[I'm away at the Florida Pagan Gathering, and won't return to normal blogging activity until November 10th. In the meantime, I'm presenting some of my favorite posts to tide you over, consider it a "greatest hits" of The Wild Hunt. Today, I'm re-printing an interview I did with author and journalist Jeff Sharlet. Since first conducting this interview in July of 2008, his book "The Family" has become a New York Times best-seller, and he's appeared several times in major media outlets like the Rachel Maddow show and the Bill Maher show. Enjoy!]

If you have been around the religious blogosphere for awhile, you have most likely heard of Jeff Sharlet. An author and journalist, he helped found two seminal web sites full of insightful commentary on faith in today’s world (Killing the Buddha and The Revealer), co-wrote a book about religious subcultures in America (which included a trip to a Pagan festival), and filed dispatches on the intersections of religion and power for such publications as Rolling Stone, Harpers, and Mother Jones. His most recent book is “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power”, an expose of elite fundamentalism’s avant-garde.

Jeff Sharlet

I was lucky enough to conduct a short e-mail interview with Jeff about his new book, what Pagans have to fear from The Family, and what we can do about it.

Some members of modern Pagan faiths have long warned of a theocratic Christian cabal bent on taking over America, often with the usual suspects of conservative Christianity playing a part. These fears have often been debunked, but your book “The Family” seems to in part vindicate those voices, albeit not in the ways they imagined. Who are “The Family”, and are they really trying to take over the government?

They’re not trying to take over government; they’ve been a part of government for almost seventy years. The Family is a network of conservative Christian elites in government, military, and business bound together by what The Family’s founder, Abraham Vereide, called simply “The Idea.” The Idea came to Vereide one night in April, 1935. God, he’d later say, revealed to him that Christianity’s emphasis on the poor, the suffering, the weak, the down and out, was all wrong. God wanted Vereide to minister not to the poor, but the powerful. He called them the “up and out” — corporate executives, politicians. The Idea was that if you could win the hearts of these “key men,” they, in turn, would dispense blessings to the masses. It was, in effect, trickle down religion, and it’s been the creed of religious conservative elites ever since, the justification for their war on organized labor and their support for foreign dictators, from Papa Doc Duvalier to Suharto to the thugs supported through the Silk Road Act, sponsored by Family politicians Senator Sam Brownback and Rep. Joe Pitts.

Domestically, The Family have long been at the heart of the Christianist assault on the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause – “Congress shall make no laws respecting the establishment of religion” – which is the guarantee of the Free Exercise Clause that makes America free (in theory, at least) for Pagan. In 1953, The Family established the National Prayer Breakfast; in 1954, Family politicians led the fight for “Under God” in the pledge and “In God We Trust” on our currency. More recently, Representative Tony Hall, a conservative Democrat from Ohio, made the National Day of Prayer a fixed, permanent affair, with White House observance orchestrated by Shirley Dobson – wife of Christian Right leader Jim Dobson.

Faith-based initiatives was first theorized by Family politicians such as Ed Meese in the 1980s; the legislation that opened the door for it, the 1996 Charitable Choice Provision, came from the offices of two Family politicians, John Ashcroft and Dan Coats.

Historic members have included men such as Strom Thurmond, William Rehnquist, and Senator Homer “Snort” Capehart, inventor of the jukebox (good) and defender of Nazis (not so good). (There have never been a lot of women involved.)

Which is all to say that the question we need to ask about fundamentalists is not, “What are they going to do?” but “What have they already done?” Fundamentalism is not a cabal or a conspiracy; it’s an ideology, and for nearly 70 years it has led America away from democracy and toward empire.

The theology of The Family seems quite different from the usual Christian conservatives and fire-breathing fundamentalists we often see covered in the news (though some of them are members or associates of The Family as well). Can you expand on what they believe, and what “Jesus Plus Nothing” means to them?

I first heard the phrase “Jesus plus nothing” at a spiritual counseling session The Family’s longtime leader, Doug Coe, was giving Representative Tod Tiahrt, a Kansas Republican. Tiahrt was going on about the usual Christian Right concerns – abortion, queers, and Muslims. Coe waved it all off. He agreed with Tiahrt across the board, but he saw that list as too limited. What, he asked, does Jesus have to teach us about Social Security? About building roads? The Family’s vision of “Jesus plus nothing” leads them to seek a government conformed at every level, in every department, every office, to the will of their totalizing Jesus. There’s a sense in which this is a weirdly bureaucratic Christ. He doesn’t stand on street corners and shout about revelation; he whispers his message in the ears of his “New Chosen,” as some Family members call themselves. And the message is almost always the same: “privatize.” For seventy years, The Family has been dedicated to deregulating markets in order to free up the “invisible hand” of God.

I was intrigued by the notion of The Family performing “spiritual assassinations” on political leaders (making them “die in spirit” to Jesus), getting close enough to perform their “hit” through innocuous-seeming events like the National Prayer Breakfast (which they organize). Who are some high-profile “hits” we may have heard of?

Just to be clear – they’re not killing anybody. You’re referring to Chapter Eight, “Vietnamization,” in which I write about The Family’s admiration for the guerilla warfare tactics of the Vietcong. In 1966 – the same year Family leader Doug Coe announced that The Family was going “underground,” erasing its public profile – another Family leader, Clif Robinson, met with the U.S. ambassador to Laos, William Sullivan – strategist of the “secret” – and illegal – air war against that country. Robinson reported back to American Family leadership on what he learned.

“He said the strategy of the VC was the same as International Christian Leadership’s,” gushed Robinson, “except applied physically and militarily. They spend hours, days, weeks, what ever time is necessary setting up for the LEADERS and then either by ambush, assassination, or other intrigue, they do away with them—not the people, the leaders. He said to kill 32 top level people”—as the Vietcong had done the previous month—“was tantamount to immobilizing thousands.” The lesson was that the Fellowship should understand itself as a guerrilla force on the spiritual battlefield.

They wanted their “victims” to “die to self” – that is, to commit themselves totally to Jesus plus nothing. One of their greatest “hits” was Chuck Colson, the Watergate felon. In his mega-selling memoir, “Born Again,” Colson writes of being recruited into The Family, which he describes as “a veritable underground of Christ’s men all through government,” through Doug Coe and the CEO of missile manufacturer Raytheon. Colson would later declare that through The Family’s religion, he was able to accomplish much of what he had once hoped to do politically. “Dying to self” paradoxically gave him a supreme sense of self-righteousness, a confidence – and a political network – through which he’s built up one of the most powerful Christian Right organizations in the world.

Some journalists and bloggers focused quite a bit of attention on the fact that Hillary Clinton is a “friend” of The Family. That through her, The Family would have access and influence. Should we have been worried if Clinton won the Democratic Presidential nomination? How deep are her ties to the family, and are they already looking to become “friends” with Obama?

The Family’s faith is a religion of the status quo. We shouldn’t be worried about what MIGHT happen; we should be worried about what has happened. If you look around the world as it is and think, “A-Ok!”, then you’ve no problem with The Family. If you look at Washington and see a healthy, happy democracy, then you’ve no problem with The Family. But if you’re disturbed by a government that’s more responsive to corporations than to people, by a two-party system in which both sides vote for a war the public didn’t want, by a politics of private influence and quiet deals, then yes, we should have been worried about The Family’s influence in a Clinton administration. We should also be worried about its potential influence in an Obama administration. The Family has endured for 70 years, longer than any other major Christian Right organization, not through doctrinal purity but by compromise with the powers that be. Power is their bottom line.

When Hillary had it, they wanted in. As she writes in her memoir, “Living History,” she joined a Family prayer group comprised of conservative politicians’ wives in 1993. She calls Doug Coe – a man who claims that Hitler, Stalin, and Mao understood the New Testament better than almost any other leaders in the 20th century – “a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide.” And she used The Family to tack right, teaming up with men such as Senator Sam Brownback and former Senator Rick Santorum on legislation that subtly redefined human rights as Christian issues.

This is not to say Hillary is a stealth fundamentalist. She is what she appears to be – a centrist Democrat. To be honest, I voted for her in the NY primary, because of her health plan. I’m glad Obama won; but I’m worried about his willingness to discard principles in pursuit of a false unity. The most troubling example of that is his plan to actually expand faith-based initiatives. Of course, he adds that organizations won’t be allowed to discriminate. But anyone who’s reported on faith-based initiatives firsthand will tell you that such regulations are impossible to enforce. Some Obama supporters say he’s just doing what he has to do to win. That’s exactly the way elite fundamentalists want it – to “win,” you have to play by their rules. I don’t think that’s true. I’m hoping that ultimately, Obama doesn’t, either.

You talk about the differences and similarities between the “populist” and “elitist” branches of American fundamentalism (together forming a “popular front”). With The Family typifying an elitist manifestation, and evangelical mega-churches like Colorado’s New Life Church (formerly headed by disgraced pastor Ted Haggard) typifying the “populist” branch. I was struck by how New Life actively worked to drive out Pagan Witches and other undesirables from their city. Is driving out the “Witches” (the religious “other”) a shared goal between the populist and elitist branches? Or simply the consequence of fundamentalist Christianity coming into power?

Some populist fundamentalists have actually criticized The Family for their willingness to make peace with and conference with those whom they lump under the label of “New Agers.” That was years ago, when Family leaders, like many conservative evangelicals, saw the wide array of beliefs they lumped under “New Age” as a threat to Christianity. They don’t, anymore – not because they’ve made their peace with those beliefs but because they don’t think those followers of those beliefs have much power. Ultimately, the inner circle of The Family considers all non-monotheistic beliefs “demonic.” At their C Street House for congressmen, they used to have a prayer calendar listing spiritual war targets for the day – Tibetan Buddhism, Hinduism, Wicca, etc.

In an interview with Alternet you described The Family as “ultimately something worse” than fascism. Since “fascism” is usually considered the ultimate manifestation of political evil, on the right and left, what makes this group worse?

The fact that it’s far more effective. Fascism, properly understood, was a relatively short-lived European ideology. There have been other examples of it since, but by far the most powerful ideology since 1945 has been not fascism, but empire. One church historian says of The Family that they’re not right-wing and certainly not left-wing, but “empire-wing.” Fascism may be a purer evil, but empire is a more pervasive one, and ultimately more dangerous because it’s able to call on the loyalties of well-intentioned people who’d never go near fascism. But if you’re a Vietnamese kid napalmed in 1968, or an Iraqi kid with your hands blown off in 2008, empire is every bit as bad as fascism. Or, for that matter, if you’re a Bangladeshi or a Chinese sweat shop worker or an Afghani forced to grow and process heroin to survive, the economic ramifications of empire are as bad as the explicit political repression of fascism. And for decades, what traditional fascism has cropped up around the world – in Central America, in some African nations, for instance – has been made possible only through the support of empire.

On point you make in the book is that secular America keeps trying to announce the death of fundamentalism, of conservative Christian power, but that these frequent declarations are rarely real. That the “defeats” are merely part of a natural ebb and flow of fundamentalism in America. Instead of shrinking, conservative “muscular” Christianity grows ever stronger and is very much a part of the American fabric. Is the much-touted recent “evangelical crack-up” just another natural ebb? Will we see audacious power-grabs by fundamentalist forces in the near future?

We see audacious power-grabs right now! For instance, Rwanda has recently become the first official “Purpose-Driven Nation,” remade in the image of evangelical pastor Rick Warren’s bestselling “Purpose Driven Life” with the support of U.S. dollars and faith-based initiatives. Closer to home, the Justice Department is supporting a program called “Fugitive Safe Surrender,” in which U.S. Marshals go into a low-income community and for four days move the entire legal apparatus into a megachurch, encouraging anyone with legal problems to sort them out under the sign of the cross. I attended one in Akron; church greeters talked to you about Jesus in the parking lot, then you walked through a metal detector, then you met a sheriff with a gun and a pastor with a Bible. Take your pick. And this program has Democratic support! Chuck Schumer’s gone on record saying it’s great, because it gets potential criminals off the street and allows poor people who’d be screwed by the justice system to have the help of the church. “Church-court” – that’s audacious. There’s no “evangelical crack-up,” no matter how much the New York Times may wish it so. Rather, there’s an evangelical transformation – and an expansion. Evangelicals are addressing issues liberals thought they owned, such as poverty and AIDS. That doesn’t make evangelical conservatives less conservative; it makes their agenda more far-reaching, for better or worse.

