At the end of Robert A. Heinlein’s 1961 sci-fi novel, Stranger in a Strange Land, as you may recall, our messianic protagonist Valentine Michael Smith is dramatically martyred. He is now out of the picture. All his friends and followers, and those who had joined his “Church of All Worlds” were left to carry on as best they could. And by this time the readers of the story have become part of it, insofar as they end up considering themselves so. I did, and so did many others, both at the very beginning, and continuing.
For SISL only provided an origin myth, just as the four Gospels did for Christianity. The real saga begins after the origin, as all who have been touched by the messianic life portrayed in the original story are left to carry on from there. We have been doing this now for 63 years, and through all that time we’ve continued to evolve from those humble origins to become something far greater and more complex. We are the living sequel to the novel.
While this happened in a science-fiction universe still a ways into our future, and on a probability path that will never exist now, it happened in our own time as soon as each of us finished reading the book. For me, that was early 1962. Lance Christie and I—freshman students at Westminster College in Fulton, MO—read it, and shared water on April 7. We pledged our lives to the actualization of the precepts and principles found in that book, and began turning everybody we thought was cool onto it. And by sharing water with those who grokked the book, we created a water-brotherhood we called Atl (Aztec for “water”).
Our initial mission-statement was simply “To make the world safe for people like us.” But what did we mean by that, exactly? And what would it take to achieve?
Firstly, what does it mean to be “safe”? In SISL, Heinlein says: “There is no safety this side of the grave.” I say safety means freedom from fear—to live our lives and raise our families freely without fear of persecution, discrimination, harassment, violence, rape, mugging, stoning, lynching, burning at the stake…
Freedom from angry mobs with torches and pitchforks—as has literally been the case throughout history.
Secondly, who are “people like us”? I say we are the ones who don’t fit into the boxes of the normal and ordinary. We are the outsiders, the exceptions, the unusual, the extra-ordinary. The changelings, black sheep and ugly ducklings of whatever society we are born into. Nerds, Weirdos, Geniuses, Creatives, Mutants, Gays, Queers, Divergents, Hippies, Pagans…
In a personal letter to me dated 1/20/1972, Mr, Heinlein wrote:
“I hope I have convinced you that STRANGER is dead serious…as questions. Serious, non-trivial questions, on which a man might spend a lifetime. (And I almost have.)
“But anyone who takes that book as answers is cheating himself. It is an invitation to think—not to believe. Anyone who takes it as a license to screw as he pleases is taking a risk; Mrs. Grundy is not dead. Or any other sharp affront to the contemporary culture done publicly—there are stern warnings in it about the dangers involved. Certainly “Do as thou wilt is the whole of the Law” is correct when looked at properly—in fact it is a law of nature, not an injunction, nor a permission. But it is necessary to remember that it applies to everyone-including lynch mobs. The Universe is what It is, and It never forgives mistakes—not even ignorant ones.”[1]
[1] Robert A. Heinlein to Tim Zell, 1/20/72 (This entire letter, along with my initial letter to Mr. Heinlein, to which this was in reply, was printed in Green Egg Vol. XXI, No. 82; Lughnasadh, 1988)
Consider the Gated Community analogy:
If you want to live in a safe environment, one way to do this is to create an isolated “safe” neighborhood and then keep all of the “unsafe” people out. This approach is so popular that we even have a name for it: the “Gated Community.” In ancient times this was the principle of Medieval castles and walled cities—even the entire country of China, with its famous Great Wall. Think of Mycenae, Athens, Heraklion, Troy, Alexandria, Rome, Paris, London…all surrounded by walls to keep others iut.
But there is another approach, and that is to try and create a world where all neighborhoods and thus all people are safe. Doing this means that you can be safe anywhere, not just in your own little Gated Community. This means that you have to improve not only your own life, but the lives of your fellow citizens as well. For some people, being part of a safe, educated, inclusive nation is in their own self-interest.
So right from the start Lance and I recognized that it wouldn’t be enough to just create our nice little Nest of Waterkin and hide out, meeting in secret, and hope that Mrs. Grundy doesn’t find us. No, we would need to create a legal Church to give us protection under the 1st Amendment to the US Constitution: “Congress shall make no law regarding the establishment of religion; nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
“…religion is a null area in the law. A church can do anything any organization can do—and has no restrictions. It pays no taxes, need not publish records, is effectively immune to search, inspection, or control—and a church is anything that calls itself a church. Attempts have been made to distinguish between ‘real’ religions entitled to immunities, and ‘cults.’ It can’t be done, short of establishing a state religion…a cure worse than the disease. Both under what’s left of the United States Constitution and under the Treaty of Federation, all churches are equally immune—especially if they swing a bloc of votes.” ~Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
The value of having a legal church in America as an exempt vehicle to do pretty much whatever you want to do without governmental interference was irresistible. So we incorporated the Church of All Worlds in the state of Missouri on March 4, 1968, and received our 501(c)(3) exemption from the IRS on June 18, 1970. But even establishing a legal church wouldn’t be enough “to make the world safe for people like us” if we’d still be surrounded by a larger society bent on our eradication. Creating the legal CAW in SISL didn’t stop the angry populace from storming the fictional temple with torches and pitchforks.
