Neopaganism- the religion of the 21st Century?
December 26, 2001 - source: David V Barrett / Fortean Times
http://www.forteantimes.com/exclusive/pagfed2001.shtml

Britain's rapidly-growing band of Pagans were in celebratory mood for their 2001 conference. Not only was it 30 years since the Pagan Federation (PF) had been founded; it was 50 years since the abolition of the Witchcraft Act. And so around a thousand Wiccans, Druids, Odinists and assorted Others came together on a beautiful sunny November day, packing the Fairfield Halls in Croydon.

Outsiders looking for weirdos would have spotted the very occasional pointy hat, and a few priests were in their robes, but otherwise to all appearances this could have been a science fiction convention, or Fortean Times' own UnConvention. There was plenty of black, of course, but mainly just tee-shirts and jeans; and plenty of bright colours as well; plus enough silver jewellery to sink a battleship. Pagans love dressing up. I mentioned in my report on the 2000 PF Conference that the Spirit of the Sixties never died; it transformed into Paganism. It's a sign of a healthy religion when grey-beards with walking sticks are happily downing real ale alongside young Goths.

Because of the anniversaries, this year's conference was called 3050, but it could as easily have been called "Looking back, Looking forward". There seemed a sense that this is a religion which has successfully passed through its adolescence, and is about to join the grown-ups. First, a brief glance at the history.

In 1951 the Fraudulent Mediums Act repealed the 1735 Witchcraft Act, which was aimed at those who "pretend to exercise or use any kind of Witchcraft, Sorcery, Inchantment, or Conjuration, or undertake to tell Fortunes, or pretend, from his or her Skill or Knowledge in any occult or crafty Science, to discover where or in what manner any Goods or Chattels, supposed to have been stolen or lost, may be found."

The 1951 Act is aimed at any person who "with intent to deceive purports to act as spiritualistic medium or to exercise any powers of telepathy, clairvoyance or other similar powers." (It excludes anyone doing this for entertainment.) The maximum penalty is reduced from a year in prison plus one day each quarter "in some Market Town of the proper County, upon the Market Day, there stand openly on the Pillory by the Space of One Hour," to a mere four months and/or a £50 fine-and no pillory. And so, from 1951, for the first time in centuries, practising witchcraft itself was no longer illegal.

A retired civil servant, Gerald Gardner, had already been in touch with a coven of witches in the New Forest-or so the story goes. Despite a reasonable amount of evidence, some scholars and even some present-day Wiccans doubt its veracity. With the abolition of the Witchcraft Act Gardner was able to write his influential book Witchcraft Today (1954), and to begin initiating witches. He was followed by the flamboyant Alex Saunders, self-styled King of the Witches, who delighted in performing for the media, and by the 1970s there was a variety of Gardnerian and Alexandrian witches around Britain.[1] Out of these came the late Stewart Farrar, whose widow Janet spoke at the conference.

Stewart and Janet Farrar were among the first to write open, accessible books about witchcraft, beginning with What Witches Do (1971). In a lively presentation, Janet Farrar and her new husband Gavin Bone, who co-wrote several later books with the Farrars, spoke of their personal history through Paganism and the many paths they followed before finding their own. The days of Kings and Queens of the Witches are gone, they said; the cult of personality, perhaps necessary in the early days of struggle, is dying out. Janet Farrar appealed to young Pagans, "the new face of the Old Religion", to be revolutionary, to challenge authority-and she appealed to older members of Paganism to accept this, rather than insisting that their own way, the "old" traditions, must be right.

"As Pagans, our strength is that we're all doing different things." This applies geographically as well: "traditions must be different in different places-they don't travel," she said. As for whether they thought of themselves now as Pagans or as Witches, she had a helpful explanation which should cut through confusion: "Wicca is a Holy Order within the religion of Paganism." In fact, Farrar and Bone revealed for the first time that, although they eschew titles, they have recently been ordained as priests in the Aquarian Tabernacle Church, and are now officially the Rev Janet Farrar and the Rev Gavin Bone-and, in a startling revelation, that this Church has been formally accepted as a "proper" religion in the Republic of Ireland, where they live.

Prudence Jones is another well-respected author within Paganism, and the current president of the Pagan Federation. After stepping through its history (it was called the Pagan Front until 1981, and has been instrumental in dispelling misconceptions about Paganism, and in making Pagans acceptable as, for example, hospital and prison visitors), she turned to the future-the next fifty years. Pagans need to engage in serious dialogue with those of other religions, she said, but also need to defend themselves against the "right wing lunatic fringe". "Paganism must be recognised as a religion, not just as a hobby." She pointed out that religion is more than just a set of moral rules, that religion is about making contact with deity, and with celebration.

Like Farrar and Bone, Jones stressed the strength in Paganism's diversity. "In our pluralism we have so much to offer the world. In monotheistic religions, one answer solves everything." In reality, this just wasn't so, she said. "Paganism is pluralistic-we have many ways of worshipping deity. It is the religion of the 21st century. It respects individuality and it respects others. It welcomes diversity and other ideas."[2]

Diversity there certainly was in Croydon, and a great deal of celebration too. Fundamentalists of other religions may continue, incorrectly, to attack Paganism as Satanism, but fundamentalists by definition can't cope with diversity and pluralism. Pagans have already spoken at world religious conferences; the time may not be far off when a Pagan priest or priestess stands alongside the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Chief Rabbi and other religious leaders at major national events, with equality and mutual respect.

David V. Barett is a regular FT contributor and the author of The New Believers (Cassel, 2001).

[1] For much more detail, see Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon, OUP, 1999, Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon, Boston: Beacon Press, 1979, 1986, Graham Harvey & Charlotte Hardman, Paganism Today, Thorsons, 1995, etc.

[2] I was having difficulty explaining to someone in the bar that, though sympathetic to Paganism, I'm not myself a Pagan; as a writer and academic on new religions I find it easier to be an outside observer, a "professional stranger" to all. A well-known London Wiccan sliced through my arguments: "You accept that all paths are equally valid?" "Yes, I'm a pluralist." "Then you're a Pagan." Q.E.D., apparently.