Cyberhenge

Modern Pagans on the Internet

Douglas E. Cowan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781135881030
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religious Institutions & Organizations

Cyberhenge examines the use of Internet technology in shaping religious traditions and rituals. Cowan asks how and why Neopaganism has embraced the Internet in such an innovative and imaginative way.

CHAPTER 1

The Modern Pagan Internet

From Hyperbole to Reality and Back Again

Cyberspace is a technological doorway to the astral plane . . . Once we enter Cyberspace,we are no longer in the physical plane; we literally stand in a place between the worlds, one with heightened potential to be as sacred as any circle cast upon the ground.

Lisa McSherry (2002: 5)

Screenshots from the Modern Pagan Web

“A bit wild and a touch edgy” reads the front page of the JaguarMoon Cyber Coven Web site, “so be prepared to get shocked by viewpoints other than your own” (www.jaguarmoon.org). Off-line, the site’s owner, Lisa McSherry, is a modern Pagan and an author who claims to have written “several books exploring the Internet from a Pagan perspective” (McSherry 2003). Online, however, in her persona as Lady Maat (which she sometimes spells Ma’at), she presides as the High Priestess of JaguarMoon, a cybercoven dedicated to teaching “Wicca in a nonthreatening manner”(McSherry n.d. [d]). Later in this book I will have more to say about the concept of the cybercoven and the ways it is reshaping more traditional understandings of modern Pagan community. Briefly, though,McSherry defines it as “a group of people of an earth-based faith or belief system who interact primarily, if not solely, through the Internet and/or the World Wide Web” ((McSherry n.d. [c]; cf. 2002: 8—10). Although members of JaguarMoon may also belong to an off-line coven or other ritual working group, McSherry offers her online version so that Web visitors interested in modern Paganism will, at the very least, “be able to discern the difference between someone who knows what they are talking about and a B.S. artist” ((McSherry n.d. [d]). Participants in her training program are expected to dedicate a year and a day of online study to a wide variety of modern Pagan topics, but they are assured that in the end they will receive “a thorough education in almost every aspect of being a Witch” ((McSherry n.d. [a]). JaguarMoon’s “system of training witches is a proven one,” she continues, and promises that those who complete the course “will finish the year with the tools to discern true knowledge amongst the ‘new age’ hocus-pocus.”

In The Cyber Spellbook, popular Pagan authors Sirona Knight and Patricia Telesco (2002) devote nearly 30 pages to a variety of gods and goddesses drawn from pantheons around the world, and they attribute to each deity properties and powers suitable for invocation on the Web. Anna Perenna, for example, “is a Roman Goddess of cyber sexuality and fertility,” and Annapurna, the “Great Hindu Mother Goddess . . . can make your Web site profitable, within the cyber world” (Knight and Telesco 2002: 51).Morgana, on the other hand, “is a Celtic Goddess of fertility and war who can help you reconfigure your [computer] system,” and Mother Mary, “the Christian archetype of the Mother Goddess” is useful “when creating new businesses, crafting new ideas, and signing contracts” (Knight and Telesco 2002: 70). Few religious figures—well known or otherwise—escape their notice. Nwyvre, the “Celtic God of space and the firmament” according to Knight and Telesco,“is a good choice for UFO and contact experiences” (2002: 72), and even the Buddha, the “enlightened one,” is pressed into service.“A God of solar energy and zero point energy,” they write, “he embodies the wisdom of solar power and ‘free’ energy in calculators, radios, toys, laptops, homes, and automobiles” (Knight and Telesco 2002: 56).

Not everyone, however, is enthusiastic about Knight and Telesco’s reimagining of a cybernetic Areopagus, where the electronic altar of whatever god or goddess one requires at that moment is no more than a few mouse clicks away. In fact, some regard it as just the kind of “‘new age’ hocus-pocus” that McSherry warns her cybercoven members about. A reviewer for newWitch, a magazine for teen Witches, regards The Cyber Spellbook as another example of Knight’s (and, by implication,Telesco’s) “special brand of condescending tripe” (Shanks 2003: 69; for a similar review of Telesco and Knight 2001, see Fisher 2002). This reviewer, a computer professional and modern Pagan on whom “technology long ago lost any romantic hold,” has little patience and less respect “for people who write barely readable but highly marketable claptrap” (Shanks 2003: 69) that seeks to wed trendy technology and traditional religion. Out of a possible five, he rather begrudgingly gives the book a rating of “one broomstick.” All is not lost for the cyber-Wiccan authors, though, because readers’ reviews on Amazon.com—arguably a form of interactive book discussion club that allows far more people to express their opinions online than dedicated chat rooms—were much more positive. “All witches with fully functioning and open minds will want this book handy,” writes one online reviewer (Grant 2002), though “half-brained Witches will hate it because it threatens their comfy little niche and beliefs.”

