Dr Angela Puca AP: Hello everyone, I’m Dr Angela Puca and welcome to the live stream Symposium. As you know this channel is your place to learn everything esoteric, occult, Pagan and so on from an academic point of view. However one of the aims of this channel is to bridge the gap between academia and the community of practitioners and so I started a series where I also interview practitioners because I started out, and at the beginning of my YouTube channel interviewing academics only and now I’m also starting to interview practitioners because I find their views fascinating as a Pagan Studies scholar and as an Anthropologist.

So before we crack on with our special guest please do know that this is a crowdfunded project and if you want to help keep it going, please consider supporting my work with a one-off PayPal donation, by joining Memberships or my Inner Symposium on Patreon and like, share, subscribe and do all the good stuff.

So our special guest today is Selena Fox, Wiccan Priestess and let me bring her on.

Hi Selena.

Reverend Selena Fox SF: Wonderful to be here.

AP: Thank you so much for accepting my invitation to Angela’s Symposium. You know you caught my attention because of your work on Nature, spirituality, and Paganism. So, would you like to introduce yourself to my audience?

SF: My name is Selena Fox, and I am Senior Minister and High Priestess of Circle Sanctuary, which I founded back in 1974 and which serves Pagans of many paths, not only across the USA but around the world. I’m really excited to be here and to continue the evolution of pagan studies, which is something that academically I also have had some connections with over the years. When I got my Master’s at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin in Counselling Psychology, I thought it was really important to document Pagans as a cultural population with its own needs regarding mental health, support, and treatment and my When Goddess is God Pagan’s Recovery and Alcoholics Anonymous was the first to get Paganism entered into addiction treatment literature. And I’m really thankful that since that time, other people have built on that work. In addition to doing some Pagan studies work I still speak, from time to time, at academic institutions at academic conferences, as well as doing a lot of speaking in person and online at pagan festivals and, webinars, and gatherings.

I also run Circle Sanctuary Nature Preserve – a 200-acre (81 ha) Nature sanctuary in Southwestern Wisconsin, USA. That began in 1983, and in 1995, we began Circle Cemetery, which is one of the first green cemeteries in North America and the first USA national pagan cemetery. So we do full-body natural burials as well as have an area where cremated remains are buried and scattered, and we have sacred sites on all 200 acres, and our Stone Circle, which was established when we got the land, is also part of our cemetery now.

AP: That’s great. Also, I’d like to remind everybody that the links to Selena’s channels and social media are all in the info box, so do check them out. Apparently, somebody from Pagan Pride, Seattle, says that we have a great guest today.

Thank you, And thank you Mark for, you know, your support and saying that we’re doing great work here.

SF: When I use the word Nature, I capitalise it as my great-grandfather did. He was a horticulturist and wrote a book on water gardening published in 1905. His name is Peter Bisset, and I honour Nature as the environment here on planet Earth and as a term that incorporates all that is. So, I think there has been more diversity in recent years regarding how Nature is conceptualised. I see Nature as something that is intertwined with various paths of contemporary Paganism and links us to the old Paganism of ancient times. Whether someone works for the environment or seeks to be outdoors is part of the ritual experience. We are all part of Nature; Nature is part of ourselves. I reject the concept that humans are separate from Nature. I think part of the growth of contemporary Paganism has come from people wanting to have a spiritual practice, a religious practice and or for those who are humanistic or free thinkers or agnostic or atheists in their worldview to have something that’s environmentally relevant. Here on planet Earth, there is a need to have humankind become more aware of our interconnectedness, not only with other humans, creatures, plants, and ecosystems but with the larger realm of Nature.

So to me, it is essential, as part of human life, to tune into Nature when we’re engaged in some form of spiritual practice, being able to not only work with Nature symbolically, such as working with the elemental tools: flame for fire, a chalice of water for water, a platter or a dish of salt for Earth, incense for air, a crystal or some other symbol for spirit. We can work with elemental tools but I find that we can deepen our magical practice, our Pagan practice by actually being in outdoor locations where we shift from being more focused, from our human framework into the environment moving from egocentric to ecocentric. There are many people who are practising forms of Magick that are working with elemental tools. They may call archangels of the directions or of the elements, but they might not consider themselves Nature-religion practitioners. I would disagree. If you have water as part of your ritual, whether it’s symbolic or you’re actually asperging with it, you’re tapping into an elemental and I think it is really important, for those of us who are Pagan to appreciate our differences but also find ways to collaborate for a healthier planet.

AP: Yeah, that’s an interesting answer, the idea that Nature is everything. So, in a way, yeah, that’s quite interesting, and you said you have a Master’s in Counselling – Psychology. I was already wondering: how is that helping now in your practice as a High Priestess? Do you link in all that knowledge?

SF: Yes, I’ve been doing counselling and Psychotherapy since my undergraduate days. Of course, there was supervision back then and in my graduate school days, the first time. So, I attended the College of William and Mary from 1967 to 1971 and focused on psychology as my major. As an undergraduate, I started working practically, doing counselling with people. I worked in what some people would call more traditional forms of Psychology – counselling- and I started reading Tarot back then. The Vietnam War was raging in the world at that time. During the first tarot reading I did for someone, I got some cards that led me to interpret that he was going to get drafted, and indeed, when the numbers were drawn, he was drafted and ended up going to Canada to escape the draft. I have done counselling in a spiritual way as well as in a secular way. Throughout my whole career in graduate school, I had limited choices in where I could study because of my gender. I went to Rutgers University, an all-male institution, and was one of the first women to break the gender barrier. They started letting women come in in 1971, in graduate school. Well, I’m there, and I wanted to study a field now called psychoneuroimmunology – looking at the mind-body-spirit connection to take a look at intuition from a psychological perspective. You let women into an academic institution, and they really upend some things. I’m happy to say that that institution now has women fully participating.

