RADICAL PAGANISM
			       PART 2


A Pagan is a practitioner of a very ancient and gentle Earth religion 
that is flourishing in 20th century America.  Most Pagans honor the  
Goddess and God, celebrate the 8 Sabbats (nature holidays) of the Year, 
and strive to live in accordance with the Charge of the Goddess and the 
Wiccan Rede.  We are of the Old Religion, and also of the 21st century. 

Radical Pagans are a small minority within Paganism. The fundamental 
characteristic of a Radical Pagan is a Pagan who goes to the roots of 
civilization and its morality, taboos, and assuptions.  It is because we 
are Pagan that we can see the roots of the dominant, often unquestioned, 
moral hedgemony of our time. 

We are radically unique in our outlook, worldview, and moral beliefs.  
Our prohibitions are against violence, cruelty, war, and misery,
but our loves are legion:  we are proud hedonists, honoring pleasure,
enjoyment, and adventure, no matter what form they take as long as
all desire it; we are proud criminals, just as the original Christians 
who refused to bow down to the Caesar were criminals; we are the walkers 
of the dark and light, the edge and the center, the sedate and bizarre.  
And we have no fear of the outer limits, of the new, the strange, the 
different, or of the rich diversity of humankind and nature.
  
We know and accept that we are strangers in a strange land, that we live 
in a basically Christian country, that our practices and beliefs go 
against that Christianization, and it isn't that we dont care, but that 
this is who we are:  xenophiles, homophiles, zoophiles, terraphiles, 
lovers of all those peaceful and pleasurable acts of which humans are 
capable.