A Practical Guide to Pagan Priesthood: Community Leadership and Vocation

By Lora O'Brien

Develop Your Skills and Talents for Effective Pagan Leadership

Join Reverend Lora O'Brien as she explores the duties, responsibilities, challenges, and benefits of becoming a priestess or priest. Whether you are currently in a leadership position, are considering taking on such a role, or would like to be more informed about the Pagan priesthood, this book helps you learn about the practical skills required and provides ideas on how you can improve yours.

There's a pressing need in the Pagan community for strong, aware, responsible, and accountable leaders. A Practical Guide to Pagan Priesthood provides a skill assessment so you can get a sense of your strengths and areas to work on. You will also discover the two primary categories of priestly duties—pastoral and sacerdotal—as well as insights into group leadership, teaching, crisis counseling, communicating with deity, devotion, healing, life rites, and community celebration. As Paganism continues to grow and new generations become leaders, this guide shares a practical picture of what the Pagan priesthood can be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide
• Release date: Oct 8, 2019
• ISBN: 9780738759876

Lora O'Brien

Lora O'Brien (County Waterford, Ireland) has been consciously following a Pagan path for twenty-five years, and dedicated specifically to the Irish Goddess Mórrígan fourteen years ago. She is a modern Draoí—a practitioner and priest of indigenous Irish magic and spirituality. For a decade, Lora served the community as manager of Cruachán/Rathcroghan, one of Ireland's most important sacred sites. Additionally, Lora is a cofounder and legal celebrant with Pagan Life Rites Ireland.

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About the Author

Lora O’Brien is a native Irish author, teacher, and guide with more than twenty years personal and professional experience in Irish history, heritage, archaeology, mythology, and pre-Christian Irish Spirituality. A modern Draoí, Lora has been consciously following a Pagan path since 1994 and is cofounder and Reverend legal celebrant with Pagan Life Rites Ireland. With her partner Jon O’Sullivan, she runs IrishPaganSchool.com, an online learning environment where students can connect to the heritage, culture, and spirituality of Pagan Ireland in an authentic and meaningful way, every day. Lora has three children who are getting seriously grown up these days, and not enough animals or plants in her life to keep her happy. Find her online at LoraOBrien.ie.

Though not one for responses to personal private messages, she can be found in the comments section on her YouTube channel, sending regular Irish Resources emails to her busy mailing list at LoraOBrien.ie, engaging with her patrons at //Patreon.com/LoraOBrien, and moderating community groups over on Facebook: The Morrigan’s Cave, Learn Ogham, Journeys in the Irish Otherworld, Do The Work System, and the Irish Pagan School Community.

Llewellyn Publications

Woodbury, Minnesota

Copyright Information

A Practical Guide to Pagan Priesthood: Community Leadership and Vocation © 2019 by Rev. Lora O’Brien.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Llewellyn Publications, except in the form of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

As the purchaser of this e-book, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. The text may not be otherwise reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, or recorded on any other storage device in any form or by any means.

Any unauthorized usage of the text without express written permission of the publisher is a violation of the author’s copyright and is illegal and punishable by law.

First e-book edition © 2019

E-book ISBN: 9780738759876

Book design by Samantha Penn

Cover design by Shannon McKuhen

Llewellyn Publications is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: O’Brien, Lora, author.

Title: A practical guide to pagan priesthood : community leadership &

vocation / Rev. Lora O’Brien.

Description: First edition | Woodbury, Minnesota : Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd,

2019. | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: "Instructions

for and insights into being a Pagan priest who serves community,

fellowship, and deity. Includes survey of established priests of various

Pagan faiths"—Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019030773 (print) | LCCN 2019030774 (ebook) | ISBN

9780738759661 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780738759876 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Neopaganism. | Priesthood—Miscellanea.

Classification: LCC BP605.N46 O27 2019 (print) | LCC BP605.N46 (ebook) |

DDC 299/.94—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019030773

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019030774

Llewellyn Publications does not participate in, endorse, or have any authority or responsibility concerning private business arrangements between our authors and the public.

Any Internet references contained in this work are current at publication time, but the publisher cannot guarantee that a specific reference will continue or be maintained. Please refer to the publisher’s website for links to current author websites.

Llewellyn Publications

Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

2143 Wooddale Drive

Woodbury, MN 55125

www.llewellyn.com

Manufactured in the United States of America

For Jon, my Partner in Priesthood, and in Life.

