Pagans are people who believe that they express their spirituality through nature, natural processes and the basic elements of life. For many Pagans, this 'nature' being referred to is their own internal energy, personal inspirations and natural sexuality which they believe should be celebrated rather than denied as they maintain it is in some other religions. Pagans may mean: Paganism, a belief in natural religion. ...

For some Pagans, nature is about the natural environment, the world's rivers, lakes, mountains and forests. It is a short extension to want to worship nature to actually want to protect it and Pagans who take the plunge and start protecting nature generally call themselves Pagan Activists.

There are many groups practicing Pagan activism around the world, but none are more prominent and more widely known than the Reclaiming tradition of Witchcraft started by Starhawk in the late 1970s. Reclaiming is an international community of women and men working to unify spirit and political action - magical activism - using ritual and magic as a form of public activism and protest as well as in individual empowerment. ... The term witchcraft (and witch) is a controversial one with a complicated history. ... Starhawk (born Miriam Samos in 1951) is a American writer, activist and Witch. ...

Many Pagan activists choose to embrace Chaos Magic as both a method to achieve their results and as a fundamental philosophy in life. You will often find Pagan Activists working alongside the Discordians at a political protest. Both groups work towards deconstructing the corporate towers of the elite and both use magic to achieve their goals. The chaos star (called a chaosphere by some practitioners) is the most popular symbol of chaos magic. ... Discordianism has been described as both an elaborate joke disguised as a religion and a religion disguised as an elaborate joke. ...

Pagan activists engage in a combination of Direct action and magick to achieve the results they are after. Direct action is a method and a theory of stopping objectionable practices or creating more favorable conditions using immediately available means, such as strikes, boycotts, workplace occupations, sit-ins, intimidation, harassment or sabotage, and less oppositional methods such as establishing radical social centres, although these are often squatted. ... Magick is an alternate spelling of magic, coined by Aleister Crowley to differentiate the true science of the Magi from all its counterfeits. In the broadest sense, magick is any act designed to cause intentional change -- for example, changing the channel on your television set. ...

External links

• http://www.reclaiming.org/ The Reclaiming Witchcraft tradition
• http://www.reclaimingquarterly.org/ ReclaimingQuarterly.org features photo-coverage of Pagan activism
• http://www.starhawk.org/ Starhawk's own website
• http://www.hairyjedi.net/active-pagan.php for a list of most of the Pagan activist groups
• http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ActElemental/ a group of Australian Pagan activists
• http://www.dragonnetwork.org/ The UK-based Dragon Network mixing Paganism with Environmentalism
• http://www.pagancluster.org/ The US-based Pagan Cluster
• http://www.paganpride.org
• http://www.comunitaodinista.org/ Longobardic paganism (italian/english)
• http://www.activism.sacredhearth.com
• http://www.thefluiddruid.net the Fluid Druid Network
• http://www.projectx13.us Project X13
• The ShahMai Network - UK Based spiritual/pagan organization focused on humanitarian and environmental activism

Category at ODP Within a Christian context, Paganism (from Latin paganus) and Heathenry are catch-all terms which have come to connote a broad set of spiritual/religious beliefs and practices of a natural religion, as opposed to the Abrahamic religions. ... Environmentalism is the support or involvement with the environmental movement by environmentalists. ...