Judy Harrow

To Me, It Was Magic: Nature Mysticism and Feminist Power in

a Woman's Military Career

M arci Drewry enlisted in the United States Army on 19 October 1981. She .retired as a Chief Warrant Officer 4---a rank equivalent to that o f a senior

Major or junior Lieutenant Colonel--on 1 November 2004. Her 23-year career spans a time of great change for the military and for American women. The same period also saw a drastic increase in both religious diversity in American society, and pub- lic awareness of that diversity. 2 For neo-Paganism, it was a period of dramatic growth)

All o f these currents flow through her story because Marci Drewry is also a Wiccan priestess.

I interviewed Drewry in August 2005, both at her home in rural Virginia and

over the telephone. This article is derived from more than four hours of tape of those interviews and from e-mail interchanges that followed over the next few weeks. There is much more on the tape than an article of this nature can contain, as well as

much more to be said that is not on the tape, so I hope that a book length memoir will eventually be forthcoming. As much as possible, I will tell Drewry's story in her own words.

Drewry's lifetime of achievement is rooted in a strong sense of personal au-

tonomy and agency, both nurtured by an instinctive Earth-based spirituality, which manifested long before she had any notion that contemporary Paganism even ex- isted or any guidance for her spiritual growth along this path.

Drewry's parents, nominal but indifferent Christians, were not churchgoers

themselves, but sent her to a variety of local mainstream Protestant services with kindly neighbors. She found church interesting, but not inspiring. Yet she gleaned

Judy Harrow has served for 25 years as High Priestess of Proteus Coven in the metropolitan New York area. In addition, she is chair of the Pastoral Counseling Program at Cherry Hill Seminary, ~ president of the New Jersey Association for Spiritual, Ethical, and Religious Values in Counseling, and a member of the Pro-Choice Religious Leadership Council.

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from there the only vocabulary she had as a child to describe her own direct and vivid early nature-based spiritual experience, most of which took place in the pro- tected watershed forest near her home.

"I grew up in Seattle. I was a nature kid, a tomboy, the kind that liked to climb trees. I felt a deep connection to nature, and in a spiritual way. When I was little, I'd take little precious things that meant stuffto me, and I would bury them in the dirt as gifts.

"When I needed to connect with something bigger than I was, I would draw a circle and I'd sit in it. So I created a place of my own, and a temple in my head, when I was a kid of five or six years old. After going to the conventional Christian church, I'd go out in the woods and draw a circle and sit in my circle, and I'd basically talk to what they referred to as God back then. I really didn't share this with anybody. My parents were not really aware that I was doing this kind o f thing, but it gave me a really good safe sense.

"I knew that there was something larger than me that was going to take care of me. Was it magic? To me, it was magic. I didn't know what it was, but it was a magical place for me."

Drewry encountered the Sacred in the forest as both a distant overarching power, which she called "The Almighty," and an intimate, embracing presence, which she called "The Holy Spirit." Although neither of these forces had gender for her at the start, she began to understand them as gendered by comparing them to her parents.

Drewry recalls: "My Morn, being a very strong and dynamic force in my life, influenced me in my search for the female I knew HAD to be a part o f Deity. After all, women had babies and cared for everyone, while Dads went offto make a living, working and bringing in money. My Dad was a traveling salesman, so he wasn't home a whole lot when I was growing up. So how could a male deity be a close focal point when he was never around? He was important, but rarely in the picture." This perception foreshadowed the gendered duotheism and hierogamy that are central to the mythos of traditional Wicca.

When young Marci was 11, the family moved to New England. She reports that this experience established her sense of autonomy and deepened her nature ori- entation:

"I didn't fit in because I came in halfway through the school year, in sixth grade. Everybody had grown up together and established their friendships, and here comes this strange kid from the West Coast. So I pulled into myself. I always had my own thing to do. I did not seek out these people that obviously were not looking for me. That's when I got my first horse. I grew up in a family that really did not like horses. From the time I could remember, my parents were dead set against us ever having a horse. But there was just this draw to the animal.

