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The Dallas Morning News
Pagans’ Progress
Revival of Nature Religions attracts diverse following.
By Christine Wicker-Staff writer of The Dallas Morning News
The question was posed as they sat in a circle on the floor of a sheet-draped room owned by a high priestess and a priest of Wicca. The light was dim and remains of the pagans’ feast-ham salad and pimento cheese sandwiches, couscous, sold cuts, soft drinks and wine-were at their feet. They were feeling mellow as they lounged in their long white robes.
“Tell me if this is true,” said an inquisitor from the edge of the circle. “You pick what you want from other religions and throw the pieces together. You might be absolutely wrong, and you know that. But this religion seems true to you, so you believe it. Is that right?”
The question was a variation on one of the traditional religion’s most devastating insults: The idea that people with new ideas about religion have a make-it-up-as-they-go faith.
The pagans were delighted. They cheered and laughed and yelled, “That’s it.”
The dozen people celebrating the beginning of spring in a Hurst apartment are part of a revival of ancient religions that started in the 1950′s and has continued with a postmodern twist.
They are among thousands of Americans who practice a brand of faith sometimes called nature or Earth religions because of its reverence for the natural world.
It is also sometimes called neo-paganism or paganism, which comes from the Latin word meaning country people. Today, pagan is often used to mean that someone has no religion, a charge the neo-pagans would vehemently deny.
The largest of these mature worship groups is Wicca, whose adherents are commonly known as witches. But neo-pagans also often worship gods from ancient Roman, Greek, Norse, Celtic, Sumerian, African, or Egyptian traditions. Female deities are a primary attraction for many neo-pagans.
One of the groups’ most distinguishing characteristics is that they often eschew authority and the traditions they grew up with to rely on their own sense of what faith or combination of faiths is right for them.
In a given ceremony, they may throw in a little American Indian tradition, dance a few Sufi dances, bring out a Wiccan cauldron, call upon some dragons, summon forth a few faeries or after declaiming loudly to gods with names few Americans can pronounce, quote from a Catholic saint.
‘Postmodern eclecticism’
“It’s a very postmodern eclecticism,” said Mary Jo Neitz, a sociologist with the University of Missouri in Columbia, who has studied the pagan movement, particularly Wiccans, for nine years.
“They are making it up as they go along, but they aren’t making it up form scratch,” she said, noting that pagans draw from cultures all over the world. It’s very consistent with what we see happening in the arts and in music.”
One researcher who counted participants at festivals, estimates that American neo-pagans now number between 3,000 and 10,000. Another source estimates between 50,000 to 100,000, based on circulation of literature. Some people within the movement say its numbers are as high as 200,000.
Dr. Neitz said getting a count is difficult because many Wiccan women don’t go to events that include men, and other pagans are solitaires, who practice alone, she said.
Signs of paganism are appearing more and more in the mainstream. Solstice greeting cards are showing up alongside Christmas and Easter cards. Pagan symbols are being replicated on towels and drinking cups.
“We can find our stuff at mainstream stores now,” said a Wiccan woman happily.
Large numbers of people who aren’t pagans but who aren’t afraid to mix with them regularly join seasonal celebrations based on pagan traditions. Last year’s summer solstice festival at White Rock Lake drew thousands, and this year’s June 21-23 celebration promises to be at least equally popular.
Christians and Pagans
Some Christians have no problem using pagan forms and rituals.
The Rev. Martha Murphy Hall, a Christian ordained in the nondenominational Ministry of Service Church, recently conducted a marriage ceremony between pagans with strongly fundamentalist Christian families. They wanted pagan elements, but they didn’t want their guests to know what they were doing.
Ms. Hall had no problem with that. “My own Jesus is tremendously tolerant,” she said, “Sinners, Romans, Samaritans. He included them all in his fold. So I don’t exclude anyone.”
Rosalind de Rolon is also among those who considers herself Christian but believes in the power of many pagan traditions. “I haven’t given up Jesus, I’ve just broadened my religion,” she said.
Last Saturday at Lee Park, 20 people with garlands on their heads danced around a May pole singing first an American Indian chant and then a hallelujah chorus. Most of the group, which included Ms. De Rolon and ms. Hall, was Christian, but the May Queen was pagan.
The 20-year-old college student said her faith was passed on to her by her mother. “she really just wanted to take her pasta salad and go to the Methodist church, but there was no place for her,” said Leigh Ann Brown. “she was too strong. She gave me her strength.”
Many women talk about the attraction of female deities and in that, as in other matters of faith, they follow what resonates for them.
Valerie Dzmura read a book called The Mists of Avalon, a retelling of the Camelot tale. “You see the women in the story saying all the gods are one god and all the goddesses are one goddess and that goes-whammo-right into your heart,” said Ms. Dzumra. “You feel like you know this. It’s like coming home.”
Many pagans said they were once ardent Christians. Some once dreamed of being nuns, missionaries or preachers.
