Drawing Down the Moon Read Free Page A

New York, NY. From “Witchcraft: Classical, Gothic and Neopagan,” by Isaac Bonewits, © 1976 by Green Egg, St. Louis, Missouri. From The Druid Chronicles (Evolved), ed. Isaac Bonewits, Berkeley Drunemeton Press, Berkeley, California, 1976. From Real Magic, by P. E. I. Bonewits, Creative Arts Book Company, © 1979 by P. E. I. Bonewits. From Green Egg, © 1968–1976 by Green Egg, St. Louis, Missouri. From Gnostica, © 1973–1975 by Llewellyn Publications, St. Paul, Minnesota. From “The Rebirth of Witchcraft,” unpublished manuscript by Aidan Kelly, © 1977 by Aidan Kelly. From “Why a Craft Ritual Works,” “Palengenesia,” and “She Touched Me . . .” in Essays Toward a Metatheology of the Goddess, by C. Taliesin Edwards (Aidan Kelly), © 1975 by C. Taliesin Edwards. From “I.D.,” poem by Barbara Starrett, © 1974 by Barbara Starrett. Frontispiece illustraxx ) Drawing Down the Moon
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    tion by permission of the Art and Architectural Division of the New York Pub lic Library (Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundation).

A Note on Names and Language
    A number of those whose names appear within are using “Craft” or “Pagan” names instead of their given names. This may be for reasons of job security, because of the community in which they live, or because, for any one of a number of reasons, they do not wish to be “public” about their religion. Their wishes have been honored.
    Throughout the book I do not use “man,” “mankind,” or “he” as generic terms. At the present time these terms mean “male” rather than being truly generic. Many of those I quote do use these terms and their quotes are left intact. There are also several quotations that contain words with intentionally unconventional spellings, such as “womin” and “thealogy.”

I. Background
    . . . the Thessalian witches who draw down the moon from heaven . . .
    â€”PLATO, Gorgias
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If I beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness; and my heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my hand: this also were an iniquity to be punished by the judge: for I should have denied the God that is above.
    â€” Job, XXXIII, 27–8

2.
    A Religion Without Converts
    HOW DO PEOPLE become Neo-Pagans? Neo-Pagan groups rarely proselytize and certain of them are quite selective. There are few converts. In most cases, word of mouth, a discussion between friends, a lecture, a book, an article, or a Web site provides the entry point. But these events merely confirm some original, private experience, so that the most common feeling of those who have named themselves Pagans is something like “I finally found a group that has the same religious perceptions I always had.” A common phrase you hear is “I’ve come home,” or, as one woman told me excitedly after a lecture, “I always knew I had a religion, I just never knew it had a name.”
    Alison Harlow, a systems analyst at a large medical research center in California, described her first experience this way: e
    â€œIt was Christmas Eve and I was singing in the choir of a lovely church at the edge of a lake, and the church was filled with beautiful decorations. It was full moon, and the moon was shining right through the glass windows of the church. I looked out and felt something very special happening, but it didn’t seem to be happening inside the church.
    â€œAfter the Midnight Mass was over and everyone adjourned to the parish house for coffee, I knew I needed to be alone for a minute, so I left my husband and climbed up the hill behind the church. I sat on this hill looking at the full moon, and I could hear the sound of coffee cups clinking and the murmur of conversation from the parish house.
    â€œI was looking down on all this, when suddenly I felt a ‘presence.’ It seemed very ancient and