However, I realized it was a big enough stretch to break the gender barrier, but I was resistant to studying ESP, Parapsychology, and Consciousness Studies. I knew it was going to be another battle. So I left and went directly into a PhD program because I was an honours student, and then I left academia for a time. When I moved to Wisconsin, in the central part of the USA, I started taking special classes in various forms of Psychology and other topics. I learned the I Ching from a classical Chinese professor who not only taught about this 5,000-year-old oracle but also taught the ritual for consulting it with yarrow stalks, so my education has continued over time.

I decided to go back to graduate school in the ’90s when I thought that there might be more understanding of the field that I wanted to study, to go into Consciousness Studies and to apply that in clinical settings and became the first graduate student to go into a private mental health hospital for my practicum. I convinced the administration to let me do nature therapy with the patients there. I got to take them outside of this lockdown facility as part of treatment, and I can tell you from first-hand experience, and at that time, that it made a difference, even for people who had a severe mental illness. I had a clinical practice for a time in the 90s. Still, my work at Circle Sanctuary continued to grow and expand, and I decided to come back and focus on spiritual counselling and Psychotherapy, which I’ve been doing ever since. So, I have a variety of clients; some of them are Pagans, and some of them are not. All of them are drawn to me in my work because I not only work with cognitive processes – what’s the self-talk that’s going on in our consciousness? But we do ritual; we do guided imagery work. I have Nature communion as part of treatment if it’s appropriate for the client that I’m working with. So, my work with Nature continues on a personal level, as part of spiritual practice, and as part of my therapeutic work with clients and in group settings. And it’s also part of my teaching in workshops and rituals at Circle Sanctuary Nature Preserve and in other parts of the world.

AP: And I was wondering, could you elaborate a bit more on the main practices you do to reconnect with Nature? You mentioned nature communion and a few others. Would you mind explaining how they work in practice?

SF: I think everyone can develop a more intentional and special relationship with the place where they live, connecting with the spirit of place. I have been to live in a forest and am in the middle of an oak forest, as I come to you via satellite internet. And one of the things that I do every day as part of nature communion is to go and face the East and honour the rising Sun; I honour each of the sacred directions. In Paganism, the tradition I was first trained in, starts with the North and goes clockwise. I’ve developed a form of Paganism called ‘Circle Craft’ where we link Earth with North, air with East, fire with South, water with West, spirit in the centre, planet beneath, cosmos above and connecting with the sphere, the sacred sphere and the Sacred Circle all around. So, as part of my spiritual practice of Nature Communion. In addition to going out and raising my hands and greeting the rising Sun, I also have a lot of work with the Goddess Bridget, who is linked with the Goddess of Dawn in several traditions, not only Pagan traditions but in Christian traditions. The Sun and dawn – I face each of the directions, honour the direction of the associated element, and deepen my resonance with each of them. So I face the North, the East, the South, the West, the land in place where I’m at, below, the heavens above, the centre where all of that comes together and then around and spirit within us and spirit around us.

Another favourite practice is to go on a walk in Nature, a contemplative walk where I experience myself as part of the natural environment. Not as somebody on a theatre stage with nature imagery as a backdrop. I like sitting in different places; I have certain rocks that I like to go and sit on. There are certain trees that I go and spend time with. When I teach people about nature communion, in addition to these basic practices, I sometimes dive deeper into a particular elemental form. At Circle Sanctuary, we have a nature preserve, a stream that flows through all 200 acres, and having established a nature preserve, we are not only working with mystical things but with science. We have a number of scientists who are part of our community, some of whom worked for the Department of Natural Resources. We could name our stream; it hadn’t been on a map; it was a small stream, but it connected with what is known as the West Blue Mounds Creek Watershed. It eventually goes down the Wisconsin River into the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic, and one of the wonderful things was being able to name that stream. Well, I have called it the ‘Stream of Consciousness’ – thank you, Williams James of Psychology Time.

And so, yes, we have our stream, as the Stream of Consciousness. At times, I will take a group of people to Bridget Spring, where water comes from the ground, and as with other people who draw some inspiration from Celtic antiquity, it’s a gateway to the underworld. We will go there and meditate on the bubbling up of the water. We have our version of the Clootie Well custom, where people take strips of cloth and tie them on trees. Sometimes, they’re called rag trees as a way of doing a prayer ribbon or a prayer cloth for healing. So we’ve adapted those practices when we’re at the stream itself. I’ve had people take small pebbles and connect with the pebble, energize it with a wish that they wish to send out into the universe or when people need to do some cleansing work. They may work with a pebble, or they might work with some biodegradables, like flower petals or herbs, and cast them into the stream as a form of work for healing.

There are so many ways to be able to commune with Nature as part of personal practice and group practice. We are in mostly a hardwood forest. We have a variety of types of oaks, I’m partial to oaks. On my father’s, father’s, father’s side, back into the Middle Ages, our family took on the symbol of an oak tree that had been cut down and springing green again with the Latin motto – they had some Norman Roots but we’re using Latin rather than French for that family line – ‘ever risk it, it grows green again and again.’ So early on in my Priestess life, I have used this old family symbol passed down through my family as a representation of what I think is happening with contemporary Paganism after more than 1600 years of bad PR and oppression more Pagans are rising up and growing green again and indeed we not only need to flourish as a people with our various traditions and practices but the planet itself needs that greening.- again energy. We need to work together to mitigate climate change and to take greater responsibility for our footprint, our part in environmental health and well-being and healing.

