Cult Following: Meeting and Greeting the Pagans

The second Wednesday of every month, local witches, druids, fairies and earth-worshippers gather here for coffee and conversation. According to the waitress, they're often there until closing time. The organizer, DaleDalessio - you can call here Elad, isn't that clever? It's her name backwards - is shockingly short of the 3-metre tall beast I've pictured, and with far less facial hair, thank God…er, Goddess.

She has no cape (I try to hide my disappointment), but she has brought fellow pagan Kit Morrison, and as we speak, more people arrive. Some of them even bring their kids. "On a cold night in February, we might have only four show up, but sometimes there are around 30 people here," Dale tells me. There's been a regular crowd since they started in 2002.

It's near-impossible to identify exactly how many pagans there are in Capital City. The Ottawa Pagan Schola touts 600 members in local groups, but there are certainly many more than that around. They are, however, among the fastest-growing movements in the country - regular readers will know that puts them in direct competition with Islam and Pentecostalism. Between the 1991 and the 2001 censuses, they were the frontrunners expanding by more than 280%.

And that growth is almost entirely because of "crossovers". Talking to pagans, you quickly realize that almost every one of them were raised in one of the main streams of Christianity, but through their own curious exploration, found their way into the labyrinth of neo-paganism. The Celts are probably the most popular point of reference in that maze, but by no

means the only one. Dale is a witch. More specifically, she follows the Gardnerian tradition, but there are plenty of other Wiccan branches she could have chosen. There are also aboriginal pagan traditions, and Norse, chief among witches are the Asatru who are officially recognized in Iceland for maintaining their religion for so long. As well, there is a great reverence for Lithuanian pagans, who may in fact represent an ancient, unbroken tradition dating back thousands of years.

These guys aren't fooling anyone, though. They know they can't possibly reproduce authentic ancient rituals and ceremonies. "Wicca, and what people call neo-paganism, is a modern religion based on ancient concepts, because," according to Dale, "we know the names of most of their Gods, but we don't know what they did."

So what holds them all together? Kit explains that it's "a reverence and kinship with nature, and most choose to honour a deity that's not just a male figure. There's a balance quite often; if there's a god there's a goddess as well." Dale adds, "And reincarnation is a biggie in some places. Karma too…"

Apparently the scene is dying. The nineties were the boom time, as can be seen from the census, and many have since lost interest, moved on or grown out of it. Anyone who graduated high school before 1999 can remember at least a few pagans - they hung out with the Goths and role-playing nerds. All that shit hit the fan at the same time. Since then, the Goths have gone Emo or gotten jobs as public servants, the role-players live in a World of Warcraft, and the pagans have consolidated. They're becoming parents now,

and after enough strange phone calls from teachers who have been told with insistence that "My mommy really is a witch!", they've started to do what movements do when they want to gain credibility: start federations, hold conferences and educate the public.

Dale, according to some sources, has single-handedly kept the community alive with her meet-and-greet evenings. She also sits on the board of the Pagan Federation which aims to dispel myths and strengthen the community of practitioners by talking to schools, groups and government organizations.

My suspicion is that it's efforts like Dale's that are killing the movement, while at the same time solidifying what's there into a permanent gel. Yes, the eager followers want to establish groups, rituals, networks. But the reason this shit caught on before the new millennium is that it was, in Kit's words, "experiential. You don't need someone to tell you your spirituality." Which is exactly what they're doing, intentionally or not, by codifying and explaining to the outside world the various systems of belief.

But tonight, the pagans pour in. Still no staffs or capes though, and all of the men so far are clean-shaven. Where the hell are the tree-hugging dirt-lovers I expected? I'm starting to sense that these particular pagans have been domesticated, housebroken.

As I walk out, thinking about the plummeting temperature on the other side of the exit doors, I mention to Dale, "You must be looking forward to spring and getting outside." But for all her being "in line with nature", she simply answers, "Actually, I'm an indoor person." I hope she's at least got plants to praise...