Contents

Introduction

Section One: The Duties of a Priest

Chapter One: Pastoral Duties

Chapter Two: Sacerdotal Duties

Chapter Three: Modern Paganism

Chapter Four: Self-Assessment

Section Two: Pastoral Skills and Development

Chapter Five: Group Leadership

Chapter Six: Community Leadership

Chapter Seven: Learning and Teaching

Chapter Eight: Crisis Care

Section Three: Sacerdotal Skills and Development

Chapter Nine: Communicating with Deity

Chapter Ten: Devotion to Deity

Chapter Eleven: Magic Skills and Ethics

Chapter Twelve: Life Rites and Community Celebration

Conclusion

Appendix: Priesthood in Modern Pagan Traditions

Bibliography

Recommended Resources

Our Survey Respondents

Introduction

Officially, I’ve been a Pagan priest for twenty-two years (at the time of writing), and this is a book I wish I had my hands on many years ago. That’s not in any way an attempt to set this work up as some sort of ultimate guide. It’s not; how could it be? How could any book be?

What this book does is provide something of a baseline or common standard at least, practical advice for building community leadership skills, and information on how to be a priest within the wide world of modern Paganism. As far as I know, there isn’t one outside of specific traditions’ practices.

People have been acting as priests for as long as they have been engaging in religious practice, and we do have many examples of historical nonmonotheistic religious structures and how they organized and trained their priests through various different cultures back in the day. Look at ancient Greece and Rome, Egypt and Sumer. Look at the Maya civilization, the Hindu traditions of India, and the pre-Christian societal structure of my own home, Ireland. It is beyond the scope of this book to go into any great depth on the priesthood of any particular culture, but I do urge you to explore and research any that catch your attention.

What Is a Pagan Priest?

You may or may not be familiar with the term Pagan, but we can clarify what I’m talking about here in a modern context so we’re all on the same page.

If you were to ask ten different Pagans what the word means, I can pretty much guarantee you’d get ten different answers, and that can even be from practitioners who are coming from a similar culture or even a similar tradition! That said, most modern definitions of Paganism would be along the lines of a polytheistic or pantheistic nature-worshipping/earth-based spiritual practice or thereabouts. What do those words mean? Theism refers to the belief in a deity or deities such as a divine creator (or meddler, depending on your perspective.) So, polytheism refers to the belief in multiple deities, as opposed to the more currently culturally familiar monotheistic belief in a single god. Pantheism is the belief that everything is divine, that a deity resides in everything and everyone, rather than being characterized or personified in a single or multiple entity or being. Pagan pantheism offers the belief that divinity is inseparable from nature and that God is in everything as a part of it. Deity is immanent in nature.

What I’ve written are only descriptors, and they can apply across many different religious and cultural beliefs. Note that polytheism or pantheism on their own aren’t necessarily Pagan—many Christians around the world might be classed as pantheistic, for example. It’s the combination of those beliefs with the nature worshipping part that gives us the Pagan definition. Nature worship or identifying with an earth-based spirituality is any of a variety of religious, spiritual, and devotional practices that focus on the worship of spirits or a deity/deities considered to be behind the natural phenomena visible in nature. The figure or figures could be personified natural features (e.g., a mountain, river, ocean) or a fully realized and sentient guardian divinity or specific deity.

Modern Paganism (sometimes called Neopaganism), is what’s covered through the book, and any historical or non-Neopagan beliefs or references mentioned have been clearly identified as such in the context of the writing.

If you’re not entirely sure what Pagans do these days, here’s a quick and very generalized catch-up.

There’s a strong focus on ritual through most of the traditions ranging from daily and personal to part of a large community festival. It could also be both or anything in between. And just to throw a little #NotAllPagans at you (because there’ll always be some), you could be a Pagan your whole life and never do a ritual at all, or at least not consciously, because I’d personally argue (and have done, don’t you know it) that as humans we live our entire lives through ritual, a series of actions performed in a set or prescribed order, whether it be large and grand affairs such as getting married, or the small, everyday habitual rituals that run a household.

Pagans may draw from multiple sources (usually referred to as being eclectic), or may follow a single contemporary tradition, of which there are many. Some examples of contemporary traditions would be: Wicca (British Traditional, Eclectic, or even Faery); Druidry; Witchcraft; Heathenry/Ásatrú; Goddess Worship; Afro-Caribbean (though not all who follow those traditions would class themselves as Pagan); or historical reconstructionist practices such as Greek, Egyptian, Celtic, Roman, and so on. There are loads of others, and we touch on the specific priesthood practices of at least some of these traditions in the interviews section of the appendix. There’s often a focus on honoring deities and/or natural features, observing natural cycles (such as annual seasons, lunar cycles), and rites of passage (birth, transitioning into adulthood, marriage, and death). The forms of ritual a Pagan might conduct or participate in varies greatly by tradition, but some examples of things we do ritual for might include cleansing, consecration, worship, or devotion to Deity; magical attainment of particular outcomes, healing, and so on. Some things incorporated into Pagan rituals might be drumming, chanting, dancing, trance or vision work, offering of food and drink to gods and/or ancestors, group or community feasting, and so much more.