AP: Yes, thank you, Hank. For he’s thanking me and you as well Selena. Thank you, Hank.

Yeah, I think these practices are fascinating and while you were talking, I guess, some things I was thinking about is that the way you describe Nature is something that is all-encompassing and my perception, from what you said of what it means to connect with Nature is to connect with something that goes beyond ourselves. Is that correct?

SF: Yes, some people refer to contemporary Paganism as earth religion. I honour that I’ve contributed to a Unitarian Universalist Association Press anthology called Skinner House. So there is a “Voices of Paganism” and “Earth-Centred Spirituality.” So I celebrate the Earth as my home in this Incarnation, but I like to go off-planet if they can start making it more affordable for people to venture off-planet. I’ve always been fascinated with the stars, but I call it Nature-spirituality and Nature-religion because it’s more than connecting with sacred forces embodied on planet Earth; for me, it’s the cosmos as well. So, having studied different paths of Paganism, I was in the first group. A regular group I was helping to do Priestess work with was a ceremonial magical lodge. Now, people in that lodge might not have called themselves Nature-religion practitioners; however, with our work drawn primarily from the Golden Dawn but some other systems, we were working with the elements, and we were drawing inspiration from a variety of Hermetic traditions, including ancient Egyptian Paganism. We honoured the divine through our connection with the Cat Goddess Bast, or some call her Bastet. As a result of my work within the ceremonial magical traditions, I deepened my understanding of Paganism and magical practice varieties. So I think it’s really important as we think about Nature and ways that we’re part of to make space in our lives, in addition to being on the screen, and I give thanks for the technology here but get off the screen and into the green. I think we need to spend more time balancing our screen time, our time in the digital age and go old school, get out, learn the names of plants, learn the life cycles of the trees in your environment, attune to weather patterns, find ways of experiencing oneself as part of that greater whole.

AP: I think you read my mind because I was about to ask about the technology pathway because this is part of a research project I will be working on. But it also links to what you said earlier, the idea that you know if somebody, when you said people that don’t consider themselves Nature-worshipping or Nature-centred but still work with what is around us since everything is Nature, then you are also working with Nature. So, connecting to that point and the concept of technology, what makes a tree more able to allow us to commune with Nature than something technological? If everything is part of Nature, what allows a tree and a forest to be more conducive to that sense of connectedness than technological things or human-made things?

SF: I think part of that, and I’ve been embracing technology, started that, you know, as it started emerging, and when I was five years old, I began my media journey. So, for me, media is a tool humans can use for communication, but what we see on the screen is just part of the reality. When we are actually in a forest, we’re in an ecosystem, and yes, I carry my phone with its video capabilities. Its camera capabilities are with me on some of my nature walks; at times, I have seen beautiful images. I did professional Psychology as part of my career after I left graduate school for the first time and moved to Madison, Wisconsin. I went into the arts for a time and became a professional commercial artist and photographer, so I see photos of trees as something that can help us connect. But it’s different than when you are physically with a living entity with its consciousness. I have the experience and the perspective that trees have spirits. We can find ways to interact with them, have friendships with them, attune to them, and get guidance from them. It’s important, I think, to develop a holistic perspective not only for personal identity but for ourselves being in the world, to find good ways to be in harmony with other humans and the rest of the natural world here on the earth and beyond. And there’s no real substitute for that than going out into green spaces.

I’ve had nature-mystical experiences since I was very young, and that’s not why I go out into Nature to bliss out in a mystical trance, though it does happen. It feeds my soul, and I think many people feel drawn to Nature regardless of whether they have a religion, a spirituality, or even a philosophy or worldview that they name. I think part of the reason there has been such a growth in interest in natural vacations, going into wild places, is to have the experience to shift from human-centric environments into one where humans are a minority. When you think about an ant hill, well, they’ve created their habitat out in Nature, and ants have all sorts of tunnels and whatever, and they’ve mounded it up. Okay, if you’re an ant, you can stay in the mound, I suppose, but there’s a whole world out there. I think sometimes, when people spend time, whether it’s in a city or a suburb or a town or even constantly on screens that are human-dominated, they are missing the opportunity to be in touch with some deeper abilities and ways of understanding that come when we immerse ourselves in natural environments.

When I started practising the craft, I found that my form of Wiccan expression had a real shamanic, and I’m using that term in a multicultural sense rather than in a very specific sense when it was that term in English was first applied to practitioners of magical ways in parts of Siberia. So when I talk about Shamanism working with the lower world, the middle world, and the upper world, I see that that also goes across several traditions, the idea of journeying into other dimensions. I see that is also part of connecting with the natural world in some powerful ways, so whether you choose to meditate at a holy well or sacred spring and journey into the underworld that way or you are going to do some sky gazing – the physical cosmos above us or we spend our time here in the middle world, connecting with parks and conservatories and other wild places, I think that we can develop a better understanding of that larger environment of which we’re part as well as ourselves – who we are as individuals.

