We Need to Talk About Pagans

Harsh phosphorescent light illuminates the five of us; a typical student in a t-shirt and jeans, a couple of eccentric academics draped in velvet, an older woman wearing primary-colour patterned patchwork, and of course me, slightly dishevelled and anachronistic, in a blazer and jeans.

There is the distinct air of quiet desperation that hangs in all small student groups, that familiar feeling that they're just passing the time, heightened immeasurably by the inevitable descent into mundane small talk.

I type away – somewhat under the cosh, wondering how to write a feature about paganism that goes beyond wiki-journalism - the clicking of the keyboard adding little enthusiasm to a rather lackluster atmosphere. Sex sells, and nothing’s sexier than the occult, but beige walls and poorly veneered tables had rather dampened the hope for nubile nymphomaniacs dancing naked around an open flame.

I hadn’t planned on asking any questions, preferring a fly-on-the-wall observational. I had interviewed the treasurer and president of Pentagram a few days earlier without gaining much 'human interest' or meat. For an off-beat cult, they were remarkably on message; repeated reminders that “paganism is a broad term, covering many different groups” and unyeilding resistance to self-defintion - “i'm dabbling in Gardinarian Wicca at the moment” – was hardly a Woodward and Bernstein break. I was invited to ask some questions now, if only to disturb the forced conversation. “We don't have many pagans in Watford.”

Having been kept at a distance previously, I try the desperate tactic of inviting the attendees to offer their strongest opinions: 'what', I ask, 'would you like the article to say?' I receive back the same un-opinionated and couched replies. The only doctrine enforced by the pagans I had met so far seemed to be that everyone must be indefinably different. The leader of the session, Myfanwy, muses that if “gods arise as a response to worship, Facebook should have a god by now.”

The event had failed to post to Facebook, and so they concluded tongue-in-cheek he's a little angry at them. In the dank scenery of the meeting room 5, it was hard to disagree.

Before the session begins a few advertisements of the group are pitched to me, for hopeful inclusion in the article.

“We're friendly, wonderful and exciting- everyone should come to our meetings.”

“Technically we're more of a study group than a faith group. Speakers present topics.”

Today's topic is Norse mythology, Myfanwy hands out a poem written in old Norse with a translation and further reading. The facebook-failure takes the pressure off, she only has to present to a handful of us and begins with some attempts to make Norse mythology seem relevant and important (the film Thor, praise for Tolkien), a reasonable tactic for an ignorant crowd however the apparent amount of shared knowledge renders this a little dry and pointless. We're told Vikings probably didn’t have horns on their helmets, and didn’t call themselves Vikings. “To go viking means to go out raiding”, the raiders and warrirors were respected by Norse culture, but most of them were the kind of miserable sobs we associate the Dark Ages with: farmers and peasents, “people who lived and died on their homestead”.

She moves on to Norse cosmology. “The ash tree Yggdrasill,” she tells us, “holds the nine worlds.” The account is quite archaeological, there's a sense of scientific and disinterested description of the artefacts of Norse culture, not the coloured prescriptions of validity (or holding some hidden truth) you might expect from a pagan.

I left a little disoriented; not quite sure what's just happened, nor what kind of feature I can write. Perhaps I can tell the reader a little about Norse heresy, paganism, it seems, is about at least that much. I think back to the interview I had arranged.

The morning had started out warm but a cold snap had rendered meeting outside Opposite Cafe a little unfortunate. I glance at a girl with violet hair drinking coffee in the corner, check my collection of stereotypes and bee-line for her. Sarah is the President, a student of Earth Systems and Alex, the treasurer, studies biology. A common component across all flavours of paganism is a “respect for nature” with accompanying vegetarianism, environmental concerns, and political motivations – and in this case, degrees.

From what I glean, the paganism movement has been growing strong since a renaissance in the 1960s, at which time a considerable amount of mythology was rediscovered, invented and re-purposed for 60s political ideologies. Pentagram has itself been running continuous from the 1960s, a record for pagan communities.

As an umbrella term, paganism covers a variety of quasi-religions. I am offered “wiccans and thelemites” as examples: the former includes a prominent role for a female goddess, the latter a preference for Egyptian theology. “There's no devil worship”, Sarah laughs, a little nervously. Pagans are encouraged to develop an individual religion of their own, with a focus on “personal spirituality”. As a person with a heightened awareness of religion in culture, the idea of picking and choosing seems to jar a little with common notions of respectable religion. The major religions are premised on the notion that fixed and shared ideas are better, contrary to this sentiment, pagansim seems to value the individual, a la carté and disorganized.

“Gods are representational” to most pagans: ways of “understanding human nature and ourselves”. Many pagans weave together, out of historical or invented theology, a worldview that serves their needs and aids in personal reflection. Peppered with these ideas are words such as “magic”, “worship” and “invocation”. From the ears of outsiders these might seem a little weird, however Sarah tells me magic is – for her - “prayer with props”; some no doubt believe magic is a little more than that, but I am reassured they are the minority. On magic, Alex offers, “causing change in conformity with will”, or to you and I, “the art of getting things done”: meditation, self-reflecting and self-motivation in a theological (and “theatrical”) language.

Cynical about my readership I probe for something a little more juicy, a line on common misconceptions. Smiling, they can't dispell any myths about free love, but there's no dancing around naked. They're fans of “high magic” however, dramatic rituals with costumes a little hammed up for effect. In a recent session “there was fruit flying everywhere”. A flair for the theatrical imbibes everyone I had met so far. I try Halloween: or Samhain (so-en), as they tell me, is a festival of the dead and a time when “the veil thins” and communication across worlds is possible. Sarah considers writing to lost loved ones, out of personal reflection rather than theological commitment.

And that concluded my experience of Pentagram and paganism: a small but reasonably vibrant community which provides an alternative to debating societies and religious unions by meshing them, colourfully. Mythology and theology had been presented to me as a means of exploring other, often older cultures, providing some insight into the human condition. Searching for some neat encompassing conclusion I recalled a quote from Einstein, "there are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." To whatever extent pagans believe their ideas, they can only be accused of the latter.