Drawing Down the Moon (65 page)

To this Carolyn Clark replied:

In retrospect I see that I should not have been so surprised that many Pagans favored technology, since most of those I talked to were highly imaginative, were avid readers of science fiction, and tended to put their ideals and fantasies in as many future settings as past ones. My own views began to change and adapt. I had a more receptive attitude toward technology, science, and cities after conducting these interviews.

As a person who had entered the Craft in part because it was “an ecological religion,” when I began my research in the 1970s, I assumed that an ecological concern would be one of the two or three unifying bonds among all Neo-Pagans, one of the unarguable points. I confess I tended to the position that anyone who did not feel this way either was not a “real Pagan” or was a person who had not begun to make connections between belief and daily life.

Verbally, most of those I interviewed agreed that “a reverence for the earth and nature” was a common bond between Pagans. Leo Martello wrote, “Neo-Paganism is a pre-Judeo-Christian religion of nature worshippers: spiritual ecologists.” Morgan McFarland said, “A Pagan world view is one that says the Earth is the Great Mother and has been raped, pillaged, and plundered and must once again be celebrated if we are to survive. Paganism means a return to those values which see an ecologically balanced situation so that life continues and the Great Mother is venerated again. If nature disappears, all my spiritual efforts go up in smoke. Both ecology and Paganism seek a restoration of the balance of nature. If you're not into ecology, you really can't be into Paganism.” Morgan's partner, at the time, Mark Roberts, was even more emphatic. “Ecology should not be an arguable point within the Craft,” he said. “If our goal is seeking kinship with nature and the nature we are seeking kinship with is being poisoned, then we must become religious militants. We should be the chaplains of the ecology movement, at the least, if not in the front ranks of the fight.”

Almost everyone spoke somewhat in this vein. The Ph.D. chemist told me that if there was a goal of the movement it was “the salvage of the earth.” Carl Weschcke, the publisher, stated it clearly: “A Witch can't think of nature as something to be conquered. . . . Paganism is a response to the planet as a whole . . . the planet is in crisis and we must get back in tune with the natural world. We must live within nature.” Finally, I asked Bonewits if there were certain positions that most Neo-Pagans and Crafters would “have to come to.” “Yes,” he said, “I think one would wind up being very concerned about environmental and ecological matters,” although, he added wryly, “Most Neo-Pagans are too loose and liberal to be fanatic about
anything,
including their own survival!”

This comment may have been the truest of all, for despite this widespread verbal agreement there was a deep split between Pagans whose commitment to ecological principles was strong and practical, and those whose commitment was limited to a religious vision. The former often felt the latter were not living up to their commitments. The latter generally felt that no extreme measures were needed. The real difference was political—between those who believed that a complete change in lifestyle or economy or consciousness was needed, and those who felt such a change was unnecessary or undesirable or something that would evolve by itself, given time.

Quite a few spoke against any kind of militant action to save the environment. “The principles of the Craft,” said one priest from the Midwest, “are more universal than environmental. The same planting, growing, ripening, harvesting, storage, and quiet period that nature goes through we go through in our own lives, even in the city. They may not be as apparent, but these same cycles are here in almost everything we do.”

This coven priest then expressed to me opinions I have heard over the years from many people in the United States. “I am pulling a little ways away from ecology. The environment is constantly changing. The minute you plant a seed in the ground, you have altered the environment. It's really not a matter of man trying to rape the earth. We simply do not yet know the results of our actions and reactions. Yes, the Craft is involved in ecology, but I do not think it is a major Craft problem.”

Roberta Ann Kennedy, the Craft priestess from Ohio, told me, “I see people in the Craft talking about ecology, but not living it. I believe there's a problem, but until it gets a lot worse nobody's going to do anything about it.” She added, “I'm judging from my own behavior,” and told me that she enjoyed her comforts and would find it hard to change her way of living. Theos, the Gardnerian priestess from Long Island, told me that she could not “recall any persons seeking membership in my coven via the ecology route.”

Most of the strong statements supporting ecological militancy came from Neo-Pagans involved in groups other than Witchcraft—groups like the Church of All Worlds and Feraferia. The most militant statements came from Penny Novack, for many years a leader of Philadelphia's Pagan Way. Penny told me she found a great difference between those she labeled “Pagans” or “celebrants” and those she labeled “occultists.” “Many occultists can't really plug in to the earth,” she maintained. She felt the movement should involve itself heavily in ecological activities and had failed to do so because most people “did not make connections” and remained on a “pretty fantasy trip.”

The world, she observed in a letter to
Earth Religion News,
needed less Witchcraft training circles and more celebrant nature worshippers. She concluded:

Penny and her husband began to call themselves Judeo-Pagan Taoists. She said she was disillusioned; she felt there was little chance for a Neo-Paganism that would unite with the ecology movement. She had converted to Judaism, the religion of her husband, because, she said, she believed in tribal religions. She felt a hunger for a tribe. She had hoped the Neo-Pagan movement would provide it, but so far it had not.

So I asked Penny, “How, then,
do
you get people to relate to nature?”

