PaganSquare.com - WitchesAndPagans.com

Minneapolis, the capital city of Paganistan, has the great good fortune to be home to two sacred waterfalls.

The better-known of the two is Minnehaha Falls, on Minnehaha Creek as it approaches the Mississippi River. This year for the seventh year running, the local pagan community will process to the Falls and make the traditional offerings to her as we kick off our annual Pagan Pride celebration.

The other is the falls on the Mississippi River in the heart of what is now downtown Minneapolis. (In fact, the city of Minneapolis was originally sited where it is precisely because of the falls.) This is the Mississippi's only waterfall; it loomed so large in local lore that in Dakota the Great River itself is known as Hahawakpa, “the river of the falls (haha).” In the whirlpool at the waterfall's foot lived Wanktehi, god of waters.

In 1682 Belgian explorer and missionary Louis Hennepin “named” the falls for his patron saint, Anthony of Padua. They've borne this imposed name ever since.

Well, it's time and high time to lose this imperialist name, which has absolutely nothing to do with the falls themselves.

If you didn't know it was a ritual, you wouldn't know it was a ritual.

An hour before moonrise, we gather at the coven bench in the park.

We swap news, laugh, eat fruit and cookies. Our newest member is just now back from five months in the Middle East; it's Sun and Moon to my eyes to see her again. She's giddy with the freedom of it all: public paganism. Being second generation, she'd never experienced the broom closet before: the pagan generation gap.

We toast her return with (ahem) iced tea from the thermos.

Somewhere behind the tree line, the full Moon is rising unseen. We sing to her, then go downhill to the lake.

Each has her own intent. Silent, we circle the already-dark water, its surface stippled with south wind; soon the Full Moon will shine from its midst. The power builds as we go.

Don't let familiarity blunt the impact.

These are revolutionary words.

All acts of love and pleasure are my rituals.

No circles, initiations, or Drawings-Down necessary.

Wiccanly speaking, that's revolutionary.

And—audacity of audacities—it's a revolution built right into the system.

Some years back, one of the local Wiccan churches (living in Paganistan, I get to say such things) held a Beltane ritual with three simultaneous Great Rites: male-female, female-female, male-male.

What do you mean, “who's that”?

Haven't you ever seen a priest of the Horned before?

Well, duh. Of course they're ram's horns. When's the last time you saw a bull's horn shaped like that? Or an antler?

For gods' sakes. Of course they're tattoos. What did you think, he was born with them?

Where are you from anyway, Cowanistan?

“I work with Ereshkigal, Oya, and Tlazolteotl,” she tells me.

Then she pauses for my reaction.

Welcome to the Irony-Free Zone.

Gee. The Sumerian Goddess of the Underworld, Santeria's Lady of Storms (mispronounced), and the Aztec 'Eater of Filth.'

Clearly, I'm supposed to be impressed.

Really, it was a turning point in the life of the local pagan community.

It was back in the Bad Old Days of the Satanic Panic.

A conspiracy (really, one can't call it anything else) of nazzes sent out their evil missionaries, so-called “occult experts,” to spread their lying gospel of sacrificed babies, multi-generational “ritual abuse,” and “recovered memory syndrome.”

To their everlasting shame, the media, psychologists, and police departments all over the US were taken in by this claptrap.

Several rituals in local parks had been disrupted by the police. Following an incident that has (jocularly enough) gone down in local pagan lore as “The Great Lammas Massacre,” people had had enough.

Writer Paul Tuitean and a couple of other guys who had personal connections with local law enforcement set up a community meeting with the Minneapolis and St. Paul police departments.

If genuine, she could well be the oldest human artifact in Paganistan.

From coiffed head to pointed toe, you can see the resemblance to the Lady of Willendorf immediately.

Articulate, enigmatic, she simultaneously merges with, and emerges from, the stone that is her matrix. At 5¼ x 2¼ inches, you could hold her in the palm of your hand.

And believe me, when you see her, you want to.

She now resides in the heart of the American Midwest at the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts. If the stories are true, her previous home was a cave in southern France, and she's 22,000 years old.