No, we would have to think bigger, and create an entire new religion, such as was proposed in a remarkable article by John Poppy in the Jan. 1970 issue of Look magazine (the final issue): “Why We Need a New Religion.” And such a new religion would need a new identifying label.
So on Sept. 7, 1967, I invoked the ancient identity of “Pagan” (which traditionally encompasses all non-Abrahamic religions) as a category for CAW—and potentially an entire new religious movement. And on March 21, 1968, I produced the first issue of Green Egg magazine (initially just a single-page newsletter), referring to “The First Pagan Church of All Worlds,” and began promoting the identity of “Pagan” to every new spiritual group I would hear about that seemed to fit the criteria I had in mind.
Like CAW, these mostly began as student study groups on college campuses, and included: the Discordian Society in Venice, CA (1959); the Order of Bards, Ovates & Druids in England (1961); the Reformed Druids of North America at Carlton College (1963); Feraferia (Mycenaean) in Altadena, CA (1967); the Delphic Fellowship (Greek) in Los Angeles (1967); the Psychedelic Venus Church in San Francisco (19690; the New Reformed Orthodox Order of the Golden Dawn (NROOGD) in San Francisco (1968); the Church of the Eternal Source (Egyptian) in Burbank (1970); the Ordo Templi Astartes (Canaanite) in Pasadena (1970); the Neo-Dianic Faith in Los Angeles; and Witches of various Traditions around the country. I would send them a copy of Green Egg and say: “You guys seem to be Pagans. So are we! Let’s all be Pagans together!” And they all said, “Yes, we’re all Pagans!” And in 1969 we formed the first Pagan ecumenical council—the Council of Themis (which reached 21 members before being torn apart in 1972—but that’s another story…). And thus was born a global religious movement.
Ben Franklin—political leader, inventor, bon vivant, philosopher—was once asked what he considered his greatest invention. He said “Americans.” For he was the one who coined and popularized that umbrella term to include the many groups who had settled in the New World, but thought of themselves as separate: Puritans, Lutherans, English, French, New Yorkers, Virginians… Franklin promoted the inclusive identity of Americans through his publications and writings, and it brought all those diverse factions together, making possible an American Revolution—though it still took a while for the wider identity to be embraced by all. In the words of Steve Zaffon and Dave Logan:
Future-based language is responsible for historical moments becoming turning points. Benjamin Franklin is credited with inventing the word American and, in so doing, transforming thirteen warring colonies into a nation. His word displaced what most political analysts of the day predicted what was inevitable—that the colonies would never speak with one voice.[1]
And that is what the word Pagan did. It brought together Hellenics, Druids, Khemetics, Norse, Celts, Shamans, Witches, Minoans, Dianics, and CAW visionaries inspired by myths, fantasy, and science-fiction into a single broad religious coalition: Pagans (literally, “People of the Earth;” Ancient Ways, the Old Religion, Nature Religion, Green Religion…). We learned that what unites us is more important than what divides us, and Paganism became a Movement—now recognized as the fastest-growing and 2nd-largest “faith group” in America, with over four million people so-identifying as of 2021.
Of course, a new religion required a corresponding new theology and liturgy based on immanent Divinity and feminism. This I introduced with my 1970 vision of Gaea as the Soul of our living planet—literally, the superorganism comprising the entire planetary biosphere as a single organism conceived in the Cambrian Explosion half a billion years ago:
“In 1970 Tim [Oberon] Zell began writing about the planet Earth as Deity, as a single living organism, and this became the Church of All Worlds’ central myth. Since 1971, the myth has been revised constantly and has become a unique eco-religious perception…”~Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon; 1979
“Oberon Zell was the first person to conceive and publish the biological and metaphysical foundations of what has become known as the ‘Gaia Theory’—the unified body and emergent soul of the living Earth. Oberon’s profound reconciliation of science, mythology and spirituality inspired and infused a worldwide neo-Pagan, panentheistic movement. ” ~Ralph Metzner, Ph.D., The Green Earth Foundation
And we created corresponding liturgy derived from ancient Pagan sources and contemporary reconstructions. Taking a cue from the Witches, we linked our rituals to the cycles of the Moon and the turning of the Seasons (“the Wheel of the Year”), drawing as well from the ancient Mysteries. And we also created Rites of Passage from birth to death.