And she replied, “I would trick them into going into the wilderness with me. And maybe we'd get lost. And maybe we would get cold. And perhaps we would have to trap and find herbs and learn basic things, like how you bury your shit. And by the time they got back, they would be so pissed at me they would never go anywhere with me again. But they would know the earth!”

As we sat around at the Novacks' house, relaxing, Penny pulled out a stack of
Akwesasne Notes
and pointed out articles to me. I opened one of them. It read:

The Novacks took a position that assumed the necessity of political and economic
and
religious transformation, but this was not typical of the Pagans I had encountered.

As we have seen, the Church of All Worlds and Feraferia consistently took a militant position on ecology, although they differed on the question of technology and on ultimate vision. The Church of All Worlds published many articles on the
religious
nature of all ecological activities, and articles in
Green Egg
often talked about “the murder of the planet” or “Terracide.” According to one article, CAW was seeking to end the destructive course of events by engaging in various activities, by seeking to live close to nature, and by emphasizing the values of decentralism and small-village life.
²⁰

A number of Pagans held up to me other models of ecological sanity. Among these were the works of Murray Bookchin, the anarchist writer whose book
Our Synthetic Environment
had appeared in 1962, well before the ecology craze. Bookchin advocated a decentralized society composed of moderate-sized cities and involving a highly developed system of what we call alternate technologies—solar, wind, etc. This future would neither be a return to the past nor a “suburban accommodation to the present.”
²¹

Another book that Pagans thrust into my hands was Ernest Callenbach's
Ectopia,
a utopian novel that takes place in the Pacific Northwest in 1999, after northern California, Oregon, and Washington have seceded from the United States and have established an ecological stable-state system. The new society is democratic, decentralist, filled with separatist and communitarian values. New technologies (like biodegradable plastics) exist alongside certain delightful primitivisms, and a Pagan religion of tree worship is subtly alluded to but never detailed.
²²

These two works reflected some of the ideas that I came across many times in my interviews. But few of those I spoke to considered any of these models seriously. Most continued to subscribe, consciously or unconsciously, to the majority American view in these matters. The nature paradise was vision—no less, no more.

A number of scholars and writers have looked at the relationship of ecology to modern Paganism since the publication of
Drawing Down the Moon.
Regina Smith Oboler wrote a paper, “Nature Religion as a Cultural System?” which was published in an issue of
The Pomegranate
.
²³
Oboler went to three large Pagan Gatherings in 2002 and 2003, as well as several smaller events. She conducted interviews, taped group discussions, and distributed a questionnaire. She wanted to analyze whether those who described their religion as a “nature religion” were more committed to environmental politics than others. Many
talked
about a link between a Pagan identity and ecological concerns. In fact, 93.5 percent of her respondents said they were sympathetic to “environmentalist political movements,” and 72 percent said they were strongly sympathetic.

Oboler compared her Pagan respondents to people who were asked the same questions in a Gallup Poll, and found that, in many cases, the responses of Pagans were not so different; the main difference was a higher percentage that belonged to environmental organizations and voted or worked for candidates based on their environmental record. But looking deeper, Oboler decided many had come to these environmentalist positions
before
they became Pagans, although many saw their ecological ideals “flowing naturally from Pagan spirituality.” But whether or not Paganism attracts people who are already environmentalists, it's clear from just observing recent Pagan Pride events and the growing number of Pagan nature sanctuaries that there are more Wiccans and Pagans today who believe that ecology is important to a Pagan world view than there were in the 1970s, although no one has calculated how many more. Judy Harrow, in an essay titled “If You Love Her Why Not Serve Her,” which will be published in a collection:
Paganism and Ecology
in the spring of 2007,
²⁴
interviewed six Pagans who are seriously involved in environmental issues: a geologist working on environmental restoration, an organic farmer, an environmental attorney, a custodian of an urban green space, a gardener, and a biologist/nature writer. Although their stories are anecdotal, Harrow said it was easy to find six people who had a serious ecological commitment that translated into their daily lives. When
Drawing Down the Moon
was first published, I could not have easily found six people within the community. In the 1970s many Pagans
talked
about a relationship to nature, and nature was important in ritual; but now, in the first decade of the twenty-first century, quite a few Pagans are involved in preservation efforts, permaculture, organic gardening, and ecology activism. And a number of Pagan festivals have moved from anonymous rented campsites to Pagan-owned nature sanctuaries; a couple of them are even off the grid. How large a difference this makes is not yet clear, but it is a marked change.

Differences between Pagans in regard to ecology really come down to differences in regard to “politics,” although that word may seem to many Neo-Pagans a bad choice, since so many of them described themselves as “apolitical,” while espousing very political views. Ed Fitch observed to me, “You find in Paganism the strangest mixture of people. You find revolutionaries and radicals. You find former army intelligence types, maybe even active CIA types. This is because they are all actionoriented. They crave something new. They crave dignity and adventure. They want to know what's just over the next physical or intellectual or emotional hill. All these people work together, thoroughly enjoy each other's company, and ignore each other's politics.”