AP: Yeah, thank you for that. So, if I understand you correctly, the difference between interacting with technology and interacting with the natural world is that the natural world’s experience is more holistic. In contrast, the experience that we get from technology is more like a flattened experience. It’s not…

SF: It gives you, yeah, it gives you a glimpse. So I’ve had to do ceremonies and rites of passage for people in various locations, and sometimes, during the pandemic, I had to do crossing-over ceremonies for people in their final moments of life on a screen. I had elemental tools present with me, and I worked with those elements as part of my doing a send-off for someone who was dying. And so I will hold up a dish of salt and blessings on your body and give thanks to it in your life now passing, taking up some incense, blessings on your mind and your life now passing, taking up a candle, flame blessing on your will in your life now passing, taking up water, blessings on your emotions on your life now passing, taking up a crystal, blessing on your soul as you journey into the other world, Tír na nÓg, heaven, the summer land, whatever it’s called according to the person who’s crossing over.

And I have found that while it’s not the same as doing a crossing over or a funeral where I am in an environment where the wind is blowing, the sun, a representation of fire, is shining, with Earth beneath our feet, with the breath that we have also connected us with wind and with water, moisture in the air, our bodies or there might be a pond or a lake nearby, it’s a full experience when you’re working with the elements in their pure form. But we can work with them in our practices.

I’ve encountered people from different traditions who say I’m not in a natural religion. Still, they’re working with old Gods and Goddesses that have connected with dimensions of Nature as part of their history through time. So, Thor of the Oak and Thunder, for example, and I think some of its semantics are how people choose to self-identify and what group and peer group they’re part of. Still, the elementals, represented in the five-pointed star encircled, link old and ancient Paganism with contemporary Paganism. The ancient Greeks had the five-pointed star; the pentagram encircled as something rooted in the Pythagorean mystery traditions. So for myself, who entered Paganism, actually, through my study of the classics, it was a Psych major as an undergraduate. But I’ve loved the classics, ancient Greek and Roman cultures and ways of being. I didn’t embrace everything those cultures had as part of their ways of being, but some of the philosophy continues to be with me today. So, I think many people are pagan practitioners and work with nature symbols, nature divinities, and nature forces but just do not want to call it Nature. That’s okay; there’s a lot of diversity, and one of the things about Nature is that it’s diverse; it’s not a monoculture.

Yeah, that’s a good point. Thank you, Jeanette. She’s thanking us both for all we do for Paganism.
I also noted a couple of comments here. Karl says no ocean or Grand Canyon picture can ever do them justice. For example, you can only experience them, not watch them.

AP: Yeah, that’s on my bucket list. Karl also says, “People make tech; we don’t make trees. Natural things still have their own self/spirit/Kami rather than being a construct, which are all parts of our human ego.”

That’s interesting. I’m philosophically fascinated with the distinction between the natural and the artificial because one could argue that everything is natural, even man-made things. But there is still the perception of a difference between the two, as Karl explained.

SF: Yes, and the word Kami was just mentioned in that comment. As part of my international interreligious work, which I started years ago, I’ve also been part of something called the Parliament of the World’s Religions. It started in 1893 in Chicago, Illinois, in the central part of the USA and back in 1893, it was considered a pioneering event because it brought together not only Abrahamic religion practitioners but people from many different paths and people from religious forms rooted in Asia. Well, in 1993, there was a centennial rebirth. I was among the Pagans who took part in that centennial rebirth, spoke at the Parliament of the World’s Religions back then, and have been part of the parliament ever since. Through my work with the parliament, I’ve had the real privilege and honour of being able, often with interpreters, to have direct conversations with nature religion practitioners from different traditions worldwide. I know the word Kami. I first encountered it when I met a hereditary Shinto priest, and we found so much in common with my practice of contemporary Paganism and his ancestral practice of the Shinto religion. There are just many, many parallels with that. When I was in South Africa, the 1999 Parliament of the World’s Religions was held in Cape Town. I was one of half a dozen scholars, practitioners, and speakers selected to be part of an international interfaith Round Table at that conference.

A scholar who has now crossed over to the other world, Hans Küng, is well known for his interreligious work called This Round Table Together. He was doing it for German television, and I had the opportunity to represent contemporary Paganism as one of the few women in the Round Table. The other woman was a member of the South African Parliament and a Priestess of the Zulu religion. So we had a chance to… and she spoke excellent English, which was great. During our breaks during this day-long session, we had a chance to talk about our different experiences. Here again, working with directions, working with the Spirit of Place, working with ancestors, and going out into natural areas as a way of spiritually nurturing ourselves and helping us learn and grow were some things we found we had in common.

I had the opportunity when I was at the Parliament in 2018 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Here, an interpreter was needed to talk with one of the … some people would call them shamanic practitioners. Still, someone from the Amazon who was there to speak about the need to stop the destruction of the rain forest in the Amazon and as someone who has been a champion of forests, not only the oak forest where I live but forests around the world, being able to talk to someone who is the defender of the Amazon rainforest and have a conversation was really powerful. Something that we both shared was our way of having a relationship with the trees in the forest where we make our home. So, I have found that contemporary Paganism has much in common with a wide variety of nature religions around the world. I often use the term nature spirituality over the last decade; I’ve been using that term more as people have been practising their spiritual paths of Paganism, connecting with ancestral traditions or traditions that are connected with a particular area of the country or place on the planet where they’re at. And I find it’s a more useful umbrella term. Some people don’t want to be labelled; some people say my church is in the woods, or My church is Nature. Some people want to embrace terminology that doesn’t automatically require a download of definitions. I capitalise the word Pagan, and I really hope that it becomes a widespread practice, too.

AP: Oh thank you, thank you, for saying that because we were having a discussion exactly about the capitalisation of Paganism the other day.

