Perhaps one of most thought-provoking presentations I attended at the American Academy of Religion’s Annual Meeting in San Francisco was that by sociologist Helen A. Berger at the Contemporary Pagan Studies Group panel “Pagan Analysis and Critique of Religion.” Her talk, “Fifteen Years of Continuity and Change within the American Pagan Community,” was a flurry of statistical information  gleaned from a 2009 re-visitation of the Pagan Census project. This isn’t the first time Berger, co-author of “Voices from the Pagan Census: A National Survey of Witches and Neo-Pagans in the United States,” has presented some initial finding from this new collection of data; in late 2010 she wrote an editorial for Patheos.com’s “Future of Paganism” series where she revealed where the data was leading.

Helen A. Berger presenting at the AAR.

“In comparing the two surveys [The Pagan Census and the Pagan Census Revisited] I found that the number of Pagans who claim to practice alone has grown from 51% to 79%. The growth of solitary practitioners has been facilitated by books and the Internet. During the 1960s and 70s when the religion was initially spreading, it was passed from person-to-person, most commonly in groups, such as covens. This has clearly changed as in the PCR only 36% state that they were trained in a group. [...] Parallel to the growth of solitary practitioners is the increase in people who state that their primary form of practice is Eclectic Paganism, which is the most common designation, with 53% of the respondents claiming this designation.  Additionally, 22% state that they are spiritual but dislike labels.”

That essay got very little attention at the time, even though it held some remarkable data of interest to our communities. Perhaps there were so many thought-provoking editorials produced for that series that it was drowned out a bit? In any case, the collection of religion scholars, Pagan scholars, journalists, and interested local Pagan community members, were very interested in what Professor Berger had to say about her (as yet unpublished) data. We found out that 40.8% of young self-identified Pagans never or “nearly never” meet with other Pagans for the purposes of ritual or religious observance. We found that a vast majority, 79%, primarily practice alone (solitary), and we found that Wicca, once the statistical heavyweight of the modern Pagan movement, is quickly losing ground to Pagans with eclectic practices. At one point Berger made an allusion to Robert Putnam’s book “Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community”, saying that a similar book about the Pagan community could be called “Circling Alone.”

How often do we communicate with other Pagans?

However, while Pagans are increasingly solitary in practice, we do interact with one another, but that interaction is happening increasingly on the Internet. More than half of Pagans today use blogs, message boards, and social media to connect with the wider Pagan world, the only method of communication and interaction that garnered a majority. Are such methods of communication and connection enough to bind us together as a movement?

“Paganism is a community of spiritual individualists that is well integrated, on both the local level through gatherings, festivals and open Sabbats and on the national and international level through websites, message boards, and blogs. As much of the integration takes place on the Internet or person-to-person, it is unclear how important umbrella organizations such as Covenant of the Goddess or Pagan Associations will be in the future. However, the desire for individuals to practice together and to get together for spiritual purposes suggests that they may grow in import as they help to organize gatherings, rituals, and classes. Paganism will continue to provide a new image of what religion can be in a postmodern world; one without churches or clear boundaries, based on books and the Internet and individuals gathering together and interacting and then returning to practice what they see as their own eclectic religion.”

Berger stressed repeatedly during her presentation that she hasn’t come to any firm conclusions about the data she’s collected in 2009, and what it might mean for modern Paganism’s future. That said, she did wonder if modern Pagans were building a new model of religious growth that flies in the face of the traditional growth arcs (the building of congregations, for example). Paganism is still growing, albeit not at the explosive levels of the 1990s, and if our movement survives over the long term it could completely change ideas of how religions survive and thrive in a post-modern (and increasingly post-Christian) world. I’m hoping we see more from Berger on this data soon, and I’m hoping to contact her for a more in-depth interview about the findings she presented at the American Academy of Religion’s Annual Meeting. For now, I think our organizations, activists, and clergy need to start grappling with the directions our movement is headed, and shift their expectations and methods accordingly.

I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about the past. Not the recent past, but the ancient world. Most modern Pagan faiths assert some connection with pre-Christian religion, whether it’s as inspiration, revival, reconstruction, or even claims to direct lineage. Recently our communities have seen renewed debates over how much of a connection we truly have, and whether recent scholarship was too quick to deem the matter of pagan survivals closed. At this year’s PantheaCon I witnessed a presentation in which an Italian group claimed direct connection to the ancient world, though not without some controversy. The synchronicity was palpable, and in some cases I believe the lines between mythic history and what may have actually happened are being intentionally blurred. But even when we stick to the approved sources, and try to reconstruct as faithfully as we can, there’s still the risk of us creating/recreating the past in our own image. I think a recent essay by P. Sufenas Virius Lupus on eclecticism and syncretism in the ancient world illustrates this problem quite well.

