In a nation of people who are moving to a morality based on xenophobia and arbitrary discrimination masked as ethical superiority, there exists a subculture of sinners, heretics and transgressors of the laws of the concrete jungle. These people, whether their existence be one of idyllic communion or of desperate nonconformity, become the pariahs of their progenitors, neither understood nor respected by their peers as they dance a mad dance that frightens the man on the street due to intensity, subtlety or sheer incomprehensibility. These individuals, being reflections of the nature of our possibility and our futility, frighten as well as remind the world of the dangers of excess as well as the draining wounds of its own banality. Those who are able to convince the world of the validity of their own mad prophecy become the icons of an era, while those without the requisite advertising skills rot in a cage of confusing expectations and near insanity. Only extreme options are available to those with the gift of Divine Madness. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire... The E-Team

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Most of what consists of 'neo-paganism' is actually an eclectic mishmash of fairy tales, anthropological conjecture, New Age sensibilities and outright wishful thinking. There is no hard evidence that the 'witches' and 'pagans' that modern pagans cite had anything resembling the same moral sensibilities that we do. Real data about their lives is scarce or biased. Modern occult draws mostly from publicity-hungry writers like Crowley, modern interpretations of incomplete and dubious medieval sources and from the media. The modern pagan learns more about magick and religion from The Craft, Mercedes Lackey and Harry Potter than any kabbalistic, alchemical or hermetic source.

Those who continue to explore religious, spiritual and magickal issues tend to go from an eclectic Pop-paganism to an examination of established religious traditions. However, the quantity and variety of religious thought now available is staggering. The major change in human interaction in the technological age has been the speed and ubiquity of communications. Cultures clash constantly as other cultural structures are exposed to (and impressed upon) the peoples of every culture and subculture. This exposure has led to a quasi-Darwinian 'survival of the most interesting' competition in American society in which ideologies are sampled like foods in a salad bar. The result is a theological consumerism where devout observance of a particular tradition is an unacceptable form of bigotry given the diversity of seemingly-devout experience available. Thus we have a pagan community with a sort of Deist agnosticism, taking what they can of each religious experience and gluing them together into a collage of spiritual belief to justify their nebulous sense of the existence of a divinity different from that of the accepted societal dogma.

That is not to say that the magick they do or the religious affinities they have are not real or as valid as the Deist agnosticism that passes for modern American Christianity. However, without a conscious understanding of the fact that modern pagan and occult sensibilities have bootstrapped themselves into existence instead of having imaginary connections to idealized ancient cultures, those sensibilities will continue to be a sort of spiritual masturbation. The unconscious appropriation of ideological icons does not provide any sort of understanding of original significance of those icons, nor does the individual have the requisite knowledge to integrate those concepts into any sort of useful framework. Without significant mindfulness, such Rube-Goldberg ideologies simply become idle curiosities, ciphers for mainstream morality or a cover for the pervasive amorphous belief in some divinity in some shape or form.

The above begs for the step of conscious appropriation in a post-modern manner. The confrontation with multiple cultural sensibilities and religious systems has indicated the existence of a wide variety of ways that life can be lived and interpreted. We have to deal with the fact that Modern Western Culture is not the evolutionary pinnacle of societal development. Our near-instantaneous global contact has shown us that there are an innumerable number of distinct cultures and sub-cultures out there that can and have produced viable communities and outlooks for their participants. With this surplus of data, the post-modern response is to divine the potential significance of these religious systems so that they can be duplicated in a framework of interlocking ideas that provides a unique whole. A techno or industrial musician samples sounds, baselines and words and remixes them into a new song reminiscent of many of the elements of the original parts yet having its own individual character. Similarly, the pomo-pagan combs the threads of spiritual and social experience for the building blocks and gears of a theological structure that utilizes the actualities and potentialities of the ancient, the popular and the possible as a metaphysical outlook that is in synch with the unique character of an inhabitant of the 21st century.

A lot of modern paganism is progressing towards this state. A large number of new adherents to paganism come from religious frameworks that they found lacking and discovered the neo-pagan community while trying to find an alternative to the framework they knew. As opposed to the converts to other religions, those who convert to neo-paganism come with a laundry-list of needs and little support as opposed to encountering a community with pre-established dogma and expectations. In order to compensate for what neo-paganism lacks in structure and focus, the new pagan begins trying to find whatever religious mechanisms will fit the their needs.