Note: This is a guest essay by author, artist, and harried graduate student Lupa, who is helping out with content while Jason’s doing his cross-country move.

In the United States, we have achieved what is possibly the most hyperindividualized culture in the history of our species. Some of the effects of this have benefited people, particularly minorities of various sorts who, while still facing oppression, are able to find more footholds for asserting their unique identities amid the masses. However, we’ve taken the archetype of the Rugged Individualist to such an extent that most of us no longer really know how to function as a cohesive community. More and more of us no longer live in the same state, let alone city or neighborhood, as our extended or even nuclear families. The average American moves over a dozen times in their lifetime.

Culturally, we feel rootless as well. Dissatisfied with mainstream (generally white) American culture, more people, neopagans included, are seeking connection with other cultures as a substitute for strip malls, reality television, and the aggressive competition associated with hyperindividualism. Unfortunately, this often results in varying degrees of cultural appropriation, in which an individual draws whatever isolated elements of a culture’s practices they prefer, while ignoring the context provided by what they’ve left behind.

I can personally speak only from an American perspective. However, while we’re not in a situation where “As goes the United States, so goes the world”, neopaganism has developed largely in individual-based Western cultures, and neopagan religions retain that influence to some degree, even when practiced in more communal settings.

I’ve run into countless pagans who want to form “tribes”, “families”, or other sorts of communities. Some may want to create intentional communities on land that no one yet owns; others just want some connection in their city or region. Many are inspired by the Temporary Autonomous Zones created in the context of pagan festivals, and wish they could extend that permanently. Unfortunately, community doesn’t just happen overnight. Nor can it be forced or even necessarily planned neatly. It’s an organic thing that happens at its own pace. Wanting to have a community doesn’t automatically confer the social and practical skills necessary to make it happen.

We aren’t used to being part of a community because our culture has slid so far into individualism. We’re used to being in groups of people, we’re used to making friends and other relationships, but we have a tendency to isolate ourselves outside of our preferred social circles. Many Americans today, pagan and otherwise, couldn’t tell you who most of the people who live on their street are—something that was very different even a couple of generations ago. Some of the pie-in-the-sky plans for intentional communities I’ve heard cooked up over the years have included “pagan communes”, self-sufficient and detached from “Christian America”.

Community requires interdependence with a variety of people, not just the ones we like. Yes, often communities are formed out of reaction to a lack of safe space due to being a minority of some sort. However, what keeps us from being able to create that safe space in the form of pagan-centric community is the intense focus on the self. We can see this in the common sabotage of attempts to create covens and other small groups, as well as other organization efforts. One or more people, miffed that the project isn’t going their way, will instead turn their actions towards destroying it out of spite—putting their own needs over that of the group as a whole. Personal disagreements take precedence over the greater goal. It’s not just isolation from non-pagans that is problematic—it’s the fact that we’ve been conditioned to prioritize our own needs over the needs of others to an unhealthy degree, even to the point of damaging one-on-one relationships.

These one-on-one relationships are the building-blocks of community, which also requires starting small. Relationships have to be established and built up over time if the people involved are going to survive the stressors of being in close proximity on a long-term basis. The most naïve daydreams I’ve seen often include a bunch of people who have little, if any, connection with each other, other than perhaps being friends with the ringleader(s). If your biggest concern is making sure that your needs get met, and you aren’t all that invested in the needs of most of the other people in your “community”, are you really going to be willing to temporarily set aside your needs in order to listen to everyone else’s as a way of facilitating group communication?

Conversely, “community” doesn’t always have to include every single member of the community all the time. Some of the strongest moments of a community are when one person with a problem simply knows that they can go to another person and get a solution. An example is the practice of borrowing a cup of sugar; we’ve so lost track of interconnectedness that very few of us feel we have an option in that instance beyond going out to the store, or doing without. While one’s pagan community may be scattered far enough apart across an area that borrowing that sugar may be difficult, there are other small but significant interactions that can still happen.