Some of the old lions of the Christian Right are dead or are dying. The new generation is softer-toned in style. But conservative evangelicalism has been a huge part of American life for 200 years. It’s not going away just because Jerry Falwell went to heaven. Or wherever.

So how do those opposed to what The Family is trying to do fight back? What is this groups Achilles heel? Is there anything anyone can do to minimize their influence on America and the world?

Of course! The first step is what we’re doing right here: talking about these issues, educating ourselves. The Family prospers when the public doesn’t pay attention. One of my favorite examples of a public fighting back occurred in 2004 in Norway. After I first wrote about The Family for Harper’s, some Norwegian journalists noticed that their new, socially conservative prime minister was jetting around the world to prayer breakfasts on the public dime. So they came to America and investigated. They discovered that this social conservative movement had strong ties with The Family, that their ambassador was taking policy meetings with John Ashcroft at The Family’s headquarters. So they put it on the front page of the paper, for two weeks. A mini Norwegian Watergate. And that government got the boot. That expose wasn’t the only factor, but it was one of them. When Doug Coe showed up in Norway this spring to talk with the king of Norway, the papers responded again, with a banner headline and a picture of Coe: “Hitler-admirer received by King.”

THAT’S public accountability. Let’s try it in America! Let’s tell Obama that we respect his desire to include people of faith – all faiths and no faith – in the public square, but we want him to recognize that not everybody is operating in good faith. Let’s pay attention to our local representatives. In 2004, a Democratic challenger to Rep. Frank Wolf, a longtime Family associate and conservative Republican from Northern Virginia, publicized Wolf’s Family ties. The Washington Post immediately editorialized that such a connection was impossible – and THEN sent a reporter to prove it so. So we need to hold the media accountable, too. We need them to ask smarter – and tougher – questions about religion. When we encounter monotheist politicians – that is, those who consider only monotheism legitimate – we need to give them loud refreshers in the history of the Founders, who were quite clear that they meant the First Amendment to extend to everyone, regardless of their beliefs.

I’m not a Pagan, but I’d also love to see some Pagan candidates for office. We’ll all benefit from that. Even if Pagans don’t win major offices – and they won’t, at least for awhile – their very presence in the public square helps everybody think about what pluralism means, what democracy means. Democracy isn’t something we HAVE, it’s something we make. The Family doesn’t like it. They call it “the din of the vox populi.” The din of the voice of the people. So we know what we need to do: Let’s make some noise.

Previous Wild Hunt interviews: Starhawk, Gus diZerega, Jeff Sharlet, Brendan Cathbad Myers, Rita Moran, Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone, Phyllis Curott, Tim Ward, Lupa, J.C. Hallman, Margot Adler.

[I'm away at the Florida Pagan Gathering, and won't return to normal blogging activity until November 10th. In the meantime, I'm presenting some of my favorite posts to tide you over, consider it a "greatest hits" of The Wild Hunt. Today, I'm re-printing an interview I did back in 2008 with Pagan elders & teachers Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone, both of whom are also currently presenting at the Florida Pagan Gathering. Enjoy!]

Authors, teachers, and elders, Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone have had an indelible influence on the modern Paganism movement. With her late husband Stewart Farrar, Janet helped pen some of religious Witchcraft’s most well-regarded tomes, including “Eight Sabbats for Witches” and “The Witches’ Way” (subsequently re-released as one volume entitled “A Witches’ Bible”). Towards the end of Stewart Farrar’s life, the couple were joined by Gavin Bone, a Pagan and registered nurse who entered into a personal and professional relationship with the couple.

Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone

Today Janet and Gavin are championing a new “Progressive Witchcraft”, teaching classes, and running workshops around the world. I recently had the opportunity to conduct an e-mail interview with Janet and Gavin about their current projects, the recently released biography of Stewart Farrar, and living the Pagan life in Ireland.

Both of you have been living and working in Ireland for some time now. What changes and progress have you noticed among Pagans in your adopted homeland? I suspect that when Janet and Stewart first moved to Ireland in 1976, there were few “out” Pagans of any sort, or any “Pagan community” to speak of.

Ever since Gavin moved to Ireland in 1993 we have seen a lot of changes in the Pagan community in Ireland. Before ‘93 there were probably only about two covens, including our own. The other one, believed to be Gardnerian, we had little contact with and it disappeared by the mid ’90’s. The big hub of activity up until then was the Fellowship of Isis, at Clonegal Castle, which of course, is still running. From that several groups began to spring up in the mid to late ’90’s including the Druid Clan of Danu, the first serious neo-Druid organisation in Ireland and the Grove of Sinann which became associated with it.

The real changes took place around about 1998. By this time the first pagan moots came into being and a conference of ‘interested parties’ took place in Dublin. The movement was beginning to blossom, but it was noticeable that the majority of the ‘movers and shakers’ were not Irish but ‘blow ins’ to use the Irish vernacular; they were English, Swiss, Scottish, and American. The real change has taken place in the last 5 years where we have really begun to see a real Irish pagan movement as such, with multiple paths appearing including a Druid and shamanic revival.

Janet, you have recently co-authored a book on the life of Stewart Farrar with Elizabeth Guerra entitled: “Stewart Farrar: Writer On A Broomstick”. Could you tell us a bit about the book, and the process behind getting it written?

Stewart had started to write his own autobiography with that title Writer on a Broomstick, back in the late ’90’s. This was only really a brief sketch of his fascinating life, he never, before his death got round to putting the ‘bones’ on it so to speak. So, a couple of years ago we approached Liz Guerra, a friend of ours for some years to write his biography. We decided to honour Stewart by using the original title he had decided upon and we went about, with Liz putting together all the research on his life.

Stewart being a professional journalist most of his life, kept a daily diary and habitually filed all the letters and replies he had ever written. The first year was taken up by Liz Guerra and ourselves going through all of this and recording the major events in his life from childhood, through his serving as an officer in the army during the second world war, through to his meeting with Alex and Maxine Sanders and joining the Craft, his writing career and finally up to his death.

We had to make some difficult decisions, one of these being whether we put everything in. We wanted to portray the real Stewart ‘warts and all’ so people could recognise him as a human being. In the end I believe we struck a good balance and people will be able to identify with him, not as a well known pagan author but as an individual like themselves who was lucky enough to have a fascinating life.

Speaking of Stewart Farrar, I understand that his novels (“Omega” being a personal favorite of mine) are in the process of being put back into print. Is there any definite word on when we might see them in our local bookstore or available for order?

Unfortunately, there have been some delays on publication of his novels. The publishing industry has suffered greatly from the current recession, so their publication has been on hold. We hope to have them republished in the next year though.

The two of you are now doing online seminars and classes with The College of The Sacred Mists. Can you describe what these classes entail? What are your opinions concerning the recent explosion of online schools? Do you feel this is a generally positve trend?

The decision to enter into online teaching wasn’t taken lightly. We wrestled with the concept for a while going through the ethics of it, and whether you could actually teach magical subjects in this way. In the end we decided it was no different to writing a book, except there was more interaction. It was this that eventually made our minds up to do it, and the fact that we had some positive experiences teaching one off online seminars.

Our current course has several different facets to it: Including written Lessons, practical exercises, regular chat room sessions to answer questions and discuss topics and the use of MP3s for teaching, which we have just incorporated in to the course. There is also homework and students are expected to keep a Course Diary which everyone can read online. This has resulted in a community feel to the course, with ourselves and the students interacting and assisting each other on a daily basis, something we really enjoy! To be honest, once this started to happen all our doubts about its viability as a method of teaching went out of the window – it began to feel like we were teaching in a college. The technology may be different but the experience is the same.

To answer your question as to whether it is a ‘positive trend’. Just as there are really good books out there, there are really good online courses, and likewise there are some really bad books written by authors with little experience. It isn’t a positive or a negative trend, its just a trend and it isn’t new. Correspondence courses on magic have been around since at least the early 1980’s, the difference is the technology being used which opens up new possibilities. In the end the community will decide whether they will work or not. If a course is bad, the word will get around the community really quick and people will simply stop signing on to it.

On the College of the Sacred Mists web site, it says that your current practical work is in the area of Spiritism and Trance Prophesy. Could the two of you touch a bit on these explorations for my audience?

First, we should explain, so that there is no misunderstanding, that this is not what the course with College of Sacred Mists is about. With the College we’re doing a seven month course called Progressive Magic. There are some things you can teach on line and other things you can’t, and this is definetly a subject which requires a ‘hands on’ approach.

I (Janet) have always been a natural medium. When I came into the Craft and was taught Drawing Down the Moon I went to it like a ‘duck to water’. I always assumed that everyone had the same experience as myself; going completely into deep trance. As Stewart and myself started to travel in the 1980’s we found that this was not the case and that I was luckily naturally gifted.

Gavin and myself started to explore this more deeply in the mid 90’s. Experimenting with different techniques including traditional Drawing Down where you use a silver bowl, and several trance induction techniques. Both of us had an interest in the Norse and Anglo-Saxon techniques used in what is called Seith or Seidr, and after seeing Diane Paxson; one of the foremost exponents of Seidr trance practise, at work with one of her trance groups, we became inspired to do more. We ended up studying other traditions including Shamanism, Santeria and Voudon (’riding the Loa’), to understand how these traditions used and induced trance and brought deity-spirits through.

It became very clear to us that there were some inherent problems with the current Drawing Down the Moon ritual used in modern Wicca, the main one being an actual lack of trance technique. So we went about creating a safe generic technique to teach trance-prophesy using what we have called The Underworld Descent Technique. Part of this process is using energy (Chakras) and visualization pathworking using a hypnotic induction technique.

We also teach that the Gods and Goddesses are REAL, not just Jungian archetypes. That they are spirits with their own personalities, capable of communicating with you through trance and in some cases positively possessing you when the circumstances are right. We have had quite a few seers and seeresses possessed by deities at different times. Originally we taught this as part of a weekend workshop (The Inner Mysteries) but it has become so successful that we now teach evening and one day sessions.

Aside from your publishing, teaching, and spiritual pursuits, are either of you involved in any activst or charity-related projects? If so, could you talk a bit about that? In a related note, what is your collective take on the M3 expansion through the Tara valley? I know that at least one member of Teampall Na Callaighe is actively involved in direct actions to help stop the current progress.

We’re not involved as much as we’d like in activist activities. Unfortunately the current situation since 911 has made it difficult for us to be involved in direct action, particularly regarding the M3, as we cannot afford to be arrested or ‘black marked’ by the authorities, as this would affect our ability to gain entry into the US for tours. Most American citizens are unaware that if you are arrested as a political activist outside the US you will be denied a visa and entry.

The whole situation with Tara and the M3 is part of bigger problem currently occurring in Ireland with the conflict in the Irish psyche between spirituality and materialism. In the 1990’s we had an upsurge of economic expansion, and at the same time the decline of the influence of the Catholic Church here. The Irish have always been a very spiritual people, but the scandals around the Church here, have resulted in a cynicism taking its place, and movement towards more materialistic values. Now every family wants two cars which they can replace every year and a new house. To quote Francesca Howell: ‘they have a nasty dose of affluenza!’. This conflict between the material and the spiritual in the culture has over flowed into the Irish countryside and the M3/Tara Valley conflict is symbolic of this change in social perspective.

Many people outside of Ireland are unaware of the other problems we face here: Peoples rights are being eroded and we widespread corruption in the Government. It is common for Government bodies to go through ‘processes of consultation’ with local communities to give an impression of democracy and then totally ignore that communities wishes. At present we are involved (alongside the M3 campaign which is linked) with a campaign to stop Eirgrid, the electricity provider putting up monster pylons across the countryside. Nobody wants them, they are a risk to the environment, wildlife, people’s individual health and the archeology. But, any complaint against this damage is ignored. We are pleased to say that this has resulted in a groundswell of public dissension – Irish people are beginning to realise that they have power at a grass roots level.