The modern Neopagan movement is a vast and complex thing, and people who identify as Pagan spread across the globe. Likewise, its priesthood has grown very organically through the decades that followed Gerald Gardener going public with his book, Witchcraft Today, which was published in 1951 after the anti-witchcraft laws were repealed in England. The book’s release and spread were the start of Neopaganism as we know it, and the trails that have been blazed from then to now are interesting to follow. If you’re into it, I recommend the work of Philip Heselton and Ronald Hutton.

In the context of Paganism, a priest is a person who honors a deity or deities; performs religious ceremonies, rites, and duties; and administers sacraments—that is, anything of sacred significance. The priest may or may not be ordained or initiated within a particular tradition, and they may or may not hold the relevant legal status in their home country or state. It’s a loose enough definition, and given the diversity of Pagan traditions, paths, and beliefs, who is recognized and refers to themselves as a priest or priestess can be a very mixed bag, honestly. As mentioned above, there aren’t really any community training norms or standards within the Pagan priesthood, and indeed most of us would rail against one person or group setting any sort of bar for others. Thus, there is a lot of freedom … and very little accountability. The lack of accountability is far from ideal for community leaders and folks who find themselves at the forefront of honoring Deity, performing religious rites, and being responsible for sacraments, as they are often seen (from the outside at least) as representative of Pagans in general.

Who Is This Book For?

If you are considering taking the step into priesthood and are taking it seriously because (like me) you’ve seen the harmful consequences of those who do not take the role and responsibilities of priesthood seriously enough—or conversely, who take it way too seriously and use it primarily as an ego prop—this book is for you. If you’re trying to decide whether you want whatever priesthood is going to mean for you, this book is also for you.

And if you’re already a priest, don’t turn away! This book is also for those of you who have considered yourselves priests or been considered by your community as priests for a while now. In every job, continuous professional development and brushing up on skills are both ideal and often necessary to fulfil your role adequately and make sure you are up to the demands of those you work for or serve. In this case, it could be the people of your community, or the god/s you are devoted to. So, if you want to be the best darn priest you can be, you will get a lot from this book, too. I know I did from the researching and the writing of it.

The aim is to help you to figure out what it really means to be a Pagan priest and to provide you with practical support, guidance, and resources to build your skill set, leadership qualities, awareness, and commitment to getting this right.

How I Came to Write This Book

My first book on Irish spirituality was published in 2004, when I had just turned twenty-six years old. By the time I wrote my second book, I was eighteen years into my (lifelong, I hope) studies of modern Pagan practices, and already sixteen years involved in the Pagan communities both in Ireland and internationally (that was in 2012).

In that second book, I included a chapter on Pagan priesthood in an Irish context because I had more than an inkling by that time—and it’s becoming more apparent to me every day—that in our modern Pagan communities, we have a very distinct lack of cohesive and clear understanding of what priesthood is about. We need to teach and train those wishing to be involved in Pagan priesthood.

When I first got involved in our community at the tender age of eighteen, there were a few elders and teachers who were safe and knew what they were doing, and thankfully for me I fell in with one of them from the start. I began to get involved more at home and abroad in local or international events. Later, with the coming of the internet through—Gods be with the days!—email lists and Yahoo! groups, my circles and experience widened. I saw that there were a whole host of chancers, as we say in Ireland, who were completely winging it and were no more qualified to lead than I was back then. They had gained position and power from being among the first to write a book on a particular topic (often merely to cash in, I’m sorry to say), or just by dint of having hung around long enough that they were familiar with what people wanted to hear and could say the things that got people doing what they wanted them to do.

Around my early twenties, I worked my way through a series of initiations and a training program in Traditional Wicca (Alexandrian lineage, from Janet and Stewart Farrar through Barbara Lee’s coven). I achieved my 3rd Degree and standing as a High Priestess in that system, was presenting and teaching (online, at home, and over in the UK), and had stood in circle and sat in meetings and through social events with many of the really big names in Paganism.

Then I left Wicca, knowing it had been tremendously useful to me as a training and development system but not as a personal practice. I decided that I could do with putting myself through more initiations because that’s just how I roll. In 2002, I got involved with the only working OTO (Ordo Templis Orientis) group in Ireland at the time, went through the Man of Earth cycle, had some pretty profound self-development experiences, and left them in 2006. I viewed that OTO organization as a community, but not a spiritual belief system; as such—I was never ordained as part of their EGC Church, for example. My personal spiritual practice developed independently alongside my time there.

Going forward, I had a strong set of experiences and beliefs: my childhood and teenage otherworld experiences; inherited family history with ancient sites and stories; my lifelong fascination with ancient Ireland; my professional work as an Irish Heritage sacred sites community business manager (CEO), teacher, and guide; my personal journey through abuse and understanding the psychology of trauma; and all that I was learning about earth-based, Pagan ritual and group/community dynamics. All these things blended to form an at-the-time fledgling native Irish spirituality practice. I continued to privately develop this for many years, eventually publishing the aforementioned second book in 2012. At the time, I also began a more public work with my native spiritual tradition.