And it’s these small interactions involving trust and communication that are the building blocks for making community happen on a larger scale. I’ve been privileged enough to be able to go to festivals at permanent pagan sites, and observe the interactions among long-term residents, volunteers, and other staff. They get to be human beings, with errors and problems, but there’s a cohesion that’s impressive to behold. It took a lot of time, and weathering a lot of challenges to temper those relationships. But it can happen.

Admittedly I can only speak so much in practice at this point. I don’t live in an intentional community, and much of my time is taken up with personal pursuits (the Master’s Degree That Ate My Life being a primary one). However, that Master’s degree will be in counseling psychology, from a program with an emphasis on community involvement—not just taking on the clients who are most like me. And in my personal life, I’m attempting to make the first steps in creating an environment in which community can hopefully develop; last month, for example, my husband Taylor and I hosted a pot luck and swap meet in our home where people not only shared food but excess resources. Granted, our collection of “resources” looked more like the fodder for a yard sale, but it was a start. And while I’m not yet the greatest gardener in the world, I’ve planted some extra onion sets in anticipation of a barter with a friend of mine who raises quail. It just so happens that a large portion of my social circle happens to be pagan—but my goal isn’t necessarily a specifically pagan community.

That’s where I’m at right now, and I’m fine with that. I have a lot of individualistic tendencies to move past, and I have a lot of practical and relational skills I need to develop. But I can also learn from those who have made community—whether pagan or otherwise—so successful, and I can put those lessons into practice. And that’s what I’d suggest to those who want to build community: learn from those who have made it happen. There’s work to be done, but it can be done—it is being done.

One of my favorite memories of Pagan life is of the time, halfway through a camping retreat in Vermont, when about a dozen of us snuck off to a local pancake house for breakfast.

I should be clear about this: this wasn’t one of those big gatherings, like Freespirit or Starwood, where the locals would logically be expected to know there were bands of Pagans in their town.  It was a small gathering, invitation only, of no more than thirty or forty of us on private land.

We weren’t wearing garb.  Any visible pentacles were small and innocuous.  I don’t think we were even wearing tie-dye, and, though we would have smelled of wood smoke, so would any number of other campers on that sunny summer day.

We’d gone into town for pancakes, real maple syrup, and deliciously hot coffee in stoneware mugs.  All around us was the usual crowd of breakfast-eaters: farmers done with their chores, local families, carpenters and loggers and friends meeting over eggs and bacon.  Surrounded by good smells, laughter, and chatter, our group sat at one long table, telling stories and getting caught up on new jobs, how the kids were doing, new romances, and all the other details of life that old friends will catch up on when given a chance.  We had almost finished our meal when a woman from a nearby table approached us, bent low over us, and said, “Excuse me for asking.  You guys… are Pagans, aren’t you?”

We said that we were, and she nodded in satisfaction.  “I thought so,” she said.

Something about how we talked to one another. Something about how we interacted with each other.

Of course, there are parts of the country where the remarkable thing about this story would be that the stranger was not reacting with fear or suspicion.  And I don’t mean to minimize the good that is simply an absence of prejudice.   But that would not be enough to make this a favorite memory for me.  No: it was the fact that what identified us as Pagan to this outside observer was our warmth, our interconnectedness.

As important as the ecstatic parts of my religious life are to me, both in terms of my Quaker worship and my years of ritual and trance work as a Wiccan and in other forms of Paganism, what I wind up coming back to again and again when I reflect on what has been most important in my spiritual growth, is my life in community.  It is the warm and loving, and sometimes heated and tempetuous relationships I have formed in twenty years as a Pagan that have done the most to shape me into the person I am: hopefully, a woman the gods can approve and love.  Certainly, my interactions with the gods have shown me the woman I would like to become.  But it has been within the dojo of Pagan community that I have made the most progress in learning to fulfill the goals the gods have set for me.  Without the practice of attempting to live a life of authenticity, courage, and compassion while being inspired, angered, and confused by my fellow Pagans, I think I would have made very few gains over the years.