It was the idea of original sin that drove Jennifer Holliman-formerly a Methodist-away from her childhood faith.
“I felt like my head always had to be down. In Christianity, you aren’t worth much because you’re human,” said Ms. Holliman, who will graduate with high honors form Texas Woman’s University this spring.
She now worships mostly Norse deities. “something about them just seemed to call to me,” she said.
A different path
Harry McMaster traces his disillusionment with Christianity back to his childhood when his mother divorced and was treated badly by the church where they belonged.
He, like many pagans, said that he didn’t so much choose paganism as it chose him. “It’s more like something you realize you’ve always believed,” said Mr. McMaster, who is a Wiccan priest.
Many pagans have friendly feelings toward Christianity. Marie Wilhite’s 9-year-old daughter goes to a Baptist church, as Ms. Wilhite did when she was a child. “I want her to learn those teachings,” she said.
Ms. Wilhite, who owns Scorpio Herbs, also would like to hire a Christian to work in the store. “If you get a good solid Christian, they aren’t likely to feel the energies, and they’ll be more likely to stay grounded,” she said, meaning they would tend to business.
Despite some mainstream acceptance, many committed pagans still have a high fear of persecution, and stories of bad treatment abound. In the ’60s and ’70s, Wiccans in the South were so afraid that they used coven names and would not reveal their true names even to those in the group, said Dr. Neitz.
Many local pagans still refuse to have their names in the newspaper. “I’m a nurse who works in a nursing home,” said a woman in her late 40s. “Most Texans wouldn’t be happy about the idea that grandma was being taken care of by a witch.”
Pagans talk a lot about magic but, when pressed, they often define it as a form of prayer. Some do have stories of having bent the material world with their will. Shawn, who doesn’t want his last name used, defines himself as a chaos magician.
He said he can control fire with his will. “A candle flame,” he said, “I can cause it to move with my mind.”
“Oh, piffle,” said Gloria Galasso, rolling out scones that would be part of the upcoming Beltane or May Day ceremony. “That’s what you perceive.”
“That’s right,” he said, not at all abashed. “that’s what I perceive.”
The occult stereotype
The Wiccan concept of magic is often no more drastic than the belief in supernatural intervention that Pentecostals sometimes share, said Dr. Neitz, who wrote a book on Pentecostals. “For awhile, I thought the Christians believed in magic even more than the witches did,” she said.
Both often believe, for instance, in what she classes “universal parking place magic.”
“May the universe manifest a parking place. All the religions I know do that,” she said.
“There are people who do practice negative magic,” said a Wiccan who asked not to be named. “We’d prefer that they not call themselves witches.”
Dr. Neitz turns down invitations to present her research at seminars on the occult by saying, “I don’t study the occult, I study religion.”
The pagan movements are real religion, unlike Churches of Satan, which are often just a reaction to Christianity, she said.
“Witchcraft is a religion because it has a story and it has an ethical platform. Satanism is a kind of adolescent rebellion,” she said, although she does recognize that some Satanists might do real evil. “I don’t know much about that,” she said.
The ethics of witchcraft involve the notion that anyone who does bad will be repaid three times, she said. Good will also be rewarded.
Elements of Paganism
Although pagan beliefs vary widely, they usually have the following three elements in common: * They contain no concept of original sin. “when people ask me about Satanism, I always tell them that we don’t even have a devil,” said high priestess Carrie McMaster.
“Christians believe they fell from paradise,” said ms. Galasso, who practices Thelema, a 3,000 member religion founded in 1904 by English poet and mystic Aleister Crowly. “We believe this is paradise.” * Pagans believe that God is in everything and everyone. “god is in the trees, in the rocks, in the computer,” said Ms. McMaster.
“God is in us,” said Ms. McMaster. * They believe in many gods who represent the one Deity, who is male and female.
“God is too big for us to perceive,” said Ms. Wilhite. “the gods and goddesses are little manageable pieces that we can understand.”
Many pagans also believe in reincarnation.
Many pagans agree with the Wiccan Rede, “An it harm none, do what thou wilt.” An is an archaic form of the word if.
The Charge of the Goddess is also often quoted, which says in part, “all acts of love and pleasure are My rituals.”
Wicca is often a difficult religion because it has no traditional ceremonies, said Ms. Dzmura. “We have to make all our rituals as we go. It’s hard.”
But to its adherents, paganism is worth the effort. It connects them to the Earth and to a sense of the holy in a way that other religions that don’t, they say.
For them it works.
“I don’t care if your god is 5,000 years old or something you just made up last Tuesday,” said Ms. Galasso. “If it gets you through the dark of the night, if it’s there for you when you celebrate, if it’s there when you need comfort from the death of your mother or your best friend, then it’s a true religion, whatever it is.”
“My religion is there for me just as much as a Baptist’s is there for him.”
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May 11, 1996
Section G, page 1G, continued on 3G
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