Interview with Phaedra Bonewits

By Gregory Michael Brewer (AutTumn)

Merry Meet Phaedra! Thank you so much for this interview, we are very honored! You were born and raised in Chicago so this is a special treat for us. When did you begin to follow the Pagan path and what initially drew you to Paganism?

Maybe it was being raised Catholic (sorry, Mom!), which can be very mystical, that got me interested in ritual and metaphysics at a young age. My dad used to have an office around the corner from the Occult Bookstore when it was on State Street oh-so-many years ago, and Big Sister and I used to love to look in the windows. Two little girls with their noses pressed to the glass—I wonder what they thought of us! I was further corrupted by Edith Hamilton’s Mythology which was required reading in my high school English class.
I was a teen in the sixties when there was a lot of occult stuff —Age of Aquarius and all that, which also influenced me. Everyone was into astrology. A lot of Chicago people learned their astrology through the Temple of Kriya Yoga. My older sister—the other one who had her nose to the glass—became very involved with them in the 1970s through the ‘90s. For me, it was Tarot cards. I started working with them seriously in the 1970s and they have been part of my life ever since.
The other factor was feminism. I was a feminist even as a teen. In college (School of the Art Institute of Chicago) I took a course called “Women and Myth” which looked at women’s issues and Goddesses. This was before all the Women’s Spirituality books came out. Our textbooks were a chapter from this book, a chapter from that, plus lots and lots of photocopies. During that class, and some of my others, I did performance art pieces based on Greek myths. I think there was a direct line from that work to my later work as a ritualist. >BR>I remember going into a feminist bookstore on Michigan Avenue and leafing through an original edition of Z. Budapest’s Feminist Book of Lights and Shadows. Later, in an issue of Ms. Magazine, I read an article about women’s spirituality that mentioned a new book, The Spiral Dance, by some California gal named Starhawk. I got a copy of that, then found a copy of Drawing Down the Moon at my favorite hangout, the Occult Bookstore. After those, there was no going back.

Labels and titles can be both limiting and beneficial. If you had to label yourself, such as Wiccan, Druid, Occultist, or simply Pagan etc., how would you describe yourself?

I like to think of myself as an occult generalist. Metaphysical topics such as Tarot have been part of my life longer than any exposure to Neopaganism. After that, I’m likely to call myself a magician or a Witch.
I use magician because my first formal training was in what we called Hermetic Magic, which is essentially neo-Gardnerian Wicca with a very heavy overlay of ceremonial magic. Or ceremonial magic practiced in a Wiccan structure, depending on how you look at it. Either way it seems to be unique to the Chicago area.
After I left Chicago, I took other initiations. I got a Gardnerian third and a Feri, both through Aidan Kelly, but because of Aidan’s status as arch-heretic, a lot of people insist to me they don’t count. (I’ve always felt that if you really want to know if someone is an initiate or not, work with them in circle; you’ll know quickly enough.) At any rate, I have never called myself Wiccan.
In the nineties, my third husband and I put together an eclectic style we called Cornfield Tradition, in honor of our downstate Illinois home. There are a few Cornfield initiates around in Illinois, and also in North Carolina where we later moved.
Druidism was really Isaac’s thing more than mine, although I learned a lot through him. I have immense affection and respect for the people of ADF. Compared to them, however, I regard myself humbly as a rank amateur on the Druid path.

Have you written or published any works?

I’ve written a lot of newsletters in my time, and also contributed articles to magazines, (most of which are now defunct) such as Enchante´, Connections, and others.
Isaac and I wrote Real Energy together, which was published by New Page in 2007. More recently, I had a piece in Llewellyn’s 2010 Witches’ Companion.

How and when did you meet Isaac?

I met Isaac at Starwood in Ohio in the summer of 1989. Some of us Chicago folk went specifically because Isaac, Oberon Zell and others were going to be there. Isaac was doing workshops on the ADF form of public ritual, and I was heavily involved with public ritual through Panthea Temple at the time. I had so much respect for him as a writer, so it was wonderful to find how delightful he was in person. Of course, as a public ritualist myself, I couldn’t wait to give him my two cents about his theories of liturgy. But apparently he was not offended, and even—dare I say it—thought my upstart opinions had some worth.

