DISKUS Volume 6 (2000) http://www.uni-marburg.de/fb03/religionswissenschaft/journal/diskus WEAVING A TANGLED WEB? PAGAN ETHICS AND ISSUES OF HISTORY, 'RACE' AND ETHNICITY IN PAGAN IDENTITY Ann-Marie Gallagher Senior Lecturer, Combined Honours University of Central Lancashire, UK Email: a.m.gallagher@uclan.ac.uk ----------------- ABSTRACT Neither the construction of Pagan identities nor academic reflection on that process takes place in a vacuum. A convergence of academic and participant understandings problematises Pagan discourses about issues of history, 'race', ethnicity, gender and other facets of identities. This article makes clear that the overlap between particular Pagan identities and intolerant and/or malevolent tendencies in contemporary Britain renders explicit consideration of this area a matter of urgency, particularly in relation to questions of Pagan ethics. --------------- INTRODUCTION On the 25th of March 1997 a witch, Kevin Carleon, got into Stonehenge and at dawn unfurled and flew the Union Flag. This was in protest at a theory published in the Wiltshire Archaeological Magazine that Stonehenge and Avebury may have been built by insurgent peoples originating from the West of what is now France around 4,500 years ago. Carleon explained his protest by declaring; 'It is my theory that those living in this country invaded Europe - and not vice versa' <1>. The deployment of a Union Flag in the circumstances seems somewhat anachronistic, given that it did not exist in its present form until 1801 and the idea of 'nation' in its contemporary sense did not exist before the eighteenth-century (Robbins l989, Hobsbawm l990). But this is just one example of a whole range of misconceptions, and arguably misappropriations, of concepts of history, nation, 'race' and ethnicity which seem to exist within popular pagan lore. It is the purpose of this article to hold up to the light, from an academic and pagan participant perspective, a number of issues arising from the continuing evolution of pagan identities in Britain at the end of the twentieth century. Some of these are named in the title of this short piece; all, it will be suggested, arise from a number of as yet unaddressed assumptions about the place that pagans occupy in our current historical, social and political situation(s). These assumptions are articulated in a number of ways: in the opinions, philosophies, texts and vernacular expressions of pagan culture and they occur with a regularity and variety which is almost dizzying when one seeks to catch at their sources and their boundaries. In order that the varying emanations of ideas around history, gender, 'race', identity and ethnicity and other issues do not slip the net, I will be seeking to identify the nodes each presently occupies on the web of pagan culture and to name the points at which this web is becoming entangled with that of the more dominant social structures in which pagans also participate. This piece will argue that current pagan praxis has the power to transform both, and to point the way towards a pagan ethics which would support this mutual transformation; but this first requires acknowledging the links between the two identities and meanings being allotted and ascribed to an ongoing construction of current pagan identity that may make that identity appear more fragile and contingent. 'HISTORY' AND POPULAR PAGAN TEXTS 'The dead are not always quiet, and the past will never be a safe subject for contemplation' Ronald Hutton (l996). A survey of popular pagan texts published by Aquarian Press, Thorsons, Element and Arkana turned up an arrestingly unproblematised relationship with ethnic, historical, national, social and political boundaries. Amongst the very popular titles surveyed, there was a markedly lackadaisical attitude towards historical periodicity. This was particularly the case in titles which invoked historical precedent as the foundation of both the authority of the information contained in the book about contemporary pagan practices and, significantly, the basis for present-day pagan identity. The examples I analysed were peppered with invocations of 'Ancient times...' and began seemingly authoritative pieces of information with 'In the past...' invariably failing to identify era let alone dates, cultural context or cite provenance. Admittedly, none of the books I looked at claimed to be an academic text, although one of the worst offenders did, somewhat ironically, deplore the 'flimsy scholarship' on which many books detailing various magical traditions are based (Green l995). I would argue, however, that neither the lack of claims to scholarship nor the disclaimers about it that some texts occasionally carry exonerate them from blatant inaccuracy or unaccountability. The influence of popular pagan texts should not be underestimated; most self-identifying pagans in Britain, Northern Europe and North America are