Who are the pagans and witches who will descend upon Adamstown next weekend, and what do they believe?

That's not an easy thing to answer, according to Jen Anderson-Wenger, president of Reading Pagans & Witches.

Her group is sponsoring the Celebrating Earth Spirituality Festival at Stoudtburg Village on Sept. 12. The event has divided the village's shop owners, with several saying they will close because Anderson-Wenger's group is sponsoring the festival.

One shop owner said a reason she will close is that she is a Christian and objects to anything not worshipping God.

Pagans and witches are an eclectic group of people with many varying spiritual paths, Anderson-Wenger said.

"If it leads to a moral and just life, then it's the right spiritual path for you," she said.

Paganism is an umbrella term that encompasses the majority of the "nonmainstream" religions, just as Christianity and Judaism are umbrella terms for their various sects, Anderson-Wenger said.

Under paganism are such paths or sects as Wicca, Druid, Celtic, Asatru (which follows the ancient Norse pantheon) and African, she said.

The term Wicca refers to wise ones in the ancient Germanic language, and the term pagan means country dweller, outside of cities, particularly in the Roman culture. It evolved from a non-Abrahamic path, she said.

Wiccans consider themselves witches, while not all witches consider themselves Wiccans, she said. The modern Wiccan faith was reinvented in the mid-1960s, she said.

Some pagans also try to reconstruct ancient pre-Christian religions based on religious and spiritual archaeology, Anderson-Wenger said. They include Celtic Reconstructionism, Religio Romana, Hellenismos, Asatru and Kemeticism.

Most pagan holidays, no matter which path, revolve around the calendar seasons. They include Mabon, Winternights, the autumnal equinox, home harvest, Beltane and Walpurgisnacht.

The practice of the various spiritual paths can be solitary, or through covens or kindreds, depending on the path one follows, she said.

Reading Pagans & Witches began almost five years ago as two separate organizations getting together through www.meetup.com, an online networking site for groups with the same interests, such as politics or hobbies, according to Anderson-Wenger.

When www.meetup.com started to charge for organizing through the site, the Reading Pagans and Reading Witches combined and slowly moved beyond casual get-togethers toward talking about more serious subjects with upward of 48 people at each meeting, Anderson-Wenger said.

"We open every meeting with prayer, if there is a need for energy for anything," she said. "Prayer, no matter what religion you are, is putting your personal energies out into the ether for something to happen, whether you are praying to the Christian God or Allah or Jehovah or Odhinn. You are putting your energy out there for the good of someone else."

Besides these meetings, Reading Pagans & Witches has two groups for children: Family Time Out Circle for those 10 and under with stories and crafts, and Youth Exploring Spirituality for ages 11 and above.

The group also holds four events each year that are open to the public: Imbolc in late January, May Faire, Celebrating Earth Spirituality Day in September and Yule Ball.

The group is charitable, holding food drives and adopting a highway and a battered women's shelter, she said.

"There are misconceptions that we have no morals. We raise our children together. We are a family. We'd give the shirt off our back for you or your children," Anderson-Wenger said.

E-mail: lvaningen@lnpnews.com