SF: I’ve been working on it for 35 years and I realized that not all the style manuals, in English, in the USA, are doing that but increasingly journalists are starting to capitalise Pagan. If you’re going to capitalise Buddhist why not capitalise Pagan? I mean we deserve equal treatment and part of my interfaith work has really been rooted in building bridges of understanding amongst people of different backgrounds but part of it also is a proactive way of trying to build a better understanding of contemporary nature religion. I do not claim to speak for all nature-religion practitioners, all Pagans, all Wiccans, Druids, Heathens, whatever, I do not. I am a voice but one of the things that I think is really important is that we find ways to listen and to share our perspectives across cultural, national, and lingual faith-tradition lines and I really think greater understanding, hopefully, will build some understanding for common ground where we can work together to be part of the solution and not the pollution, here on planet Earth.

AP: I like your sayings, ‘Get off the screen, go into the green,’ and now, ‘Be part of the solution, not the pollution.’

SF: Well, I’ve been an environmental activist pretty much my whole life.

AP: I can tell.

SF:I was one of them, but many people helped birth Earth Day in the USA from 1970 to April 22nd 1970. I was one of those. I was at my undergraduate Campus, College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, USA, and I felt it was essential that we have an Earth Day event on campus. And what we chose as our focus for our teach-in, as they were called back then, basically getting people together to share ideas and information about aspects of the environment. We focused on the health of a large body of water called the Chesapeake Bay, right off the Atlantic. We were in a part of Virginia called Tidewater, and the Chesapeake’s pollution was horrible. In 1970, that wasn’t the only place with polluted water in the US and other parts of the world. In the decade that followed that very first Earth Day, all sorts of federal legislation were passed in the USA: a Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act and the Environmental Protection Agency. So we shared the science of what was going on with pollution with the Chesapeake Bay and then did a call for action. I’m happy to say, as a result of that first Earth Day Back in 1970, not only were people on campus but also in the community and other parts of the Tidewater area coming together to take a look at the problem and take action to clean up the bay and much has been done.

More needs to be done, but Chesapeake Bay has become healthier. It came from calls to action from many different places, not just Earth Day, but scientists had been concerned about that. Still, I think environmental events, especially the climate strike that happened back in 2019, right before the pandemic, really boosted the signal about the need to pay attention to our environment, not consider ourselves on some… I know Shakespeare said all the world’s the stage, but Nature isn’t a backdrop. It’s part of us. We’re part of Nature, and when we talk about the environment, part of Nature, the ecosystems, the plants, the creatures that are all around us, we need to pay attention to what’s happening with them.

Water quality, not only the quality of water but also who has access to water, has been a topic that has been researched in various ways. Back in 2004, when I was at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Barcelona, Spain, right before the main Parliament, there was an assembly of religious and spiritual leaders. I’m very thankful to have been invited to participate in a religious leaders’ conference at Montserrat, which is a Roman Catholic Monastery and a place for the Dark Madonna. Yes, I got to go into the monastery and see the Black Madonna, which many people say is rooted in Mother Earth. That’s a whole ‘nother, I know, another topic. But essentially, it was one thing we shared and discussed. People compared notes about water quality and water access. I talked with people who had to walk miles with their water containers to get water for the day, and we need to take a look at what major corporations are doing with water access and how they’re treating the waters of our land. In addition to working with the Parliament, I’ve been involved in a number of other special environmental endeavours, the water walks that have happened in the past, and this was about, I think it was 2012, there was a water walk, and the Anishinaabe people were organizing this and Anishinaabe some people know them as Ojibwe are in Canada as well as in the United States and one of the grandmothers, who has been part of the water walks, came to Madison, Wisconsin. We had an interreligious gathering at the start of the water walk. I was honoured to be amongst the people and religious leaders who came and spoke at that interreligious service. One of the things we were endeavouring to do was raise consciousness about water quality, water access, and water protection. So, that was an example of how activism, ecoactivism, and spirituality came together in an interreligious way.

IWe need to speed up our attention and actions, and I still think we can make a difference and mediate climate change. Still, so often, other things grab the headlines and the attention not only in media, mass media, and public media but also on social media. So, one of the things I’ve been involved with over the last few years is an international, interreligious, environmental endeavour called Green Faith. I think Circle Sanctuary may still be the only Pagan spiritual community part of this international, interreligious network, but we are sharing information and doing actions together. It gives me hope and enthusiasm to know there are ways to connect with people who may believe quite differently than us, different theologies, different ways of being and people from different parts of the world. I think it’s essential that nature-religion practitioners make themselves more visible in our quest to combat climate change and have a healthier planet.

AP: Thank you, Selena, and thank you, Winde5, for the super sticker.

And Hank is asking about AI, and in your view, AI hardware is part of Nature. Would moving the human consciousness into the AI realm to live forever not be an egocentric act rather than a unifying one?

SF: I think a lot depends on who’s organising it and its purpose. I’m continuing to educate myself about AI, including ways of being able to upend it because what I mean by upend it is in the States if you are attempting to communicate with a major corporation – I tried to do this earlier today because there’s going to be an action for a bank that is contributing way too much money to the fossil fuel industry. So on the 16th, the Bank of America will get some corrective feedback from many people, from many faith traditions and political backgrounds from around the world, about their emboldening of the fossil fuel industry. So, I attempted to call the customer’s service line this morning to give some corrective feedback early. Whether you call it a bot or however you define the AI, they essentially have it all automated, and I attempt to go into a deeper dive and talk to a live human – I have not yet beat that system yet. I may have to give them an identifying number or whatever. Still, whenever I’m booking an airline ticket, I have to find a way beyond the automatic artificial intelligence that’s been programmed to have a robot answer your questions instead of talking to a live human. I’ve used the word agent, and I just keep chanting it until they finally give up and let me talk to a human. Is that AI? I don’t know, but it’s connected with that dimension. I don’t think…

AP: Yeah, what do you think? Yeah, what do you think about the idea of transferring one’s consciousness, for instance, to live forever by artificial means?