first-generation pagans (in the contemporary sense at least!) and the majority either have first contact with paganism via these texts or consult them for follow-up information after initial person-to-person contact with paganism. Moreover, in my experience and from the evidence of other similar sources cited in the texts themselves, the information and ideas generated by these books is often enthusiastically picked up on and quoted, taken as given and often, as I will go on to argue, reapplied somewhat problematically. PAGAN 'ETHNICITIES', CELTICISM AND CROSS-CULTURAL COMPARISONS A concept which appears to span some particularly woolly ideas around some of the issues mentioned is the often uncritical and unproblematised application of the term 'Celtic' (cf. Bowman 1993). What has effectively been a salvage job around previously suppressed, silenced and overlooked aspects of past and present cultures of the British Isles has been a positive consequence of the so-called 'Celtic revival' and has gone some way to challenging the myth of Anglo-Saxonism first imposed within ideologies of racial hierarchies in nineteenth-century England. However, the current wave of popular 'Celticism' stands in danger of propagating myths with similarly denigrating effects. Courtenay Davis, in the introduction to his book Celtic Design, uses the term 'the Celtic nation' (Rutherford 1993)-one of the problems related to which I have already pointed out. But the frequency with which the rhetoric of Celticism abounds, for example 'the Celtic civilization', 'the Celtic people' places it in favour of an homogenous 'Celtic' history and identity. Only one of the samples of books on the Grail Mysteries that I looked at, for example, contained any element of differentiation in terminology. John and Caitlin Matthews do pause at the beginning of Ladies of the Lake to deplore what they term a 'growing tendency to confuse "Celtic", "British", "Welsh" and "Gaelic"'. However, they go on to say that when they are talking about 'Celtic' they are 'speaking broadly about the traditions of Britain and Ireland combined, since both countries share many common themes and stories' (Matthews l992). Notably, both authors employ the term 'Celtic' unproblematically and without even as much differentiation as this in a number of their other works. So what we have, effectively, is a large number of popular texts invoking a cultural specification without ever specifying whose culture, or when or where it is or was. WHAT DOES THIS FINE DISREGARD FOR CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL SPECIFICITY SIGNIFY? Perhaps we could paraphrase the historian Renan by applying his assessment of the tendencies of forming nations to present-day pagan identity. He claimed that 'Getting its history wrong is part of being a nation' (Hobsbawm l990). Perhaps getting our history and occasionally our geography wrong is part of constructing a pagan identity. But what might the consequences of such myth-building be? Might not the construction of our ideas about, for example, Celticity actually be 'culture-u-like' with knotwork, and undermine those voices struggling to be heard below the surface of that lumpenmasse identity; fighting for land-rights in Scotland, against racism and poverty in Wales, against war in Ireland, absentee landlords in Cornwall and against the demise of the Manx language in Vannin? To what extent, when an author claims and a reader believes that building a mound in your garden is a 'very Celtic thing', are we essentializing racial characteristics, positing an 'inside track' on spirituality in place of recognizing human rights issues and lack of power? Stereotyping, even when it appears to be awe-struck and benevolent, actually denies and 'disappears' self-autonomy. Claims towards 'Celticity' or any other identity which ignore the real history and material conditions of those with whom we are declaring affinity becomes another form of abuse; whether this takes the form of ripping off identities which are not ours, or the strip-mining of the spirituality which may be the last dignity some peoples have remaining. All pagans have a responsibility to act ethically in relation to oppressed peoples - that means respecting their history and present struggles, not constructing a 'Stage Oirish' spirituality. Romanticizing minority-ethnic cultures is a concurrent issue occurring within the recent interest in Native American spirituality. This has had a devastating effect on Native Americans, as Andy Smith, a Cherokee woman points out in her essay 'For All Those Who Were Indian in a Former Life' (Smith 1993). She points out that Native Americans are told they are greedy if they do not choose to share their spirituality, and gives the example of white women in search of spiritual enlightenment appealing to female solidarity in order to glean some 'secret' knowledge from Native American Women. She notes that