I’m putting this in this forum since it’s about religion, but feel free to move it as necessary.
I know Whynot describes herself as a Pagan, and I just realized I don’t know what that means in the modern world. What sort of beliefs do pagans hold? Are there different types? What are the ceremonies like? Are there “sacred texts?”
It sound fun. Tell me about it!
The term “pagan” encompasses such a broad range of religious belief that it’s really impossible to pin anything down. As it has no organized church (at least, none with widespread influence), and the lack of dogma is actually a selling point for the various faiths, that no universal beliefs develop.
That said, I think there are a few commonalities we can discuss. I’m speaking in general terms here, and some of my points will apply less or not at all to various groups that identify as “Pagan”.
Most Pagan religions have at their core an attempt at reconstructing pre-Christian European beliefs. Most Pagans admit that their faith probably bears little resemblance to historical pagans, but they use deities and symbols from the old religions anyway.
A higher priority for women and nature, relative to Christianity. Many Pagans worship a goddess. Often “The Goddess”. Also, they’re much more positive about sex.
Magic. Most pagans that I’ve encountered believe that they can affect the physical world through spiritual means. Some believe that their magic is subtle (nudging probability slightly in their favor, or simply giving the caster and/or subject a more positive attitude), while others wear that they could turn a person into a newt, they simply choose not to. Many groups have a rule against harmful magic, but some don’t.
There aren’t any sacred texts, but there are some books that are more widely read than others. The Spiral Dance by Starhawk is a popular spiritual text, while the more scholarly Drawing Down the Moon by Margot Adler is big on the history of the faith.
For an outsider layman, I recommend Not In Kansas Anymore by Christine Wicker, although I’d caution that she went out of her way to find the freakiest examples possible. The Otherkin (people who believe they are fantasy creatures such as elves or vampires or even mundane animals in human form) in particular are pretty widely mocked even by other pagans.
“Pagan”, as used by many of us, generally means a follower or believer of a polytheistic pantheon (is that redundant?)
There are as many different types as there are leaves on the mighty oak. As a celtic reconstructionist druid (or reconstructionist celtic druid, something like that), for instance, I have little in common with followers of the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids - we’re as similar as the Catholics and Mormons. Self-identified wiccans can find they have little in common with the next coven over.
“Paganism” is a linguistic short cut, in my opinion, that conveys almost as little information as “christian”.
I personally feel that polytheism is key, and so wouldn’t describe a monotheistic religion as “pagan” (especially one based on or associated with the old testament, including Satanism).
Gotta run, or I’d clean the response up and maybe provide some actual information, but maybe one of the others will pop in and give a coherent answer.
That’d exclude a lot of self-described Pagans I’ve met. Some believe in a singular Goddess, and some go on to describe other deities as aspects of this being, instead of separate entities (rather like some Hindus do, or the Christian trinity, for that matter).
I do agree that Satanists are really considered Pagan, although there is some historical overlap between them.
I think that Pagan refers to anyone who does not worship Abraham’s God.
We seem to be suffering from a bit of a pagan shortage here at the old SDMB – there are far fewer publicly-avowed pagans around than there were a few years ago. So let me essay some comments on modern paganism – bearing in mind that I’m speaking as an outsider, a liberal Christian sympathetic to and with minor knowledge of their worldview. Any pagans who are around can add, correct, and so on.
First, distinguish between modern Neopaganism and the various belief structures that it claims to revive. These were the beliefs of the pagus, the “country” in the sense of where the other mouse than the City Mouse was from, rural areas and small towns of pre-Christian southern and western Europe. Some were Celtic, some Germanic, some were local variations on the Greek and Roman polytheisms. What modern pagans are is a part of a 20th/21st century movement attempting to recover the spirit of those old belief systems, but in most cases not the historical perpetuation of them through centuries of being hidden. In my impression, most neopagans are (1) sincere in thinking that they are the continuation/revivification of those old belief structures, and (2) frank that it is an attempt to recapture something largely or nearly lost in the mists of time.
Pagans do not draw a mind-body dichotomy as many other religions do. The “you” they address, the “me” they claim to be, is spirit and body in one entwined whole. You are not a body which possesses a soul, or a spirit which possesses a body, but a single entity participating of the interaction of both.
Pagans are unabashedly Spiritual in their worldview. Spirit, and its interrelation with the material world, are significant in their beliefs.
Pagans in general have a philosophical understanding of spirit. Whatever they may believe about individual gods, demigods, tutelary spirits, etc., they are focused on the male and female principles, respectively personified as the Lord and the Lady, who are somehow One. This sexual dichotomy is crucial to their worldview, though how it mediates their interrelationship and religious practice may vary widely.