In your time with Isaac, would you care to share in his honor one or two of your favorite memories of him?

He was funny and romantic. He had a really sweet, sentimental side people didn’t always see.
When he asked me to marry him, it was on his birthday. He came up to me with a little package and said that on Hobbits’ birthdays, they gave other people gifts. I opened it and it was an engagement ring, but not a typical one, it was a pearl encircled with diamonds. He said, “It’s the white moon among the stars.” Needless to say, I melted. I can still see the look on his face when he said it. Makes me smile and cry every time I remember.

How do you feel about the direction the Pagan movement is going and are there one of two aspects of Paganism that have significantly changed in our community over the years?

Wow, that’s a big topic. There are a number of things that have changed radically.
One, of course is the Internet, which has changed our whole world, not just the Pagan movement. Another—and one that goes hand and hand with the first—is the rise of the deliberate solitary.
When I started out in all this, in the mid- to late 20th century (when Neopagan dinosaurs roamed the earth) it was rare to find someone who had as their primary Pagan identity that of a Solitary.
Now, remember, there was no Web and only the smallest fraction of the books available today. There was a huge publishing boom in the 1990s, which as it happens is the year Wicca for the Solitary Practitioner came out. Before that, if you wanted to learn about Neopagan practices in any depth, you pretty much had to learn it from somebody.
Yes, there were solitary practitioners, but they were often people in some sort of transition: maybe they’d moved away from their coven or were newcomers (like me!) looking for people with which to work. Sometimes you’d find old-timers who weren’t so interested in getting in a group again, but they had done so in the past. Sometimes you’d find people who said groups were not for them, but we’d generally note (ok, behind their backs) that with their temperaments or personalities there might be a good reason why they didn’t cope well with groups. But interpersonal work and training—even if with quite small groups—were the norm.
Scott Cunningham (who was apparently a nice guy but not a people person) put together a way to work by yourself. But here’s the difference: he was coming from the position of a person who was already trained. He’d come up through the old system, which he was rejecting because he just didn’t want to work with a group. Now (thanks to Scott and others) people start from solitary with no intention of going anywhere else.
I see a serious loss in skill training from this--for example, it’s hard to understand what energy work can feel like without experiencing examples of it, and I say this as someone who wrote a book on energy. But there is also a loss in culture. Materials and knowledge were passed hand-to-hand. There were chants and songs that everyone knew, because you heard everyone use them. At an event, you could pull out an old, trusty chant and know that everyone would jump in to sing along. It was a lot like the way kids used to teach other kids games and songs. (I say, “used to” because a lot of kid culture is getting lost, too.)
Now, people know stuff, but it’s much more fragmented. The Internet is part of that, because for all it has made it easier for people to find out stuff (and find each other!) it’s easy to assume that your one favorite forum or website or e-mail group is got the whole picture. Isaac used to have some satiric and parody Pagan songs, which became less and less fun for him to perform because the audiences stopped getting the jokes. They didn’t know the people being ribbed, or didn’t know the original song he was filking.
I find a funny thing with primarily Internet Pagans, too, where they will insist to me that no one anywhere near them is Pagan, when they are near to some very active communities. Recently, on Facebook, I had a gal in NC tell me there were no Pagans anywhere around where she was. I knew a half-hour north of her there were lots of activities, because I’d been around when some of it got started back in the mid ‘90s. “Well,” she told me, “I’ve never met any around here.” Two minutes on the Web and I had PNOs and Imbolc rituals for her to go to. How she managed not to find these very public folks astounds me. Just Google “(insert name of nearest big town here) Pagans” and you can find folks just about anywhere.

Do you have any up-coming projects?

