Drawing Down the Moon (27 page)

Wicca priestess Elspeth consecrates the salt.

Four Wicca priestesses (clockwise from upper left): Moria, Z Budapest, Sharon Devlin, and Theos.

Oberon and Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart with one of their unicorns.

Dancing around the sacred fire in the Opening Ritual at the 2005 Pagan Spirit Gathering in Ohio.

A Druid procession in California—the New Reformed Druids of North America.

The late Gwydion Pendderwen in ceremonial robes.

LEFT: Dancers performing in the Temple of the Sabaean Order in Chicago.

BELOW: A May Day celebration at the 1982 Rites of Spring Festival in Massachusetts.

The Church of the Eternal Source stages its annual Egyptian New Year's party in Los Angeles.

Selena Fox and friends gather herbs at Circle Sanctuary in Wisconsin.

Pagans at the 2004 Parliament of the World's Religions in Barcelona, Spain. Photo taken at the Pagans at the Parliament reception sponsored by Circle Sanctuary.

—AIDAN KELLY

 

—TIMOTHY LEARY
¹

 

—THE ABBEY OF THELEMA (MAGICAL ORDER)
²

 

 

“THE CANDLES, the incense, and the images are props,” the woman wrote to me. The spells, the chants, the dances are props. These things are not
magic.
The magic is the art (or science) of using the props. But to say this implies that magic and ritual have some purpose beyond the aimless activities of the ignorant, uneducated, and superstitious. Bonewits observes that “as intellectuals, we have been raised to have a kneejerk reaction to such terms as ‘magic,' ‘the occult,' ‘ritualism,' ‘the supernatural,' etc., so that we can only think about these subjects in the ways that we are supposed to.”
³

I have found it impossible even to discuss these subjects with certain upper-middle-class intellectuals; they elicit an almost religious response. Those who uphold the secular religion of rational humanism put up more blocks to such discussion than adherents of any other ideology.

I am hoping that most readers will adopt, at least temporarily, a more open position: a position that assumes that most of what has been written about magic is nonsense and that the truth about psychic realities lies under a thick web of ignorance, passivity, and conditioning. Perhaps the best approach is to allow yourself to play with the idea of magic in the way that Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson in their book
Illuminatus
allowed themselves to play with the idea of Eris, the Goddess of Chaos, letting her lead them in some unexpected directions. According to Wilson, that's precisely how magic works.

We have seen that most Witches and Neo-Pagans do not link “magic” with the “supernatural.” The best comment on this subject comes from Leo Martello, author of
Witchcraft: The Old Religion.
He wrote: “I make no claims as a witch to ‘supernatural powers,' but I totally believe in the
super
powers that reside in the
natural.
”
⁵