Pagans are intensely ethical. Key to their understanding of how the world works is the need to follow the Rede, most commonly stated as “An [if] it harm none, do what thou wilt,” but carrying a lot of ethical responsibility packed into those few words. This is, I think, not seen so much as a divine commandment from a despotic deity, as it is a natural principle, to violate which is to risk self harm in much the same way as “violating the law of gravity leadeth to a fall.” The Rule of Three is also important – the good or evil you do is paid back threefold.
Pagans are not creedal or legalistic. As might be expected from a religion founded on the Rede, there is virtually no interest in compelling another to follow one’s beliefs about what may or may not be moral. And there is refreshingly little effort to define an orthodoxy about pagan belief – which may lead to some confusion in explanations like this one – there is no one right answer to “What do pagans believe?” – but definitely is an improvement over the theological wrangling of Christianity and Islam.
Those are statements I feel comfortable making as an outsider observing paganism. Take them as purely that; I cannot speak to what it feels like to be one, never having been one, nor to how those beliefs feel when “worn” by the participant. And I certainly may be all wet in my understanding – I believe not; I’ve tried to listen respectfully and learn. But it’s quite possible that I’ve gotten things wrong.
Before I say anything, let me add one little warning - there are almost literally as many differences in Pagan beliefs as there are Pagans who hold them. We are most definitely NOT an organized religion in any sense of the word! There are some generalities, but even there you can’t assume that there’s a clear majority on any aspect.
I think one thing that most Pagans share is a belief in responsibility. The rede that Polycarp quoted - “an it harm none, do as ye will” - is probably the closest thing we have to a commandment. It doesn’t mean we can do whatever we want and damn the consquences, though; it means that we are responsible to ensure that our actions do not cause harm… we can’t go to confession and be absolved of our sins by an outside entity, we have to make it right ourselves.
There are Pagans who worship different deities - God and Goddess, Lord and Lady, specific cultural pantheons you’d find in mythology, and so on. For me, the mythology works much like the parables Jesus used, with the gods and goddesses as archetypes and examples of specific qualities. I do not see god-ness as something outside me - I don’t believe a specific person or persons (or spirit) is in the “elsewhere” watching me, approving or disapproving, planning reward and punishment or anything like that. Rather, I believe that we all contain a measure of whatever you want to define as divine - a soul, a spirit, something that connects us to everyone and everything else.
As for magic, (or magik, majick, magick, etc.) I think that’s no different at its core than prayer is. I don’t know of anyone who has ever sincerely put forth the assertion that he or she could turn someone into a newt, but hey, if faith as small as a mustard seed could move a mountain, I don’t see any reason why it couldn’t “newtify” someone. Prayer, to me, is our exertion on the divine - we use our own spirit to try to influence something bigger, and that’s what “magic” is, too.
More later - dinner-making time.
You need to distinguish between more structured revivals of ancient belief systems and wicca-related paganism.
The former includes systems like Asatru (Norse revival), which is, in spirit and practice, quite different from the Gardnerian-derived and Llewellyn-influenced groups that make up modern Wicca. Mistake an Asatruar for a Wiccan and probably the best you can hope for is a cold shoulder.
You also need to distinguish between those who take their paganism sincerely and those who get their paganism from Silver Raven-Wolf…
I think you’ll find that I almost always - except when being lazy - describe myself as a neopagan, or occasionally a Hermetic Neopagan, depending on which seems relevant. I do this to try and distinguish what it is I do from what actual ancient Greeks and Romans did - they were pagans, I am a neo, or "new’ pagan. While I might work with Hera, Aphrodite or Hestia, same as they did, I am under no illusions that I am a member of their same religion or even recreating what they did. Their god faces simply resonate with me and I use them in whole newfangled ways. An ancient Greek would most likely no more recognize my interpretation of Hera than he would understand Muhammad. There are a very few groups which literally and truly believe themselves to be recreating ancient religions, but they are a small minority, and the veracity of their claims is…questioned by many scholars.
That’s one part of Polycarp’s post I disagree with: I don’t think most neopagans sincerely believe we’re living the “Old Religion”. We *talk *about it as if we did, but that’s sort of a shibboleth. It’s part of our origin myth, that there was this utopian time when we were in charge and the rivers flowed with honey and women were equal to or more powerful than men before the Sky Gods came with the invaders from the North and subjugated us. Didn’t happen. We know it didn’t happen. That doesn’t mean we don’t learn something from the story, just like Christians teach their children lessons from Noah while admitting there is little to no historical evidence for an actual flood. Literal truth is beside the point to an insider, and outsiders get all hung up on it.
