Drawing Down the Moon (61 page)

The Witches' Voice
alone has 66 entries for GLBT Pagan groups, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. And although lineaged traditions continue to play an important role in the Pagan community, we have moved, forever, from the time when they held the center stage. We are in the era of pop-influenced Paganism; a time characterized by fluid and rapid growth and a multiplicity and diversity of ideas. There are arguably more solitary practitioners than members of formal groups at this point in time. No one holds the keys to the kingdom; or, rather, everyone does.

• Dianic Wicca (covered extensively in Chapter 8 of this book and in the section on Wiccan traditions in Chapter 5). Most covens are open to women of all orientations, although many have a strong lesbian presence—and many trace their origins to Z Budapest and the feminist covens of the 1970s. Others trace their origins to Starhawk, Reclaiming, or Morgan McFarland.

• The Minoan Brotherhood (see the section on Craft traditions in Chapter 5). This is the tradition of Witchcraft based on Cretan sources started by Eddie Buczynski as a safe haven for gay and bisexual men. There are now groups throughout the United States and Canada. There is also a Minoan Sisterhood.

• The Radical Faerie movement continues to grow, characterized by spontaneity and anti-authoritarianism. Michael Lloyd describes it as “having a pro-humanist, pro-environment, pro-sex vision of the world that contrasts sharply with the mainstream Western religious traditions.” He adds that while some groups include straight men and women, and even children, “gender bending is a hallmark of the radical faerie movement.”

• Feri Tradition (see the section on Wicca traditions in Chapter 5 and quotes by Victor Anderson). Blind poet and shaman Victor Anderson, author of
Thorns of the Blood Rose,
his wife, Cora Anderson, Gwydion Pendderwen, and several others founded the Feri Tradition. It began in the San Francisco Bay Area, and it is certainly not a “gay” tradition, but Michael Lloyd (Garan du) insists that “its emphasis on the movement of energies that are at once sensual and sexual, ecstatic and mystical, creative and eclectic, invocatory and trance-possessory, and its respect for the wisdom of Nature and a love of beauty,” have made the tradition more open to gay, bisexual, and transgendered people.

• Two-Spirit. This “modern phase,” writes Garan du, refers to the seers, visionaries, and peacekeepers of many Native American tribes before the arrival of the European explorers. Often they dressed in women's clothing and were what we now call “gay.” Garan du says many gays are learning to reconnect with their gifts, and that a new “Two-Spirit” tradition is rising.

Our culture is absolutely obsessed with this concept of gender. We are so preoccupied with it that we even assign gender to human characteristics. So courage, boldness and strength become masculine—and therefore male, while gentleness, nurturing and empathy are labeled feminine—and therefore female.

Many, if not most, Wiccans and Witches have gone a step further by using the mythic image of the God and the Goddess to
spiritualize
masculinity and femininity into the very heart of their traditions. So, ironically, a religion that is often viewed by its adherents as being a radical alternative to mainstream society can actually reinforce the damaging gender stereotypes our culture presents to us.

But the secret we know is that
all
humans, regardless of their gender or sexuality, have the potential to express
all
of the characteristics which society labels masculine and feminine. The fact is that femininity and masculinity are not universal absolutes, but rather social constructs which can and do change from culture to culture. Courage does not have a penis, and compassion does not have a vulva. Yet we talk about “men getting in touch with their feminine side,” as if men were explorers hacking their way through dense jungle in search of the Lost Gold of the Incas. We know it's there but it's
really hard
to find. As if tenderness were a foreign substance that has to be injected into men from the outside in order to take. The danger in talking about human characteristics or emotions as if they had gender is that we make it very tough for people to possess those qualities which have been assigned to another group. I know I am not a woman, and if I hear gentleness spoken of constantly as if it belongs only to women, then I will find it difficult to be a genuinely gentle man.

If you go to a gay club on a Saturday night, you will feel Dionysus throbbing in the sweaty, heated air around you on the dance floor. We know that the gods continue to live in us, because we feel them on a personal, visceral level even when we don't understand the “why” of it. Ecstatic faiths almost never arise from the upper strata of society where all the marrow has been sucked out of life in the process of screwing over the little guy while morally posturing with the Joneses. Ecstatic faiths manifest themselves amongst the little guys who are getting crapped on. The speakers-in-tongues, the shakers, and the gay clubbers all give those in power today the heebie jeebies, just as the Galli and the Bacchantes gave the Roman establishment the willies at the turn of another millennium. We have more in common with a gibbering, shaking Pentacostal than we do with any moralizing, self-righteous Baptist with a broomstick firmly lodged in his posterior.

Shake it up and shake it out, be hermetic, be mercurial, react, reject, rebel, look outside the bone box, look up the Goddess' skirt, be more than they'll let you be, breathe the free air, fight the good fight, seize the day, brave the elements, bust a nut, and live! All magick is an act of rebellion against the status quo.