Finally, consider the online Coven of the Whispering Brook (www.whisperingbrook.org). According to their site, this is “an all female eclectic Wiccan coven” whose main activity consists of weekly chat sessions in a Delphi forum (Whispering Brook n.d. [a]). Going online in May 2001, the Whispering Brook cybercoven includes members from New Zealand, California, and Mexico, and offers a “dedicant program” in which prospective members must participate before they will be considered for full admission. Lest anyone mistake them for just another modern Pagan chat group, however,Whispering Brook makes it very clear that it is an “online community that acts as a functioning coven.We are not a discussion group, we are not a chat room, we are much more than that. We are a family” (Whispering Brook n.d. [b]). Indeed, they have put a number of measures in place to ensure that the often tenuous nature of online communication and community does not affect what members regard as the serious, intentional nature of the group. For example, they offer something of an online modern Pagan illustration of the “strict church hypothesis,” which posits that those religious organizations that demand more of their members in terms of commitment will be more successful in the long run (cf. Iannaccone 1994). Notwithstanding their claims not to be a chat group, the coven by-laws state that “Members must be present at chat. Chat is on Thursdays at 6:30pm PST [n.b., 2:30 p.m. the following day in New Zealand]. If you have two unexcused chat absences out of a consecutive four, then you will be gagged from the forum, or until you next show to chat . . . Coven members must check into the covenstead (forum) every few days. Once absent for a week, a reminder e-mail may be sent. Two weeks without visiting the coven may result in being dropped from the forum” (Whispering Brook n.d. [b])— which we assume means being released from the coven itself.

From Hyperbole to Reality and Back Again

In these three brief snapshots of the modern Pagan Internet we are confronted with a number of issues that will concern us throughout this book. The freewheeling, antinomian (and almost anarchic) character of modern Pagan belief and practice is challenged by Pagans’ religious reimagining and often indiscriminate appropriation from other traditions—a process some critics have condemned as a form of “cultural strip mining” (Pike 2001: 134—37; cf. Aldred 2000). The hyperbole and exaggerated rhetoric in which so many claims for the power of the Internet seem to come cloaked is met by the reality that we are all ineluctably embodied, subject to the constraints of time and space, and that our ability to interact online is hardly a global phenomenon. Finally, the crisis of credibility and authority in both the online and off-line worlds meets a number of hardly surprising attempts to stake claims to the authenticity and legitimacy of one’s own knowledge and expertise. Indeed, as we will encounter numerous times throughout the book, it is the Internet phenomenon of the “instant expert” (Berger and Ezzy 2004;Wright 2000) that both contributes to and limits the potential of the Web as a source for religious creativity and innovation.

Put simply, how do we know that Lisa McSherry has the wisdom and experience to provide “a thorough education in almost every aspect of being a Witch,” to guide prospective Pagans on the very serious journey of spiritual discovery and exploration? She may very well have, but the ease with which a Web site can be created does nothing to establish or validate her credentials. In The Wiccan Web both Telesco and Knight (2001: 114—15) recognize what I have called elsewhere the Internet paradox: “more information available more quickly than ever before in human history, but with fewer controls on the quality, accuracy, and propriety of that information” (Cowan 2004: 258). While they are obviously not every modern Pagan’s cup of magickal tea, both women offer their services, online and off-line, as experts in Wiccan belief, ritual, and practice.As I will argue more fully in Chapter 2, it is the open and relatively unrestricted creativity so highly valued by modern Pagans that allows for such a laissez-faire construction of both social and religious reality. While many authors offer lists of magickal correspondences between an often bewildering array of deities, minerals, plants, essential oils, planets and stars, food, incense, divination tools, and ritual practices, just as many declare that these correspondences must suit the individual practitioner to be efficacious. If they do not, then the individual should feel free to rearrange, reconstruct, or simply reinvent more appropriate parallels (see, for example, Cunningham 1988, 1993; Knight and Telesco 2002; NightMare 2001; RavenWolf 1993, 1998; Telesco and Knight 2001). “Since this idea is broaching on ‘cutting edge’ magic,” write Telesco and Knight of their lists of cyberspatial correspondences (2001: 31), “what we’re giving here are personal, instinctual associations . . . you may feel differently about these parts and should always trust your instincts over anything found in a book.” Another author, who claims she employed sex magick to obtain her G4 Powerbook computer, writes that Witches uncertain of or apprehensive about the effects of their magick “can always precede any working with the following statement: ‘If it is my best interest, and in the best interest of The Whole, let me be successful in this Working,’ or something along those lines” (Firefox 2003).