she can hardly attend a feminist conference in the United States without the only Native American presenter being the woman who opens the conference with a ceremony. Because of this romanticization of indigenous peoples' spirituality, the real oppression of Indians [sic] is overlooked, even trivialized; 'Indian women are suddenly no longer the women who are forcibly sterilized and are tested with unsafe drugs such as Depo provera; we are no longer the women who have a life expectancy of 47 years; and we are no longer the women who generally live below the poverty level and face a 75 per cent unemployment rate. No, we're too busy being cool and spiritual'. An analogy between what has happened to Native American spirituality and the situation with the new Celticity in Britain is drawn, albeit unwittingly, in a book on 'Celtic Lore'. In a section where 'past' 'Celtic' oral culture is discussed in relation to story-telling traditions, the author inserts an amazed footnote: 'There are still peoples who retain an oral tradition and possess memories which are, to us, startling. An example of this is the Navajo Indians. A writer in the Independent Magazine in August 1990 records a visit to a restaurant in Navajo country. The waitress went from packed table to packed table taking orders without the benefit of written notes, then returned with laden trays bearing the correct dishes' (Rutherford l993). Since all that can be said with any certainty, given the evidence, is that this woman has an extremely good memory, it is difficult to conclude whether the author really believes this woman lives wholly outside the rest of American culture in spite of the fact that she is found waiting in a restaurant, or that she somehow embodies an essence possessed by all Navajo. It is clear, however, that in his enthusiasm to point out the difference of oral cultures from literary ones, the author is keener to attribute the ensuing abilities of the former to groups of peoples than he is to engage with the social contexts of their lived realities. Essentializing, romanticizing and imbuing with mysticism is, in fact, racist. John H.T. Davies, a Welshman writes, 'I do not want to see what has happened to the native Americans, happen to the heritage of my own people. I do not wish to see us marginalized as the 'Dreamtime People' of Europe...To value us only for our dreams is extremely patronizing'. He goes on, 'I do not wish to encounter your expensive workshop leader who can't even pronounce, let alone speak, any Welsh; whose only qualifications are a set of distinctly cranky ideas, assembled from fragments torn loose from our heritage' (Davies 1995). Whilst it is possible for me to agree heartily with the sentiments and warnings expressed in this plea, the linkage made between land, heritage and spirituality provokes another important question. The pagan movement is a predominantly white movement. Are we passively or even actively excluding black and Asian participants because of the store we are setting by indigenous British traditions? And what are we defining as 'British', or even as Cornish, English, Irish, Manx, Scottish and Welsh? One finds, for example, the rare text which appears at least to acknowledge that Britain is multicultural, by declaring appreciation of the cultural 'gifts' successive 'visitors', have brought to British culture. Needless to say, caveats of this type are clearly defining 'British' culture as something core and pre-existing those 'visitors' and defining the 'gifts' as added extras (Matthews l988). This seems to situate 'British' pagan antecedents as part of an historical identity which actually excludes all those communities and ethnicities arriving after a given date. At one level this indicates a measure of social unawareness around, for example, black and Asian Britons, whose 'own' culture is black and Asian British. At another it connotes an inadvertent racism, the message of which is the spiritual equivalent of 'these roots are not yours'. CONTEMPORARY PAGAN 'ETHNICITIES' Given the expressed importance of historical precedence and provenance to contemporary pagan identity, one is not surprised, then, to find that contemporary paganism in Britain is a predominantly white movement, particularly given the additional tendency to essentialize certain spiritual attributes as the gift of given peoples. However unintending, and for whatever reasons, there do seem to be a number of exclusionary definitions operating around the construction of pagan identity in the British context. Oppressions often work multiply and are rarely without complexity, but it seems that there is a good deal of difference between a person of colour resisting what Davies identifies as 'spiritual strip mining', and a predominantly white movement in a racist culture steering clear of black or Asian participation. It is perhaps the case that white ethnicities (and I would include