While I’m on the subject of Ireland’s spiritual landscape, I notice that you do tours of ancient sites in Ireland, and Janet has produced a DVD of Celtic fairy stories. Is Ireland’s pre-Christan past a big influence on your spirituality and practice?

Pagan tour groups started approaching us several years ago, in fact one of the first groups was one run by Starhawk as far back as the early 1980’s. It seemed natural to advertise that we were ‘open for business’ in this area. So far we have toured groups from the United States, Mexico and Australia. We have an advantage in this area as we live central to most of the major ancient sites in Ireland, and we also know where all the lesser known, more intimate ones are which attract ‘activity’ of a spiritual nature.

When you live in Ireland you can’t ignore the heritage around you. If you are a pagan or a witch you certainly can’t ignore. Just about every coven we know links itself to the spirituality of its environment. Our coven is linked to Slieve na Callaighe (The Hill of the Witch), part of a series of hills in County Meath known as Lough Crew which has neolithic burial tombs stretched across them. Only just recently we went up at dawn to watch the sunrise on this hill as the tomb on top is aligned with the Spring Equinox.

Many of our coven, including ourselves link to deities outside of Ireland, including Freya, and Diana, but we do not ignore the heritage of this land or the ancestral spirits of it. At Imbolg we make offerings to Brid and at Lughnasa to Lugh and also throw offerings into our local river to our local river goddess Boann. Witchcraft here is linked very much to the land here, and the mythology of the Irish can be found in every hill and at every ancient site.

What new books and other projects can we expect on the horizon from the two of you?

You may not see any new books from us for a while. We do have one book being written at the moment on our experiences with trance and psychism but its publication is a long way off. At present we are concentrating on the practical workshops and the online courses. We are touring again this year, and will be in New York State, Connecticut and Washington DC towards the end of August and September.

As both of you continue in your roles as elders and teachers within the wider Pagan community, what do you think will be your greatest legacy to the modern Paganism movement?

That’s a good question, and we’re not really sure that it is our place to say! In the end I think we will be judged on what effect we have had, what we have done, rather than any claims we have made about ourselves. If we have changed one person, and allowed them to find their spirituality and connection to divinity then we are happy that we have achieved something. It only takes one person to change the world.

Previous Wild Hunt interviews: Starhawk, Gus diZerega, Jeff Sharlet, Brendan Cathbad Myers, Rita Moran, Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone, Phyllis Curott, Tim Ward, Lupa, J.C. Hallman, Margot Adler.

Few living modern Pagans have had as much influence on our interconnected movements as Starhawk. Author, outspoken activist, and co-founder of the Reclaiming Tradition of Witchcraft, she, along with several others, helped shape threads of modern Paganism that were more explicitly feminist and eco-activist in nature. She is perhaps most famous for her 1979 book “The Spiral Dance”, a work that synthesized elements of spiritual feminism, Wicca, environmentalism, and the teachings of Victor Anderson into something entirely new. This year we not only approach the 30th anniversary of that book, but of the yearly Reclaiming-sponsored Spiral Dance Samhain ritual, which has evolved from a small Bay Area community-based ritual into an international event that draws nearly 2000 people. I was lucky enough to recently conduct a short e-mail interview with Starhawk about both of these anniversaries, and her vision for the future.

This interview will be part of a larger piece about the 30th anniversary of the Spiral Dance to be published by the Pagan Newswire Collective in late October/early November.

Starhawk

What started out as a release party for your book “The Spiral Dance” has evolved into a massive multi-day ritual pageant, complete with original art, music, and dance, that draws people from far outside the San Francisco area. To what do you attribute this success, and what do you think the Spiral Dance represents to the hundreds who attend?

Let me just start by saying that the Spiral Dance has always been, first and foremost, a ritual. Although the first one was also a book release party, uppermost in our minds was the desire to create a powerful, public ritual on a scale that we had never tried before. And I wanted to involve friends of mine who were artists, musicians, poets—to honor the arts as sacred activities. In retrospect, we did crazy things. We had Goddess dancers in porcelain headdresses sculpted by Medea Maquis, and wearing macramé costumes all hand-made by my dear friend Kevyn Lutton. Another sculptor, Eleanor Myers, made sixteen porcelain headpieces for the chorus. They were all beautiful—and you can see them in the video that’s on our new website. But they were incredibly hot, heavy, and breakable!

But that was the spirit in which we approached the ritual—let’s go all out, over the top, and see what we can create. And I think that’s why it has become a tradition.

Now, the Spiral Dance is many things. It’s a performance, that we hope moves people both esthetically and spiritually, and that serves as a vehicle for many, many people to express their creativity in different ways: building altars, creating dances and invocations, singing in the chorus. It’s a place where we can come together to mourn our dead and reconnect with their spirits in deep meditation. And again, beyond everything else, it’s an amazing, participatory ritual where over a thousand people dance together and raise focused power for our vision of healing and renewal.

Your book is also seeing its 30th year in print. In those intervening years you’ve become one of the most visible modern Pagans, acting as a panelist for the Washington Post’s “On Faith” project, and making international news with your activism. Has your notoriety changed how you view The Spiral Dance – the book, and the event?

I don’t know if ‘notoriety’ is actually the word that fits—that, such as it is, and a quarter might get me on a bus. Actually, these days it would probably take a couple of dollars.

Thirty years ago, books had more impact than they do today. Merlin Stone’s book When God Was a Woman came out in 1976. In 1979, three important books came out: mine, Margot Adler’s Drawing Down the Moon, and the anthology edited by Carol Christ and Judith Plaskow, Womanspirit Rising. Together they helped to take what was really a tiny movement of a few of us in our living rooms doing circles, and boost it up into a major movement—really several intercepting movements—the womanspirit movement, the earth-based spirituality movement, the Pagan movement.

Throughout the eighties, Harper SanFrancisco was looking for books on feminist spirituality to publish. They saw it as a niche, but a large enough one that they could do well by serving it. In the nineties, sometime perhaps around the time Harper Collins was bought by Rupert Murdoch, they shifted focus. They dropped a huge number of contracts—not mine, but many other quality books, and like publishing as a whole, moved away from serving specific communities and toward a general mass-market focus. Harper SanFrancisco now publishes mostly Christian books. And publishing overall is in turmoil, losing readers to the Internet.

So, while its easier than ever to publish—all you have to do is set up a blog and you can publish yourself—it’s harder than ever to find publishers for deeper, more thoughtful works or for them to find an audience. HarperSanFrancisco did a tenth anniversary edition and a twentieth anniversary edition of The Spiral Dance, but they didn’t want to do a thirtieth unless I significantly rewrote the book, which I decided I didn’t want to do. I think the book still stands on its own, especially with the commentary I’ve added in the later editions. Perhaps because I wrote it when I was young, fervent and in the first throes of my love affair with the Goddess, it has an energy of its own that I didn’t want to mess with. If I were going to rewrite it, I’d rather write something new, which I did a few years ago, The Earth Path.

As for the ritual—I still love it! I work on it every year in some capacity, as part of the ‘cell’ or collective that puts it on. People join the cell by taking on a coordinating role, whether that’s directing the chorus or directing the cleanup—a truly vital role! We have a visioning meeting early on, and invite a large group of people who have a connecting to the ritual. From that, we draw our theme and intention and imagery for the year.

Reclaiming works collectively, and we try to pass around roles of leadership and responsibility. So—I’ve done many things for the Spiral Dance, from writing or rewriting parts of it, to unloading the storage space and hoisting the platforms for the altars. Some years I lead the trance—other years I’ll take a smaller role in the ritual itself and let someone else take the central roles.

One change—for many years we did not allow photography at any of our rituals. We felt there was a power in the ritual happening at the moment, and that photographs were intrusive and made people feel paranoid. However, in recent years we’ve changed that policy for the Spiral Dance. The world has changed—and communication now is visual, on the web. We found we couldn’t get calendar listing without good photos. So we experimented with asking a couple of the photographers and videographers in our community to shoots some photos in a limited and respectful way. They did an amazing job—and we learned that photography, too, can be a sacred art when it is practiced in the right spirit. I’ve put together two short videos that have let over 20,000 people catch a glimpse of our ritual. They can be viewed on our website.

This year our theme is ‘the next generation’, and we’re bringing many of our teens and youth into ritual roles, together with some of our elders. I’ll be co-leading the trance with my dear friend Rose May Dance, one of our early Reclaiming members, and with a young teen, Julian Litauer-Chen, who has also sung in the chorus for many years.

Reclaiming, the Witchcraft tradition that sponsors the annual Spiral Dance, has become a vibrant international presence within the modern Pagan movement. How do you think this growth and evolution have changed the event?

Bay Area Reclaiming used to be Reclaiming—now we are just one community among many. The Spiral Dance used to be the Big Event for all of Reclaiming—now it is one ritual among many, including other rituals in the Bay Area and all the rituals people are doing in their home communities. I’m thrilled that Reclaiming has grown, and our vision has always been one of many linked, decentralized communities with their own identities and characters.

But people still love The Spiral Dance—and many people come from far away to participate. This year, our house is full with visitors from Vermont, Boston, Montreal, L.A. and San Diego. We’ve had guests from England, Australia, New Zealand—all over the world.

What are your personal feelings on this 30th anniversary?

I’m thrilled at what we’ve accomplished, excited for this year’s ritual, and a bit shocked to think that I wrote the book thirty years ago!

How have your visions for the future shifted during the first 30 years? What do you envision the 60th annual Spiral Dance will be like?

I see two roads for the future—and that’s part of the theme and imagery of this year’s and previous Spiral Dances. On one road, we continue to pump fossil fuels into the atmosphere and pump the poisons of fear, racism, hate, and war-mongering into the psychic atmosphere. By 2039, we’ll face a world of drought, famine, endemic war, potentially a loss of our civil liberties, hundreds of millions of deaths, oceans rising…

Then there’s the other road, the good road, the road of life…where we make the tremendous shifts we need to make, where we recognize the sacred in every human being and in the interconnected web of all life, where—as our litany says—“we draw our power from the wind and sun.” “May the old ones and the young be loved, and all the forms of love be blessed, and all the colors of our skin be praised, and all the cycles of life be saved.”

That’s the vision we raise power for at The Spiral Dance, that’s what we dance for and sing for, and what we work for all the other days of the year. It is my deepest hope that, thirty years from now, we are walking firmly on the good road, and that a new generation is still dancing the Spiral.

Previous Wild Hunt interviews: Gus diZerega, Jeff Sharlet, Brendan Cathbad Myers, Rita Moran, Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone, Phyllis Curott, Tim Ward, Lupa, J.C. Hallman, Margot Adler.

I would just like to quickly mention that I have been interviewed by the comics and culture e-zine Sequential Tart. So if you’re interested in hearing me opine about polytheism, blogging, and our mythic imagination why not head on over? I now return you to our regularly scheduled content.

Author and academic Gus diZerega is one of the strongest Pagan voices on the importance of Christian-Pagan dialog. His 2001 book “Pagans & Christians: The Personal Spiritual Experience” was a bridge-building work that sought to begin a reconciliation between Pagans and Christians, and emphasized a need for more communication. Now, the journey that started with “Pagans & Christians” continues with “Beyond the Burning Times: A Pagan and Christian in Dialogue”, a truly open conversation with Australian theologian Philip Johnson that explores our differences and similarities. I was lucky enough to conduct an e-mail interview with Gus diZerega concerning this book, what he learned from the experience, and why Christians seem to worry so much about the Pagan resurgence.

Gus diZerega

While there are certainly tensions between Christianity and other non-Christian faiths, there seems to be something about modern Pagan religions that especially troubles certain factions within the larger Christian community. What is it about Paganism that makes some Christians worry about us so much, even though we are relatively tiny in size?

I think there are a number of reasons. It’s a complex matter. First, we have arisen within a Christian culture, a very self confident one, and we explicitly reject its Abrahamic spiritual tradition as being good for us. Not only that, we look to the pre-Christian past for inspiration and grounding. We represent the rise of something Christian leaders thought they had vanquished long ago, and we should never forget that initial vanquishing involved the sword far more than persuasion. Add religious liberty and the outcome would have been far different. For the most rabid of our attackers, our reappearance also seems evidence that we are in the end times, a time of religious war, at least for the likes of Dispenastionalists.