Another memory, from the years before I developed the friendships and connections of my Pagan community, reflects what I mean.

Almost the first thing I learned, when I became Pagan, was trance journey.  It began with working solo.  I had books to guide me, and many of the books featured trance work meant to be engaged in by a group, with one person reading out loud from a script.  Working alone, I had no one to read a script.  (I was much too self-conscious, back then, to read into a tape-recorder.)  So necessity required I give up the scripts early.  Likewise, without a partner, I had no one to beat a drum for me. So I settled on a focus on my own breath, and began exploring an interior landscape based, at first, on what scripts from my books suggested, but then more and more focused on encounters from dreams and from previous journeys.

Many of the encounters I had in that first year of working alone are still important to me.  Many of the landscapes I visited I still return to.  Sometimes I speculate on which mythological landscape they are related to–but that’s really beside the point here. Imagine that they come from whatever mythology makes sense to you.

On those journeys and in those dreams, I came to recognize a series of spirit-beings.  It was at that time that I began to connect with the goddess I work with to this day, a figure who once told me, when I asked her name, that I could call her “Rosie.”

Like a lot of imaginative people, I was very uncomfortable sharing my inner world with other people. So this means of working–going off to my own room, casting a circle, focusing on my breath, and finding my lonely way to an interior landscape–was very satisfying to me.  No risk, all gain.  I felt like I could go on this way forever… but I also sensed that I was reaching the limits of what I was going to be able to learn from books.  So I centered myself, went into trance, and went off to find Rosie, to ask her to guide me to a teacher.  Maybe even to be my teacher.

There exist a number of techniques for deepening trance.  I had discovered several of them.  My journeys, at that point, tended to be full of smells, textures, sounds.  They could unfold with a good deal of richness.  Places were distinct, specific, recognizeable.  And, as my books instructed me, I always made a point of retracing my steps in the reverse direction at the end of my journey, in order to “go home” to ordinary waking consciousness.

On that particular day, I had no real problem finding my way into trance, nor finding my way to the specific place in a wood where I often met Rosie.  But when I framed my question to her, something new happened:  the trance simply ended.  Like being dumped out of a wheelbarrow.  I was just done. With a strong non-verbal sense that this was not what Rosie wanted me to do.  I would not find a teacher in the spirit world.

I’ve come to recognize that my loner instinct needed curbing.  That the gods were indeed interested in engaging me in deepening relationship–but that they recognized that the way to make that happen was going to involve more than lip service to the immanence of spirit in the world.  I was going to have to go out into the physical world, and into the scariest part of the physical world at that: the social world, of prickly, pretentious, quarrelsome, judgemental human beings.  I was going to have to find my way to the gods through the hearts and minds of my fellow men and women.

I took the lesson to heart.  Oh, I still do engage in trance journey from time to time, and other forms of ritual and worship as well.  The direct encounter with Spirit is what I love best about my religious life.

But I have come to realize that, without interaction with humans, I would be incomplete.  I need to practice whatever wisdom the gods lead me to in that toughest of arenas: human community.

I don’t know how I would have fared had I become Pagan in the age of the Internet! With so many online forums and groups, it is perhaps possible never to connect with another Pagan face-to-face.  I might have been so sorely tempted by that that I would never have ventured out into the deep wild water of direct human community.  And that would have been a shame.

Because real community will hurt you, betray you, let you down.  And that’s a feature, not a bug.  Oh, I’m not saying we should welcome betrayal into our communities, or cultivate disillusionment as a path to wisdom.  But there’s a way that compassion and love and mature spiritual vision will not thrive in an ideal world. We need to be buffetted a bit by the kind of storms that are inevitable in an imperfect group of humans.

And, baby, they’re all imperfect.  That wonderful clan of Pagans whose warmth so impressed an outside observer was wonderful–but also engaged in a schism from another, larger group of Pagans, with plenty of acrimony on all sides.  We were all learning how to work on perfecting our spiritual selves in the midst of imperfect community.  None of us were (or are) perfect people, and yet we thought our communities ought to be!  We hadn’t yet mastered the delicate balancing of boundaries and generosity, love and limits, that spiritual maturity demands.