amongst these British pagan ethnicity) are selective in which inequalities they seek to redress. As one Manxman wryly put it when I began to enumerate the loss of many Manx traditions, 'and don't forget the alarming demise of bigotry, including sexism, racism, homophobia' <2>. ASPECTS OF PAGANISMS AND UNIVERSALITY At the very least, there is currently a good deal of ambivalence expressed within the pagan community regarding certain forms of oppression and here some of the more troubling aspects of these tendencies open up in relation to ideas regarding, for want of a better description, issues of 'fate' and personal responsibility. There is a tendency, which expresses itself in a variety of ways, to place responsibility for the conditions of one's life at the feet of the individual. This is often taken up and applied uncritically and regardless of the specific context of the individual's life and the extent to which they may control events governing their situation. This conviction comes across quite strongly in a number of popular pagan texts, although the strength of this underpinning credo is perhaps felt more in its accumulative effect, both within an individual text and in seeing it reiterated in a range of similar texts. Consequently the examples below, which have been selected from two of the more popular texts analysed for this study and which are based in the Western Mystery Tradition, appear on the face of it to be relatively harmless: 'If you have lost a lover you must ask yourself; "In what way did I fail to meet her needs/passion?" The fault lies with you'(Green l995). 'If you have no love in your life, magic will not supply it, until you learn why you are not loveable' (Green l990). If this philosophy stays where it is put, it may be regarded as little more than a rather callous homily for broken-hearted ex-lovers. However, the basis of this rather uncomplex theory of unconditional personal responsibility is often reapplied and extended to both global problems and both natural, and often unnatural disasters. The suffering of the people affected by starvation and disease following the war in Rwanda was theorised by one pagan as: '... the earth getting rid of her surplus. There must be a life lesson in it for them, mustn't there? We all have to take responsibility for what happens to us'. <3> And so presumably the same applies to a raped woman, a tortured man, an abused child, a beaten pensioner and so on. It seems quite significant, moreover that the philosophy is so readily applied to people of colour who live 'over there'. But the crucial thing here is that a self-motivating philosophy applied to an individual living in the West, who to a certain extent enjoys the type of autonomy not experienced in other cultural contexts, is not appropriate for projection onto what is the result of political interventions, often by the Western powers, whose freedoms that individual enjoys. Another typical, if troubling pagan response to suffering is to attribute it to a mysterious spiritual malaise that is felt globally: 'The Wasteland is growing, both on the face of the planet and in the minds of the people. Many have sunk so low through poverty, homelessness, sickness, deprivation or disaster that they have lost hope of things getting better. They have even become so hopeless that they are not able to take advantage of any good which may come their way' (Green l995). One of the corollaries of this type of stream-of-consciousness universalism is that it substitutes blanket explanation for any attempt to focus on the particular causes of specific sufferings. It also raises the question of how appropriate a response to privation it is to map onto the events of one geographical and historical location the symbols and metaphors of the historically and geographically located tradition of another. At this particular node of the web the tension between the universal and the specific mirrors that which snags where a philosophy which motivates the individual is applied to the general to produce a theory of inaction. At these points, the two webs, that of pagan identity and that of the wider social web against which it occasionally strains, become entangled. This may, in part, be due to the internal entanglement that some paganisms have with philosophies which could more accurately be defined as New Age. However, the distance often placed between the political and the spiritual in both mainstream and pagan culture is a predisposition both to this type of entanglement occurring and, significantly, the catching of something nasty in the web. PAGANISM, RACISM AND NEO-NAZISM The occult-fascist axis often posited by historians of the German Nazi movement of the 1930s and 40s is perhaps the better known of the interludes where paganism has proved a rich hunting ground for fascist groups looking for symbols of volkisch unification. This specific connection in fact had a much