THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, October 12, 1996 TAG: 9610110038
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E2 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY BETSY MATHEWS WRIGHT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 186 lines
``PAINT ME A bird,'' chirps the child to the campsite visitor.
It is late in the summer day and the girl wants her face painted. Polite and cheerful, her words are a sweet request, not a demand.
The visitor gladly accommodates. A few strokes later, a blue bird appears on the cherub's cheek. She bounces off to join several pals. Their parents - old friends who attend the same church - have brought them to this blissful wooded park outside Williamsburg for a religious celebration, joining nearly 300 other worshipers who've pitched tents and hooked up RVs for three days of fellowship.
About an hour before sundown, a woman begins to pound a big drum slung on her hip. The sound signals the group to gather in a large open field where they join hands. Another woman, dressed in white, steps forward, raising her arms to the heavens.
``Thank you for the beautiful weather,'' she shouts, getting a round of cheers and applause from the giant circle of men, women and children. A dog barks and is joined in chorus by several other well-groomed pooches scattered here and there at the heels of their attentive masters.
Then the ceremony begins.
``The Goddess is alive,'' bellows half the circle, to which the other half loudly replies, ``And magic is afoot.''
Back and forth they volley these chants, breaking circle to march into a nearby lower field. That's where the real ceremony gets rolling. That's where the group stops to watch a simple pageant in which a ``Greenman'' with green clothes, green face and green beard is wed to a ``Springmaiden'' whose red curls are bedecked by a wreath of flowers. After the pageant, everyone dances in circles and spirals. Children frolic in a haystack. And at the end, the group sits peacefully to ``give their energy back to the earth.''
What kind of religious celebration is this?
It is the ancient celebration for the Spring, held yearly by Contemporary Pagans from Hampton Roads, the Peninsula, Williamsburg and Richmond. This is one of two regional festivals held yearly for local Pagans. It is also part of a religious tradition that pre-dates Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Just recently, some of the same people joined for the Fall celebration. The two weekends are highly anticipated occasions, mostly because of the fellowship factor. It's a time when like-believers - people often misunderstood and ostracized by the general public - can come together
In most ways, Contemporary Pagans are little different from other members of the community. By profession, they are teachers and car mechanics, bank tellers and musicians. They work in neighborhood markets. They shop at Kmart and Food Lion. Like most Americans, Pagans spend the majority of their time raising their children, paying taxes, working and recreating.
It is, however, what they believe and how they worship that sets Pagans apart. Their beliefs often raise eyebrows, and their worship practices have caused some to label them as weird.
``We're really pretty normal,'' said Fred Ludwig, a 42-year-old Pagan from Virginia Beach. ``We don't sacrifice babies or do strange stuff in the dark.''
If a generic description could be found, a Contemporary Pagan would be one whose beliefs are nature-based. Though there is no such thing as one kind of Pagan - there are as many types of Pagans as there are types of Protestants - all Pagans share a few main beliefs.
Pagans, in general, believe that all of creation, not just human beings, are offspring of the divine. Humanity, they say, is divinely connected to nature, as is nature to humanity.
Contemporary Pagans, like their ancestors, center their rituals and celebrations around the cycles of the seasons. They celebrate the winter and summer solstices, the spring and fall equinoxes, in addition to other seasonal festivals. Though Pagans no longer practice primitive fertility rites, they do believe in a healthy attitude toward human sexuality. Their rituals often contain symbols of the sexual union. For instance, in the traditional Maypole or May Day celebration - which its Pagan originators called Beltane, or May Eve - the pole symbolizes the male anatomy while the ribbons that entwine the pole symbolize the feminine. The circular dance around the pole symbolizes intercourse.
Contemporary Pagans are feminists in their concept of the divine. Some worship many dieties, both gods and goddesses. Others worship a single supreme being that has both masculine and feminine attributes. Most believe in one universal consciousness, sometimes called the Creative Power in the Universe. Some call themselves ``witches.'' They do not, however, accept the concept of absolute evil nor do they worship any entity known as Satan, or the Devil, as defined by the Christian religious tradition.
If there is a common belief that all Pagans share it is the belief in total religious freedom. The creed of the Pagan movement is the Old English verse: ``An' it harm none, do as you will.''
Even though there are an estimated 200,000 Pagans in America alone, almost all of them stand firmly behind this motto to live-and-let-live. Many say they simply wish others would do the same.
``It's so silly that people get so uptight at what we do,'' said one 25-year-old woman, a local college student and second-generation Pagan who learned the faith from her mother. ``They go to church and have communion and celebrate Christmas with the tree and holly and stuff and Easter with the bunnies and eggs, and then they get bent out of shape because we like to dance in a field. That's crazy.''
