A LITTLE LESS MISUNDERSTANDING

(What Christians Don't Understand about

Neopaganism)

by J. Brad Hicks

Q: Are you a witch?

A: That's actually a tricky question to answer,
so let me go
about it in a round-about way. What I am is a
Neopagan.
Neopaganism is a beautiful, complex religion that is
not in
opposition to Christianity in any way - just
different. However,
some of the people that the Catholic church burned
as "witches"
were people who practiced the same things that I do.
In
identification with them and the suffering that they
went through,
some of us (Neopagans) call ourselves witches.
One expert, P.E.I.
Bonewits, says that there are actually several
kinds of groups who
call themselves "witches." Some are people whose
ancestors were the
village healers, herbalists, midwives, and such,
many of whom had
(or were ascribed to have) mental, psychic, or
magical powers, which
were passed down through the family in the form of
oral tradition,
and Bonewits calls them "Traditional Witches."
Some are people who
have deliberately used the term to oppose themselves
to Christianity,
are practicing "Satanists," and practice
(deliberately) most of the
practices invented by the Inquisitors. Bonewits
calls them "Gothic"
or "Neo-Gothic Witches." Of a different kind are
some radical
feminist groups, who call themselves witches because
they believe
that the original Inquisition was primarily anti-
female; some of
these also practice magic, many of them do not -
Bonewits calls
them "Feminist Witches." But the vast majority of
modern witches
are harmless people who worship God in many forms,
including the
Lord of the Dance, the Lady, and the Mother Earth.
These are the
people that Bonewits (and I) call"Neopagan Witches" -
and this is
what I am. I hope that this helps more than it
confuses.
 Q: Are you a devil worshipper?
A: I'm tempted to just say, "No!" and leave it at
that, but that
probably isn't enough. Devil worship (including
Satanism) is
really a Christian heresy. (If you don't believe me,
ask an expert -
say, any well-read pastor or theology professor.) In
order to worship
Satan, you have to believe in him - and there are
no references to
Satan outside of the Christian Bible. So to be a
Satanist or a
devil worshipper, you have to believe in the accuracy
of the Christian
Bible, then identify yourself with God's Enemy,
proclaim that you
are "evil," and then try to "fight against Jesus" or
similar
nonsense. Neopagans do not accept the Christian
Bible as a source of
truth. As a source of some beautiful poetry,
sometimes, or as a
source of myth, but not as a source of truth.
Emphatically, we do
not believe that God has an Opposite, an evil being
trying to destroy
God, the world, man, or whatever. So it is non-
sensical to say that
Neopagans worship Satan. Of course, many people
insist that any god
other than JHVH/Jesus (and his other Biblical names)
is a demon or an
illusion created by Satan. Well, you're welcome to
believe that if
you like - but over half of the world's population is
going to
be unhappy at you. Jews and followers of Islam are
just as confident
that they worship the True God as you are, and
resent being called
devil worshippers. So do I.

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Q: What do Neopagans believe about God?

A: Neopaganism is a new religion with very, very
old roots. It
harks back to the first religions that man ever
practiced (based
on the physical evidence). Neopagans worship a
variety of symbols
 from the Old Religions - the practices of the ancient
Celts, the
Greeks, the Egyptians, the Romans - and differ with
each other over
what those symbols really represent. What I
(and many others)
believe is that they are all aspects of God (or
maybe, the Gods) -
some kind of beautiful, powerful, and loving being
or force that ties
all of life together and is the origin of all
miracles - including
miracles such as written language, poetry, music,
art ...

Q: Do Neopagans have a Bible?

A: Not most of us. The closest analogue would be a
witch's Book
of Shadows, which is a sort of notebook of legends,
poetry, history,
and magic ritual which is copied by every newly-
initiated witch, then
added to. But on the whole, even a Book of
Shadows isn't what
Christians think of as a Bible. It's not
infallible (couldn't be,
they've been brought to us via hastily-copied
texts under trying
circumstances), it doesn't prescribe a specific
code of morality
(except for a few general guidelines), and it
doesn't claim to be
dictated by God - except for a few, debatable
parts. Those of us
who aren't witches don't even have that much.
Neopaganism is a
religious system that relies more on the
individual than on the
Book or the Priest. One of the principal beliefs
of Neopaganism is
that no one, not Pope nor Priest nor Elder,
has the right to
interfere with your relationship to God. Learn
from whomever you
want, and pray to whatever name means the most to
you.