58 Gender Issues ~Fall 2005

"I had the concept that everything was all together--you know, the snails and the horses and the trees and everything. It all had the same value to me, no matter what it was. I had a horse, and the horse knew everything. And that was my life for a whi le--I wasn't that involved with other human beings.

"This kind of concerned my parents--you know 'why don't you have friends?' 'Well, I have lots of friends. They may be in different outfits; they may have hairy bodies. They understand me and I understand them.' So for a while I retreated into the nature world by myself."

Horses, and the Celtic horse goddess, Epona, were to be constant strands in Drewry's spiritual life.

"I got my first horse when I was in junior high, so I was working with horses for a long time before I discovered that I was a Pagan. There was a draw even then. There was something there with the horses that was not just 'gee, let's go ride the horses.' It was a personal relationship, and emotions and feelings. And something that I knew that was around that animal that made it such a wonderful critter to be with.

"I also have a tendency to believe that Deity seeks you out in different aspects as well. With me, it was Epona, the horse Goddess, although I did not learn about Her till years later. When I learned what Epona was, it was almost like She was saying, 'OK, come on over here I 'm going to teach you about what Epona is be- cause, guess what? You already know Me.'"

Drewry and her husband currently live on a farm with seven horses. Drewry's interest in nature and the outdoors led her to major in Parks and

Recreation Management at Idaho State University in Pocatello. She reports: "When other students were learning accounting, I was rock climb-

ing, and paddling boats down the Snake River, and out on horseback with the wild horse herds, so even my major in college went with that Pagan philosophy. Nobody said they were Pagans at that time, but I 'm sure I went to class with a lot of Pagans. We just thought of ourselves as nature people. We got together and climbed rocks and told stories around a campfire. It wasn't ever called religion. We all knew that it kind of was Pagan, but nobody said that. Unless you were a Native American, and then it was O.K.

"In college, I started meeting people who were out of the religious mainstream. They would talk to me about their profound experiences. That's when I realized that there was much more out there, and that's when I started to look, to actually say 'I 've been doing this stuff for all my life, but there's actually something to it.'

"I started exploring Native American belief systems. A wonderful English teacher gave me a copy of BlackElk Speaks. From there, I was led to Buddhism and Taoism. There were bits and pieces of each o f those religious belief systems that I

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said 'this is really cool, but I can't follow this system as a whole because it doesn't fit completely. So I continued to look."

That eclecticism, perhaps made possible by her strong sense of autonomy, led to a life of religious experimentation. For example, while stationed in Korea, Drewry reports: "I was fortunate to meet the local 'ladies' some of whom would not admit it, but were basically at the fortune telling and Kut (indigenous Korean shamanism) 4 healing level. I have also listened to the stories of the local Korean women and find their feminine magic astounding and very Earthy. I was asked, when some of the Koreans I worked with found out I was actually a Witch, i f I could assist them with their magic workings sort of as an added energy thing, which I did on occasion"

Drewry was to spend many years pursuing her self-directed spiritual explora- tions before she found her way home to a particular Wiccan group.

After graduating from college in 1977, Drewry took a job that gave her "mon- astery t ime" a period of wilderness isolation in which her nature orientation was further confirmed and deepened. "I went to work in the Cascade Mountains at an environmental camp. I spent about four months alone there over the winter o f 1977- 1978 as caretaker. It was one of those not planned profound experiences some people wish they could have. I learned absolute peace and absolute alone there. I learned inner reflection and an appreciation for the tiniest of Nature's magic and being one with those things there. However a time came for me to get back to civilization."

Further work in outdoor recreation was successful but not fully satisfying, so, in 1981, Drewry followed her adventurous spirit into the Army. As her military ca- reer advanced, she began to encounter incidents of gender discrimination. Some examples:

In Germany, in 1982: "When I walked into the Third Military Police Company as a brand new military police officer, at my first meeting with the commander, the very first question he asked me was not my name, but 'Are you pregnant? And, if not, are you planning to get that way? Cause I don't need you if you're either o f those two things. I need a soldier; I don't need somebody that's going to sit around and be an admin clerk.' That was my first welcome to the military police."

