The rise of neo-paganism (No, this one is NOT SATIRE)

America was founded by Christian Puritans, who had a deep aversion to idolatry, popery, and magic. The hardships and dangers of their predicament made them cling to their religion as the one thing that justified the perilous pilgrimage to the New World. And from time to time they would tremble before the thought that paganism lay not only around them, but within, where it was all the more dangerous because hidden from view. So began the trials of suspected witches and the vigilant denunciations of neighbors that tore the New England communities apart.

Constant immigration has diversified the religious inheritance of the United States. Nevertheless the country remained until recently predominantly Christian, with a continuing aversion to pagan cults and superstitions, and a trust in the Bible as the common inheritance of the Judeo-Christian faiths. Indeed the United States has been held together more effectively by its Bible culture than by its Constitution: for the Bible has shaped the language, the morality, and the aspirations of ordinary Americans and provided them with a common frame of reference. American patriotism is scarcely thinkable without the Judeo-Christian God as its Almighty Guardian, and it is hardly surprising to find that the outlying communities in America-many of them suspicious of the Constitution as a weapon used against them by urban liberals-cling to the Bible as their most trusted guide. Debates over school prayer, over creationism and the curriculum, over abortion and sex education, are not, in America, the halfhearted affairs they are in Europe. On the contrary, they are at the center of politics since they affect the deep-down loyalty of many Americans to the settlement under which they live.

Strange things are now happening to this religious inheritance. The Christian churches have clung to their congregations, but often at the cost of dividing and subdividing into ever more marginal sects, each striving to accommodate the eccentricities of some obstinate community of believers. Almost none of the old denominations retains any centralized authority that can control the doctrine, liturgy, or membership of its peripheral congregations, while new cults and new services spring up everywhere, as dormant religious passions ignite like forest fires. In Europe we observe the slow, steady decline in faith, and the gradual disappearance of human hopes behind a cloud of skepticism. In America, however, every loss of faith is met by a gain, as new religious practices rise in the places vacated by the old. That this should be happening now, in the age of scientific inquiry, is testimony to the strength of American society, which finds new sources of hope beneath the never-ending stream of disappointment. Nevertheless, these sources of hope make less and less reference to the Bible and the Judeo-Christian tradition and are more and more pagan in tone. That which the Pilgrim fathers found most horrendous- witchcraft-is the latest, and one of the most successful, among the pagan cults now colonizing America.

Of course the witches-devotees of "Wicca," as they like to say-strenuously argue that their faith has been traduced in the past, that it is older and deeper and more spiritual than Christianity, and that it was branded as evil only because it was seen as a threat to the "patriarchal" culture. And by way of proving the point they have cobbled together a very up-to- date and user-friendly version of goddess-worship, which answers so well to the spiritual hunger of modern Americans as to cast serious doubt on its antiquity. Their basic principle-"Harm none and do what you will"-is the gospel of liberalism dressed up as law, rather than the lack of it; their "covens" are in many cases vamped-up feminist circles, devoted to boosting the confidence of women downtrodden by men, or at any rate by their own image of men; their symbols-the pentagram, the altar, the nine- inch daggers or "athames," the long robes, and the leaping over flames-may have ancient precedents, but they come to the Wiccans from 19th-century charlatans like Eliphas Levi and Aleister Crowley, men who cannily judged the spiritual hunger of the new middle classes and thereby notched up women by the score. Indeed, as Philip G. Davis has shown (Goddess Unmasked: The Rise of Neo-pagan Feminist Spirituality), the Wiccan theology is derived not from the old forms of goddess-worship, but from the writings of 19th-century commentators like Johann Jacob Bachofen, who invented the notion of a lost matriarchal past in a work that is now entirely discredited.

Still, religion will survive any amount of skeptical scholarship, and the Wiccans are no exception. They offer the commodity for which modern Americans are hungry-the conversion experience, the transition from dark to light, lost to found, outsider to insider. In comparison with this redemptive gift, other things are of no account. The covens have been spreading through the suburbs; even the military now recognizes the Wiccans as a "minority religion," with the right to hold rituals and classes for serving personnel. Weak though their doctrines may be from any intellectual or historical perspective, they are a triumph of applied anthropology. Feminism, environmentalism, and liberalism all come together in a religion that recognizes the goddess as the object of worship, the priestess as her representative, and the earth and its seasons as the source of sacred rites.

It is tempting to regard the Wiccans in the same light as the other cults that have recently sprung up in America-the Branch Davidians, Heaven's Gate, the Moonies, the church of the notorious Rev. Jim Jones. There are, however, two important features that distinguish them. There is no leader or founder of the Wiccan cult; and there is no sacred text. Witchcraft is a religion without any structure of command and without any written law. True, there is an attempt to compensate in the use of antique and fustian language-"yclad," "mote," "hallowmas." But the religion recognizes no objective authority to which the worshipper must submit. On the contrary, it is a religion of "empowerment," to use the feminist word. Spells and brews, chants and talismans are all weapons in the hands of the individual Wiccan, who gains power over self and others through the manipulation of things. True, the Wiccan draws on mysterious cosmic forces; but the purpose of the spell and ritual is to join these forces to yourself-to amplify your own power and so achieve a kind of here-and-now redemption.