longer history, but I am more concerned here with present connections being made. <4> Initial analyses of alleged connections between pagan groups and neo-nazis being made from within the anti-nazi movement led me to regard some of the claims with a measure of scepticism, partly because some of the rhetoric tended to be either anti-pagan or rather confused in conflating all occult interests of known neo-nazis into 'paganism'. However, a close examination of neo-nazi literature available in Britain makes it quite clear that paganism is being pressed to the cause of spiritual Aryanism in Europe, through groups such as ANSE (Arbheitsgemeinschaft Naturreligioser Stammesverbade Europas or European Racial Association of Natural Religious Groups) and the Thule Seminar and others currently operating on the internet <5>. Indeed, there are a number of neo-fascist initiatives operative in most parts of Britain and some of these appeal to what they perceive as pagan 'values' within the extreme right. These values are those mobilized around notions of history, race and nationhood. The edges of some pagan philosophies blur dangerously with those that support racism and warn against what they see as racial and spiritual 'miscegenation'. The links made between fascist aspirations and paganism appear to come from the provision, within the formations of pagan identity in Britain, of the racial specificity of what some pagans perceive to be their past and their cultural antecedents. An example of the way in which pagan discourses of history, 'race' and nationalism can be diverted and appropriated is found in the (undated) desktop-published newsletter, Valkyrie, which advertises itself as the 'voice of the Patriotic Women's League'. The League is based in the northwest of England. Valkyrie is replete with Celtic knotwork and symbols and contains advertisements for the 'Church of Thor-Would' and for the neo-nazi band 'Celtic Warrior'. It also carries a list of publications, organizations and bands which have links with the League, including titles such as; 'Renewal of Identity', 'Aryan Sisters' and 'Blood and Honour'. As well as featuring strong imagery referring to a pagan past, including a blonde-plaited child regarding a stone dolmen, it posits a warrior goddess dubbed "Mother Europe'. This figure is juxtaposed with a diatribe against non-racist and non-sexist educational materials which reiterates the theme of preservation and a mythical all-white heritage found elsewhere in the magazine. The message of a photograph of a white mother teaching her white child on the page opposite that of the goddess-figure 'Mother Europe' emphasizes the role of both mother and goddess, whose fiercer intentions are focussed upon 'defending' Europe from multi-culturalism by invoking a veritable confusion of Celtic and Nordic knotwork. At the same time, this sacralizes the task being set here for all white mothers, exhorting them to play this role within the home. Other neo-nazi magazines and newsletters indicate that several more pagan organizations are actively supportive of neo-nazi aspirations. The latter are entirely commensurate with those of ANSE and the Thule Seminar, both pagan fascist organizations with the philosophies of hatred and denial which appear on the agendas of fascism globally. The blurring of pagan affinities and neo-nazism to the point where neo-nazis are as at home in the former as they are in the latter is a cause for grave concern. At which point does a badge declaring 'Albion for Pagans' or 'the Pagan State of Albion' (found on stalls at a Pagan Northwest Region conference and in a number of shops selling New Age and pagan paraphernalia) become 'England for the English' or 'Keep Britain White?' The nature of the highly particularised standpoints which fund ideas of pagan identity, historical rights and future aspirations is that they emanate from a new, minority perspective which is fundamentally in flux around issues of identity. Accordingly, notions of history, authenticity and provenance are often seen as paramount in the task of constructing an 'authentic' identity; to such an extent that where these are contested, any newly-forming ideas around identity are considered under threat (cf. Bowman 1995). Similarly, ideas which are seen to smack of 'political correctness' are given short shrift, partly because of the challenge to the pagan love-affair with 'Nature' and the organic, both of which are seen as ontologically integral to the past(s) to which we refer, distinctive aspects of our spiritually-led identities. In this context, what appear to be challenges to the exclusionary nature of what are actually reconstructions of past ways of life and socio-cultural constructs of 'nature' are seen as joltingly modern (if not post-modern), interventionist, and as wishful thinking. The search for authenticity in the formation of contemporary Pagan identities does tend to lead