It matters that many of us have ‘fallen away’ from our childhood Christianity. In my experience, strong believers of secular ideologies are least tolerant of those who once shared their views, and now differ. I suspect it is no different here. We saw the ‘truth’ and rejected it, which from a believers’ need for certainty, is worse than being ignorant.

In addition, modern Paganism locates the sacred in the world as well as above it, fundamentally challenging Christianity as it has usually presented itself. Many lay Christians are potentially sympathetic to our position because it is in accord with their own experience of the sacred. We didn’t come up with terms like “God’s country,” after all. Experience has often been at war with dogma in Christian history and our emphasis on almost anything but dogma is very hard for dogma to rebut or dogmatics to tolerate.

Our emphasis on divine immanence also undermines many dimensions of conservative and Fundamentalist Christian theology. Most of the world’s major religions emphasize a salvational or similar purpose for us in this vale of tears. We reject this spiritual problem as relevant for us, and so our challenge is deeper than our rather small numbers suggest. We open a very threatening door that others might pass through.

For example, we honor the Divine Feminine as first among equals. That portion of the Christian community that most viciously attacks Pagans also has also most thoroughly eliminated the feminine from their image of the sacred. They have almost nothing to offer women spiritually beyond preserving their ignorance that alternatives exist to their psychological and spiritual misogyny.

More liberal Christians are now seeking to inject or rediscover the feminine into their conception of deity. Our existence has encouraged many within the Christian community to recognize the feminine face of deity. But doing so strikes at the core of fundamentalist theology which privileges divine power over divine love. So we are a double threat, first by our example, second, by others encouraged by our example to recognize a stronger feminine role in their own tradition.

We also recognize the sacred as it manifests within the forces of nature, and our holy days explicitly honor natural cycles and seasons. As I explained in Pagans and Christians, even the Old Testament shows a powerful ecological ethic. It does not find nature to be sacred, as we do, because the tradition generally sees nature as God’s artifact, but most certainly the sacred is seen to manifest through nature. This aspect of Christianity has been largely ignored until recently, excepting small but important examples like Saint Francis.

But modern right-wing Christianity is deeply committed to dominating nature, subjugating it, and in its most pathological forms, using it up since we are supposed to get a new earth after Armageddon. Their God is a God of will and domination, and they seek to replicate these characteristics in their relations to the land and towards people who differ from them. Our very existence helps expose the poverty, narcissism, and arbitrariness of their view of the sacred, and for many people we provide an attractive alternative to such stuff. This kind of Christian will always be threatened by us.

But this implacable hostility is not true for all Christians. Philip Johnson certainly is not guilty. We Pagans need to remember that Christianity is incredibly diverse. I myself have come to think of Christianity as a umbrella term for a variety of competing monotheisms, a kind of closet polytheism: pick the God you want so long as it is male, and worship only it. Catholics, Southern Baptists, Pentecostals and Methodists worship very different Gods. Their Jesus figures differ as well. That is why Pentecostalist Pat Robertson could describe Methodists as being in the spirit of the Antichrist. It is why whenever I offer a criticism of Christianity, I seem always to be told that that is not true for all Christians. Probably nothing is true for all Christians except their use of the name.

Now many Christians are innocent of the problems I outlined above, other than the polytheism issue, but these are not the ones you asked me about.

Your book, “Pagans & Christians: The Personal Spiritual Experience”, which came out in 2001, sought to “reconcile” Paganism and Christianity. Now, with the publication of this dialog in 2008, do you think we are any closer? Is there more understanding and trust between our faith communities?

Let me dispel a possible misunderstanding. The term “reconcile” was not mine. I will be very happy with mutual toleration. A great many Christians believe their old claim that they are the only way by which people can be saved from Hell, and as Christians they have a duty to ‘witness’ in order to save us. Pagans by contrast do not believe we are the only spiritually valid path, nor do we believe we have any duty to bring the truths of Paganism to others. If others are interested, we are happy to invite their participation, and unlike earlier times, we can now be public. We do not go door to door, we do not stand on street corners with literature or megaphones, we do not finance missionaries, we do not attack other spiritual paths if they leave us alone.

I did offer a pretty straightforward Biblical interpretation that pointed directly towards spiritual pluralism. If that or something like it were accepted, reconciliation would follow as they recognized the legitimacy of multiple paths. But that choice is theirs.

So the real task of reconciliation is on the part of Christians, not Pagans, because we have no problem with Christianity so long as it respects our own religious freedom. Christians need to recognize they are one (well, many) spiritual path among many others, of which Pagans are only one.

In fact a great many Christians are coming to this recognition. Christians getting involved in interfaith work discover their path is far from the only one speaking to sincere people in spiritually valid ways. They take their discoveries back to their own faith communities. The fundamentalists who attack interfaith claim it is part of a plot to create one world religion, but anyone actually involved knows this is delusional or dishonest. We are all learning to respect one another, and when that happens, no reconciliation is needed.

As a result of many Pagans getting involved in interfaith dialogue, today we can see we have made incredible strides in dispelling false beliefs about who we are and what we do, and among the more liberal Christian community We have also forged many strong personal ties of affection, regard and respect. There we have seen enormous progress.

On the other hand, and here I speak of the United States only because I do not know whether this madness strongly afflicts other cultures, the eruption of an aggressive fundamentalist, authoritarian, politicized Christianity has increased the level of nasty rhetoric and potentially also of nasty actions against us. Christianity is bifurcating between traditions who recognize they are part of an irreducibly religiously plural world, and those who see themselves in a life and death struggle with beliefs different from their own. This latter group is powerful, but I think they have over played their hand, and so I am optimistic that the positive changes will ultimately count for more than their hatred, and that the needed reconciliation will mostly take place.

In the section on interfaith work, you said that Pagans can be of great service to the larger spiritual community. Could you elaborate on what qualities make Pagans so well-suited for interfaith activities?

As a religious community, we are relatively unusual in being free from that orientation, thoroughly conversant with modern values, and unusually well represented in the computer and internet technologies so useful in building interfaith networks. I know these traits have helped interfaith work in California and even more droadly, and I would imagine they would be equally helpful elsewhere.

Because of our openness to the validity of other spiritual paths, Pagans are well suited to be “honest brokers” in interfaith discussions. In addition, we have already played a significant role in empowering many aboriginal and indigenous spiritual communities in part, at least, because we do not look down on them as primitive or ignorant. After all, much of what they do, we do. In general, the stronger the interfaith community; the safer the Pagan community.

In your conclusion, you say that Paganism “decenters” religion, just as spirituality “decenters” the self. Could explain to my audience what that means, and how this phenomenon within Paganism differentiates us from Christian religion?

When I said spirituality decenters the self I meant it puts our personal concerns in a larger and deeper context, the largest and deepest we two leggeds can encompass. When I am focused on my own self as separate from everyone else, I can end up obsessing over even very tiny slights or misunderstandings, growing them into mountains of resentment and anger. We probably have all had the experience of focusing on some problem, making it a Big Deal, and we then see someone in a wheelchair. What seemed so big suddenly becomes very small. Spirituality puts everything we experience not only into a bigger context, it is a context characterized by meaning, compassion, beauty, and love. Such has been my experience anyway. So the self ceases to be the center of our universe once we begin to grasp this larger context.

Paganism does the same for religion by demonstrating one can be genuinely and deeply religious without saying my or any other path is best, and that every religion as we practice it illuminates only a portion of the whole divine picture. We free ourselves from equating genuine spirituality with a particular path or expression of the sacred. Instead, it is a quality of engagement found within many paths.

Think of your family. You are likely very devoted to your family without thereby thinking all other families are inferior. They are simply not your family. Same with religion. Now think back how grim the world was when people honored and trusted only their families. Where such attitudes survive, as in Southern Italy, they contribute to suspicion, violence, and oppression.

Religions are different recognitions and celebrations of humankind’s encounter with that which is superhuman. They are perhaps the most fulfilling expressions of human creativity in this world, bringing together all of our arts, our philosophies and theologies, our hearts and our minds, all in a recognition and honoring of the sacred that underlies and manifests in our reality.

To pick another mundane example, each religion is akin to a composer of beautiful music. It is as silly to confuse a composer with music as it is to confuse a religion with spirituality.

Now that you have engaged in this dialog with Philip Johnson, in what ways do you feel you have deepened your understanding of Christianity? Has it altered how you envision them in any way?

I was quite taken by his evident sincerity and with the good will underlying this sincerity. Philip Johnson challenged in a happy way the impression I had formed that most evangelicals were arrogant, regarding others’ spiritual and religious practices as Satanic errors or a sign of deep and catastrophic ignorance. The best of them were good people but very narrow in their appreciation for others.

Before working with Philip the only significant exception to my unhappy conclusion were a very few people I had had the pleasure of meeting who were associated with the Spiritual Counterfeits Project. Philip Johnson and Lion Hudson Press have sensitized me further to the great complexity of the evangelical community.

We will probably never agree on the ultimate nature of spiritual reality, but we don’t have to. Philip may still think I am destined for hell, I don’t know. But I am convinced he is willing to leave that issue and its outcome up to me and God.

His example makes me more optimistic than ever before that we will be able to live together with mutual good will and respect.

In the book’s “responsive thoughts”, Lainie Petersen criticizes you for “raising the specters” of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell in the section on culture wars. Do you think Pagans overestimate the influence and power of these men (and men like them)? Is it “unfair” to name-check the most “bombastic” of fundamentalists when engaging in a dialog?

I do not think it is unfair at all. If I did not mention them, they would be the 500 pound gorilla in the closet. Why did I not address them? They have largely defined what Christianity is in the American media for many years. It is a false picture, promoted by the corporate press for political reasons, as well as lazy and craven reporters who have lost all competence in doing their job, and right wing politicians using them to split the public so they would get what Pat Buchanan described as the ‘bigger half.’ But it has been the dominant picture nonetheless.

Second, so long as a religion claims to be fundamentally more true than any others, it will encourage a certain kind of narcissistic believer to lord it over everyone else. Give those people access to political power and you have the possibility of their creating Hell on earth. In terms of how they would want to treat others the only major difference between people like that and the Taliban and Al Qaeda is lack of sufficient power.

Third, the culture war is basically an assault on the feminine in the name of a pathological masculinity, a masculinity that is not only out of balance, it denies that balance is even an issue because the feminine can be ignored. At its core modern NeoPaganism is a recognition of the feminine as equal to the masculine in ALL things. And so the culture war waged by so-called ‘Christians” and their secular right wing allies is at its core an assault on what is must central to our spirituality.

Fourth, the rest of the Christian community seems for the most part to have not denounced what is done and advocated in its name. They should not be surprised that we treat these people as Christians. They themselves do.

Christians cannot have it both ways. If the ‘Christian’ right, including certain conservative Catholics, are considered legitimate Christians, and they spread hatred and lies about us, and have access to political power, in self-defense we will focus on them and the threat they poses. If other Christians strongly denounce these people publicly, and reject what they do as Christian, then on matter of dialogue we can spend much more time on more interesting topics.

From excommunication to shunning, Christians have a variety of ways of demonstrating someone is no longer a member of their community. It is past time they did so with these people.

If you could transmit just one idea or fact about modern Paganism to Christians, what would it be?

We are not trying to proselytize. We certainly are personally committed to our own path as a good one for us and are happy to share it. But it is of small moment to us whether you join us or not. If you do – welcome! If you do not, we wish you fulfillment wherever Spirit may lead you. Get your house in order and then, if you want, visit ours as a guest.

Now that this book is out, what is the “next step”. What advice would you give Christians and Pagans wanting to continue the work begun in this book?

Get involved in interfaith work in your local communities. False beliefs about us are best dispelled through personal contact. It is easy to believe falsehoods about people we do not know. And of course that cuts both ways. The Christians you meet in interfaith work will be among the most committed and caring in their community. So it is a win-win situation for us all.

