If you thought the “Satanic Panic” years were over, that the global hysteria over “ritual abuse” in the 1980s and 1990s that ruined countless lives and enriched unscrupulous con-artists was nothing more than a fading bad memory, think again. According to Private Eye magazine the core of true believers never stopped believing and they’re mounting a come-back.

“…despite the fact that there has been not a shred of credible, physical, forensic evidence to substantiate the existence of Satanic ritual abuse, anywhere in the world, there is still an international network of zealots hell-bent on reviving and spreading the myth. For a few years in the late 1990s and early 2000s the believers quietly went to ground. There was a backlash here and in the US … Believers stopped talking about Satanic or ritual abuse and instead started using the terms organised or extreme abuse … there is now a growing and dangerous fight back in the form of books and conferences featuring speakers defiantly and proudly proclaiming the existence of “ritual abuse” and how to treat “survivors”.”

A quick look at Amazon reveals that SRA (Satanic Ritual Abuse) “survivors” are still writing memoirs, and two books seemingly aimed at mental health and law enforcement professionals interested in SRA cases (“Ritual Abuse in the Twenty-First Century” and  “Forensic Aspects of Dissociative Identity Disorder”) were published in 2008. If the Satanic panics are making a come-back we all know what could happen next, a moral panic that will see innocent men and women jailed, sometimes for decades. Creating a situation where Pagans and occultists will have to watch their backs.

“In the United States, Canada, and Europe, people have reported being ritually abused under the banner of satanism, Christianity, various pagan and pantheistic belief systems, white supremacy movements, nazism, Santeria, voodoo, etc. At the present time, satanism is either the most common ideology under which ritual abuse is practiced or it is receiving the most attention.”

Remember, the last time this exploded into the mainstream even Oprah jumped on the Satanic Panic bandwagon (something I don’t think she ever apologized for). How do these Satan panic peddlers stay afloat when the inevitable backlashes happen and the light of truth and reason shines on their money-making schemes? One has only to look the extensive underground network of conservative evangelicals and Pentecostals who are still convinced that Satan is not only a spiritual adversary, a personification of evil, but has “troops on the ground” as it were.

“A month ago I was with my wife and two other ladies in the car, including one who was formerly a witch but now a full on born-again Christian. In fact I have personally cast out many demonic spirits out of her. She told us that one of her friend’s (who also was a witch) father was a high priest in the coven. When she was a small girl, he told her that he had a surprise for her birthday. He blind folded her and told her to cut the cake. After cutting, her blind fold was removed and she was horrified to see that she had cut through the neck of a baby. Could this be happening in Australia?? Yes, it is.”

The non-stop culture of “spiritual warfare” against imaginary Satanic “witches” and “warlocks” inevitably leads to spiritual (and sometimes physical) action against real-live Witches and ultimately the horrors of false accusation for owning the wrong books, listening to the wrong kind of music, or practicing the wrong religion. You may think it would never happen to you, but if the police ever search your home after a false accusation of “Satanic abuse”, what will they find on your bookshelf?

“If they came for you tomorrow, innocent or not, what would your bookshelf tell the world about you? Go and have a glance now, and ponder whether those volumes you’ve accumulated really are the possessions of an innocent person…”

The best way to combat this hysteria ever reaching the mainstream again is to be as out and open as possible. To be visible, outspoken, and unafraid of the “mainstream”. This doesn’t mean we have to lose the mysteries central to some of our faiths, but that  we must constantly dispel the shadows of rumor and gossip so we can combat the lies with reason. To engage with the media and press on our own terms so that never again will another innocent man or woman be jailed or put on trial by a “spiritual warrior”, unscrupulous therapist, “occult expert”, or child (grown or not) who’s imagination has been warped and led astray.

Bob Smietana of the Nashville Tennessean reports on Thomas Dyer, the first-ever Buddhist Army chaplain. Dyer was able to bypass some of the strict (and Christian-clergy favoring) military chaplaincy standards due to his former life as a Baptist pastor.

“A potential chaplain must have a master’s degree in religion. But some faiths, such as Buddhism and Wicca, don’t have seminaries, so they struggle to find chaplain candidates. Dyer qualified as a chaplain because already he had earned a master’s degree as a Baptist pastor before converting to Buddhism. Chaplains also need to be endorsed by a civilian religious group. The Department of Defense has approved few non-Christian endorsement groups.”

If this all sounds somewhat familiar it is because it deeply echoes the case of Don Larsen, a former Pentecostal Army chaplain in good standing who tried to become the first Wiccan Army chaplain only to get caught in a variety of spiteful bureaucratic actions from his former endorsing body and military superiors leaving him in a procedural limbo.

