Drawing Down the Moon (75 page)

If, with Aidan Kelly, we define the Craft as “the European heritage of Goddess worship,”
⁶
the connections with the Mysteries of Demeter and Korê become clearer. Above and beyond the murky area of historical and geographical connections, the philosophical connections are real. What little we know of the Mysteries seems to indicate that these rites emphasized (as the Craft, at its best, does today)
experience
as opposed to
dogma,
and
metaphor
and
myth
as opposed to
doctrine.
Both the Mysteries and the Craft emphasize initiatory
processes
that lead to a widening of perceptions. Neither emphasizes theology, belief, or the written word. In both, participants expect to lead normal lives
in
the world, as well as attain spiritual enrichment.

How can one explain the plight of George Mylonas? Aidan notes that the Athenians distinguished between lesser and greater Mysteries.

It is the
process
and the
experience,
not the secrets, that are the mystery of the Mysteries. Even were a secret chamber found in the depths of Eleusis, or had the basic rituals been inscribed, the Mysteries would defy discovery. This explains why, for over two thousand years, even during times of Christian domination, there were no revelations by converts, no statements from ex-initiates.

Mysteries, observe two Neo-Pagan writers, are “stages of growth in consciousness of the sacred universe, not secrets”:

Mylonas is, then, a potent symbol. We are all searching among the ruins. He is all of us who have admitted our spiritual impoverishment, hoping that objects, words, and inscriptions will give us clues to things that can be learned only through experience. What Mylonas (and most of us) have been denied is the experience of being “tricked” into this initiatory process. We are forced to rely merely on our intellectual tools, which will not allow us to enter certain hidden chambers. The secret that Neo-Paganism seems to have begun to learn over the past thirty-five years is this: If the methods for creating such experiences have been lost, the way to find them again is to create them again.

When
Drawing Down the Moon
was first published, the way Witches and other magical practitioners were depicted in the media and in academia was, to put it mildly, abysmal. By 1986 and the second edition, journalists had written a few sensitive articles on Paganism and Wicca, but most newspapers, wire services, and television shows were still only interested in a few kinds of stories—sensational descriptions of Witches' gatherings, stories involving criminal charges, clashes between Witches and Christians, and, of course, something cute and usually silly for their Halloween feature. I admit to participating in a few of these latter, after my book came out, including going on the
Today Show
(where the first question I was asked was “Do you have psychic power?” My response was “probably just about as much as you do.”) Looking back to the kind of interviews I was subjected to when this book first came out in 1979–80, they included questions like “Why do you have black hair?” (I was born that way) and “is that scar on your leg from a ritual?” (No. I cut myself shaving.) Between 1980 and 1985, I pulled out approximately fifty newspaper, magazine, and wire service stories collected by
Nexus
, and noted that there were only five basic stories: the perverted individual who was killing animals and calling themselves a Witch; a custody battle between a couple, usually one of them a Witch and the other a Christian; a Wiccan gathering that was picketed by fundamentalists; a bill that would take away tax-exempt status from Wiccan religious groups; a trial of someone for murder who was supposedly a Witch.

Now, twenty-five years later, much has changed both in the United States and in Europe. Witches appear in the media at other times than Halloween. Selena Fox says that media depictions have definitely improved as “contemporary Paganism has grown in numbers and scope.” Historian Ronald Hutton notes that press coverage in the British mass media is much better than it was: “Pagans are generally no longer newsworthy in themselves, and are most frequently treated with respect and understanding when they are discussed. The occasional uninformed attack is confined to the more crudely populist newspapers, and is now rare enough to be surprising.” Paganism still figures in some of the fights over religion in the public square, and Pagan religious freedom organizations like the
Lady Liberty League, The Alternative Religions Education Network
(AREN), and the
Earth Religions Assistance List
(ERAL) still have plenty of work to do, but here's a story that Larry Cornett, a Pagan who has been active in many religious battles told me:

It is still almost impossible to explain Wicca or Neo-Paganism in the several minutes allowed on most television shows, but in 2005, for example, excellent articles appeared in both
The San Francisco Chronicle
and
The New York Times.

Things have also improved markedly in regard to scholarship, and there is even a burgeoning Pagan studies movement (see Chapter 13).
Drawing Down the Moon
is also no longer the only serious treatment of modern Pagans and Witches. Ronald Hutton's monumental
The Triumph of the Moon
and newer serious works like Sabina Magliocco's
Witching Culture
have transformed the landscape. But much of the history depicted in this chapter deserves to be remembered because many of the blunders made by reporters and researchers studying occult and magical groups are still common.

