In the original edition (1979) of her standard book on contemporary Paganism in the United States, "Drawing Down the Moon", Margot Adler wrote:

“In the last ten years, alongside the often noted resurgence of 'occult' and 'magical' groups, a diverse and decentralized religious movement has sprung up that remains comparatively unnoticed, and when recognized, is generally misunderstood.”


Those were people describing themselves as Pagans or Neo-Pagans. “The modern Pagan resurgence includes the new feminist goddess-worshipping groups, certain new religions based on the visions of science-fiction writers, attempts to revive ancient European religions - Norse, Greek, Roman - and the surviving tribal religions”, wrote Adler.




In the meantime, Paganism has certainly not decreased and its expressions have become still much more varied than they used to be. There are now many academic books and articles on contemporary Paganism, especially in North America. Moreover, Paganism has grown into a more international phenomenon. But people active in Pagan ways still feel they are misunderstood in many places. However, at least in the United States, Paganism has now its place among other religious paths in a number of local, regional, and national interreligious initiatives, for instance.


In order to learn more about Paganism today, Religioscope has met with Selena Fox, who has been active for many years in this field as the leader of Circle. Born in 1949 in Arlington, Virginia, Rev. Selena Fox is senior minister and high priestess of Circle Sanctuary, a Shamanic Wiccan church, Pagan resource center, and Nature preserve with a worldwide Ecospirituality ministry that includes networking, publishing, education, environmental preservation, counseling, events sponsoring, and other work. For more than thirty years, Rev. Fox has served as one of the elders, religious freedom activists, and public media spokespersons for the Wiccan religion and related forms of contemporary Paganism and Ecospirituality, nationwide and internationally.


Being involved in networks across Pagan traditions, Selena Fox is certainly one of the most qualified Pagan leaders for helping us to gain a better understanding of this religious phenomenon. In this interview, she also tells us how she came herself to follow the old Gods. The interview took place in July 2004 at the Parliament of the World's Religions, in Barcelona, Spain, and was revised by Selena Fox in August 2005.


Religioscope - How did you discover that you were a Pagan?

Selena Fox - Ever since I was a very young child I have had a strong affinity with Nature. I found that being outdoors in natural settings was one of my favorite things to do. Throughout my life, I have enjoyed listening to the sounds of birds and sitting meditatively by trees. Plants, creatures, and the Elements of Nature are my friends. I have had special close relationships with the companion cats in my life. Although I did not call myself a Pagan when I was a child, now as an adult, I realize that I already had Pagan leanings.


Special bonds were formed and developed between me and animals, places, and plants, with the wind, with land, sacred fire, the sun, waters. I found that my own inner Pagan spirit began emerging very early in life, in that I had what would best be called “mystical experiences” while I was communing with Nature. During these times, I found myself going beyond the confines of my human-centric consciousness and feeling a oneness with the Divine. I not only experienced the Divine within me but within the greater Circle of Life.


I was raised in a fundamentalist Southern Baptist family. Although some of my mystical experiences occurred indoors in a Christian church setting, most emerged spontaneously when I was doing my own type of Nature communion outside. I found that I was most comfortable with spiritual activity outdoors and being in places where I was one with the unity of Creation and Creator.


Religioscope - But this was a kind of solitary Pagan awareness. When did you come in touch with other Pagans? When did Pagan community life begin for you?

Selena Fox - I began having group experiences when I was twenty-one years old and a senior in college. I went to the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, U.S.A. My undergraduate studies were in psychology but, in addition to my major field, I continued my love and study of the Classics, which had begun when I was thirteen years old and in ninth grade, eight years before.


During my senior year in college, I was the president of the Classics honors society, Eta Sigma Phi, as well as the president of the Classics Club, which was open to everyone regardless of their academic achievement. I decided, as president of both organizations, we needed to enhance our learning about the Classics in an experiential way. The Classics department was one of the oldest departments on campus, and dated back nearly three hundred years, with the founding of the college in 1693. So there already was a long tradition of Classics at my college. I got the Classics professors to agree to be part of a re-creation of a Rite of Spring where we drew on both ancient Greek as well as Roman traditions.


