My mother was a bully at her Catholic elementary school. Well, at least when the time came to raise funds to name the pagan babies claimed by the church. She would shake a coffee can in the faces of her fellow students, rattling the coins she had collected thus far, and demand that they give up their milk money. She wanted to name her baby Antoinette, a feminist take on St. Anthony, patron saint of lost objects; because she figured that any pagan baby must be lost.

Note to the wise: Be careful what you wish for.

Another ten years later, my mother had the blessed opportunity to name and raise her very own pagan baby. Free-spirited, feral, and enthusiastic, I spent much of my childhood barefoot, hugging, climbing, and talking to trees. I loved to lie on the grass, feeling the solidarity of the earth beneath me, watching the clouds drift by, and imagining a world of fantastical and mundane creatures parading across the bright blue sky. I gazed at stars and considered them my stellar brothers and sisters. Intrinsically I felt a deep symbiotic connection with all of life. I believed myself to be equal in importance as the eucalyptus tree, the blade of grass, the cumulous cloud, or the fiery ball of gas I call a star: never realizing there were scads of dirt-worshipping nature lovers. It took decades for me to find my pagan family.

There is an assumption, even as ironic as it sounds, an arrogance that presumes Americans are open-minded and accepting of diversity. Hell, we nominated a black president. Certainly we like to be different, as long as it means unique enough to stand above, but not merely apart from others.

Pagans however, still get a bad rap. From medieval woodcuts to modern media to animated cackling Halloween witches, the prevailing society constructed and perpetuates a frightful, evil image of pagans and witches. Outspoken pagans are ostracized from mainstream community in their workplace, schools, and neighborhoods, sometimes denied promotions or child custody battles, even though the word “pagan” simply means one who dwells in the country and “witch” is derived from a word meaning wise. I know a pagan minister who visits imprisoned men and women. He provides counseling, guidance and conducts religious rituals and ceremonies for neophyte and long-practicing pagans, even though he is regularly beat up, and even hospitalized, by the guards, yes the guards, who fear what he preaches and teaches.

Due to this oppression, pagans have gone underground to celebrate their holidays and pass along their knowledge and stories. But for one glorious weekend, they get to be fully expressed and self-actualized without fear of condemnation, violence and repression of others’ fear. For the last eighteen years, hundreds of pagan babies, mostly grown up, gather at Pantheacon, a four day pagan conference of concurrent classes, workshops, drum circles, spiritual and academic presentations, rituals, and dances where they can learn new chants, ancient lore, pantheons, ceremony, and ritual covering the wide range of diversity within the pagan community.

Part of going to Pantheacon is uncovering the parts of you that you hide from the world. It is a time and place to express the secret, eccentric you. The first time you visit Pantheacon can be a shock to the system. The halls are flooded with a wild mix of Castro Street in San Francisco meets Halloween in Salem, Massachusetts with a bit of Renaissance Faire and more. Conference attendees don cloaks, kilts, scarves, jackets, witch hats, faery wings, top hats, velvet Merlin hats, cat ears, bunny ears, Martian ears, animal skin or fur pants, leather pants, hip hugger pants. Women and men wear corsets, coin hip skirts and dresses, fishnet stockings, and outlandish outfits in Victorian, pirate, Steampunk, Renaissance, Gothic, Old Apothecary. Drag queens dress in everything from Little Bo Peep to the Dragon Lady. Horns of different colors, twisted and straight, bone and ceramic, sprout from foreheads. Flowing skirts of batik, silk, tiered, tear-drop, patchwork, sequined, and embroidered. Yoruban priestesses have on pure white dresses, adorned with red trinkets. Hair dyed every possible color of Easter pastel. The more subdued wear fantasy t-shirts of faery, wizard, unicorns, dragons, chimeras, witches, and pentacles. Ribbons that attach to your conference badge, stating things like Crafty Witch, The Purple Gang, Love Your Yoni, are traded and revered like Mardi gras beads. It’s an opportunity to be free of judgment, either self or community induced. It’s a chance to wave your freak flag and really, who can resist that?

The liberation and joy grows over the four days as attendees create their individual curriculum based on the unique combination of classes they take. I myself taught a class on how learning about biophilia (an innate love of life) and biodiversity can fuel your desire to live a more sustainable life. At night I celebrated by attending an absinthe making class taught by Jeff Winters where we learned about the subtleties and history of this ancient liqueur. Of course, we tried some!

After sleeping in, I took a class taught by R.J. Stewart, a man with long flaxen hair who looks, speaks, and acts like a venerated elf incarnate. He spoke of the Tree of Life and its Kabalistic and Celtic roots. We formed three consecutive circles and visualized the root of the earth or the Underworld, connecting to the planetary system, then out to the stars. We imagined drawing up the energy, allowing it to rise up through our bodies then out every pour until it reached the great expanse of the stellar region. Together we breathed and chanted as one: the Tree of Life.

In the next hour, along with a hundred women, I sang to the dark mother, mother of us all, with the guidance of the Iseum of Black Isis. I poured a libation for my ancestors, was anointed with oil on my forehead, received a crown of a cowrie shell headband, and fanned in a blessing. While we shuffled through each of these stations we chanted, “I am the earth, air, fire and water. The Priestess. The Queen. The Mother. The Daughter. The Shaper. The Teacher. The Healer. The Seer.”

At night we drank homemade meade. I went to a drum circle and alongside many, I danced in wild abandon. We rattled, we shook, swayed, shimmied, and gyrated, until sweat poured and the smiles were plastered on our faces.

The next day, I attended a presentation given by Orion Foxwood, a radiant, enthusiastic seer from the Appalachians, who received applause when he merely walked in the room. With the most adorable twang, he spoke of the magick that is omnipresent and that we must only open the door to give it access into our lives. “There are those who do magick, and there are those done by magick,” he said with a swish of his hand and swing of his hip. His compassion, spirit, and desire for each person to discover the power and glory within themselves was inspiring. We meditated on the Dark Rider, the energy and spirit that exists at the crossroads, on the shoreline, the meeting place between ocean and land, “where silence and sound make love.” We were to ask the Dark Rider’s advice for a problem that vexed us. Our teacher told us, “When life is most difficult is where you are being called to the center.” It was time to ask for what we desired, and at this crossroads, the center of our being, we would find the answer.

Then I found myself in another movement class taught by T. Thorn Coyle. Only this time as we formed three concentric circles, we spun like the whirling dervishes. We were taught that Rumi developed this technique one day in the crowded marketplace. He turned on the spot, listening over his left ear for his beloved Sham. He whirled and whirled until he spun himself into ecstasy and union with spirit: reunited with Sham. During our spinning and other meditative movements, we invoked Inanna with the chant.

Eya, Inanna, Hail to the Queen of the Heavens

Whose Spiced Lips bring life Everlasting,

Hail to the Queen of the Heavens*

As we lost ourselves in the whirling, we prayed, finding rapture in our connection with the Divine.

The last session I attended was a typical Southern Revival, complete with fans. But instead of shouting Hallelujah Jesus! We called out, Blessed be to the Goddess!” Again the lesson was “Know Thyself.” As the precursor to any magic, one must first begin within.

The best part of liberating is we begin break down the walls that separate ourselves from ourselves. As we grow more comfortable in our own skins, we find answers to the questions that plague us: should I go back to school? Where does my career path lead me? Which is the best environment for me to live in? We know there is a community and love shared with our pagan families. And we’re no longer lost... at least from each other or the light of our own souls.

*Lyrics by Sharon Knight