A Pagan Ethnography - An Anthropological Work

Excerpts from: A Pagan Ethnography - An Anthropological Work

By: Erin Picard (© 1997)

Setting

TWO is the Trent Wiccan Organization founded in 1996 by two of it's current members, Willowgreen and Morgan. It's aims are to be an outreach connection for pagans, wiccan, basically for people who do not seem to fit in with the Judeo-Christian or other mainstream religions. The one adherence the members had to agree to was the 13 tenants set out by the Council of American Witches in 1974; this was mostly because of TCSA wanting an outline of who the group was and what we were wanting to accomplish.

Principles of Wiccan Belief:

1. We attune ourselves with the natural rhythm of life forces marked by the phases of the moon and seasonal quarters and cross quarters.

2. We recognize that our intelligence gives us a unique responsibility toward our environment. We seek to live in harmony with Nature, in ecological balance offering fulfilment to life and consciousness within an evolutionary concept.

3. We acknowledge a depth of power far greater than that apparent to the average person. Because it is far greater than ordinary it is sometimes called " supernatural " but we see it as lying with in that which is naturally potential to all.

4. We conceive of the Creative Power in the Universe as manifesting through polarity as masculine and feminine and that this same Creative Power lies in all people and functions through the interaction of the masculine and feminine. We value neither above the other, knowing each to be supportive to the other. We

value sex as pleasure, as the symbol and embodiment of life, and as one of the sources of energies used in magickal practices and religious worship.

5. We recognize both outer worlds, and inner, or psychological worlds, sometimes known as the Spiritual World, the Collective Unconscious, Inner Planes etc... And we see in the inter-action of these two dimensions the basis for paranormal phenomena and magickal exercises. We neglect neither dimension for the other seeing both as necessarily for our fulfilment.

6. We do not recognize any authoritarian hierarchy, but do honour those who teach, respect those who share their greater knowledge and wisdom, and acknowledge those who have courageously given of themselves in leadership.

7. We see religion magick and wisdom in living as being united in way one views the world and lives within it. A world view and philosophy of life which we identify as Witchcraft the Wiccan Way.

8. Calling oneself " Witch "does not make a Witch. But neither does heredity itself, nor the collecting of titles, degrees and initiations. A Witch seeks to control the forces within her/himself that make life possible in order to live wisely and well without harm to others and in Harmony with Nature.

9. We believe in affirmation and fulfilment of life in a continuation of evolution and development of consciousness giving meaning to the Universe we know and our personal role within it.

10. Our only animosity towards Christianity, or towards any other religion or philosophy of life, is to the extent that its institutions have claimed to be " The Only Way " and have sought to deny freedom to others and to suppress other ways of religious practices and beliefs.

11. As Witches, we are not threatened by debates on the history of the Craft, the origins of various terms, the legitimacy of various aspects of different traditions. We are concerned with our present and our future.

12. We do not accept the concept of absolute evil, nor do we worship any entity known as " Satan " or " The Devil " as defined by the Christian tradition. We do not seek Power through the suffering of others, nor accept that personal benefit can be derived only by denial to another.

13. We believe that we should seek within Nature that which is contributory to our health and well being.

 

Willowgreen

Willowgreen is a 24 year old woman, quiet and somewhat reserved. She has been one of my best friends for over three years now, which made my interview with her easy and difficult at the same time. I already knew certain aspects of her personality but not the in-depth things that she kept personal, even from friends. Because of her quiet reserve she does not often speak up and offer information, so a lot of my questions, I felt, seemed pervading. She holds a lot inside. She has been a solitary practitioner for about the last two years. Willow's mother is Protestant, her father, a fundamentalist Baptist, and she went to Catholic School from grades five through eight. Coming to Trent allowed her to make a move out on her own away from her parents. Her mother does not know about her faith; keeping her celebrations in Peterborough, taking a hiatus during the summer months at home. Her father is a born-again Christian.