One of my fondest memories is organizing an interfaith tree planting in Berkeley, California. Each religious group conducted their own planting in their own way. But we planted them together. The dark forces unleashed by those worshipping power and domination are best undermined when we do not divide ourselves into exclusive communities looking distrustfully out on everyone else. That is why those forces seek to sow distrust. We all have our own communities, and that is as it should be. But we can leave our doors open to the neighbors.

[Stay tuned for "part two" of my "Beyond the Burning Times"-themed interviews. In the next installment, I'll be interviewing Christian theologian Philip Johnson.]

Previous Wild Hunt interviews: Jeff Sharlet, Brendan Cathbad Myers, Rita Moran, Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone, Phyllis Curott, Tim Ward, Lupa, J.C. Hallman, Margot Adler.

If you have been around the religious blogosphere for awhile, you have most likely heard of Jeff Sharlet. An author and journalist, he helped found two seminal web sites full of insightful commentary on faith in today’s world (Killing the Buddha and The Revealer), co-wrote a book about religious subcultures in America (which included a trip to a Pagan festival), and filed dispatches on the intersections of religion and power for such publications as Rolling Stone, Harpers, and Mother Jones. His most recent book is “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power”, an expose of elite fundamentalism’s avant-garde.

Jeff Sharlet

I was lucky enough to conduct a short e-mail interview with Jeff about his new book, what Pagans have to fear from The Family, and what we can do about it.

Some members of modern Pagan faiths have long warned of a theocratic Christian cabal bent on taking over America, often with the usual suspects of conservative Christianity playing a part. These fears have often been debunked, but your book “The Family” seems to in part vindicate those voices, albeit not in the ways they imagined. Who are “The Family”, and are they really trying to take over the government?

They’re not trying to take over government; they’ve been a part of government for almost seventy years. The Family is a network of conservative Christian elites in government, military, and business bound together by what The Family’s founder, Abraham Vereide, called simply “The Idea.” The Idea came to Vereide one night in April, 1935. God, he’d later say, revealed to him that Christianity’s emphasis on the poor, the suffering, the weak, the down and out, was all wrong. God wanted Vereide to minister not to the poor, but the powerful. He called them the “up and out” — corporate executives, politicians. The Idea was that if you could win the hearts of these “key men,” they, in turn, would dispense blessings to the masses. It was, in effect, trickle down religion, and it’s been the creed of religious conservative elites ever since, the justification for their war on organized labor and their support for foreign dictators, from Papa Doc Duvalier to Suharto to the thugs supported through the Silk Road Act, sponsored by Family politicians Senator Sam Brownback and Rep. Joe Pitts.

Domestically, The Family have long been at the heart of the Christianist assault on the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause – “Congress shall make no laws respecting the establishment of religion” – which is the guarantee of the Free Exercise Clause that makes America free (in theory, at least) for Pagan. In 1953, The Family established the National Prayer Breakfast; in 1954, Family politicians led the fight for “Under God” in the pledge and “In God We Trust” on our currency. More recently, Representative Tony Hall, a conservative Democrat from Ohio, made the National Day of Prayer a fixed, permanent affair, with White House observance orchestrated by Shirley Dobson – wife of Christian Right leader Jim Dobson.

Faith-based initiatives was first theorized by Family politicians such as Ed Meese in the 1980s; the legislation that opened the door for it, the 1996 Charitable Choice Provision, came from the offices of two Family politicians, John Ashcroft and Dan Coats.

Historic members have included men such as Strom Thurmond, William Rehnquist, and Senator Homer “Snort” Capehart, inventor of the jukebox (good) and defender of Nazis (not so good). (There have never been a lot of women involved.)

Which is all to say that the question we need to ask about fundamentalists is not, “What are they going to do?” but “What have they already done?” Fundamentalism is not a cabal or a conspiracy; it’s an ideology, and for nearly 70 years it has led America away from democracy and toward empire.

The theology of The Family seems quite different from the usual Christian conservatives and fire-breathing fundamentalists we often see covered in the news (though some of them are members or associates of The Family as well). Can you expand on what they believe, and what “Jesus Plus Nothing” means to them?

I first heard the phrase “Jesus plus nothing” at a spiritual counseling session The Family’s longtime leader, Doug Coe, was giving Representative Tod Tiahrt, a Kansas Republican. Tiahrt was going on about the usual Christian Right concerns – abortion, queers, and Muslims. Coe waved it all off. He agreed with Tiahrt across the board, but he saw that list as too limited. What, he asked, does Jesus have to teach us about Social Security? About building roads? The Family’s vision of “Jesus plus nothing” leads them to seek a government conformed at every level, in every department, every office, to the will of their totalizing Jesus. There’s a sense in which this is a weirdly bureaucratic Christ. He doesn’t stand on street corners and shout about revelation; he whispers his message in the ears of his “New Chosen,” as some Family members call themselves. And the message is almost always the same: “privatize.” For seventy years, The Family has been dedicated to deregulating markets in order to free up the “invisible hand” of God.

I was intrigued by the notion of The Family performing “spiritual assassinations” on political leaders (making them “die in spirit” to Jesus), getting close enough to perform their “hit” through innocuous-seeming events like the National Prayer Breakfast (which they organize). Who are some high-profile “hits” we may have heard of?

Just to be clear – they’re not killing anybody. You’re referring to Chapter Eight, “Vietnamization,” in which I write about The Family’s admiration for the guerilla warfare tactics of the Vietcong. In 1966 – the same year Family leader Doug Coe announced that The Family was going “underground,” erasing its public profile – another Family leader, Clif Robinson, met with the U.S. ambassador to Laos, William Sullivan – strategist of the “secret” – and illegal – air war against that country. Robinson reported back to American Family leadership on what he learned.

“He said the strategy of the VC was the same as International Christian Leadership’s,” gushed Robinson, “except applied physically and militarily. They spend hours, days, weeks, what ever time is necessary setting up for the LEADERS and then either by ambush, assassination, or other intrigue, they do away with them—not the people, the leaders. He said to kill 32 top level people”—as the Vietcong had done the previous month—“was tantamount to immobilizing thousands.” The lesson was that the Fellowship should understand itself as a guerrilla force on the spiritual battlefield.

They wanted their “victims” to “die to self” – that is, to commit themselves totally to Jesus plus nothing. One of their greatest “hits” was Chuck Colson, the Watergate felon. In his mega-selling memoir, “Born Again,” Colson writes of being recruited into The Family, which he describes as “a veritable underground of Christ’s men all through government,” through Doug Coe and the CEO of missile manufacturer Raytheon. Colson would later declare that through The Family’s religion, he was able to accomplish much of what he had once hoped to do politically. “Dying to self” paradoxically gave him a supreme sense of self-righteousness, a confidence – and a political network – through which he’s built up one of the most powerful Christian Right organizations in the world.

Some journalists and bloggers focused quite a bit of attention on the fact that Hillary Clinton is a “friend” of The Family. That through her, The Family would have access and influence. Should we have been worried if Clinton won the Democratic Presidential nomination? How deep are her ties to the family, and are they already looking to become “friends” with Obama?

The Family’s faith is a religion of the status quo. We shouldn’t be worried about what MIGHT happen; we should be worried about what has happened. If you look around the world as it is and think, “A-Ok!”, then you’ve no problem with The Family. If you look at Washington and see a healthy, happy democracy, then you’ve no problem with The Family. But if you’re disturbed by a government that’s more responsive to corporations than to people, by a two-party system in which both sides vote for a war the public didn’t want, by a politics of private influence and quiet deals, then yes, we should have been worried about The Family’s influence in a Clinton administration. We should also be worried about its potential influence in an Obama administration. The Family has endured for 70 years, longer than any other major Christian Right organization, not through doctrinal purity but by compromise with the powers that be. Power is their bottom line.

When Hillary had it, they wanted in. As she writes in her memoir, “Living History,” she joined a Family prayer group comprised of conservative politicians’ wives in 1993. She calls Doug Coe – a man who claims that Hitler, Stalin, and Mao understood the New Testament better than almost any other leaders in the 20th century – “a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide.” And she used The Family to tack right, teaming up with men such as Senator Sam Brownback and former Senator Rick Santorum on legislation that subtly redefined human rights as Christian issues.

This is not to say Hillary is a stealth fundamentalist. She is what she appears to be – a centrist Democrat. To be honest, I voted for her in the NY primary, because of her health plan. I’m glad Obama won; but I’m worried about his willingness to discard principles in pursuit of a false unity. The most troubling example of that is his plan to actually expand faith-based initiatives. Of course, he adds that organizations won’t be allowed to discriminate. But anyone who’s reported on faith-based initiatives firsthand will tell you that such regulations are impossible to enforce. Some Obama supporters say he’s just doing what he has to do to win. That’s exactly the way elite fundamentalists want it – to “win,” you have to play by their rules. I don’t think that’s true. I’m hoping that ultimately, Obama doesn’t, either.

You talk about the differences and similarities between the “populist” and “elitist” branches of American fundamentalism (together forming a “popular front”). With The Family typifying an elitist manifestation, and evangelical mega-churches like Colorado’s New Life Church (formerly headed by disgraced pastor Ted Haggard) typifying the “populist” branch. I was struck by how New Life actively worked to drive out Pagan Witches and other undesirables from their city. Is driving out the “Witches” (the religious “other”) a shared goal between the populist and elitist branches? Or simply the consequence of fundamentalist Christianity coming into power?

Some populist fundamentalists have actually criticized The Family for their willingness to make peace with and conference with those whom they lump under the label of “New Agers.” That was years ago, when Family leaders, like many conservative evangelicals, saw the wide array of beliefs they lumped under “New Age” as a threat to Christianity. They don’t, anymore – not because they’ve made their peace with those beliefs but because they don’t think those followers of those beliefs have much power. Ultimately, the inner circle of The Family considers all non-monotheistic beliefs “demonic.” At their C Street House for congressmen, they used to have a prayer calendar listing spiritual war targets for the day – Tibetan Buddhism, Hinduism, Wicca, etc.

In an interview with Alternet you described The Family as “ultimately something worse” than fascism. Since “fascism” is usually considered the ultimate manifestation of political evil, on the right and left, what makes this group worse?

The fact that it’s far more effective. Fascism, properly understood, was a relatively short-lived European ideology. There have been other examples of it since, but by far the most powerful ideology since 1945 has been not fascism, but empire. One church historian says of The Family that they’re not right-wing and certainly not left-wing, but “empire-wing.” Fascism may be a purer evil, but empire is a more pervasive one, and ultimately more dangerous because it’s able to call on the loyalties of well-intentioned people who’d never go near fascism. But if you’re a Vietnamese kid napalmed in 1968, or an Iraqi kid with your hands blown off in 2008, empire is every bit as bad as fascism. Or, for that matter, if you’re a Bangladeshi or a Chinese sweat shop worker or an Afghani forced to grow and process heroin to survive, the economic ramifications of empire are as bad as the explicit political repression of fascism. And for decades, what traditional fascism has cropped up around the world – in Central America, in some African nations, for instance – has been made possible only through the support of empire.

On point you make in the book is that secular America keeps trying to announce the death of fundamentalism, of conservative Christian power, but that these frequent declarations are rarely real. That the “defeats” are merely part of a natural ebb and flow of fundamentalism in America. Instead of shrinking, conservative “muscular” Christianity grows ever stronger and is very much a part of the American fabric. Is the much-touted recent “evangelical crack-up” just another natural ebb? Will we see audacious power-grabs by fundamentalist forces in the near future?

We see audacious power-grabs right now! For instance, Rwanda has recently become the first official “Purpose-Driven Nation,” remade in the image of evangelical pastor Rick Warren’s bestselling “Purpose Driven Life” with the support of U.S. dollars and faith-based initiatives. Closer to home, the Justice Department is supporting a program called “Fugitive Safe Surrender,” in which U.S. Marshals go into a low-income community and for four days move the entire legal apparatus into a megachurch, encouraging anyone with legal problems to sort them out under the sign of the cross. I attended one in Akron; church greeters talked to you about Jesus in the parking lot, then you walked through a metal detector, then you met a sheriff with a gun and a pastor with a Bible. Take your pick. And this program has Democratic support! Chuck Schumer’s gone on record saying it’s great, because it gets potential criminals off the street and allows poor people who’d be screwed by the justice system to have the help of the church. “Church-court” – that’s audacious. There’s no “evangelical crack-up,” no matter how much the New York Times may wish it so. Rather, there’s an evangelical transformation – and an expansion. Evangelicals are addressing issues liberals thought they owned, such as poverty and AIDS. That doesn’t make evangelical conservatives less conservative; it makes their agenda more far-reaching, for better or worse.

