Neopaganism

Neopaganism is a new religious movement in the United States that had its beginnings in the 1950s but saw its period of greatest growth during the 1970s and 1980s. Reports are mixed, but most observers agree that Neopaganism in the United States is well established and is growing steadily if not rapidly. It is impossible to say how many Americans practice Neopaganism, but most estimates (based on book sales, festival attendance, and the like) range from one hundred thousand to five hundred thousand.

Neopaganism in the United States was initially imported from Britain in the form of Witchcraft. Gerald Gardner, who popularized Witchcraft in England, described it as a pre-Christian, indigenously European religious tradition that had survived through secret teachings handed down along small group or family lines. Gardner himself claimed to have been initiated into Witchcraft in 1939 by an old woman who had received these traditions in an unbroken line dating back at least to the Middle Ages, when presumed witches were tried and executed in large numbers, especially in continental Europe. Goddess worship, group rituals on lunar and solar holidays, and the practice of magic were all key themes in Gardner's version of Witchcraft. From the start, Witchcraft was a fractious religion, and new variants of it kept cropping up and vying for ascendancy. Several found their way in the 1950s and 1960s to the United States, where they were met by various complementary American occult traditions and a burgeoning religious counter-culture that led to a dramatic flowering of Neopaganism. As it developed in the United States, Neopaganism gradually separated itself from its specifically European roots and began to adopt deities and religious practices from religions—especially tribal religions—worldwide.

There are several things that most Neopagans hold in common. First, Neopagans find the divine in the natural world, regarding the divine as radically immanent. For most American Neopagans, this extends to a commitment to environmentalist politics and often to vegetarianism. Second, ritual centers on natural events such as new and full moons, solstices, and equinoxes. Ritual typically involves the "casting of a circle" (an invocation of ritual space through blessings and ritual actions) and the "raising of energy" through drumming and chanting. Third, Neopagans practice magic, sometimes in the context of group ritual, but more often as a home-based religious practice. Most Neopagans have altars in their homes that contain objects from nature (feathers, flowers, stones, shells), images of gods or goddesses, divination tools such as runes or tarot cards, and items of personal importance such as photographs, all of which can be used to invoke magic or to cast spells. Fourth, Neopagans are officially polytheistic, worshiping a huge pantheon of gods and goddesses. However, this is often balanced by the view that all the deities are ultimately one and that this oneness is somehow feminine. Goddess worship and a concomitant use of female leadership in ritual have attracted large numbers of women to Neopaganism, some of whom have adapted it for specifically feminist use.

Neopagans in the United States are mostly antiauthoritarian and antidogmatic, downplaying doctrinal beliefs and formal initiations in favor of spontaneity and invention. This is especially apparent in the move from a Gardnerian-style hereditary Witchcraft—in which it was felt that an ancient body of secret knowledge had traveled relatively unscathed through centuries of official Christendom—to a happy admission that Neopagans are making it up as they go along. Despite the variety, even chaos, that this policy of spontaneous invention engenders, Neopagans are able to come together across their differences for shared ritual and worship. Several umbrella organizations exist, the largest of which is the Covenant of the Goddess. Regional and national festivals are held on an annual basis, and they draw solid and enthusiastic crowds. The ideal among Neopagans is the formation of a coven, a small group of practitioners (some say the optimum number is thirteen) who meet together on all the lunar and solar holidays and assist one another on an ongoing basis with their individual magical practices. However, such groups fall apart about as often as they form, with the result that Neopaganism at the local level is rarely very stable. Many Neopagans describe themselves as "solitaries" whose connection with other Neopagans is limited to reading the same newsletters and journals and attending the same festivals. To date, most Neopagans in America come to the religion as adults, but increasingly Neopagans are raising their children within the religion, creating a new and interesting phenomenon: second-generation Neopaganism.

See alsoAltar; Chanting; Cult; Drumming; Ecofeminism; Ecospirituality; Goddess; Magic; Nature Religion; Occult, the; Pantheon; Ritual; Tarot; Vegetarianism; Wicca.

Bibliography

Adler, Margot. Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids,Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today. 1989.

Eller, Cynthia. Living in the Lap of the Goddess: The Feminist Spirituality Movement in America. 1993.

Hutton, Ronald. The Triumph of the Moon: A History ofModern Pagan Witchcraft. Forthcoming.

Kelly, Aidan. "An Update on Neopagan Witchcraft in America." In Perspectives on the New Age, edited by James Lewis. 1993.

Cynthia Eller