And if we’ve come closer in the years since–I hope I have, at least–it is only because we struggled with one another to find out how to do it: how to be real, and committed to one another, and still striving for something better–together.

In an Internet world, it has become easier to throw away people when they cause us pain, and to simply drop communities when they (inevitably) experience conflict.  It has become easier and easier to stay home, stay safe, and only journey inwards to find what we want of the spirit world.

But I don’t think that’s what the gods want of us.  I think the gods want us to keep it real, keep it present, get invested, get bumped and sometimes bruised among our fellows.  And, in the process, to mature, both as individuals and as a people.

Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon.
Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted,
And human love will be seen at its height.
Live in fragments no longer.
Only connect…

–E.M. Forster, Howards End

Cat Chapin-Bishop blogs at Quaker Pagan Reflections.

(guest post by Elysia Gallo)

I’m committed to becoming another brick in the wall – one that makes it stronger – rather than becoming another sucker who punches a hole in that wall. What wall am I talking about? The wall of separation between church and state.

The Establishment Clause provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.” Jefferson later famously referred to this clause in a letter as having built “a wall of separation between church and state.” Like all walls (the Gaza wall, the US-Mexican border, the Great Firewall of China), this wall is not impermeable. It protects us from being forced by the government to join or financially support a church, but it does allow in streams of personal religious expression – the other right we hold so dear. The Constitution ensures that religious expression on a personal level is acceptable, as long as our government does not endorse one religion over another. However, there are many times when it does just that, whether purposely or simply because the majority thoughtlessly and naively sees itself as the default mode.

For example, when a crèche turns up in front of city hall, minority faiths who want equal representation in the public sphere often have to ask for inclusion after the fact. In many cases– in Wisconsin and Washington state, for example – the consequent opening of the door to all faiths is quickly followed by a swift slamming of it when too many requests flood in or the displays cause too much controversy. Baby Jesus and a menorah are one thing, but a Wiccan pentacle? The Flying Spaghetti Monster? The Festivus Pole? The mainstream can’t take it!

A poll last year found that “83% [of respondents] say a nativity scene on city property should be legal, but only 60% say a display honoring Islam during Ramadan should be legal. Overall, 58% of all Americans feel both should be legal, while 15% feel both should be illegal.” If the majority of Americans are for the nativity but only slightly more than half would open up that space to all faiths regardless of their personal religious views, you have the majority effectively suppressing the minority’s religious expression. We need to put a stop to this practice altogether, or else this stream could become a flood that washes away our Constitutional protection against such state-sanctioned oppression. The Constitution is supposed to protect the rights of minorities, not strengthen those of the majority – that’s what the Civil Rights movement was all about.

While not all Christians are trying to push their religion on us, not all non-mainstream religions are without ulterior motives of their own…

Should we support proselytizing by non-mainstream religious groups?

You may remember Jason blogging about the case of a fringe religious group called Summum trying to get its Seven Aphorisms erected in a city park in Pleasant Grove, UT, on equal standing with the Ten Commandments already displayed there.

However, Summum had challenged another city for the same reasons – the city of Duchesne, UT. While the Pleasant Grove case proceeded to the Supreme Court, Duchesne instead reluctantly moved its Ten Commandments piece to a cemetery to avoid further litigation. Surprisingly enough, this was not seen as a victory in Summum’s eyes; in an article published after the monument had been moved,

“We are saddened that the Ten Commandments monument has been removed from the city park in Duchesne,” Summum President Su Menu said.

“Summum has never requested that religious monuments be removed from government property. We have only asked that all religions be given equal access,” Menu said. “Just as the citizens of Duchesne have benefited from the display of the Decalogue, so, too, would they have benefited from the display of our Seven Aphorisms.”