The discrimination may be irrational, but it is nevertheless real. Some Pagans, who refused to be identified in this story, have lost jobs when they were open about their religion. Others, they say, have been evicted from their homes and even lost child-custody suits over their faith.
Pagans, however, admit that much of the negativity about their faith comes from the few ``bad eggs'' in their midst who get into devil worship and ritualistic abuse. True Pagans, they say, denounce these acts. They say that such abusers profane their religious symbols.
Why would someone choose to become a Pagan? Some are drawn to Paganism because of its reverence for nature, its rituals and its feminist views. Others say they have been turned off by their former faith's lack of tolerance for others. Still others have been hurt by organized religion. One Norfolk man, who recently joined a Pagan group but would not give his name for fear of reprisals at work, said he had a very traditional Southern Baptist upbringing.
``I believed in the Golden Rule and life after death,'' said the 36-year-old public administrator, ``but the missing link in my belief system was a real connection with the divine. Paganism has filled that void.''
Like many who've embraced Paganism, the Norfolk man first encountered the movement through the 1979 book ``The Spiral Dance'' by Starhawk. A peace activist and leader in the feminist-spirituality and ecofeminist movements, Starhawk is a best-selling author and lecturer who teaches at several colleges in the San Francisco Bay area. Raised Jewish, she became a Pagan during her college years at UCLA, drawn to the faith because of its emphasis on goddess worship and the divinity of nature.
``Before I knew anything about Paganism,'' said the Norfolk man, ``I called myself a `nature mystic.' Then I got access to some material about Paganism, and everything began to explode. As I read (`The Spiral Dance'), with every page I turned, I kept saying to myself, `That's me!' ''
Nancy Logsdon Mandelkorn, 43, is the mother of five, a grandmother and works as public relations assistant at Virginia Wesleyan College. She has been a Pagan since 1981.
``I gradually discovered,'' Mandelkorn said, ``that I didn't want to be identified as a Christian because I had too much love and respect for Jesus and I simply could not find his love and teachings in contemporary Christianity.''
She was drawn to Paganism because of her Celtic heritage and because of a love of holidays and ritual. In 1988, she was invited to the Unitarian Church of Norfolk and found a group of people who supported her and her right to her beliefs.
A year later, she discovered that some Unitarian Universalist churches had groups called CUUPS, Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans. She went to work to help form one in Norfolk, with the blessing of her minister and congregation. Officially formed since 1991, the Norfolk CUUPS group meets once a month, sponsors holiday activities and religious education at the church, and has a ``Pagan Players'' performing troupe. Mandelkorn does not keep a membership list, but she said attendance fluctuates from as few as five to as many as 40.
Last year, Mandelkorn and her group rejoiced when the Unitarian Universalist Association officially adopted ``Earth-centered spirituality'' as a valid source of wisdom, alongside other already-recognized wisdoms like Christianity, Judaism and Islam.
Mandelkorn said she and other local Pagans are blessed to have the ``safe haven'' of the Unitarian Church of Norfolk. She said that Pagans there are not judged for their beliefs, but are accepted and held accountable only for the way they treat others.
``All religions - even Paganism - have their dark sides and can be equally abused by sick or evil people,'' Mandelkorn said. ``A religion, any religion, is only as good as the hearts of the people who practice it.'' MEMO: For information about the local CUUPS group, call 627-5371. Local
meetings are held the first Sunday of each month from 1 to 3 p.m. at
the Unitarian Church of Norfolk, 739 Yarmouth St. ILLUSTRATION: CHRISTOPHER REDDICK
The Virginian-Pilot
From left, Jim Wento, Nancy Logsdon Mandelkorn, Michelle Askew and
Dorothy Hilliard join hands as part of a prayer circle of local
Pagans.
A history of Paganism
The word pagan is from the Latin paganus, which means a
country-dweller. Pagan means a member of a rural, primitive or
tribal, polytheistic religion.
Ancient Pagans the world over practiced religions that were
closely tied to the seasonal and agricultural cycles. Much focus was
placed on fertility. Rural people depended on fertility of the
fields for their sustenance, and they depended on the fertility of
their people to produce the hands needed to work in the fields.
Fertility meant survival, and their religions reflected this.
Paganism became synonymous with nature-worship and fertility
rites. For some, it also became synonymous with devil worship. The
Satanic association came primarily because of Paganism's history of
child and virgin sacrifice. Though not all Pagan religions embraced
human sacrifice, enough did so that the association stuck.
Christians and Jews abhorred such practices and fought bitterly
to end them. However, in their quest to rid Paganism of the evil of
human sacrifice, Christians and Jews often tried to completely
eradicate these ancient religions. Certain beliefs and practices,
however, would not go away. As Pagans converted, they brought with
them their rituals, influencing the religious practices and
celebrations of both Christianity and Judaism.
KEYWORDS: RELIGION PAGAN by CNB