DISKUS Volume 6 (2000)
http://www.uni-marburg.de/fb03/religionswissenschaft/journal/diskus

'VIRTUAL PAGANISM' OR DIRECT ACTION? THE IMPLICATIONS OF ROAD PROTESTING FOR MODERN PAGANISM

Andy Letcher
PhD student, Religious Studies, 
School of Cultural Studies
King Alfred's College, Winchester
Email: andy@jabberwocky.freeserve.co.uk


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ABSTRACT
Environmentalism is central to the discourse of much contemporary paganism.  It is considered a primary source of self-identification, and Paganism potentially provides powerful resources for activist engagement with urgent contemporary environmental issues. However, a tendency towards meditative quietism among some Pagans is also revelatory of aspects of Pagan identity that are, among other things, internally divisive. Challenging questions of academic engagement as well as issues of direct action and boundary drawing within Paganism are raised here. 
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One of the interesting questions of our time is the extent to which people really act upon their ideals, their beliefs and spiritual goals. For some these remain simply unobtainable goals, whilst for others they represent a blueprint for living that affects all aspects of their lifestyle. In recent years we have seen in Britain, along with the meteoric rise in the popularity of Paganism, an increase in the number of Pagans prepared to take direct action to try to ameliorate or halt environmental destruction. Given that, in spite of a plurality of beliefs, the belief in the sanctity of nature is central to most Pagan faiths, one might expect Pagans to be at the forefront of the environmental movement. In fact the so-called 'Radical Pagans' involved in direct action represent a minority. Obviously direct action is just at the extreme end of a whole spectrum of possibilities of involvement, but if Paganism as a movement is not at the vanguard of environmentalism then surely it can be labelled as a 'virtual religion', a faith without substance or credentials. In this article I look at examples of how inconsistencies within modern Paganism support this accusation of virtuality and then demonstrate that the Paganism that has emerged from the road-protest movement in Britain answers this accusation by basing its belief upon actions rather than words, and thereby in the process contributing to 're-enchantment'.

Undoubtedly we are facing a 'crisis of modernity' (Ivakhiv in Lewis 1996). Not only does science provide elegant explanations for the way the world is, and for our place in it, but it actually delivers on its promises. Newtonian physics really can place a man upon the moon, modern medicine really can eradicate disease, but in the process science has pulled the proverbial rug from beneath our feet. No longer is the earth the centre of the universe, no longer did we arise from a unique creation, no longer are we God's chosen. Nor for that matter was the world created by Raven, did Merlin summon dragons, or are there 'islands of cheese or cucumber trees' (as Baron Munchausen says in Terry Gilliam's film 'The Adventures of Baron Munchausen'). Science has given us answers but in the process has stripped away the myths by which we define and construct both ourselves and society. Science has demolished centuries of self-belief and has, in contrast to the colourful mythologies of tradition, created a rather depressing world. No wonder then, that Paganism as a flowering cultural idiom is so popular, with its emphasis on the super-natural, the super-scientific, the inspiration to be found in the pre-industrial, pre-Christian cultures of this land, and the evocation of a time when people were, perhaps, more in harmony with their natural surroundings. Paganism restores our place in the world and the 'ecology of souls' (McKenna 1993). 

Paganism restores a sense of beauty, but sits uneasily with science and the scientific narrative. For example Tanya Luhrmann (1994) in her study of modern magic asked why 'apparently rational people hold apparently irrational beliefs' whilst distancing herself from her own participant interest in the subject; an interest explained away as the product of an overactive childhood imagination. To remain credible, academe must distance itself lest it 'goes native', but at the same time the 'natives' have been unreceptive, or downright hostile, towards academe. Consequently Pagan narratives have often side-stepped the problems generated by a scientifically constructed reality, preferring instead endlessly to reinterpret old texts, stories or myths in order to reconstruct themselves anew. For example within Druidry, medieval texts are used as a basis for constructing modern day practice whilst the medieval texts were themselves attempts to reconstruct a long forgotten Iron age (Hutton 1996). Perhaps self-definition by means of a virtual chain of tradition is a genuine Druidic practice, but it means that contemporary narratives are always based on what might have gone before, rather than what is now. One might then legitimately ask what differentiates Paganism from a role-playing game like Dungeons and Dragons?

