Madeline’s Reviews > Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America > Status Update

“The occult world offers to the individual a free market of ideas. What this resembles, and not by coincidence, is the intellectual democracy of the scientific and academic communities.”

“Occultists continually affirm that certain experiences do not cease to exist simply because there is place for them in our customary order.”

“The groups within this book are largely non-authoritarian. The pagan view is one that says that neither doctrine nor dogma nor asceticism nor rule by masters is necessary for the visionary experience and that ecstasy and freedom are both possible.”

Paganism: the subject of this book. A religious movement that usually means the pre-Christian nature religions of the West.

Similar to anarchy, communism, etc. in terms of being misunderstood/misused in popular culture