Once we had a legal church and had started a global new religion to provide a larger context for it, we needed a centralized communications system that would reach everyone. A universal “watering hole,” so to speak, where everyone would come to drink (literally “grok”). This I did with Green Egg—“A lever long enough to move the world,” in the words of Archimedes.
“In March of 1968, the Green Egg appeared. From its inauspicious beginnings as a one-page ditto sheet, it grew into a 60-page journal over the next 80 issues, becoming the most significant periodical in the Pagan movement during the 1970s and made Tim Zell, its editor, a major force in Neo-Paganism (a term which Zell coined).”
~ Rev. J. Gordon Melton, The Encyclopedia of American Religions, 1991
“Tim Zell, by using terms like Pagan and Neo-Pagan in referring to the emerging collectivity of new Earth religions, linked these groups, and Green Egg created a communications network among them.” ~Margot Adler,Drawing Down the Moon, 1979
By this time we were realizing that we needed to transform the entire dominant paradigm of Western Civilization from the exclusivist Judeo-Christian-Islamic monotheist paradigm to a broader and all-inclusive poly-pantheism. A new Paganism for a New Age. Conjuring a genuine miracle would be a good way to get people’s attention. So in 1980 Morning Glory and I manifested “the Impossible Dream” and resurrected authentic Living Unicorns. Real magick right there in front of everyone!
Well, that worked pretty well, as our Unicorns appeared at every Renaissance Festival in North America, and soon became the star attractions of “The Greatest Show on Earth” (the Ringling Bros/Barnum & Bailey Circus!). And I 1985 I led a diving expedition to New Guinea in search of real-life Mermaids. And on the way we planted the CAW in Australia, where it has prospered.
When we returned from the South Pacific, we looked around to see what else we would need to change. SISL had considered a revolutionary alternative approach to relationships—particularly sexual ones. From the moment we met, Morning Glory and I had based our relationship and marriage on the expanded family and open marriage ideas proposed in SISL. In 1982, we entered into a triad relationship with Diane darling, which soon became a 4-adults, 3-kids group marriage we called “Triskelion.”
Like “Pagan,” this too needed new terminology. So in 1990 we came up with polyamory and polyamorous—launching another significant social movement. Today, polyamory is practiced by about 4-5% of the population of America. And according to Pew Research, 51% of adults under 30 in the US now think that open marriage is acceptable.
Triskelion lasted ten years, during which time we were not only raising and exhibiting our Living Unicorns at Renaissance Festivals all over North America, and publishing Green Egg as the award-winning leading journal of the Pagan movement—with a kid’s auxiliary we called HAM (How About Maick?), mounting a diving expedition to New Guinea in search of Mermaids (found ‘em too…), and raising three kids with multiple parents; we were also very involved in the early polyamory movement, with many conferences and interviews. After Triskelion fell apart in 1994, we created a new group marriage—the Ravenhearts—with five adults (adding Liza, Wynter and Wolf). That also had a goodly run of ten years.
In the mid-‘90s I decided that our Pagan altars needed suitable altar figurines. Since I had already drawn a few Altar posters of Gods and Goddesses, I began sculpting some. People who saw them wanted their own, so we learned to make molds and reproduce them as a family business. Eventually I created about 30 altar statues and wall plaques, as well as a line of silver and gold jewelry. Other artists soon followed, and now these icons are in metaphysical stores throughout the world. Exhibiting my figurines at the International New Age Trade Show (INATS) in Denver each June, I was introduced to a book publisher (New Page) who commissioned my first books (for Apprentice Wizards), of which I’ve now written more than 20.
And finally, after having developed and presented viable alternative approaches to religion and sexuality, I turned my attention to the educational paradigm, and created a revolutionary school of “Esoteric Education,” as well as a series of textbooks for it. The Grey School of Wizardry was incorporated on March 14, 2004, and is now the world’s foremost academy of arcana. I held the office of Headmaster until Nov. of 2022, when I passed the torch to my protégé Nicholas Kingsley, who has done a superb job, establishing a physical campus in Whitehall, NY.
Right about the time SISL came out, in my first year of college, I articulated my lifetime “Mission Statement:” “To be a catalyst for the coalescence of consciousness.” This has served me ever since. In my life, I have ever been a tosser of pebbles and a sower of seeds.
Stranger in a Strange Land became an icon of the 1960s counterculture, winning the prestigious Hugo Award for best novel in 1962. In 2012, it was included in a Library of Congress exhibition of “Books That Shaped America.” SISL introduced us to pantheism, immanent divinity, water sharing, Pagan priestesses, psychic abilities, afterlife, communal living, ritual and social nudity, sacred sex, polyamory, and group marriages.