If science is dismissive of a Paganism that owes more to Pratchett than pragmatism (see Harvey in this volume of DISKUS), then the opposite is also true and many Pagans blame science and the Judeo-Christian culture from which it emerged for the loss and wilful destruction of a Pagan golden age. Opinion remains divided as to the validity of the myth of a 'lost golden age' <1>, but in ecological terms it never happened. The neolithic stone-circle builders left us lasting monuments to their faith but were lousy ecologists (Hutton 1991) - the species-poor upland areas of Britain are the legacy of their mismanagement. Moreover the countryside that most Pagans venerate is just that; countryside, a landscape modified by millennia of human activity and human technology into a user-friendly environment such that true wilderness does not exist in Britain (Hoskins 1992). In an ironic twist the technocracy rejected by Paganism has created the very thing that Pagans venerate. The land our neolithic ancestors inhabited must have been an altogether more hostile environment, one to be respected but not necessarily revered. We have a particularly cosy position from which to view the past and so Pagan perspectives of the land and our relationship to it are often naive, derived from novels, films, and television rather than from direct experience.

If one assumes an even distribution of Pagans throughout British society then it is clear that the majority of Pagans must live in urban or sub-urban areas: the prevailing attitude of Paganism towards the land is an urban one. By necessity this implies a fundamental disassociation from that which is venerated. Access to the land is a luxury that not everyone has, and this is not to say that only country-dwelling Pagans are legitimate or non-virtual. The point is that Pagan practise, Pagan narrative must be derived from real experience of the land for it to be non-virtual; it must be a practical Paganism. An example will suffice. In the common Pagan practise of pathworking one undertakes an imaginary journey, perhaps to a grove, or a peaceful sacred site, in order to find relaxation, inspiration or, perhaps, conversation with spirits and deities. Finding such a site in the real world might prove problematic for English Pagans, as a recent report published by the Council for the Preservation of Rural England found only three places in England where the noise of traffic could not be heard. From our cosy urban perspective we can drive into the countryside, perhaps to perform an 'earth healing ritual' and return again without ever having to acknowledge the harsher realities of the natural world (nature red in tooth and claw), or even to acknowledge the connection between our actions, however good their intent, and their consequences in terms of, say, pollution and erosion.

Paganism has set itself up as the spiritual wing of the environmental movement and as a genuine answer to the crisis of modernity, but through romanticism and a reluctance to take a more hard-edged stand it falls at the first hurdle and accepts virtuality, a hyper-real religion based on a hyper-real view of the world. At least, that is the accusation. In the second part of this paper I examine some of the ways in which the accusation of virtuality has been firmly refuted, using the Paganism that has emerged from the direct-action movement as evidence.
	
In the late 1980s Moonshine magazine published a booklet entitled 'Awakening the Dragon - Practical Paganism, Political ritual and Active ecology' (Westwood and Walbridge, nd.).  It was a clarion call to the Pagan community 'dedicated to impeccable warriors and those who aspire to be so. To those who love and care for the earth our mother and would want to act positively to end the wanton destruction and rape of our home'. It contained a political ritual whereby people would gather at the same time each month and 'raise the Dragon', directing their intent towards the symbol of the sword Excalibur, representing 'truth, love and honour'. With the Dragon representing the power and, to a certain degree, the wrath of the land, this was a symbolic and magical act of defiance towards the seemingly unending scourge of Thatcherism <2>. But it also encouraged people to empower themselves through action and listed the absolutes around which a Pagan ought to live such as 'a Pagan owns a car but takes the bus' or 'a Pagan has loft insulation and double-glazing'. Their argument was simply that Paganism and action were inseparable and that non-action was a sign of impotence. By arguing that ritual and action be combined they were directly challenging what they called bedroom paganism, or what is called here, virtual paganism.

In the years since this publication, environmentalism has become firmly established on the Pagan political agenda. Irrespective of what shaped it, most Pagans (indeed most people) believe that the countryside is worth protecting as it is a thing of great beauty, easily destroyed. A woodland cut down and tarmaced over might take a thousand years to return; a hill removed for a bypass is lost forever. The Pagan response to Moonshine's gauntlet has taken many forms from the magical to the political to a mixture of the two. Magical tactics might include sending 'strong thoughts to the Minister for the Environment' <3>, or performing the political ritual (although it is not clear whether anyone still does), or travelling to a sacred site for an 'earth-healing' picnic and ritual. More active tactics might include picking up litter out of a sense of guardianship of the land, or doing the recycling (and indeed fitting double-glazing), through to physically obstructing the bulldozers when they come for the local green-space.  Groups such as the Dragon Environmental Network, some of the West country Druid orders, and a loose collection of freestyle-anarcho-hedgewitches mix ritual and action. Raising the dragon now involves frenzied drumming on the bulldozers. Since Moonshine's publication, the Dragon has become the symbol of Pagan environmentalism, suggesting that the Moonshine activities were successful in consciousness raising.

In Britain it was the launch of an ambitious road-building program by the then conservative government that galvanised the direct-action movement. Road-protesting gave individuals the chance to take action that actually had an effect on the government machine - it stung the government where it hurt most: in the purse. Starting at Twyford Down, peaking at Newbury and culminating at Fairmile (with many others in between) the protesters won the argument and the building of new roads has been scrapped as a solution to Britain's traffic problem <4>. Clearly not all protesters are Pagan, and there are a variety of different motives for protesting (not least an expression of inner city rage), but there has been a Pagan discourse underlying the movement. The road-protest movement has taken people out of the cities onto the land. It has empowered them with a sense of purpose which in turn fuels their Pagan beliefs and animates them.

