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Over the course of our decades-long friendship, writer and activist Macha Nightmare has remarked to me on more than one occasion that paganism here in the Midwest has a more distinctively “regional” feel to it than in most other places.

(Macha, please correct me if I'm misquoting.)

Macha has traveled more widely than I have across the many-colored world of Pagandom, but—from what I've seen—my own experience tends to bear out her observation.

So one New Moon the coven sat down to discuss the matter.

What makes Midwestern Paganism different? Here's what we came up with.

2018 marks the 500^th anniversary of the first publication of the Theban script, now widely used by modern witches.

Theban first saw light in Johannes Trithemius' 1518 Polygraphia, in which he attributes the script to the legendary magus Honorius of Thebes: hence the name.

Trithemius' student Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486–1535) later included the alphabet in his De Occulta Philosophia (Book III, ch. 29) in 1531. From Agrippa, Theban made its way into several early 20^th century popular books about the occult, and it is through these that it probably entered the the modern Craft.

Certainly it came in early on. Ronald Hutton tells me that he's seen references to Theban among Gardner's papers now in Toronto, and it was in current use in London during the early 60s. I myself first became aware of the script in Paul Huson's controversial 1970 Mastering Witchcraft: A Practical Guide for Witches, Warlocks, and Covens. For my money, Huson's serifed Theban is still the most elegant version of all.

And Theban does have its own weird, witchy beauty. With all due deference to my colleagues who can read it as fluently as the ABCs, it's not a practical script. The letters are too complicated, too similar in shape for general daily use. But that's all part of its—ahem—charm. And as something that a certain group of people share, it's brilliant in-group strategy. If you can read this, you must be one too.

Time was, here in Paganistan, the Besom Brigade used to show up at the Heart of the Beast May Day Parade, black steeple hats and all, doing our precision broom drills down the middle of Bloomington Avenue.

There's no need to be afraid:

we are the marching Besom Brigade.

Schmeering on that herbal lube,

riding all night on our brooms.

Sound off.

Thir-teen!

So, one day the Interfaith Council asks the witch the deliver the opening prayer.

(By the way, this actually happened. My long-time friend and colleague Macha Nightmare has been active in Interfaith for years.)

She stands up.

“Witches dance to pray,” she says. “So I'm going to teach you one of our oldest, most sacred dances. It's called the Spiral Dance.”

A while back I had a call from my friend and colleague, Macha Nightmare. She had a new book deal and was looking for reasons to take pride in being pagan. As one does in these situations, she was consulting peers on the subject. That's kind of how elder-ocracies like the paganisms tend to work; it helps keep us honest.

“Well, we were first at a lot of things,” I said.

 “Like what?” she asked.