In this, at least, the Wiccans are close to the witches as they were once imagined. The witch was anathema to the Christian believer because she had arrogated to herself the powers that belong to the Almighty. Her spells were the antithesis of the sacred text-indeed, it was often thought that they consisted in reciting Biblical or liturgical texts backwards. For they were expressions of the individual will, rather than admonitions and counsels of a higher power. All the discipline of religion-which consists in obedience to the divine command and a day-to-day study of its meaning- was negated in the Puritan image of the witch, which is why witches were so greatly feared. They were the archetype of the liberated human being- the human being who had stepped free from the chains of morality and seized the world and its glories for herself.

For this very reason, however, witchcraft has a singular appeal to modern Americans, increasing numbers of whom are brought up without any knowledge of a sacred text and without the language and the concepts of the Judeo- Christian tradition. The idea that religion might be a matter of obedience and example strikes them as weird; the idea that it is a matter of the self and its empowerment connects immediately with the surrounding secular culture.

But why isn't feminism enough? Why the need for a Wiccan religion? What is added by religion that is absent from the politics of the group?

The answer is enchantment. Science has disenchanted the universe and deprived us of our place at its center. Human beings cannot live with this demoralized world. They need to see their environment as their tribal forebears saw it: as an enchanted place, which mysteriously returns our glance. The spell answers directly to this need, since it enables the witch to reanimate her universe. It gives supernatural power to a human being, and so rescues her from nature.

Rituals, spells, and incantations are deliberate defiances of reason. They place nonsense in the center of people's lives and ask them to unite in believing it. People on their own are nothing-victims of the natural world, and at the mercy of their own skepticism. People in a group, however, have a power that is more than the sum of their individual efforts. And the spell symbolizes this power. Alone you could not possibly believe in it, since alone you have only reason as your guide. Together, however, you can believe anything. In short, the Wiccans have rediscovered the phenomenon observed by the anthropologist Arnold van Gennep-the rite of passage, which purges the individual of his isolation and grants him membership in the tribe. The rite of passage works by summoning occult powers, by standing outside nature and against it, and by reassuring the individual that, absorbed into the community, he cannot be harmed.

And that is what is missing from modern life, and especially from life in the American city. The most important rite of passage in recent Western societies was marriage-the consecration before the community of a lifelong commitment. The collapse of marriage is not the result of feminism, but the cause of it. Without lasting marriages, women have no real guarantee of security, and no reason for trusting men. If men cannot be trusted, then women have to set up on their own. Feminism turns on the masculine realm and deconstructs it, representing it as a realm of lies, manipulation, and the brutal misuse of power. It thereby reassures women that they don't need men in any case. But it relies on rational arguments, sociological theories, and objective policies-so leaving the heart unconsoled. What is needed is a new form of membership, a new rite of passage, and a new lifelong commitment-hence a new form of nonsense. In other words, what is needed is witchcraft. This is surely why the Wiccans are expanding, even though they have neither a leader, nor a doctrine, nor a text.

On the other hand, a cult that spreads so quickly, and that has so little substance when it comes to answering the great metaphysical questions, is ripe for takeover by the real witches. Strong personalities like Aleister Crowley preyed on the vulnerable loners who had lost their religion but not their religious need, and who wanted to throw themselves beneath the juggernaut of some crushing ego. Modern America has seen the emergence of these leaders-Koresh and Jones being symptomatic. And it has discovered that their promise of a new life is also a death threat. For the moment, the Wiccans speak only of peace and love and finding oneself. But without a doctrine or a text to protect them, they may soon find themselves opening the door to the Devil. Those old Puritans were wrong about many things; but they were not entirely wrong about witchcraft.

>>Surely you agree that Christianity must be supreme 
>>above pagan, immoral superstition?
>>
>>Now that's funny! Christianity leads to selective 
>>stupidity, like how the author of the article 
>>conveniently forgot that Jim Jones and David Koresh were 
>>Christian nutcases.
>>
>>The current idiocy in the Catholic church

What a waste of time. You can find examples/extremes in each religion to "disprove" its legitimacy. For every Christian extremist/whacko you reference, I can find a Muslim, Jewish, Atheist counter-part. So, what's the point? There is none! Using fringe examples is pointless. After all the spin from all sides, we return to the same point. Uncertainty reigns. The weak will gravitate towards an explanation/religion to deal with the uncertainty. The rest will accept the uncertainty as being part of life.

Eh, they probably were:) But the South, in general, has tended to be more open towards other faiths. Of course, we do not agree with them, but tensions between religions have tended to be rare in the South. Now, as some have commented, this may be true, but the South has had the distinct racial relations, not found elsewhere in this country (as in blacks and whites), to make up for it unfortunately.

I did enjoy reading this article in spite of the controversary it has caused on this thread! (gee, what a surprise!:) )
One of the sad things to me is, not only has this country turned from it Christian roots, they now deny we were founded on them to begin with.
You know, the old "repeat a lie often enough, and people will begin to believe it."
A good read, thanks for posting it.