Q: Did you say magic? Do Neopagans believe in the

occult?
A: Cringe. What a badly worded question - but I
hear it all the
time. Neopagans as a rule don't "believe in the
occult" - we
practice magic. Magic is simply a way to focus the
mental abilities
that you were born with, and use them to
change the world in
positive ways. Magic can also be mixed with worship;
in which case it
differs very little from Christian prayer.
 Q: But I thought that you said that you weren't a
demon-worshipper?
A: That's right. Magic and demonology are two
different things.
Magic you also know as "psychic powers" or
"mentallics" or even as
"the power of positive thinking" - in essence, the
magical world
view holds that "reality" is mostly a construct of
the human mind,
and as such, can be altered by the human mind.
That's all there
is to it.

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Q: How do you become a Neopagan?

A: In a very real sense, nobody every
"becomes" a Neopagan.
There are no converts, as no conversion is necessary.
Neopaganism
is an attitude towards worship, and either you have
it or you don't.
My case is not atypical. All of my life, I have
been fascinated by
the old mythologies. I have always found
descriptions of the Greek
Gods fascinating. If I had any religious beliefs as
a child, it was
that somewhere, there was a God, and many people
worship Him, but I
had no idea what His name was. I set out to find
Him, and through an
odd combination of circumstances, I because
convinced that his Name
was Jesus. But seven years later, I had to
admit to myself that
Whoever God is, he answers non-Christians' prayers
as well as those
 in the name of Jesus. In either case, true
miracles are rare. In
both cases, the one praying has a devout experience
with God. After
searching my soul, I admitted that I could not tell
that I was better
off than when I believed in the Old Gods. And in the
mean time, I had
found out that other people also loved the Old Gods -
and that they
call themselves Neopagans. When I realized that
what I believed was
little or no different that what they believed, I
called myself a
Neopagan, too. The common element for nearly all of
us is that nearly
all of us already believed these things, before
we found out that
anyone else did. "Becoming" a pagan is never a
conversion. It's
usually a home-coming. No one ever
"brainwashed" me. I finally
relaxed, and stopped struggling against my own self.

Q: I've heard about witches holding orgies and

such. Do you?
A: No, that sort of thing doesn't appeal to me.
Most of the
crap that you've heard about "witch orgies" is
nonsense made up by
the National Enquirer to sell magazines. But I
shouldn't be flippant
about this, because it underlies a serious
question - what kind of
morality do Neopagans hold to?

"Eight words the Wiccan Rede

fulfill:
An it harm none, do what thou
will!"
from an old Book of
Shadows

That about sums it all up. Neopaganism teaches that

it is
harmful to yourself (and dangerous) to harm
others. It also
teaches that trying to impose your moral standards
on somebody
else's behavior is (at least) foolish - and probably
dangerous,
as you run some serious chance of hurting that
person. Perhaps in
a sense Neopagans don't have morality, for as R. A.
Wilson said,
"There are no commandments because there is
no Commander
anywhere," but Neopagans do have ethics - standards
for behavior
based on honor and mutual benefit.
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Q: I saw on the news that Neopagans use a star in a

circle as their
emblem. Isn't that a Satanic symbol?
A: A pentacle (that's what it's called) is a
Satanic symbol in
precisely same sense that the cross is a Nazi symbol.
The German
National Socialist Party used an equal-armed cross
with four flags
attached to it as their emblem. (Yes, I know -
that's a swastika.
Well, before the Nazis made the word common
knowledge, people just
called it a "bent cross" - it's an old heraldic
symbol, and it
means the same thing that a normal cross does). That
doesn't make
the Nazis good Christians, and it doesn't make
Christians into
Nazis. In the same sense, Satanists (and some rock
groups) use a
type of pentacle as their emblem. That doesn't
make them Neopagans,
nor does it mean that Neopagans are
Satanists (or even
rock-and-rollers).

Q: Are Neopagans opposed to Christianity?

