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Paganism in Minnesota is composed of widely different neopagan movements and organizations as well as Native American religions and non-European Immigrant Traditions such as Hinduism and Buddhism. The two Principle Native American Tribes currently in Minnesota are the Dakota or Sioux to the South and West speaking a Siouan language and the more numerous Ojibwe to the North and East speaking an Algonquian language. The largest Europagan Neopagan religion is Wicca, followed by Neodruidism. Both of these religions were introduced into the United States during the early 1960s from Great Britain though some traditions may have a deeper history. Germanic Neopaganism and Kemetism appeared in the US in the early 1970s. Hellenic Neopaganism appeared in the 1990s.

Definitions

Wiktionary like most dictionaries defines pagan as any non-Abrahamic religion. That is all or any religion except Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Likewise, the other Wiktionary definitions for paganism, Wicca, witchcraft and Druidism are relatively up to date.

History

The vast majority of the history of humans in the land we call Minnesota is a Pagan History by the above definition. It can be categorized into four basic periods around the impact of the arrival of Europeans.

Pre-Columbian Period

There is a brief discussion of Native American pre-History in Minnesota in the Native American Inhabitation section of the History of Minnesota Wikipedia Article.

In the sequence of North American prehistoric cultural stages first proposed by Gordon Willey and Philip Phillips in 1958, the Lithic stage was the earliest period of human occupation in the Americas, accruing during the Late Pleistocene period, to time before 8,000 B.C. (before 10,000 years ago). The stage derived its name from the first appearance of Lithic flaked stone tools.

The time encompasses the Paleo-Indian period that subsequently is divided into more specific time terms such as Early Lithic stage or Early Paleo-Indians and Middle Paleo-Indians or Middle Lithic stage. Examples include the Clovis culture and Folsom tradition groups.

The Lithic stage was followed by the Archaic stage.

• The Lithic stage (before 8000 BC)
  • c. 16,000 BC Peak of the Des Moines Ice Lobe, at this stage in the Glacial history of Minnesota our future state is largely buried under glacial ice.
  • c. 14,000 BC Clovis tradition in other parts of North America begins, ice retreating.
  • c. 9000 BC "Browns Valley Man" oldest known human remains in Minnesota, Plano culture.
  • c. 9000 BC The rising water of glacial melt flowing into Lake Agassiz overtops the Big Stone Moraine and the subsequent violent flood down the new Glacial River Warren carves out large sections of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers. This was the last great change in the geology of Minnesota.

• The Archaic stage (8000 BC to 2000 BC)
  • c. 7200 BC Bradbury Brook site near Mille Lacs
  • c. 6600 BC Minnesota Woman site near Pelican Rapids
  • c. 5000 BC Old Copper Complex in Northern Minnesota

• The Formative stage (2000 BC to 500 AD)
  • c. 1750 BC Jeffers Petroglyphs in use for some time.
  • c. 1000 BC Early Woodland Period begins, bow and arrow replacing the atlatl.
  • c. 700 BC The first burial mounds, tumuli or barrows built in Minnesota
  • c. 500 BC First Mounds built at Indian Mounds Park (Saint Paul, Minnesota)
  • c. 200 BC Hopewell Tradition specifically the Trempeleau Hopewell Tradition in southern Minnesota and Laurel in northern Minnesota. They began c. 500 BC further south in the Ohio Valley.
  • c. 0 BC Middle Woodland Period begins, Full Hopewell Culture. Carved stone begins to replace clay for tobacco pipes. Approximate traditional date of the beginning of the westward migration of the ancestors of the Ojibwe.

• The Classic stage (500 AD to 1200 AD)
  • c. 500 AD Late Woodland period begins, smaller burial mounds go out of favor, larger ceremonial mounds increase. The Chiefdom form tribal structure becomes more complex.
  • 535-6 AD Extreme weather events of 535-536 may have ended Hopewell Dominance.
  • 796 AD Traditional date of the formation of the "Council of Three Fires" the Tribal Alliance of the Ojibwe, Ottowa and Potawatomi or Niswi-mishkodewin in Ojibwe at Michilimackinac or the region around the Straits of Mackinac .
  • c. 980 AD Norse colonization of the Americas begins in Greenland
  • c. 1000 AD Early Mississippian Culture reaches Minnesota in the the form of the Oneota Complex. Considered a strong possible ancestor Culture to the Dakota. Similarly the ancestors of the Ojibwe had originally living at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River on the Atlantic coast and had begun moving west upriver into the Great Lakes region long before.
  • 1000 AD Leif Eriksen lands at Vinland and a settlement is established at L'Anse aux Meadows voyages to 'Markland' may have continued for up to 400 more years.
  • 1200 AD The Mississippian cultural center at Cahokia is entering its zenith creating the largest earthworks in North America. The Oneota Complex of Wisconsin and Minnesota are provincial. There is evidence the Cahokian Eastern Provinces warred with the early form of the Iroquois Confederacy in the pre-history of Native Americans in the United States.