As a preliminary caveat, however, this often exuberant attitude of religious individualism should not be construed as a lack of intentionality, sincerity, or seriousness on the part of modern Pagans. Indeed, quite the opposite. Though many of the more popular treatments of modern Pagan belief and practice might lead the uninitiated to conclude that these are little more than spiritual dilettantes, immature seekers unable to face the often harsh realities of the world around them (see, for example, Davis 1998; Faber 1996), as a growing number of other scholars have noted, men, women, and children from a wide variety of socioeconomic demographics populate the modern Pagan movement and have found it a remarkably fulfilling religious environment (see, for example,Adler 1986; Berger 1999; Berger, Leach, and Shaffer 2003; Greenwood 2000; Hutton 1999, 2003; Luhrmann 1989; Pike 2001; Salomonsen 2002; York 1995). Even a cursory review of a few of the more detailed emic treatments of modern Pagan belief and practice (see, for example, Bonewits 1989; Buckland 1995; Budapest 1989; Carr-Gomm 2002; Crowley 1994; Crowther 1998; Currott 1998; Farrar 1991; Farrar and Farrar 1981, 1984; Hopman and Bond 1996; RavenWolf 2003; Starhawk 1989;Vale and Sulak 2001) reveals clearly the depth of thought and self-reflection that exists within modern Paganism, as well as some of the internal tensions within the movement, that speak to the seriousness with which many modern Pagans regard their emerging religious tradition. This is not to say, of course, that there are not dilettantes, dabblers, and poseurs in the modern Pagan movement. There are, and the Internet has given many of these a forum for expression unimaginable just a decade ago; but such individuals are hardly limited to modern Paganism.

Thus, like many books, Cyberhenge is a study in contrasts. Seemingly incompatible domains of human behavior, innovation, and social construction are held in a variety of creative tensions, and out of those tensions often complex religious meanings come into view. Utilizing the multivalent emergence of modern Paganism in North America over the past few decades, this book examines and extends some of the discussions about the evolving relationship between religious belief and practice, and the metatechnology of the Internet and the World Wide Web. I use the term metatechnology here to highlight the reality that the hardware, software, and Internet service provision are, perhaps, the least remarkable characteristics of the various developing e-space cultures. That these cultures require the existence of Internet technologies and architecture is not in dispute; without the technologies the cultures themselves are impossible. These cultures far exceed, however, the now relatively commonplace electronics that make cyberspace possible. Cyberspace is metatechnological in that it is not the material world of hardware and wiring, not the interrelated command-andcontrol processes of software and programming, and not even the communications that take place between Internet users. Rather, it is that which is conceived and experienced in the interactive interstices between all three.

Religion and Communications Technology

As far as we know, religion has always been in the vanguard of social movements that have made use of new and innovative communication technologies. The earliest examples of written texts are not laundry lists or civic compacts, but religious documents: solemn covenants between divinity and humanity; ritual instruction and ethical dicta according to which social life was organized; and wondrous, dynamic, often bloody cosmogonies preserved for communication within and across generations. As the shift was made from written text to printed text, and later from printed to mass-produced text, religious works were at every point in the forefront (Graham 1987). These shifts produced paradoxical, often contradictory results. For example, as printed religious texts established the notion of a “standard edition” (illustrated most obviously in the West by the appearance of the 1611 King James Bible as the “authorized version”), simply by expanding the available pool of readers mass-produced texts in vernacular languages opened up the range of possible interpretations. As readers became more familiar with the biblical texts, many were left unsatisfied by the dominant interpretations offered by established religious authorities. Although other factors are certainly at work in the emergence of religious movements such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Christian Science, and Jehovah’s Witnesses, that each offers radically different interpretations of the Bible is linked, at least in part, to the wider availability of the biblical text. Thus, in response to what he regarded as widespread apostasy, Joseph Smith produced The Book of Mormon, subtitled “Another Testament of Jesus Christ”; Mary Baker Eddy wrote Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures ([1875] 1971), the biblical commentary on which Christian Science depends; and Charles Taze Russell offered his interpretation of Holy Writ in the six-volume Studies in the Scripture (1906—1917).

With these cultural, technological, and religious dynamics in mind, one of the central issues we must consider is how the shift from mass-produced text to hypertext affects the proclamation of religious beliefs, the production and protection of religious doctrine, and the performance of religious ritual and practice. Because we are dealing with texts—whether they are entirely written or they integrate image, sound, and movement—there are a number of basic issues to consider here: (1) the nature of hypertext itself, which allows readers to access texts in highly individualistic ways; (2) the medium in which the hypertext is immersed, that is, the architecture of the Internet and how it facilitates transmission and replication of hypertext documents (especially the increasingly cut-and-paste character of information on the World Wide Web); (3) the difference between “content” and “creativity” in the electronic environment, including, as Castells notes (2001), the widening gap between those who provide online content and those who simply have Internet access; and (4) the interrelationship between online texts and off-line texts, which is a reflection of the inescapable connection between life in front of the computer screen and life away from it.

First, however well or poorly it is realized in actual usage, one of the realities of hypertext is a reader-driven nonlinearity. Although simple d...