Six years later, during her first tour in Korea: "I knew real discrimination in 1988 when I went to Korea. I had gone to a class at Fort McClellan, Alabama for hostage negotiation and protective service. One of the other students in the class had just come from the office I was going to. He warned me, 'look, they're already gunning for you. The commander doesn't like women. They're going to set you up, and try to make you fail.'

"Well, that's real fun to go into in a new job. Especially when you're a young non-commissioned officer looking towards becoming an officer, going to a strange country where you don't know the language, and where you've never been before.

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"My husband and I went to the same place on what they call an unaccompa- nied tour, to what they call a single soldier unaccompanied area. He was in the infantry and I was a CID agent. So they sent us to the same place, but not together. I lived in the barracks and he lived in the barracks, but separately.

"The night that I arrived in Korea, I was assigned to a room. I looked around. There were no blankets, no pillows. It was 10:30 at night. No towels, no nothing. I had my suitcase with me. So I slept under my raincoat that night with a balled-up shirt under my head.

"Because I had come in after dark, I didn't know where anything was. The place they had put me was a good mile away from our office. So I woke up that morning, and I figured that somebody would come get me, because I was new there and didn't know my way around. Nobody came. Finally, two or three hours into the day, when I could see my way around, I found my own way to the office. When I walked in, the reception was extremely cold.

"I kept thinking, 'well, maybe it's just me.' This guy planted the seed in my head and because of that, maybe I was just thinking all this was really coldness. Maybe it wasn't. But the commander told me in no uncertain terms that he really didn't think women should be in that area. So I realized that the guy that warned me wasn't lying.

"CID agents are not normally co-located with other support troops. We have to either be with military police or with other CID agents. We are not well liked by other soldiers. You can't live next to somebody that you may have to bust tomorrow. But this commander placed me in a mechanics unit. I found out later that the female staff sergeants in the building were running a brothel out of that particular barracks. So I wasn't making any friends, fast.

"Also, they put "CID" on my door. So what they did was to put a red flag in front of the other people in the barracks saying, 'here is the enemy.' Besides that, there was a hole in the wall of my room, literally a small window, so that anybody could look into my room, or get into my room by reaching through this hole in the wall to unlock my door. So, here I was with a room that was unsecure.

"And then my gun arrived. I had no safe to secure it. There was no lock on any of the cabinets in my room. So I had to do things like put my gun in a plastic bag to take a shower. I explained this to the commander, and he told me to lock it in the safe every night before I left the office. So I asked him what to do on the nights when I had overnight duty.

"I explained the regulations to the commander. He told me that, if I didn't like it, I could go elsewhere. And, i f I wanted to be a crybaby, he could send me down to Seoul, which is where the headquarters people were, and I could live in that environ- ment until I left.

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"Well, of course, my husband was up where I was and I didn't want to go to Seoul. So, I said 'the heck with you, dude' in my mind and I decided just to deal with this. My husband went to his sergeant major, who is the senior non-commissioned officer of his unit. We explained the situation to him. He allowed me to move in with my husband, so that's what I did.

"About a week later, my commander found out that I was living with my hus- band. But, once again, we were on unaccompanied tours. So I got called into his office and he said, 'have you been sleeping with your husband?' He was looking for something I was doing wrong, something he could plant on me. I said 'Sir, I 'm not going to answer that question, because I don't think professionally it's any of your business.' He said 'we're moving you down to Seoul. I 'm tired of you. I've had it with you female soldiers. You think that you can do whatever you want to do and get away with it.'

"So, I stayed with my husband and was the leper of the office. But then my husband's unit was moved and their barracks were closed down. By that time, my commander had given away the unsecure room, so I had no place to stay. I was homeless in the military, which is almost unheard of, because this person did not want a woman agent in his unit. I walked the streets with the whores and the street people all night long, and slept when and where I could.

