They used to hang suspected witches in New England but times have changed. Three hundred years after the Salem witch trials, paganism is the fastest growing religion in the US, according to its followers. The rapidly increasing number of pagan websites also indicate that Wicca is a burgeoning movement worldwide. An estimated 1996 figure of 50,000 Wiccans in the US was thought to be conservative, given the complete autonomy and secretive nature of covens. But today many American witches are going public, marching on Pagan Pride Day and gaining the recognition of other religions, the US Army and even the Internal Revenue Service.
In doing so, they have also sparked a bizarre Gaelic revival. Irish traditional music is now pagan easy listening in the US and the score for the documentary film Pagans: The Wheel of the Sacred Year, released earlier this month, was written by Paddy Keenan. Celebrating their Celtic and pre-Celtic connections, serious pagans now learn the Irish language and adopt Irish names while they venerate Newgrange and other sacred sites as their Jerusalems.
Mary Colleen McCarthy is a good example. As a Boston Irish-American, her name - and probably her irreverent wit - is inherited. As a Wiccan priestess ordained in the Celtic Fairy Tradition, however, her Irish affiliation would horrify the regulars down at the John Boyle O'Reilly Club. "Visiting the west of Ireland in particular, I realised how steeped it still is in the old Celtic, pagan ways," McCarthy recalls. "It's there in the folk songs and in things that people still do as second nature - leaving milk out for the fairies, turning your clothes inside out if you get lost."
Educated by nuns, and once intending to join them, she was an obstetrical nurse in San Francisco when she felt the spirit of a dead baby leaving its body and was spiritually drawn away from a Catholicism which was already at odds with her political and feminist views.
McCarthy's subsequent journey to Celtic pagan enlightenment was uniquely American. "I was trained in San Francisco by a Sicilian-American who used a lot of Hawaiian practices," she laughs. Guided by Brigid, her pagan goddess, she ended up in Greenfield, Massachusetts, where she runs Tarr and Feathers, a pagan shop, training and ritual centre, with her husband, Ted Tarr, an ordained Wiccan High Priest.
Describing the Celtic Fairy Tradition in the shop's back room where Dark Moon rituals and Pagan Brunches are held, McCarthy is reverent - if a little vague. It is a way of "getting in touch with the spirit . . . of channelling spiritual energy from above and below". It has much in common with traditional Native American beliefs. A certain amount of tree worship is involved. To practise it effectively, she is convinced that she must learn Irish. The offerings on her altar - a chalice filled with chocolates, some twine, candles, soil, incense, a halfeaten hamburger - offer few additional clues.
In McCarthy's defence, a concise description of the Wiccan religion hardly exists. When pagans in the US Army demanded recognition and a space for their rituals four years ago, however, they were required to specify their beliefs, practices and requirements. The resulting manifesto stresses, for example, that all witches are pagans, but not all pagans are witches. Pagans are not Satanists. They do not even believe in Satan, the Devil or "any similar entities". They typically form covens, worship the sacred in nature and practise magic ("magick"), sometimes while naked ("skyclad"). As polytheists, they use many names for the deity, mix and match gods and goddesses and commonly refer to a handwritten collection of rituals and lore known as the Book of Shadows.
Current forms of Wicca in the UK were chiefly inspired by Gerald Gardner, who publicly declared himself a witch in 1951 when Britain repealed its anti-witchcraft laws. In 1962, two of Gardner's students, Raymond and Rosemary Buckland, brought his teaching to the US and, in 1975, a group of covens formed the Covenant of the Goddess in California to secure legal protection and a church status tax-exemption.
The AIDS epidemic in San Francisco prompted Mary Colleen McCarthy and other worshippers to formalise their identity. "Many of the men dying in the intensive care unit had been disowned by their families," she explains. "To visit them you had to be a relative or an ordained cleric. So we had to get ordained." In recent years, pagans have joined many interfaith councils and certain mainstream denominations even allow their churches to be used for some pagan rituals.
The pagan soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, however, are happy to have their own chaplain and their own meadow, provided by the US Army. On a recent clear night, about 20 of them gathered, some hooded, some carrying forked staffs topped with horns and feathers, some toting animal skins and drums to celebrate a "moon ritual". Circling the fire and waving their talismans, these colonels, sergeants, captains and privates chanted "So mote it be" as the high priestess intoned "Circle of power, I conjure thee to ban such things as named by me. . . Attract such things as named by me . . ."
Responding to what Time magazine called "a boomlet" in the ranks, four other military bases recently followed Fort Hood's initiative, causing outrage among many Christians who saw the American melting pot rapidly turning into a fiery cauldron. "What's next?" Republican congressman Bob Barr ranted in a letter to Fort Hood's commander. "Will armoured divisions be forced to travel with sacrificial animals for satanic rituals?"
Back in Greenfield, it is hard to imagine even Bob Barr being offended by the pagan paraphernalia that Mary Colleen McCarthy sells in Tarr and Feathers. Alongside the ritual cloaks and daggers, there are bumper stickers reading "Witches Do It In Circles" and "The Goddess Loves You - Everyone Else Thinks You're A Jerk". There are crystal balls made from fibre-optic cable. ("A crystal ball does not work like a television," Ted Tarr explains. "But it does work.")
There are women's underpants with a pentagram and the instruction "Worship Here" decorating the crotch. There are Celtic books and baubles. "You can always spot the new witches," McCarthy confides, "They are the ones wearing all the jewellery, all the tunics and belts and cloaks. When you've been at it a while, you tone it down." A newsletter on the counter advertises a "Winter Solstice Ritual with Garran na bPreachain Naomh: Grove of the Sacred Crows . . . Call Senior Druid Gwynne Green", and a "Welcome Millennial celebration and dark moon ritual to banish the negativity of the old year".
The "hey, whatever" inclusiveness of modern paganism undoubtedly contributes to its growing popularity. Eco-feminists, nature worshippers, nudists, firewalkers, New Age travellers, goddess seekers, druids and ageing hippies can all find a home in the magic circle. "The political and social climate has a lot to do with the growing numbers," McCarthy agrees. "There is a feeling that the world is not working, that we have mistreated nature and it's time to get back in balance."
For a generation embarrassed by the leprechaun and shillelagh talismans worn by their Irish-American parents, paganism is also an alternative connection to the "Old World" - with more tasteful fashion accessories.
Anna Mundow is a journalist and writer who recently published The Compass American Guide to Southern New England