For some Connecticut residents, paganism isn't just a religion — it’s a community.
WSHU’s Molly Ingram spoke with CT Mirror’s Shahrzad Rasekh to discuss her article, “Pagans in Connecticut: Stepping out of the (broom) closet,” as part of the collaborative podcast Long Story Short.
WSHU: Hi Shahrzad. You have a really interesting story about something that I think many people probably have some misconceptions about. How did you choose to write this story about paganism in Connecticut?
SR: Hi. So I was pretty new at the Mirror and in Connecticut in general, and I was looking for something that not only I wouldn't really know about but that people in Connecticut wouldn't really know about. So I actually started by going on Facebook and seeing what kind of different social, cultural and religious groups were prevalent in Connecticut. And I stumbled across a few different groups that were focused on paganism. So it was a little bit tricky to get access at first, because people were obviously a little bit weary, a little bit skeptical of what I could write, just because they hadn't had great experiences with media and paganism in the past. And so that's how I got started.
WSHU: Tell me about Tony, one of the people you talk to for this story.
SR: I met Tony through a few members out of Connecticut's Welcoming Pagan Network. I told them what the Mirror usually did, which was focus more on public policy, and that I was trying to find a way to incorporate the Mirror’s general approach and this whole aspect of paganism into one story. And so they recommended that I approach Tony because he had had a lot of experience working on the Witch Trial exoneration project, which resulted in a bill being passed last legislative session that basically exonerated or absolved people accused of witchcraft in the 1600s. That wasn't exactly the direction that I wanted to go with the story. But it was a great start because he himself was also pagan.
WSHU: And how did he find paganism in Connecticut?
SR: Well, Tony first started dabbling in paganism in the mid-90s, after a visit to Salem. He became interested in the history of the Salem Witch Trials and basically the whole social movement and feminist movements, or anti-feminist movements, back then that had resulted in such injustice for the people who had been killed. As a police officer, he was also rather justice-focused. So that piqued his intrigue in that sense. But he also started looking into actual paganism as it is actually practiced, not in the sense of it being used as a weapon to kill women.
And so when he returned to Connecticut, he started going to different paganism-related stores, some of which don't exist anymore. He went to pick up some magazines from magazine stars that also don't exist anymore that were focused on witchcraft and paganism. And little by little, he developed his sense of what he saw as his path in paganism. So he started going to different temples and different groups. One of them, which was mentioned in the piece, was the Pantheon Temple, which at the time had been started in Bridgeport, and had a different name. And that wasn't the right fit for him. But he ultimately found different groups like Connecticut's Welcoming Pagan Network that he did find as a better fit.
And so I first met him at the Harvest Gathering that I wrote about in-depth in the piece. We talked at a bench in the forest, and we just had a great conversation about his efforts to lead the witch trial efforts, along with a few other people. And I met him a second time later to talk about his own experience with paganism and his life experience in general.
WSHU: A lot of your photos are from the Harvest Gathering. What was it like to attend that? And what were the things you found important to take photos of when you were there?
SR: It was a great and really unique experience. I met some people who were hesitant to be photographed, and even a handful who were reasonably wary of me. There had been a photographer for another publication the year before, who hadn't necessarily respected everyone's wishes not to be photographed. So I had to be very clear with my intentions, and ask for consent more than I generally would have.
Even though I did ask the organizers to announce my presence a few times, I would still ask people who were in my photos if they were okay with it, just because not everyone is comfortable being public with their faith and their paganism. But overall, it was a really welcoming community. As you walked across the campground, everyone came up to me to say welcome home, and it really aligned with many of the traditions I've grown up with, which are Persian traditions. Because they're also rooted in paganism, it was really interesting to see how something that I was raised with connected so much with something that I thought I had no idea about.
WSHU: And from your photos, I get a really good sense of community, it seems like this is a group of people that are maybe used to being ostracized and judged, but from what you write, they've used that to grow stronger together.
SR: Yes. So their community is so supportive from what I've seen. And when I was trying to photograph them, I was trying to look for different moments that would really show their community. I tried to focus on kids to show how parents were involving their kids. But I also tried to focus on older members of the community, trying to show the range, the age range, but also the social range, and the activities that were going on. I had kids playing, I had people pouring tea during breaks between activities. I wanted to show the diversity, not only of the people, but also of activities that were organized and of paganism in general, in the sense that they have so many different practices, and not everyone ascribes to all of these practices, but they're all there and available for the community to be able to learn from and use in whatever ways they feel best aligns with their faith.
WSHU: And I have to ask, because we've never had a photographer on the show, is it difficult to talk about your photos without showing them to an audience? I'm sure you're used to being able to present them in a certain way when you're talking about them.
SR: As a visual person, I don't necessarily think that it's difficult for me to describe them. I love photography so much that I could just talk about it for hours. So it's more about not boring the person I'm talking to because I remember every detail of my photos, but I'm able to see it because I know what the photo looks like. So I guess it's more difficult to convey it to the person in its entirety.
