A few weeks have passed since your first Pagan festival. The memory comes to the surface, something so vivid that it feels more like something that is happening right now, than it does like the mind's record of something long over. The passion and energy of the first drum circle you've ever witnessed as your heart races. The Erisians whispering conspiratorily among themselves as they plan their next surprise. The faint smell of incense and spice and the sound of music unlike any you've ever heard before echoing in the distance, as you join in on discussions that tie together history and metaphysics with people so different from the benneton-clad clones you keep meeting, and things you've not seen for so very, very long. Things that you had almost forgotten were possible in the soulless, overplanned reality that downtown Chicago has become during the 90s: spontaneity. freedom. laughter. People just being with each other without agendas or hard schedules, or concerns about who may be listening and who might disapprove. People free to just be themselves and be at ease. It doesn't sound like much when you say it that way, but as you know all too well, it can be awfully hard to find.

But you have no time for that tonight, because you are a graduate student, and work has to get done. As the sun rises you are writing lemmas; as it peaks, the theorems come forth, and as it sets the corollaries and counter-examples hemming in the limits of what is provable have scarcely begun. And there is the reading, the endless, satisying but tiring reading. "The most fun you can have with your clothes on, Sam?", somebody asks with a faint smile crossing his face. Perhaps so, you say, but you've been too busy to remember a few of your meals today, or much of anything other than the endless burning of your desk lamp, and the ever lengthening chain of reasoning that is your work. The day ends, though you aren't ready for it to, but time won't wait for you, and neither will fatigue. You slip out of your clothes. Sleep takes hold of you, ending that very productive evening, but as the new day begins, the night can't seem to decide when it is that it wishes to let you go.

You find yourself standing in what appears to be your grandmother's house - and yet you don't. You - look over your shoulder? No, that's not right. But something within you looks back, and you find yourself within your sleeping body, your eyes tightly closed, hearing the first birds of morning and the sheets rustling against your bare skin in the gentle breeze entering through the window. And whatever that is within you that was looking back looks forward again, and you find yourself fully clothed and standing in Grandma's house once more. You get it.

"This is so cool!", you think. "I'm awake, and yet I'm not". You're hovering on the brink of consciousness in a state that logic tells you that you must have been in many times before, but which you could never remember. You want to enjoy it for a while, this feeling of being in two places at the same time, so you keep your real eyes tightly closed, while your imaginary senses take in all that is around you in this unreal place.

This is not like the other lucid dreams you've been in. It is so vivid. Relatives who you will never see again have gathered around the kitchen table, and are laughing and trading stories. You can smell the cardamom and orange in your grandmother's raisin wine, which you so much wish you had tried while she was still alive. But you wouldn't let yourself, worried beyond reason about what a little alcohol might do to you. And here it is before you - why not? You take a glass, and expecting nothing, feel its warmth and taste its gentle sweetness, as you lean back a head that can't really be moving and savor a drink you've never had and never will. The glass is almost silky to the touch. You hear voices in the next room. Grandma? "Somebody wants to see you, Sam", your uncle says, showing no sign of remembering his own funeral or the ambulence that didn't bother to arrive in time. You aren't about to remind him. You nod your head and thank him, and you head over.

To your disappointment, Grandma isn't there. As you go around the corner to where your cousin's bedroom should have been, you find yourself, against all logic, entering a vast marble hall that couldn't possibly fit in that tiny house. People have gathered in the center, but they aren't family. Half of you knows that none of this is real, but the other half is startled enough at this intrusion. You pull back, leaning against an unpolished wall, and it is then that you get your real surprise.

Dreams, as you have always told people, are a poor substitute for reality, especially when you know them for what they are. The fictive reality has so little detail that it seems almost cartoonish compared to the waking world, and one's subconscious mind has so much trouble keeping the details straight that once one's conscious mind is engaged, one can't help but notice the inconsistencies. But this is different. As you run your fingers along the wall behind your back, you can feel every bump, every crack and crevice in far greater detail than you ever could in reality, and the details are staying put! And it hits you that this is how the whole dream has been - more vivid and more detailed than reality could ever be. You begin to recognize a few of the men gathered in the center of the room. Some of your uncle's old interns. You still remember how each was initated into his profession, who fell for the jokes played on him by the older engineers and who didn't.

