These New Pagans: An Exploration Of Neo-Paganism
In honour of this week’s summer solstice, Mark Pilkington – author of Mirage Men and Far Out and operator of Strange Attractor Press – looks at some contemporary neo-pagan tribes and their music.
While we’ve marvelled at what’s left of their art, culture and architecture, we know precious little about what our ancient ancestors actually believed, or how they enacted their beliefs. One thing we can be sure of, however, is that all cultures – at least all those that have left traces of themselves behind – observed the slow spin of the cosmos above their heads and developed stories about the heavens and their inhabitants. Early astronomers paid particular attention to the days when the sun appears to stand still, rising and setting at the same point on the horizon: the summer and winter solstices. Ancient architectural sites all over the world, from Ireland to Mexico, are aligned to the midsummer or midwinter suns, or to the equinoctial points in-between. By watching the world around them, early human cultures began to tell stories about what they saw; over time these stories became myths, and eventually these myths became religions, the most powerful of which were capable of birthing and destroying nations. If the ebbs and flows of religious power throughout human history can teach us anything, it’s that the gods don’t die when people stop worshipping them, and that cultures don’t die when their gods do.
In the UK alone, the 2001 census listed 43,000 people under the broadly inclusive banner of Pagan, and there are likely to be considerably more in the 2011 census. Paganism is ultimately the church of Nature: it is pantheistic – recognising and respecting multiple deities and spirits – and animistic –understanding that everything is alive, and that we are all joined by the great web of being. And when we say everything is alive, for the committed animist, we mean everything, including rocks (which move and change shape over time), slime moulds (which have been observed navigating mazes), computers (which fly planes and run cities) and synthesisers (which make great music).
While there are countless permutations of paganisms, here we identify four key tribes and some of the musics that they have influenced. All share a belief in the supremacy of nature, and will, in their own ways, be marking the passage of the solstice sun.
WICCA
Solitary witches have always been there, living at the edges of towns, cities and societies all over the world. They were the wart charmers, weather wizards, herbalists, healers and astrologers – and they’re still with us to this day. But the popular idea of an organised witches’ cult or religion was a fiction developed by an aggressively paranoid Christian church in the Middle Ages and mistakenly sanctioned by anthropologists in the early 20th century. There is no evidence for witches in Europe ever gathering in groups for ceremonies, or even sharing specific sets of beliefs, until the 1940s.
Born near Liverpool in 1884, Gerald Gardner moved to Malaya where he lived and worked as a plantation manager, before returning to England in 1936 to enjoy his retirement. He had a keen interest in folklore, magic, nature and naturism. In the late 1940s Gardner declared that he had stumbled upon a witches’ coven in the New Forest in the south of England. He first wrote about them in a pseudonymous fictional work High Magic’s Aid (1949), and then in the non-fiction Witchcraft Today in 1954. Gardner pretended to be a dispassionate observer to this newly-discovered religious movement, but in fact he was its founding father.
Gerald Gardner interview, Out Of Step, ITV, 1957
The romantic notion of a surviving religion entirely separate to, and in opposition to, Christianity was hugely appealing to Gardner, who combined these ideas with his own passions for nudity, light flagellation, ritual magic and bondage, to form a newly ancient craft. He called it witchcraft, and its adherents The Wica.
Gardner’s goddess-worshipping, pagan, naturist, fertility religion immediately drew the attentions of the press and by the time of Gardner’s death in 1964 there were covens all over the UK. But until the 1960s, witchcraft generally remained a low-key, private, underground movement. That is until the arrival of its first superstar, Alex Sanders, King of the Witches.
Alex and Maxine Sanders rite, From Witchcraft 70 (1970)
Born in Liverpool in 1926, the son of a music hall performer, Alex Sanders began to make a name for himself as a witch in the early 1960s. Sanders claimed to be have been initiated into an ancient tradition of witchcraft that was distinct from Gardner’s. Never one for modesty, he named it the Alexandrian tradition.
By the mid-1960s, Sanders had a small Manchester-based coven of his own, complete with a beautiful high priestess, 17 year-old former convent girl Maxine Morris. The duo courted press attention with dramatic, often racy pictures featuring a skyclad Maxine. Alex soon declared himself King of the Witches and Maxine his Queen. A biography, national press articles and parts in mondo-style documentary films like Legend Of The Witches, Witchcraft 70 and the softcore porno flick Secret Rites (a kind of witchy Space Is The Place) followed. Preparing for the big time, they moved to London, welcomed all comers to their flat in Notting Hill and became, for a short while, national celebrities, aided by Maxine’s lack of concern about appearing naked on film, on stage or in books and magazines.
“Like so many ‘timeless’ folk traditions, Wicca’s rites had been assembled from various sources to create the impression of something ancient.”
