New Age and Neopagan Religions in America

Sarah Pike

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9780231508384
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

From Shirley MacLaine's spiritual biography Out on a Limb to the teenage witches in the film The Craft, New Age and Neopagan beliefs have made sensationalistic headlines. In the mid- to late 1990s, several important scholarly studies of the New Age and Neopagan movements were published, attesting to academic as well as popular recognition that these religions are a significant presence on the contemporary North American religious landscape. Self-help books by New Age channelers and psychics are a large and growing market; annual spending on channeling, self-help businesses, and alternative health care is at $10 to $14 billion; an estimated 12 million Americans are involved with New Age activities; and American Neopagans are estimated at around 200,000. New Age and Neopagan Religions in America introduces the beliefs and practices behind the public faces of these controversial movements, which have been growing steadily in late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century America.

What is the New Age movement, and how is it different from and similar to Neopaganism in its underlying beliefs and still-evolving practices? Where did these decentralized and eclectic movements come from, and why have they grown and flourished at this point in American religious history? What is the relationship between the New Age and Neopaganism and other religions in America, particularly Christianity, which is often construed as antagonistic to them? Drawing on historical and ethnographic accounts, Sarah Pike explores these questions and offers a sympathetic yet critical treatment of religious practices often marginalized yet soaring in popularity. The book provides a general introduction to the varieties of New Age and Neopagan religions in the United States today as well as an account of their nineteenth-century roots and emergence from the 1960s counterculture. Covering such topics as healing, gender and sexuality, millennialism, and ritual experience, it also furnishes a rich description and analysis of the spiritual worlds and social networks created by participants.

Part One

CHAPTER ONE

Ancient Mysteries in Contemporary America

San Jose, “Silicon Valley” central, is the heart of the late twentieth-century technological revolution and home to a large community of Neopagans and New Agers, many of whom have converged on a local hotel. The expansive lobby and atrium area of the Doubletree Hotel features a restaurant and bar, luxurious lounge chairs, elegantly dressed doormen—and dozens of people walking around in velvet cloaks, leather corsets, and other costumes. As I passed through on my way to a late-morning ritual, a traditional English longsword dance had taken over the lobby. Fiddle and guitar players kept time to the kilted dancers, and passersby gathered to watch them go through their steps. This was the yearly Bay area New Age and Neopagan convention called Pantheacon, and the scene was not out of the ordinary for a hotel that also hosts science fiction and Star Trek conventions. Down the hall from the lobby were information tables with flyers advertising henna hand painting, soul journeys, a shamanic healing arts center, Earth activist training, a fire drum circle, and The Hieroglyph newsletter for Egyptian revivalists. The hallway opened onto the “Vendor’s Room,” a convention ballroom full of merchants selling Neopagan music CDs, gauze gowns, hooded cloaks, billowy silk blouses, leather bags, decorative knives and swords, crystals and colorful stones, herbal lotions and essential oils, incense and dried sage, chain mail jewelry, jewelry with Celtic designs, statues of Pan and voluptuous goddess figurines, tarot cards, and books about Mayan culture, Renaissance magic, astrology, ancient Greece, Welsh mythology, African Yoruba religion, Witchcraft, and more. Massages and aura readings were offered at some booths and a “Peace Altar” was set up in another, which invited participants to leave an offering or prayer for peace in “these interesting times.” The hotel hallway was also filled with bulletin boards listing events that would take place over the three-day weekend. Hundreds of different rituals, workshops, and performances were listed, including “Intro to Shamanism,” “Self-Hypnosis That Works,” “The Quest Tarot,” “Ancient Slavic Paganism,” “Trance Middle Eastern Dance Workshop,” “Druid Healing Ritual,” “Hercules and the Hydra,” “Liturgy for Athena,” “Lord of the Rings—Chainmail 201,” “Psychic Techniques,” “Gaia Tribe in Concert,” and “Being a Witch at Work,” to name just a few.

