Navigating Academia and Spirituality from a Pagan Perspective

From early encounters with Methodism, Will Durant and Anton LaVey, my spiritual questing intersected with the Haight-Ashbury Counterculture. One culmination of this encounter was the emergence of the Strawberry Hill Coven. A second culmination was my disenchantment with Turtle Island and self-exile to Europe. In time – after many years of wandering through both Europe and India, I began to read for my Ph.D. at King’s College London and became completely seduced by the academic world. This seduction coincided with the rise of contemporary Western paganism as a new religious movement as well as the sociological interest in understanding the movement. The rest of this contribution delineates what I have been able to witness of the advance of Pagan Studies within the field of education. Successes have been slow but incremental and steady. For the well-being of our planet, they are also vitally necessary.