Modern Magic Makers: A Look into the Neo-Pagan Movement in the U.S.

Witchcraft is the belief in the power of ideas to change your reality, my cousin Della*, a Wicca practitioner, told me. She often calls on Freya, the Nordic Goddess of love and war, when she wants to channel courage, strength, or love. Her imagination of Freya's energy makes it exist in this realm and fills her with the desired feeling — in the same way that she believes energy manifests itself as the guardian angel named Gabriel.

Della developed her distinct spirituality in opposition to the confining and abusive environment of her childhood, where she struggled with a strict, inflexible father and a mother who converted to Jehovah’s Witnesses when she was young. Della's belief system rejected this upbringing and gave her a sense of control over her world.

Della’s spirituality — while unique to her — fits within the larger grouping of American spiritual practices called neo-Paganism, which comprises many revitalized forms of ancient religions, including Wicca, Druidism, Goddess worship, Heathenry, Kemetism, shamanism, and nondenominational eclectic paganism. As of 2014, 0.3% of the American adult population identified with Pagan or Wiccan faiths, according to Pew Research — around 1.5 million individuals. Pew considers this small religious minority one of the most quickly growing religious groups in the United States; however, the exact population is difficult to determine because many worshippers shy from the term or define themselves by their marginalized status, decentralization, and hyper-individualized ritual practices and beliefs in opposition to dominant culture.

Della explained to me that her personalized spirituality started with her love and respect of the natural world, antithetical to the conventional idea of human ownership of nature. She resented the Christian concepts that she grew up with: the masculine and uncompassionate God; the church controlling people with the fear of Hell. She points to the 1996 cultlike movie The Craft as her spiritual turning point, and from sixth grade on devoured books about Wicca, folklore, Celticism, and Greek mythology. Texts about the neo-Pagan movement helped her build a sense of agency through a direct relationship with nature and in opposition to mainstream American Christian culture.

The power in a word: Neopaganism as counterculture

The term “Paganism” was originally coined by Christians during the Roman Empire to separate themselves from the many non-Abrahamic spiritualities, against whom they launched brutal witch-hunts. An estimated nine million victims were killed over centuries. What we consider neo-Paganism today first cropped up in the U.S. in the 1950s and 60s, when some naturalistic spiritualists reclaimed the fraught term. Despite a lack of blood or cultural ties to these historic Pagans, the American spiritualists rebelliously chose the “Neo-Pagan” label to associate themselves with the murdered nonconformists from centuries before.

They might not have known it, but the term tied them to an existing religious community, one which had continued quietly practicing their naturalistic religions for centuries. In the 2018 book Pagans and Christians in the City: Culture Wars From the Tiber to the Potomac, law professor Steven Smith traces a direct lineage from ancient to modern worshippers. He argues that paganism was never fully suppressed by the rise of Christianity in the world.

Nowadays, some practitioners hesitate to define themselves as Pagan and consider it a reductive — even dangerous — blanket label put on them by the non-Pagan world. U.S. law has been slow to add pagan religions to lists of protected identities in workplaces, prisons, and the military; and neo-Pagans have been harassed while partaking in religious practices in public.

Religious scholar Zhange Ni, in her 2015 book The Pagan Writes Back: When World Religion Meets World Literature, identified the most dangerous opposition to neo-Pagan religious freedom in the U.S. as “charismatic, conservative Protestant sects who view any form of contact with the supernatural outside Christianity as dangerous diabolism.”

While Della identifies as a Witch, she calls herself a "healer" to people who do not understand her religious beliefs. She uses this term to protect herself against ongoing negative connotations around the term "witch" caused by Hollywood and Christianity. Her true identity, though, she embraces as a rebellion against the persecution of historic witches and a way to empower herself to fight against oppression. Della's spirituality reminds her: “You are powerful. You can control your life.” This sentiment is shared with other neo-Pagans interviewed by psychologist Zohreh Kermani for her 2013 book, Pagan Family Values: Childhood and the Religious Imagination in Contemporary American Paganism. Kermani found that many female practitioners in particular use the adopted identity to reclaim their right to be powerful women.