We picked a beautiful Springtime day to have this learning experience, which was a re-creation of an honoring of the Divine as Great Father in the form of Dionysus, God of Rebirth and Ecstasy among the ancient Greeks, and of the Divine Feminine, Mother Earth, known as Terra to the Romans and Gaia to the Greeks. I was the priestess of this ritual. I carried with me a tambourine and a pine cone-tipped staff known as the thyrsus, traditionally part of the rites of Dionysus. We dressed in long, flowing, toga-like outfits with ivy in our hair, and we went processing through campus making joyful sounds. Someone played the flute and I played the tambourine. We got to a beautiful place on campus, the Sunken Garden, dating back to the colonial era and designed by Thomas Jefferson who went to school there. In the middle of this beautiful garden area, we perfomed our ritual. We called on Dionysus. “Io! Evohe! Io! Evohe! Io! Evohe!” We then began dancing ecstatically and in so doing connected with ancient Greek Dionysian traditions. We peaked our ecstatic dance, and then laid down on the ground and honored Mother Earth.


This group ritual experience was both fun and educational. But for me, something additional happened within myself - it was spiritually transformative. I realized that I had come home to my religion. I realized that I needed to do rituals such as this as part of my life. I did not know fully at that time I would actually be a full-time Pagan priestess as my career. But I realized how therapeutic and transformative this Pagan ritual was. Now in retrospect, I realize that the gateways of my spiritual perception were thrown open by performing that ritual and invoking with ancient Divine forces. I aligned with ancient Pagan roots and from that point onward I was forever changed.


Within two months of doing that ritual, I encountered a small group of women who were practicing a form of the Pagan religion rooted in the folk traditions of old Europe in a place once known as Prussia. A woman named Marianne was a hereditary Pagan. Pagan folkways had been passed down from generation to generation in her family. It was an oral tradition and there was no book. There was not a lot of elaborate liturgy involved and this path was very simple in some of its practices. It was basically a continuation of folkways with a spiritual dimension to it. Marianne's Paganism was a women's tradition, passed on to her from her grandmother. What we shared together consisted of going out under the Full Moon, invoking the Moon Goddess and celebrating our connection with all of Nature and making magic. I began by working just with her, and then that Summer, several other women joined us. So my first experiences with Paganism in community settings was these experiences with Marianne as well as the ritual I led as an educational experience. As I continued to go deeper in my explorations, actually the old Gods and Goddesses, the Old Ways, found me, and I began increasingly practicing Paganism with others.


How did I find Marianne? Although I majored in psychology and was an honors graduate, the first job I got was working on an archaeological dig. Throughout my life, I have had a long-time interest in ancient cultures, in preserving history, and in researching history. I talked my way into an archaeological job even though I had no academic training in archaeology. I was able to restore pottery and do displays as I did have some art training. And, I actually went out on the archaeological digs on some occasions. Marianne worked on this dig and we both worked in the laboratory cataloging broken wine bottles, windowpane glass, broken pipe stems and other artifacts from a dump of a colonial tavern. We discovered our common interest in honoring the sacred dimensions of Nature. In addition, I realized that she shared my own positive associations with the “Witch” word. She invited me to practice Witchcraft with her. That was in the Summer of 1971.


Religioscope - I see two elements here. On one hand, it was still in the atmosphere of the counter-culture of the 1960s. On the other hand, there is the feminine dimension, a group of women, the feminine dimension of the Divine. So, would these be two major impulses stand behind the rebirth of Paganism?

Selena Fox - Yes. And, in my own case, I also think my connection with the Classics, which is coming from a much more conservative form of tradition. For me personally, my immersion in the Classics is what brought me to Paganism. The Neo-Classicism of the America colonial era is part of my conservative, political upbringing, roots, and training. I am the descendant of ancestors that came to America from England, Switzerland, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Germany and other parts of Europe in the sixteen and seventeen hundreds in order to practice their forms of religion. I view my embracing of contemporary Paganism as also part of my ancestral tradition of what I prefer to call religious innovation, but which was regarded as religious radicalism by those persecuting my ancestors.


In addition to my European-American heritage, I am also part Native American and descended from the Cherokee people. Some of my own understanding of Nature religions also comes from teachings of my Native American ancestors that have come through childhood dreams, and from my own personal practices of working at sacred sites. As an adult, I have encountered elders from a number of different native traditions that paralleled Nature traditions rooted in old Europe. I have come to know that my spiritual path in this life involves honoring and working with the sacred dimensions of Nature in multicultural ways.


I see Nature religions as having roots in the oldest parts of humankind and yet what I practice now is not something that was practiced in an unbroken line by Pagan peoples thirty-five thousand years ago or even two thousand years ago. The Paganism I practice is something that draws on the roots of the ancient past from many cultures but also draws on the here and now in a time where there is multiculturalism and a time where we have post-modern philosophy. Paganism today has evolved in a time where there is an environmental crisis and a need for there to be environmentally relevant and responsible forms of religion.


Religioscope - As you were practicing at the time with Marianne, were you aware there were other Pagans in the United States, groups of different traditions or did that become an awareness at a later stage?

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