Drawing Down the Moon (70 page)

Moreover, as Eliade noted, shamanism is a worldwide phenomenon. Michael Harner has noted that many of the methods used by shamans are remarkably similar worldwide, whether they are used by indigenous peoples of Australia, Lapland, the Amazon Jungle, or Eastern Europe. Harner argues that the reason that cultures thousands of miles apart with different kinship structures, religious ideas, and ecological requirements developed strikingly similar shamanic techniques is that over thousands of years, through empirical trial and error, these techniques worked from culture to culture, as a means of healing, of finding lost children, of finding animals and sources of food.

Here's a mundane example. As a descendant partly of Russian Jews, experiencing a sweat lodge ceremony was a deep and extraordinary experience, but it was not entirely foreign. Going to Russian steam baths, experiencing the traditional
platzkas
—being beaten with oak leaf branches as you experience the hot steam and then are doused with ice cold water, is clearly part of the same continuum. There are plenty of ways for modern Pagans to use shamanic techniques without “stealing” the traditions of indigenous people.

While Wiccans and Pagans who are exploring shamanic paths must respect and learn from the traditions of others, and avoid the pitfalls of Western arrogance, this worldwide search is really a quest for our own lost traditions, traditions which were, way back, from all we can tell, not so very different from some of the practices of traditional cultures today. And even more important, as the Pagan community slowly evolves into a real, multigenerational community, there is more of a real basis for shamanic work.

Pagans have been eagerly embracing interfaith work. The Pagan presence at the Parliament of the World's Religions has increased with each international meeting, and Pagans have been involved with many other interfaith efforts. Pagans and Witches are working to be taken seriously as a world religion. They are also making connections with animist and other traditional polytheistic groups around the world.

Pagans have also connected with various Christian and Jewish denominations. There has been an important connection between Pagans and the Unitarian Universalist Association, which remains one of the only “mainstream” religious organizations where women involved with Goddess religion can enter the organized ministry. Wiccan priestesses have enrolled in Unitarian seminaries, and a number of them have graduated with ministerial credentials. Beacon Press, a publishing company that is coonnected with the UUA, has put out many women's spirituality books, including those by Starhawk and Mary Daly.

In an essay written in 1985, four months before he was to be elected president of the UUA, William F. Shultz, who later went on to head Amnesty International, wrote that there had been “a religious revolution” in the Unitarian Universalist Association, that, “to put it in symbolic terms, Ashtar, the Goddess, had been issued invitation where formerly only Lord Jehovah dared to tread.” Schultz said that the Women and Religion resolutions passed by the UUA General Assemblies in 1977, 1979, and 1980 “must first be appreciated THEALOGICALLY.” He said the resolutions laid the basis for a new kind of Unitarian Universalism and there were at least five implications: that religion is to be experienced, as opposed to being understood in terms of right and wrong beliefs; that the religious experience is personal and found in ordinary experience; that personal religious experience can be shared in community; that creation is a whole; that human beings are not rulers or even “stewards” of nature, but co-creators with all living things; and that from this kind of spirituality flows a commitment to peace and justice. Among the most interesting suggestions made by William Schultz was the creation of a new hymnal that would reflect feminist spirituality through words, songs, and liturgies.
³¹

Since 1985 the UUA has said that its traditions are drawn from many sources. And in 1995, after a fight of several years, the UUA embraced the Pagan nature traditions by adopting a sixth source to draw from: “Spiritual teachings of Earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.” Although many congregations had gone through a virtual revolution in their liturgies over the last twenty-five years, much of it inspired by the feminist spirituality curriculum, Cakes for the Queen of Heaven, which went like wildfire through congregation after congregation, as well as the presence of the Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans (CUUPS) in many UUA churches, the decision to approve the sixth source meant that Unitarian Universalism officially became a welcoming home for Pagans. And although there are many, many Pagans who have no use for an official base within the Unitarian Universalist Association, it has been extremely important for Pagans in many communities to have the option of an accepted place in the “mainstream” for worship and community.

