DISKUS: The journal of the British Association for the Study of Religions (BASR)

DISKUS Vol. 11 (2010)
http://www.basr.ac.uk/diskus/diskus11/cusack.htm

THE CHURCH OF ALL WORLDS AND PAGAN ECOTHEOLOGY: UNCERTAIN BOUNDARIES AND UNLIMITED POSSIBILITIES

Carole M. Cusack

Studies in Religion A20
University of Sydney NSW 2006
AUSTRALIA

Abstract
In the contemporary West Pagan and alternative religions frequently place emphasis on the importance of the environment at the centre of their theology. As Jon Bloch has argued ‘alternative spiritualities assert that all aspects of life are sacred… [they] argue that activities involving the protection of the earth should be conceptualized as part of one’s spirituality’.[1] Mainstream religion, exemplified in the West by Christianity, is perceived as allied with the advance of capitalist modernity, which has resulted in environmental degradation, rampant materialism and the alienation of humans from Nature. The Church of All Worlds (begun in 1962 by Lance Christie and Tim Zell, later Oberon Zell-Ravenheart) is a Pagan religion inspired by Robert A. Heinlein’s novel Stranger in A Strange Land (1961). Core religious practices of the Church of All Worlds are derived from this fiction, in which Valentine Michael Smith, raised on Mars, attempts to teach humans Martian values, including the sacredness of water (kinship is established through the ‘water-sharing ritual’), the unity of all things (‘Thou art God’), and the evils of sexual repression, jealousy and violence.

CAW has played a pioneering role in the development of Pagan ecotheology. The Pagan revival from Gerald Gardner onwards has focused on the Goddess and earth-based spirituality, but in the late 1960s and early1970s Tim Zell’s vision encompassed a religious organization where Waterkin (members) are based in Nests (coven-like groupings), and where the Goddess is a ‘single vast creature: Mother Earth Herself’.[2] CAW ecotheology is complex and highly developed; the boundaries are uncertain because Zell-Ravenheart (through the practice of grokking, from Heinlein) asserts the absolute unity of all in Gaia, which means that sexuality and social mores, as well as attitudes to deforestation or the extinction of species, all become ecological issues. Grokking literally means drinking, but ‘[i]n practice it means expanding one’s identity to include the whole being of another person or thing’.[3] CAW draws on Teilhard de Chardin’s notion of the noosphere, or planetary consciousness (to which humans contribute), and argues that the process of evolution, considered as a totality, is the maturation of the Earth as a ‘single vast living entity … the Great Goddess: Mother Earth, Mother Nature’.[4]

THE CHURCH OF ALL WORLDS AND PAGAN ECOTHEOLOGY: UNCERTAIN BOUNDARIES AND UNLIMITED POSSIBILITIES

Introduction

This paper has a five-part structure. First, ecology and the related concepts of ecotheology, environmentalism and ecospirituality will be introduced and located in the context of the 1960s, the decade in which the environment became an issue of significance for the West. Second, Robert A. Heinlein’s novel Stranger in a Strange Land and the foundation of the Church of All Worlds are considered, with a view to determining the debt that CAW ecotheology owes to Heinlein. Third, the development of CAW as a Pagan religion dedicated to the Goddess and Tim Zell’s TheaGenesis vision are outlined, and related to later scientific speculations, including Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis. Fourth, the virtually unlimited possibilities offered by the radical environmental theology of the Church of All Worlds are sketched. Due to the absolute interdependence of humans, animals, plants and all things in the living body of the Goddess, the Earth itself, boundaries between political activism, sexual mores, educational programmes, magic, science and religion are dissolved. Ecotheology is about the Earth; it also encompasses everything. Finally, the issue of the place of the study of new religions within the wider academic study of religion is briefly touched upon.

Environmentalism, Ecology, Ecotheology, and Ecospirituality

In the 1960s the discourse of environmentalism took root amongst both scientists and the public. Rachel Carson’s (1907-1964) influential Silent Spring (1962) brought the damage done to the environment by pesticides to a popular audience, and in 1967, the peculiarly creative time known as the Summer of Love, historian Lynn White, Jr (1907-1987) published a short article asserting that ecological devastation was a direct consequence of the Judeo-Christian worldview, in which a sharp distinction between Creator and creation was maintained, with the latter characterized as soulless matter.[5] Although White’s piece ended with an endorsement of the Christian environmental spirituality of Francis of Assisi, he praised the Pagans of the ancient world in order to sharpen his criticisms of Christianity. He wrote:

[i]n Antiquity every tree, every spring, every stream, every hill had its own genius loci, its guardian spirit. These spirits were accessible to men, but were very unlike men; centaurs, fauns, and mermaids showed their ambivalence. Before one cut a tree, mined a mountain, or dammed a brook, it was important to placate the spirit in charge of that particular situation, and to keep it placated. By destroying Pagan animism, Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects.[6]

Although it is possible to trace ‘ecotheological’ thinking farther back, and anthologies often begin with Plato, Buddhist texts or other ancient sources, for the purposes of this paper White’s 1967 challenge is an appropriate starting point.[7]

The word ‘ecology’ was coined by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) in his Generelle Morphologie (1866).[8] It comprises two Greek words, oikos (meaning ‘house’, the root of English ‘economics’, and broadly ‘system’) and logos (meaning knowledge or words).[9] Technically, ecology extends further than ‘environmentalism’ as it demands that humans be subordinated to the whole; in environmental discourses it is still possible for humans to assume a ‘stewardship’ role and to attempt to retain control that way. It has been suggested that ‘ecospirituality’ or ‘spiritual ecology’ might be more appropriate to describe the teachings of Paganism than ‘ecotheology’, for two reasons: ecotheology is strongly associated with the Judeo-Christian tradition, and ‘spirituality’ is generally viewed as more inclusive than ‘religion.’[10] These are both valid points, but ‘ecotheology’ (knowledge about systems of the divine) is here preferred, as for the Church of All Worlds the whole (Nature, the Earth) is Gaia (the Goddess), and what CAW teaches is knowledge of her.

The 1960s was a decade in which a distinct counterculture developed, which was opposed to many received ‘truths’ of modern Western culture. 1950s ‘family values’ were questioned; protesters demanded equal rights for gays, blacks and women, and called for an end to the Vietnam War. The ‘Beat Generation’ of the 1950s, including writers Jack Kerouac (On The Road, 1951) and Allen Ginsburg (‘Howl’, 1956) had articulated alternative values, including sexual liberation, rejection of wage-slavery, anarchist politics, Eastern religion, drugs and altered states of consciousness. In the 1960s these ideas became part of mainstream youth culture.[11] Countercultural values were championed by ‘hippies’; non-competitiveness, free love, anti-racism, anti-discrimination, peace, community building, and the pursuit of enlightenment through alternative spiritualities. In a sense, the counterculture was a manifestation of Romanticism, which rejected Enlightenment rationalism and the material benefits of the Industrial Revolution, and rather sought emotional and spiritual fulfilment in harmony with nature.

Contemporary efforts to save the environment are divided between those who view this as a religious or spiritual duty and those who approach ecology as a scientific, secular concern. Bron Taylor has noted conflicts between members of environmental activist groups (for example, deep ecology lobby Earth First! objected to the wearing of gold and crystals by the Rainbow Family, as these were products of mining).[12] Yet she concludes that the ecological movement is a broad church, in which all members (whether they campaign for legal protections for forests or perform rituals to achieve the same result) feel ‘kinship and loyalty to earth and all her life-forms and living systems’.[13]

Stranger in a Strange Land and the Church of All Worlds

Robert Anson Heinlein (1907-1988) served in the United States Navy and worked as an aeronautical engineer before committing to writing full-time after the end of World War II. He was a prolific author, and was both popular and critically acclaimed within the science fiction community, hailed as one of the ‘Big Three’ (with Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke), winning four Hugo Awards and being the recipient of the first Grand Master Award granted by the Science Fiction Writers of America.[14] His life and works are deeply contradictory: over his long life his politics veered from left-wing to far right-wing; he deeply admired the military, yet he advocated an extreme form of individualism; he was personally anti-racist and thought women superior to men, yet he often appeared to approve of racism in his novels and to offer a view of sexual liberation in which women existed only to satisfy male desires.[15] His refusal of an authorized biography and disinclination to explain his oeuvre resulted in serious, perhaps irresolvable, interpretive disputes existing among critics and readers alike.

Stranger in a Strange Land was published in 1961, but Heinlein had started it in 1948 (the year of his third marriage, to Virginia Gerstenfeld), under the provisional title A Martian Named Smith. The oft-cited reason for its delayed appearance is that its sexual content was too explicit for the 1950s. Stranger is the story of Valentine Michael Smith, the son of two astronauts on a mission to Mars. The mission perished and he is brought up by the Martian ‘Old Ones’, who are very different to humans (all are both male and female at times thus erotic attraction does not exist, and they are cannibalistic). In Part 1, ‘His Maculate Origin,’ Mike is taken prisoner by Federation agents and, as he is unable to cope with Earth’s heavier gravity, he is confined to Bethesda Medical Centre, Maryland. There he meets nurse Jill Boardman, the first female he has ever seen; she becomes his first ‘water-brother’ (the act of sharing water has great significance on hot, dry Mars). Jill aids Mike to escape with her lover, the journalist Ben Caxton. In Part 2, ‘His Preposterous Heritage,’ the Reverend Doctor Daniel Digby, the Supreme Bishop of the Church of the New Revelation, also known as the Fosterite Church, is introduced. Here Heinlein satirizes the hypocrisy and bullying tactics of Christian fundamentalist churches.[16]