A: Some Neopagans are ex-Christians, and I'm not
going to deny
that some of them have a grudge against the Church
because of what
they perceived as attempts to control their minds.
Further, many
Neopagans are suspicious of the Church, because it
was in the name
of Jesus Christ that nine million of our kind were
murdered.
Neopagans are opposed to anyone who uses force to
control the
 minds of others. Does that include you? If not,
then itmeans
that Neopagans as such are not opposed to you. Do
you work for the
benefit of mankind, are you respectful to the
Earth? Then it makes
us allies, whether or not either of us wants to
admit it.

- - - - - - - - - -

There are manyother misconceptions in the

popularmind about
the Neopagan religion. Unless you've studied it,
read about it
from sympathetic sources, then you really don't
know anything about
Neopagan history, beliefs, practices, customs, art,
science, culture,
or magic. But it would take several entire books to
teach you, and I
already fear that I will be accused of trying
to win converts
(despite what I've said above). If you are
curious and willing to
learn, try some of the following books:

Margot Adler, _Drawing Down the

Moon_
Starhawk, _The Spiral Dance_
P.E.I. Bonewits, _Real Magic_
Stewart Farrar, _What Witches
Do_.

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{file "NeoPagism (Eric S. Raymond)" "bos086.htm"}

NEOPAGANISM
 By Eric S. Raymond
I. Introduction

The neopagan phenomenon is a loose

collection of religious
movements, experiments and jokes that offers a
healthy alternative to
the dogmatism of the Judeo/Christian/Islamic
mainstream (on the one
hand) and the mushy-mindedness of most 'New Age'
groups (on the
other).

This article,prepared atthe requestof

anumber ofcurious net.
posters, offers a brief description of neopagan
thought and practice.
A list of good sources for further study are listed
at the end.

II. What is a neopagan?

I used the term 'religious' above, but as

you'll see it's
actually more than somewhat misleading, and I
(like many other
neopagans) use it only because no other word is
available for the more
general kind of thing of which the neopagan
movement and what we
generally think of as 'religion' are special cases.

Neopaganism is 'religious' in the

etymological sense of 're
ligare', to rebind (to roots, to strengths, to the
basics of things),
and it deals with mythology and the realm of the
'spiritual'. But, as
we in the Judeo/Christian West have come to
understand 'religion' (an
organized body of belief that connects the
'supernatural' with an
authoritarian moral code via 'faith') neopaganism
is effectively and
radically anti-religious. I emphasize this because it
is important in
understanding what follows.

Common characteristics of almostall the

groups that describe
themselves as 'neopagan' (the term is often
capitalized) include:

1. Anti-dogmatism

Neopagan religions are religions of

practice, pragmatism and
immediate experience. The emphasis is always on what
they can help the
individuals in them to *do* and *experience*;
theology and metaphysics
 take a back seat, and very little 'faith' or
'belief' is required or
expected. In fact many neopagans (including yours
truly) are actively
hostile to 'faith' and all the related ideas of
religious authority,
'divine revelation' and the like.

2. Compatibility with a scientific world-view

This tends to follow from the above.

Because neopaganism is
centered in experiences rather than beliefs, it
doesn't need or want
to do vast overarching cosmologies or push fixed
Final Answers to the
Big Questions -- understanding and helping human
beings relate to each
other and the world as we experience it is quite
enough for us. Thus,
we are generally friendly to science and the
scientific world-view.
Many of us are scientists and technologists
ourselves (in fact, by
some counts, a plurality of us are computer
programmers!).

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3. Reverence for nature, sensuality, and pleasure

Mostneopaganisms makeheavy use ofnature

symbolismand encourage
people to be more aware of their ties to all the
non-human life on
this planet. Explicit worship of 'Gaia', the
earth ecosphere
considered as a single interdependent unit, is
common. Veneration of
nature deities is central to many traditions.
Ecological activism is
often considered a religious duty, though there is
much controversy
over what form it should take.

Bypreference, mostneopagans holdtheir

ceremoniesoutdoors under
sun or moon. Seasonal changes and astronomical
rhythms (especially the
solstices, equinoxes and full and new moons)
define the ritual
 calendar.

Ritual and festivenudity arecommon; to

benaked before natureis
often considered a holy and integrating act in
itself. Sex is
considered sacramental and sexual energy and
symbolisms permeate
neopagan practice (we like to contrast this with
Christianity, in
which the central sacrament commemorates a murder
and climaxes in
ritual cannibalism).

