This letter was in response to the many Editorial Letters lamenting the fact that Paganism was not receiving the same treatment, respect and tolerance from public officials that main stream religions were enjoying. Much has changed for Paganism in the last Decade. We are seeing fewer and fewer of the kinds of complaints that prompted this letter. I am presenting it here as an example of what can happen in a very short period of time when dedicated Pagans work together to overcome obsticales that stand in the way of our progress. It is also a short history lesson that we need to remember. We will never know where we are unless we know where we have been.
El Bee......
Many of us here in St. Louis, myself in particular, have a very hard time understanding the difficulties Pagans in other parts of the country have with public officials treating them fairly. We have rights and we should exercise those rights.
Missouri is in the middle of the Bible belt. Yet, public Paganism is very much alive and well here. I believe what we are doing to make it alive and well is the correct thing to do and it is working. I am not in any position to criticize the activities of Pagans in other communities nor advise them in what they should be doing to improve their public image. I can, however, describe our activities and share a few positive stories.
My name is El bee and I have been a Pagan for many years. I am currently the president of Omnistic Fellowship, a Pagan church and a founding member of the Council of Alternative Spiritual Traditions. CAST is a ministry of Omnistic Fellow and is an area wide activity planning council. 1
CAST is but one of many Pagan organizations in this area. It is, however, the most public. Besides CAST, there is Awakening University, Alliance of Magickal and Earth Religions, Spiraling Stairways, Diana's Grove, Ozark Avalon, Pathfinder and others.
There is also, at last count, forty one covens, circles and groves here.2 Thirty three of them are public and many of them send representatives to the Council. Although not specifically Wiccan, most council members are and most of our activities are Wiccan oriented.
We sponsor seventeen public events a every year. The largest is the St. Louis Pagan Picnic. It draws 700-800 each year.3 The Magickal Weekend is in its fifteenth year. We set up at Earth Day and have two major fund raisers, the Spring Fling and the Fall Ball.4
Our main public outreach, however, is a schedule of Open Full Moon Rituals.5 These are scheduled a year in advance with a different group hosting the event each month. We have a waiting list and have outgrown our present facilities. We will soon be moving to a new location that can accommodate up to three hundred worshipers.
Everything is advertised. We use non-professional PR people that design our advertising and get it into the newspapers, radio and TV. We print thousands of fliers, brochures and posters. Some of us have done radio and television interviews and conducted live open forums.
How is all this possible? We just do it. We are in your face. We are public and we demand the same rights and privledges that are granted to every other religion. Every time the Christian Right successfully lobbies for rights and protection under the law, we claim them for ourselves. Why not? We consider it foolish not to. There are Pagan lawyers who can make it so.
We have made the Police Department our friend instead of our advasery. We inform them when we are planning an event, give them our literiture and use them for our security. We present ourselves to the police as a ligitimate church organization filled with regular folk who hold jobs, volunteer in civic projects, live next door, pay taxes, send our kids to school and are concerned about our neighbors and our environment. 6
Three years ago at the Picnic, there was a very loud amplified family reunion a few hundred yards away. When six o'clock rolled around and it was time for our closing ritual, the police informed the reunion that they must turn off the amplified music because church services were about to begin in the park. We were pleased and very impressed.
We have also made fast friends with the administration of Tower Grove Park and several departments at City Hall. So much so that they encouraged us to expand our annual Pagan Picnic into a two day event. We clean up Tower Grove Park before we set up and leave it cleaner than we found it. All of our trash is sorted and baged and all recyclables are carted away with us when we leave. The Park Police sit down to eat with us and observe our rituals with respect.
This year, the Schedule for the St. Louis Pagan Picnic is included in Directory St. Louis, the official directory of St. Louis area events. We are quite proud of this. Who would ever have thought of this? Have we gone main stream and respectable? You bet, why not. 7
One of our members publishes Neumens Notes. It's a calender listing of all area pagan events. It's quite detailed and extensive. It includes times, dates and places a year in advance, resources, networks, civil rights organizations, shops, vendors and craftsmen, web sites and much more. 8
Some of our events are covered by the media. We have received front page color photos and feature stories in the Post Dispatch. Once, we were featured on the front cover of the River Front Times which included four pages of story and photos. Last year one of the local TV stations did an announcement about the picnic at the end of the 10:30 news cast. It surprised all of us. I can't remember the last time we had bad press. Yes I can. A few years ago, the City Council voted to retain an old law that banned tarot reading for money. Oh, well.
I don't want to leave the impression that everything is rosey in River City. We have our distractors. Even though we have not had any protesters picketing us or had any event otherwise disrupted, there are those fanatical souls who would be pleased beyond belief if we just disappeared. There are also people and organizations here who are actively working to discredit us, deny us our rights, take our children away, influence our employers and label us evil and possessed. We are determined not to let that happen.
Most people in the Pagan communities across America are unaware of the role St. Louis has played in the emergence and growth of Neo-Paganism. Many of this nations Elders were raised here or lived here at one time. We have old church roles going back to the 1920's. Some of the people who helped make St. Louis what it is include Otter and Morning Glory Zell, Don Wildgrube, Gillian Stewart, the Frost's, Fey Clark, Deborah Bourbon, Sybil Leek, Lance Christi and many others. We are all in their debt.
This publication, the Green Egg, was founded here. Stories are told about how folks would sit around naked on the living room floor of a north St. Louis home cutting and pasting those early editions of the Green Egg. They were words of wisdom back then and still are. Those early copies are cherished and coveted here.
What St. Louis is today and what it will become tomorrow is their legacy and will be the legacy of those of us here now as well. Much of the credit for what we have is due to the men and women doing what has to be done now. We are building on the foundation laid down years ago. We have also, for the most part put aside our differences to work toward our common goals for our common good.
We still meet in small groups or worship before personal altars. We still try to avoid the trap of hierarchies and power mongers. We believe in reserving our personal power for ourselves and following our own paths. But give us a common obstical or crisis and we will rally together to overcome it.
At the outset of this letter, I said I would not offer any advise. There are however, three things any community can do to improve its situation. Get organized, get active and get official status. It all helps. Try it. See what happens.
Copyright 2000-2008, El Bee Kanobe. All Rights Reserved. No duplication or republication without written permission. Reprinted here by permission of El Bee Kanobe.