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A Cautionary Tale for the New Pagani of the West

He called himself a pagan, but what he really was, was an ex-Christian.

My coven-sib was dating a guy who worked at the Renn Fest. Because he identified as pagan, she invited him to our Sunrise Yule brunch.

Alas, though, he had nothing to say about the Sun, the Wheel, or the Season. All that he wanted to talk about—and he wanted to talk a lot—were Jesus, the Church, and “Christianity”—as if such a monolith actually existed.

Needless to say, the relationship didn't last long.

Needless to say, we never invited him back.

As Norwegian Egyptologist Jan Assmann sees it, the defining distinction between religions is not monotheism or polytheism, but whether they're Primary or Secondary.

Primary religions—what we may call the Old Paganisms—arise directly out of human experience of That Which Is.

Secondary religions—the Abraham religions being prime examples—arise out of reaction against Primary religions. Such worldviews, Assmann notes, are inherently dangerous because they automatically come with an enemy attached. This helps explain the bloody swath that the children of Abraham have cut through human history.

(Check out your favorite news-site. They're still doing it today.)

It also helps define an important distinction between the Old and New Paganisms.

The Old Paganisms were, by definition, Primary Religions.

The New Paganisms—alas—not so much.

A piece of modern pagan history is up for sale.

It's a piece of my own history as well.

Cân-y-Lloer: “Song of the Moon.” That's the name of the stone-built 19^th century Welsh farmhouse that, for more than ten years, from the late 60s to the early 80s, was the headquarters of the Pagan Movement in Britain and Ireland, one of Britain's (and the world's) earliest New Pagan organizations.

These were the folks who gave me my start in things pagan. From them I learned the fine art of ritual, and how to think like a pagan. It's no real hyperbole to say that they gave me the gods themselves.

Oh, those were heady times, our goal nothing less than the transformation—the retribalization, the repaganization—of Western society. Back to the Gods, back to the Land, back to the Tribe: those were our touchstones.

50 years on, they still are. From an ocean and half a continent away, I look back now with fond nostalgia, contemplating our failures—and our successes.

“Can-y-Lloer—the isolated Carmarthenshire cottage where a pagan commune is being set up. The name means 'Song of the Moon,' a tribute to one of the gods of witchcraft,” reads the steamy caption accompanying the grainy photo in a tabloid of the day.

The Pagan Movement grew out of the Regency, which during the late 60s offered open pagan rituals in north London, and was itself “off of” Robert Cochrane's Royal Windsor Coven.

Though I've had other initiations since, if that constitutes a lineage, I guess that's mine.

Through a series of unlikely coincidences, I recently learned that Cân-y-Lloer, and surrounding properties, is now for sale. To judge from the estate agent's photos, it looks like it's in pretty rough shape. Still, for a mere £250,000, this piece of New Pagan history can be yours.

Unicorns Will Always be Easier

Back when I first got to town, the Rowan Tree Mystery School was one of the big players on the local pagan scene. I myself never joined, but a number of good friends were committed members.

As part of their magical training, each student was expected to keep, in effect, an astral familiar: a unicorn, a dragon, a griffin. I'll admit, this always twisted my nuts the wrong way.

What's wrong with real animals? I wondered. If you're going to cultivate a relationship with an animal, why not Buffalo, or Groundhog, or Deer?

Why not real animals: animals that shit, and piss, and stink? Animals that we have to watch and study long to understand? Animals with wills and lives and ways of their own, animals that won't do what we want them to?

Unicorns will always be easier.

The Barrow-Wights Are Angry

A local high [sic] priestess had a mission. The barrow-wights were angry, you see, and it was her job to—I suppose—mollify them.

Well. This is Minnesota, and there are lots of mounds here. There are people in many of those mounds, the ancestors in the Land.

Seeing what has become of the Land, I could well understand that they might be angry. Well do we, the Younger Sibs, new in the Land, need to make our peace with the Land, and with the First Peoples of this Land: with what has been done, and with our role in that doing. Well might the barrow-wights be angry.

But no high priestess, however powerful, can do that work for me.

That work I need to do for myself.

Pagans in Exile

“Why isn't the Earth enough?”

(Mark Green)

I once spoke with mythologist Joseph Campbell. After his talk, I asked him a question: “Do we, then, need to return to the Earth?”

I had intended my question—not, perhaps, as felicitously phrased as it might have been—seriously. The West is in spiritual crisis, granted; how, then, do we best address ourselves to this problem? Is the sacrality of Earth not central, both to this problem, and to its solution?

Campbell, though, who had his own story to sell [sic]—the Hero's Journey—blew it off.

Pagans being pagans, we like to drink, and we like to get drunk. When we are, we like to sing about it.

So pagans have lots of drinking songs.

But, of course—pagans being pagans—it's not quite that simple.

Dewi Brown—Dewi is “David” in Welsh—was an early, founding member of the Pagan Movement in Britain and Ireland, one of the earliest (and most influential) New Pagan organizations in the West. His poem “The Drunkard” was first published in the PM's quarterly, The Waxing Moon, in the Lughnasadh 1971 issue, which is where I first came across it. The poem impressed me at the time; 50 years on, it still does.

(Here let me mention that this particular issue of TWM was my personal introduction to the Pagan Movement, a group that would shape my own nascent paganism and, indeed, the rest of my life—you're reading this now because of it—but that's another story for another night.)

