It's the 24th annual Pagan Picnic is being held this weekend in Tower Grove Park, St. Louis.
The two-day event started as a potluck where pagans could celebrate “pagan pride” and clear up misconceptions that others have about them", said Amanda Bell, the lady in charge of the event.
“Pagans are traditionally quiet about their beliefs,” she said. “Because of that, it’s very hard to find people like ourselves. So the people who first started the picnic really wanted something to bring the community together to let other people in the community know: ‘Hey, we’re here.’”
Paganism helps these people cope with life, and at the Spirit’s Edge ritual held earlier this year in Ladue, group members poured out anxieties about looking for a job, caring for dying relatives, starting college and losing weight.
As we have said all along Paganism has answers, and instead of holy books or prayers, we use rituals, spells, crystals, wooden staffs, dancing and chanting.
Shea Morgan, founder of Spirit’s Edge says "When someone raises an eyebrow at the mention of magic, pagans ask doubters: Can you prove a prayer works any more than a spell does?"
“Anything you can pray about, you can do spells, as well. It’s basically like a prayer, only we raise energy instead to the simple idea of asking a higher power, ‘Please help me solve this problem,’” said Mickie Mueller, a pagan minister in St. Louis.
But pagans share some common underlying values and themes.
“I mean, paganism is a joyous religion. It’s not a religion where you’re taught that pain is a necessary sacrifice,” said Wendy Griffin, a national expert in contemporary pagan studies and academic dean at the online-only Cherry Hill Seminary of paganism. “There’s a sense of wonder and a sense of play in paganism that is valued. Paganism is embodied, it’s physical, it involves things that open up the mind, like dance and drumming and chanting.”
There’s also a value for all things feminine, Griffin added, that pagans say is missing from better-known religions.
Several women from Christian backgrounds drifted to paganism because they felt their churches treated them as being second to men.
Stella, a Spirit’s Edge member from Godfrey who goes by her pagan name for fear of being ostracized by her family, used to be a Christian minister and even did missionary work in Latin America for some years.
She became pagan because she says she never related to a male deity. She hides her paganism from her brother, a Christian minister, because she fears he might keep her from seeing her niece and nephew if he learned she had left Christianity.
“I felt it was out of balance to worship only one gender,” Stella said. “… I feel more in touch with my spirituality and what I feel is right and moral more than I ever did as a minister.”
Not all pagans have gone public with their identity — or, as they call it, come “out of the broom closet.”
We hope this yearly event continues to prosper and grow in numbers.