Some of the old lions of the Christian Right are dead or are dying. The new generation is softer-toned in style. But conservative evangelicalism has been a huge part of American life for 200 years. It’s not going away just because Jerry Falwell went to heaven. Or wherever.

So how do those opposed to what The Family is trying to do fight back? What is this groups Achilles heel? Is there anything anyone can do to minimize their influence on America and the world?

Of course! The first step is what we’re doing right here: talking about these issues, educating ourselves. The Family prospers when the public doesn’t pay attention. One of my favorite examples of a public fighting back occurred in 2004 in Norway. After I first wrote about The Family for Harper’s, some Norwegian journalists noticed that their new, socially conservative prime minister was jetting around the world to prayer breakfasts on the public dime. So they came to America and investigated. They discovered that this social conservative movement had strong ties with The Family, that their ambassador was taking policy meetings with John Ashcroft at The Family’s headquarters. So they put it on the front page of the paper, for two weeks. A mini Norwegian Watergate. And that government got the boot. That expose wasn’t the only factor, but it was one of them. When Doug Coe showed up in Norway this spring to talk with the king of Norway, the papers responded again, with a banner headline and a picture of Coe: “Hitler-admirer received by King.”

THAT’S public accountability. Let’s try it in America! Let’s tell Obama that we respect his desire to include people of faith – all faiths and no faith – in the public square, but we want him to recognize that not everybody is operating in good faith. Let’s pay attention to our local representatives. In 2004, a Democratic challenger to Rep. Frank Wolf, a longtime Family associate and conservative Republican from Northern Virginia, publicized Wolf’s Family ties. The Washington Post immediately editorialized that such a connection was impossible – and THEN sent a reporter to prove it so. So we need to hold the media accountable, too. We need them to ask smarter – and tougher – questions about religion. When we encounter monotheist politicians – that is, those who consider only monotheism legitimate – we need to give them loud refreshers in the history of the Founders, who were quite clear that they meant the First Amendment to extend to everyone, regardless of their beliefs.

I’m not a Pagan, but I’d also love to see some Pagan candidates for office. We’ll all benefit from that. Even if Pagans don’t win major offices – and they won’t, at least for awhile – their very presence in the public square helps everybody think about what pluralism means, what democracy means. Democracy isn’t something we HAVE, it’s something we make. The Family doesn’t like it. They call it “the din of the vox populi.” The din of the voice of the people. So we know what we need to do: Let’s make some noise.

Previous Wild Hunt interviews: Brendan Cathbad Myers, Rita Moran, Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone, Phyllis Curott, Tim Ward, Lupa, J.C. Hallman, Margot Adler.

Author, scholar, and modern Druid, Brendan Cathbad Myers has become an important emerging voice within the wider modern Pagan movement. Myers was a founding member of the Order of the White Oak, and the Convocation of Irish Druids (since dissolved and reformed as the Circle of Druids), in addition to receiving OBOD’s Mount Haemus Award for his research into Druidry. His most recent book, “The Other Side of Virtue: Where our virtues came from, what they really mean, and where they might be taking us”, is an in-depth examination and call for renewal of classical Virtue.

Brendan Cathbad Myers

I was lucky enough to be able to conduct an interview with Brendan Cathbad Myers about his book, the nature of Virtue, Pagan morality, and tips for living a Virtuous life.

This is a very ambitious book, what inspired you to explore the nature of virtue?

The idea for this book was born while I was living in a small town in Hessen, in Germany, in the summer of 2004. I used to enjoy walking in the forests and fields outside the village every day, and I loved visiting the cathedrals and castles and mediaeval towns of the region. I had also been living in Ireland for several years at that time. I had visited many of the actual locations where the events of Celtic mythology took place. And I was also reading Aristotle, and a few contemporary philosophers of Virtue theory, such as Rosalind Hursthouse, Alasdair MacIntyre, Phillipa Foot, Susan Wolf, and Iris Murdoch. But I think the idea to write a book about virtue came the evening after my friend and I were caught in a summer storm. In part because of that experience, the philosophical work I had been reading, and the landscapes and architecture I had been enjoying, came together in my mind. I felt as if I had discovered not only the key to understanding ancient people’s ethical world view, but that I had also discovered something primordial and universal about the human spirit. That day has become one of the most important spiritual occasions of my life.

At the very beginning of the book you define virture as: “the ancient idea that excellence in human affairs is the foundation of ethics, spirituality, self-knowledge, and especially the worthwhile life.” Do you think we (Pagans) have lost touch with this idea of virtue?

It’s not well known, but Virtue was originally a pagan idea. It was not only an ethical idea, but also a spiritual idea. It had to do with the way people make choices, but also with the way people ‘held’ themselves and possessed themselves. It configured how they understood their relationship to other people, the world, and the gods. To most people today it has to do with Christian qualities like humility and chastity. But its original side, which has now become its ‘other side’, has to do with the means by which a person empowers and edifies herself, and becomes a complete human being. Pagans have virtue-concepts in some of our most important and most widely shared statements of identity. The Charge of the Goddess mentions eight of them. But when most pagans think of ethics, they usually think of the the Wiccan Rede — a highly utilitarian idea which has nothing to do with virtue. I’d like to change that.

Although I say that Virtue was originally a pagan idea, yet it is an idea that belongs not just to pagans. It belongs to the world. For the questions it poses and the solutions it offers are there to be discovered by anyone. I think it’s not only Pagans who have lost touch with the original idea of Virtue. I think that the wider “Western” society in which we live has also lost touch with it. This is a shame, as mythological virtue is one of western society’s most important and powerful sources of identity and meaning. For most modern people, religious or not, express their values in utilitarian terms. Although most pagans think of themselves as belonging to a minority, professing values that others might find strange or even repugnant, nonetheless the Wiccan Rede is perfectly consistent with the widely-held modern values of individualism, utiliarianism, and rational self-interest. I suspect that Gardner and Valiente and the other early founders of Wicca promoted the Rede in order to show the rest of society that Witches are non-threatening! But I think the time of the Rede has passed. I will not prophesize what new time is coming: but I hope it will be the time of the Virtues, and I’ve written The Other Side of Virtue to help make that happen.

You have some critical things to say about relativism and the ethic of individualism in your book. Do you think our modern culture, and modern Paganism in particular, have taken these ideas to unhealthy extremes?

“Unhealthy extremism” is not what worries me about individualism and relativism. For these are both very interesting ideas in various ways. What worries me is that if all values and choices are “relative” to the “individual”, or to the individual’s culture or time and place, then it will follow that we will have little or no means to tell the difference between nobility and banality, or excellence and ordinariness. If “do what you will” is your ethic, then the choice to become a couch potato will be neither better no worse than the choice to become, say, a medical doctor, or a concert violinist. The logic of Individualism and Relativism cannot offer a substantial idea of why we live, what things are really worth having and doing, what a noble and excellent life really looks like.

I find myself strongly influenced by the philosoher Charles Taylor in this part of my thinking, especially in books of his like “The Malaise of Modernity” and “Sources of the Self”. As he explains it, Individualism offers no means to recognise values that transcend the individual, and no means to recognise the independant significance of friendship and love, history, the environment, politics or the wider society in which we all live. Yet Taylor also affirms that there is something important and profound in the individualist idea that each person is responsible for finding the meaning of her own life. My own philosophical project is similar. Here is how I describe it in the book:

“The good life involves each person finding within herself the purpose and worth of life. But this activity of self-exploration must not cut people off from sources of meaning beyond themselves… Similarly, we should assert that some values really are ‘out there’, beyond the self, and are not a matter of personal opinions and preferences. But we must find a way to assert this without falling back on old models of conformity and obedience.” (pg. 14)

I’m well aware that individualism is a value that most everyone presupposes as a normal and natural truth of human life. Many people feel personally threatened when it is called into question. And many people (not only pagans) think that the only alternative to individualism is some kind of oppressive authoritarian dogmatism. I believe that is a false dichotomy. My criticism of individualism is intended to show the way to higher, better, more spiritual ways of thinking and living.

Your exploration of virtue, is in some ways, a call for a new sense of morality in Western culture (and by extension, modern Paganism). What do you think a virtuous Pagan morality should look like? What would it include, what would it exclude?

I’d like to see a modern pagan morality in which the mythological virtues, both heroic and classical, are just as important as the Wiccan Rede – perhaps even more important than the Rede. For it is not enough to avoid what is harmful. It is also important to affirm what is joyful! We’re here on this earth-walk not just to experience life from many different angles. We’re here to lift ourselves up, to better ourselves, to find and to create a beautiful world. I think the Virtues can show us how to do that.

A new morality would have little to do with rules and laws. For the heart of the idea of virtue is the idea that ethics and spirituality is a matter of who you are, not just the rules you follow, even if you follow an unobjectionable rule like “harm none”. Indeed a fully virtuous person isn’t interested in rules at all. She’s interested in becoming a beautiful and complete human being, able to lead a fulfilling and worthwhile life.

A new morality should include lots of room for diversity and variety, and a robust idea of the good life at its centre, just as the pagan movement already does. Yet it should also offer robust models of admirable human beings and socially just communities, and it should offer values worth defending – as the modern pagan movement could do if there were fewer “witch wars” and internal conflicts.

To the best of my knowledge, there are only two other book in the pagan market that discuss ethical issues from a point of view other than the Wiccan Rede. One is Emma Restall Orr’s “Living with Honour”; the other is a single chapter in Philip Carr-Gomm’s “What do Druids Believe?” (both of which I have read, and thoroughly enjoyed, and am happy to recommend). I look forward to more books in the future which explore our ethics in greater depth, as these books (and mine) do.

You talk about “heroic” and “civilized” virtue, what differentiates these two ideas of virtue, and what aspects did they share?

The main differences between heroic and civilised virtues have to do with the kinds of cultures that they came from. Heroic virtues come mainly from chieftain-level societies like the Celts, the Norse, and the Homeric Greeks. They are concerned with the ways a person achieves fame and renown in such a society. Civilised virtues come from city-state societies like the Athenian democracy, or the Roman empire. They have to do with the use of reason to perceive the spiritual unity of the world, and to re-make one’s character in accord with that unity.

But in both cases virtue arises as a response to given problems, and enables people to handle their realities better, and transform their problems into sources of beauty. Those in Heroic societies saw fate, destiny, transience, and impermanence as the biggest problems. Those in Civilised societies thought the biggest problems in life were social and political in nature, such as warfare. But in both cases the way to handle the basic problems in life is not to draw up new laws to follow, but rather to become a certain kind of person.

When moving to the modern era, you praise J.R.R. Tolkein’s “The Lord of the Rings” and J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” series (among others) for bringing forth a resurgence of virtue. In your opinion, what do these writers teach us about being virtuous?

I wrote a chapter on Tolkein and Rowling to show that the ancient idea of virtue makes re-appearances in the most surprising places. I even wrote a short chapter on the heroic virtues as they appear in Star Wars! But I decided not to include it, since I felt my point had already been made, and besides Tolkein and Rowling are better writers than George Lucas (as I’m sure even ardent Star Wars fans will agree).

I think Tolkein and Rowling teach that anyone, from any background, in any circumstance, can find it within herself to be heroic. Virtue does not belong only to those who are born to aristocratic or wealthy families, or destined for ‘greatness’, as might be implied if one took civilized and heroic virtue at face value. Tolkein shows how ordinary people, like the Hobbits, have it within them to be noble. Rowling shows how even children can be noble. I’m particularly impressed with Rowling’s use of the language of the virtues. The various moral teachings which she puts in the mouths of Harry’s mentors, like Dumbledore, Minerva McGonagall, Sirius Black, and Remus Lupin, would find a ready home in any pre-christian philosophical treatise.

