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I swear, it's the same every time I get back from a pagan festival.

Next morning, I get out of bed. I go downstairs to put the kettle on.

I get out the teapot and load the tea ball. Then I head for the back door to get a sprig of mint from the garden.

(Nothing says “Summer morning” better than fresh mint in your tea.)

Suddenly, contextual awareness kicks in.

 In Which Boss Warlock, As Usual, Doesn't Have a Clue

“They walk among us.”

Hey guys, check this out.

This is my new cowan drag.

(Models.)

Pretty good, hunh? Makes me look just like a cowan, doesn't it?

Oh, hey, and listen to this.

(Mugs.)

“Blessed be, my fellow cowans.”

Sounds just like one, doesn't it?

(Smiles modestly, looks at feet.)

I've been practicing.

“You stinking cowan,” I say, fondly.

My friend returns my grin. He's no cowan, and we both know it.

“Now, now,” he says in mock-offense. “No need to get insulting.”

Cowans. (First syllable like the animal.) What is it about non-pagans that makes them so...well, cowanish?

You're cowanish if you're:

• Clueless to the point of offensiveness, especially about things pagan.
• Unobservant, especially of your environment.
• Ignorant of the natural world and its processes.
• Uncomfortable with the body and things bodily.
• Incapable of seeing other people's perspectives.
• Unquestioning.
• Insensitive.
• Incurious.

Of course, these stereotypes are utterly unfair, and largely a product of pagan self-conception. You certainly don't have to be a cowan to be cowanish.

But, then, that's kind of the point of the exercise, isn't it? Nobody wants to be cowanish, not even cowans.

“Oh, I'm sure we'll manage to muggle through one way or other,” says my friend.

I love in-group humor. She's riffing, of course, off of the phrase “to muddle through,” but the Harry Potter allusion appeals, rather poignantly, to our shared paganism. I suspect that "struggle" is somewhere in the mix as well.

One way or another, she's saying, we're going to get through this.

“Muggle,” of course, is J. K. Rowling's name for those who live—truly a shudder-inducing prospect to some of us—without benefit of magic. The precise etymology of the word is unclear—to me, anyway—but clearly “muddle” is somewhere in the mix, with its connotations of imprecision and the slapdash.

I've never much been one for spells myself but, after nearly 50 years in the Craft, I'm so accustomed to living magically that the prospect of living in any other way seems grim indeed.

What does it mean, to live magically?

“Who you callin' 'cowan'?”  (Marvin Kaye and Parke Godwin, Masters of Solitude) 

Every community has one: a name for Them. You know, those “Not Us” People. In this, pagans are just like everyone else. Who are they, those mysterious non-pagans?

Non-Pagans. A term for when you need to sound neutral (or polite). Most non-pagans that I know are pretty amused to learn that they're non-pagans. Long-time resident in the pagan ghetto that I am, I appreciate the educative value of “non-pagan.” (Let's hear it for paganonormativity.) Mostly, though, this is an “inside-looking-out” term; I don't generally use it when speaking with fellow normos.