By then, I had a very good idea of what was and wasn’t available with regard to Pagan priesthood, and in the time since then I’ve traveled internationally and taught at multiple large events abroad while working at home to co-organize and run our national Pagan festival, Féile Draíochta, for thirteen years, and cofounding the organization Pagan Life Rites (within Ireland) to ensure Irish Pagans have legal standing and governmental recognition of our rights as a minority religion.

After all of that, I’m here once again writing a book I needed to teach me how to further develop essential skills and continue to do the work of a Pagan priest.

Parts of this work you might find in various other books on leadership and from other Pagan traditions, but I haven’t ever seen it all together quite in this way. And given the problems within our communities and out there in the modern world, I see a powerful need for us to speak from a common standard and baseline to make sure our deities receive the honoring they need and our people have the leadership we need. There is a strong need especially when dealing with authority or public standing that will allow us to be taken seriously and treated with the respect we deserve as individuals, so that we can continue as a force for good in a rapidly changing world. From there, we can develop a new generation of strong, aware, responsible, and accountable leaders in our groups and in larger communities.

This is a book that I hope will open those doors and provide a cross-tradition foundation for what Pagan priesthood can be. Within these pages is work I’ve been doing for a while—I’d love for you to join me if you believe priesthood is right for you and you’re ready to grow and develop your role … or find the path you should be taking instead, if it’s not.

Most of all, however, I hope you enjoy the book and maybe learn something new along the way. That’s a good day’s work in itself, right there.

Reverend Lora O’Brien

Waterford, Ireland, 2018

[contents]

Section One

The Duties

of a Priest

Chapter One

Pastoral Duties

In light of the roles and responsibilities of priests generally, the word pastoral comes originally from the practice of a shepherd tending a flock. It refers quite literally to the countryside or life in a rural location. The word is often used to convey the idyllically simple life of shepherds or folk living out in the country. Anyone who thinks rural life is idyllically simple or easy has never had to get up at 4:00 a.m. to milk a cow or catch the goat that’s gotten loose by eating through their steel-reinforced rope and is currently decimating the carrot crop with a fierce determination to not be caught or stopped. True story right there, and let me assure you that goat-related emergencies are never what you might consider idyllic.

The term pastoral is thus used to represent the pastor’s (in most cases, the minister or priest of a monotheistic religion) tending of their community, and it refers to a category of work that is concerned with care for a spiritual community, the outward work of a priest of any religion. In short, these are the bits that could be done by any layperson, really, if they had the same skills, experience, and (let’s face it) desire to do so. The difference is that with the taking of a priesthood role, it can become a sacred duty to take care of your community in these ways.

I’m going to be clear here that pastoral care is not an absolutely essential part of the Pagan priest’s role, important and worthy as it may be. The common (largely) Christian idea that the primary role of a priest is to assist folk in their relationship with Deity is not completely irrelevant to us inasmuch as it is a part of the job of priesthood in our wider Pagan belief systems. But it’s also not the be-all, end-all of what a priest should or could be doing with their days in a modern, unsheeplike spiritual community that generally believes in direct access to Deity rather than through an intermediary or middleman who, incidentally, then holds all the power and gets the last word on everything when it comes to who’s good or evil. Having people (most often men) in communities wielding absolute power is not a good idea for most common folk (especially women and minorities) in those communities, day-to-day, as history and even modern societies will attest.

In deciding whether these pastoral duties should make up a part (or the whole) of your work as a priest, there are a few big-picture questions to consider: Does the priest represent the god they serve? As a priest, am I entitled to or appointed to act or speak for the deity I have devoted myself to, especially in (but not limited to) an official capacity? Going further, do I really care enough about people to do this work? Does my deity want me to?

Within the established structure of a religious organization, phrases such as entitled and appointed become somewhat clearer than they are within our global Pagan community, which is a community of individuals who represent a loose collective of incredibly diverse beliefs, traditions, and organizations. For now, let’s say that representing the gods we serve and acting or speaking for them in this world can certainly be part of the function of Pagan priesthood … but with provisos, as we’ll see.

Some related questions then, are: As a priest, do I constitute the deity’s physical embodiment in this world? Do I walk and talk for, or physically manifest, —a deity? These are big questions, too. As we dive in, let’s be really clear again that the following do not comprise a checklist that every single priest in every single community must adhere to

Reviews for A Practical Guide to Pagan Priesthood

[Micheál · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Amazing book. A must-read for anyone thinking about undertaking the responsibilities of priesthood, or answering the needs of their communities.