It might be added that none of the heroes in these books are motivated by a desire to “harm none”, or reduce the harm that is caused in the world. As a thought experiment: think of any person, living or dead, or think of any literary character, who you admire. Next, ask yourself if he or she made a personal goal of minimizing harm. The answer will almost always be “no”. What makes people praiseworthy and memorable are their virtues: the qualities of character which make them stand out, and make them capable of great things — even if such things are, in the words of Mr. Ollivander, “terrible things, but great”!

How does the ancient Greek aphorism “know thyself” provide us with the key to developing excellence and virtue?

This aphorism is an interesting one. It’s phrased in the form of a moral imperative: it tells us what to do. Yet what it demands is not obedience to a dogmatic authority. It calls for a process of mature and honest soul-searching which, if done right, produces a heroic and civilised human being. “Knowing Yourself” is not the same as accepting yourself as you are, accepting your flaws, accepting your habits and desires. “Knowing Yourself” requires “the deepest committment, the most serious mind.” As I describe it in the book, to know yourself means to know the reaches and the limits of your powers and potentials. it is to know what you are capable of. Yet the only certain way to learn this is to put your powers and potentials to the test. On such occasions, we often find that those powers and potentials are greater, or lesser, than we originally believed them to be. This is not a process of accepting yourself ‘as is’. Rather, it is a process of changing, discovering, improving, and transforming yourself into a better person. For self-discovery is also three out of five parts self-creation.

Through the Delphic motto, “Know Yourself”, individualism makes an important appearance in my text. Yet that individualism is connected to sources of value from beyond the self. For it usually takes an event or experience from outside the self to initiate the quest for self knowledge.

My book addresses existential and universal themes such as these. It is written not only for pagans, but for everyone. In that sense, it can be thought of as a book with pagan ideas in it, not a pagan book. I recently noted that it was put on the “recommended reading” list of a humanist society in Italy. Yet I hope that it will be of interest to pagans. Modern Asatruars and Heathens, Hellenic Revivalists, Druids, and Pagan Celts have been working with lists of virtues for many years now. Indeed I think that the pagan community is well positioned to show the world what a heroic, and civilised, and mythological, yet completely modern ethical idea, looks like in practice — and why it can help us respond effectively to the largest problems of our time, such as global warming, religious fundamentalism, economic corruption, racism, sexism, poverty, apathy, and nihilism.

What is “The Immensity”, and how does it connect to the idea of virtue?

While studying the myths and legends in which the ancient idea of Virtue appears, it quickly became clear to me that no one can revive that ancient notion of Virtue “as is”. The Celts, for instance, were headhunters. The civilised societies I studied, such as Rome, were imperialist societies that kept slaves. And some of the wisdom-texts I studied are profoundly mysogynist. I had to create a philosophical account that that sheds light on the logical foundation of virtue, and explains its universal power, without endorsing old pagan customs that have no place in today’s world. The Immensity is that philosophical account.

In its essence, the Immensity is an event or experience which every thinking and feeling human being must inevitably face, every once in a while, in the course of her life. In the book I describe three of them: the Earth, and other people, and death. No one can live without meeting these three things once in a while. And there might be more Immensities than just these three. I explain how the Immensity has many of the features regularly attributed to God, such as timelessness and authority. Yet its power is not that of a paternal or heirarchical kind of lawgiver. Its power is more like that of a friend who tugs your sleeve and says, “Here, look at this rainbow, look at this flower, look at this curiously shaped stone”–and then doesn’t stop tugging until you look. Then when you finally look, you feel as if an itch you didn’t know was scratched, but now that you think about it, well yes, it did itch, didn’t it?

In the last three or four years, the study of the Immensity has become my life’s work. I’m presently preparing another book which will explore this idea on the social, political, and environmental planes.

Finally, what advice would you give to someone who wants to start living a virtuous life?

Well as you might expect, I would recommend that such a person should read my book. But more seriously: ask yourself what are the Immensities in your life, and examine how you have responded to them. In the final chapter I describe a thought experiment which is designed to help get the process started. I don’t want to give it away here, but I’ll say this much. To live a virtuous life, in the original, heroic and civilised sense of the word, teach yourself to recognise the Immensities when they appear, acknowledge them as you would acknowledge a messenger from the gods, and offer in response the choice which will help transform you into the person which you wish to be.

Previous Wild Hunt interviews: Rita Moran, Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone, Phyllis Curott, Tim Ward, Lupa, J.C. Hallman, Margot Adler.

I’ve got some great links for any of my readers looking for some new online reading material. To start with, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, which recently heard the testimony of Pagan chaplain Patrick McCollum on religious discrimination in prisons, has posted the full transcript of the proceedings.

“If the same standards that are being required of the Wiccans were applied to the Protestants, you guys would have to fire all the Protestant chaplains right now because they don’t have any ground to stand on at all in all the services that they’re getting.”

This is historic testimony on behalf of minority faiths before a U.S. governmental body, and should be required reading for any Pagan concerned about our religious freedoms.

Turning from political concerns, the comics/pop-culture web site Sequential Tart interviews Thista Minai about her Hellenic faith, and her recently published book “Dancing In Moonlight: Understanding Artemis Through Celebration”.

“And, of course, I’m nuts about animals and wilderness. I work as a veterinary technician, and I remember a rather amusing trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York with my (very Catholic) father. There was a pendant on display showing Artemis as Potnia Theron, the Mistress of Animals, and I was explaining to my father (who by then was well aware of my obsession with Artemis and suspected that it was more than academic) exactly what all that meant. When I finished, he looked at me, looked at the pendant, then looked back at me and said, ‘So, basically, She’s the Goddess of veterinary technicians.’ And I said ‘… Yeah, dad.’”

An interesting and wide-ranging interview that provides a nice look into Pagan religion and ethics outside the Wiccan paradigm.

Finally, the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR) has posted all the papers from its 2008 international conference. A wealth of academic papers on modern Paganism, the New Age movement, syncretic faiths, and several papers dealing with Aleister Crowley and Thelema.

“CESNUR, the Center for Studies on New Religions, was established in 1988 by a group of religious scholars from leading universities in Europe and the Americas … CESNUR’s original aim was to offer a professional association to scholars specialized in religious minorities, new religious movements, contemporary esoteric, spiritual and gnostic schools, and the new religious consciousness in general. In the 1990s it became apparent that inaccurate information was being disseminated to the media and the public powers by activists associated with the international anti-cult movement. Some new religious movements also disseminated unreliable or partisan information. CESNUR became more pro-active and started supplying information on a regular basis, opening public centers and organising conferences and seminars for the general public in a variety of countries. Today CESNUR is a network of independent but related organizations of scholars in various countries, devoted to promote scholarly research in the field of new religious consciousness, to spread reliable and responsible information, and to expose the very real problems associated with some movements, while at the same time defending everywhere the principles of religious liberty.”

Some interesting looking papers include “The Rise and Fall of a Public Witch Hunt: Changing Media Attitudes to New Religious Movements Since 1988″, by Suzanne Evans, “Online and Offline – Locating Pagan Community”, by Angela Coco, and “Minority Religions and Law Enforcement: A Human Rights Perspective”, by Alessandro Amicarelli. I recommend browsing the entire list.

Happy reading!

In the increasingly close (and heated) Democratic primary race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the role of “superdelegates” has gained a lot of scrutiny and attention as it becomes clear that these individuals will most likely decide who receives the Democratic party’s nomination for president. For a short period, one of those superdelegates was an openly Pagan party official. Rita Moran, Chair of the Kennebec County Democratic Committee, who was outed and stalked by a vindictive local Christian group last year.

Rita Moran

So why was Moran a superdelegate for only a short time? That is a matter of some controversy, involving an unnecessary re-vote, and factions within the Democratic party battling it out. I was lucky enough to conduct an interview with Rita Moran about this situation, what it’s like being an openly Pagan party official, and what her future plans are in the wake of losing her superdelegate position.

You are currently the Chair of the Kennebec County Democratic Committee. How did you get involved in politics, and how did you come to be in the position you are in now?

I come from an Italian immigrant family, and it was the Democratic Party that helped my parents learn English and find a place in their new country. When my father became a citizen, and I still remember that day, he became a Democrat and eventually rose to leadership in his county committee. I guess it’s in my blood.

Last year, you were “outed” as a Pagan by the Maine Christian Civil League, did that affect your standing with fellow officials within the local Democratic Party, or hinder your relationship with Democratic voters in your community?

It’s hard to say. Overtly, the Democratic Party leadership stood behind me. Behind the scenes, or in the minds of individual voters, I honestly have no idea what was, is, being said.

You were recently, albeit briefly, elected as a superdelegate for the state of Maine. Could you explain how you were elected, and subsequently removed from your position?

Sure. The Maine Democratic State Committee has a “three strikes” rule which mirrors that of the Democratic National Committee: miss three consecutive meetings and you are automatically removed, but may run for the position at a subsequent meeting.

Jennifer DeChant, who ran unopposed and was elected at the June, 2004 state convention had missed three consecutive meetings; the third was in November of 2007. At that time it was announced that she would have to run for that office again at our January, 2008 meeting. The day before that meeting I was asked by someone in party leadership to run against her; I agreed to accept the nomination. I would not, however, make phone calls or send e-mails asking for support, since I knew Jennifer was experiencing a difficult pregnancy and would be unable to match that effort. I knew it could cost me the election, but it was an ethical decision I felt I needed to make.

The election happened, and I won by a narrow margin.

A few days later one of our state legislators contacted John Knutson, state party chair, and claimed the election was not legitimate. During the two months between the January and March meetings I made many phone calls to state committee members looking for support. I found there was an awful lot of misinformation out there, though couldn’t say by whom it was being spread. I cannot tell you how difficult that time was. I have devoted an enormous amount of time to the Democratic Party, am loved and honored by our county team, and led them to victory in two special elections last year (the first of which led to my attack from the Christian Civic League).

The state party chair asked for an opinion from our Rules Committee, which said there was no problem with the original election. Despite this, at last month’s state committee meeting my election was repealed. Another election was held and I lost by just a few votes.

Do you plan to run for superdelegate status within your state’s party in the future, or are you planning on challenging the “re-vote” that reinstated Jennifer DeChant?

Right now, I’m looking forward rather than back. I am running, and running hard, for Maine’s DNC Woman slot. The election will be held on May 31st at our state convention. The campaign will cost several thousand dollars, but I believe it’s time we sent an “outed” pagan to the Democratic National Committee. Our views, our voices, are different, and deserve to be heard on the national level. I have set up a PayPal account under my campaign e-mail address: DNCWoman@gmail.com, and hope to have the help of my fellow Pagans who agree with me on this. Folks (especially Mainers going to the state convention) can also contact me at that same address with advice and inspiration. I’d love to pull together a Pagan Caucus, if only via e-mail.

What are your broader political goals? Do you hope to run for elected office at some point in the future? Do you think America will get to a point where (open) modern Pagans will be elected to government in our lifetimes?

I’ve been urged to run for political office, but feel that working in the background is best for me. Frankly, I am afraid of the negative effects on our small business (independent bookstore) should my faith become an issue in a legislative campaign. Being “outed” by the Christian Civic League certainly hasn’t helped business, and this would make it all happen again on an even larger scale.

That being said, I believe there may well be open Pagans in elected office right now. We just don’t know who they are!

I know that you are not currently a superdelegate, but had you held on to your position which Democratic presidential candidate would you have endorsed and why?

When the state committee elected me in January, I asked them just that question. Overwhelmingly they urged me to vote so that the superdelegates’ ballots would reflect the outcome of Maine’s caucuses: 60% for Barack Obama and 40% for Hillary Clinton. If I were free to express a public opinion, however, I would overwhelmingly support Barack Obama. I feel his message of hope, his campaign which has been so incredibly inclusive, has inspired me.