• The Post-Classic stage (1200 to 1492)
  • c. 1250 Cahokian peak with a population of 30,000 to 40,000 not to be equaled until 1800. Much of its religious structure has been reconstructed as the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex.
  • c. 1300 The Native American city of Cahokia begins to decline.
  • c. 1350 Norse Western Settlement at Greenland abandonded.
  • 1362 The date inscribed on the highly controversial Kensington Runestone discovered near Alexandria Minnesota.
  • c. 1400 Cahokia abandoned.
  • c. 1450 Norse abandon Greenland.
  • 1492 Christopher Columbus lands at San Salvadore in the Bahamas.

Minnesota Mission Free Period

• (1492 to c. 1700)

• • c. 1620 Beaver Wars begin
  • 1661 Raddison and Sieur des Groseilliers (Médard Chouart) visit the Dakota living at the Western end of Lake Superior. These are the first confirmed Europeans in Minnesota. They are fur traders. In France King Louis XIV comes of age and retires his regents.
  • 1663 Louis XIV nationalizes the fur trade and expands it.
  • 1665 Ojibwe at La Pointe, Wisconsin. Father Allouez establishes a mission there. White Settlement on the East Coast is expanding and pushing the tribes west.

• • 1775 to 1783 American Revolutionary War
  • 1786 The "Council of Three Fires" becomes the core member of the Western Lakes Confederacy or the Great Lakes Confederacy along with a number of other tribes.
  • 1794 Battle of Fallen Timbers

Christianization Period

Native Americans

Kensington Runestone

Revival Period

Native Americans

The spread of Neopaganism in the United States started in the 1950s with the introduction of Neodruidism and Wicca from Great Britain. These reached Minnesota in 1968 through books and then in person in the 1980s. Germanic Neopaganism (or Heathenism) entered the US during the 1970s, developing into new denominations proper to the US, notably Theodism. In the same period the first Kemetic groups were formed, with the tradition itself originating in the US.

Wicca, introduced by Raymond Buckland in 1964, is the most known of the Neopagan movements. The 1980s and 1990s saw the emergence of a number of reconstructionist and other ethnic traditions. Hellenic Neopaganism (Dodekatheism), for example, has flourished since the 1990s, along with parallel developments in Greece.

Immigration

Organizations

Further information: List of Neopagan movements

Notable US Neopagan organizations:

• Wicca/Goddess/eclectic:
  • Feri Tradition (from ca. 1960)
  • Feraferia (Hellenic-inspired goddess worship, established 1967 in southern California by Frederick M. Adams, as a continuation of his Fellowship of Hesperides founded 1957), based in Nevada City
  • Church of All Worlds, formed 1962, formerly the largest of all the pagan movements, which centres on worship of the earth-mother goddess;
  • Pagan Way, Chicago
  • Circle Sanctuary, based in Wisconsin, the largest Neo-Pagan organization in the U.S. Its newsletter, Circle Network News, has some 15,000 subscribers (as of 1992).[2]
  • Council of Magickal Arts, Texas
  • Mid-Atlantic Pagan Alliance (since 1999)
  • Cherry Hill Seminary, Vermont (since 2001)
  • Covenant of the Goddess (since 1975)
• Hellenic Neopaganism
  • Hellenion
• Neodruidism:
  • Reformed Druids of North America (since 1963)
  • Ár nDraíocht Féin (since 1983)
• Germanic neopaganism:
  • Ásatrú Folk Assembly (AFA, Nevada based, since 1994, re-activation of Stephen McNallen's 1974-1986 Asatru Free Assembly, formerly Viking Brotherhood, 1971-1974 [3])
  • The Troth (since 1987 [4])
  • Ásatrú Alliance (AA, since 1988, Arizona based [5])
  • Odinic Rite (ORV, "Vinland Regional Office", since 1997 Wisconsin based [6])
  • Urglaawe (since 2007, Pennsylvania based [7]). Draws on Pennsylvania German folkways.
• Kemetism
  • Church of the Eternal Source, since 1970
  • Ausar Auset Society, since 1973
  • Kemetic Orthodoxy, since 1988
• Nondenominational Pagan groups
  • Free Spirit Alliance

Festivals

Further information: List of Neo-Pagan festivals and events

• Pagan Spirit Gathering (since 1980)
• Starwood Festival (since 1981)
• Heartland Pagan Festival (since 1986)

Demographics

Wiccan churches and other Neopagan institutions are becoming more common in the US. However, estimates of their numbers vary widely. Most of the 1990s studies put the number of US Neopagans between 200,000 and 1 million (0.1% to 0.5% of the total population). A 2008 Pew Forum survey put "New Age" religious believers, including neopagans, at about 1.2 million.