There are plenty for whom this is true, including many Wiccans. Many others, however, including Dianic Wiccans, have only a Goddess or only a God and aren’t all caught up in the sexual dichotomy thing. Feri is bringing a whole new look at gender in neopagan religions, as are large neopagan festivals which host people from hundreds of different paths. “Traditionally” in many paths at Beltaine, the women dance in one “receiving” ring and the men around them in one “fertilizing” ring. So where do the transgendered stand? The gay? The infertile, by choice or not? There’s been a lot of talk about this in the last decade or so. Not always real answers, but at least there’s discussion. (When I Priestess Beltaine, I explain receptive and generative and let people choose which they feel they are today. It might not be as aesthetically pleasing, but it gets better results.)
I also question whether or not most of us are truly polytheistic. Again, to the outsider, it certainly appears so. What’s spoken around the bonfire, however, is more of a “monotheistic polytheism”, if you will. The idea is that there is one Divine Source or Creator or Cosmic It, and that all the “gods and goddesses” are facets of that One. We are so far removed from “It” that we can only comprehend it in little bitty pieces we call “gods and goddesses.” Different facets are important to different people at different times, and so it appears as if we’re all talking about different Divinities, but they’re all parts of The One. A common analogy is to think of all the names and roles you have in life: You might be Mom to your kids and Mrs. Smith and work and Sweetie to your husband and Pumpkin Belly to your dad. There are times when your identities clash - when you have a project due at work the same night as your kid’s play, so you feel as if there are two or more of you fighting each other. But “Mom”, “Mrs. Smith”, “Sweetie” and “Pumpkin Belly” are all names for the same entity.
I agree that most (but not all) neopagans believe in immanent divinity - that is, that there’s a bit of The Divine in each of us and in everything around us - as opposed to external Divinity - that The Divine is this Other Thing Out There somewhere.
So yes, terming myself “a neopagan” isn’t amazingly informative in and of itself. It doesn’t tell you whether I’m a radical feminist man hating Dianic (Ok, they don’t all hate men, but it’s sure hard to tell sometimes!) or a fur bikini clad Thor hanger on or what.
In reality, I personally have training in both Wicca and Ceremonial Magick, as well as what I call “generic tree-huggin’ hippie nature based spirituality.” At the moment, I’m working most closely with a Golden Dawn group, so the Hermetic path is a big thing for me. That may change without notice. They are also adamant that they are not a religion, but rather a philosophy, so one could easily say that I’m a Hermetic philosopher of nature based neopagan religion.
And don’t get me started on where the Santeria, Ifa and Voudoun fit in. Socially, they hang out with us neopagans a lot, and there’s some amount of epistemological overlay, but I scarcely think most of them would call themselves neopagans.
For more than you ever wanted to know, check out www.witchvox.com
See, when I say “Pagan”, many people automatically translate that as “Wiccan” - which I am not. (I actually had someone say to me once, “I know YOU are OK, because your star-thing points up, so you’re a good witch.” Um, nooo…)
Honestly, though, most of the Pagans I know completely understand that the outside observer is not automatically going to distinguish Asataru from Gardnerian Wicca, anymore than the average Catholic is going to automatically know the difference between a Missouri Synod Lutheran and a Wisconsin Synod Lutheran, and they’re not going to hold it against you if you don’t know. And I don’t know anyone who takes Silver Ravenwolf seriously.
Regarding immanence vs. transcedence, there’s a book called The Goddess Path that explains those concepts very nicely. Additionally, there’s a book simply titled Paganism, by Joyce and River Higgenbotham, that does a pretty fair job of summing up the similarities and differences in various paths.
To be a Pagan means to wear a leather jacket and ride around on a Harley with a bunch of other similarly-equipped Pagans.
Glad we could clear this up. 