4. Polytheism, pantheism, agnosticism

Most neopaganisms are explicitly polytheistic

-- that is, they
recognize pantheons of multiple deities. But the
reality behind this
is more complex than it might appear.

First, many neopagans are philosophical

agnostics or even
atheists; there is a tendency to regard 'the
gods' as Jungian
archetypes or otherwise in some sense created by
and dependent on
human belief, and thus naturally plural and observer-
dependent.

Secondly, asin many historicalpolytheisms,

there isan implicit
though seldom-discussed idea that all the gods and
goddesses we deal
with are 'masks', refractions of some underlying
unity that we cannot
or should not attempt to approach directly.

And thirdly, there is a strong undercurrent

of pantheism, the
belief that the entire universe is in some
important sense a
responsive, resonating and sacred whole (or, which
is different and
subtler, that it is proper for human beings to view
it that way).

Many neopagans hold all three of these beliefs

simultaneously.

5. Decentralized, non-authoritarian organization; no

priestly elite

Neopagans have seen what happens when a

priesthood elite gets
temporal power; we want none of that. We do not
take collections,
build temples, or fund a full-time clergy. In fact
the clergy-laity
 distinction is pretty soft; in many traditions,
all members are
considered 'in training' for it, and in all
traditions every
participant in a ritual is an active one; there
are and can be no
pew-sitting passive observers.

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Mostneopagan traditionsare
(dis)organizedashorizontal networks
of small affinity groups (usually called
'circles', 'groves', or
'covens' depending on the flavor of neopagan
involved). Priests and
priestesses have no real authority outside their
own circles (and
sometimes not much inside them!), though some
do have national
reputations.

Many of us keep a low profile partly due

to a real fear of
persecution. Too many of our spiritual ancestors
were burned, hung,
flayed and shot by religions that are still powerful
for a lot of us
to feel safe in the open. Down in the Bible Belt
the burnings and
beatings are still going on, and the media
loves to hang that
'Satanist' label on anything it doesn't understand
for a good
juicy story.

Also, we never proselytize. This posting is

about as active a
neopagan solicitation as anyone will ever see; we
tend to believe that
'converts' are dangerous robots and that people
looking to be
'converted' aren't the kind we want. We have found
that it works quite
well enough to let people find us when they're ready
for what we have
to teach.

6. Reverence for the female principle

 Oneof the most striking differencesbetween
neopagan groups and
the religious mainstream is the wide
prevalence (and in some
traditions dominance) of the worship of
goddesses. Almost all
neopagans revere some form of the Great Mother,
often as a nature
goddess identified with the ecosphere, and there
are probably more
female neopagan clergy than there are male.

Most neopagan traditions are equalist (these

tend to pair the
Great Mother with a male fertility-god, usually
some cognate of the
Greek Pan). A vocal and influential minority are
actively feminist,
and (especially on the West Coast) there have been
attempts to present
various neopagan traditions as the natural 'women's
religion' for the
feminist movement. The effects of this kind of
politicization of
neopaganism are a topic of intense debate within the
movement and fuel
some of its deepest factional divisions.

7. Respect for art and creativity

Neopaganism tends to attractartists and

musicians as muchas it
attracts technologists. Our myth and ritual can be
very powerful at
stimulating and releasing creativity, and one
of the greatest
strengths of the movement is the rich outgrowth
of music, poetry,
crafts and arts that has come from that. It is quite
common for people
joining the movement to discover real talents in
those areas that they
never suspected.

Poets and musicians have the kind of special

place at neopagan
festivals that they did in pre-literate
cultures; many of our
best-known people are or have been bards and
songsmiths, and the
ability to compose and improvise good ritual poetry
is considered the
mark of a gifted priest(ess) and very highly
respected.

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8. Eclecticism

"Steal from any source that doesn't run too

fast" is aneopagan
motto. A typical neopagan group will mix Greek,
Celtic and Egyptian
mythology with American Indian shamanism. Ritual
technique includes
recognizable borrowings from medieval ceremonial
magic, Freemasonry
and pre-Nicene Christianity, as well as a bunch
of 20th-century
inventions. Humanistic psychology and some of the
more replicable New
Age healing techniques have recently been
influential. The resulting
stew is lively and effective, though sometimes a
bit hard to hold
together.