Mike is taken by Jill and Ben to the Poconos Mountains, to Jubal Harshaw’s mansion. Jubal is a Wise Old Man, a ‘Heinlein-voice’ character; a millionaire who dictates novels to his three lovely secretaries, Dorcas, Miriam and Anne. Jubal educates Mike, who has paranormal powers and extraordinary intelligence. Jubal’s home is a model for the Church of All Worlds, founded by Mike later in the novel. Nudism and free love are practised, and a large swimming pool emphasizes sensual pleasure and the importance of water. As Jill adjusts to the household, Jubal tells her ‘This is Freedom Hall, my dear. Everybody does as he pleases.’[17] The agnostic Jubal aids Mike in understanding religion. Mike ‘groks’ (a Martian word meaning to understand so completely as to eradicate the subject-object dichotomy) that ‘Thou Art God’ (the entirety of creation is divine, or pantheism).[18] Mike experiments with sex and meets members of the Fosterite Church, and Jubal Harshaw’s great wealth ensures his freedom when Federation agents come to the house to re-apprehend him.

In Part 3, ‘His Eccentric Education,’ Mike attends a Fosterite service where he meets stripper Dawn Ardent and Digby, Supreme Bishop of the Church. Mike realizes the service is different to the water-sharing ceremony, and yet is still a way to achieve closeness. He and Jill work for a while in a carnival (Mike is Dr Apollo, a magician, which is important as the book constantly contrasts the Apollonian and Dionysian modes). There they meet Patricia Paiwonski, a Fosterite ‘priestess.’ The carnival educates Mike in showmanship and helps Jill to accept sexual exhibition in public (as for her it was previously private, in Jubal’s home). These two things are significant bridges to the Church of All Worlds, as is their hearing of the existence of the ‘inner church’ of Fosterism (whose members are called the ‘reborn’); ‘the secret church was that Dionysian cult that America had lacked and for which there was an enormous potential market.’[19] Mike decides that founding a religion might be good for people, and that all religions are true. In Part 4, ‘His Scandalous Career,’ Mike studies at Union Theological College, and joins the army for a while, seeking experience. Jubal is horrified when he hears that Mike is a theology graduate and has founded a new religion, the Church of All Worlds. Ben Caxton goes to the ‘Nest’ (as Mike calls it) to report to Jubal: he says that learning Martian is a high priority; that followers are studying telekinesis and other psychic powers with Mike; that the Church is organized in nine circles; there are obvious similarities to Fosterism; and that nudism and polyamory are customary. Patricia Paiwonski and Dawn Ardent have joined the Church of All Worlds. Ben decides to join himself, and Jubal remains the last sceptic.

In Part 5 ‘His Happy Destiny,’ Mike is freed from his mission of spying for the Martian Old Ones, so he can serve the ‘Terran angels’. Jubal is concerned by the radical activities of the CAW. Mike’s Temple is incinerated and Jubal joins him a Florida hotel, where his followers are temporarily housed. The aged Jubal’s long celibacy ends when he has sex with Dawn. The fact that CAW is in agreement with all religions is emphasized; Muslims, Jews, Christians, atheists and agnostics have all joined the Nest. There are discussions on polyamory and mythology, and Mike, who realizes that his time on Earth is nearly at an end, prepares to ‘discorporate.’ This happens when he is violently attacked by a crowd. They menace him with bricks and a shotgun, and accuse him of blasphemy, and finally kill him.[20] Jubal is in despair, and attempts suicide, but is revived by members of the Nest. They plan to move the CAW to his house permanently. They drink a decoction of Mike’s remains in observance of Martian cannibalism. Several of Mike’s lovers are pregnant or have recently given birth. The final scene shows Mike being appointed archangel and the supervisor of Digby and Foster, while the Martian planned invasion of Earth is aborted. Jubal is last witnessed dictating a novel called A Martian Named Smith.[21]

Stranger in a Strange Land was a smash hit, though Heinlein was often puzzled by the uses to which readers put it. Its emphasis on religion confused critics for a number of reasons. Heinlein thought that both religions and secular creeds were pointless:

atheism and ‘scientific humanism’ are the same sort of piffle in mirror image, and just as repugnant. Agnosticism is … more acceptable but only in that it pleads ignorance, utter intellectual bankruptcy, and gives up. All the other religions, elsewhere and in the past, are just … silly.[22]