The strangers see you huddling in a corner, and gesture for you to come join them. They seem amused to see you. "Are you scared to see us here? I see the distrust in your eyes, Samuel, almost like you think we're up to something", one of them says in a mock serious tone, unsuccessfully suppressing a friendly smile. "Pshah, what would ever make him think that?", you ask yourself in quiet sarcasm. "You're right. We're devil worshippers, and your uncle is our cult leader, and now that you've stumbled onto one of our rituals, it's time to either initiate you or sacrifice you. You being a Math major, we're pretty sure you'll qualify as a virgin, but we're guessing you'd rather be initiated".

"Now, raise the bottle of Doctor Pepper on the table to your right over your head, stand on your left foot, face toward the unholy city of Sheboygan, and repeat after us" ... and they act just the way you'd expect some of your uncle's interns to act from the way he used to describe them, trying to see what they can get the new kid (that's you) to swallow. Fair enough, your uncle pranked them, and now they're pranking you, but still, they're going to have to try a lot harder than this. "Yadda, yadda, yadda, Satan rules ... Yeah, that's great, guys", you say, laughing. Carelessly showing that you're in on their game, you observe out loud that you can't remember another lucid dream that seemed so real as this one.

The strangers seem hurt. As you look at each, he disappears, almost seeming to fold in on himself, and you find that you've suddenly forgotten the name he just gave you. "Guys, wait!", you say, but you're too late. All is fading out and turning to a white mist, the voices turning to silence, the smell of the cardamom fading out last, after all else is gone. The white mist turns to light as your eyes open, and you see the sunlight just starting to filter in through your blinds.

"Darn!",(*) you think. "If only I could have kept my mouth shut", because this was so much fun, and you really wanted it to last. But this is foolish, you realise. This is by far the longest you've ever had a lucid dream last, and your outburst was probably just your subconscious' way of bring the show to a close, and, you have to admit, it was a wonderful show. It was like the people were really there, and real or not, there are some voices you were really glad to hear again. Spirits lifted, you get through another busy day, and on this night, you give yourself permission to go out and spend a little time with your new friends.

"Huh!", you think. "What a coincidence!" They are talking about the dreams they had last night. No coincidence at all, you'll learn later, as this is a topic they raise with monotonous regularity, but for now, it seems novel. The dreams are unusual ones, but nothing as colorful as what you've just had. Waiting your turn, you finally mention your dream. Dead silence. Even by Teutonic standards, they've just turned amazingly pale. You think.

"Sam, my Goddess, do you hear yourself?" Your friend's mouth was hanging open before she started speaking, and it's hanging open again, now that she's finished. "Well, yeah ... but, like, Mary, you know, chill. It's just a dream." "Sam, that was a psychic attack. Somebody pulled you into an astral projection. Did you notice how the names suddenly vanished from your mind as each vanished from view?" "Yes", you say, "Of course. The dream was ending, and as usual, some of my memory of it was being purged ..." "Sam", your friend insists, "they were shielding". "Mary", you reply, "Come on. They were just characters in a dream, and they were joking around." But, no matter what you say, the only part she seems willing to hear is the part about Satanism. "Sam, you need to cleanse yourself. A saltwater bath should work. Tell me that you're going to do that." "Mary, please ...", but she seems really upset, and has company in this. "OK, I promise", you say, trying to keep a poker face, having found that nothing else you can think of saying will calm her down.

And your word of honor is your word of honor.

You go back and wash, getting done just in time to answer the door. A friend has dropped by and needs to use the toilet. "Sam, why is there a box of salt and a salad bowl in the shower?" "Please, don't even ask", you say, wondering where the Pagan sense of humor had gone that night. Probably the same place as that glass of raisin wine you didn't have time to finish, you think: into the oblivion reserved for those things that never really were.

The focus of what you're about to read may be a little different from what you are used to. Many pages have been written about the hordes of ill-informed Wiccans one can find who, having read a book by Scott Cunningham, now feel ready to become high priestesses. The fact that we started out as a Graeco-Roman Reconstructionist Group ("Post-Classical Hellenistic" would have been the best description) only made the problem the more irritating for us. We have been left fending off an endless series of stubbornly clueless individuals who refuse to hear when we tell them that we are not now, nor have ever been, nor have ever claimed to be Wiccan.