to quite reactionary stances on issues of social concern; the will to change social inequalities is seen as being out of step with the 'realities' of past societies and out of step with the organic, with the 'nature' from which past pagan societies emerged. That our ideas about the past and about nature are largely social constructs doesn't seem to bother anyone overmuch, judging by the survey of popular pagan literature and participation in pagan communities. The predisposition towards misappropriation by fascist and neo-Nazi groups is in fact coming from the very bases ('history' and 'nature') upon which the anxious construction of Pagan identity appear to be resting, and is further adumbrated by notions of the collective 'fate' of people who, paradoxically are deemed responsible for their own troubles. 'Destiny', it should be remembered, was a very good friend of British imperialism. It could be argued that pagansare not responsible for symbols and identities hijacked from our movement. After all, we can't actually stop anybody doing this. But unless we are to be associated with these agendas calling themselves 'pagan', we have to examine what they are finding so attractive and make a positive statement which irrevocably dissociates us from them; whoever 'we' turn out to be. And this brings us back to disposing with the idea that spirituality has nothing to do with the political, with power. PAGAN PRAXIS AND CHALLENGES TO RACISM Given that paganisms often abhor dualistic separations, our embodied spiritualities, our notions of immanence and our sense of the interconnectedness of things are particularly fitted to provide models of interrelationship, gradation and flow. Within the structures of our practices and symbols, our acknowledgement of tides, cycles and seasons, lies the potential to challenge political hierarchies and provide an agency for positive change in our society and on our planet. This means acknowledging diversity-of needs, of experience, of the cultural, social historical and geographical contexts of peoples lives. One of the most compelling and powerful symbols we have is that of the web. It is a symbol which has been deployed with amazing success both metaphorically and physically at Greenham; it provides a model via which we might see varied forms of oppression, different spiritualities, economic means, and different identities as contingent upon each other and touching at various nodes of the web. But perhaps we may see it as many webs, each touching and interconnecting but varying with location, experience, political agenda and worldview. As a spiritually-led identity we may occasionally see ourselves as an oppressed group; for example, our spiritualities provoke fear and hatred amongst other groupings (both religious and non-religious) to the point that the fear of child-kidnap by misinformed social workers is still real. But the acknowledgement of our own oppressions carry the responsibility of acknowledging both our own privileges and the oppressions of others. Fighting for our own rights need not mean that we privilege our community's needs by ignoring or trivializing the day to day prejudice that other oppressed groups experience. The principle of interconnectedness, signified within this article as a web, lies at the heart of pagan spirituality. It is not a philosophy which espouses sameness as oneness. By definition, it inter-connects and coalesces by recognizing diversity <6>. Given what I have had to say about the inappropriateness of projecting specified and located symbology as universals, this may be a surprising proposition. But the point about interconnectedness as a touchstone is that it recognizes and situates 'me' and 'us' and 'others' as contingent and located <7>. CONCLUSION: TOWARDS A PAGAN ETHICS OF DIVERSITY A pagan ethic which acknowledged the proximity of the wider social web to that of its own communities would go some way to disentangle the prejudices of the one from the spiritual declarations of the other. But as I have indicated, there are other pressing and compelling reasons why such an ethic would need to be developed. This brings us full circle to the issue of identity which began with the Union Jack being flown in Stonehenge at the beginning of this paper. Who are 'we'? Where and when are 'we'? Who and what do 'we' embrace; who and what do 'we', should 'we', exclude? On the issue of exclusivity in term of heritage, history, tradition, some words from Caitlin Matthews: 'there are no rightful bearers of tradition, only bearers of tradition. However we are welcomed into our tradition - whether it be by formal training, ritual initiation or long personal meditation - we become bearers of that tradition by desire, aptitude and dedication' (Matthews 1990) To this I would add the quality of committed understanding, and that would include the criteria that we are prepared to accept and find out why it is more