Late Saturday morning a ritual called “The Jewel Without Price: Exploring the Grail Myth Through Tools of the Feri Tradition” was scheduled in one of the windowless convention rooms.¹ Participants who arrived for the ritual had read the following description in the convention program: “Musically accompanied workshop/ritual using Iron and Pearl pentacles to touch the mystery of the Grail, whose secret elixir of magick [with a K to distinguish it from stage magic] and inspiration has been sought by humanity throughout existence.” The pentacle or pentagram is a symbol in the shape of a five-pointed star, with each point symbolizing one of the elements of earth, fire, air, water, and spirit. The ritual was to be presented by Sharon Knight, who, according to her informational flyer, was “a Feri initiate” who “has practiced magick for 20+ years. She is co-founder of the band Pandemonaeon and teaches music and magick in the Bay Area.”

The description piqued the interested of many conventiongoers, and twice as many people as Knight had expected showed up in the conference room. Chairs were pushed to the back of the room and the lights were dimmed. More than fifty people stood or sat in a circle along the walls. Some were dressed in jeans and T-shirts and others wore ceremonial robes. There were no prerequisites or required attire. The entire convention and this ritual were open to anyone who paid the registration fee of $60 for four days. Knight wore a sapphire blue Renaissance-style gown, sleeves dripping with blue lace, a striking contrast to her long red hair, which she wore loose. Another priestess with blond braids wore a burgundy silk and velvet gown, fitted around the bodice and flowing through the skirt. The rich colors of their clothes and the period style were a welcome contrast to the nondescript hotel carpet and blank walls and helped to set the mood, as did a man softly playing acoustic guitar in the corner of the room.

In the center of the room was a large bronze grail, or cup, with tarot cards arranged face down in a circle on the floor around it. We stayed seated against the walls as Knight described each stage of the ritual, telling us exactly what to expect, how the steps of the ritual were to unfold, what chants we would be singing, and what she hoped to accomplish. As she talked, she realized that her original ritual plan would have to be adjusted to accommodate the large number of people who had chosen to attend that day. Instead of having everyone walk the shape of the pentacle, following the priestesses, they decided it would be more effective for us to stay where we were and to follow their movements with our eyes, imagining we were walking with them instead of actually moving around the room. Their original plan would have resulted in a confused melee of people with no idea what to do next.

When she was ready to begin, Knight asked us to stand, unless we were more comfortable sitting (no part of the ritual was mandatory, but most people followed directions), and she led us through a visualization to help us enter ritual space. She encouraged us to feel anchored to the earth, rooted in the bedrock beneath the earth’s surface, releasing every distraction that might prevent us from being fully mentally and physically present for the ritual.

Feel deep in your belly a glowing red fire. Let a strand of this red flame drop from your belly down into the earth, through all the layers of the earth, until you come to the very molten core of the earth. Let the fire of your core meld with the fire of the earth’s core. As you exhale, let all your tensions and scattered energy pour down this red strand into the earth. As you inhale, draw up love and strength from the earth. Continue the cycle, pouring out your distractions into the earth and drawing up strength from the earth, until you feel focused. Then send your love down to the earth as you exhale and draw up love from the earth as you inhale. Chant, “Hail Earth, Mother of all.”²

Worries, memories, concerns, and time fell away as we followed her instructions to visualize the “red core of energy” connecting us to the earth. Next we “cast a circle” in our minds by visualizing a sphere encompassing the ritual space, with the mundane reality of the hotel left outside. She instructed us, “Draw this red flame up through your entire body until it flows out your crown and up into the Heavens. Envision a sphere opening up about a foot above your head where an electric blue light flows into your body.” Then the first chant began, Knight’s strong and beautiful voice leading us and participants joining in as they learned the words. It was the “Vault of Heaven,” an invocation of a deity (asking a spirit or deity to be present in a ritual) called the Star Goddess: “You who open the vault of Heaven, out of the blackness comes spinning of stars.”³ At the end of the chant she asked us to

Allow the essence of stars to pour through you, filling your body with the wash of spirit, flooding you and pouring all the way through to the center of the earth. Draw up the flame of the earth through your body and up out your crown, offering your earthly potency to the Goddess of Heaven. And let her starry wisdom rain down through you again until she grounds herself in the very core of the earth. And draw up the earth through your body until it fountains out your crown as an offering to the Star Goddess.

