The Pagan Man: Priests, Warriors, Hunters and Drummers
Isaac Bonewits
Citadel Press, NY, 2005
ISBN 0-8065-2697-1

Isaac has been a significant part of the American Pagan movement for many years. He was the founder of the New Reformed Druids of North America, the Schismatic Druids of North America, the Hasidic Druids of North America, and of çr nDra’ocht FŽin (ADF) in the late '70s and the beginning of the '80s. His various books include Real Magic: An Introductory Treatise on the Basic Principles of Yellow Magic (1989), Witchcraft: A Concise Guide or Which Witch Is Which? (2003) and Rites of Worship: A Neopagan Approach (2003), among others.

Perhaps the primary driver of this particular book is shown in a quote Isaac includes from someone's letter to him:

One of the first books I read on Wicca was Starhawk's Spiral Dance. When I bought the book, I was excited, because I thought it would open the way for me to learn about Wicca. But, just about every exercise in the book began with the instruction to breathe into your uterus. Starhawk also made sweeping claims about prehistory, saying that our prehistoric ancestors had been matriarchal. Well, I have a BA in classics and I know that we know so little about the Stone Age that we cannot make that claim. When I read Spiral Dance, I felt excluded. I felt like men couldn't be a part of this religion. We don't have uteruses to breathe into. Starhawk's vision of a matriarchal Stone Age was not utopian for me. It was distopian. I believe in equality between men and women and that means that matriarchy and patriarchy are both wrong. . . . As a man who believes in gender equality, I felt betrayed and humiliated -- because I had expended so much passion on women's rights and felt slapped in the face and barred from a spiritual path that I felt deeply called to explore.

The '70s were the "feminist decade" in American Wicca (fading through the '80s), though not so much so in the other Neopagan paths. On the other hand, often even today "Wicca" and "Paganism" are considered pretty much synonyms by those on the outside. A serious attraction of this book is a general one: It is a very useful survey of just who many of us are, what we have in common, how we differ, and how we got here. It provides useful organizational categories and descriptions that can help people understand the variety of who we are, and what many of the different paths are, and who their founders were. For that, this is an excellent book for everyone interested in a quick look at the structure and history of American Paganism.

This book is one view of what a man's (as opposed to a woman's) role is in modern Paganism. The title implies several traditional roles: Priests, Warriors, Hunters, and Drummers, and indeed these are discussed. The key point, though, is that there truly is a role, and that these days on most paths it is largely balanced.

Each of the roles mentioned in the title is discussed in a chapter, with other chapters presenting additional information and cross-discussion. The discussions of Warriors and Hunters were particularly interesting, giving much attention to questions of ethics.

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