
                   Paganism

                      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 at the request of a number of curious
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 almost all 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 ourselve (in fact, by some counts, a
plurality of us are computer programmers!).

 3. Reverence for nature, sensuality, and pleasure

Most neopaganisms make heavy use of nature symbolism and 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 dieties is
central to many traditions. Ecological activism is often considered a
religious duty, though there is much controversy over what form it
should take.

By preference, most neopagans hold their ceremonies outdoors under
sun or moon. Seasonal changes and astronomical rhythms (especially the
solstices, equinoxes and full and new moons) define the ritual 
calendar.

Ritual and festive nudity are common; to be naked before nature is
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 dieties. 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, as in many historical polytheisms, there is an 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.

Most neopagan traditions are (dis)organized as horizontal 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 prosyletize. 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

One of the most striking differences between 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 attract artists and musicians as much as 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.


 8. Eclecticism

"Steal from any source that doesn't run too fast" is a neopagan
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 believe that it is more dangerous to take your
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.

One of 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 any religion that can't stand to have 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 on who you talk to and what definitions 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 numerically largest and most influential neopagan 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.

Other important subgroups include those seeking to revive 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 are also the various orders of ceremonial magicians, 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 brillant 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.

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 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.

On the East Coast, a higher-than-general-population percentage 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 deliberately not said much about mythology, 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:


 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 definitive analytical 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.


 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.