Thank you for bringing up this aspect of separating out different groups of paganism. As for the “mistake an Asatruar for a Wiccan” line, it’s not always true. It all depends on how the individual feels about “the other side” and what kinds of experiences they’ve had. For me, as an Asatruar, I’ve been pretty solitary. Part of this is because of a distinct lack of kindreds in the area, and, as a larger matter, a distinct lack of serious Asatruar in the areas I’ve lived. My “community” connection was through a [university] student pagan organization, where a lot of people were beginners and most people were on a path that was different than the rest of the group’s particular brand of paganism. We had connections to the local pagan community, which was also varied, but had more experience practitioners than in the student group. Although my beliefs didn’t necessarily mesh with everyone else’s all the time*, we managed to share ideas and exist pretty well considering our collective differences. Yes, there were a lot of discussions of magic and not as much about things like ethics and the spiritual process; this was a student group, and the majority of the group were interested in developing magic “skills” as part of their studies. (Personally, I think that if they were going to go that route, they should’ve had more discussions of magic theory in general before getting into actual practice, but that’s the academic side of me talking. If I were running the show, I would’ve been starting with Aleister Crowley’s discussion of magic theory as a primer because it’s difficult and precise.) My interest in magic, however, is not that strong. It’s not a heavy or a largely practiced “thing” in Asatru, and it’s not a necessary part of my experience with Asatru. My religion is more about spirituality and connection than with control of reality through magic.
Okay, now on to talking about Asatru in general. As I’d stated, Asatru is not very concerned with magic as a standard. It’s a reconstructionist religion, and like many reconstructionist beliefs, this requires “homework” (i.e. a lot of self study and source finding) and an emphasis on spirituality and community. Looking at the religion itself, its beliefs are founded on history, mythos, discernible social mores of the historic peoples and trying to connect those with coping in the modern world. Asatru is not necessarily earth centered, but there is an important aspect of respect for the spirits of the land (land wights) as part of general conduct and the spiritual world. Asatruar tend to group up when the opportunity arises, in groups that are called kindreds, hofs, or other terms I cannot at present think of. Family is important within Asatru, as it is a foundation of kinship with the gods to be right with those around you.
As for worship rituals, we generally give offerings in the form of blot and sumbel. Generally it’s in recognition and thanks of gods or land wights, but they are also given periodically at different times per year in relation to the significance of the Asatru calendar. (I’m not going to get into that, as I’m a bit of a pragmatist and don’t celebrate all of the holidays, and it’d take way too long to explain in one post.)
Lastly, and of least emphasis is magic. Most Asatruar don’t practice magic regularly or, in many cases, at all. A lot of the magic that is practiced is rune magic (and sometimes runic divinatory ritual), but some groups practice an approximation of the old practice of seidhr (there are many spellings and little documentation for this Norse form of trancework), which has roots in general shamanistic trancework theory. This practice in and of itself could and probably is a heavy cultural borrowing from the Saami of Finland, who were much more heavily involved in shamanistic practices, but had quite a bit of contact with the Iron Age Norse. (Note: The Norse actually borrowed a lot of religious stuff from the different groups they encountered. In a way, they had a symbiotic religio-magical relationship with the groups they encountered in their travels. This explains for the variation in practice of Asatru in a lot of areas in addition to the emphasis of different gods in different regions of Scandinavia and other Germanic regions. Iceland, for example, had a large number of Thor worshippers in comparison to other Norse gods, whereas other areas have many places named after other gods who are less well-known in the remaining sources available today.)
[sub]*[There were quite a few occasions where I was in opposition to some of the practices and beliefs of other groupings; however, it wasn’t necessarily a purely ethical issue every time. Asatruar don’t follow the Rede, and have our own concepts to code morality. It’s a bit more gray on generalities, but it has specific duties that we have as ethical Asatruar to fulfill. It also varies a bit. It’s generally known as the Nine Noble Virtues.] [/sub]
Okay, I’ve rambled a lot and I don’t know if I’ve been clear. Feel free to ask more questions. If I can’t answer them, I can direct you to a source that might do a better job of answering it for me.
Thank you for clarifying that. Most of my contacts with Asatruar have been online, and usually as a spectator to a confrontation between that Asatruar and some fluffybunny who’s just tried to assert that the Rede is universal law and extends to all paganism. So my viewpoint is probably a bit limited on that. 
Which leads to the meaning of “fluffybunny”.
Understand, please, that I am not trying to characterize all or even most Wiccans with this term. But there is a certain subset (and probably all of the Wiccans (and pagans in general, for that matter) reading this know just what I’m talking about.
Fluffybunnies are people whose whole education in their Wiccan faith consists of the less…respected…Llewellyn publications (Silver Ravenwolf has much to answer for…) and films like The Craft and Practical Magick (and occasionally, I’m convinced, reruns of Bewitched). There is only light for these people. Shadow is icky. The Rede is a universal law of morality and the Threefold Rule is enforced by a great headmistress in the sky. They often have Circle names that are derived from Tolkien or Rowling. Usually every last bit of their Wiccan networking has been done online, from people of dubious spiritual lineage and trustworthiness, and they honestly believe that they’re a 32nd-tier Priestess of the Universal Church of the Holy Mother, ordained through a millenia-long line of teachers that reaches back to Mary Magdalene, who was actually a priestess of Astarte who ruled early Christianity with her consort Jesus before Paul stole the whole thing away.
