Central NC Pagan Pride Day is a chapter of the international Pagan Pride Project, a non-profit organization whose mission is to foster pride in Pagan identity, and to eliminate prejudice and discrimination based on religious beliefs, all through education, activism, charity and community.
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Isaac Bonewits 1949 – 2010
Philip Emmons Isaac Bonewits, founder and Archdruid Emeritus of of Ár nDraíocht Féin: A Druid Fellowship, one of North America’s leading experts on ancient and modern Druidism, Witchcraft, magic and the occult, and the rapidly growing Earth Religions movement, died today after a short struggle with cancer.
Mr. Bonewits first came into the public eye when he graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a Bachelor of Arts in Magic and Thaumaturgy (1970). During his tenure there, Mr. Bonewits worked with many renowned professors including Nobel Prize Laureate Owen Chamberlain. The work he did for that degree became his first book, Real Magic: An Introductory Treatise on the Basic Principles of Yellow Magic (1971).
In 1983, he founded and became the first Archdruid of Ár nDraíocht Féin: A Druid Fellowship (ADF) an international fellowship devoted to creating a public tradition of Neopagan Druidry. In 1995, he retired from a leadership role due to complications from eosinophilia-myalgia syndrome. ADF has grown to become the best-known Neopagan Druid group based in North America. At his death, Mr. Bonewits held the title of ArchDruid Emeritus.
During his forty years as a Neopagan priest, scholar, teacher, bard, and polytheologian, Isaac Bonewits coined much of the vocabulary and articulated many of the issues that have shaped the rapidly growing Neopagan movement in the United States and Canada.
Mr. Bonewits was internationally known as a speaker who educated, enlightened and entertained two generations of modern Goddess worshippers, nature mystics, and followers of other minority belief systems, as well as explained these movements to journalists, law enforcement officers, college students, and academic researchers.
His personal papers will become part of the American Religions Collection at the Library of University of California at Santa Barbara.
One of his most influential contributions was the Advanced Bonewits Cult Danger Evaluation Frame (the “ABCDEF”), developed in 1979 as a response to the Jim Jones People’s Temple tragedy. It has been translated into many languages and used around the world to evaluate how dangerous or harmless an organization might be. It was the first such scale to use theories of mental health and personal growth to judge rather than theological or ideological standards.
His other books include Authentic Thaumaturgy (1979, 1998), The Pagan Man (2005), Bonewits’s Essential Guide to Witchcraft and Wicca (2006), Bonewits’s Essential Guide to Druidism (2006), Neopagan Rites (2007), and Real Energy (2007), which was co-authored with his wife, Phaedra, as well as numerous articles, reviews and essays. As a singer-songwriter, he released two albums, Be Pagan Once Again (1988), and Avalon is Rising (1992).
He is survived by his wife, Phaedra, his son from a previous marriage, Arthur Lipp-Bonewits of Bardonia NY, his mother Jeannette, his brothers Michael and Richard, and sisters Simone Arris and Melissa Banbury.
Happy 2010 Alban Hefin!
ALG celebrated this year’s Summer Solstice at Gaia’s Gardens in Raleigh NC. (not to be confused with the BBC photo of Stone Henge celebration pictured left)
This nicely centralized location was perfect place for the Keltrian based ceremony that was performed by Ailim with Sundruid supporting the ritual. The “Gardens” is nestled close to NC State campus and boasts beautiful oak, maple and various vines and shrubs. This was also the first morning ritual that Awen’s Light Grove has performed since our founding in January 2007.
It’s easy to get in the rhythm of doing evening ritual. It was really nice to soak in the sun’s energy with a great morning event.
ALG will be performing the Raleigh Pagan Pride Day opening ceremony in September. Be sure to attend the next ALG moot in July.
Curious Questions part II
This was a response to an inquiry I received on Druidry. The querent asked really good questions. I’m not sharing his writings to protect his privacy, but I do want to share my responses as he moved me to put this down in writing in a way that I don’t often take the time to do.