Deciding to live in a protest camp is a Pagan act in itself. One leaves the cosseted protection of the home to live in the woods where all water must be carried from the nearest source, where there is no central heating or electricity, where all cooking is done on an open fire, where one is acutely aware of one's environment, the mud, the rain, the weather, the use and misuse of resources, where one may have to hoist oneself 80ft up a tree in order to go to bed. The campaigners at Newbury braved one of the coldest winters on record. The very act of living out, however dependent on wider society for food and so on, puts one in touch with nature in a way that is real, not virtual.

Initiation, a ritual encounter with fear marking some underlying internal change, is a practise common to many Pagan faiths but becomes a real experience for protesters. One encounters many fears; fear of heights, of arrest and the power of the state, fear of getting hurt, fear of the wild ways of an anarchic temporary autonomous zone (Bey 1991). Fear is probably the main reason why people do not get involved with direct-action but those who do are changed by the process. Similarly other rituals emerge out of necessity or the reality of living out. A full-moon circle held two days before a camp is evicted becomes supercharged with a mixture of fear, emotion and defiance. No ritual structure is required; the solidarity of holding hands is enough. Beltaine, the celebration of the return of Spring, is celebrated with a greater passion when one has overwintered in a bender or treehouse. Often only a very informal ritual structure is employed, allowing the spirit of the moment to flow unimpeded by dogma. When, at Skyward camp at Newbury, it was decided to burn the trunk of a particularly venerated tree to prevent profiteering from the timber, it became a grieving ceremony, a funeral pyre, charged with the very real emotion of a people dispossessed through adversity.

For Pagan protesters the land is often seen as an enchanted place, with many sightings of other-than-human folk, mythological beasts and fairies. That many protesters take their inspiration from fairy mythology is reflected in the use of words like 'pixie-magick' or 'pixieing'; phrases used to describe the nocturnal activities of eco-saboteurs. If the pixies of folk tale turn the milk sour, or tie an unsuspecting person's shoelaces together, then the modern day pixies let down tyres or snatch a helmet from a security guard's head (a reminder that fairies are not necessarily 'nice people', see Harvey 1997, 172-3). It is this rather cheeky flirtation with the forces of law and order that has caused some to label the protesters as modern day outlaws. Living in the trees and opposing characters like the 'Under-sheriff of Berkshire' it is tempting to see protesters as an expression of the Robin Hood myth, but they do not simply reinvent the old; they help to establish the new. Our relationship to place takes on new meaning when, for example, we know that this is the hill where Arthur's Camelot was alleged to have been. A tree becomes more than a tree when we know that the Magna Carta was signed beneath its branches. Similarly, as one travels the route of the Newbury bypass one crosses the sites of the protest camps, with all the stories that they created. Gotan, the Pixie Village, Skyward, Kennet, Rickety Bridge each has its own stories, its own mythology. Each has contributed to a 'geography of enchantment' that comes from the now, not from an imagined past.

Real, vibrant, enchanted, yes, but Pagan protest and direct action are by their very nature political and confrontational and the Pagan community is divided over the issue. Firstly, some have argued that politics should be kept separate from spirituality, that spirituality should be a refuge from the troubles of the world. This ignores the fact that to call oneself 'Pagan' is a political act in itself, for not only does it raise all the issues about the land and its usage (as mentioned above), but the word sets oneself apart from mainstream society (at least for the time being). 'By declaring ourselves Pagan, we have stepped out of the mainstream of society, and to a certain extent put ourselves on the line both materially and spiritually' (Westwood and Walbridge, nd.). If Pagans who allege to hold 'all the earth sacred' are not prepared to act to minimise their impact on the world, then who will? During the Newbury bypass campaign celebrants of a Druid ceremony around a threatened tree (Middle Oak), caused consternation among protesters, and particularly Druidic protesters, by their refusal publicly to oppose the bypass, when it was clear that their very presence was an act of opposition. Such woolly thinking, and the refusal to make hard choices, weakens Paganism, and opens it to the accusation of virtuality.

