He impressed upon us the necessity for our actions.

Michael then began to describe how bears catch fish with their paws. He asked us to visualize ourselves as bears, to place ourselves in the position of a hungry bear in need of food. I began to imagine the essence of a bear’s live. In such a mood, we waded to the middle of the river, where the water came up to our waists, and began slapping our hands together very quickly, catching the fish between our hands and throwing them over our heads and onto the beach. We continued this process of slapping and throwing until the beach was covered with fish. An hour later, we gathered them up in buckets and took them to the truck, which was soon filled almost to the top.

If I may presume to broaden Michael’s definition of magic, it might read something like this: Magic is a convenient word for a whole collection of techniques, all of which involve the mind. In this case, we might conceive of these techniques as including the mobilization of confidence, will, and emotion brought about by the recognition of necessity; the use of imaginative faculties, particularly the ability to visualize, in order to begin to understand how other beings function in nature so we can use this knowledge to achieve necessary ends.

This magic did not involve the supernatural. It involved an understanding of psychological and environmental processes; it was a kind of shamanism, a knowledge of how emotion and concentration can be directed naturally to effect changes in consciousness that affect the behavior of (in this case) humans and fish. It is important to stress that this naturalistic definition of magic was not unique to the farm in Colorado, but is common in one form or another to the other groups mentioned in these pages.

Interestingly, traditional occult definitions of magic have rarely included the supernatural. For example, in Aleister Crowley’s famous definition, magic is “the Science and Art of causing change to occur in conformity with Will,”⁵ and more recently Isaac Bonewits has defined magic as “folk parapsychology, an art and science designed to enable people to make effective use of their psychic talents.”⁶ Most of these definitions link magic to an understanding of the workings of the mind. Actually, the idea of the supernatural, of something outside nature, is a thoroughly modern notion unknown to the ancients.

Magic is only one of many terms about which there is misunderstanding. Others are Pagan and Witch. Pagan comes from the Latin paganus, which means a country dweller, and is itself derived from pagus, the Latin word for village or rural district.⁷ Similarly, heathen originally meant a person who lived on the heaths. Negative associations with these words are the end result of centuries of political struggles during which the major prophetic religions, notably Christianity, won a victory over the older polytheistic religions. In the West, often the last people to be converted to Christianity lived on the outskirts of populated areas and kept to the old ways. These were the Pagans and heathens—the word Pagan was a term of insult, meaning “hick.”

Pagan had become a derogatory term in Rome by the third century. Later, after the death of Julian, the last Pagan emperor, in 362 C.E.,^c the word Pagan came to refer to intellectual Pagans like Julian. Gore Vidal, in his extraordinary novel Julian, wrote a fictional description of this event in which the Pagan orator Libanius, after attending the funeral of a Christian notable, writes in his journal: “There was a certain amount of good-humored comment about ‘pagans’ (a new word of contempt for us Hellenists) attending Christian services. . . .”⁸ Julian, by the way, has long been one of Neo-Paganism’s heroes, and an early Neo-Pagan journal was called The Julian Review.⁹ Centuries later the word Pagan still suffers the consequences of political and religious struggles, and dictionaries still define it to mean a godless person or an unbeliever, instead of, simply, a member of a different kind of religion.

Pagan is also often associated with hedonism. This makes some sense, since many ancient pagan religions incorporated sexuality into ecstatic religious practice. Open attitudes toward sexuality play a part in some, but by no means all, Neo-Pagan groups, and the old Pagan religions had their share of ascetics.

I use Pagan to mean a member of a polytheistic nature religion, such as the ancient Greek, Roman, or Egyptian religions, or, in anthropological terms, a member of one of the indigenous folk and tribal religions all over the world. People who have studied the classics or have been deeply involved with natural or aboriginal peoples are comparatively free of the negative and generally racist attitudes that surround the word Pagan.

Isaac Bonewits uses the term Neo-Paganism to refer to “polytheistic (or conditional monotheistic) nature religions that are based upon the older or Paleopagan religions; concentrating upon an attempt to retain the humanistic, ecological and creative aspects of these old belief systems while discarding their occasional brutal or repressive developments, which are inappropriate. . . .”¹⁰ Another Neo-Pagan writer, Oberon Zell-Ravenheart of the Church of All Worlds, has written that Neo-Pagans see divinity manifest in all the processes of nature. According to his view, Neo-Paganism is a constantly evolving philosophy that views humanity as a “functional organ within the greater organism of all Live. . . .”¹¹

Since many of the groups I interviewed for this book consider themselves to be Witchcraft covens of one description or another, it will be impossible to understand their nature if one is burdened by stereotyped notions about Witches. There mere words witch and witchcraft unlock a set of explosive associations that inspire unease if not fear.