There were the descriptions of rituals, including Priestesses, and The Goddess, along with ritual nudity (none of these things were to be found anywhere else but in Pagan religions). So we have created and evolved rituals conducted by legally-ordained Priests and Priestesses (CAW was the first incorporated church ever to ordain Priestesses!), to celebrate The Goddess and all the pantheons of the Old Gods. We have evolved new social and family structures, new subsidiary spinoffs, publications, music, theology, liturgy, literature, statuary, jewelry, sacred lands, green cemeteries, businesses, lifestyles.
In the novel—published in 1961 and set, remember, 25 years after the first human mission to Mars, which still has not occurred, so we are still looking decades into the future—the mainstream society and established religion is so outraged by these radical concepts, and this alien religion—that an angry mob with torches and pitchforks burns down the Temple and martyrs the Prophet.
But see, here is the thing: we have already changed the world so much that even now—63 years later and decades before the fictional story is even set—that extreme backlash reaction is inconceivable. The real-life Church of All Worlds and the worldwide Neo-Pagan movement it founded and fostered is already over half a century old, and it is far too late to stamp it out. Modern Paganism has long been recognized as the fastest-growing religion in the English-speaking world (and growing exponentially in many other countries as well).
Modern Paganism has long been recognized as the fastest-growing religion in the English-speaking world (and growing exponentially in many other countries as well). Paganism is now widely accepted as practically mainstream, and persecution of our people is virtually nonexistent. We have won every legal battle for recognition and acceptance of our religion and its symbols—even on school children’s jewelry and veterans’ tombstones in Arlington Cemetery! Large annual public “Pagan Pride” events are now held in many regions of the country, and metaphysical stores may be found in every large city.
When Wicca went public, Gardner’s nightly gatherings provoked considerable scandal. In Britain today, however, Paganism is largely portrayed in positive terms by the media. Although both witches and Druids have sometimes been accused of devil worship due to sensationalism and misrepresentation in popular culture—particularly during the so-called Satanic Panic of the late 1980s and 1990s—the media is becoming increasingly adept at researching and portraying Paganism accurately, and the dedication of some public Pagans in representing Paganism as a gender-equal, nature-loving, and gentle religion appears to have contributed to a comparatively positive image of Paganism among the general public [1]
[1] Manon Hedenborg White, “Contemporary Paganism,” In: James R. Lewis and Jesper Aa. Petersen (eds.), Controversial New Religions, 2nd ed. Oxford University Press, 2014.
The war is over, and we won! Three generations have already grown up and are raising their own children and grandchildren in a world transformed by our new Pagan Renaissance.
We have embraced, fostered and participated in the shaping of the Feminist movement, the Deep Ecology ecospirituality movement, the Civil Rights movement, sexual liberation, legalization of herbs and psychedelics as sacraments, LGBTQ+ rights (and legal marriages), radical environmentalism (Lance was a co-founder of Earth First!), etc. And we have named, encouraged, and fostered the rise of two entire social movements which have grown directly out of these realizations into full communities: the Neo-Pagan movement, and the polyamory movement. We have planted our roots deep into the fertile Earth, while, like a great tree, our branches reach towards the beckoning stars.
We have indeed made the world safe for people like us! Now let us boldly go where no one has gone before—unto the Awakening of Gaea…
And this is the Ultimate Conspiracy—for when you know enough to grok what it’s all about, it’s too late; you’re already one of us!
Addendum:
Evolution was built into the original design of the CAW, both in the book and in our real-life analog. The basic principles were there in the book, but we have built upon them for three generations. Some of these are:
“Thou art God.” (pp.139-140; 324; 399) This gave rise to a full theology of pantheism and imminent Divinity; and eventually, to the Gaea Thesis. And the total responsibility of this understanding, as in “An it harm none, do as thou wilt” (the Wiccan Rede).
“Grokking.” (pp. 205-206) Grok means, literally, “to drink.”
“Growing closer.” (p. 255; 272; 388) “Spirits blend as flesh blends.” (pp. 397-398) Sacred sexuality; sex as Divine communion.
“May you never thirst.” (pp. 271-272) The ritual of water-sharing, at various levels of intimacy and commitment.
“Love is that condition wherein another person’s happiness is essential to your own.” (p. 345) This gave rise to love without jealousy, acceptance of homosexuality and other sexual options and variations. I believe this single statement was, along with the invention of The Pill, most responsible for creating the “free love” era of the ‘60s.
“The Nest.” (pp. 345-349; 381) This gave rise to polyamory, group marriages, intentional families, communes, tribes…
“All names belong in the hat.” (pp. 134-135; 229-231; 275-278; 349; 375-376; 381-382) SISL taught religious relativism, and acceptance of ALL religions, giving rise to our celebration of diversity in religious paths, eclecticism, polytheism, multiple pantheons, etc. And an exploration of comparative religions that led to Paganism, as we sought to dig deep enough to discover our own roots.
“Goodness is never enough… Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.” (p. 393)
