Drawing Down the Moon by Margot Adler Read Free Book Online Page B

differences? This is the question I struggle with. Who are those who can embrace polytheism, accepting a bit of chaos in their spiritual perspective without denying rational modes of thinking? Who are those who are able to suspend belief and disbelief at will and are equally comfortable with scientific discourse and magic ritual? Who, in short, can afford a nonauthoritarian religion? Are we talking about a broad-based phenomenon in this country? Surely not. Are we talking about ways of being that are available only to those strong enough to break with certain aspects of the dominant culture?
    My own experience with the Pagan resurgence has made me reluctant to categorize Neo-Pagans according to simple age and class divisions. I am not comfortable with the “radical” analysis that says that the recent rise of occult groups is a white middle-class phenomenon. It is too simple, although many of those I subsequently met did fall into this category.
    My tentative conclusion is that Neo-Pagans are an elite of sorts—a strange one. 21 The people you will meet here may be some of those few who, by chance, circumstance, fortune, and occasionally struggle, have escaped certain forms of enculturation.
    Most Pagans are avid readers, yet many of them have had little formal education. Few are addicted to television. They are, one priest observed to me, “hands-in-the-dirt archeologists,” digging out odd facts, “scholars without degrees.” They come from a variety of classes and hold down jobs ranging from fireman to Ph.D. chemist. But as readers, they are an elite, since readers constitute less than twenty percent of the population in the United States.
    The paradox of polytheism seems to be this: the arguments for a world of multiplicity and diversity are usually made by those few strong enough and fortunate enough in education, upbringing, or luck to be able to disown by word, lifestyle, and philosophy the totalistic religious and political views that dominate our society. Perhaps in my own fascination with the Neo-Pagan resurgence I am hoping that these attitudes can become the heritage of us all.
    Here’s the big question: Has the polytheistic affirmation of diversity come at a time when most people increasingly fear complexity and accept authoritarian solutions? Neo-Paganism is a growing movement. According to some sources, 22 there are a million Neo-Pagans around the world. In previous editions of this book, I wondered if Neo-Paganism was doomed to be a delicacy for the few. I am still convinced contemporary Paganism will remain a minority religious phenomenon; but I am more convinced today that it has staying power.

II. Witches

4.
    The Wiccan Revival
    What can we learn of this witch figure? . . . She takes energies out of consciousness and pulls them toward the unconscious to forge a link between the two mental systems. . . .
    We know the roots of our consciousness reach deep into the nonhuman, archaic unconscious. . . . The witch archetype makes visible to us the very depths of what is humanly possible, the great silences at the edge of being. . . .
    She stirs up storms that invade whole communities of people. She conducts vast collective energies to our very doorstep. . . . These undirected unhumanized spirit forces are symbolized for us as ghosts, dead ancestors, gods and goddesses come up from the world below. . . .
    What do we gain from this vision? A sense of perspective. . . . The witch-seer makes us see into the proportions of life. . . .
    The radical impact of the witch archetype is that she invades the civilized community. She enters it. She changes it. . . . She heralds the timeless process of originating out of the unconsciouss new forms of human consciousness and society.
    â€”DR. ANN BELFORD ULANOV 1
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    THE WORD witch is defined so differently by different people that a common definition seems impossible. “A witch,” you may be told, “is someone with