Summary of conversation – “I’m not convinced that there is life after death. I also want to know more about druidry as an experience and also how your values and morals guide you. Seems that this kind of religion could be used for selfish purposes”
Sure. If you believe life ends at the end of this incarnation and time is linear – you’re existence will be bound by these rules and you will make decisions based on that. My experience is that the universe has much more poetry, vastness and strangeness to it than that. Science is now starting to find quarks that jump time and space, particles that fly through the Earth without touching a single atom and studies concerning near death experience and ghostly phenomena seem to point out that we don’t know the half of it..
Druidism is an experiential path, not one of dogma as you may be use to studying. So you’re only going to be able to pierce the veil so much before your intellectual mind begins to hurt 🙂
Only giving your intellectual side to life will yield a texture of dry, uninspiring cynicism to your life. This is the curse of the spirit that relies too much on Air. The new druid synchronizes their exploration to that of the forest and the seasons. Many folks approach earth centered spirituality with a strong Air affinity (intellectual bent) and it is the age of Aquarius which is an Air sign, but if you begin the OBOD druid path, you’ll work on balancing the other 3 elements of your personality in the Bardic grade. Really neat opportunity to explore yourself on a ‘guided path’ using meditation, ritual and other projects that bring better balance. You’ll gain new perspectives on poetry than you have contemplated in the past. You’ll connect to inspiration within yourself and it will be totally unique to you (no one can teach you) and you’ll only get out what you put into it.
As for morality. My morality is informed by my values. That includes fair dealings with other people in business and social interactions, respect for the environment, raising children that are drug free, responsible and well adjusted in order to provide for themselves, their family and contribute in the world – this is just to name a few. I find other druids to be open minded, willing to help and non-judgemental of others.
Abuse of followers? You mean like suicide cults, religious based racism, bombers and priests taking advantage of children? We don’t have clergy and I’m hardly the leader of any ‘movement’. We have Awen’s Light Grove as a place for druids to meet together and I’m the organizer, provide some direction to make it worthwhile for folks. I like to answer questions and be a beacon for people seeking.
Polytheism isn’t that hard to adopt – just let go of dualism
I’ve come to the realization years ago that everything is made of energy. Guess that’s not so tough as the latest minds in physics are expounding the same concept.
For me, this leads me to a comfortable place of ’spiritual relativity’. Not values, mind you, but the idea that if all things are made of energy, then personifications of different energies make poetic sense. Of the thousands of gods that men and women have created, each has a name, a focus and a custom that makes it unique and special to the culture that identified it. Doesn’t even have to be unique – many god and goddess tales are not much different than the ancient pagan counter part or simply different cultures that may not be separated by time. An example here would be Mithras and Jesus – same birthday – different astrological sign and energy. Jesus is of the Picsean age and Mithras of the Taurean age. They are both celestial deities marking the procession of the Equinoxes and marking the Solstice.
Once we accept that this universe is made up of different energies that can be linked to archetypal ideas or perhaps link into the ancient archetypes represented by astrology, tarot or what have you, it is easier to make sense of religion with our 21st century minds – seeing it in a much more poetic, harmonious way.
Our minds and modern thinking want to dissect, understand and have logical comprehension of our universe, whatever that truly means. Where the ancient mind was much more satisfied with the poetic description of things they didn’t understand, we now draw a left-brained conclusion and compare to that to the paradigm we’ve developed in our objective thinking methods. This is good – I’m not trying to go retro – but there are many things that are “right-brained” centered that make up the fullness of life and we as a society need to honor and respect that. If we don’t, we fall prey to cynicism and disillusionment.
I found that allowing poetry to describe life from time to time adds balance and harmony to my existence. Those feelings of mystery and wonderment are the intangibles in life that make it worth exploring. Accepting many different deities in one’s life enriches us to the understanding that the universe is broad and diverse. Its an exciting place full of deities.
Awen's Light Grove 
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