Yet the title is from Exodus 2:22, where Moses named his son ‘Gershom: for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land’,[23] and the contrast between the two religions, Digby’s Fosterite Church and Mike’s Church of All Worlds, makes up the bulk of the novel. ‘Michael’ means ‘who is like God’ and he is finally seen to be (possibly) the Archangel Michael of the Bible. In the counterculture of the 1960s, intergenerational conflict and political rebellion were yoked to a spiritual quest for a new narrative to replace Christianity, which had lost credibility for many young people. Stranger was adopted as a religious exemplar by several groups (including the Merry Pranksters and the Manson Family), of which the real world Church of All Worlds has proved the most enduring.

Tim Zell and Lance Christie met at Westminster College (Fulton, Missouri) and read Stranger in a Strange Land as part of a reading group, in which they had already digested Ayn Rand’s novels and philosophy, Objectivism, and the self-actualization theories of psychologist Abraham Maslow. On April 7 1962 they shared water, and founded the Church of All Worlds and a water-brotherhood called Atl. Zell devised liturgies for the weekly meetings of the church, and Christie was the de facto head of Atl. The etymology of the name is given by Margot Adler as being Aztec for ‘water that also had the esoteric meaning of “home of our ancestors.” The closeness of Atl to words like Atlas, Atlantic, and Atlantis was also noted. Water was … [a] symbol of life, since the first organisms came into existence in water and water is essential to life.’[24] Atl was an intimate group of like-minded people, loosely structured and radical, with a reading programme in politics, psychology, education and science. Lance Christie stated that Atl anticipated ‘a world where the children of Man walk in the hills like Gods.’[25] Stranger in a Strange Land gave CAW its core spiritual practices (sharing water; the organization of members or Waterkin in ‘nests’ with a nine-circle structure; sexual freedom, multiple relationships and a commitment to non-traditional family patterns; the affirmation that all religions are true; the greeting between members ‘Thou art God/ess’; and other phrases from the novel, such as ‘never thirst’ and ‘grok’).

Paganism, the Goddess and Green Egg

In 1967, the year Lynn White Jr’s provocative article appeared, Tim Zell used the term ‘Pagan’ to describe CAW (probably due to his friendship with Frederick McLaren Adams, founder of pioneering Pagan group Feraferia). This is just a year after Kerry Thornley (1938-1998), one of the founders of Discordianism, used ‘Pagan’ to describe another sexually experimental intentional community, Kerista (credited by Margot Adler as the first use of Pagan to refer to alternative, polytheistic, nature-based religion emerging in the 1960s).[26] In 1968 Zell organized CAW formally as a church and published the first issue of Green Egg, CAW’s ground-breaking Pagan newsletter. According to Adler, members of Atl were less than enthusiastic, although Lance Christie wrote for Green Egg and remains a close collaborator of Zell-Ravenheart to the present. At the start of the 1970s the Church of All Worlds led the Pagan revival in two important ways: first, in establishing communication channels (like Green Egg and the Council of Themis) between the disparate groups that made up the Pagan scene; and second, in the development of an environmentally-oriented theology. Stranger in a Strange Land is not a particularly ‘environmental’ novel, although the vital importance of water is stressed throughout, and the beauty of the Poconos Mountains where Jubal Harshaw’s mansion is located is described. However, Heinlein’s personal naturism and concern for pristine frontier territory in his novels meant that although he admired Ayn Rand, he did not subscribe to her view of humanity being at war with nature. By 1970 both Zell and Christie, also former admirers of Ayn Rand, were committed environmentalists.

On September 6 1970 Tim Zell experienced a profound religious vision that changed the direction of CAW’s theology significantly. He preached the substance of this revelation to members and published ‘TheaGenesis’ (Birth of the Goddess) in Green Egg in 1971. He apprehended that the Earth was alive, that the Goddess of Paganism was the divine Earth, and ‘the entire Biosphere of the Earth comprises a single living Organism’.[27] Zell coined the term Terrebios (later Terrabia) from the Latin for ‘earth’ and ‘life’ to describe this divinity. In 1972, the English scientist James Lovelock (b. 1919) published a version of the same thesis in the journal Atmospheric Environment, using ‘Gaia’, a name suggested to him by his friend the novelist William Golding, to denote the living Earth. [28] Tim Zell then adopted Lovelock’s nomenclature, although he usually spelled it ‘Gaea’. Zell had already grafted modern, Wiccan-inspired Pagan rituals and teachings onto the Heinlein-derived theology of the Church of All Worlds. In 1970 he oriented the Goddess worship of CAW to the Earth itself. In 1972, Lance Christie explained the change of direction as follows:

The Church of All Worlds is evolving a vitalistic religious philosophy which subscribes to and develops the ‘Organic World Picture.’ We perceive that the 22 billion year process of evolution of life on Earth may be recognised as the developmental process of maturation of a single vast living entity; the planetary biosphere itself… We perceive the human race to be the ‘nerve cells’ of this planetary Being – [what] Teilhard de Chardin termed the Noosphere. And further, we equate identity of our great living Biosphere (which we refer to as ‘Terrebia’) with the ancient archetypal image of the Great Goddess: Mother Earth; Mother Nature.[29]

It is significant that Christie placed the emergent CAW Earth Goddess theology in an evolutionary biological framework, rather than a traditionally religious one. Also in 1972, Arne Naess, a Norwegian philosopher, coined the term ‘deep ecology’, which emphasized the ‘primacy of the natural world over human prerogatives’.[30]

Uncertain Boundaries and Unlimited Possibilities

Throughout the 1970s the Church of All Worlds continued to grow and develop. In 1977 Tim Zell and his wife Morning Glory (b. Diana Moore, 1948) left Missouri for California, where they lived for a time at Coedin Brith (Welsh for ‘speckled forest’), a property belonging to Alison Harlow, who with Thomas de Long had founded Nemeton. In 1978 COAW and Nemeton merged. In 1979 Zell organized a large gathering at the replica of Stonehenge at Maryhill, Washington, to celebrate the solar eclipse on 26 February. During this ritual Zell experienced a vision quest and later changed his name to Otter G’Zell. At Coedin Brith the Zells founded the Ecosophical (‘wisdom of systems’) Research Association, taught Pagan seminars and workshops, exhibited ‘unicorns’ (actually one-horned goats) in Ringling Brothers’ circus, and established the Holy Order of Mother Earth (HOME) with bard and neighbour Gwydion Pendderwen.[31] They continued their open relationship with a range of partners and raised their children. CAW has upheld its commitment to polyamory and eclectic family structures, in defiance of mainstream Western society’s retreat from sexual experimentation after the 1960s. Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart’s 1990 essay, ‘A Bouquet of Lovers’, sets out clear and sensible rules to make open relationships, responsible non-monogamy, viable. She makes a distinction between primary and secondary partnerships, advocates honesty and safe sex practices such as the use of condoms, and admits the possibility of jealousy and negative emotions threatening the primary partnership (in which case, she advises the termination of any threatening secondary partnership). This essay is also important as in it Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart coined the term ‘polyamory’ for this type of relationship.[32]

In 1996, when the Zells were living with Wolf Dean Stiles, Liza Gabriel and Wynter Rose, the whole family took the name ‘Zell-Ravenheart’.[33] These arrangements have since changed, but all appear to preserve their friendships.[34] In 2005 the Zell-Ravenhearts were in relationships with Stiles, Kat, and Julie Epona (and with Morning Glory’s Pentecostal mother Polly Love Moore also in residence, evidencing CAW’s commitment to the equality of all religious positions).[35] Polyamory is congruent with CAW’s Gaian perspective in that it stresses human interconnectedness and holism, as opposed to the atomism of exclusive sexual relationships. The Church of All Worlds ethic of polyamory is summarised by Oberon Zell-Ravenheart as ‘Be excellent to each other’. For CAW this is part of being excellent to the self, to the environment and thus to the divine.

In the 1990s Zell-Ravenheart stepped down as Primate of CAW, and the Church of All Worlds reorganized under High Priestess Anodea Judith (psychologist and Pagan teacher, ordained in CAW in 1985) and High Priest Tom Williams (editor of Green Egg from 1975-1976). International expansion followed; in 1992 a branch of CAW was established in Australia by Fiona and Anthorr Nomchong, where ‘it became the first recognized Goddess and Earth worshiping religion within [that] country’.[36] Oberon Zell-Ravenheart returned to the post of Primate of the Church of All Worlds in 2005, and in the twenty-first century has worked make CAW’s legacy readily available, through an internet and paper publishing programme.[37] He and Morning Glory are now elders of the modern Pagan community. As elders they are deeply interested in the continuation of the religion among the younger generation. In 2004 Oberon Zell-Ravenheart opened the Grey School of Wizardry, an online Pagan education system, which drew on the popular success of J. K. (Joanne Kathleen) Rowling’s series of novels about the boy wizard Harry Potter.[38]

