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Internet Book of Shadows, (Various Authors), [1999], at sacred-texts.com
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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