We even have a note near the top of our front page saying "we are not Wiccan or magickal group", and have for some years, not to mention an article listed near there explaining some of the differences between Hellenism and Wicca. It didn't matter. Until we pulled the mail links out, we still heard from a steady stream of idiots who wanted us to teach them "the craft" or "at least a few love spells". Invited as guests, those of the tribe of the fluffy bunny have been known to cast circles in the middle of Hellenic shrines, profaning the sacred space dedicated to gods other than their own, becoming resentful in some cases and confused in others when told that Hellenists don't cast circles. "But you worship the ancient gods and follow the old ways". "Which ancient gods and which old ways, though?", we would respond. Blank incomprehension.

Or, sometimes shouting matches. During a visit to "The Blessed Village Shrine" (not its real name), which will be mentioned in what follows, one of us started to explain that the Romans would have been most surprised by the suggestion that they and the Druids were following the same religion ... and he wasn't even allowed to finish his sentence. The high priest cut him off, saying that "the Romans habitually equated foreign gods with their own". No real Historical Reconstructionist would have any trouble coming up with an answer to that non-argument. Jews, Muslims and Roman Catholics today all believe that they worship the same single god, and yet nobody believes that these three are the same religion. There is more to a religion than a list of deities.

As for the thoughts of the Romans, one should note that the religion of the Druids was outlawed in the Empire, while the Religio Romana was not only legal, but to a certain extent legally mandatory (at least in some of its observances, such as sacrificing to the genius of the emperor) for most Romans until the time of Constantine. To maintain that the Romans saw their religion and that of the Druids as being one and the same is to maintain that they outlawed something on pain of death and then outlawed the absence of the same, under the same penalty. Logically speaking, this is absurd, unless one wishes to maintain that the Empire was trying to compel its residents to convert to one of the religions (such as Judaism) whose adherents were exempt from the ritual demands of the Religio, because on these terms the only alternative would be death. If somebody wishes to really reach, and try to claim that the emperors and senators were part of a fanatical crypto-rabbinical movement intent on the forced conversion of the Empire to Judaism, one is then left with great difficulty in explaining the destruction of Jerusalem (long before Constantine), the martyrdom of so many the writers of the Talmud, and the many records of pork consumption by wealthy Romans.

In other words, "Moonblossom, get serious".

Our member was, however, unable to utter a word of any of this, because every time he opened his mouth after that, one of the half-crazed acolytes of the "high priest" shouted him down. The rest glared at him all night. "But it was their event, and their beliefs" is the usual excuse offered for this behavior, and it's a weak one at that, because what we are looking at here is a matter of confirmable historical fact, not faith. There is no "belief system" involved here, merely a lack of education. And a lack of sincerity too, we might add, because when the Wiccans in our local community have been our visitors in the past, instead of we being theirs, the very same acolytes who shouted us down in Wiccan meeting places did not hesitate to try to do the same to us in our own. "They're entitled to their opinions" would intone the same apologists, who have been appalled at the news that we've threw those loudmouthed acolytes out in the past and threatened to call the police on some who refused to leave. "And we are not entitled to ours?", we would respond, getting nothing but a good stonewalling from these people who forget their own rules the moment they cease to be convenient.

Such is the reality of far too much "Wiccan religious tolerance" - the "true believers" will be plenty tolerant of you, if only you agree that your religion is really theirs with a few cosmetic changes, you refrain from offering any opinions which contradict those of their elders, and remove those cosmetic details which the Wiccan elders personally disapprove of. This, by itself, would have been ample reason to show the local Wiccan community the door, as we have, banning all Wiccans even as visitors to the Shrine (our once and future group). We are tired of this sort of disruptive behavior, and must put an end to it if we are ever to be true to our own vision.

It is not a "live and let live" world, our fans of the Llewellyn Press would have us live in, all pretensions to the contrary notwithstanding, and the problems here have gone well beyond their theological foolishness and dismal scholarship. They go right to the heart of what it is that the norms of behavior and just basic common sense ought to be, and what sort of life it is that one allows oneself when one allows those who ignore such norms in one's door as guests. Let it not be said that when we enacted this ban, that we did so hastily or lightly. As you see, we could not have done otherwise, and probably should have done so a lot sooner.

The events you are about to see are real. ALL of the names have been changed to protect the innocent, or the not so innocent, including that of the coffeehouse in which we met. (It is no longer with us, anyway, which is regrettable). Click here to continue.

(*) or maybe a similar word, which our host won't let us use.