Willowgreen is magickal name, and I asked her to tell me how she came by this name and why she took it. This is her story. There was a short story in a series that told about the life of a character, called Willowgreen, and how she battled to gain self-esteem. This parallels her own life, as she has always suffered from a low opinion of herself,(she tells me) while just in the last few years she has made progress in thinking more positively about herself. But, for her it was not an abrupt transformation like it was for Willowgreen in the story: rather an uphill battle which could go either way. By calling herself Willowgreen she reminds herself what she would like to accomplish: to be whole and content with herself as a person. Also, there are other reasons why she chose Willowgreen in particular. She has always considered herself to be a 'water' person, having Pisces (a water sign) as a sun sign and being born in the year of the rat (which is considered to be a water creature), and the willow tree is commonly associated with water since it usually grows in damp places. The willow tree is graceful and sensual, which are qualities to which she aspires. It is flexible, but also strong. These are qualities she would like to see in herself. In addition, the choice of green is significant. According to the colour chakras, green is a colour of healing, balance, and harmony. All of which are things she wishes to achieve in her life. Also, green is associated with life, rebirth and nature. And, as a whole, Willowgreen is unique. I have met many witches that use the name Star-something, or Moon-something, or those who have taken their name from mythology (eg. Flora, Tyr, Lilith, Morgana, etc.). But, she (nor I for that matter) have not met a single other Willowgreen. And, as an individual person, she appreciates a name that is unique. (In high school there were four people with her name in her grade alone, so she doesn't think of it as an especially unique name.) As far as the idea that people are supposed to pick a name numero logically in harmony with your birth date, she really doesn't think it is important unless you are heavily into numerology. She don't think her name works out using that method, but since she really doesn't have a vested interest in numerology, she doesn't think it matters.

Willowgreen uses her name it to remind herself who she would like to be, what she would like to accomplish. And to retain some anonymity in a prejudiced world. She goes on to talk of how people have been fired from their jobs, dismissed from classes, and have had their windows smashed all because others discovered that they didn't conform to the religious herding of Christianity. So, she uses Willowgreen to protect herself from the ignorant who adhere to stereotypes that witches are evil and Satanic. She also uses Willowgreen to prevent her parents from discovering that she is a witch. It gives her a degree of anonymity to protect herself from a biased society.

She calls herself a witch or Wiccan, dependant on the situation. By calling herself a witch in a public forum, and clarifying what that means, she believe that she is taking strides to eliminate ignorance in honour of her brothers and sisters who died in the burning times because of religious persecution. Also, she feel as though she is making steps in the prevention of other religious persecution like in WWII through the lesson of tolerance. Personally, she does not subscribe to a particular path of Wicca, like Gardenerian or Dianic, but she tends to incorporate things that are significant to her into her practices. So, she decides that she fits into the broad general category of Wiccan. But, that is just a description of my religious beliefs. "I am Me, and no one else." This sense of individuality is very common among the pagans with whom I've spoken.

Willowgreen has always known that she was different, and that she thought of things in a different way than others did. When she found Wicca she says finally had a name for the things that she had been thinking for the majority of her life. Before then she still believed the same things, but she thought she was alone in those beliefs, and felt like somewhat of an outcast. Willowgreen believes that her absolute rejection of patriarchy comes from the fact that she was raised by her mother, a single mom. Her strength outshone anything her unmotivated every-second-Saturday father demonstrated. She was the one that sacrificed, she was the one that cared for her and her brother, she was the one that wanted them, no matter what she had to give up. Willow's father she describes "didn't even attempt to get any sort of custody of us at all, just visitation rights. When the going got tough, he got going." She feels much resentment towards her father for this reason. He couldn't handle it, so he ran away. And, it was her "mother who had to put the pieces together, and had to deal with two emotionally shattered children while all the while coping with her own pain of the divorce". So, she believes in equality, or even matriarchy, rather than patriarchy. Mother is strength and love, while father is transient. She says its no wonder she had difficulties associating with an all-powerful male God. Plus, she always believed that humans were not meant to dominate the earth, and the things that humanity has done to the earth-mother are atrocious. She has always thought that it was arrogant and erroneous for human beings to assume that they are of superior importance than other species of life on the earth. Humans are merely part of the ecosystem as well as everything else.

