Steve Watt is an elder with Down to Earth Community Temple, a Pagan congregation based in the Ozarks.
Recently he and several others shared about Pagan life and beliefs as they prepared for Winter Solstice celebrations held December 21.
Watt says, "I go down and I listen to the creeks, when nature talks to us at all times, and we've forgotten how to listen to it, and that's what we do, lot of folks throw out, 'oh, tree huggers!' Well, yeah, I've hugged a tree or three.”
Folks like Watt who celebrate Winter Solstice say they’re intricately focused on their connection with our living planet.
"It is a core belief with Pagan folks," Watt says. "We do follow the Wheel of the Year, which is the seasons and the how the nature travels around. Lori (Down to Earth high priestess) is an eclectic polytheist. I'm a hedge witch.”
Watt is a white-haired, beardy man. As he explains all of this to me, he looks the part of a hedge witch, though he cautions me that Pagans often hide from everyday society due to rampant stereotyping.
"One of the things we wish to do with the temple is to create outreach," Watt says. "It's also to educate people. Because our Pagan community, we have a lot of folks that are lost. They they can't find other Pagans, and it's gotten better as time has gone by, but when I started this, way back, when you kept your mouth shut, you didn't tell people, you just went along.
"And there's still a lot of folks doing that, I still run into people today. I'll I'll notice their jewelry or something, and I'll mention them to go. We had no idea there was people around. And that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to educate people that we're not the bewitched or charmed witches. We are nature-based worshipers.”
'Each day gets a little longer'
I soon learn that Pagans — at least ones living in the Ozarks — aren’t into religious titles. Down to Earth's high priestess, Lori McMillan, stressed that celebrating Pagan faith does include titles and roles, but they tell me they treat everyone equally.
It’s still a few weeks until Winter Solstice on the day I’m interviewing Watt and McMillan.
We post up inside the Creamy Arts Center on a bitterly cold winter morning, and they lead me on a conversational tour of some basic Pagan beliefs, and the cycle of holidays including Winter Solstice.
Watt explains that the Wheel of the Year includes eight major holidays, each about six weeks apart.
"Our new year begins on Samhain [pronounced SOW-in], which most people call Halloween," Watt says. "Our first major event is the Winter Solstice after that, and that's [also called] Yule.
"Yule — Most people, they go, 'Well, what is it? What is it? What is it?'
"Okay, Well, that's fine, just looking pretty much any Christian household. We [Pagans] have trees that we decorate. We have a Yule log that we burn. We like to light candles and nowadays, nice lights and stuff. We even have Yule Carols that are somewhat similar to the carols that you'll hear. It's the beginning of winter.
“But here's the thing. Yule, while it's the beginning of winter — and we'll be going through the cold times from the day of Yule on — each day gets a little longer, a little more sun, it's coming back.
"And that's why that's important, is because we look up," Watt says. "One of the things we will be having, one of our members is going to have a drumming to welcome the sun back on in, at dawn on Yule.”
Multiple Pagan congregations practice in the Ozarks
The following night, I met with another group of Ozarks Pagans, five individuals from the Dara Pagan Coalition who traveled from as far away as Webster County to share about their faith. Within Dara, there's even a smaller coven with a handful of members.
Jodi Bray, one of Dara's board members, explained about how these groups go about commemorating Winter Solstice: "We'll have a small ritual or ceremony to where we honor each direction... Each direction represents each element, such as East represents air, South represents fire, West, water; and North, earth. And then we also honor the God and Goddess at that time too.”
Kate Tarrant, Dara's high priestess, highlights some of the sacred practices and how they relate to the seasonal Wheel of the Year, as winter approaches but gives way to the warmer months.
"During the ancient times," Tarrant says, "the people of the of the land would gather together during this time just to kind of check on each other, make sure everybody's still there and make sure everybody's prepared for the long winter ahead, because this is when winter actually starts, and depending on how the harvest went, it was either going to be a good winter or a bad winter.
"And of course, everybody wants to check in and make sure that everybody's going to be all right. So to be all right for the spiritual aspect of that. The celebration that we just had was Samhain, and that's the third of three harvest festivals, and that is when the Lord of the Grain returns to the earth. He's cut down. Essentially he dies. And the Mother goes into mourning. The Goddess goes into mourning over the death of her beloved. And then at Winter Solstice, the God is reborn, because it is the longest night of the year and the shortest day. The days will start getting longer and longer and longer. The sun, representing the God aspect, becomes stronger and stronger and stronger, and he starts his return to power again during the summer."
The Dara folks who are sharing their faith and ideas with me on this chilly December evening include Tarrant along with Daniel "Dano" Owen, Jodi Bray, Stormi Agee-Murch and Tye Tyson.
One aspect they all stress in the conversation are they ways Pagans get along with a majority-Christian society.
Many, they say, live in blended extended families that include Christians. Thus, many Pagans often participate in Christian commemorations like Christmas.
Much like the folks with Down to Earth Temple, members of the Dara Pagan Coalition described a growing community of Ozarks Pagans that includes several hundred people, from all kinds of walks of life. Attendance at worship or other events may vary widely.
On a wider level, the most recent data I could find on Pagan demographics in the U.S. hail from a 2014 religious landscape study by the Pew Research Center.
Pew Research labels Pagan and similar religious groups with an umbrella term they call "Other Faiths," which make up just 1.5 percent of the U.S. population.
Folks deemed "Pagan or Wiccan" are a smaller subset, just 0.3 percent of Americans.
Local Pagans told me that they believe many Pagans aren't fully classified by these types of surveys: They say "closet" Pagan believers — especially prevalent among credentialed professionals like nurses or lawyers — may tell survey researchers that they don't follow any particular religion.
As Pew reports, as of last year some 28 percent of U.S. adults identify as atheists, agnostics or "nothing in particular." NPR reports that the "nones" are the biggest single religious group in the U.S., followed by Evangelical Protestant Christians (24 percent) and Roman Catholic Christians (23 percent).
these days, the
Though not always very public about their beliefs, Pagans from the Ozarks willing to share about their religion say they're Winter Solstice, as the days each get a bit longer leading up to spring rebirth.
