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>> 25 1 Crafting History Three Pagans, Five Opinions Pagans sometimes joke that if you ask three Pagans a question, you’ll get five answers. Even after half a century as an American religion, contemporary Paganism remains decentralized both in doctrine and in practice , and very little consensus exists among scholars or practitioners on more than the most fundamental aspects of the religion. Unsurprisingly, contemporary Paganism is also fraught with contentious and varied interpretations of its historical roots. In a striking convergence of popular and scholarly opinion, it is often the case that any three scholars’ descriptions of the nature and origins of the religion will result in five answers—different from one another and from the first five as well. This dissension is as old as contemporary Paganism itself—but do the roots of this religion reach back millennia or decades? Is contemporary Paganism a nature religion, focused on reverence for the earth and oriented toward environmentalism, green living, and the cycles of the seasons?1 Is it a mystery religion based in ancient—or modern—esoteric beliefs?2 Is modern Paganism a continuation of Neolithic Goddess-worshipping matriarchies or a reconstruction of indigenous Celtic traditions?3 Are contemporary Pagans the spiritual descendants of the women and men persecuted as witches in Europe or in Salem, or are they the intellectual descendants of nineteenth-century occult and magical societies?4 26 > 27 fifty years has profoundly oriented Pagan thinking and shaped the values that Pagan parents instill in and expect of their children. During fieldwork with Pagan families around the United States, I asked the people I met what they meant when they called themselves “Pagans” (or Wiccans, or heathens, or Green/Eclectic/FamTrad witches) and how they understood the history of their religion. I listened to latenight discussions over bottles of homemade mead, to songs families sang around campfires and while washing dishes, and to the stories that Pagan parents and children told one another. This chapter presents four perspectives on the complicated issue of Pagan identity in the contemporary United States: Paganism as a prehistoric indigenous religion; Paganism as an earth-based nature religion; Paganism as the heir to the esoteric and Mind Cure movements of the nineteenth century; and Paganism as an eclectic integration (some might say “appropriation”) of beliefs and practices from globally and historically diverse non-Christian traditions. Two of these perspectives—nature-based “Green Wicca” and the quasi-esoteric “metaphysical Wicca”—are represented in this book by the radically different understandings of Pagan history held by two geographically proximal (but intellectually and spiritually distant) circles within SpiralScouts International. Even within one of the very few centralized, national Pagan organizations, these two groups (which have, presumably, somewhat similar goals for shaping Pagan children’s experiences) vary considerably in their views of their religious histories. It should be apparent that the four perspectives presented here do not exhaust the histories and mythologies of contemporary Paganism. Rather, they offer a glimpse into the radically divergent ways that superficially similar Pagan groups imagine and explain their histories and how they deploy these histories in the construction of religious worlds for themselves and their children. “We Honor the Earth”: Green/Eclectic Wicca “SpiralScouts, circle up!” Jess calls, and the eleven scouts of Silverling Circle gather on the carpet in the circle leader’s sunny, open living room on a beautiful New England afternoon. Their parents find seats on the couches and chairs around the room or sit with their children on the brown, tan, and green blankets laid out on the floor. The various colors 28 > 29 rituals and religious objects, they rarely insist on these explanations or on specific “right” answers. The oldest scout, Noah, says that the small green candle is for earth, and as Jess lights the white candle, four small scouts eagerly shout, “Spirit!” Jess says, “Right! And what about this big green candle?” A four-year-old who has been sitting on his father’s lap suddenly yells, “For grass—no, trees!” at the same time that Ryan confidently offers, “That’s for SpiralScouts!” Jess explains that other SpiralScouts groups all over the world might use different kinds and colors of small candles, but all SpiralScouts circles everywhere have a big green candle like this one—“Because we’re all SpiralScouts, and because we honor the earth.” That the scouts know (or can guess or improvise) the meanings of the candles’ colors is impressive, considering that this opening ritual is not performed at the...

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