On the larger question of superdelegates, I do not, and will never believe that they know more than the voters who participated in primaries and caucuses. That’s elitism, plain and simple. Since the Democratic Party instituted the idea of superdelegates,a lot has changed, making it far easier for voters to be well-informed. When I’m elected to the Democratic National Committee I plan to address two issues: first, the superdelegates; second, the broken system of setting dates for primaries and caucuses.

Oh, and I’m intending to show up for my first DNC meeting wearing my rather discreet pentacle. Imagine that!

Finally, what advice would you give to a Pagan wanting to run for office or get involved in American party politics?

I’ve helped lots of candidates. I believe that job #1 for a candidate is to give people hope…hope that things can be better and that, as a candidate you with with your constituents and fellow legislators to make a difference, to make things better.

One-to-one voter contact, with that message (as well as a good, strong idea of who you are as a candidate) that will resonate with voters, is the key to getting elected. Phone calls and mailers are far, far less effective.

Previous Wild Hunt interviews: Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone, Phyllis Curott, Tim Ward, Lupa, J.C. Hallman, Margot Adler.

Authors, teachers, and elders, Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone have had an indelible influence on the modern Paganism movement. With her late husband Stewart Farrar, Janet helped pen some of religious Witchcraft’s most well-regarded tomes, including “Eight Sabbats for Witches” and “The Witches’ Way” (subsequently re-released as one volume entitled “A Witches’ Bible”). Towards the end of Stewart Farrar’s life, the couple were joined by Gavin Bone, a Pagan and registered nurse who entered into a personal and professional relationship with the couple.

Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone

Today Janet and Gavin are championing a new “Progressive Witchcraft”, teaching classes, and running workshops around the world. I recently had the opportunity to conduct an e-mail interview with Janet and Gavin about their current projects, the recently released biography of Stewart Farrar, and living the Pagan life in Ireland.

Both of you have been living and working in Ireland for some time now. What changes and progress have you noticed among Pagans in your adopted homeland? I suspect that when Janet and Stewart first moved to Ireland in 1976, there were few “out” Pagans of any sort, or any “Pagan community” to speak of.

Ever since Gavin moved to Ireland in 1993 we have seen a lot of changes in the Pagan community in Ireland. Before ‘93 there were probably only about two covens, including our own. The other one, believed to be Gardnerian, we had little contact with and it disappeared by the mid ’90’s. The big hub of activity up until then was the Fellowship of Isis, at Clonegal Castle, which of course, is still running. From that several groups began to spring up in the mid to late ’90’s including the Druid Clan of Danu, the first serious neo-Druid organisation in Ireland and the Grove of Sinann which became associated with it.

The real changes took place around about 1998. By this time the first pagan moots came into being and a conference of ‘interested parties’ took place in Dublin. The movement was beginning to blossom, but it was noticeable that the majority of the ‘movers and shakers’ were not Irish but ‘blow ins’ to use the Irish vernacular; they were English, Swiss, Scottish, and American. The real change has taken place in the last 5 years where we have really begun to see a real Irish pagan movement as such, with multiple paths appearing including a Druid and shamanic revival.

Janet, you have recently co-authored a book on the life of Stewart Farrar with Elizabeth Guerra entitled: “Stewart Farrar: Writer On A Broomstick”. Could you tell us a bit about the book, and the process behind getting it written?

Stewart had started to write his own autobiography with that title Writer on a Broomstick, back in the late ’90’s. This was only really a brief sketch of his fascinating life, he never, before his death got round to putting the ‘bones’ on it so to speak. So, a couple of years ago we approached Liz Guerra, a friend of ours for some years to write his biography. We decided to honour Stewart by using the original title he had decided upon and we went about, with Liz putting together all the research on his life.

Stewart being a professional journalist most of his life, kept a daily diary and habitually filed all the letters and replies he had ever written. The first year was taken up by Liz Guerra and ourselves going through all of this and recording the major events in his life from childhood, through his serving as an officer in the army during the second world war, through to his meeting with Alex and Maxine Sanders and joining the Craft, his writing career and finally up to his death.

We had to make some difficult decisions, one of these being whether we put everything in. We wanted to portray the real Stewart ‘warts and all’ so people could recognise him as a human being. In the end I believe we struck a good balance and people will be able to identify with him, not as a well known pagan author but as an individual like themselves who was lucky enough to have a fascinating life.

Speaking of Stewart Farrar, I understand that his novels (“Omega” being a personal favorite of mine) are in the process of being put back into print. Is there any definite word on when we might see them in our local bookstore or available for order?

Unfortunately, there have been some delays on publication of his novels. The publishing industry has suffered greatly from the current recession, so their publication has been on hold. We hope to have them republished in the next year though.

The two of you are now doing online seminars and classes with The College of The Sacred Mists. Can you describe what these classes entail? What are your opinions concerning the recent explosion of online schools? Do you feel this is a generally positve trend?

The decision to enter into online teaching wasn’t taken lightly. We wrestled with the concept for a while going through the ethics of it, and whether you could actually teach magical subjects in this way. In the end we decided it was no different to writing a book, except there was more interaction. It was this that eventually made our minds up to do it, and the fact that we had some positive experiences teaching one off online seminars.

Our current course has several different facets to it: Including written Lessons, practical exercises, regular chat room sessions to answer questions and discuss topics and the use of MP3s for teaching, which we have just incorporated in to the course. There is also homework and students are expected to keep a Course Diary which everyone can read online. This has resulted in a community feel to the course, with ourselves and the students interacting and assisting each other on a daily basis, something we really enjoy! To be honest, once this started to happen all our doubts about its viability as a method of teaching went out of the window – it began to feel like we were teaching in a college. The technology may be different but the experience is the same.

To answer your question as to whether it is a ‘positive trend’. Just as there are really good books out there, there are really good online courses, and likewise there are some really bad books written by authors with little experience. It isn’t a positive or a negative trend, its just a trend and it isn’t new. Correspondence courses on magic have been around since at least the early 1980’s, the difference is the technology being used which opens up new possibilities. In the end the community will decide whether they will work or not. If a course is bad, the word will get around the community really quick and people will simply stop signing on to it.

On the College of the Sacred Mists web site, it says that your current practical work is in the area of Spiritism and Trance Prophesy. Could the two of you touch a bit on these explorations for my audience?

First, we should explain, so that there is no misunderstanding, that this is not what the course with College of Sacred Mists is about. With the College we’re doing a seven month course called Progressive Magic. There are some things you can teach on line and other things you can’t, and this is definetly a subject which requires a ‘hands on’ approach.

I (Janet) have always been a natural medium. When I came into the Craft and was taught Drawing Down the Moon I went to it like a ‘duck to water’. I always assumed that everyone had the same experience as myself; going completely into deep trance. As Stewart and myself started to travel in the 1980’s we found that this was not the case and that I was luckily naturally gifted.

Gavin and myself started to explore this more deeply in the mid 90’s. Experimenting with different techniques including traditional Drawing Down where you use a silver bowl, and several trance induction techniques. Both of us had an interest in the Norse and Anglo-Saxon techniques used in what is called Seith or Seidr, and after seeing Diane Paxson; one of the foremost exponents of Seidr trance practise, at work with one of her trance groups, we became inspired to do more. We ended up studying other traditions including Shamanism, Santeria and Voudon (’riding the Loa’), to understand how these traditions used and induced trance and brought deity-spirits through.

It became very clear to us that there were some inherent problems with the current Drawing Down the Moon ritual used in modern Wicca, the main one being an actual lack of trance technique. So we went about creating a safe generic technique to teach trance-prophesy using what we have called The Underworld Descent Technique. Part of this process is using energy (Chakras) and visualization pathworking using a hypnotic induction technique.

We also teach that the Gods and Goddesses are REAL, not just Jungian archetypes. That they are spirits with their own personalities, capable of communicating with you through trance and in some cases positively possessing you when the circumstances are right. We have had quite a few seers and seeresses possessed by deities at different times. Originally we taught this as part of a weekend workshop (The Inner Mysteries) but it has become so successful that we now teach evening and one day sessions.

Aside from your publishing, teaching, and spiritual pursuits, are either of you involved in any activst or charity-related projects? If so, could you talk a bit about that? In a related note, what is your collective take on the M3 expansion through the Tara valley? I know that at least one member of Teampall Na Callaighe is actively involved in direct actions to help stop the current progress.

We’re not involved as much as we’d like in activist activities. Unfortunately the current situation since 911 has made it difficult for us to be involved in direct action, particularly regarding the M3, as we cannot afford to be arrested or ‘black marked’ by the authorities, as this would affect our ability to gain entry into the US for tours. Most American citizens are unaware that if you are arrested as a political activist outside the US you will be denied a visa and entry.

The whole situation with Tara and the M3 is part of bigger problem currently occurring in Ireland with the conflict in the Irish psyche between spirituality and materialism. In the 1990’s we had an upsurge of economic expansion, and at the same time the decline of the influence of the Catholic Church here. The Irish have always been a very spiritual people, but the scandals around the Church here, have resulted in a cynicism taking its place, and movement towards more materialistic values. Now every family wants two cars which they can replace every year and a new house. To quote Francesca Howell: ‘they have a nasty dose of affluenza!’. This conflict between the material and the spiritual in the culture has over flowed into the Irish countryside and the M3/Tara Valley conflict is symbolic of this change in social perspective.

Many people outside of Ireland are unaware of the other problems we face here: Peoples rights are being eroded and we widespread corruption in the Government. It is common for Government bodies to go through ‘processes of consultation’ with local communities to give an impression of democracy and then totally ignore that communities wishes. At present we are involved (alongside the M3 campaign which is linked) with a campaign to stop Eirgrid, the electricity provider putting up monster pylons across the countryside. Nobody wants them, they are a risk to the environment, wildlife, people’s individual health and the archeology. But, any complaint against this damage is ignored. We are pleased to say that this has resulted in a groundswell of public dissension – Irish people are beginning to realise that they have power at a grass roots level.

While I’m on the subject of Ireland’s spiritual landscape, I notice that you do tours of ancient sites in Ireland, and Janet has produced a DVD of Celtic fairy stories. Is Ireland’s pre-Christan past a big influence on your spirituality and practice?

Pagan tour groups started approaching us several years ago, in fact one of the first groups was one run by Starhawk as far back as the early 1980’s. It seemed natural to advertise that we were ‘open for business’ in this area. So far we have toured groups from the United States, Mexico and Australia. We have an advantage in this area as we live central to most of the major ancient sites in Ireland, and we also know where all the lesser known, more intimate ones are which attract ‘activity’ of a spiritual nature.

When you live in Ireland you can’t ignore the heritage around you. If you are a pagan or a witch you certainly can’t ignore. Just about every coven we know links itself to the spirituality of its environment. Our coven is linked to Slieve na Callaighe (The Hill of the Witch), part of a series of hills in County Meath known as Lough Crew which has neolithic burial tombs stretched across them. Only just recently we went up at dawn to watch the sunrise on this hill as the tomb on top is aligned with the Spring Equinox.

Many of our coven, including ourselves link to deities outside of Ireland, including Freya, and Diana, but we do not ignore the heritage of this land or the ancestral spirits of it. At Imbolg we make offerings to Brid and at Lughnasa to Lugh and also throw offerings into our local river to our local river goddess Boann. Witchcraft here is linked very much to the land here, and the mythology of the Irish can be found in every hill and at every ancient site.

What new books and other projects can we expect on the horizon from the two of you?

You may not see any new books from us for a while. We do have one book being written at the moment on our experiences with trance and psychism but its publication is a long way off. At present we are concentrating on the practical workshops and the online courses. We are touring again this year, and will be in New York State, Connecticut and Washington DC towards the end of August and September.

As both of you continue in your roles as elders and teachers within the wider Pagan community, what do you think will be your greatest legacy to the modern Paganism movement?

That’s a good question, and we’re not really sure that it is our place to say! In the end I think we will be judged on what effect we have had, what we have done, rather than any claims we have made about ourselves. If we have changed one person, and allowed them to find their spirituality and connection to divinity then we are happy that we have achieved something. It only takes one person to change the world.

Previous Wild Hunt interviews: Phyllis Curott, Tim Ward, Lupa, J.C. Hallman, Margot Adler.