9. A sense of humor

Neopagans generally believethat itis more

dangerousto takeyour
religion too seriously than too lightly. Self-
spoofery is frequent and
(in some traditions) semi-institutionalized, and at
least one major
neopagan tradition (Discordianism, known to many
on this net) is
*founded* on elaborate spoofery and started out as a
joke.

Oneof the most attractive features of the

neopagan approach is
that we don't confuse solemnity with gloom. Our
rituals are generally
celebratory and joyous, and a humorous remark at the
right time need
not break the mood.

We generally feel that anyreligion that can't

stand tohave fun
poked at it is in as sad shape as the corresponding
kind of person.

III. What kinds of neopagan are there, and where did

they come from?

Depending onwho you talkto and

whatdefinitions you use,there
are between 40,000 and 200,000 neopagans in the
U.S.; the true figure
is probably closer to the latter than the former, and
the movement is
 still growing rapidly following a major 'population
explosion' in the
late '70s.

The numericallylargest and most

influentialneopagan group is
the 'Kingdom of Wicca' -- the modern witch covens.
Modern witchcraft
has nothing to do with Hollywood's images of
the cackling,
cauldron-stirring crone (though wiccans sometimes
joke about that one)
and is actively opposed to the psychopathic
Satanism that many
Christians erroneously think of as 'witchcraft'.
Your author is an
initiate Wiccan priest and coven leader of long
standing.

Otherimportant subgroupsinclude
thoseseeking torevive Norse,
Egyptian, Amerind, and various kinds of tribal
pantheons other than
the Greek and Celtic ones that have been
incorporated into Wicca.
These generally started out as Wiccan offshoots
or have been so
heavily influenced by Wiccan ritual technique that
their people can
usually work comfortably in a Wiccan circle and vice-
versa.

There arealso the variousorders of

ceremonialmagicians, most
claiming to be the successors to the turn-of-the-
century Golden Dawn
or one of the groups founded by Alesteir Crowley
during his brilliant
and notorious occult career. These have their
own very elaborate
ritual tradition, and tend to be more intellectual,
more rigid, and
less nature-oriented. They are sometimes
reluctant to describe
themselves as neopagans.

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The Discordians (and, more recently, the

Discordian-offshoot
Church of the Sub-Genius) are few in number but
quite influential.
They are the neopagan movement's sacred clowns,
puncturing pretense
 and adding an essential note to the pagan
festivals. Many Wiccans,
especially among priests and priestesses, are also
Discordians and
will look you straight in the eye and tell you
that the entire
neopagan movement is a Discordian hoax...

Neopaganism used to be largely a white,

upper-middle-class
phenomenon, but that has been changing during the
last five years. So
called 'new-collar' workers have come in droves
during the eighties.
We still see fewer non-whites, proportionately, than
there are in the
general population, but that is also changing
(though more slowly).
With the exception of a few nut-fringe 'Aryan'
groups detested by the
whole rest of the movement, neopagans are
actively anti-racist;
prejudice is not the problem, it's more that the
ideas have tended to
be accepted by the more educated segments of society
first, and until recently those more educated
segments were mostly
white.

OntheEastCoast, ahigher-than-general-
populationpercentage of
neopagans have Roman Catholic or Jewish
backgrounds, but figures
suggest this is not true nationwide. There is also a
very significant
overlap in population with science-fiction fandom and
the Society for
Creative Anachronism.

Politically, neopagans are distributed

about the same as the
general population, except that whether liberal or
conservative they

tend to be more individualist and less conformist

and moralistic than
average. It is therefore not too surprising that the
one significant
difference in distribution is the presence of a
good many more
libertarians than one would see in a same-sized
chunk of the general
population (I particularly register this because
I'm a libertarian
myself, but non-libertarians have noted the same
phenomenon). These
complexities are obscured by the fact that the most
politically active
and visible neopagans are usually ex-hippie left-
liberals from the
'60s.
 I think the most acute generalization made
about pagans as a
whole is Margot Adler's observation that they are
mostly self-made
people, supreme individualists not necessarily in
the assertive or
egoist sense but because they have felt the need to
construct their
own culture, their own definitions, their own
religious paths, out of
whatever came to hand rather than accepting the
ones that the
mainstream offers.