And that’s fluffybunnies.
My daughter has encountered several fluffybunnies of the dark side - she’s 16, so goth is the thing among her peers, of course. Little heavily-eyelinered girls wearing pentacles and claiming to have been burned at the stake in Salem, where, and I quote, “I died holding my book of shadows to my chest and swearing the vengeance of my master Satan on the entire town.” Odd that none of them have considered the statistical improbability of all of Satan’s minions suddenly being reincarnated together in a Chicago suburb and ending up in the same high school…
Anyhow, my daughter said she’s not telling anyone her religious beliefs while these goth girls are being visible and vocal, because she’s afraid people will lump her in with the nutjobs.
Odder still is the fact that we didn’t burn witches in the new world. That was something those demented Europeans did. No, by God, we did it good and proper and hanged the little witches so if they were burned at the stake it wasn’t in Salem.
Marc
So far as I’ve been able to tell this is what it means to be pagan. You get to do a lot of talking about the burning times, get to poke fun at Baptist, talk about cleaning up the Earth even though the yard of your club house is littered with your cigarette butts, you get to spell majick instead of magic, and there can be a lot of T and A at their get togethers.
Admittedly this is a fairly biased account of someone from the outside who got to look on the inside for a short while but there you go. I’m sure not everyone has the same experience and while I admit I find paganism to be somewhat silly that’s only because of my own cultural bias. After all, what’s the practical difference between prayers to an invisible man in the sky and sympathetic magic?
And is only relevant to Wiccans and people of Wicca-derived religions. As someone whose religion has utterly nothing whatsoever to do with Wicca, I’m not a part of that ‘we’.
And even within Wicca and Wiccan derived religions, it’s not as dogmatic once you’re past the fluffy Ravenwolf stage. (Poor Ravenwolf, I’m sure she *means *well. And she’s hardly the worst offender, just the most well-known and with a silly name to boot.)
Do negative things tend to happen when you do magick to bring harm? Yep, in my experience that’s often the case. Always? No, at least not in the human lifespan noticeable sense. But there are some instances I can think of where I’m willing to take that possibility on. If there were a serial rapist in my neighborhood, I might do a working to bring him harm long enough to be caught by the police, in full acknowledgment that I myself might end up suffering for it. Most of the people I know would do the same. But this is not widely spoken of, and you won’t find it in the books at your local Borders.
If I don’t post again, look for my body with pentacle shaped bruises from the Wiccan cabal! 
Okay, here’s my long thing now that I’ve done the short-tempered reconstructionist obligatory gromph at the bloody Rede.
“Pagan” is pretty much a none-of-the-above religious term category; the only definition of what it means that isn’t liable to irritate some pagans is that a pagan is a follower of a non-Abrahamic religion. As soon as someone starts adding more to that, some pagan religion or another winds up dropped out of the system, and this makes for crankiness all around. (Some of the popular ways of irritating people: the word or concept of ‘earth-centered’ or ‘earth-based’; belief in the Wiccan Rede or Threefold Law; Lord-and-Lady belief-set or talking about The Goddess (tee-em).)
There are three broad categories in modern paganism, plus a bunch of miscellaneous things that don’t categorise easily. Those are: 1) the religious witches (best known are Wicca and its derivatives); 2) the people whose stuff derives from various magical societies (such as Thelema); 3) the reconstructions (of which the best known is Asatru). For the miscellaneous random shit, you wind up with some Discordians, some but certainly not all African Diaspora religious practitioners, various people primarily influenced by various polytheistic, pantheistic, shamanic, or animistic extant religions (tribal religions, Hinduism, and Shinto are the ones I’ve seen most often). You also get people who do combinations, eclectic things (most eclectics are most similar to category #1), and incorporate things like New Age beliefs into their religions.
Most pagan religions do not have sacred texts in the sense of having revealed scripture. However, many have other written materials. Wicca has what is referred to as a ‘Book of Shadows’, which is the recorded lore that a new member of the religion acquires in their study. The Thelemites have the esoteric ramblings of Crowley to gnaw on. The various reconstructions have surviving material – the Greeks have, of course, the plays and renditions of the myths, many of which were sacred performance in their time (though never holy writ); the Egyptians have the vast storehouse of written material, far more than we’ve translated, much of which is talking about sacred subjects. On the other hand, most of the northern Europeans don’t have much written material to work with at all, and essentially none that is before the Christianisation of the regions.
