Dianic Wicca Interview with Byron Ballard

Anna Shook: How has the Asheville community been supportive of your religion?

Byron: We are really lucky in Asheville because it is such a diverse community. However, we have to remember that we are right here on the buckle of the bible belt. Where there are a lot of people who are going to be supportive and interested. There will also be that part of the community that will just as soon burn a cross on your yard. That happened with some people in Madison county. This group that was very open, a cross was burned on their yard and they were hassled a lot and it happens a lot. It happens still and it doesn't happen in N.Y. or LA and it happens here cause this is the bible belt and people still thing it's wrong and sinful and satanic.

Anna: So how do you deal with those stereotypes?

Byron: Our particular group deals with it by being particularly open-we do a lot of public stuff, the full moon open pagan circles. I write an occasional column in the mountain express. We actively seek positive publicity. I do funerals for indigent. I do indigent burials at Riverside cemetery. People who have died either in a city or a county facility. They have no family left and there is nobody really to bury them. They had been doing they just sent the remains to the Riverside cemetery and the guy there David Olsen would a dig a whole, put them in the ground and it was done. There was an article in Mountain express about it. I read it and I wrote to David and offered my services to do a funeral for these people, and he agreed. That's something we do in the community, and then Mountain express did and article about that. We also do things like the roundtable discussion at Warren Wilson, and I come out to Jeanne's class and talk about what we do and stuff like that, we're very out and very open and we talk about it all the time. I usually wear a pentacle of some kind and I do that for two reasons. One is so other Pagans can identify me, and know I'm somebody they can talk too and also so that people will ask. So that Christians will ask, anybody who's interested and maybe thinks they know what a pentacle is. They can see that on this middle aged woman who works in a bookstore who has a child in an elementary school, and who is a pretty safe person to approach. I'm willing to take the time out to talk to people, and to do it a non-threatening way, as much as I can and explain what it means and what the path is so that they know. My neighbors out here started out being a little dubious and one of the neighbors called the police dept. when we were having circles down in the woods and she said there were these were robed figures and there were candles and there was chanting. They sent an officer out and she wanted to know more about the Pagan ritual. We are the neighborhood witches and they know we are the neighborhood witches and they know they are normal people and safe and we're not gonna do anything to harm them and we're not evil or Satanic. I've let the neighbors know that we don't want to disturb them and we're not gonna be out at two in the morning drumming and howling at the moon. We had a problem two years ago in that our outdoor circle was desecrated. It scared me because I thought I had a relationship with the people in the neighborhood. It turned out to be a couple of teenagers 14 and 15 year old living in a trailer back behind the woods. They came up and took some of our firewood and made crosses around the circle. They caved in the stones in the fire pit, and they smashed some of the decorations that the kids had made for Beltaine. I called the police, he was concerned with snakes being out there, but he was really good-he turned it over to the hate crimes division. It kind of validated the fact that the neighbors were o.k. with what we did. They said when we weren't here they would keep an eye on the property. If people can put a face to a witch if they know a witch it makes it all different.

Anna: They start to think about who the person is rather than the stereotype.

Byron: That's what we all need to do with each other regardless of rather we're witches, or Black or White or whatever. If you get to know a person then you can judge them on whether or not you like them and not based on some stereo type.

Anna: Where you raised Wiccan?