useful to some oppressed groups that we respect their traditions from the sidelines rather than attempt to enter them from certain given positions of social privilege <8>. As for the issue of legitimate exclusion and dissociation, this depends upon the will to develop an ethic which would positively undermine those predispositions which make our philosophies so tempting to some of the more malevolent tendencies currently misappropriating pagan symbols and philosophies. What such an ethic might eventually look like depends to a certain extent on the passage of time, on the growth of the movement and its ideas. Given the very real threat of the misappropriation by the New Right of both, however, it is critical that it is not left entirely to time. More than the future of the pagan movement is at stake here. If we acknowledge that the web of our culture connects with that of a larger, dominant social web, we do not simply disentangle ourselves from its worst tendencies, but have a position of agency, a potential for transformation which can spread from our web to others. Change is a multi-directional process; enchanting the web with a commitment to ending oppression means not only holding up a mirror to ourselves, but becoming, in turn, a reflection in which others may see something worth emulating. If we believe in a web of life; one in which everything is interconnected, then we must believe in the reverberating effects of a conscious disentanglement, a conscious awareness of privilege and oppression, and the outflowing change the ownership of that awareness can bring to wider contexts than ours. The question that a pagan ethic might address could be something close to the thought on which I would like to close the discussion here and open it up elsewhere and the question which the poet-philosopher June Jordan suggests we constantly ask of ourselves, 'How is my own life- work helping to end these tyrannies, the corrosions of sacred possibility?' <9> NOTES <1> Psychic News, 12 April 1997. Fortean Times. August l997. Reports of the findings published in the Wiltshire Archaeological News can be found in The Guardian, The Independent, The Times and the Daily Telegraph on lst March l997. <2> This particular Manxman has asked not to be identified; so I send my thanks to him in his anonymized form! <3> Here, perhaps is evidence that paganism currently experiences overspill from what some commentators would term 'New Age' philosophies. <4> Searchlight. August 1997: 17-18. <5> Ibid. <6> It has this in common with some ecofeminist perspectives, see for example, Lori Gruen's essay 'Toward an Ecofeminist Moral Epistemology' in Warren 1994; and Karen Warren's essay 'Ecofeminism and the Spiritual' in Adams, 1993. <7> A good example of thinking around difference in this way is found in Keya Ganguly's essay 'Accounting for Others: Feminism and Representation' in Rakow (l992). <8> See Elizabeth Brookes' (l993) section on 'Ethics' in A Woman's Book of Shadows; and Andy Smith (1993). <9> June Jordan has published a collection of her essays in a volume (l989) entitled, Moving Towards Home; Political Essays. BIBLIOGRAPHY Adams, C. (ed.). 1993. Ecofeminism and the Sacred. New York: Continuum. Bowman, M. 1993. 'Reinventing the Celts', Religion 23: 147-56. Bowman, M. 1995. 'The Noble Savage and the Global Village: Cultural Evolution in New Age and Neo-Pagan Thought', in Journal of Contemporary Religion. 10.2. Brookes, E. l993. A Woman's Book of Shadows. London: Women's Press Davies, J.H.T. 1995. 'The Celtic Tradition', in The Pagan Index. London: House of the Goddess. Green, M. 1990. Elements of Ritual Magic. London: Elements Books. Green, M. 1995. Everyday Magic. London: Thorsons. Harvey 1997. Listening People, Speaking Earth: Contemporary Paganism. London: Hurst. Hobsbawm, E.J. 1990. Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. Cambridge University Press. Hutton, R. 1996. 'Who Possesses the Past?' in Carr-Gomm, P. (ed.) The Druid Renaissance. London: Thorsons. Jones, P. & Matthews, C. (eds.). 1990. Voices from the Circle; The Heritage of Western Paganism Aquarian Press. Jordan J. 1989. Moving Towards Home; Political Essays. London: Virgo Press. Matthews, C. & J. 1988. An Encyclopaedia of Myth and Legend: British and Irish Mythology. Aquarian Press. Matthews, C. & J. 1992. Ladies of the Lake. Aquarian Press. Matthews, J. 1986. The Grail Seeker's Companion: A Guide to the Grail Quest in the Aquarian Age. Aquarian Press. Rakow, L. (ed.). 1992. Women Making Meaning. London: Routledge. Robbins, K. 1989. Nineteenth-century Britain; England, Scotland, and Wales. The Making of a Nation. Oxford University Press. Rutherford, W. 1993. Celtic Lore; the history of the Druids and their timeless traditions. London: Thorsons. Smith, A. 1993. 'For all those who were Indian in a former life' in Adams, C. (ed.). 1993. Warren, K.J. (ed.). 1994. Ecological Feminism. London: Routledge. END 23