Pagans on Campus 2014, part 3

“It is clear that Pagan elders need to listen to the young and new, or the young and new will bring change regardless.” – Jeff Mach, Rutgers University alumnus. In the final article of our series “Pagans on Campus 2014,” we discuss the challenges and hurdles that lay before young Pagans as they reach out beyond campus life and beyond the comforts of the Pagan Student Association. If backlash is not the biggest problem, what is? The students also share their thoughts on the future of Paganism as a whole.

Pagans on Campus 2014

Our fathers had their dreams; we have ours; the generation that follows will have its own. Without dreams and phantoms man cannot exist.” – Olive Schreiner

We often spend much of our time listening to community elders, learning from experience and absorbing the collective knowledge of past generations. While this is time well spent, it is often at the expense of looking toward the future; toward the growing the minds that will eventually inherit our projects and cradle experience in their hands. In a three-part series “Pagans on Campus 2014,” The Wild Hunt will look to the next generation – the youth who are just starting out as independent adults and, more often than not, as Pagans.

Where science and religion meet: a discussion with Jeff Mach

What do Druidry, the Steampunk Movement, Nikola Tesla, Isaac Bonewits and Staten Island all have in common? Answer:  Jeff Mach

Jeff Mach is a modern Druid and founder of New Jersey-based Widdershins, LLC (a.k.a. Jeff Mach Events), the production company behind the popular Steampunk World’s Fair, Wicked Faire and other similarly-themed events.  More recently, he began producing The Geek Creation Show, a fundraising event to benefit the Tesla Museum at Wardenclyffe on Staten Island. The Museum will be a science learning center at the reconstructed laboratory of famed-scientist, Nikola Tesla.  By raising these funds, Mach is able to give something back to the local community.