IV. Where do I find out more?

I have deliberatelynot said much

aboutmythology, or specific
religious practice or aims, or the role of magic and
to what extent we
practice and 'believe' in it. Any one of those is a
topic for another
posting; but you can get a lot of information from
books. Here's a
basic bibliography:

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Adler, Margot _Drawing_Down_the_Moon_ (Random House

1979, hc)
This book is a lucid and penetrating account of
who the modern
neo-pagans are, what they do and why they do it,
from a woman who
spent almost two years doing observer-participant
journalism in the
neo-pagan community. Especially valuable because
it combines an
anthropologist's objectivity with a candid personal
account of her
own feelings about all she saw and did and how her
ideas about the
neo-pagans changed under the impact of the
experiences she went
through. Recommended strongly as a first book on
the subject, and
it's relatively easy to find. There is now a
revised and expanded
second edition available.
 Starhawk _The_Spiral_Dance_
An anthology of philosophy, poetry, training
exercises, ritual
outlines and instructive anecdotes from a
successful working coven.
First-rate as an introduction to the practical
aspects of magick and
running a functioning circle. Often findable at
feminist bookstores.

Shea, Robert and Wilson, Robert Anton _Illuminatus!_

(Dell, 1975, pb)
This work of alleged fiction is an incredible
berserko-surrealist
rollercoaster that _will_ bend your mind into a
pretzel with an
acid-head blitzkrieg of plausible, instructive and
enlightening lies
and a few preposterous and obscure truths. Amidst
this eccentric tale
of world-girdling conspiracies, intelligent
dolphins, the fall of
Atlantis, who _really_ killed JFK, sex, drugs, rock
and roll and the
Cosmic Giggle Factor, you will find Serious Truths
about Mind, Time,
Space, the Nature of God(dess) and What It All
Means -- and also
learn why you should on no account take them
Seriously. Pay
particular attention to Appendix Lamedh ("The Tactics
of Magick"), but
it won't make sense until you've read the rest.
This was first
published in 3 volumes as
_The_Eye_In_The_Pyramid_, _The_
Golden_Apple_ and _Leviathan_, but there's now a one-
volume trade
paperback carried by most chain bookstores under SF.

Campbell, Joseph W., _The_Masks_of_God_ (Viking

Books, 1971, pb)
One of the definitiveanalytical surveys of world
mythography-- and
readable to boot! It's in 4 volumes:
I. _Primitive_Mythology_
II. _Oriental_Mythology_
III. _Occidental_Mythology_
IV. _Creative_Mythology_
The theoretical framework of these books is a form of
pragmatic
neo-Jungianism which has enormously influenced the
neopagans (we can
accurately be described as the practice for which
Campbell and Jung
were theorizing). Note especially his predictions in
vols. I & IV of a
 revival of shamanic, vision-quest-based religious
forms. The recent
Penguin pb edition of this book should be available
in the Mythology
and Folklore selection of any large bookstore.

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Bonewits, Isaac, _Real_Magic_ (Creative Arts Books,

1979, pb)
A fascinating analytical study of the
psychodynamics of ritual and
magick. This was Bonewits's Ph.D. thesis for the
world's only known
doctorate in Magic and Thaumaturgy (UCLA Berkeley,
1971). Hardest of
the five to find but well worth the effort
-- an enormously
instructive, trenchant and funny book.

V. Will there be more net.info on this topic?

I am also available to answer questions by

email or phone. Be
warned that I will probably tell you to go off and
study some more,
rather than referring you to a group, if you haven't
read at least two
out of the five above or else good equivalents like
Michael Harner's
_Way_Of_The_Shaman_ (Castaneda, UFOlogy books
and anything on
astrology or the Great Pyramid will *not* count!
Grrr...!).

No fooling, learning to do this stuff right

is hard work and
demands a lot more rigor and clear thinking than most
people associate
with 'occultism'. But it's also fun and empowering
and could turn out
to be one of the couple most important things you do
with your life.

If response to this posting is heavy, I may

post some stuff on
 Wiccan ritual practice and theology, that being what
I know best.

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{file "What is Wicca? (Amber K.)" "bos087.htm"}