Byron: I'm a heredity witch, which means that I was not Wiccan-witches have been traditional healers, people with physic and other sixth sense abilities. In my family back at least seven generations-it seems to pass on the woman's side from mother to daughter. There have been people who have been , um, uh, physic healers. There have been people with pre-cognitive dreams. Different kinds of, we refer to them as gifts, that are passed down in the family. And each generation seems to have a different kind of gift. And sometimes the gift will skip a generation so that my grandmother had pre-cognitive dreams. My mother doesn't, but I do. And they always refer to themselves as witches. And they were, they probably before they came over on the boat were the traditional healers in their villages. And the people who knew what the weather was going to do, and maybe had the ability to change the weather and direct the weather. That sort of thing. But it was never considered a religion. It was just what you were. So that my grandmother could be a Methodist all her life, and sing in the choir and still be a witch. And it wasn't until this generation, my mother didn't go to church, and so I was raised not as a church goer. So I was not raised as a Methodist. And we lived out in the country and I remember when I was very young my mother said, you know it doesn't matter to me if you worship that oak tree. And she pointed out in the yard. As long as you do that with your whole heart and your whole soul. And I laugh now and say that she didn't realize that is exactly what I would do, because what happened for me is that I took the inherited qualities of my family and then I made it not only the way I was, but I made it my religious path. And I was initiated into a Wiccan group in college, because I am Dianic, we only have two levels of initiation. It's the first initiation and then at the time you are ready to become a High-priestess you take your ordination. Now different traditions in Wicca do it differently. Some groups do three degrees, some groups do five degrees. It just depends on what tradition. Because I am Dianic I just have the two. So I had been a witch all my life, and then became a Wiccan when I was in college. And became a high-priestess just four years ago.

Anna: Wow! Let's see. So you weren't raised with any religion. How do you think that ...

Byron: I had a kind of comparative religion life.

Anna: I mean as far as in the whole Christianity - Methodist.

Byron: There are a lot of Pagans who have come out of either a Christian or Jewish tradition and have become Pagans. But that was not my experience. My experience was that I always was a Pagan in and a witch. And I went to church with people in my neighborhood. We had a Catholic neighbor and I church with her a couple times, and we had some real fundamentalists, Church of God people. I went to church with them some.

Anna: So that was acceptable.

Byron: I went to a lot of different places and dabbled in a lot of different things, and was fascinated with mythology. Very fascinated, still am fascinated with it. And did, you know just read everything that I could about religion. From a really early age, and none of it grabbed me and I didn't want to do any of it. But I was willing to dabble around and to experience it all. For me a spiritual path has to be experienced. It can't be something that you just, it can't be a social club that you attend once a week. And not all religions are like that and not all people who are religious are like that. There is a tendency, there was a tendency I think among the people that I knew that they didn't think about spiritual things, matters at all until it was time to get dressed and go to church on Sunday morning. And then they sat in church and then, and maybe they did and maybe they didn't think about God or Jesus or whatever. But then it was twelve o'clock and they all went to have lunch. And then it was done.

Anna: They would move on with their lives.

Byron: There was not an interface between the two of those things. And for me I always felt connected with the Earth, and with the trees and with the seasons changing. And all of that seemed very glorious to me. When I was a kid, like I said we lived out in the country, and whenever there was a thunderstorm rolling in. We lived on the side of a mountain and you could see the thunderstorm kind of coming in. And the sky getting dark, and I always wanted to be outside for that. And I would stand out in the pouring rain and in thunder and lightning. And my mother couldn't. I mean she could come physically pick me up and bring me in, but I always felt safe. I never felt threatened at all, and I loved it. I felt energized and it was wonderful. All aspects of nature are like that for me. So that sitting on a stone, a warm stone with my feet in a cold brook is a religious experience, it's not just that it feels good-it's more than that-it's connecting with this thing that I love, this thing that I'm consciously part of-and I didn't know it growing up and I didn't know it until college but I intuitively know we were all connected. That I am not different from the tree, I am not better than the tree. The molecules that make me are the molecules that make the tree, and make the ground that goes between us. I did not feel the separation---It's been a problem for Five-thousand years that nature is bad and dirty and when we die we will go to a better place-I can't imagine a better place than this. A lot of people don't understand and it scares them about Pagans and about witch craft. We don't feel a difference between us and God, we are part of that and that is part of us-so that we can be in a circle and say to someone-You are Goddess, that's not sac-religious. It's acknowledging that we are all connected on a cellular level. We are not different, we are not separate. I like to think this is how our ancestors felt, they didn't feel separate from the world they lived in. They were a part of that and they were as likely to be eaten as the next thing or as likely to eat as the next thing. I love to think that the feeling they had is a feeling I have and that is a basic primal need to be part of all of it that's around us. We've spent 5,000 years creating these artificial constructs to separate us from that. It's worked-it really has separated us, and that's a bad thing. There's so many people that are hungry for that connection, they think of it as they want to be connected to Jesus-they want to feel the holy spirit rushing through them. What they really want is that primal connection our ancient ancestors had, that they constantly got rid of.