BTW: I do know something about wicca, and more important to them than "do no harm" is the tenet, "Do what thou wilt." (meaning, do what you want.)

>>They make no secret of any of this. It is part of Wiccan 
>>belief. Just ask anyone who knows about it.

I'm not going to let you off that easy. I need an explicit reference to demonstrate/prove your assertion that: "Wicca is a cult that encourages liberalism, moral relativism, witchcraft, abortion, homosexuality, lesbianism, feminism and the idea that your daughter can screw around as much as she likes without it mattering a jot."

Ah, but Chesterson was right! You state that you believe in yourself. Of course, I doubt you see yourself as a god, but you do believe in something. And, I suspect, though perhaps you have not had it yet, you will one day find yourself like Casca before Pompey's statue, believing in something very foolsih, but needed under tense situations. Perhaps you shan't. But I believe you will, though you may surpress it. There is One in whom our belief should lie, you know. Though I must ask your pardon of my brothers here who may not wish to show it to you in the finest terms. They do not truely mean harm, I believe.

America was founded by Christian Puritans

An overly simplified and woefully incomplete telling of history. Some colonies in North America were created by rather nasty and rude Christian Puritians, other were created by far more "liberal" (ie, not imposing the death penalty for missing church) types. Some of the colonies settled by the more "liberal" Christians were overrun by the Puritians who establishsed their hard-core rules...

...of course none of that matters, since that was all prior to the United States of America's existence.

"Do what thou wilt" is from Crowley and his Golden Dawn group. While there is a lot of crossover (a lot of Wiccans are also Golden Dawners and both groups use a lot of the same pagan gods) they are two seperate groups. Crediting one with the tenents of the other is like blaiming Catholocism for Lutheranism.

And if it is your daughter, or your niece, or your neighbour's kid, do you start to care then?

What you recommend? Compulsory Christianity by the government? Outlawing any expression of non-Christian religious belief?

As long as neither neo-paganism nor any other "belief system" infringes on my person or property, I don't give a rat's @ss what people believe/preach/practice/etc.

Ah, but there's the rub...it always will, eventually.

What one believes about God will always find a way to work itself out into the body politic.

Every culture that rejects the Light sinks further and further into the darkness...examples from throughout history abound, for those who care to look with the blinders of their preconceived notions off.

Yes, but uncertainty need not reign. I am not uncertain, I am quite certain of these "uncertain things". Certainly (durn!) there are some things of which I am unsure, but my faith is neither blind, nor does it lie- my beliefs- lie only on faith, though that is a great deal of it of course (And, incidentaly, a part of uncertainty, for faith can not be proven- here- but is actually never fully certain, as our reason would have it. But reason is not the sum of the human, no, not the whole sum.)

Do you actually know anything about Wicca? Of course not. The highest precept of their faith is "do no harm". Not a bad start for a moral foundation I think.

"Love thy neighbor" is a much better moral foundation.

I've been an atheist for 20 years and haven't played with any of that stuff.

Many believers insit on telling you that you have some belief about yourself being a god or being all-knowing or some other such nonsense. Basically they accuse you of arrogance and presume to know exactly how you think and act without ever meeting you.

Cal Thomas did a lovely op-ed on atheists and how foolish they were. A perfect example of mindless arrogant diatribe devoid of logic.

(Note: I am not accusing all Christians of behaving in this manner).

Love thy neighbor is nice. But as Letterman used to say: this is an exhibition not a competition, please as always, no wagering. I've spent a fair amount of time looking for the ultimate moral foundation, what I've found is that most religions share most of their tenents. They might express it differently but for the most part the rules are the same. And oddly enough they're also the same as The Social Contract. Everybody has to find the way to learn these rules that works best for them.

Haiti is a nation that as a body rejected Christ, and openly chose witchcraft. Their tropical paradise became a barren wasteland full of starving babies.

The other half of the same island, known as the Dominican Republic, chose Christ; and remains a lush and productive oasis to this day.

That little island is one of the best illustrations of the importance of whom a society chooses to serve imaginable.

I've spent a fair amount of time looking for the ultimate moral foundation, what I've found is that most religions share most of their tenents. They might express it differently but for the most part the rules are the same. And oddly enough they're also the same as The Social Contract. Everybody has to find the way to learn these rules that works best for them.

Read C.S. Lewis' 'Mere Christianity'.

He pretty much says what you say in this particular post...but then he clearly explains the ramifications of that similarity of belief.

And, to show I'm a nice guy and can see both side of the arguement, there are a number of atheists out there who will go into great detail on what you must think to be a Christian. Like with so many conflicting groups I think if we just shot the loud mouths and then sat down to talk like grown-ups we'd find we have a lot more in common.

There are different interpretations depending on what your starting point is. I've read a number of Christians who have come to the conclusion that God did this to help people find the way. IMHO these are just plain good rules that are absolutely necessary for the survival of a society and it strikes me as quite natural that most sub groupings of humanity have figured it out. Of a much greater mystery to me is how so many societies figured out distilled liquor, if you know anything about distilling you know that doing it wrong is very dangerous, I definitely would not have wanted to be involved in those early experiments.

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