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Pagan Drumbeats for Summer Solstice 6/25/2003 Potter Fans Unknowingly Join the Celebrations
As millions of children waited outside bookstores for the midnight Saturday release of the latest Harry Potter novel, tens of thousands of practicing pagans gathered for summer solstice celebrations.
Children in the book line picked up Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fifth book in the wildly popular J.K. Rowling series, and celebrated with games, refreshments and costumes.
Pagans, celebrating the year’s longest day, danced and frolicked at dawn. About 30 thousand Wiccans, Druids and unaffiliated pagan revelers gathered at Britain’s Stonehenge alone.
“Ever since the release of book one, the author and publishers of the Harry Potter series have tried to distance themselves from the actual practice of witchcraft and paganism,” Cleveland, Ohio-based Mission America president Linda Harvey told the Culture & Family Report. “Now that is no more, with a summer solstice release they are being quite open about what this series is about.”
The record attendance at Britain’s main solstice celebration and the record breaking first day sales of the latest Harry Potter novel are leading to questions about the growth of paganism and interest in witchcraft in Britain and the United States.
Matt McCabe of the Order of Bards Ovates and Druids in Britain told Reuters that the group had grown from a few hundred in the late 1980’s to 7,000 worldwide today. He credits the growth to the group’s Internet recruitment efforts.
“People are very reassured by the structured learning we can offer via the Web,” McCabe said.
The power of the Web is only expanding on cultural influences that favor the pagan worldview. The first wave of interest came in the 1970’s on the back of the environmental movement.
“Paganism’s veneration for nature drew many from the environmentalist ranks,” McCabe said.
“That promotion of Earth Day, which glorifies nature worship, has escalated interest in the occult,” said Harvey of Mission America. “Last year about 75,000 packets of information were sent by Earth Day organizers to public schools nationwide. Often this material reaches the classroom despite it’s religious undertones.”
’Woman-centered’ theology The next wave of interest came with the feminist movement, and efforts to infuse mainline Christian denominations with a more woman-centered theology.
“Feminist spirituality, as exemplified by the Re-imagining movement, is heavily weighted toward paganism and goddess worship,” Harvey said.
Recently, however, paganism and witchcraft have drawn the attention of a younger audience, namely teenagers.
In the 1990’s popular television shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Sabrina the Teenage Witch, brought forth a genre of teen media from books to television to movies about young female witches and “girl power.”
“Anything that makes teenage girls feel powerful is bound to go down well,” McCabe said.
“There are today tons of paperbacks aimed at pre-teens, 11-year-old girls and up, that are not only based on the popular television shows, but are actual how-to guides for casting spells and becoming a witch,” Harvey said.
Pastor Ross Rennie, of the Northwich Christian Fellowship in Britain, an outspoken critic of the Harry Potter phenomena, said popular media has led to increased the number of young people looking to witchcraft.
“Before I became a Christian I was into witchcraft so I know more about it than most people in the district; I believe in the dark side and the light, and I have lived both sides,” he told The Northwich Chronicle.
“If I was still into witchcraft I’d be rubbing my hands together — it’s great recruitment. They recruit through books and films: one of the biggest recruitment times was during the release of The Exorcist.”
“If you take the story in the Harry Potter books, it’s done in a harmless way. Harry goes to school and learns about sorcery, but it’s teaching children to believe these things are normal — it’s a breeding ground for witchcraft,” he added.
Rennie said if there was a Harry Potter day at his children’s school, he would withdraw them for the day rather than exposing them to the normalization of witchcraft.
Pop culture primes kids A 2002 Barna Research Group study, reported by WorldNetDaily, indicated that 86 percent of children watched witchcraft or supernatural-themed television shows on a regular basis.
The addition of the Harry Potter series to other witchcraft-themed media is desensitizing children, according to occult expert Caryl Matrisciana.
“The godly fear that protects mankind form dabbling in the spirit world is being taken away from children who read these Harry Potter books,” Matrisciana told WorldNetDaily. “The terrors and horrors of black magic and occult practice, rituals, ceremonies and demon possession are being normalized.”
While the most visible gathering of pagans occurs annually at the ancient ruins on the Salisbury Plain was uneventful, it was not so with other gatherings.
At least eight people were stabbed when a riot broke out among 200 solstice revelers gathered on the grounds of Headley Park Hotel near Bordon, Hampshire.
Another gathering in Birmingham, billed as a “perfect day out for the whole family,” sparked condemnation from the Church of England, when the pagan musical group scheduled to perform insisted on a “quiet area for fornication” during the celebration.
A spokesman for the Custard Factory, where the festival was held, told the local paper, The Birmingham, that the group Inkubus Sukkubus insisted on the area.
“They said they needed a quiet fornicatorium,” the spokesman said. “They said it is a fertility rite. The singer goes into a trance-like state. We don’t quite know what will happen once the frenzied activity begins.”
The request was confirmed by a spokesman for the UK Pagan Association.
“There are certain festivals where we celebrate the creation of life where you have to have sex,” Rhiannon Biddulph told The Birmingham.
A spokesman for the Church of England in Birmingham condemned the event saying, “It is difficult to believe that anyone, pagan or otherwise, would include a sex show as part of a ‘family day out.’”
American pagan movement growing While public pagan celebrations are more visible Britain, there is a growing pagan influence in the United States as well.
A Chicago-based group Telepathic Media, has purchased the former Hoopeston, Illinois town hall and plan to open a school teaching Wiccan principals. The school, currently offering instruction on-line, is expanding to face-to-face instruction.
School officials plan to start the first 13-lesson seminar in Wicca in September, hoping to eventually expand the school to a four-year college.
Meanwhile, paganism has joined homosexuality and race as issues for diversity training in a northeastern Pennsylvania camp for teenagers.
College Misericordia’s Intergenerational and Multicultural Diversity Camp for high school students and senior citizens, held in Dallas Township, featured an expanded lecture and question-and-answer session with Tom Jarmiolowski, a self-proclaimed witch.
Linda Trompetter, director of the college’s Diversity Institute, told The Times-Ledger that the camp decided to feature Wicca because it’s one of the least-recognized faiths, and one that invokes the most ignorance an prejudice.
Jarmiolowski gave the same half hour presentation last year, but was allotted a full hour this year because of the class’ popularity and the lively question-and-answer period.
Harvey says all of the pieces are in place for a full-blown inundation of paganism in the U.S.
“There’s no question we are on the verge of an explosion,” Harvey said. “All that is really needed right now is for some pop celebrity, one particularly idolized by teens, to openly proclaim ‘I am a witch.’”
“We have seen some less popular celebrities openly embrace paganism, and some top stars hint at interest,” she added. “But once we see a top star actively adhere to the pagan rituals and tenants, then we will see a flood like we have never seen before.”
Harvey added that once tons of kids become taken with paganism, a slowly building “pagan rights” movement will also blossom, moving to promote the religious rights of minors over the rights of parents opposed to their child’s involvement in the occult. |
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