One of the things that stuck out in her perspective in her Christian upbringing was that there were too many inconsistencies. In the Bible, God commanded 'do not kill', yet later instructed thousands to be put to death because of their non-conformity. And there is the 'do not suffer a witch to live'. And the entire creation myth seemed very far-fetched to her. She extremely disliked the entire idea that women were somehow less than men in Christianity. Willowgreen goes on to say that the whole idea that 'women was created for man' is the religious justification of patriarchy. Women are treated as second-class citizens in Christianity, with God being classified as male. As a woman, she was offended that women could not be altar persons or priests, because males were somehow closer to God than females. She also learned that the doctrines 'do unto others' and 'the golden rule' only apply to someone that conforms to Christianity. She was also taught that other people's spiritual opinions did not count, and Christians were somehow superior to those of other religions. Christians were supposed to convert the masses, even though the masses did not want to be converted. God to her was also somewhat of a hypocrite: He could command thousands to their death, but humans were condemned to eternity in Hell for stealing a cookie. The entire idea of Hell, in her perspective, is a giant scare tactic to enforce conformity: 'you better behave, or else!!'.

Willowgreen states matter-of-factly that Christianity was probably one of the contributing factors as why she had developed low self-esteem. In the Christian faith women were less important than men. But, female chastity was very important. In the Bible a woman who was raped was stoned to death, but the man who committed the crime merely repented and paid a fine. And it was not the woman's fault that she was raped. God and Christianity seemed to have a grudge against women, and by extension, against her. The Christian paradigm really never sat well with her, especially fundamentalism. She thought that the neglected ideas like the golden rule and do unto others were the most important spiritual lessons Christianity could teach, and she rejected all of the rest that it taught. People were all equal, yet different. Christianity could not enforce within her the value that Jews, Moslems, Hindus, and all other people of other religions are somehow evil.

Again she says she always knew that she was different, and that she didn't buy into "this Christianity stuff." For a while she tried to believe it, but it was just a superficial imitation of the faith of others. She used to go to church, and sing the hymns. (She had this favourite hymn from which they sang every Easter: Morning has broken/ like the first morning/blackbird has spoken/ like the first bird.... It was only recently that she discovered that it was not a hymn at all, but a Simon and Garfunkel song.) I sort of chuckled at this, remembering my experience singing that song at church myself. She always considered Christianity very narrow-minded and sexist, and she reasoned that there was a higher power that didn't subscribe to this oppression. When she discovered Witchcraft and Wicca she discovered that others had the same opinions that she did: that women were equally important than men in a spiritual sense, that sin was not the centre of human existence, and that 'men' were not meant to 'rule over the earth' but to be part of the ecosystem, and that everything on earth, all life, has meaning and spirit.

Willowgreen did call herself a Christian for the sake of convenience. She didn't believe in it, but people wouldn't bug her or jump to conclusions if she told them she was Christian. Her pagan beliefs were there, but she did not yet have a name to place to them. Now she feels as though she is less alone as she's found out that others think the same way she does. Feeling less like a social outcast Willow is now more confident in displaying her religious beliefs than before.

But there is still the parents to confront, and as mentioned before her father is a born-again fundamentalist Baptist and though she doesn't really "think that he would be above burning [me] at the stake, or at least multiplying his efforts to convert me", he would not understand what Wicca is, and brand her as evil and a worshipper of Satan, even though she reiterates, witches do not believe in the existence of Satan at all. And, as well there's her fear that he might cut off his "meagre financial contribution" to her studies, which, although small, she does need. Willow's mother would have trouble separating witchcraft from the stereotypes in mass media and also consider it not a religion, but a 'phase' that she was going through.

