Pagan Prisoner Advocate's Guide

By Dixie Deerman

The Pagan Prisoner Advocate’s Guide exposes a national travesty — a pogrom of persecution against Pagans behind bars — and reveals a Wiccan clergywoman’s secrets to helping this vulnerable segment of the Craft community.
Co-author of The Goodly Spellbook: Olde Spells For Modern Problems, Lady Passion (Dixie Deerman) has taught Witchcraft to incarcerated and institutionalized people nationwide for decades, and has enabled them to secure their religious rights.
Evoking empathy for needy inmates and others, the High Priestess of Coven Oldenwilde in Asheville, North Carolina asserts, “There but for the grace of the Gods go we.” And she’s right: America imprisons more of its citizens than any other developed country.
Lady Passion explains how some laws penalize magical practices and make Pagans prone to arrest or committal. And she gives a blow-by-blow account of the petty and perverse ways that prison and institutional staff employ to violate the religious rights of Pagan and Wiccan inmates and patients.
Lady Passion’s experiences besting bigots with her wicked mix of cunning, courage, compassion, and resolve provide a model for volunteers to emulate.
Ultimately, Lady Passion encourages readers to step up and volunteer to advocate for convicts and the committed, and provides surefire insider tips to ensure they succeed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dixie Deerman
• Release date: May 30, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301245314

Dixie Deerman

Published Book: The Goodly Spellbook: Olde Spells For Modern Problems, Sterling Publishing,NY, NY 2005 Available: amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, everywhere Italian translation: Il Libro Degli Incantesmi: Antique Formule Magiche Per Risolvere Problemi Attuali, Milan, Italy E-book: Ask-A-Priestess in color, fully illustrated, author-signed edition at: www.oldenwilde.org Citations in other authors' books: Drawing Down the Moon, Margot Adler, 2006 The Temple of High Witchcraft, Christopher Penczak, 2007 Mystical Dragon Magick, D.J. Conway, 2007 The Living Temple of Witchcraft, Vol. 2, Penczak, 2009 Magazines: NewWitch, Oracle 20/20, The Mystic Buffet Newspapers: Mountain Xpress, The Indie, Asheville Citizen-Times Other web site: www.wiccans.org Numerous activist Witch national and state legal precedents set in the categories of Religious Rights, Public Health, Environment, and Peace (see at: oldenwilde.org Charitable works funded by donation in these categories: Activism Advocacy Divination Education Herbal Home Legal Magical Medical Military Personal Rites For counseling: http://www.oldenwilde.org/oldenwilde/members/pass/consult_lady_passion.html

Book preview

Pagan Prisoner Advocate's Guide

How to Aid & Advocate for Pagan & Wiccan Inmates & Institutionalized Persons

Lady Passion (Dixie Deerman)

Published by Coven Oldenwilde at Smashwords

Copyright Lady Passion, 2016. All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition 1.2, February 2016

Cover by *Diuvei.

Frontispiece: Pagans Behind the Iron Veil, original artwork by Cirnunnoz S. Cian,

one of the many Pagan/Wiccan inmates we’ve aided for almost two decades and counting.

Oldenwilde.org; Oldenworks.org

ArtMagicalAcademy.org; Wiccans.org

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CONTENTS

The Truth Behind the Wall

Why Incarcerated & Institutionalized Pagans Deserve Help

The Benefits of Advocating for Persecuted Pagans Behind Bars

How Institutions Differ

How to Begin

Inmate Religious Rights Entitlements

Ways & Means to Aid

Avoidable Pitfalls

Helpful Resources

About the Author

Other Books by the Author

T.V. & Radio Interviews and Articles

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The Truth Behind the Wall

I’m not a wanton lawbreaker myself, but I admit that I generally disdain many legalized inequities in life — the wealthy corrupt who flout laws with impunity, the politically corrupt who suppress our struggling population by passing punitive laws. A pacifist Pagan, I am galled that my tax dollars fund wars, back fracking, and other corporate pollution pogroms, etc. And I practice civil disobedience when I feel strongly that a law or plan is wrong, such as cannabis use. These reasons likely explain my willingness to help Pagan inmates and institutionalized persons.

I began initially simply teaching magic and officiating spellwork rites for a group of men in a nearby medium-security prison who asked for my and *Diuvei’s help.

From the start I had no qualms about serving medium or even maximum-security convicts of either sex. No facility is off-limits to me, so I’ve helped inmates in Sing Sing, Folsom, and Otisville with as much care as those on Death Row or in a transitional women’s prison in Connecticut.

As quickly as a closed penal system tends to breed, word spread like wildfire from convict to convict, jail to jail about my pro-prisoner stance, fearless manner, moving rituals, and ability to secure inmates the religious rights they were entitled to.

As inmates from all over the country wrote me uniformly detailing the same hundreds of perverse ways that prison personnel employ to persecute them, I learned of the reprehensible dark underbelly of the society I lived in.

Contrary to the prevailing assumption that inmates enjoy cable T.V. and tennis lessons — a kind of shadow country club life where they could get a free college degree, etc. — I discovered sad realities that forced me to add added many other services to aid them.

Because nothing could be farther from the truth: Many institutions are old and decrepit, and new ones are soul-crushingly sterile, so clinically devoid of character that they’re tantamount to a coffin or sensory deprivation chamber. The term prison gray took on a whole new meaning to