SF: Well, humans are creating artificial intelligence. I don’t think we should just write it off due to too many scary science fiction movies that one might have seen. I do think it can be a useful tool but like with any tool what is one’s intention? Who’s using it? Who’s controlling it? I’d say one of the most complicated and problematic uses of AI has to do with how information is shared in social media and algorithms and to actually give a boost to incorrect information, especially lies spread by politicians is not helpful.

AP: So yeah, I guess that I was wondering, in terms of somebody who’s following a path of nature spirituality, how to navigate, you know, what you call the digital age in terms of… is it something that is in contrast with nature spirituality or is this something that can be in line with it, can be worked with?

Thank you, Lindsey.

SF: I don’t see concrete per se with technology and the natural world. I’ll just use that as I think we need to find ways of using technology, including automatic translation devices on social media; I’m able to talk with people of other languages I have not studied by using a translation – click on translate – when I’m posting something to Facebook. It’s very helpful in that way; it can help us, and I think in terms of having people be aware of ways of working with Nature therapeutically, there are ways of teaching that on a screen. I like taking some nature videos and sharing them on social media. I don’t for myself; I don’t see a huge conflict between the technology humans are developing and working with and the natural world. For me, technology is a tool, but just like anything else coming from the ancient Greek Pagans, all things in balance, know thyself and things in moderation were some adages that come to us from the ancient Greeks. And I think that technology can be helpful. I’m thankful for the opportunity to have a conversation with you and be there with everybody else that’s happening to tune in live due to technology. I’ll take my camera, and I’ll take my phone and some other things out into the green with me, and I will do, at times, video nature rituals that I’m doing, do some teaching, and then share that. But suppose we’re just staying by a screen and not allowing ourselves to develop a direct relationship with the natural world. In that case, we’re missing some opportunities to grow in our understanding of what it’s like to be human here, not only within our consciousness but to connect with that wider world we are all part of.

AP: As a last question I’d like to ask you, I know that you are an environmentalist – it was very clear from this conversation and I was wondering in what ways if any, you know, environmentalism helps the path of somebody who is on a path of nature spirituality or Paganism, I mean in what way being an environmentalist helps with the spiritual path?

SF:I think when you are increasing your awareness of nature rhythms, of different dimensions of the natural world, when you’re developing relationships with, for example, the oaks out here, being able to watch their lifespan, not the whole lifespan, a lot of them live much longer than humans but to recognize from a small acorn a mighty oak grows. Yes, you can talk about oak spirits, and you might work with that as part of your Paganism, but if you are also developing a relationship not only with individual oak trees but with the species, if you are working to improve the health, to bring about reforestation to counter the deforestation. I think it all works together. Now I know in environmental circles, I have gone and spoken at a variety of environmental conferences and often, I mean encountering people who would consider themselves not religious, not spiritual, they would call themselves secular, maybe secular humanist, maybe atheist or agnostic or a free thinker and have no room within their worldview to do anything so-called spiritual.

Well, whenever I’m speaking on the environment, I try to share my own perspectives in ways that people, regardless of whether they’re religious, spiritual or secular, can connect with the environment in a meaningful way. So when I’m guiding a ceremonial experience, I may use some additional verbiage; if I’m in an all-pagan circle where people are pagan spiritual or pagan religious, okay, we’re connecting with the spirits of this forest. If I’m with a bunch of scientists, that isn’t their worldview, or if very few of them have that, I’ll say let us experience this ecosystem with all of our senses. Now, that may really take a different form, but I do think that observation is so key to science. And when I got my undergraduate degree, it was a Bachelor of Science, not a Bachelor of Arts. I love science. I think it’s really important to develop scientific thinking and critical thinking, develop a hypothesis or a theory, collect data, analyse the data, get rid of the theory if the data is not working or do some additional studies.

I don’t see a big conflict within my consciousness between science and religion or science and mysticism. I think that many people have mystical experiences but not a framework in which to understand or work with them, and I find when I am helping people who have a loved one dying or I’m with the person who is dying, one of the most important things I endeavour to find out is what is their framework. If they are connected with a particular religion, what is that religion? If they have a spiritual philosophy rather than consider themselves, you know, religiously identified. Okay, what is that? And if they have no time of day for religion or spirituality, and they don’t see a hereafter or whatever, they should also be with them in that reality. For myself, whether it’s counselling or helping a person at their end of life, I do think listening and connecting and being able to creatively develop ‘languaging’ around helping whoever is going through that process. I like envisioning a time when we can find more ways to connect. And I think it’s important for us to not only get our information from sources that we agree with but also to be aware of the range of attitudes and perspectives that exist so that we can adapt, especially those of us who are activists, we can adapt our actions accordingly.