The Grey School, with Zell-Ravenheart as Headmaster, has a seven-year programme (like Hogwarts, although six or seven years of high school is quite common in many education systems). Matching the four Hogwarts Houses of Slytherin, Gryffindor, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw are four Houses named for the Elementals connected to the Four Quarters; Sylphs, Salamanders, Undines and Gnomes (air, fire, water and earth respectively). The first textbook published was Grimoire for the Apprentice Wizard (2004), which contains instruction on magickal arts, conducting rituals, cosmology, wizards of history (including Eliphas Levi, Charles Godfrey Leland, Aleister Crowley and Gerald Gardner), and a variety of other subjects, organized in seven blocks of study.[39] Despite Zell-Ravenheart’s prankish sense of fun, it appears that the Grey School of Wizardry is a serious project. In the West Christianity has retreated, and there are Islamic and Jewish schools, Buddhist and Steiner schools. The time was right for a Pagan curriculum, and Zell-Ravenheart, an innovator from his teenage years, made it happen. The membership of the Grey Council in the Grimoire is impressive; staff include Raymond Buckland, Raven Grimassi, Donald Michael Kraig and Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart. The school’s name may be derived from the colours assigned to wizards in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings (the wizard Gandalf is ‘the Grey’, and he later takes the title previously held by Saruman, ‘the White’. Radagast ‘the Brown’ is the only other named wizard).

Another textbook, Zell-Ravenheart’s Companion for the Apprentice Wizard, is here discussed to demonstrate its appeal to children and adolescents. The ‘Preface’ shows Zell-Ravenheart’s attunement to his audience, and ability to address young people without patronising them. He comments on the absence of wizarding and magickal websites aimed at children and teenagers, gives a summary of the plot of Stranger in a Strange Land and tells the students how he and Lance Christie shared water and formed a bond ‘deeper than blood or marriage’.[40] He reflects on his years as a teacher and school counsellor (even Pagan leaders need jobs), and notes that he hopes to appeal to potential students who loved the Harry Potter books and films. Finally, he states that ‘Paganism and Wicca are religious orientations, whereas Magick and Wizardry are studies and practices that are independent of any particular religion. And I felt this was an important distinction that I wanted to keep.’[41] The School admits students from eleven (like Hogwarts), though many of its thousand-odd students are older. Zell-Ravenheart’s educational intentions are egalitarian; the Grey School is not expensive. This is a radical programme of alternative education, and is evidence of Oberon Zell-Ravenheart’s concern to transmit an ecological Pagan vision and effect widespread social transformation.

Since it became a church in 1968 CAW’s main message has been environmental awareness. The Goddess Gaia is the Earth, ecological catastrophes do threaten, and Pagans must act to empower Gaia. The conservation movement is anti-consumerist and pro-sustainability. Since the mid-1980s Lance Christie, resident in Utah, has been a tireless environmental activist, publishing and campaigning on the effects of pesticides, global warming, and sustainability. He is the founder of the Association for the Tree of Life, and was a member of the Natural Resources Defence Council,[42] and his e-mail address is ‘atl@frontiernet.net’, recalling the beginning of his and Zell-Ravenheart’s journey in 1962. Oberon and Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart have lived for many years in rural districts, pursuing a ‘green’ lifestyle as much as the freedom to be polyamorous and Pagan away from mainstream society. HOME (the Holy Order of Mother Earth) celebrates the seasons and rural life, with its patterns of birth and death in the plant and animal worlds. All CAW publications proclaim the divinity of the Earth through ritual and in teachings. This is the only dogma the Church insists upon. There are rituals to become attuned to the Earth (‘imagine an interchange between you and the Earth, and as you make contact with each step, you bless one another’),’[43] rituals for tree-planting, and chants to use in water-sharing rituals (‘I open up my body, to receive the Living Waters, that spring from the heart of life, that spring from the heart of life, the Earth is guiding me clear and true, to the living source of Love, to the living source of Love’).[44] However, the Church of All Worlds remains attached to science and to science fiction, and the fact that Zell-Ravenheart and Christie both studied science at university means that their vision is future-oriented, rather than hearkening back nostalgically to a pre-modern Golden Age.