This year (2011,) I’m focused on writing. I’ve resurrected our blog, Views from the Cyberhenge, (http://neopagan.net/blog), I’ve got an article about Isaac coming out in the British journal, Greenmantle Magazine, and starting in the spring I should have a column in Witches and Pagans Magazine. I’m also going to try to finish a book on Neopaganism that Isaac was working on at his death. He and I had talked about the project privately, but I just got the go-ahead from the publisher this week.
This spring and summer (2011), I’ll be doing some festivals and appearances in Texas, Florida and North Carolina, and an event in Washington State in the fall. Just got a tentative invite to an event in northern Indiana for July, too, which I hope will be an opportunity to reconnect with some Midwest friends.
A big project I’ve been working on for several years is cataloging all of Isaac’s and my books. Now that he’s passed, it’ll be a record of all the books he had at the time of his death. You can watch the progress at http://www.librarything.com/profile/ibonewits and at http://www.librarything.com/profile/phaedrab.

Out of curiosity, do you believe that the many gods and goddesses of mythology and sacred writings throughout history are but different faces, archetypes, and aspects of one universal Goddess and God, or exist as actual individual divine entities?

The latter works for me, although as with so many Neopagans, my theology is fluid. What constitutes an “actual individual divine entit[y]” is a whole ‘nother discussion (maybe several books’ worth!) but at heart, I am firmly polytheist.
I do believe the first view holds a potential intellectual danger for Western people of our era. Our intellectual history is so imbued with monotheistic thinking, it’s too easy to confuse the duotheism of “one universal Goddess and God” with “oh, it’s all just a dyad” then, “it’s all just a monad,” and the next thing you know, you’re a monotheist again. It “makes sense” and feels comfortable, simply because monotheistic assumptions are so deeply ingrained in our Judeo-Christian-influenced culture.

Would you please share with us your personal concept of the Summerland?

I’m not sure I have one. I have always felt that is one thing we won’t know until we get there. It would be a comfort to me to say it’s a place, and that Isaac (and my dad, and my brother, and my Grandparents and so on) will be there to greet me, but I’m not sure if I actually believe that. It’s more of a wish than a concept.

If one could attempt to explain the differences and similarities between Wicca and Druidism, how would you describe it?

Oh, boy, I sure wish I could channel Isaac for a question like that!
Wicca, at least the neo-Gardnerian form you see most often, is based on early-to-mid- 20th century British Isle spirituality. As originally propagated, it focused on small groups, duotheisim, and heterosexuality. Over the years, of course, it evolved, especially through the influence of feminist spirituality and gay culture. Its forms—casting a circle, calling quarters, working magic, God and Goddess, High Priest and High Priestess, everyone is a Priest/ess—have become fairly standard in modern Paganism.
Druidism, or at least Ár nDraíocht Féin (ADF)-style Druidism, uses modern investigations of Indo-European religious and cultural practices to create a polytheistic, nature oriented, religion, not directly reconstructing or recreating the past, but taking the best of past faith practices and adapting them to our contemporary lives. There are other forms of Druidism and Druidry besides ADF. Some are more fraternal than religious in nature. Some folks use “Druidry” as a term for a more solitary, contemplative form of nature spirituality.
The really, really short answer would be that Wicca is about small group private magical work more along the lines of a mystery cult or mystery religion. ADF Druidry is about large-group public worship of the Gods. The paths are not mutually exclusive.

Lastly, would you please leave us with any final words of wisdom and advice for both the long-time practitioner and those who are new to Paganism?

Two things:
First, just do it. Read all the books you want, surf the Web all you want, but get out there and do something, too. Reading an exercise is not the same thing as doing an exercise. Reading a ritual is not the same thing as doing a ritual. There is a reason we call it “working” magic. Show the Gods you care by doing something for them.
Second, a religion is about community. Little separate points of light might make a pretty starry sky, but it takes a lot more light than that to light up a room, much less the world. Come together, folks!

Once again thank you so much and many Blessings to you.

My pleasure.

Chicago Pagan Pride
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