I certainly sensed a bit of defensiveness Rhiannon 
and I can understand that given what you say. Some of the posts on here about pagans are ridiculous indeed. Very sad that you have to think about hiding your books and stuff if your kids friends come over. I sort of wonder though whether the seeming desire to show/claim that modern paganism has this long tradition going back millennia is counter productive. Perhaps going for the modern would distance neopagans from the old associations? Is it really important to neopagans that there should be this association with the old religions? What do you think?
Maeght
Just an example to, I hope, explain some of my tetchyness.
Some years ago my daughter, then aged 8, accompanied me and my older daughter, aged 16, to a gathering at the Conway Halls in Holborn; a gathering called the Beltaine Bash. It is a celbration of May Day, one of the eight major Sabbats of the Pagan Calendar.
It was, it is no longer held, a chance to meet pagan friends who we only saw once every six months, to stock up on incenses, to maybe get a new robe or cloak for ritual and to consume copious quantities of mead (alcoholic honey, in case you don't already know, and, reputedly, the oldest alcoholic drink know to man).
There were dozens of other kids of the same or similar ages and 8 year-old had a great time.
As she and her sister were under 18 they were exluded from the opening and closing rituals. This was a necessary precaution due to the "pagans take young girls and do nasty things to them against their will" that was prevalent then - still is in the minds of some.
At school on the following Monday her class were asked what they had done at the week-end and she answered honestly and in some detail, especially when the teacher asked her a lot of questions.
I arrived at school to pick her up and was met by the teacher and two police officers. I was told that I was to be arrested for exposing my daughter to the disgusting sexual excesses of a witch's orgy.
I was lucky that the cops asked me for my version of what had happened, let me go, and told me that they would submit their report to their superiors.
The police contacted me a week later and stated that there was a possibility that I would be charged with exposing a minor to moral danger. As a result of this the officer suggested that I contact the Pagan Federation who had lawyers who would help me.
The upshot was that, thanks to Pagan Fed and the lawyer they supplied, no action was taken and the teacher wound up being reprimanded for the way she had interrogated my daughter, for falsely reporting her as having said things that she did not, confirmed by classmates who now seemed to think that she was " someone of interest" and for passing a confidential report to the local priest.
It was not all good news. She was spat at, slapped, pushed around, sworn at by some of the children. My ex-wife attempted to get a Court Order to prevent me having access to my daughters. The school stamped down hard on the bullying at school and the Pagan Fed lawyer helped me keep my access to my children.
Some on here, as Rhiannon has stated, still feel that pagans, especially pagans who are witches (all witches are pagan but not all pagans are witches), are not really acceptable.
One, you may have noticed, insists on mentioning the fact that I am a witch with monotonous regularity, using it always in a negative manner.
Maeght, please accept my apologies for the manner in which I have addressed you, many, even in this day and age, still consider that Exodus 22:18 should be acted upon, and it does rankle.
Please understand that most of the history of all pagan "sacred sites" comes from archaeology and archaeologists and most of our (pagans) knowledge of the beliefs of our pagan ancestors comes from fragmentary records that escaped the flames that destroyed most of the written records and from pagans of non-British origin, Gaelic, Celtic, Norse, Greek, Roman and Egyptian.
Thus, I am afraid, your comments and criricsm of modern pagans and their attachment to our ancestors hit a seriosly raw nerve.
I sort of wonder though whether the seeming desire to show/claim that modern paganism has this long tradition going back millennia is counter productive. Perhaps going for the modern would distance neopagans from the old associations? Is it really important to neopagans that there should be this association with the old religions? What do you think?
What we are trying to do is to revive the Old Religion. We do not claim to be continuing it.
Despite what Margaret A Murray and Gerald Gardner would have it, paganism as it is practised today is NOT a continuation of the old, pre-Christian, paganism.
It is an attempt to revive that religion, a religion that was ruthlessly destroyed by Christianity (that won't go down well with some here), to recreate it if you will. It is not the fact that it is history that is important to us, it is important for what it stood for, what it thought was important, like the all things natural; natrual things the fed and clothed them, animals and plants and birds. A lot of pagans joined the various Green Partys, until, for the most part, their policies began to head for the lunatic fringes - many pagans are still active members of Greenpeace.
Yes, the historical paganism is important, the more we find out about it the more we can bring back to life - a second case of a resurrection connected to religion?
We do not claim that our rituals are the same as those practised by the people who, we feel sure, used places like Stonehenge and Avebury, we cannot know what they did or said.
Gerald B did modern pagans a serious disservice when he claimed that the Wiccan religion that he invented was a continuation of pre-Christian paganism; a disservive that we are still trying to reverse. It is a shame that there are still Gardnerian Wiccans who will not accept the truth about Gardner.