So, going back to your question about… okay, if you’re an environmentalist, how can that help Nature’s spiritual practices? I think that in addition to learning about a mint plant and connecting with its essence and what you might use it for as part of a pagan practice, whether it is drying the mint and sprinkling it around your house to bless it or taking a fresh sprig and putting it in a cup of water and aspurging to bless your home. Developing a relationship with the species as a whole and plants in particular can help you with your gardening. As someone who’s very much involved in the environmental activism realm, knowing the name of the plant, what research has been done and most importantly, if you’re going to consume a plant internally or work with it in some way, it’s going to be interacting with your body – well, check the data. With herbology, more people are now sharing their experiences and not only their folk wisdom, but more people are looking at the science around plants, what helps them grow, and what sustains them. If you are preparing something with that plant, do you boil it or steep it? When do you harvest it? Is it when it comes into flower, or do you get the leaves before it blooms? If it’s a root, chances are you’ll get it at night or in the Autumn when the plant is storing its energy there. So, I think nature-spirituality practitioners would do well to understand the science and the Magick connected with different aspects of the natural world. I think that we all need, as part of our communion with Nature, to not only tune in but to listen to what is happening to the environment and listen for messages about what we can do to bring about a healthier relationship with humans in the natural world and a healthier planet.

AP: Thank you, and here we have a question. Can I ask… are we interacting with the individual plant with the spirit of the species?

By the way, Lindsay please repost your question because I looked through the chat and couldn’t find it but I know that you’ve been trying to ask something. So what about this?

SF: Yeah, thank you for that question. I do both. If I’m going to harvest some plants. We have something called wild bee balm, Monarda fistulosa, for those of you who want the scientific name. Before I harvest, I will go to a patch of the wild bee balm. I will honour the plant species as a whole. I will pause and invite it to give guidance to me in my harvest, how much to take, where to take and then as I start working with the individual plants, I don’t just randomly start cutting; I attempt to be sensitive to the individual plants and as part of wildcrafting as well as horticultural work. It’s really important to recognise you are receiving a gift when you’re harvesting, to not only attune as you begin, in some traditions, a kind of asking permission or asking help as part of that process and when you’re done giving thanks to the plant. You’ll find that kind of tradition of honouring plants connected with the harvest and giving thanks at the end; you’ll find that across different nature-centred paths. And I think it’s important to develop our relationship with the spirit of the whole species and to recognise we’re actually working with individual plants. So, good question. Yes, and that works with creatures too. I don’t have any cats in my life at present. Still, I have kept an altar to Bast ever since I was saying that the High Priestess of that ceremonial magical lodge back in the early 1970s, and I not only honour Bast as a form of the divine and work with her in connection with cats that have been in my life or the people who have cats have particular needs. But to me, it’s a way of connecting with the spirit of the cat, is to work with a deity that has direct access to that.

AP: Yeah, that’s a good point. Lindsay wanted to say AI is divination without moral reasoning. It’s a billion dice roles deciding which path through a maze to take.

SF: TThat’s a really good way of characterising it. I am seeing that people are using AI in a variety of ways. There is a big debate in the art world right now about AI-created art. Is that art, or isn’t it? As somebody who made my living as an artist before I gave up art and photography as my main career path and went into being a Priestess this lifetime, I think there is much to think about and explore regarding AI and how we’re using it. I am fascinated by how AI is being used in the art world. But as somebody who supports bards and artists, I hope we continue to have humans creating art and not evolve the art world into something that’s AI only or dominates our commercial art world. I know AI is now generating some Hollywood movie posters. Still, there are holdouts, and I’d like to see a balance between artists creating the images from within their processes and, yes, having some AI art, but it shouldn’t be taking over the whole world. There’s something magical about the creative process and what happens as we give birth, whether it’s to a painting, song, dance, theatre performance, essay, or novel. I celebrate creativity, and AI should be a tool and not take over.

AP* Well, maybe the key is what you said; it’s not about the final object. It’s about the process, and that’s something that you cannot… I’m a fan of technology and the new advancements in technology, so to be fair, I always think of things as tools and not threats. So, I don’t think that art made by humans is ever going to disappear. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think so, and one of the many reasons is that, as you said, it’s not just about getting a picture or a portrait. It’s also about the process. So, the process that the artist goes through.

SF* You asked me early on, you know, how has Paganism changed over time? When I first started practising Paganism as a young girl, I didn’t have a name for it then. It was, actually, as a result of my work in classics. I was president of the classics honour society, Eta Sigma Phi, on campus, and I started the classics club. So those people whose grade point average wasn’t so good could also enjoy the classics. So, as president of both organisations, I went to the faculty and said we needed to experience the classics. I also did my very first public pagan ritual as part of academia. This was to be an exploration of welcoming in the spring. so I got the whole faculty of the Classics Department, some grad students, some undergraduates who were part of the group, and we went out into an area of the campus called the sunken garden and did a rite of spring, “yo able hey.” Well, people use that in connection with the rites of Dionysus; we used it in that rite called on Dionysus called on Mother Earth, have not been the same since. What was once an academic exercise to really help people get a fuller understanding of ancient Greek and ancient Roman society actually set me on the Priestess path. So I would say if you’re going to be working with some ancient sacred names, be prepared and invoke them. Be prepared. They may come up and show up.

Back then Paganism was bringing up in many different ways but we didn’t have the kind of connectivity back then and Paganism, in the US in particular, it wasn’t safe to be out as a Pagan in many places. When I founded Circle in 1974, only a few years after that experience, I thought it was really important to have a way that people could create community together and in 1978 took the next step which is to actually incorporate our community, our organization as a non-profit religious institution. So we became one of the first pagan churches legally established in the USA and back in… oh, now it’s been almost 16 years, we actually were able to win some victories for pagan rights in the USA.

