Fall/Winter 2005: Belief

Magical Roots

By Susan Pesznecker

I come from magical roots. My beloved grandmother knew leechcraft and herbalism, skills passed down through her family for centuries in eastern Europe. The other side of my family descended from Nez Perce medicine folk and the Celtic magical traditions of the highland pictish Scots. I was born magic, through and through.

Despite this background, I was baptized Episcopalian. Not unsurprisingly, it never took, and although I eventually dabbled in a long list of religions, the rituals seemed empty and the promises disconnected from the world I knew. I'd come to believe that I was one of those people for whom religion would never fit, until the day I heard a favorite radio journalist--Margot Adler--conducting an interview on changing religions in America. The guest was deep into a discussion of Pagan spirituality when Adler explained that she, too, was Pagan.

Pagan? What was that? The guest mentioned a book--Drawing Down the Moon--a scholarly account of the Pagan movement in America, written by Adler. The conversation made my blood race, and I jumped into my car and headed for Powell's bookstore. An hour later, settled into my new book, I also found a new way of life, one that--like any religion--would be filled with both joys and challenges.

I learned that the word "Pagan" reflects a diverse group of contemporary religions based on ancient traditions, beliefs sharing a reverence for nature, and an awareness of the tightly woven web of life. As Chief Seattle put it, what affects one living thing affects us all. I learned that Pagans see divinity as immanent; that is, they don't have to look upward or outward to find the divine, but only within themselves. I studied rituals and began to acquire the tools and trappings of Pagan practices: books on sky-watching, a mortar and pestle for herbal workings, candles and oil lamps, a black scrying mirror in which to see what might inform my future. My sweetheart gave me with a handmade black woolen cloak, resplendent with midnight-blue velvet lining and a silver Celtic knot clasp. As I became surer of my new path, I moved out into Portland's Pagan community. At my first Pagan Pride celebration, I wandered wide-eyed among the booths and displays, thrilled to see smiling men and women in cloaks and robes, children running about, waving "magic wands" that they'd made at the craft table.

Pagans believe in magic. Not the rabbit-out-of-the-hat kind of magic, but real magic that's all around us, happening all the time. Magic is the art and science of using will and focused attention to influence change or action. It is a blending of science and spirit, of known force and unknown action, a way of making things happen which we do not yet possess the vocabulary to explain or even understand. Many magic-users believe that concrete definitions of magic will eventually be found in the ethereal and anything-goes field of quantum physics, a horizon where reality meets possibility.

People following mainstream traditions might be surprised to find that Pagans are more like them than they are different from them. Pagans seek to embrace the divine, to engage with their communities, and to help those in need. They pray, engage in spiritual rituals, and observe holy days. Their lives follow the "Sacred Round," also known as the Wheel of the Year--a seasonal progression of eight sabbat days that include the fall and spring equinoxes, the winter and summer solstices, and four cross-quarter days that fall in between. Those celebration days are full of symbols that look familiar. In fact, most of today's mainstream holidays are reworked versions of ancient Pagan traditions. For example, the lights and greenery of modern Christmas are part of Yule, while colored eggs and bunnies belong to Ostara and jack-o-lanterns and trick-or-treaters to Samhain. Pagans even have their own version of the Golden Rule, an ethical tenet that can be traced back for several thousand years, called "The Rede," which says, simply, "And it harm none, do what you will." In other words, live your life in accordance with your beliefs, provided that what you do doesn't harm others.

It can be difficult to be Pagan, in the way that anything outside the mainstream is difficult. With centuries of misappropriated lore about demons and witchcraft to shake, Pagans need tough shells to face threats of eternal damnation delivered by fundamentalists who see it as their duty to turn Pagans from their path. Pagans are regularly called Satanists, even though Satan isn't a part of their traditions, and fears such as these have turned up in the courts as arguments to usurp parental and employment rights. Many Pagans remain "in the broom closet," concerned that going public with their beliefs will engender fear and reprisals. While most Christians and Jews are comfortable wearing crosses or six-pointed stars in public, most Pagans often don't feel the same ease in wearing the pentagram, a symbol that has nothing to do with Devil worship but is an ancient, pre-Christian symbol of the elemental forces of nature.

But the challenges must be worth it, because surveys suggest that Earth-based traditions are the fastest growing religions in the United States. Pagans don't proselytize; people who come to Paganism do so as the result of a personal search and a dissatisfaction with organized religion that leads them to seek a different kind of connection with the divine. To be Pagan is to draw life and breath from the world's natural presence: people, trees, animals, oceans, and the flame of creation that spun it all. Every human ancestor at one time or another practiced Earth-based traditions, honoring the seasonal wheel, the life springing from the Earth, and the cosmos spiraling overhead. They practiced these beliefs without writing, without clergy, and without dogma, their spirituality based on the life-giving rhythms that they saw and felt every day, forces that directed their lives and coursed through their blood. Anyone who has ever found something that resonates this deeply knows how good it feels, and those who become Pagan describe an almost universal joy, a feeling of having found something they've looked for all of their lives, a feeling of having come home.

I'm out of the broom closet. A waxing crescent moon--symbol of feminine spirituality--is tattooed on my arm and on the arms of my mother and my daughters. I keep a seasonal altar space in my home and practice the herbal remedies and tonics penciled into the margins of my grandmother's Bohemian cookbook. Her cast iron cauldron occupies a place of honor in my kitchen. My magical roots run deep.

Published in the Fall/Winter 2005 issue of Oregon Humanities.

© 2005 Oregon Council for the Humanities