The Dilemma of Alex Mar or How Long Shall We Be Afraid?

I am on pins and needles waiting for a chance to see Alex Mar’s documentary “American Mystic”. It features Native American, Spiritualist and Pagan mystics searching for the divine. It looks absolutely fabulous and will most certainly be a film I will have to add to my collection. If you haven’t yet heard about it you can find the trailer here.

This morning Jason over at the Wild Hunt (see the link in our news feed below) talked about an interview with filmmaker Alex Mar at Tribeca Film. Alex had difficulties finding a Pagan willing to be featured in the documentary. As a Pagan writer I completely sympathize with her dilemma.

“I met with different covens in different parts of the country, and one of the challenges with the pagan element in the film is I needed to find someone brave enough to say, okay, not only am I a witch, and to say that on camera, but I have this coven, I have this group that I practice with, and everyone associated with her had to be brave enough to say, okay, we’re comfortable with this.

In California and maybe in New York, it doesn’t sound like that big of a deal to say that you’re pagan, but obviously being a witch is a big deal in this country. I met with a woman who I thought was so wonderful in Tennessee, and she would have loved to have shared her story but she was terrified. You know, she had seen people lose their jobs, and actually had a friend whose children were taking away from her through child welfare… It was really, I think, all told, six months of going around the country.”

Here in Atlanta it’s been over 40 years since Lady Sintana opened House of Ravenwood to the public and fought for the religious rights of all Pagans, yet many of us are still afraid. We were a hub of the Civil Rights movement of the 60’s and we’re now known as the “Gay Capital of the South” but Pagans are still afraid.

We have so much work to do. Like the Gay movement of the 70’s we have to come out to protect ourselves. A person’s opinion of a religion will change when they realize they know a practitioner. Your neighbor who thinks Witches are evil doesn’t suspect the nice, friendly lady next door practices the Craft. I take pains to be a decent, kind, friendly, generous, honorable, honest person, not only because I feel it’s the right way to be, but also because I may be the only open Pagan my friends, relatives, co-workers and neighbors know.

I was raised to think Mormons, Catholics and Pentecostals were odd people with strange and questionable rituals. Nothing changed my mind as quickly as getting to know practitioners of those faiths. Knowledge eradicates fear.

Whatever your situation, consider that instead of reviling you for your faith the people around you may be impressed that the kind, loving, reasonable person they know is a Pagan.