According to David Waldron (2005), roughly 10 million Wiccan-related books were sold in 2000 (up from 4.5 million in 1990), as reported by the American Booksellers Association. However this gives only a rough guide to the size of the Wiccan-related economy and he comments that the added complexity of determining the boundary between Wiccan or neo-Pagan products and New Age products makes determining the size of the movement from this rather problematic.

More conservative estimates include Helen Berger and Craig Hawkins in Exploring the World of Wicca, who guessed from 150,000 to 200,000. Melton, J. Gordon, Jerome Clark and Aidan A. Kelly in New Age Almanac (1991, p. 340) estimate a total of about 300,000 people associated with the "overall movement" of Wicca, with "tens of thousands" of members active in between 1,000 and 5,000 covens. Conservative estimates arrive at about 50,000 Wiccans in the US (Religious Requirements & Practices of Certain Selected Groups: A Handbook for Chaplains, 1993) while Wiccan high estimates claim several million (Phyllis Curott, The Book of Shadows: A Modern Woman's Journey Into the Wisdom of Witchcraft and the Magic of the Goddess). The largest estimates posit 1 million Wiccans , a fast growth compared to the 100.000/200.000 estimated in late 1990s and early 2000s.

Geography

TwinCities Metro Area

• Paganistan (NOT Paganisatan! ;-) )

Principle Forms

Wiccan Traditions

"Emblem of Belief" #37

Wicca was introduced to North America in 1964 by Raymond Buckland, an expatriate Briton who visited Gardner's Isle of Man coven to gain initiation. Interest in the USA spread quickly, and while many were initiated, many more non-initiates compiled their own rituals based on published sources or their own fancy. Another significant development was the creation by feminists in the late 1960s to 1970s of an eclectic movement known as Dianic Wicca, or feminist Dianic Witchcraft.

The United States Department of Veterans Affairs in an out-of-court settlement of 23 April 2007 with the family of Patrick Stewart allowed the pentacle as an "emblem of belief" on tombstones in military cemeteries.

Norse Traditions

Main article: Ásatrú in the United States

Ásatrú in the United States begins in the early 1970s with Stephen McNallen's 1974-1986 Asatru Free Assembly, formerly Viking Brotherhood, 1971-1974.

In 1986, the "folkish vs. universalist" dispute regarding the stance of Ásatrú towards white supremacism escalated, resulting in the breakup of the Asatru Free Assembly. The "leftist" (universalist) branch reformed as The Troth, while the "rightist" (folkish) branch became the Ásatrú Alliance (AA). McNallen re-founded his own organisation as the Ásatrú Folk Assembly (AFA) in 1994.

In 1997, the Britain based Odinic Rite (OR) founded a US chapter (ORV). This means that folkish Asatru is represented by three major organizations in the US, viz. AA, AFA and OR. The three groups have attempted to collaborate within an International Asatru-Odinic Alliance from 1997 until 2002, when it dissolved again as a result of internal factional disputes.

Discrimination charges

Native American

Further information: Religious discrimination against Neopagans

According to feminist pagan Starhawk "religious discrimination against Pagans and Wiccans and indigenous religions is omnipresent in the U.S."

Controversies mostly surround religious rights in US prisons and the US military. Prison inmates' right to practice minority religions was asserted in 2004 by the Supreme Court in Cutter v. Wilkinson.

See also

• Religion in the United States
• Christianity_and_Neopaganism
• Paganistan

References

• Berger, Helen A. (2005) Witchcraft and Magic: Contemporary North America. University of Pennsylvania Press ISBN 081223877X, ISBN 978-0812238778
• Helen A. Berger, Evan A. Leach, Leigh S. Shaffer, Voices from the Pagan Census: A National Survey of Witches and Neo-Pagans in the United States, Studies in Comparative Religion (2003), ISBN 978-1570034886.
• Berger, Helen A. (1998) A Community of Witches: Contemporary Neo-Paganism and Witchcraft in the United States. University of South Carolina Press ISBN 1570032467, ISBN 978-1570032462
• Adler, Margot, Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today, Beacon Press, 1979; revised and updated 1987.
• Ellwood, Robert, Religious and Spiritual Groups in Modern America, 1973.
• Gottlieb, Annie, Do You Believe in Magic? The Second Coming of the Sixties Generation, Times Books, 1987.
• Robert S. Ellwood, Notes on a Neopagan Religious Group in America, History of Religions (1971).
• J. G. Melton, Encyclopedia of American Religions, 7th ed., Detroit (2002), ISBN 978-0787663841.
• G. Melton and I. Poggi, Magic, Witchcraft, and Paganism in America (1992).
• Pike, Sarah M. (2004) New Age and Neopagan Religions in America. Columbia University Press ISBN 0231124023, ISBN 978-0231124027

This page will be placed in the following categories if it is moved to the article namespace.

Categories:

• Modern paganism in the United States