In 1937, E. E. Evans Pritchard published a seminal work of anthropology entitled Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande. Pritchard had been studying the Azande, a people living along the upper Nile, for eleven years. In it, he recorded the interesting case of someone who cast a death spell on another member of the tribe. The victim died soon afterwards, killed without warning by a collapsing roof.
The curious Pritchard soon discovered that this roof had been riddled with termites. When he brought this to the attention of the tribe, and asked whether they still believed the spell had worked, they replied, well, of course.
“But it wasn’t the spell that collapsed the roof!” said Pritchard. “It was termites!”
“Yes,” said the people of the tribe. “But how did it just happen to fall at that time, when the victim was under it?”
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For the most part, the Pagan community here in western Mass can be described as reasonably large, out in the open, and close-knit. But no one knows how many Pagans here are practicing alone, eschewing contact with the rest of us, for whatever reason. And there could be entire communities of Pagans that keep themselves to themselves and never reach out to the larger community.
I mean, yes, it’s a problem I’ve had, but it’s never been severe; and anyway (I tell myself) it’s such a mundane issue, no one wants to hear about my latest attempt to diet… And it’s such a simple thing — all I have to do (I tell myself) is get a little more discipline and the problem will simply disappear!
There are plenty of polytheistic druids, who try to adhere as closely as they can to the pantheon of gods worshipped by the ancient Celts. I am one of those. Then there are duotheistic druids, who believe in a God and Goddess, much as many Wiccans do; and panethiestic druids, and animist druids… There are druids who worship a pantheon of gods who were admittedly made up (or discovered?) out of thin air by college students in the 1960’s. There are druids that practice a mixture of Celtic mysticism and Buddhism (which are not nearly so far apart as you might think — in fact, the similarities are frequently striking). There are even Christian druids, who practice a form of Christianity native to Scotland and Ireland in the latter half of the first millenium (known as “Celtic Christianity”). For all I know, there may be agnostic or atheistic druids as well.