Pantheacon (2) – Pagans? Heathens?? Witches???

So, speaking of Pantheacon, some of you may be wondering just what this is all about?  A convention for Pagans, Heathens, Witches and such?  Surely this must be a joke.  Perhaps you cannot imagine what such an event would be like.  You can’t imagine people in the year 2013 calling themselves Pagan and the other names.

I’ve been a Pagan for over thirty years.  You may ask:  How can that be?  Surely these things have been left behind long ago, hundreds or even thousands of years ago, by civilized people.

No.  I was baptized a Lutheran and grew up hearing Bible stories, it is true.  Then, in grade school, I also heard the legends of Greek heroes.  In high school I heard about Greek tragic heroes.  So that I was familiar with the so-called “Pagan” authors before I ever got to college.  About the same time, I became interested in Wagnerian opera, eastern religion, and the psychology of Carl Jung.

I was inclined towards nature and mysticism.  When I discovered books about Wicca, and Margot Adler’s Drawing Down the Moon, it didn’t seem particularly foreign to me.

I confess, I read Adler’s book because I’d been studying mythology.  I’d spent a lot of time with Joseph Campbell’s four-volume The Masks of God.  I was interested in modern approaches to myth.  When I noticed that most of Adler’s book dealt with modern-day witches, I was a bit put-off.   Witches?!  I wasn’t interested in witches!  I thought that anyone calling themselves a witch nowadays must be either extremely shallow or extremely weird.

But it appealed to me.  It was not what I had expected.  I’d believed stereotypes.  You may have ideas of who these people are; and you may be wrong.

I’ve been surprised, over the years, by how many other people have also felt attracted to these things.  

So—I’m going to tell you a bit about Pantheacon—what I saw and heard there.

Stay tuned.