Actually, to get this pentacle added to a government list so that it could be included on grave markers for Pagans who had served in the US military and who had died. Yes, it took 10 years, several lawsuits and a lot of trips to Washington to accomplish this. Still, I did not plan to start a pagan church as part of this lifetime. Still, it is really important that not only Paganism as a whole, in all of its diversity, but also nature religions, we have the same rights and that we have religious freedom in whatever country we’re in. The right to have couples be married in legal ceremonies and the right to be able to practice our religion without being killed, harassed, or harmed in some way. I’m the executive director of the Lady Liberty League, and within Circle Sanctuary, that is one of our services.

We also do podcasting work and have Circle Sanctuary Network podcasts. So, those of you who are interested in interviews, workshops, rituals, and discussions. You can check us out on the Circle Sanctuary website. And should you have a religious freedom issue, if you’re Pagan, you’re being discriminated against, if you’re being harassed, we can’t promise we’re going to solve that for you, but if you want to contact us at lll@circlesanctuary.org. We have a network of people who attempt to help those in need and work for a world with freedom, liberty and justice for all. So hail Libertas, the ancient Roman Goddess of Freedom, also depicted in the US, most often, as Lady Liberty. So may we have the freedom to be ourselves, to practice our religion and to work for a world where people can practice openly if they choose to do so.

I really appreciate your work, Angela. I appreciate the opportunity to be here with you. I’m so excited about this contribution to Pagan Studies. My husband, Dr Dennis Carpenter and I, along with several other people back in 1995, hatched what was then called the “Nature Religion Scholars Network” with the American Academy of Religion, and neither one of us were Religious Studies majors or professionals in terms of academia, we were both from Psychology realms. Still, I’m happy to report that it is a thriving part of the American Academy of Religion for Religious Studies people. And I really do think that we need to come up with ways to connect those of us who feel we can be open about our Paganism and work together with others to dispel the misinformation and the discrimination and have a world where there is hopefully more kindness and understanding and collaboration.

AP: YYeah, that sounds like a great way to end our conversation. Yeah, it was lovely to have this conversation with you, Selena; thank you so much for coming over to Angela’s Symposium, and yeah, it’s, you know, for everybody interested in Selena’s work, please check out the info box because there are all the links and the contact details so that you can reach out to her or follow her on social media.

SF: Best wishes for all your work. I’m so glad to connect with you and learn about your endeavours. May Pagan Studies as an academic discipline continue to grow, evolve, and thrive.

AP* Yeah, it’s not easy to be in Pagan studies. So I obviously really appreciate all the work that you’ve done in Paganism and for Paganism, and you know, in my case as an academic obviously, it’s really difficult to be a Pagan Studies scholar and academics that are in this field know, you know, how much of a struggle it is. One of the reasons I opened this YouTube channel and my social media platforms was to let people know that Paganism and other Magick-practising traditions are studied from an academic point of view because many people had no idea this was the case. So I’m trying to disseminate the work of Pagan Studies scholars so that the field can grow and because otherwise, you know, with a situation that we have going on where Religious Studies Departments gets shut down. Paganism is not a priority; let’s put it that way. So I’m trying to give voice to Pagan Studies scholars who have done a lot of important work in the field, and I’m hoping to give, you know, my contribution to see it grow and be acknowledged in the public sphere.

SF: Well, I guess I have a happy story to tell you because I was recently in a session with some Pagan Studies scholars who talked about job descriptions, and this was an international private Zoom. Job discrimination is occurring within academia, and I have been part of World Interfaith Harmony Week, a United Nations endeavour. Still, different organisations and institutions all around the world have events as part of that, February 1st through 7th every year, and so I always do some kind of workshop at our Imbolc festival and have that as part of our World Interfaith Harmony Week participation, I’m happy to report that once again I was at a college as a pagan minister, taking part in interreligious international dialogue as somebody who is Pagan and the Campus Chaplain convened us again.

Most people were in person at the college, but two were on Zoom. An African Muslim from the Middle East and Saudi Arabia and me from my oak forest home in Wisconsin or that we sometimes jokingly call Witch-consin, USA. So it’s good that more people are finding ways to be present. I do think if anyone can come to Chicago in August and be part of the Parliament of the World’s Religions, regardless of what your personal religious orientation is, if you’d like to really have a sense of the diversity of spirituality, religion and philosophy in the world today, it’d be a great place to be together. One thing that people have in common in the Parliament is to be able to join together to build understanding, and we do that with our Pagan Spirit Gathering, which happens during summer solstice week every June 18th through 25th. So, for those who want more information about that, you don’t have to be Pagan to be part of it, but you definitely have to be Pagan-friendly. We bring together Pagans from many paths, not only to celebrate summer solstice but also to do some leadership training and a variety of concerts and celebrations.
Thank you so much, Angela, for your work and for bringing this into cyberspace. It’s a Wonderful way to connect; I say I connect in cyberspace, face-to-face, and inner space, and capitalised Pagan.

AP: Yes, I will take note of that. Well, I’m in total agreement with that; it’s just that, yeah, it was a discussion, you know, for the book, but I agree with you. And yeah, thank you so much for being here and accepting my invitation. I encourage everybody in the chat or those who will watch the video afterwards to check you out on social media. I really thank you for all the work that you’ve done for Paganism and within Paganism.

SF: Well until we meet again, be well and bright blessings.

AP: Thank you, thank you so much everybody for being here. Please check out the info box for Selena’s contact details and you will also find all the ways to support this project. And if you’re watching this now or later don’t forget to SMASH the Like Button, Subscribe to the channel, activate the Notification Bell and obviously share this video with all of your friends, like all of them and Subscribe to be a Symposiast. Until next time, stay tuned for all the Academic Fun.

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