Paganism, Just Another Religion for Military and Academia

[icymist]

If personal tradition holds, just before sundown Saturday, Michael York will stand before a colonial-style wooden cabinet in his bayside town house here and light a candle. As night falls, it will illuminate the surrounding objects: tarot cards, Tibetan silver bowls, a bell and statues or icons of deities like the Greek earth-mother, Gaia, and the Lithuanian thunder god, Perkunas.

While facing the altar, if past practice holds, Mr. York will invoke the names of the ancestors and loved ones who have died. He will often write down their names, too, and keep that piece of paper in the cabinet. One can mourn on any day, as Mr. York put it recently, but on this occasion, “the veil between the worlds is understood to be thinnest.”

The day that most Americans know as Halloween, a commercial bonanza and secular holiday with only the faintest remnants of its pantheistic origins, Mr. York celebrates as Samhain, the autumnal new year for Pagans. And for Mr. York, Paganism is indeed a proper noun, connoting a specific religion that he has observed for decades.
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[Chemisse]

1. Interesting - I like this part

Nothing did more to secure Paganism’s place in the religious mainstream, though, than a highly serious, indeed somber, court battle. Brought by Americans United for Separation of Church and State on behalf of Circle Sanctuary and several widows, the decade-long litigation sought permission from the federal Department of Veterans Affairs to have the gravestones of deceased Wiccan soldiers marked with the symbol of the pentacle.

Since winning that right as part of an out-of-court settlement two years ago, Wicca followers have marked more than a dozen military graves with the five-pointed star.

“This got us the most widespread support and had the most wide-ranging import,” Ms. Fox said. “Our symbol was literally being carved in stone and taking its place alongside the symbols of other religions. Our religion was at last getting equal treatment. It was one of those crossroads moments.”