Conclusion

It is now irrefutable that the Church of All Worlds is a vibrant and influential Pagan religion, and that revived Paganism is an authentic spiritual path in the modern West. Scholars remain sceptical about the value of new religions (for example, the Church of Scientology, founded in 1954), and are even more dismissive of those religions that admit to being based on fictions.[45] Compared to traditions with a long history, such as Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Taoism and Christianity, which are all at least two thousand years old, new religions are often perceived as thin and insubstantial. Yet such comparisons are basically unfair. In 1974 Robert Ellwood spoke of COAW’s vision with absolute seriousness: COAW’s

members, both intellectually and sensually oriented, take this first of all to mean that man must discover himself as part, not sovereign, of a world biological unity,  within which men must find an ecological slot, cooperating rather than competing  with his own kind, as do all successful species. In view of current sober predictions of  catastrophic disaster for mankind and the earth within a century if exploitation of  resources continues at the present rate, and in view of the obvious fact that this juggernaut to apocalyptic doom - a world without fuel, hungry, and yet doubtless  warring over what scraps remain - will not be halted without a swift and radical alteration of goals, attitudes, and life style, the importance of these discussions is obvious. The language of ancient Paganism, like that of Stranger in a Strange Land, is taken metaphorically, but the issues are real. Recent discussion in the Nests has, partly under the influence of Teilhard de Chardin, moved in the direction of  considering the whole biosphere of Earth as a single living organism. As the Mother  of all within itself, it may be regarded as feminine - the Goddess - and the evolution  of consciousness is reaching a point at which it can become aware of itself as such.  Then the true nature of the cancer-like self-destruction of the tissues of the organism  by certain malignant ‘cells’ within it can be grasped by its unitary mind. ...whether the world ravages itself to death, or the lovely goddess comes to consciousness on this planet, is up to us. This is the mirror the Church of All Worlds wishes to hold up to the present generation.[46]

It is accurate to state that the Church of All Worlds’ vision for the transformation of the world is virtually unlimited: it envisages a revolutionary sexual culture based on polyamory; an ambitious pagan education system based on Rowling’s Hogwart’s model (for which many textbooks have already appeared); a newly conceived periodization of history as ‘Religious Epochs’ (we are now in the Gaian Epoch, with Oberon Zell-Ravenheart and scientist James Lovelock as prophets); a transformed relationship between humans and nature; and a vigorous pagan culture asserting the fundamental unity of religions. Whether this reorientation of the world will be achieved is a moot question, but CAW is itself testimony to the power of narrative. The narrative of the divinity of the earth has great power and CAW’s vision for the future is imaginative, ethical and suffused with possibilities. It may appear to be a dream, but (to quote W. B. Yeats) ‘in dreams begin responsibility’.

NOTES

[1] Jon P. Bloch, ‘Alternative Spirituality and Environmentalism,’ Review of Religious Research, 40/1 (1998), p. 57.

[2] Oberon Zell-Ravenheart, Grimoire for the Apprentice Wizard (Franklin Lakes NJ: New Page Books, 2004), p. 54.

[3] Liza Gabriel, Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart and Oberon Zell-Ravenheart, ‘Appendix A: The Church of All Worlds Tradition’, in Oberon Zell-Ravenheart and Morning Glory Zell-Ravenheart, Creating Circles and Ceremonies: Rituals for All Seasons and Reasons (Franklin Lakes NJ: New Page Books, 2009), p. 268.

[4] Lance Christie, ‘Neo-Paganism: An Alternative Reality,’ in Oberon Zell-Ravenheart (ed.), Green Egg Omelette: An Anthology of Art and Articles from the Legendary Pagan Journal (Franklin Lakes NJ: New Page Books, 2006), pp. 120-121.

[5] Lynn White, Jr, ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis’, Science 155 (1967), pp. 1203-1207 at http://aeoe.org/resources/spiritual/rootsofcrisis.pdf, accessed 21 August 2009.

[6] White, Jr ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis’, p. 6 (of pdf).

[7] For example, Thomas Frick (ed.), The Sacred Theory of the Earth (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1986) begins with extracts from Plato (Phaedo), Mercator, Hegel, and others.

[8] Mary Evelyn Tucker and John A. Grim, ‘Ecology and Religion: An Overview’, in The Encyclopedia of Religion, 2nd edition (Gale, 2005), p. 2608.

[9] Peter Marshall, Nature’s Web: Rethinking Our Place on Earth (New York: Paragon House, 1994), p. 3.

[10] Leslie E. Sponsel, ‘Spiritual Ecology: One Anthropologist’s Reflections’, Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 1/3 (2007), p. 340.

[11] See A. Robert Lee, The Beat Generation Writers (London and Chicago, 1996), passim.

[12] Bron Taylor, ‘Earth and Nature-Based Spirituality (Part I): From Deep Ecology to Radical Environmentalism’, Religion 31 (2001), p. 184.

[13] Bron Taylor, ‘Earth and Nature-Based Spirituality (Part II): From Earth First! And Bioregionalism to Scientific Paganism and the New Age’, Religion 31 (2001), p. 241.

[14] J. D. Gifford, Robert A. Heinlein: A Reader’s Companion (Sacramento: Nitrosyncretic Press, 2001), p. xiii.