The Sanders and their magic displayed a greater sense of theatricality than Gardner’s, incorporating the elemental drama of ritual magic and ceremony. They also emphasised psychic feats, healing and divination, aligning their magic with then-fashionable pop cultural ideas about the supernatural. Their world was an entirely different place to that of Gardner’s. It was the era of flower power, psychedelic drugs, wild music, hippies and beatniks. The glamorous, sexy, mysterious witchcraft of Sanders sat perfectly with the rebellious spirit of the time and was reflected in something of an occult revival and, probably more than any other pagan path, inspired a number of musicians to make music about witchcraft, and even a few witches to sing.
Comus “Diana”, from First Utterance (1971)
Gwydion Pendderwen “The Sun God”, from Gwydion Sings: Songs For The Old Religion (1975)
Dave & Toni Arthur “The Cruel Mother”, from Hearken To The Witches Rune (1970)
Black Widow “Come To The Sabbat” (live, 1970), from Sacrifice (1971)
Louise Huebner “Gods”, from Seduction Through Witchcraft (1969)
And just in case you’d decided that music had abandoned Wicca sometime in the 1970s, here’s a contemporary number from The Advisory Circle, a witchcraft-positive electronic musician whose album features sleeve notes from the eminent historian of British magic, Professor Ronald Hutton.
The Advisory Circle “We Cleanse This Space”, from As the Crow Flies (2011)
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DRUIDRY
Sleep “Druid”, from Holy Mountain (1992)
Next to nothing is known about the original Iron Age druids, who lived in Britain, Ireland and France. Writing in 50BC, Julius Caesar describes them as an enemy who he nevertheless held in great respect as “persons of definite account and dignity.”
A century or so later Pliny refers to rites incorporating mistletoe and oak branches; other classical sources refer to human sacrifices, including the famed Wicker Man, though modern scholars tend to doubt their veracity. In 60AD the druid stronghold of Angelsey in present day Wales came under amphibious assault by the Roman general Gaius Paulinus, who destroyed their oak grove and shrine, but the job wouldn’t be completed for another 18 years, consolidating the druids’ powerful reputation.
“After a legal battle in 1884, cremation – previously outlawed as primitive and pagan – became more commonplace, with crematoria being built around the UK.”
In England, the 17th and 18th century antiquarians John Aubrey and William Stukeley romanticised the druids as the builders of Avebury, Stonehenge and other ancient monuments, paving the way for a druidic revival spearheaded by Welsh antiquarian and document forger Edward Williams, aka Iolo Morganwg. Iolo wrote the “Druid’s Prayer” and also developed a Bardic alphabet, both of which are still in use by modern druids.
Following Iolo’s lead, Dr William Price – a physician, Welsh Nationalist, vegetarian and advocate for unmarried love – came to druidry in the 19th century. After the death of his infant son, Iesu Grist (Jesus Christ), Price fought, and won, a legal battle to cremate the child’s body in the open air, which he did in 1884. Over the next few years, cremation – previously outlawed as primitive and pagan – became more commonplace, with crematoria being built around the UK.
There are various neo-druidic orders around Europe and North America today – some of which incorporate elements of freemasonry and other esoteric traditions – but for the most part the druids are a jolly bunch, keen on their druid fluid (cider and real ale), singing and dancing.
Druids singing at Stonehenge
In 2000, modern druids, led by biker King Arthur Pendragon, were largely responsible for winning the fight to re-open Stonehenge to the public at the winter and summer solstices. It had been closed to the public since 1985 to prevent hippies and travellers from celebrating there.
Stonhenge Free Festival: The Battle of the Bean Field, BBC Newsnight 1985
These days the neo-druids, some of them veterans of the earlier free festival scene, can always be found leading the rites at solstice ceremonies at Stonehenge, Avebury, and in green spaces (‘groves’) all over Europe and America.
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HEATHENRY
Incorporating a number of polytheistic, neo-pagan religions based upon Northern European traditions, heathenry is often associated with the legendary ferocity of the Viking raiders and the sturm und drang of the Germanic tribes. So, you won’t be surprised to find that it’s very popular within the metal community, where it’s not uncommon to see Mjolnir (Thor’s Hammer) being worn as a pendant or tattoo.
Sweden’s hugely-popular answer to Iron Maiden, Amon Amarth epitomise Viking-chic and have perhaps done more than any other band to spread heathen lore and ideas. Lead singer Johan Hegg’s heavyweight Mjolnir can be seen during a frantic bout of characteristic hair-waving at about 3.30.
Amon Amarth “Guardians Of Asgaard” (live, 2009)
While heathenry comes in many frozen flavours – Asatru, Odinism, the Northern Tradition – all the groups pay their respects to the gods of the Aesir, the Norse pantheon which includes Loki the Trickster, Odin lord of Valhalla, Freya the beautiful, Thor the storm-bringer, Frey the Virile, Baldr the poet and their friends and allies.