So was Summum ultimately just trying to win converts, or did they believe that all beliefs could peacefully coexist if everyone had equal access to them? Would we ever want to erect a statue of the 42 Principles of Maat, or the Nine Noble Virtues, or the Wiccan Rede in a public park simply because others “may benefit” from its display? Proselytizing is not a central tenet of any Pagan faith I can think of, but does that mean we should bar others from doing so? If we are all for tolerance and acknowledging the validity of an infinite number of other paths, why would we be intolerant of a Ten Commandments statue in a park or courtroom?

And if we went to all the courthouses of the nation to dismantle any Christian-themed decorations, then what of Pagan decorations like Lady Liberty? Would you get rid of Moses yet keep Confucius? What of Mars in front of the US Capitol, or the Three Fates and the four elements in front of the Supreme Court building? Obviously we live in a society where religious expression is not easily extracted from the public sphere; indeed, in many cases it makes our lives richer.

Conversely, if tolerance is one of our core beliefs as Pagans, how can we tolerate intolerance and religious aggression? Wiccans say “An’ it harm none, do as ye will” – so the question then becomes whether Christians are actually doing harm by erecting the Ten Commandments in public places, placing nativities on City Halls, and so forth.

Pagans and Atheists – strange bedfellows?

Unfortunately what may have once been the simple, well-intentioned decorating of buildings and parks in the past is now being pushed as part of a malicious and divisive political agenda. That fits the definition of “harm” well enough for me. You can see this again and again as part of the “Culture Wars” that fundamentalist Christians believe they must wage to stop the secularization of America. In the words of Green Bay City Council President Chad Fradette, who placed the nativity on government property, “I’m trying to take this fight to the people who need to be fought. I’ll keep going on this until this group imposing Madison values crawls back into its hole and never crawls out.”

Because of people like Chad, I’m more inclined these days to crawl into bed with the atheists – to stop, or at least to impede, the progress of the Christian right juggernaut that is hell-bent on tying up taxpayer’s money in long, drawn-out court battles revolving around their supposed “persecution” by a secularized America. I realize that in not supporting religious displays on public land I’m in a small minority of Americans – but what else is new?

It’s not just Chad fighting to get us back in our hole – many Christians are organizing to be more proactive in thrusting their nativities into the public sphere, to deliberately inflame others. The response of setting up a Wiccan pentacle is just feeding into that – a retribution against having the nativity on government property. And then that pentacle gets trashed, which is just more revenge visited upon retribution. Does it make any sense? Can’t we just nip it in the bud by saying no to everyone before it gets ugly? Can’t religious displays be simply relegated to private homes, churches and temples? Why bring it to city property or schools in the first place?

A huge chorus of secularists saying “no” to these displays will probably be heard more loudly than one or two minority faiths’ disjointed efforts to fight these assaults or gain equal standing on their own.

One atheist organization, the Secular Coalition for America, has been lobbying Washington of late for initiatives that Pagans may also support, such as eliminating faith-based policies that impose mainstream religious tenets on the rest of us through discriminatory hiring, weakening science-based education and health services, and proselytizing through charity. They are also urging more atheists to come out of the closet; this article about their lobbying efforts reveals that of 23 privately self-proclaimed atheists in the House and Senate, only one was willing to go public with it! Ultimately they, too, fear PR damage on the basis of the mainstream American belief that only Christians can be moral or ethical and that atheists are necessarily evil, deluded, liberal or untrustworthy. (Sound familiar? Such labels are often applied to Pagans, too.)

As Herb Silverman, president of the Secular Coalition, wrote to me in an email,

“Our mission is twofold: to promote non-theism and work for the separation of religion and government. We are on your side on just about all cases. […] I think it is a good idea for all of our groups to work together on the main issues and also to work for the visibility and respectability of our constituencies. The more Atheists and Pagans come out of their closets, the better off we will all be.”

Besides the Secular Coalition and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, there are more inclusive groups fighting for the same ideals (because believers of any faith can be secularists, too), such as Americans United for Separation of Church and State – the very same organization that helped Roberta Stewart and Circle Sanctuary with the pentacle quest.