One side effect of this is that although there are many CUUPS chapters active throughout the United States, there has been somewhat less energy in that organization, possibly because it is no longer so deeply needed.

The 1986 edition of
Drawing Down the Moon
emphasized the growth of Pagan festivals and said that these gatherings had helped create a national Pagan culture. It's important to describe this history before talking about Pagan festivals today.

When
Drawing Down the Moon
was published on Samhain 1979, the principal mode of communication was through newsletters. Finding Pagans was not easy. It took determination and luck. There was a feeling, often communicated by covens and groves, that this hard and long search was part of the growth process. When you were ready, your teacher or group would materialize. The upside of this was that when you did find a group, even if it wasn't quite the right group, you still were committed. The downside was that people were often alone and completely isolated in their search for years. And if the group they entered was inappropriate, unacceptably hierarchical, or the leaders were simply on a power trip, there was often no recourse.

I think my own search was not untypical. I came across an English Pagan journal,
The Waxing Moon,
and eventually corresponded with an English coven. But, turning to my own community, I was reduced to looking through ads in the
Village Voice.
I entered an occult shop, only to find out that it was a front for La Vey's Church of Satan. I finally saw an ad for a lecture series on Witchcraft at a Brooklyn church and visited yet another occult store, finally happening upon a Pagan study group that was linked to a Welsh tradition coven. At the time I began I did not know there were a dozen excellent Pagan newsletters. In fact, a member of this coven, hinting great mystery, told me that the newsletter
Green Egg
was an “insiders' journal” available only to advanced students. I had no idea that the United States was filled with active and creative Pagan groups.

It is still not easy to find an appropriate group, but today it is much easier to enter the Pagan community, to attend rituals and workshops, and to encounter an extraordinary number of different Pagan traditions. Some people do this without ever belonging to a coven, grove, or kindred. Their route to the Pagan community is through festivals or the Internet. As one person told me, “There are people who have searched for years. I went to a festival and met ten people who are my friends five years later. It took me four years to get invited to a ritual. At my first festival I saw four rituals in five days.”

Festivals completely changed the face of the Pagan movement. It is the one most enormous and striking change that occurred between the time
Drawing Down the Moon
was published in 1979 and its second edition in 1986. Festivals created a national Pagan community, a body of nationally shared chants, dances, stories, and ritual techniques. They even led to the creation of a different type of ritual process—one that permits a large group to experience ecstatic states and a powerful sense of religious communion. And while perhaps less than 10 percent of the Pagan community went to festivals then or goes now, the importance of the information brought back to the many hundreds of small groups all over the United States, Canada, and beyond far outweighed the number of people who actually attended one or more major festivals in a given year.

There had been large gatherings before the late 1970s, but except in California almost all were indoors and at hotels. Often they were sponsored by a large organization like Llewellyn, the publishing company, which for many years put on Gnosticon and several smaller conferences. These events, which took place in Minnesota, were geared to a diverse mix of people—occultists, astrologers, magicians, Pagans, and Wiccans. Carl Weschcke, the head of Llewellyn, had always had a personal interest in the Craft, but his publishing company made its bread and butter on occultism and “new age” subjects. Most of those who attended these gatherings were more Christian than Pagan, but many Pagans—Oberon and Morning Glory Zell, Isaac Bonewits, Alison Harlow, for example—met with each other at Llewellyn events.