Brown's poem is cast in traditional form: four stanzas, each arranged in two couplets. This form, the poem's rather archaic diction (“sup,” “from out”), and its willingness to controvert standard grammar for the sake of rhyme (“Nor of your beauty can he tell”) give the poem a sense of agelessness, of the pre-modern; almost it reads like one of the 17th century Cavalier poets, perhaps a Robert Herrick.

This dislocation in time is fully intentional. Bad poetry sacrifices anything, even clarity and grammatical integrity, to clinch that rhyme. Brown, though, is fully in control of his medium.

On the surface, “The Drunkard” reads as a secular drunk's tribute to his drug of choice. “Screw 'em all,” he sings to his glass of wine, his sole drinking companion.

But, of course, it's not that simple. That's what makes this such a good poem.

The Drunkard

Founded more than 50 years ago in 1970, the Pagan Movement in Britain and Ireland was headquartered on a pagan communal farm in rural Carmarthenshire (Wales). It originally grew out of a London organization called the Regency, which in turn had its roots in (and was founded by former members of) Robert Cochrane's Royal Windsor Coven.

What follows is a hymn to Earth and Sun from the PM's Rite of Imbolc, which marked the reborn Sun's Coming-of-Age. (Though not directly named, Earth is the “thee” to whom the piece is addressed.) It is sung to the tune of Edward Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March #1, familiar to Americans as the processional march at high school graduation ceremonies, also known as Land of Hope and Glory.

Though not attributed, the lyrics were clearly the work of Tony Kelly (1943-1997), the PM's leading light, and my own beloved teacher. Kelly was a brilliant but deeply flawed man; Old Craft historian Michael Howard once described him to me as having had “horns of gold and hooves of clay.” Truly one of the Wise, his understanding of the Old Ways and their gods was deep beyond telling. It was from him that I learned what many pagans, 50 years on, have still to realize: that the truest and most authentic pagan experience comes, not from dusting off some old god or goddess from Long Ago and Far Away, but from an active lived relationship with—to begin with—Earth and Sun, Here and Now.

Though a brilliant and articulate writer, Kelly's verse suffers from his fondness for archaic diction and his willingness to sacrifice anything, even clarity and grammatical integrity, for the sake of rhyme. (That said, rhyming "Goddess" with "forest" is sheer pyrotechnic verbal genius, brilliant.) Still, Proud the Sun Adore Thee has much to teach.

You can see the hymn in its original ritual matrix here. Please note that a number of errors have crept into the version cited in the Weebly Pagan Movement Archive, foremost among them the inversion of the first and second lines of stanzas one and three. I have here restored the song to its original form.

Proud the Sun Adore Thee

 A Visit to Pagan Island

A row of standing stones runs along the spine of the long, narrow river island.

In the dream, I'm in Wales, visiting the old Selene farm in Carmarthenshire, which during the 70s and early 80s was home to the Pagan Movement in Britain and Ireland. It was from these good folks that I learned ritual and how to think in Pagan. It was in this soil that my pagan roots first grew deep.

The river in the dream, though, is clearly the Mississippi, along whose banks I now live. In the logic of dreams, the meaning is clear enough.

When we finally manage to get out to the island—did we swim? boat? teleport?—we discover something very interesting indeed. The long row of standing stones that line the island's ridge are not raised stones. These stones are a part of the island itself, living rock rearing to the sky, grown here like the trees themselves.

In the dream, I think of the immemorial sanctity of river islands. I remember the self-manifest lingams of India, most sacred of all lingams. These are self-manifest standing stones, most powerful of all.

We link hands and begin to dance. Down along the full row we dance, weaving in and out of the standing stones as we go.

In the dream, I'm in Wales, at a reunion of members of the old Pagan Movement in Britain and Ireland, the group which, back in the early 70s, gave me my first leg-up into the Old Ways.

(I'd fallen asleep reading Arthur Machen's The Secret Glory, with its musical Welsh place-names singing in my head, so I guess it's not surprising that I should dream-journey thence.)

Regretfully, my teacher Tony Kelly wasn't there—he died in 1997—but I'm excited to meet so many folks that I've heard so much about over the years, but never yet met. I'm also excited that the gathering is happening at the old Cymdeithas Selene, the commune in northwestern Dyfed (Carmarthenshire) where the Pagan Movement was based.

(When I wake, it's with the Selene address singing in my head: Cymdeithas Selene, Cân y Lloer (“song of the Moon”), Ffarmers, Llanwrda, Sir Caerfardden, Cymru.)

(Ah, Welsh. I've only dabbled in the Celtic languages, and dallied most with Scots Gaelic, the sexiest of the lot—oh, baby—but some of my people came from along the Welsh Marches in the old days, and it's the Cymraeg that will always feel most like home.)

I'm talking with Greg Hill, whom I've also never met (though we've corresponded) about my gratitude for all the things that the Pagan Movement has given me: how to do ritual, how to think in Pagan, and—gift beyond price—the gods themselves. Children of Mabh are we, our beloved Earth Mother: sweet Mabh, dearest Mabh, with her two husbands: Pahh, the Sun, her right-hand husband, and Dahh, Thunder, husband of her left hand.

(And doesn't every child with two fathers need a name for each?)