Willowgreen feels that she has been persecuted for her beliefs because the public doesn't acknowledge Wicca as a valid religion, and that "we" (meaning followers of Wicca) are still lumped together with Satanists. She affirms that people say that Wicca is not a 'real' religion, and assume that wiccans worship Satan and sacrifice animals, do drugs and are generally anti-social (as in the idea that wiccans are criminals that contest the status quo using violent or destructive means). "Stereotypes abound, like the stupid witch cutouts appearing on people's doors on Hallowe'en that show a witch as a green-skinned ugly old hag with a pointy black hat." Noting that on tv shows like 'Sabrina the teen-age witch' which totally eliminate the concept that witchcraft is a religion and portray witches as something more akin to mutant genies or magicians. As well she notices that the surveys on religious beliefs by StatCAN, for example, have all the broad categories of Judeo-Christian belief systems, and the Moslem and Hindu religions, but merely have a category of 'other' for those not lumped to those main categories. Also, historians fail to recognize the death toll that Christianity has caused over the Centuries, and refuses to acknowledge the burning times as an atrocity at par with those that occurred in WWII. I would say that Willowgreen has quite a bitter feeling towards Christianity as a whole; not without just cause in her opinion.

Willowgreen noticed that her faith makes her feel that her social status is less than those who adhere to the status quo. As her religion is classed as a 'whatever', most places of employment do not consider Wicca a genuine religion with its own holidays and festivals. Very few people have to work on Christmas, "but it is hell trying to get Yule off of work to celebrate." In her opinion they (her employers) validate their refusal to give her the time off by saying that it is not a 'real' holiday as it is not on the calendar. Here I remembered a friend of mine who was confronting her father on the subject of holidays. He asked her why she didn't celebrate Easter because it was on the calendar, and she retorted "Why don't you celebrate the full moons? It's on the calendar".

Willowgreen worships the Goddess and the God, which fall under many names and forms. She believes that the Goddess has her three forms: Maiden, Mother and Crone, while the God has a similar triad. The Goddess is represented by the moon, while the God is represented by the sun. The Goddess is the Earth-mother in her various forms, while the God is her consort. But, it takes the union of male and female, God and Goddess, to produce life.

Willowgreen has always thought that divinity transcended the white Anglo-Saxon male of Christianity. It was not a matter of finding the spiritual path, but putting a name to her beliefs. When I asked her what she thought about taking other people's ideas for her own spiritual grown she took offence to my using the word 'taking' first of all. It goes along with the academic jealousy of clinging to ideas and attributing them to a certain person. But, just because one person got their idea published before another doesn't mean that someone else didn't think of it first. The whole idea of academic property is out of control. A person does not live in a vacuum, and therefore, their thoughts and reasonings cannot be attributed to that person alone, but also to the environment in which they exist. Willowgreen has problems with the concept of academic property because of these reasons. Therefore, the word sharing would be more appropriate. After all, what is the purpose of having one's ideas published than for the reference of others? If the author did not intend to share their certain perspective to the world, then why did they publish it in the first place? Willow thinks that people who publish books on the subject of Wicca actually want their information to be read, absorbed, and digested. So that their wisdom can be passed on to others. So, Willow has no problem taking others ideas for her own spiritual growth.

When I asked Willowgreen if she felt closer to the divine that those who use a medium (priests) she said without a doubt 'Of course!'. "Without a set up hierarchy to tell [us] what to do and what to think, Wiccans and Pagans have to think for ourselves, and discover the divine on [our] own. We don't have someone on a podium saying "think this because I say so because I am closer to God than you are and I am, therefore, better than you."" She believes that Wiccans look to themselves and to the writings of others about spirituality to discover what the divine means to them, which makes it far more personal than a religion with a leader which tells everyone what to think. She says that even the most devout Christian needs a medium with which to communicate to God, while a Wiccan can converse without a translator or middle-person.

Willowgreen incorporates the thought that everything has life within it from both the Druidic and North American Indigenous people's traditions. Also, the idea of totems can be attributed to both of the above traditions as well. Her heritage is English, Scottish, Irish, French and Native Canadian, in that order.

So I'm not sure if her heritage has much to do with her spiritual calling (like Morgan or Kim). When I asked Willow what religion was to her she expressed religion as a world view., the way in which one see the world, and those paradigms which are incorporated into [your] perceptions. Religion celebrates this world view in a group situation, such as in ceremonies and rituals. It marks the rites of passage, such as birth, death, and marriage. It provides structure in a person's life, and marks the passage of time through the various festivals throughout the year. Spirituality on the other hand for Willow is religion on a personal level.