This idea of cultural impurity and anti-syncretism, of course, ignores the many historical and provable cases in which there was eclecticism or syncretism in operation. Anyone who worships Gaulish or ancient British deities is doing so from syncretistic sources. Shinto is a syncretistic religion, having combined certain concepts from various forms of Buddhism into itself, as well as both Japanese and Ainu animism, Taoist energetic philosophies and esoteric techniques, amongst other things (including, in some cases, Christian saints becoming kami!). For that matter, what we think of as “Greek religion” or “Roman religion” is also, at its core, syncretistic. Most polytheistic systems are profoundly local, and thus the “religion of Rome” is combined from Latin, Sabine, Umbrian, Etruscan, and any number of other Italic religious elements…and that’s in its strictly Roman form. As time went on, increasing influence from Greece, and encounters with the cultures of Carthage, the Near East, and a variety of other peoples from diverse geographic areas influenced the Roman practices and the content of the Roman pantheon. “Greek religion” is–what, exactly? The religion of ancient Athens, about which we have the most information? The religion of ancient Sparta? Boeitia (including Thebes)? Crete? While some ancient Greeks might make an argument for any of those possibilities, they would most likely exclude Crete from the picture…and yet, as far as we’re concerned, Crete is under the heading of “Greek religion.” Take a god like Dionysos, for example, and he seems to be the combination of many possible different deities from originally separate, local cultus; the same is true of Artemis (compare Artemis of Ephesus to Artemis of Brauron to Artemis Orthia of Sparta, for starters!), and Zeus, and Demeter, and any number of other deities that we consider “Greek.”

It is, of course, human nature to create a past we feel comfortable with. Especially our “pagan” pasts. Several nonfiction books I’ve been reading lately, “Knossos and the Prophets of Modernism”, “Electric Eden”, and “The Birth of Classical Europe”, all deal with how our ancient pasts are constantly redefined, reexamined, and retold to suit our current needs. As our present recedes into memory, even when we have ample documentation, we tend to keep a kind of cultural shorthand and forget the rest until some new frame of reference is required. The problem is when we use a certain (often incomplete) conception of the past as a way to feel superior, or even give us permission to act callously towards others.  Of course, Pagans aren’t the only ones who create incomplete or mythic images of our ancient past, Christian apologists are very fond of the exercise as well.

“I recently finished watching the first season of the Starz Channel series “Spartacus.” The series is definitely not for the squeamish, or those easily offended by the salacious depiction of Roman debauchery, maybe not even for those not so easily offended. But it is a powerful depiction of the pagan Western world prior to the advent of Christianity, and as impressive as Roman civilization was at the time, it was nightmare for those who were not Roman citizens. [...] As I was watching the show, I was wondering what the Western world would have looked like if Christianity had remained a small Jewish sect stuck in Palestine [...] The juxtaposition of Roman culture to that of the spreading Christian Church is stark, as light is to dark, day is to night and as up is to down.”

I vacillate between laughter and dread at the thought that there are people out there who believe “Spartacus: Gods of the Arena” is even close to an accurate portrait of ancient Rome. Yet, even if we removed the specter of that nudity and blood-drenched series, Christian revisionism of the past has been common since that religion rose to prominence in the latter part of the Roman Empire. Even when the past is largely Christian, it must be made even more so to suit current agendas.

The quest, I feel, is to keep our images of the past from becoming calcified into immovable doctrine. That we should be supple enough to absorb new information and theories. Faiths that build their foundation on historical claims in some ancient era, no matter how well researched, always run the risk of encountering new information, new theories, better scientific data. Such a faith can be shaken or shattered, whether it’s based on the Biblical creation story, or where Atlantis is. Some have tried to discredit Wicca by attacking its origin myths, but they miss the point of most modern Pagan faiths, which are often more focused on the experiential than on proper doctrine or utter faith in its creation myths. I have great faith in my religion, I can have meaningful experiences with its myths in the proper contexts, while still laughing at the Pagan-themed “teach the controversy” t-shirts. My belief doesn’t hinge on Gardner, or any other Pagan elder (or text), being “right”. The past should inspire, enrich, and help guide our efforts to (re)build modern Pagan faiths, so long as we remain aware of  our limitations and the limitations of our source material.

The jester or holy fool is an oft-necessary role within religious communities. It is far too easy at times to get over-serious and forget the inherent joy and playfulness that can come with living the Pagan life. It is during those times when we forget joy and humor that the fool points out that our fine clothes are imaginary, and we’ve been parading about naked. For many in modern Paganism the semi-official holy fools are the Discordians, worshippers of the sexy goddess of chaos Eris, a joke-cult/cult-joke popularized in such works as “The Principia Discordia”, “The Illuminatus! Trilogy”, and Margot Adler’s “Drawing Down the Moon”.