“While in the process of switching faiths within the chaplaincy (normally a routine process, involving some paperwork), a senior Army chaplain disclosed to the Pentecostal Church exactly what Larsen was switching to and as a result pulled their endorsement of Larsen before Sacred Well’s endorsement could be approved … Retired Army colonel Jim Ammerman, the president and founder of Chaplaincy of Full Gospel Churches admits that the church went against longstanding agreements among endorsers in pulling Larsen’s papers.”

Now, in light of this new breakthrough, could we see a second chance for Larsen or renewed hope for another would-be Wiccan Army chaplain? It remains to be seen, but some have wondered if the Army’s chaplaincy program is fundamentally broken, unable to adapt to a multi-religious reality.

“…some faith groups are overrepresented among chaplains. For example, there are 54 members of the Independent Fundamental Churches of America in the military, and 22 chaplains from the denomination. That’s one chaplain for every 2.5 church members. By contrast, there’s one imam per 353.5 Muslims, and one priest for every 1,086 Catholics. And there are no chaplains to serve the 3,214 Wiccans in the military. Recruiting chaplains from diverse faiths is a challenge, in part because the recruiting system favors Christians and Jews … In the end, Bergen, the Toronto professor, wonders if creating a diverse chaplain corps is possible…”

In a chaplaincy overrun with conservative evangelicals can any other faith grouping find a place or expect fair treatment? Is the case of Thomas Dyer a fluke or the beginning of a new trend to allow more religious diversity into the Army’s chaplaincy? What we do know is that modern Paganism is quickly approaching a time when it will have its own masters-granting seminaries in conjunction with several willing sponsoring organizations. The current maze of red-tape and various organizational “catch-22s” will not last forever, and we will soon find out if the Army is equally dedicated to serving the needs of its Wiccan soldiers as its Christian ones. Until then, I wish Thomas Dyer good luck, and hope he is the beginning of a brighter future.

News has reached us that author, teacher, radio-show host, comedian, and proud New York Witch Marion Weinstein passed away on July 1st, 2009. Weinstein is probably best known by many Pagans as the author of “Positive Magic”, which was first published in 1978 and soon became a beloved classic among women and men awakening to religious Witchcraft. She went on to write several more books, and give talks and workshops on a variety of Witchcraft-related topics, including a yearly stand-up comedy show each Halloween. One of Weinstein’s life-long goals was to de-stigmatize Witchcraft and have it recognized as a positive influence on the world.

Marion Weinstein, Candlemas 2009

“Weinstein’s guiding belief about Witchcraft is that a Witch’s job is to help the community. Her personal definition of magic is transformation. Thus she spreads information about personal self-transformation–always for the good of all and according to free will–as an ongoing way to help the individual self and the global community. A self-avowed “city Witch” in a modern world … Weinstein sees Witchcraft not only as a religion but also as a philosophy and a way of life, springing from a personal inspiration that comes from within.”

A public memorial service is being held at the NYC Pagan Pride Day celebration on September 26th. The service will be lead by Donna Henes, and you can contact her for more information. To learn more about Weinsteins rich and full life, check out her web site, her YouTube channel, and an interview conducted with Weinstein by the Wiccan / Pagan Times. May she rest in the arms of the Goddess and return to us again.

I’m going to make a stand in America’s long battle over work and leisure and take this Labor Day off from my normal blogging routine. Here’s to having a nice restful day at home, normal operations at The Wild Hunt will resume tomorrow.

UK women’s magazine Fabulous (a News of the World production) lets us know that Kabbalah (of the Madonna-practicing variety) is so out, and that “kooky, sexy, cool” Paganism is the “hot new religion”.

“Welcome to the world of paganism. Walk into any high-street bookshop and, alongside the usual chick-lit best-sellers, there’s another set of books flying off the shelves, all about how to find your inner witch. Yes, really. Hot on the heels of best-selling vampire saga Twilight and new US drama Eastwick, it seems all things weird are wonderful. Pagan culture has arrived in the 21st century – and young women are behind its growing popularity. Intrigued by its mystery and underlying sexuality, 20-somethings are converting in their droves, making paganism the UK’s fastest growing religion. According to the Office of National Statistics, there were 31,000 pagans living in the UK in 2001. Just eight years later, the Pagan Federation estimates there are now around 360,000.”

Fabulous goes on to interview three women (a Wiccan, a Celtic Pagan, and a practitioner of Vodou) about why they left more mainstream expression of religion for these “hot” belief systems, and they even interview “kooky, sexy, cool” British historian Ronald Hutton on why younger women are attracted to Pagan religions.