What do you think? Do you want to join the atheists and other secularists to ensure that minority rights don’t get trampled by keeping faith out of the public sphere, where we still can? Or will it be more effective to fight for better minority faith inclusion in the long run? How should we respond when “culture warriors” provoke us to action?

(by Brendan Myers)

In the last few years I’ve started to hear more and more about Elders in the Pagan community. The people who first joined the movement back in the 60’s are in their 60’s now (in terms of age, if not a decade!) and many of them have done so much work for the movement in that time – running a festival, writing books, managing a shop, teaching new people – that the word Elder is more frequently being attached to them.

In the spring and summer of 2006 I worked as a contract researcher for the branch of the government of Canada responsible for peacekeeping and policing in the First Nations. During this job, I came into contact with 50 traditional indigenous Elders from all across Canada. I think that as the Pagan community begins to acknowledge Elders of its own, it would benefit from a look at the way Aboriginal people understand their Elders. Here’s a short account of my own experiences.

Continue Reading »

There are times when you just can’t get to the computer for several hours per day to blog, one of those is when you’re trying to pack and engage in a cross-country move. This week I’ll be pulling up stakes and moving from the Midwest (Milwaukee) to the Pacific Northwest (specifically, Eugene, Oregon). But don’t despair! While I’ll be driving through Montana with my wife and two cats (two, upset, angry, cats), The Wild Hunt will be featuring a wide assortment of vibrant, challenging, and innovative voices from within (and occasionally from without) modern Paganism while I’m gone. Here’s the run-down of The Wild Hunt’s amazing guest bloggers!

July 14th – Brendan Myers

Dr. Brendan Myers, Ph.D. is the author of several critically acclaimed books on the subject of ethics and philosophy, environmentalism, Celtic and European mythology, folklore, society and politics, and spirituality. They have been used as inspirational and educational resources by college professors, social activist groups, interfaith groups, Celtic cultural associations, and even humanist societies, in many countries around the world. Brendan’s work has appeared in numerous magazines, podcasts, and radio shows (including America’s NPR). He is the 2008 recipient of OBOD’s prestigious Mt. Haemus Award for recent research in Druidry.

July 15th – Elysia Gallo

Elysia Gallo is an Acquisitions Editor at Llewellyn Worldwide, the oldest and largest independent New Age publisher in the United States. She acquires books for publication in such topics as Witchcraft, Wicca, Paganism, magic(k), herbalism, and the paranormal. She lives in St. Paul, MN with her husband and two cats.

July 16th – Cat Chapin-Bishop

Wiccan since the late ’80s, Cat Chapin-Bishop has also been Quaker since 2001. Cat’s essays have appeared in Laura Wildman’s “Celebrating the Pagan Soul”, “The Pomegranate: The Journal of Pagan Studies”, the Covenant of the Goddess newsletter, and “Enchante: The Journal for the Urbane Pagan”. In addition to her work as a Wiccan HPs, Cat is the former Chair of Cherry Hill Seminary’s Pastoral Counseling Department, and she currently serves on the Ministry and Worship Committee of Mt. Toby Quaker meeting. Cat and her husband maintain Quaker Pagan Reflections, a blog dedicated to exploring the connections between Pagan spirituality and Quaker practice. They reside in Northampton, Massachusetts, where they attempt to live peacefully in the midst of chaos.

July 17th – Lupa

Lupa is the author of “Fang and Fur, Blood and Bone: A Primal Guide to Animal Magic” and “A Field Guide to Otherkin”. She’s also the co-author of “Kink Magic: Sex Magic Beyond Vanilla” with Taylor Ellwood, and a contributor to the “Magick on the Edge” anthology and “Manifesting Prosperity: A Wealth Magic Anthology”. Additionally, Lupa works as an associate editor, layout tech, and nonfiction publicity/promotions manager for Immanion Press/Megalithica Books. Lupa uses the term pagan for simplicity’s sake, though more accurately she describes herself as a totemist, an animist and a pantheist. She has been studying pagan religions and magical topics for twelve years and practicing for ten years. Currently she is developing and training in therioshamanism.