I can speak more specifically on two pagan religions: the Kemetic (Egyptian reconstruction) and Feri witchcraft:
The essential concept in Kemetic religion is the concept of ma’at. If you’re familiar with the standard Egyptian afterlife art, ma’at is the feather against which the heart is weighed at judgement. It’s one of those hard-to-define ideas, encompassing “truth”, “justice”, “order”, “right action”, “right relationship”. It is the responsibility of all beings to uphold ma’at; I tend to think of this as taking a stand against entropy. We believe that this is not a fallen universe or one that needs redeeming, but it definitely needs maintenance, because otherwise it will run down from the perfection of creation. This maintenance includes not only right relationship with the cosmos/gods/what have you, but also a strong, mutually supportive community and healthy individual people.
Kemetics range from fairly strong but not perfectly hard polytheists through to those who believe in an ultimate god-behind-god (to nick a line from Borges here) Whose manifestations are the gods we know. (This latter structure is common in African religions.) Personally, I am about as strong a polytheist as what we know about the ancients can justify. Whether monolatrist or polytheist, a recognition of the diversity of the created world is important, as well as an awareness that the gods appear in many forms.
Kemetic basic ritual includes cool water libations, the lighting of a candle or candles, and burning incense or scented oil. Offerings are made to the spirits of the ancestors, to the gods, and to other denizens of the unseen. Those offerings are treated like offerings in Hinduism, as a shared meal between the god (or whoever) and the worshipper; no part should be wasted. For this reason, most Kemetics do not make offerings that they or someone in their household cannot consume, even if those are traditional ones to make. (I know someone who does not make any alcohol offerings, because she does not drink, for example.) The use can vary; I know people who have given their offering water to their pets (especially in the case of cat owners who are devoted to Bast) or used it to water plants, as well as the more traditional drinking thereof.
There are more specific beliefs particular to denominations of Kemetics; I cannot speak to these personally because I am nondenominational. These include varying beliefs on the importance of having a spiritual leader in an equivalent role to the divine king of ancient Egypt, the nature of the personal relationship between the gods and their followers, and similar matters.
Most Kemetics will be particularly devoted to a subset of the pantheon, but will also acknowledge the other gods in Their appropriate places. The ones I personally follow are Hathor, Khnum, Wepwawet, and Set.
Feri witchcraft is a form of American religious witchcraft coalesced into its present-day form primarily by the late Victor Anderson and his wife Cora. The word “Feri” is a shifted spelling of “Fairy”, and you will see some people using other spellings as well; this has led to some conflatings, some of which apparently frustrated Victor in his lifetime. (He has been quoted to me as saying something like, “If I’d known fairies were going to be so popular I’d have named the damn tradition something else.”)
To those familiar with the commoner forms of pagan practice, the Feri basics will be familiar: rituals are held in a space sanctified for the occasion, though Feri practitioners use a sphere, not a circle; many of the tools (blade, cup, wand, cauldron) will be familiar; members of the religion will refer to themselves as witches. Like Wicca, Feri is an initiatory religion, and thus the information which is publically available is not complete.
The Feri pantheon begins at the Star Goddess, Who is creator and ground of all being; She is all that is, pervasive in everything. Her children are the Twins, Who have many forms, male, female, both, and other; They were born in the Star Goddess’s first orgasm, which was the flash of initial creation. When the Twins, who are lovers and opposites, unify to reveal the path of integration, there is the Peacock God, Whose feet are in Hell and whose tailfeathers reach to Heaven, Who makes the seven heavens shake with His thunder.
The goal of Feri as a religion is to achieve realisation of one’s full potential, which includes the apprehension of one’s place as part of the divine. It is explicitly queer and polygendered; the ability to recognise both male and female in oneself is a part of the instruction process. (As a result of this, there are many gay and bisexual Feri practitioners, as well as other people who are uncomfortable with the gender duality of much religious witchcraft. The fact that all healthy sexuality is valued in Feri is also an appeal.) Creativity is highly valued; Victor Anderson frequently taught with poetry. The woman I am studying with teaches with dance.
The Cauldron’s Pagan Primer at http://www.ecauldron.com/newpagan.php can give you a sense of overview of more religions than are liable to come up here. I wrote the Kemetic FAQ there.