Pagan Family Values

Childhood and the Religious Imagination in Contemporary American Paganism

S. Zohreh Kermani

• Editore: NYU Press
• Anno: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780814745144
• Argomento: Theology & Religion
• Categoria: Religion

For most of its history, contemporary Paganism has been a religion of converts. Yet as it enters its fifth decade, it is incorporating growing numbers of second‑generation Pagans for whom Paganism is a family tradition, not a religious worldview arrived at via a spiritual quest. In Pagan Family Values, S. Zohreh Kermani explores the ways in which North American Pagan families pass on their beliefs to their children, and how the effort to socialize children influences this new religious movement. The first ethnographic study of the everyday lives of contemporary Pagan families, this volume brings their experiences into conversation with contemporary issues in American religion. Through formal interviews with Pagan families, participant observation at various pagan events, and data collected via online surveys, Kermani traces the ways in which Pagan parents transmit their religious values to their children. Rather than seeking to pass along specific religious beliefs, Pagan parents tend to seek to instillvalues, such as religious tolerance and spiritual independence, that will remain with their children throughout their lives, regardless of these children's ultimate religious identifications. Pagan parents tend to construct an idealized, magical childhood for their children that mirrors their ideal childhoods. The socialization of children thus becomes a means by which adults construct and make meaningful their own identities as Pagans. Kermani’s meticulous fieldwork and clear, engaging writing provide an illuminating look at parenting and religious expression in Pagan households and at how new religions pass on their beliefs to a new generation.

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

In different ways, each of these histories is the history of the religion. Lacking an “official” historical or mythological foundation, contemporary Pagans take full advantage of the freedom to build their own foundation. The decision by individuals or groups of Pagans to support a particular history determines the tenor of personal and local expressions of Paganism itself, and each of these histories evokes a different set of morals, goals, and values and a corresponding religious identity, imagination, and practice. This process of imaginative historicizing is a key component of the construction of contemporary adult Pagans’ identities and imaginations. As such, this historicizing has a significant impact on the rhetoric and practice of Pagan parenting and child rearing and on Pagan children’s experiences of their religion.

This chapter considers the multiple and varied historical, intellectual, and sociopolitical sources of contemporary American Paganism as they are understood by scholars of religion and by adult Pagans. The religion’s antecedents in Romanticism, Spiritualism, reconstructions and fantasies of indigenous religions, and magical and occult societies offer valuable insights into the diverse expressions of contemporary Paganism. Likewise, the decision of an individual practitioner, coven, or tradition to emphasize a particular historical and mythological lineage to the exclusion of other options illuminates the dynamic and sometimes capricious process of Pagan self-identification. The choice of a relevant past shapes the religious, cultural, and personal practices that express these values. Simply put, the Pagan historical imagination shapes the Pagan religious imagination and has significant repercussions on the lives of Pagan adults and children.

The histories of Paganism that contemporary Pagans create, rehearse, and revise in their religious practices often differ from those identified by historians of the religion. These sometimes-dissonant accounts may be a source of anxiety for Pagans, but nearly as often, the opposite is true. Many Pagans see a creative tension in this ambivalence. Scholars and practitioners see the juxtaposition of these different registers of historical awareness as a hallmark of the religion’s development within the American religious landscape. A large part of American Paganism’s distinctiveness from its European precursors emerges from its introduction into the social and cultural milieu of the mid-1960s United States. Paganism’s grounding in American culture and religion over the past 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 late-night 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 represent the three age groups of the SpiralScouts program: FireFlies (three- to eight-year-olds), SpiralScouts (nine- to thirteen-year-olds), and PathFinders (adolescents from fourteen to eighteen years old).⁵ Although SpiralScouts circles technically include scouts of all three age groups, PathFinders are rare; I met only three during the time I spent with SpiralScouts circles. There are a number of possible reasons why older Pagan scouts are elusive: most children’s scouting groups tend to have higher attrition rates as adolescents follow other interests; the lack of peer support and involvement in Pagan scouting may discourage teenagers from continuing through the ranks; or there may simply be fewer second-generation teenage Pagans because Pagan children are increasingly encouraged to choose their own religious paths (a phenomenon discussed in more detail in chapter 6). At this meeting, as at most of the SpiralScouts meetings I observed, the majority of the scouts fall into the three- to eight-year-old FireFly range.

Jess brings out a stocky green pillar candle and five small round candles in different colors for the meeting’s opening ritual and sets them on a large, round tray in the center of the floor. As she lights each smaller candle, she asks the scouts which element each color represents. “What does the red candle stand for?” she begins, and a first-grade FireFly with bright red, waist-length pigtails says, “Red is for fire.” Jess smiles in agreement and reminds the scouts and parents that red is also the color of imagination; when they light this candle, they call both on the element of fire and on their imaginations. “What about blue? What’s the blue candle for?” Several of the children here today are new to this group, and they listen curiously and fidget with the edges of the blanket. Some of the returning scouts, including Jess’s six-year-old son, race to see who can answer Jess’s question as quickly as possible, and three or four scouts shout at once: “Air! It’s for air!” One of the older scouts says, “I thought it was for water.” Jess says that blue is usually for water, emotions, and feelings, but it can remind us of air, too, acknowledging and validating the older scout’s lone dissenting opinion. The yellow candle that Jess lights next is usually the one associated with air, but as she begins to light it, her son Ryan exclaims, “For the sun!” and Jess lets his answer stand. Paganism’s freedom to improvise rituals and redefine common symbols extends to children as well as adults, and although adults frequently offer children relatively standard explanations for 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 beginning of every meeting; in fact, this is the only time I saw this ritual performed in this way at this circle.