July 18th – John Morehead

John Morehead is a researcher, writer, and speaker in intercultural studies, new religious movements, theology and popular culture. He has an M.A. degree in intercultural studies from Salt Lake Theological Seminary which included a thesis on Burning Man Festival. He also has an avid interest in aspects of pop culture, particularly myth and archetype as well as the social, cultural and religious dimensions of fantasy, sci fi,and horror. John lives in the greater Salt Lake City area with his wife and two children. Be sure to check out his excellent TheoFantastique blog!

July 19th - Caroline Kenner

A longtime Washington D.C. activist in in feminism and environmentalism, Caroline Kenner now uses her skills to advocate for modern Pagans. In 2006 and 2007 Kenner called pan-Pagan rallies in Washington D.C. to demand religious freedom and equality. The 2007 rally was particularly auspicious as it celebrated the recently-won right to place the Pentacle, equivalent to the Cross, Star, or Crescent, on military grave markers. The event united several large Pagan organizations working to establish Pagan military chaplains and the approval of other specific Pagan symbols worn by Pagan and Heathen veterans. In addition to her activism, Caroline is a graduate of The Foundation for Shamanic Studies‘ Three Year Program in Advanced Shamanism and Shamanic Healing. Caroline also holds an A.B. from Bryn Mawr College and a M.S. from Boston University. She has practiced shamanism since 1989.

July 20th - Chas Clifton

Chas S. Clifton has been blogging since 2003, when he converted his Pagan magazine column, “Letter from Hardscrabble Creek,” into a blog. A widely published Pagan writer, he is the author of “Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America”. He also edits “The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies”.

July 21st – James R. French

James R. French has been interested in Magick and Paganism since adolescence. He is an Adept of the Open Source Order of the Golden Dawn and a Reiki Master. (Mr. French wants us to understand that “Adept” and “Master” are titles within these respective lineages. They do not necessarily indicate anything beyond that.)

July 22nd – Thorn Coyle

T. Thorn Coyle is a magic worker, mystic, musician, and author of “Evolutionary Witchcraft” and “Kissing the Limitless.” She teaches internationally. Her blog can be found at yezida.livejournal.com or http://www.thorncoyle.com/musings.html.

July 23rd – Sannion

H. Jeremiah Lewis, also known by his religious name Sannion, is a Greco-Egyptian polytheist who has been actively honoring the gods since around 1993. He has lived all over the country, including Alaska, Nevada, New York, Montana, Washington and Oregon (where he currently resides), and has worked the standard assortment of odd jobs that every aspiring author needs to get by with. Mr. Lewis divides his time between an insanely intense religious practice, writing, research, helping to organize the activities of Neos Alexandria, and directing the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. There isn’t much time for anything else.

July 24th – Peg Aloi

Peg Aloi is a Pagan and a scholar who works in both the academic and popular arenas. She is a writer on Paganism and the media for Witchvox, is the co-editor with Hanna E. Johnston of the new volume “The New Generation Witches: Teenage Witchcraft in Contemporary Culture” (Ashgate, 2007), and is currently co-authoring a book with Hannah titled “The Celluloid Bough: Cinema in the Wake of the Occult Revival”.

Please give all of them a warm and hospitable welcome, I’m certain they will all contribute something special to The Wild Hunt. The gods and my new DSL service willing, I should be back to my regular posting schedule by July 25th. Make sure to keep things respectful and polite in the comments while I’m gone, the assorted hells hath no fury like a vacationing blogger who has to log in to a WiFi spot in Idaho to engage in some blog moderation.

The Religion Clause blog reports that Arizona governor Jan Brewer (a Republican who assumed the governorship after it was vacated by Democrat Janet Napolitano) has signed into law the Students’ Religious Liberties Act. This law gives blanket protection to religious expression by students in school, including the right to pray at school, insert religious themes into coursework, and to wear religiously-themed jewelry and clothing. Similar legislation was passed in Texas and rejected in Oklahoma. While this new legislation may seem benign on the surface, who’s against more religious freedom after all, the Texas House’s own research organization warned that it could privilege the majority once passed.