[15] Leon Stover, Robert A. Heinlein (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1987), p. 65.

[16] Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in A Strange Land (London: New English Library, 1987 [1961]), p. 66.

[17] Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land, p. 79.

[18] Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land, p. 134.

[19] Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land, p. 268.

[20] Ronald Lee Cansler, ‘Stranger in a Strange Land: Science Fiction as Literature of Creative Imagination, Social Criticism, and Entertainment’, Journal of Popular Culture 5/4 (1972), pp. 944-954.

[21] This summary of Stranger in a Strange Land is also used in Chapter 3 of Carole M. Cusack, Invented Religions: Imagination, Fiction and Faith (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010). A slightly different extended summary is used in Carole M. Cusack, ‘Science Fiction as Scripture: Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land and the Church of All Worlds,’ in Christopher Hartney, Alex Norman, and Carole M. Cusack (eds), Creative Fantasy and the Religious Imagination, special issue of Literature & Aesthetics 19/2 (2009), pp. 72-91.

[22] Robert A. Heinlein, Grumbles from the Grave, Virginia Heinlein (ed.) (New York: Ballantine Books, 1989), p. 229.

[23] Exodus 2, verse 22, King James Version, at http://bible.cc/exodus/2-22.htm.

[24] Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today, 2nd edition (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986), p. 291.

[25] Adler, Drawing Down the Moon, p. 292.

[26] Adler, Drawing Down the Moon, p. 294.

[27] Oberon Zell-Ravenheart, ‘TheaGenesis: The Birth of the Goddess’, in Zell-Ravenheart, Green Egg Omelette, p. 95.

[28] Dorion Sagan and Lynn Margulis, ‘Gaian Views’, in Christopher Key Chapple (ed.) Ecological Prospects: Scientific, Religious and Aesthetic Perspectives (Albany: SUNY, 1994), p. 3. Lovelock’s theory was published as Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979). This book has been influential and is now in its third edition.

[29] Christie, ‘Neo-Paganism: An Alternative Reality,’ in Zell-Ravenheart, Green Egg Omelette, pp. 120-121.

[30] Mary Evelyn Tucker, ‘Religion and Ecology’, in Peter B. Clarke (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 824.

[31] Oberon Zell-Ravenheart, ‘Preface: A Brief Personal History of HOME’, in Zell-Ravenheart and Zell-Ravenheart, Creating Circles and Ceremonies, p. ix.

[32] Morning Glory Zell, ‘A Bouquet of Lovers’, in Zell-Ravenheart, Green Egg Omelette, pp. 228-231.

[33] See Lady Chimmerly, ‘Stranger in a Super-Friendly Land’ at www.salon.com/health/sex/urge/1999/07/17/conference/print.html accessed 21 August 2009.

[34] Oberon Zell-Ravenheart podcast on Polyamory Weekly, Episode 203, 2 May 2009 (with Minx) at www.mefeedia.com/ tags/heinlein/rss2.xml.

[35] Oberon Zell-Ravenheart, ‘The Ravenhearts’ Bio: August 2005’ at www.gwsh.org/Ravenhearts/RavenheartBio.htm.

[36] Adam Possamai, Religion and Popular Culture: A Hyper-Real Testament (Brussels, 2005), p. 58.

[37] See www.caw.org, accessed 21 August 2009.

[38] The series began with J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (London, 1997 and concluded with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (London, 2007).

[39] Oberon Zell-Ravenheart, Grimoire for the Apprentice Wizard (Franklin Lakes NJ: New Page Books, 2004), p. vii, p. 338.

[40] Oberon Zell-Ravenheart, ‘Preface: Once Upon a Time’, in Oberon Zell-Ravenheart, Companion for the Apprentice Wizard (Franklin Lakes NJ: New Page Books, 2006), p. ix.

[41] Zell-Ravenheart, ‘Preface: Once Upon a Time’, p. ix.

[42] See ‘Lance Christie’, Earth Forum: Discourse, Diverse, Dynamic, at www.earthportal.org/forum/?author=782, accessed 21 August 2009.

[43] Farida Ka’iwalani Fox, ‘Attunement with the Earth’, in Zell-Ravenheart and Zell-Ravenheart, Creating Circles and Ceremonies, p. 139.

[44] Liza Gabriel, ‘Water Sharing Chant’, in Zell-Ravenheart and Zell-Ravenheart, Creating Circles and Ceremonies, p. 143.

[45] See David Chidester, Authentic Fakes: Religion and American Popular Culture (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 2005), passim.

[46] Robert Ellwood, Religious and Spiritual Groups in Modern America (Prentiss-Hall, 1974), pp. 202-3.