Then she told us to say to ourselves, “I contain the earth and the heavens within my center, the circumference of all.” At that point the lights dimmed and the guitarist began playing again. Knight announced the purpose of the ritual and set us on our path: “What is the jewel without price? That for which we yearn in our deepest heart of hearts? That which drives us along the path of magick though we face misunderstanding, loneliness, and desolation? For what one kiss would you be willing to give all? . . . Come, let us walk the endless knot, and disentangle ourselves from limitation.” The ritual focused on clearing psychological obstacles such as fear that kept us from knowing and acting to realize our full potential.

The “red wand priestess”—the blond woman in the burgundy dress—silently walked to each point of the pentacle while Knight followed behind her and led us through a visualization/meditation for each point; we followed their words and movements with our eyes and minds. The light of the wand, she said, “symbolizes the fire of earth we invoked that burns through our bodies and the blood that pulses through our bodies.” The red wand priestess walked to the first point of the pentacle and began by raising her wand and pointing away from the center of the space. This first point was “Spirit and Sex,” represented by a violet jewel and violet light running through our bodies. Knight asked us to think of all the ways that sex is empowering and positive, conjuring up our images of sexual power and shining violet light on them: “Feel your connection to the earth. Feel yourself opening to the Vault of Heaven. Notice the pillar of energy this creates, and allow this pillar to become flooded with a violet jewel tone. Here we invoke the powers of sex. Conjure within yourself all the images of your sexuality. How do you celebrate the deliciousness of sex? What joys does it bring you? In what ways do you feel strong in your sexual self?” We meditated on these questions, and then she asked us to notice any cloudy places in the violet jewel, places where we might be uncomfortable sexually, where our power might be blocked, where the violet does not shine, and to look into these places. “Where are your fears regarding sex lodged in your body?” she asked. “Trust your body-wisdom, and accept whatever feelings, images, or insights are given. Now clench even deeper into these fears. Accentuate the feelings of restriction they cause in your body, so that you really feel them. Take a deep breath . . . and release all the tension into the earth. . . . Shake it out, breathe it out,” she instructed. A couple of people fell to the floor, some stomped, and others let their breath out with a rush. Knight rang a bell to signal the release and told us, “Flood yourself again with the pure jewel tone of violet, and stand in this clarity for a moment.” We imagined the violet light permeating our bodies, shining through unimpeded, spreading through us as we held the images of sexual power in our minds.

The priestesses went through a similar routine for each point of the pentacle as we followed with our eyes and imaginations. Each time, Knight had us imagine a jewel-tone light shining through us, specifically associated with the element of that point (air—topaz, earth—emerald green, fire—ruby red, water—sapphire blue, spirit—violet). And each time we had to look for where the color was cloudy and our power blocked, mentally go into that cloudiness, see what was causing it, and clear it away by breathing out, then imagine the colored light filling us up again. Topaz and golden light were for the power of self-identity; red ruby, fire and pride for personal power, for our accomplishments and who we are; emerald for earth and power—where we see ourselves really manifesting our will on the concrete level, changing the world around us; blue sapphire was for water and passion flowing through us, passion for life more than sexual passion. “What are you most moved by in life?” Knight asked us. “What rouses your deepest emotions?”

When the priestesses walked toward each point, all of us turned in that direction and imagined walking toward it in our own way. Some lifted their hands up as if to hail the spirits of that direction, while others simply focused their eyes and minds there. Some ritual participants remained seated while others swayed back and forth as they stood and watched the priestesses.

After leading us through the visualization exercises for each element/color, the priestesses returned to the sex/spirit point where they had started. Here they repeated the same ritual in an abbreviated way, asking us to feel the Iron Pentacle (red fire coming up from the core of the earth where iron resides that represents the iron of our life’s blood) as the red light of iron moved through our bodies.

At the head, they said, “We invoke Spirit and Sex,” and asked us to visualize red flame tracing from our head to our right foot.

At the right foot—“We invoke Fire and Pride”—we were to visualize red flame from our right foot to our left hand.

At the left hand—“We invoke Air and Self”—we were to visualize red flame from our left hand to our right hand.