“As women become more empowered in their relationships and careers, they’ve begun to look for a set of beliefs that reflects this,” he says. “In paganism, women are given an equal role to men – and in some branches, they’re actually dominant. Women want a religion that empowers them.”

It is certainly true that young women in the UK are abandoning Christianity at a impressive rate, and that many of them are turning to Wicca and other forms of modern Paganism, but we’ll have to wait till the next census to see if modern Paganism is really the fastest-growing religon in Britain. In the meantime, we can all be assured that our faiths are the in thing to be, at least according to Fabulous magazine.

Pagan scholar Helen Berger, co-author of “Voices from the Pagan Census: A National Survey of Witches and Neo-Pagans in the United States”, has announced that she and fellow researchers James R. Lewis and Henrik Bogdan are revisiting the Pagan Census project. The Pagan Census was first initiated nearly twenty years ago, and compiled data from thousands of modern Pagans to give a fascinating snapshot of our communities during Paganism’s meteoric rise in the 1990s. Now, in an age of blogs and instant communications, an update is underway to compare and contrast just how much we’ve changed.

“A number of scholars have noted that it would be helpful to have a follow-up of that survey to see if and how the community has changed or remained the same. The survey that follows uses many, although not all of the same questions that were in the original survey to provide that comparison. There are also new questions, for instance about the Internet, something that was of little interest 20 years ago but is now, and some from other studies, that again permit a comparison. This has resulted in the survey being somewhat long–we appreciate your taking the time to complete it.”

I urge all my readers who identify in any way with the modern Pagan/Heathen movement to participate in this census and spread the word to everyone you know. The more respondents the census has, the more accurate the data. You can find it, here. You can be sure that I will be paying attention to this renewed project as it goes forward, and will keep you appraised of any updates or results.

The shops in a quaint tourist-trap “village” in Adamstown, Pennsylvania are apparantly split over a local Pagan group renting out the place for their Celebrating Earth Spirituality Festival (a local take on the national Pagan Pride Day gatherings), with several refusing to open or closing early to avoid touching Pagan money.

Jane Lesher, who owns The Soxy Lady but doesn’t live in Stoudtburg Village, said her business, which is usually open on Saturdays, will be closed during the festival … As a merchant, Lesher said, she believes the Earth Spirituality Festival is “not the image we want to portray for Stoudtburg Village.” … Lesher said that if the event were held in a “more urban place, it might not have the negative image it would have around here … I am a Christian, and anything that is not worshipping God is something I object to. You can’t force it on another, but you don’t need to support it in any way, either. I base this on what God says. I’m not just a stick-in-the-mud and can’t change my mind, but I base it on what I believe is an absolute.”

I didn’t know you could worship God by selling yarn and notions, makes you wonder if she questions each customer about their faith before ringing them up. Joining Lesher in her retail shunning are Country Pastthymes (a tchotchkes shop) and the Stoudtburg Village Coffee Shop (who is closing after the apparently God-approved morning customers have left). All this ruckus caused the local paper to interview Jen Anderson-Wenger, president of Reading Pagans & Witches, in order to understand who these Pagans are.

“Who are the pagans and witches who will descend upon Adamstown next weekend, and what do they believe? That’s not an easy thing to answer, according to Jen Anderson-Wenger, president of Reading Pagans & Witches. Her group is sponsoring the Celebrating Earth Spirituality Festival at Stoudtburg Village on Sept. 12. The event has divided the village’s shop owners, with several saying they will close because Anderson-Wenger’s group is sponsoring the festival … Pagans and witches are an eclectic group of people with many varying spiritual paths, Anderson-Wenger said. “If it leads to a moral and just life, then it’s the right spiritual path for you,” she said … The group is charitable, holding food drives and adopting a highway and a battered women’s shelter, she said. “There are misconceptions that we have no morals. We raise our children together. We are a family. We’d give the shirt off our back for you or your children,” Anderson-Wenger said.”

They may be moral, charitable, and family-oriented, but belong to the wrong religion and should not be served coffee or allowed to buy a stuffed animal. Now, it is certainly the perogotive of these businesses to close down if they want to, but this protest  just seems somewhat strange. Would they have preferred that the village (a secular organization) had broken the law in refusing a rental to a valid not-for-profit? Do they really think they have never taken a Pagan dollar in the course of being open? How do you think the Pagans heard of, and wanted to rent, the Stoudtburg Village? To operate in a tourist-trap, a place that exists to draw in as many people as possible to spend money, but then get picky about the law-abiding groups that come to enjoy the place seems to be a poor business model. Perhaps all the local Pagans should tell all the people they know that these shops that closed down don’t want non-Christian business, after all, we wouldn’t want to trouble them with the thought of taking money not sanctified by the Lord.