This highlights the fear of confrontation felt by many Pagans. Not all protesters are Pagan and not all are non-violent. A minority have a political agenda rooted in a mistrust and defiance of authority which can extend into violent protest. The majority of protesters, including Pagan protesters, are non-violent although not necessarily non-confrontational. The high drama of a tree-top eviction is by necessity an emotionally charged situation. However, confrontation is willingly accepted, and acceptable, within the Pagan mythological canon. The Arthurian legends, Robin Hood, Greek and Norse myths are all to some extent based on the confrontation between righteous good and evil. Hindsight enables the majority to determine who the good guys are; contemporary women deplored the actions of the suffragettes whilst modern women are grateful for their legacy. It may be that the perception of 'confrontation' is entirely subjective. During an eviction at the Newbury campaign, a Druid priest in full regalia went round the cordon of 500 security guards, looked each in the eye and gave them a heartfelt Celtic blessing. His 'congregation' met him with a mixture of hostility, contempt, sarcasm, humour and fear. Was his behaviour an act of folly, bravery or unnecessary provocation?

Unpleasant as confrontation is, protesters take direct action because it works. The power structures of this land are remarkably deaf to public opinion unless it costs them significant amounts of money. Direct action has more or less put paid to road building in Britain. A recent out-of-town supermarket development at Wyndham Hill in Somerset (a place venerated by Pagans) was shelved due to the cost of evicting the underground protest. Swampy, emerging from his week long underground protest at Fairmile said to the assembled media "would you all be here if I'd written a letter to my MP? I don't think so".

Finally, direct action has been accused of being an aggressive, primarily male activity. What if you are disabled, or a mother, or unable to take action for any other reason - does that make you a virtual- pagan? The glib answer is that mothers and people with disabilities do get involved. The Twyford Down campaign was remarkable not only because it was the first of its kind but because of the prominent role of the women campaigners (not forgetting the precedent set at Greenham Common). 

More seriously this raises the point that it is action based upon ideals that makes virtual Paganism real, and action does not necessarily mean taking to the trees (as the Moonshine booklet pointed out). Direct action is not without its problems: it focuses on single issues; it often makes unreasonable demands; it is reactive not proactive and tends to confront problems rather than create solutions. It draws media attention away from less glamorous campaigning. There are many Pagans who do not have recourse to direct action yet refute the accusation of virtuality by growing organic vegetables, planting trees or owning a car yet taking the bus.

In conclusion, I have argued that modern Paganism contains inconsistencies which mean that it fails in its attempt to answer the crisis of modernity. Virtual paganism is an escape from the harsh realities of the scientific narrative, a symptom of non-action, a refusal to honour Pagan goals and ideals. Whilst this article has focused on direct action and road protesting, action can take many forms. For if Pagans are not taking a leading role in the struggle against environmental destruction then they not only disempower themselves, but their religion and that which they hold to be most sacred.


NOTES

<1> One of the books most influential in shaping the Golden Age narrative has been Marion Bradley's pagan retelling of the Arthurian legends 'The Mists of Avalon'. See also Starhawk 1990, Gimbutas 1982,  and for a more unorthodox approach, McKenna 1992. 
<2> A similar exercise was conducted by the Encyclopaedia Psychedelica International who published their 'magic Maggie doll'. Readers were encouraged to place acupuncture needles into a picture of Margaret Thatcher, the intent being to open her heart to a more compassionate world view using this benign form of sympathetic voodoo. The results of this experiment are unclear, but she is alleged to have cried in public for the first time, the day the magazine was published.
<3> Moonwalker quoted in Luhrmann, 1994.
<4> Although a few road schemes such as the Birmingham relief road and the widening of stretches of the M25 are to go ahead.


REFERENCES

Bey, H. 1991. T.A.Z. The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism. Autonomedia, New York.
Bradley, M. 1993. The Mists of Avalon. Penguin, London.
Gimbutas, M.A. 1982. The Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe: Myths and Cult Images. Thames and Hudson, London.
Harvey, G. 1997. Listening People, Speaking Earth: Contemporary Paganism. Hurst, London. 
Hoskins, W.G. 1992. The Making of the English Landscape. Hodder and Stoughton, London.
Hutton, R. 1991. The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles. Blackwells, Oxford.
Hutton, R. 1996. 'Who controls the past?' in Carr-Gomm, P. (ed.). The Druid Renaissance: the Voice of Druidry Today. Thorsons, London.
Ivakhiv, A. 1996. 'The resurgence of magical religion as a response to the crisis of modernity: a postmodern depth psychological perspective in Lewis, J.R. (ed.). Magical Religion and Modern Witchcraft. State University of New York Press, Albany.
Luhrmann, T.M. 1994. Persuasions of the Witches Craft: Ritual Magick in Contemporary England. Picador, London.
McKenna, T. 1992. Food of the Gods: the Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge - a radical history of plants, drugs and human evolution. Rider, London.
McKenna, T. with Zuvuya 1993. Dream Matrix Telemetry. Delerium records DELEC CD 2012.
Starhawk, 1990. Dreaming the Dark: Magic, Sex and Politics. Unwin, London.
Westwood, R. and Walbridge, J. nd. Awakening the dragon: practical paganism, political ritual and active ecology. Moonshine publications, Birmingham.

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