Anna: When and how did this coven form?

Byron: We formed five years ago, because a lot of us were doing theatre together. And we did the play Mothersongs and the very last part of that play was a modern Wiccan ritual and we did it and we loved doing it so much that we would get together (when we weren't rehearsing) and do that ritual because it just felt good. And initially it was just a group of women, and our partners or husbands would come and they would hang out on the porch. We'd go do ritual in the back yard, and then we'd all eat. Slowly the guys got drawn into it too, so that we became a mixed gender group. Which was really nice. We still meet-I think I told you- once a month we meet just as women, as a women's only group. Because there are issues that we really need to go deeply into that are boring to them; or we don't really want their input on it, or it's just not something that's really important to them.

Anna: Its on a really personal level, and I think that it's really important to have the one thing that really interested me about Wicca. It was the whole female deity aspect and that, I need to find that within myself- it's really important.

Byron: Anyone who as raised in a Judeo-Christian culture, has grown up with the notion that deity is male. And that if you are not male, you somehow are lesser- And because God is a man, and you are a woman, you can never be like God. And in the Catholic church you can still never be a priest because Jesus was a man, and you are not a man. So, I personally don't know how women can be Christians. They must find something in there that feeds them spiritually, and they can ignore the history and ignore the deeply ingrained misogyny.

Anna: A lot of it is people just seeing the top level and they're just being sucked in because there are people coming at you that are like: this is the right way, this is the only way.

Byron: And if you don't do it, you go to hell.

Anna: Yea, and it scares people -people are intimidated by that. I sat down and talked to this lady for like two hours one time because she was upsetting people so bad by handing out her Christian pamphlets and I just wanted to talk to her and she was a really nice lady. She didn't have much of a basis for what she believed, except for that that was what she had been told.

Byron: And that's the way it is. It's the hardest part of the Christian-Pagan interface because one of the tenants of Wicca, not all of Paganism but certainly of Wicca, is that all lovingly held paths are sacred. So that if you want to be a Christian, if you want to be a Jew, Muslim, whatever. As long as you truly and sincerely hold that path in a loving manner. That is OK with us, we don't want everybody to be what we are. Christians have a mandate to convert people to Christianity. So they can not afford us the same courtesy that we can them. They can't say---Oh well your deity is female, well that's cool- that's not what I believe but that's cool. They just can't do that because it's part of their religion to win souls for Christ.

Anna: That's what Jennie was talking about, you have not just light and the dark and then there's that dusk period where it just is. That is really amazing to me. So, did you ever practice alone when you were learning about it.

Byron: Sure, I practiced solitary for many, many years. In fact the interesting thing about this group, and one reason that this group works so well is because we were all solitary practitioners. And we were called together so that we are a fairly new group. Though at five years now we aren't that new anymore. We all had like 20 or 30 years of experience each, because we had been doing in alone for so long. It is different with a group.

Anna: What do you think are the most positive aspects of having a Coven, besides unity and bonding.

