Witches, magic and the popular movie "The Craft:" such are images that usually come to mind when one thinks of pagans. But the IU group Earth Religions wants to dispel those myths and educate people about what it really means to be pagan.\nJunior Jill Vance, public relations officer for Earth Religions, said the group was started about six years ago. At the beginning, it was a very loose organization, but about two years ago it became an established group on campus and began electing officers. About 10-20 people come to meetings, Vance said. But officially, the group includes about 95 people.\nSophomore Pierre Sosa, events coordinator for Earth Religions, said the group is good for exploring one's own beliefs.\n"I would probably have to say it's kind of like a study group," Sosa said. "I would think of it more like a group where you can go in and explore and learn more about earth religions and pagan paths and also a lot more about yourself."\nVance agreed, emphasizing that Earth Religions is more about learning what is out there in terms of faiths.\n"Our purpose is really to serve as a learning environment for people," Vance said. "A lot of them don't really know what paganism is and what the different religions of paganism are and the different stuff that we do. We have kind of a really wide scale of members for as long as we've been involved. It's a kind of sharing and learning for new people and building on what you know."
Outside the norm?\nWebsters Collegiate Dictionary defines pagan as "a follower of polytheistic religion (as in ancient Rome)" and "one who has little or no religion and who delights in sensual pleasures and material goods." \nYet Sosa said the term paganism is an ancient term dating back to the pre-Christian time period that broadly defines many different religious paths. It was a term coined by the Romans to describe the people living outside of the city. \n"The classic definition is 'those outside of the norm,'" Sosa said.\nVance said the group is open to any pagan religion regardless of someone's individual definition of paganism. \n"Our focus tends to be on emphasizing different pagan religions or spiritualities that focus on some deity of nature -- that there is some aspect of the divine in the earth itself," Vance said. "That's about as specific as we can get. It's very individual…it's very much what you want to make out of it."\nVance said pagans believe in one unifying force that can be defined individually and divided into male and female roles. \n"A lot of people use the analogy of the diamond," Vance said. "It's all the same thing you are worshiping, but you can worship that aspect that you feel most comfortable with. The lady can be divided out to be any different nature goddess."\nIt is this individuality of the religion that Vance believes interests a lot of women. While the Earth Religions group on campus is very integrated, Vance said, in general more women are drawn to the pagan religion because they cannot connect with the traditional masculinity of other religions.\n"There is a pretty large sect of paganism that is very feministic," Vance said. "There are a lot of women involved primarily because a lot of them have been driven away from the masculine aspect and they can't connect with that anymore." \nThe holidays celebrated in paganism revolve around the moon and the harvest season. The next major holiday for Earth Religions is Saturday, when the Imbolc ritual will be celebrated. It is a fire festival, involving a lot of candles, and is "very pretty," Vance said. \n"It's really based on old ideas of astronomy," Sosa said. "Mythology mixes with astronomy, and those kind of combine. We use those to this day."\n Rev. Rebecca Jimenez, campus minister at the Center for University Ministry, said the traditional view of Earth Religions is that it is a completely different religion from Christianity. But she said Christianity could learn a lot from Earth Religions.\n "The more enlightened view would be that earth religions have a lot to teach us about how to respect, embrace and care for the environment," Jimenez said. \n Jimenez said too often the stance Christianity takes is that man is a master and has dominion over everything. She said in practice this has led to the use and abuse of the environment.\n"Humankind is one part of all creation," Jimenez said. "We should be good stewards of creation. A good metaphor would be the gardener…the ultimate purpose is healthy growth."
Discovering Paganism\nBoth Vance and Sosa discovered paganism during high school, and for Vance it started out as something funny to do.\n"It started out as a joke, for me," Vance said, laughing. "I was surfing around the Internet back in my junior year of high school, I was sitting next to my sister and I was just randomly typing in search words to see what would come up…I would type in witches and all of these things, and I was joking with my sister that I was going to run off and join a witch's coven (circle)."\nFrom there, Vance said she started reading more about paganism, and it really spoke to her. She became particularly interested in Wicca, a neo-pagan religion.\n"I had always had a big problem with putting all other forms that aren't human below us and somehow considering them not quite as worthy, and that always bothered me," Vance said. "Paganism is really kind of putting everything on equal footing. That really spoke to me. And from that point on, I kind of started learning more about it, and about a year later I really started considering myself pagan."\nSosa had a similar experience. He also started reading about it independently and was interested in the free thinking of paganism.\n"I kind of went into it because I always was interested in different types of thought, and I always wanted to study something," Sosa said. "And religiously there really wasn't much to study…it was more like do what you're told. And this was something I could study and explore more."\nVance and Sosa's families reacted well to them being pagan, but that is not always the case. \n"Most people tend to be pretty quiet to their parents," Vance said. "It's been my experience."
Misconceptions\nThe biggest misconception that exists is that paganism is satanism, Vance and Sosa said.\n"The thing is that we don't even believe in any other deity that's considered Satan, so it's hard to worship something we don't believe in," Vance said. "I think that's the biggest misconception."\nSosa said people come up to him, asking him if he can curse somebody or cast some sort of love spell. He dismissed the pagan image represented in the movie "The Craft," in which every time a magic word was spoken, lightning shots through the sky. Vance said magic is usually the most misunderstood aspect of the pagan religions.\n"The concept of magic seems to be something pretty misunderstood," Vance said. "We tend to think of magic as something not like creating an apple out of thin air. It's basically the composing of yourself and focusing your own personal energy towards the goal, not creating something that was never there before...It's just a mindset."
More Information:
• Next Earth Religions Meeting is Feb. 13. The topic will be 'Symbols of love through time.' See www.indiana.edu/~eathrel
• The Witches Voice: http://www.witchvox.com