“The bill could serve as a tool to proselytize the majority religious view, Christianity, in Texas schools. The United States is a nation made up of people of many faiths. Children are required to attend school and should be permitted to do so without someone else’s religion being imposed on them … A school should be a religion-free zone – leaving religion for homes, places of worship, and individual hearts.”

As if confirming this “tyranny of the majority” suspicion, the Arizona law was backed by the conservative Christian political group Center for Arizona Policy (an organization with links to Focus on the Family), and opposed by local Jewish groups. It was CAP who used the instance of a 7th grader being told to keep her evangelizing crucified Jesus notebook at home to inflame the passions of Rep. Rich Crandall into sponsoring the bill.

“Does Crandall want to protect any religious speech, no matter how offensive it may be to members of other groups? I doubt it — if it offends Christians, that is. What he and the folks at the Center for Arizona Policy, a conservative group, want is to allow Christian expression to flourish, probably with the right kind of prayer thrown into the mix. As for members of other religions? Something tells me a notebook that says, “Christ died for nothing, the idiot!” with an offensive cartoon of Jesus wouldn’t go over so well with Crandall and his friends.”

Now we’ll just have to see if this new law will bring about a new golden age of religious freedom, or simply allow local Christians to throw their weight around with impunity. Somehow I don’t think a Wiccan student wearing a pentacle, sporting a Goddess-themed notebook, and meeting for circle chants during lunch, will get the same considerations and protections as Christian students. Any brave Arizona students and parents want to put this new law to the test? After all, this new law is supposed to be for all religions, right?

I’m sure many of you have already read about this on Boing Boing yesterday, but in case you haven’t, West Marin Witch the Rev. Joey Talley (who can apparently help you with your alien and shark problems) made the news after being booted from a local farmers market.

“After spending the past six summers giving free tarot readings beneath the redwood trees of Bolinas Park, the Rev. Joey Talley, the “Good Witch of West Marin,” has come to think of herself as a part of the Fairfax Farmers Market. Managers at the Marin Farmers Market see things differently. The organization, which operates eight farmers markets throughout the Bay Area, says Talley has never applied to work as a vendor or entertainer at the Wednesday night market, and they’ve asked her to leave.”

Kicked out! Boo! Hiss! But before we switch our outrage meters into overdrive, we might want to read a bit further.

“Talley agrees that she’s never sought an application, and admits that she “snuck around behind her back” after Spilger asked her to leave the market last year. But Talley believes she’s providing a free public service and has been gathering signatures on a petition asking that she be allowed to stick around. “I’ve been here year after year,” Talley said. “There are teens who tell me things they could never take to their parents, and they could never afford to schedule a $100 session with me.” While Bolinas Park belongs to the town, the Marin Farmers Market has the right to use the park every Wednesday from 4 to 8 p.m., and to decide which vendors can participate…While they appreciate Talley’s unique talents, Marin Farmers Market representatives insist she take part in the same application process as every other vendor at the Fairfax market. It’s that process, Spilger said, that lets customers know what they see at the market is what they’ll get.”

In other words, they kicked her out for flouting the application process and sneaking around after being asked to leave. Rev. Joey seems to think that her free services to local teens are so important that the rules should not apply to her.

“I’ve been here year after year,” Talley said. “There are teens who tell me things they could never take to their parents, and they could never afford to schedule a $100 session with me.”

Of course Talley could simply offer free services to teens at her office, or those tarot-desperate teens could attend one of her many sessions at local coffee houses, but that might not drum up new paying customers the way glomming onto the farmers market does. Sorry Joey, if you break the rules and get caught you pay the price. If you behave dishonorably in your business dealings (like lying and sneaking around), you can’t then imply that you were wronged and circulate a petition as though you were a cause worth fighting for. This isn’t religious discrimination, and it isn’t something to get outraged about.