Like druidry before it and wicca after, modern heathenry is a poetic re-imagining of the olde ways, though in this case some original manuscripts do survive. This allows adherents to base their ritual practices on a lore that historians recognise as stretching back to at least the tenth century, and was written down 300 years later in the Icelandic heroic poems and stories known as the Edda.
Mirrorscape “Rites Of The Edda” (live 2010)
Unfortunately the popular image of the vikings as fierce warriors, and the fact that the second wave of the heathen revival was driven by an esoteric cabal within the German National Socialist Party in the 1930s and 40s, have drawn some deeply unsavoury characters to the heathen cause. This made the news most recently with murders and a putative bombing campaign associated with the Rodnovery (‘native faith’) movement in Russia.
Rodnovery ritual, Russia
A murder and a spate of church-burnings by feuding Norwegian black metal clans in the early 1990s brought the wrong kind of attention to the Odinist movement, condemning the gods of the Aesir to a soundtrack of black metal chugging and mortuary ambience for all eternity.
Burzum “Jóln”, from Umskiptar (2012)
Most infamous of the Norwegian black metallers is Varg (born Kristian) Vikernes of Burzum, aka Count Grishnak of the band Mayhem. Convicted and imprisoned in 1994 for the murder of fellow Mayhem member Oystein Aarseth, aka Euronymous, Vikernes was freed in 2009 and released a new Burzum album last year. Vikernes makes no secret of his racist, eugenicist agenda and was closely involved with Norway’s neo-Nazi Heathen Front, itself connected to English radical Odinist group Woden’s Folk, whose Coventry contact is an organiser for the British National Party.
But fear not, there is a progressive side to black metal heathenry, best represented by Wolves In The Throne Room from the Pacific Northwest of the USA. Unabashed about their anarcho-eco-heathen ideals, WITTR are more likely to be found discussing biodynamic farming than the cleansing fires of Asgaard.
Wolves In The Throne Room “Cleansing”, live at Roadburn 2008
The ‘might is right’ brigade tend to overlook that Odin, the most powerful of the ancient northern gods, had a sensitive side – enjoying dressing up in women’s clothing and hanging upside down from trees. Once you look past the hair and hammers, the heathen mythography is rewardingly rich, strange and complex.
Julian Cope “18 Charms Of Odin”, from Discover Odin (2001)
======== NEO-SHAMANS The broadest neo-pagan tribe – and so the hardest to pin down culturally – are the neo-shamans, who emerged from a seething mass of post-rave protoplasm in the late 1980s and early 90s. The three paths we’ve looked at so far share a respect for nature and find roles for inebriants and psychoactive substances, used to enter shifted states of consciousness and communicate with human and animal ancestors or spirits. For the neo-shamans however, this gnostic-psychedelic connection with the otherworlds and the teachings of those who dwell there, are central to their beliefs and activities. The Shamen & Terrence Mckenna “Re:evolution” (live, 1992)
Watch on YouTube
“Spread the word! Shamanise!” Perhaps the ultimate expression of rave-era New Age psychedelic magical idealism can be found in this video of Scots The Shamen performing live with their guru, American psychedelic philosopher Terrence Mckenna.
If you can hear him over the ecstatic roaring of the crowd, Mckenna outlines his psychedelic, apocalyptic neo-shamanic philosophy that will, according to many neo-shamans and New Agers, climax at this year’s winter solstice (December 21st, 2012). Good luck getting any of them to agree on what exactly is supposed to happen, though.
The ongoing global new-New Age dance culture smorgasbord, incorporating the horror that is psy-trance, represents perhaps the most visible face of quasi-shamanic activity in Western Europe and North America – finding its apotheosis at the annual Burning Man festival in Nevada and the many events that it has inspired.
But it doesn’t all have to be glowsticks and repetitive beats:
Coil “A Warning From The Sun” (live in Vienna 2002)
In the live performances conducted in the last few years of Coil’s existence, John Balance personified the frontman as shaman, and had a lifetime’s research and experimentation with drugs and magic to back it up. Over the course of their career, Coil gradually steered a course from darkness into light, declaring themselves ‘born again pagans’ during a tentative flirtation with dance music in the early-90s. Balance maintained strong connections with the international occult community and the queer pagan scene, championing the early 20th century South London artist and mystic Austin Osman Spare as a shamanic ancestor.
Bulldog Breed “Austin Osman Spare”, from Made In Britain (1969)
Meanwhile, in Finland:
Arktau Eos, live in Moscow 2007
Finnish performance duo Arktau Eos draw upon the shamanic practices of their frozen homeland, also incorporating elements of western European hermetic magic, witchcraft and stagecraft to pull the underworld up from the depths and the heavens down to Earth.
As we celebrate the solstice and the wheel of the year turns again, Arktau Eos’s cthonic actions remind us that there is no summer without winter and no morning without night. This midsummer get outside, embrace the elements and enjoy the moonlight and the sunshine.