At the right hand—“We invoke Earth and Power”—we were to visualize red flame from our right hand to our left foot.

At the left foot—“We invoke Water and Passion”—we were to visualize red flame from our left foot back to our head.

Then we were told to repeat the process while tracing a red pentagram over our body, and to speed up, saying only, “Sex, Pride, Self, Power, Passion” at the respective points.

Then there was stillness and the music began again. Knight led us in an invocation of the Celtic goddess Brigid, whom she called the “Keeper of the Cauldron of Inspiration in Celtic lore.” Knight circled around the grail, swinging a silver branch of bells and singing a song to Brigid:

Oh light in times of darkness, Lady come down to us

Mother Serpent, Mystic Rose, Lady come into us

Eerie One of the Ivory tower, Lady come through us

Fountain of Crystal, Mouth of Music, Lady come out of us

Oh Lady of the Cauldron, warmed by the breath of the sacred Nine

Oh Lady of the Cauldron, warmed by the breath of the sacred Nine.⁴

We all joined in, repeating the song many times to let the energy from our singing fill the room. The guitarist in the corner kept playing as the song slowly died down and Knight invited us to come up and look into the grail, “to scry”—a process of seeking visions and insight by looking in a mirror or water into other realities. She also instructed us to choose one of the tarot cards that were arranged face down on the floor around the chalice, turn it over to see which character it was, then put it back and concentrate on what it signified. People spontaneously left the outer circle and gathered around the grail a few at a time. When they had finished and returned to the circle, others took their place. Some people sat by the grail and meditated on what they saw there or on their card for a few minutes before returning to the circle.

We went through a similar process with the Pearl Pentacle, visualizing pearly white light flowing through our bodies and turning into color at each point. We did this several times quickly, filling the room with our energy. Knight explained what we were doing this way:

As the Iron Pentacle is the work and wisdom of our human selves, so the Pearl Pentacle is the work and wisdom of our Divine Selves, our transpersonal magick, the quickening that comes from gaining awareness of the True Will. Pearlescent energy drawn through body in the shape of a pentagram, as was the Iron pentacle. At each point, “Sex deepens into Love” and a violet flame alights at our crown. “Pride deepens into Law, or True Will,” and a ruby flame alights at our right foot. “Self deepens into Knowledge,” and a topaz flame alights at our left hand. “Power deepens into Power,” and an emerald flame alights at our right hand. “Passion deepens into Wisdom,” and a sapphire flame alights at our left foot.⁵

The priestesses closed the ritual by “grounding” the energy we raised and bringing us back to the present. “Grounding” was a calming process that brought us out of the realm of visualization and meditation into the concrete reality of our presence in a group of people sitting around a hotel conference room. As part of our return to ordinary reality, we “released” Brigid and the elemental powers of fire, air, water, earth, and spirit that we had invoked—we bade them good-bye. Knight asked us to return from the “astral” plane to our bodies, to touch the earth, notice the boring hotel carpet, and remember where we were. Finally she shared a Buddhist blessing with us: “We dedicate the benefit of this act, and all acts, to the complete liberation and supreme enlightenment of all beings everywhere, pervading space and time, so mote it be. May the benefit of practice, ours and others’, come to fruition ultimately and immediately, and we remain in a state of presence.”⁶ Then we all let out a loud “AAAAAAAAHHHHH!” in order to spread the benefit of the ritual throughout the world.

Knight, like many other Neopagans, has found ways to harmonize her spirituality with work in the world. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area, where she is a massage therapist and founding member of the band Pandemonaeon. “Her private practice uses art, music, and dance to tap the mythic powers of the psyche,” says her promotional flyer.⁷ The Iron and Pearl Pentacle visualizations that we went through were Knight’s versions of rituals she learned as an initiate in Feri Witchcraft. Her flyer explains that “Feri is an ecstatic tradition of Witchcraft first developed and taught by Victor Anderson. It is characterized by a fierce,...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Half title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents 
• Introduction
• Part One
• Illustrations
• Part Two
• Chronology
• Notes
• Glossary
• Resources for the Study of New Age and Neopagan Religions
• Index