Willowgreen contends that science is a religion. It provides theories in the workings of the universe which are accepted on faith. Nothing can be truly be proven, for each hypothesis is based on accepted 'truths' which scientists adhere to blindly. It is a world view which people commonly accept as truth. Science provides answers which the people need to feel secure in their own existence. Willowgreen believes that the most relevant sphere of thought in science currently is the chaos theory which states that there are an infinite number of variables contributing to a single outcome, the EXACT replication of which are impossible. In other words, that the world is far more complicated for science to fully comprehend. The power of science is the faith that people have in it. Science is also being constantly revised, with older theories being eclipsed by newer ones. Outdated spheres of thought are lost in the wake of modern discoveries, leaving the once dearly held 'certainties' of life as something akin to superstition.

Willowgreen finds that western medicine is just one approach to mental/physical well-being. It has its place in heath care, but it is not the end all and be all of medicine. Other methods of heath care are as valid as Western Biomedicine: homeopathy, acupuncture, acupressure, herbalism etc. The idea that one system will solve everything is arrogant. Just as people are diverse, the methods of treating them should be equally as diverse. Willow believes that once Western Biomedicine admits that it doesn't have all the answers the heath care system would be greatly improved.

Homeopathy, in her opinion, is a much better approach to human existence than Western Biomedicine. Western medicine views the mind as being separate from the body in adherence to Descartes, while homeopathy regards the mind and the body as one. She finds that this theory as more feasible as people do not exist separately from their bodies, and considering mind and body as separate would take things out of context. The body influences the mind, and vice versa. She states that we do not exist without bodies or without minds, but as a union of the two. Therefore, any consideration which isolates one or the other is in error. Like the oriental concept of chi, the union of mind and body is powerful. Also, the human being is a complex organism, and the hyper-medication practices of Western medicine could be making things worse. "Bacteria are now immune to some anti-biotics because of doctors that prescribed them for anything, just in case. Just recently medicine has begun the discovery that minimalism is more beneficial. You don't need a sledge hammer, and if it is a virus, you just need rest, not an anti-biotic that only effects bacteria anyhow." It must be noted here that I realise that much of what Willow knows about medicine and alternatives to western medicine, she has learned from college courses and certain anthropology courses here at Trent.

As for authors of pagan writing, I asked Willow to tell me what she thought of them. Aleister Crowley is a name which is infamous with witchcraft. I find it surprising that she has heard the name, not read anything by him personally. This is mostly because I know how much Willow detests misrepresentation of Wicca, and I'd expect that she'd want to know more about him and what he's said about witchcraft. She's heard he wasn't a very good representative of Wicca, so this is probably why she has stayed away from his writings. As well, Gerald Gardner, the first witch to come out publically and write about his faith is not very important to Willow, not being able to remember what he wrote. StarHawk, author of several inspirational works is not very memorable to Willowgreen. "I knew I read it once, but I can't remember anything of it". When I mentioned Susan Seddon Boulet Willow expressed her love for Boulet's beautiful, wonderful, pagan and symbolic artwork. Willow has many of her paintings up on her wall. Scott Cunningham, author of many books on Wicca and magick, Willow enjoyed his earth magic book, but [I] have not really read much else of his. So when I asked where she got her information for her rituals, she said books, but mostly it was personal. Whatever worked for her.

So on the subject of ritual, in Willow's opinion, males should not be present in certain rites, like the celebration of a woman's first menstruation. They simply would not understand and feel somehow apart of the ritual because of their different anatomy. Everything else is ok. Also, it would make the woman more comfortable to be only with other women. But, the men could participate in a part of the ritual like a celebration feast after the actual ceremony. Similarly, a man's manhood ceremony could include only men in a similar fashion.

Symbolically she has an altar with a candle for fire, a chalice for water, incense for air, and a large chunk of amethyst for earth. She also has a set of candlesticks, one with the sun for the God, and the other with the symbol of the moon for the Goddess.