“In a way, it’s ridiculous even to talk seriously about the Erisians, a group, or collection of groups, that has called itself a “Non-Prophet Irreligious Disorganization” this “dedicated to an advanced understanding of the paraphysical manifestations of Everyday Chaos”, and at other times stated, “The Erisian revelation is not a complicated put-on disguised as a new religion, but a new religion disguised as a complicated put-on”.

But for some the joke can go too far, allowing the chaos to spread to a point where it turns a holy day into a jumbled mess of tired pop-culture references. That seems to be the experience of one woman who attended a CUUPs service for Lammas that seemed far more about Monty Python than first-harvests or the god Lugh.

“Our local CUUPS group hosted a strange Lammas/Lughnasadh ritual last night. Members of the group take turns as High Priest and Priestess and this ritual was led by our local Discordians … it’s not that I don’t appreciate some of the points made … I like the emphasis on those un-looked-for blessings, the life changing moments that come out of nowhere. It is good to notice and appreciate those once in a while. It is good to remember that while harmony in a worthy goal, disorder always lurks beneath the suface of order and that is not always a bad thing. I believe there really is a time and place for last night’s ritual. I don’t think Lughnasadh is it … It felt like I needed to hear the lessons about reaping the works of your labors and being multi-skilled. I was hoping for a ritual experience that would embed the ideas swirling in my head. Instead I got a quick thank you to Lugh, mixed for some reason with Gaia, but now let’s really talk about Eris all night … when people started quoting Monty Python as part of the ritual I knew my spiritual needs were not going to be met.”

Worse still, she left feeling “negative” and “conservative” for not being able to join in the laughs. No doubt part of this can be attributed to the ups and downs of a rotating eclectic gathering, sometimes the Discordians are put in charge when you are more in the mood for something a bit more reverent and serious, but I also think this might be a failure on the part of the CUUPs organizers. The Sabbats/High Holy Days/Fire Festivals can certainly include mirth and irreverence, but they are also meant to transmit deep truths, help us commune with the gods, and turn the wheel of the year. If the holy fools appointed/chosen as ritual leaders can’t control their own chaos long enough to mark the holiday, they are not only out-of-balance, but they imbalance all those who chose that event to connect to the mysteries of that holiday.

There are certainly times when the lunatics should take over the asylum, when chaos should overrun our natural inclinations towards order and safety, but those liminal times should be chosen carefully and not assigned arbitrarily. There are times for mayhem and there are times for work and for harvest. And on a personal note, quoting Monty Python (no doubt “Holy Grail”) in circle is sooo played out. Seriously, get some new material folks.

One fact that hasn’t sunk in too deeply to those on the outside looking in on modern Paganism is that our culture includes many different points of view on the topic of spiritual eclecticism. While some groups and individuals feel free to incorporate “whatever works”, others try very hard to find or reconstruct a singular tradition and are loathe to incorporate elements that they see as outside their cultural/religious boundaries. Today, many modern Pagans (myself included) fall somewhere in between these two poles. So I found it interesting that Pagan author Amber K seemed to take a shot at Pagans with a traditional bent in a recent article on Yule.

“People drawn to paganism tend to be “spiritual mavericks” because it’s a religion that is open to incorporating many beliefs, she said. “The fact is, if anything seems useful or true or good to us as individuals, we’ll incorporate that into our spiritual practice,” she said. “There are also pagans who don’t do that, who swallow a very set sort of beliefs and practices that are pretty rigid, but I would have to say the majority are pretty much wide open to spiritual truth wherever you find it.” That flexibility is one reason Kim Pennington-Dozier, a Jemez Springs resident, says she was drawn to paganism.” (emphasis mine)

I wouldn’t have noticed this if it weren’t for the “swallow” remark, and the subtle insinuation that the more tradition-bound Pagans are somehow denying spiritual truths in other faiths. Was she taken out of context? It can be hard to “hear” the intention in pieces like this, so perhaps she meant no insult? In either case, this brings up some interesting issues for the future of journalistic coverage of modern Paganism. More often than not, the “eclectic” Pagans get interviewed more often (for a variety of reasons) giving the impression that the entirety of modern Paganism is eclectic in nature. As modern Paganism continues to grow journalists will start to pick up on the divide between eclectic and traditionalist urges within modern Pagan faiths.

We are at a point now where we could establish the talking points for these idealogical differences within modern Paganism. If we don’t, we run the risk of having both sides of the ongoing debate stereotyped and defined by those who report on them. A good start would be avoiding comments that seem to inflate your viewpoint at the expense of those who don’t share it.