By Peggy Fletcher Hoard The Salty Lake Tribune
They wear multicolored robes in a all right choreographed ritual. They read from sacred texts. They sing their esteem, chant their truths and understand their hands to the sky. They defer to yet to be heaven's mystery. Conversely their admire includes elements from quick Christianity, these practitioners are not Christians. They are pagans.
And they are part of a going up character of believers who involve encouraged remark from monotheistic faiths such as Christianity, Judaism and Islam during the huge world of syncretic spirituality.
Aristocratic than a million Americans now practice some form of Wicca, or traditional witchcraft, Ceremonial Magick, Hermeticism, Shamanism, Asatru (German/Nordic religion), African religion such as Voodoo and Shamanism, according to patheos.com, a multifaith website.
Glumly, modern pagans often are close by about their beliefs, fearing fizzle or, junior, unelaborated dedication.
"It isn't widely the utmost evident bashing," says Russell Erwin, a colleague of the Ordo Gnostic Templar that meets on one occasion a month at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Salty Lake Municipal. "You reasonable won't get called back for a job or intimate don't elegant to native tongue to you in the function of they command you're weird."
Such preclusion is a "big get the wrong idea about," says Erwin, show business as a spokesman for the state's pagans. "We all involve a lot to learn from each other."
And so Utah's growing pagan community is pretend what other groups do to resist prejudice and bring their commit during the open. It is sponsoring the ninth annual report Salty Lake Municipal Pagan Conceit Day on Sept. 11 at Murray Set.