 

—PRINCIPIA DISCORDIA
¹

—MARCELLO TRUZZI
²

 

 

THERE IS AN OLD psychiatric saying: People who are in Freudian analysis have Freudian dreams, people in Jungian analysis have Jungian dreams, and people in Adlerian therapy have Adlerian dreams. Our experience of the world often reflects the influences under which we find ourselves. The categories we use to define an experience often determine it.

When we look at what the media might call “the occult explosion”—of which the revival of Witchcraft and Paganism is certainly a part—this perception rings particularly true. This “explosion” or “resurgence” is a confusing and ambiguous subject, and almost everyone has a superficial explanation that usually conforms to his or her previous experience and beliefs. Stereotypical notions are rampant about most subjects that become fads for a time, and occultism, magic, Paganism, and Witchcraft are no exception.

A psychologist might attribute this resurgence to the need of certain neurotics to regress to a beatific infant stage. A professional humanist might bemoan the “rise of the irrational” and “the trend toward anti-intellectualism.” A Christian fundamentalist might be troubled by the “reawakening of the demonic,” and a Marxist writer might be distressed by the attempt of a wealthy leisured class to dissipate the forces of dissent by promoting ideas that mystify the “real” issues and lead to decadence and narcissism. There is an “occult explosion” nightmare to fit every ideology. And on the other side, occultists share an equal number of paradisal dreams and fantasies about the importance and ultimate benefits of their efforts.

Distortions that circulate about occult groups are generally of two types. The first and more easily dismissible is what might be called the “Exorcist-Rosemary's Baby” view that was once put forth by much of the press and is still put forward by fundamentalist Christian groups. Although books, articles, and scholarly studies have shown this view to be pure fiction (with the exception of an occasional sick individual), the feeling persists that those who practice Witchcraft or occultism are engaged in something fearful, pernicious, illegal, and immoral. This image has a long history. It is nourished by the media because it sells. But more important, this image encourages a fear of the unknown that blunts most people's curiosity and adventurousness.

These negative feelings are widely shared, even by well-educated people. I have told hundreds of people about my travels around the United States to various Witchcraft covens and Neo-Pagan groups, and the first response was usually “Weren't you afraid? Wasn't it dangerous?” This assumption was so common, and stood at such odds with the facts of my travels, that it seemed to be a clue to a general misperception. The facts were simple. I met with representatives of over a hundred groups. The majority were previously strangers. My only negative experience came when a coven of Witches walked out on me after a political disagreement. Such an event could have happened anywhere, and was certainly no more likely to occur among Witches than anyone else.

Another attitude circulates primarily among intellectuals and must be looked at seriously. This is the view that occult groups are trivial, escapist, anti-intellectual, antipolitical, narcissistic, amoral, and decadent. These charges do not come from the sensationalist press. They appear in the works of highly regarded writers and scholars, in
The New York Review of Books, Commentary, Partisan Review.
Many of the ideas in these articles filter down into ordinary “educated” conversation, becoming the basis for the rigid, defensive, and hostile reactions that many people exhibit when they talk about the occult.

Of course, there is another group of writers who have consistently praised the occult revival, viewing it as a seedbed of innovation. There are also critiques by anthropologists, sociologists, historians, and psychologists that contain few stereotypes. These writings reveal the occult world to be complex, with many themes and many layers, a world richer and far different from that portrayed in the press, in most books, in the dinnertable conversation of certain intellectuals and, for that matter, in the simple-minded postures of certain occult writers.

This chapter serves two main functions: it summarizes some of the standard arguments surrounding the revival of occult and magical groups, and it makes accessible a number of lesser known articles and less rigid ideas and perceptions.

One thing should be made clear at the start. There is no consensus on why there has been a resurgence of Witchcraft and occultism, and some people even doubt whether such a resurgence exists. There are any number of fascinating theories and speculations, many of which contradict each other. For example, in 1971 there appeared a rather unexceptional popular study of new religious sects by Egon Larsen. The book
Strange Sects and Cults,
takes a pseudo-psychological approach and describes the rise of these sects as “a subconscious protest against the faculty of thinking. . . .” Larsen argues that these new sects are peopled by a “simple kind of soul.” Such people's “personalities never mature”; they remain frightened and bewildered by rigorous mental activity.
³
Several years earlier Richard Cavendish had observed the exact opposite in
The Black Arts,
⁴
a study of occult and mystical practices. Cavendish wrote that people who enter mystical groups are generally seeking to take the Apple from the Serpent; they want to eat of the tree of knowledge and become “as gods.” He claimed that the typical magician or mystic, far from being a simple person, is attempting to become “the complete man.” Such persons, he wrote, throw themselves into all kinds of experiences, both good and evil. They tend to regard all experience as potentially rewarding.