Byron: There is a tribal affiliation. We think of ourselves as a tribe of people. We have talked about, in fact we are always talking about the notion of an intentional community. So that we all go in together and we buy acres and acres of land and we don't want to live communally. We still want to live separately, but that we would have a communal temple. And we'd have a stone circle. And maybe we'd have a huge kitchen and dining area so that we all didn't have to have kitchens, because we are all a bunch of chefs - which is kind of amazing too. And we could get together and cook together, eat together, but you wouldn't have to do that. So we are very private people but we relish that - we call it our tribal affiliation. And that's the best part about it, plus doing ritual with a bunch of people, it is really easy to raise the energy. It is fun to chant with a bunch of people. To celebrate the holidays it's nice. At Yule, we go to Sharon and Tim's house. We have traditional done Yule there for the past few years. It is a good thing to not have to feel alone. That you don't have to reconstruct this ancient tribal ritual all by yourself. We teach each other. We are a learning body.

Anna: Is there any certain element that you think is lacking in Wicca? Do you think that you have been able to fill that in because you can adapt that to how you are.

Byron: We are pretty non-dogmatic. Now there are some Wiccan groups who are very dogmatic. This is the way God is and this is the way Goddess is, this is the way the ritual has to be. Because we are non-dogmatic, we don't argue about points of policy and we don't argue about---Well when I envision Goddess, she looks like this---there is no right of wrong way. Whatever way works for you. I like being Wiccan. It was a hard decision because I wasn't sure if I wanted to do this. All I had ever heard about was Gardnerian, which was like Catholics and the Catholic church. There was so much hierarchy, and I have gone where the high-priest and high-priestess have done everything. Everyone else stands in a circle watching them.

Anna: They aren't involved really.

Byron: it felt to me like being a spectator. I don't want to do that. I want to mainline it. I want to feel that rush. Drawing up through our bodies from the Earth and then releasing it. So if you create this column of pure energy that's coming up through your body - I love that. That's what I do it for.

Anna: How do you think Wicca plays a role in your children's life? They all seem to enjoy it.

Byron: Yeah, they into it. They get bored like any children do going to church. We try really hard to be conscious of the fact. We don't want them to go away from being Pagan, because it bored them. So we try to do things that include them. It's hard because there are so many ages and the little kids, the tiniest ones are really the best. They just want to be with mom and dad anyway. They just listen to the chanting and all that. It's when they get to be 8 or 9 up through about 13 or 14, where it's not very interesting and there are no cute guys. So far we haven't lost any yet. We are aware that we are raising the next generation of Pagans and that these are children who have been Pagans from before their birth. So they are not going to have a conversion to Paganism. They will have had this path presented to them all along. And they choose to ultimately not do that, But I don't think that they will.

Anna: Can you think of any thing that is really important.

Byron: I think other then the connection to the natural world, I think the most important thing that Wicca does is present the notion of deity as female. I personally believe that whatever we call deity, whatever that life force is - I don't think has a gender. I choose to celebrate deity in the female form because it empowers me. I think that is what are ancestors did. I think when what we call, now mythology, when that was developed - they developed it not as we are told in school. They didn't develop it because they were afraid of thunder and lightening, so they had to make a God who through thunder bolts. I don't think that was it at all. I think they developed these Gods, these superhuman critters because it empowered them. It made them be more then maybe they thought they could be. That is what I choose to do. A lot of people will tell you that the Gods and Goddesses are literal, and they worship them, and appear to them. I'm not going to nay-say that because if that's their experience then that's fine. I know for me, the thing that I celebrate- I wouldn't even say that I worship it- because I am so much a part of it. To worship something you have to be separate from it, and below it. I celebrate what that life force is that flows through the planets, through all of us and out into the stars. I celebrate that and my connection to that. I choose to call it Goddess. One reason is because I am a woman, and I am aware of 5,000 years of history that need to be re-written. If not re-written, than we need to write the other half of it that never got written. Also because when I say the word Goddess, There are people who tremble and people who find that so frightening and offensive, that I just want to say it again and again. Like a little kid saying damn or shit, they do it just to shock their parents. I just want to jump up and down, with a big grin on my face yelling---Goddess, Goddess, Goddess, Goddess. Deal with it, deal with it.