Neo-Paganism changing in recent years

There is a recent spotlight on the religious group due to a declining hegemony in Christianity in the U.S. and the commercialization of niche communities on social media.

According to Pew Research, the population of Americans who identify as Christian has been steadily decreasing for decades, from 78% of American adults in 2007 to 63% in 2021. Pew estimates that the Christian proportion of the population could decrease to as little as 35% by 2070. Meanwhile, Pew projects that by 2050, the category of people identifying with “other religions” will account for 6.6 million people, or 1.5% of the total population. The survey organization identifies half of these "other religions" adherents as currently Pagan or Wiccan and the rapid growth as primarily driven by conversions to these two religions.

Pew Research’s 2007 and 2014 Religious Landscape surveys show that, in addition to growing, the neo-Pagan population in the U.S. is becoming poorer, more supportive of small government, more moderate and Republican-identifying, and more supportive of abortion and environmental regulation.

In addition to Americans who identify as neo-Pagan in Pew Research's surveys, the organization counted three in ten American adults as religiously unaffiliated in 2024, more than half of whom believe that animals can have spirits or spiritual energies, and around 50% believe the same about parts of nature and memorial sites. Similar to Della, these individuals believe in religion and spirituality, but reject the narrow, unpleasant Christianity from their childhoods.

In fact, Della's understanding of the spirit world is not entirely independent from Christian practices; she asked me, “What is 20 Christian women coming together and praying in a circle other than a spell?”

The Wiccan tradition is particularly tied to modern-day feminist movements focused on female power and free will.

Meanwhile, witchcraft is blowing up on social media and has been commercialized alongside Halloween. Online influencers and mainstream feminists speak in Wiccan terms to reject patriarchy and capitalism. They promote mindfulness and positive affirmations — which directly relate to the Wiccan practice of mental manifestation as affecting the physical world. The normalization of these practices creates space for recognition and representation of neo-Pagan practitioners. Notwithstanding debates about religious appropriation and commercialization, this normalization of pagan practices is creating a safer world for neo-Pagans experiencing recent (and ongoing) oppression.

For a more in-depth look of how the mediatization of paganism allows practitioners across the globe to interact with each other and spread their practices to interested converts, check out the 2020 analysis by social media researchers Berit Renser and Katrin Tiidenberg, Witches on Facebook: Mediatization of Neo-Paganism.

Della has a child, only a few years old, and I know that she is thinking about her own upbringing as he grows up. She will reject the patriarchal, overbearing, abusive way that her parents raised her.

And I’m sure Della gets her little one involved in her tarot card readings.

* I have changed Della’s true name to preserve her privacy.

Further reading:

Pew Research’s 2014 Religious Landscape Study

Pew Research’s 2022 Modeling the Future of Religion in America

Social media researchers Berit Renser and Katrin Tiidenberg’s 2020 analysis, Witches on Facebook: Mediatization of Neo-Paganism

Philosopher George Santayana’s seminal series on philosophical naturalism, The Life of Reason

Ethnographer Joan-Pau Rubiés’ 2006 article, “Theology, Ethnography, and the Historicization of Idolatry” in the Journal of the History of Ideas

[Partial paywall] Psychologist Zohreh Kermani’s 2013 book of interviews with American Neo-Pagans, Pagan Family Values: Childhood and the Religious Imagination in Contemporary American Paganism 

[Paywall] Scholars Helen Berger, Evan Leach, and Leigh Shaffer’s 2003 book, Voices from the Pagan Census: A National Survey of Witches and Neo-Pagans in the United States 

[Paywall] Sociologists Helen Berger and Douglas Ezzy’s 2009 book, Teenage Witches: Magical Youth and the Search for the Self

[Paywall] Anthropologist Sabina Magliocco’s 2004 book, Witching Culture: Folklore and Neo-Paganism in America

[Paywall] Religious scholar Zhange Ni’s 2015 book, The Pagan Writes Back: When World Religion Meets World Literature

[Paywall] Law professor Steven D. Smith's 2018 book, Pagans and Christians in the City: Culture Wars From the Tiber to the Potomac