Dictionaries define Witches as (primarily) women who are either seductive and charming (bewitching) or ugly and evil (wicked). In either case, the women are supposed to possess a variety of “supernatural” powers. The lexicographical definitions of witch are rather confusing and bear little relation to the definitions given by Witches themselves. Participants in the Witchcraft revival generally use Witch to mean simply an initiate of the religion Wicca, also known as the Craft.

Followers of Wicca seek their inspiration in pre-Christian sources, European folklore, and mythology. They consider themselves priests and priestesses of an ancient European shamanistic nature religion that worships a goddess who is related to the ancient Mother Goddess in her three aspects of Maiden, Mother, and Crone. Many Craft traditions also worship a god, related to the ancient horned lord of animals, the god of the hunt, the god of death and lord of the forests. Many Neo-Pagan Witches, and Neo-Pagans generally, see themselves as modern-day heirs to the ancient mystery traditions of Egypt, Crete, and Eleusis, as well as to the more popular peasant traditions of celebratory festivals and seasonal rites.

The word Witchcraft comes from the Old English wicce and wicca, referring to female and male practitioners, respectively. Many Witches have said that these two words derive from the root “wit” or wisdom. Others (including myself, in a previous edition of this book) have said the word derives from the Indo-European roots “wic” and “weik,” meaning to bend or to turn. According to this view, a Witch would be a woman (or man) skilled in the craft of shaping, bending, and changing reality. This definition would apply well to what happened with the fish in Colorado. Although this definition emphasizes the flexible and non-authoritarian nature of modern Wicca, most dictionaries say something quite different. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, for example, says that the word “witch” is derived from the Indo-European root “weik²,” which has to do with religion and magic, and this differs from “weik⁴,” to bend. Many Wiccans define Witchcraft as the “Craft of the Wise,” and anyone who reads the literature of modern Wicca will come across this definition. Whether or not this idea is etymologically correct, it is understandable since Witches identify with village elders and healers—those skilled in healing and the practical arts.^d

In this book Witch refers to the followers of the Craft unless otherwise stated. Neo-Pagan Witchcraft is seen here as one of a number of modern polytheistic religions. I use the word “religion” broadly, to refer to any set of symbolic forms and acts that relate human beings to ultimate conditions of existence, cosmic questions, and universal concerns. Most people in the West tend to associate the word religion with the type of religion they are used to. They assume that religion must contain “beliefs” and “dogmas” and must involve a remote and transcendent deity, usually male, though occasionally neuter, and often removed from human interaction. The idea of a “nature religion” seems a contradiction in terms.

Neo-Pagans look at religion differently; they often point out that the root of the word means “to relink” and “to connect,” and therefore refers to any philosophy that makes deep connections between human beings and the universe.¹² The science fiction writer Joanna Russ once told a convention that science fiction was a “religious literature.” Many Neo-Pagans would agree. Similarly, the literature of ecology—for example, the work of writers like Loren Eiseley, René Dubos, Marston Bates, John Muir, and Henry David Thoreau—is seen by many Neo-Pagans as religious. Also, Neo-Paganism returns to the ancient idea that there is no distinction between spiritual and material, sacred and secular. We generally think of spiritual concerns as apart from mundane concerns. This idea is entirely opposed to the Pagan perception. A group of women in a feminist Witchcraft coven once told me that, to them, spiritual meant, “the power within oneself to create artistically and change one’s life.” These women saw no contradiction between their concern for political and social change and their concern for “things of the spirit,” which they equated with the need for beauty or with that spark that creates a poem or a dance. Mirth and reverence coexist as they do in many indigenous cultures.

People who want a convenient box to place these groups in frequently ask me whether they are “occult.” Usually this question is asked by people who do not wish to consider them at all, and if I say yes, they feel relieved that they don’t have to. The real answer is yes or no, depending on the definition of occult. Yes, because many of these groups deal with hidden or obscure forms of knowledge that are not generally accepted, and no, because a number of groups regard themselves as celebratory rather than magical or occult.

Harriet Whitehead, in an article on Scientology, science fiction, and the occult, makes the point that, contrary to the popular assumption, most occultists have an intellectual style, “a process of sorting, surveying, analysing and abstracting.” One of the hallmarks of that style is lack of dogmatism. “The occult world,” she writes, “offers to the individual a ‘free market’ of ideas. . . .” What this resembles, “and not by coincidence, is the intellectual democracy of the scientific and academic communities.” She writes that the difference between these two communities and the occult world is that occultists refuse “contentment with the finite” (the phrase comes from William James). Occultists continually affirm that “certain experiences do not cease to exist simply because there is no place for them in our customary order.” Occultists display an extraordinary ability to shift from one dimension of reality to another with ease, feeling that the whole world “hangs together in one unified piece.”¹³ While some Neo-Pagans consider themselves occultists and others do not, Whitehead’s characteristics seem to hold true for the groups I’ve observed. So, as you read, I hope your customary stereotypes will dissolve.