Silverling Circle is a SpiralScouts circle, the equivalent of a troop in more traditional scouting organizations. SpiralScouts International aligns itself with marginalized cultural groups (and deliberately distinguishes itself from better-known groups like the Boy Scouts of America) by welcoming children of minority religions as well as atheists and agnostics. At the same time, it follows “traditional” scouting models and tends to flourish in areas where scouting is popular, such as the American Midwest and South. SpiralScouts International (or S*SI, as their promotional material suggests the name be abbreviated) is a scouting organization rooted in Wiccan ethics and designed for children of earth-based and other minority religions. In a religion that continually negotiates its relationship with mainstream religions and society, SpiralScouts offers a model for the inclusion of children’s experiences and perspectives at the same time that it reflects the adult architecture of these experiences. Like all SpiralScouts circles, Silverling Circle affirms an earth-centered spiritual worldview. Jess describes the circle’s orientation as “Green and Eclectic Wicca,” indicating a willingness to draw on values, beliefs, and practices from a variety of earth-based traditions while maintaining a thoroughly ecological (or “green”) consciousness.

This emphasis on the sacredness of the earth and on ecological and environmental concerns is clear in all of Silverling Circle’s activities. Silverling scouts plant trees, assist with ocean shore and river cleanups, participate in weekend-long campouts, and end many meetings with unstructured “outside time” that allows the scouts to roll down hills or climb trees. Green Wicca adheres to what many might consider the “traditional” view of Wicca as a nature religion with values rooted in nineteenth- and twentieth-century ecological, conservationist, and Romantic movements. Catherine Albanese has pointed out the multivalence of “nature religion” in the United States, noting that many groups that fall under this rubric maintain varying or even opposing ideals.⁶ The historian Chas Clifton has attempted to circumscribe the bounds of American Paganism as a nature religion, suggesting that it can be seen as rooted in Cosmic Nature, Embodied/Erotic Nature, or Gaian Nature.⁷ Cosmic Nature, Clifton proposes, includes metaphysical understandings of nature that emerge from Renaissance practices of “natural magic,” whereas Embodied Nature is concerned with the sacralizing of sexuality and the human body. Silverling Circle’s focus is most closely associated with Clifton’s third designation, Gaian Nature, a phrase that emerges from Oberon (Tim) Zell-Ravenheart’s 1970 article on “deep ecology.”⁸ Clifton describes adherents of this type of Paganism as “likely to speak of the spirit of nature and, as heirs of the Romantic Movement, to see humanity as suffering from its spiritual divorce from nature.”⁹ This assessment of contemporary Paganism as a primarily nature-based religion remains a popular way of understanding and practicing the religion. Graham Harvey’s analysis of contemporary Paganism notes that despite the many other ways of perceiving it, “Paganism is a religion centrally concerned with celebrating Nature. Pagans are people who are listening to the living, speaking Earth.”¹⁰

Proponents of the nature religion view of contemporary Paganism find that it integrates well with political and social activism. Starhawk’s San Francisco–based Reclaiming Collective frequently organizes and participates in political protests and leads a course on “Earth Activist Training.”¹¹ Other Pagan groups and individuals have found ways of expressing their spiritual and political views through association with organizations like Earth First!¹² Regardless of whether they choose to ally their spirituality with organized politics, many nature-oriented Pagans find environmental activism an important part of their daily practices and values. As Jess observes, “Even things like recycling can be a ritual if you do it with the intention of healing the earth.”¹³ Jess’s commitment to a green lifestyle is apparent in both her personal and professional choices; she has a degree in environmental education, has worked as a biology teacher, and currently coordinates a number of sustainability projects, both informally and professionally.

Silverling Circle regularly chooses activities that reflect the group’s attentiveness to the earth-based and pantheistic elements of their tradition, and this focus informs the values that parents in this and other nature-based communities impart to their children. Silverling Circle’s nature-based focus is evident in the books included in the group’s lending library and the book list maintained on its website, which include dozens of wildlife and nature field guides as well as books on nature myths, earth-centered activities, natural health care, earth science, plant lore, and a three-part series on “Green Witchcraft.”¹⁴ Likewise, nearly all of Silverling’s activities involve a focus on nature, the earth, or the seasons. Silverling scouts have spent meetings learning to navigate with compasses, gathering sap from maple trees, cleaning community parks, going on winter and summer hikes, and picking a variety of fruits and vegetables.

Individual families that share Silverling Circle’s commitment to earth-based spirituality and nature-oriented religious practices often express these beliefs through seasonal rituals and crafts, environmental activities (from putting out food for birds and other wildlife in the winter to assisting in community park cleanups or collecting litter on beaches), and informal and formal attempts to “take care of the earth.” One earth-based Pagan described her “earth-based spirituality” to me as “very much an integrative thing.” She explained:

I hate the idea of “primitive peoples,” but the concept of how First Nations and aboriginal peoples don’t have a word for religion, but having their spiritual experience be an outgrowth of their everyday activity—that’s part of what this means to me. That’s why I shit in a bucket.¹⁵ That’s why I grow my own food. That’s why I buy food from my neighbors. Because those are outgrowths of my spiritual relationship with the earth.¹⁶

Although there is certainly a continuum of beliefs and practices among earth-based, eco-centered Pagans, most Pagans of this sort stress their “respect” or “reverence” for the earth. One Pagan mother explained her religious practices in a ...