One of the most beautiful rituals I ever attended, the handfasting of Oberon (then Tim) and Morning Glory Zell, took place at such a festival in Minneapolis in the spring of 1974. I also remember an amazing experience at a Fall gathering, when twenty Pagans simply decided to go skinny dipping in the hotel pool sometime well after midnight; I remember it as an ecstatic event. The pool was empty. There were no hotel employees around. A sudden decision, pulling off our clothes, jumping in. The water so cool and fresh. It seemed right out of the Garden of Eden when Oberon and Morning Glory let their two pet snakes—a python and a boa constrictor—out of their cage to enjoy the pool with us. Very few people saw us, except for a tourist from India, who immediately joined us in the pool, accepting it as a natural part of American culture. (Although I think he was greatly disappointed when an orgy did not follow.) I do not think the Hyatt House Lodge was amused, however, for Llewellyn's next festival took place elsewhere. Carl Weschcke was probably not pleased either; it seemed too much of a hippie vision for his sensibilities. Its hard to know if such an event would happen today.

Another organization with a history of indoor gatherings was the Church and School of Wicca. For many years, starting in the late 1970s, they held an annual Samhain Seminar, with workshops, rituals, and guest speakers. The gatherings were primarily for the students of their correspondence school.

In California, the mid-seventies were filled with gatherings. The Pagan organization Nemeton was founded in 1972, and a year later an overnight Summer Solstice gathering was held on the land at Coeden Brith. About 150 people attended, including many in the NROOGD tradition. In the desert near Los Angeles, overnight ritual gatherings were held since 1970, starting with a small group and growing to hundreds. In the Bay area, NROOGD pioneered large public and semi-public seasonal celebrations and each fall, starting in 1968, NROOGD would present its re-creation of the Eleusinian Mysteries. For the fortunate hundred or so who attended, one could relive the Goddess Persephone's abduction and descent into the underworld as personal initiation: one could stumble into the dark cave, groping and struggling to find the way, one could eat of the pomegranate seed. NROOGD no longer holds this annual event. Other groups have held ceremonies based on the Eleusinian Mysteries, including the Zell-Ravenhearts and the Aquarian Tabernacle Church.

But all of these gatherings did not in themselves lead to the Pagan festival phenomenon. The indoor festivals were too much like ordinary conventions to create a real community feeling, and many of the outdoor festivals were geared to one group, or tradition, or school and so did little to create a broad ecumenism.

Outside of California, one of the first organizations to think about an outdoor camping festival was the Midwest Pagan Council. The Midwest Pagan Council was originally organized in 1976 among groups in the Chicago area. Most of these groups came from the same Englishbased Wiccan tradition, but many of them had gone their own way and there was some friction between the groups. “Our goal was uncertain,” Ginny Brubaker, an organizer of many Midwest festivals, told me. “But we felt there were tensions between us and we should at least be talking to each other.”

Originally, the idea may have been to celebrate one of the two summer sabbats together—Lammas or the Summer Solstice. Christa Heiden, a Pagan priestess and long-time leader in CUUPS, remembers suggesting that there be instead a special festival that would not interfere with individual coven celebrations—a Pan-Pagan festival that would celebrate unity in diversity. Ginny Brubaker remembers Dick Clark, another council member saying, “Why don't we all go camping?” So, she said, “we put some notices in a few publications and used a few of our mailing lists and lo and behold, 80 people showed up.

“In retrospect, we weren't very organized. Our campsite wasn't reserved, and we ended up with chicken for 300 people. We decided that if we ever did it again, we would do it right, and in 1978 we had 150 people.”

Even at the very first Pan-Pagan festival in 1977, many things were in place. The program included lectures, workshops, a main ecumenical ritual, a mystery play, and lots of music. For a while the numbers seemed to double each year. In 1980, almost six hundred people attended Pan-Pagan 1980; up to that point it was the largest Neo-Pagan and Wiccan outdoor camping festival ever held in the United States. It was sponsored by the Midwest Pagan Council and the Covenant of the Goddess.

Other groups began organizing around the same time. The Georgian tradition started annual gatherings in Bakersfield, California. In 1978, southern Pagans in the Church of Y Tylwyth Teg organized a festival at a private retreat in the mountains of Georgia. It was called the Gathering of the Tribes. By 1979, there were beginning to be ecumenical festivals in many parts of the country, but no one really thought these gatherings would change the face of the Pagan community.