"Over Memorial Day weekend that May, I researched all the regulatory re- quirements for CID agents in housing. That next Tuesday, when I went into the of- rice, an award had come in from my previous unit. The commander had to pin the award on me. That same morning, I submitted to our Equal Opportunity representa- tive a 20-page EEO complaint against my commander.

"He was a lieutenant commander, up there in the chain of command, so I fig- ured my career was over. There was no way I was going to win, but I was going to give it the best shot that I could. So I basically said to myself 'you're falling on your sword.' I figured Warrant Officer School wasn't going to happen, and I would prob- ably get through this tour and then need to get out of the army. But, in fact, I won the EEO complaint."

Through these and other challenges, Drewry drew the strength to persevere from the spirits of nature, which she had known from childhood. "When I had a bad day, the first thing I would do would be to go outside. It didn't matter what the weather was. I needed to be outdoors. It was almost like a physical need. I was very fortunate, for example, when I was in Wurtsberg that, fight above our barracks, up on a hill, we had a wonderful cherry grove. I would go walk amongst the cherry trees. It was just a real soothing feeling for me to be there. The other thing that I would do would be to take my bicycle out into the grape vineyards around that area.

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"When I was doing these activities, there was always Deity there. There was never a feeling that I was alone. There was never a void."

But Drewry still did not have a name for her beliefs or a religious community to share and support them. She had no idea at the time that contemporary Paganism existed and associated Wicca with the "Disney" stereotype, green skin, big nose and pointy hat. This image shattered when an investigative assignment required her to research the occult.

"In 1988, when I was with the Military Police at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, a young soldier blew his brains out on the sidewalk. He had put a bunch o f hiero- glyphic-type markings that no one could decipher on a suicide note, requested to play "Stairway to Heaven" at his funeral, and all this kind of stuff.

"This was around the time of the great cult scare. So, o f course, immediately they all said 'oh, this is Satanic.' Well, I was in an office with a bunch of very staunch Baptists at the time, but they were also insecure Christians. They were afraid to get near it. I thought to myself, 'well, shoot, y 'know? What's there to be afraid of?.' I volunteered to do the investigation.

"I contacted a police officer that specialized in cult crimes. He recommended some books as starting points for my research, such as the Satanic Bible by Anton LeVey, and told me how to find copies. I read the books, and there was nothing in there about killing children and drinking their blood or any of that stuff. The book was nothing but an ego trip. It was like ' i f it feels good, do it, as long as it's legal.' So, I 'm thinking now, 'well, what's the big scary?' ! figured, if this is the ultimate bad book . . . . And that was my turning point in learning about what 'the occult' was. I read the bad books first.

"I finally found out that the young man's doodling was not Pagan at all. He was just plain psychotic and had created his own little cipher thing. But I decided to delve a little bit further into it, and that's when I discovered metaphysical book- stores, and started being able to look at the real stuff."

Six years later, while stationed in Washington, DC, Drewry found the name for her spiritual path. "In 1996 or thereabouts, I felt that I needed to find people more like me. My roommate, who was also a good friend and a very spiritual person, turned to me one day and said, 'you know, you're a Witch. Why not just admit it and find out about all the other stuffthat you're doing, cause that's what you are. You've looked into all these other religions, but you've never really touched anything close to Witchcraft.'"

In a major metropolitan area, Drewry had access to good bookstores and was able to find accurate descriptions of contemporary Wicca. "I started researching what Witchcraft is, and found out that most of what I'd been told about it was gar- bage. I liked the concept of female empowerment that I found in what I was reading.

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Where I was living at that time, there were plenty of Witches, but I had no idea how to get in touch. I had no idea that there were any groups out there at all that I could go to.

"So I kept reading, and I stumbled upon Phyllis Curott's first book--The Book of Shadows--and I realized that she had gone though a lot of the same feelings that I'd had. That's when I knew that there was a direction out there, and I started to seek out specific types of books and specific authors, like Vivianne Crowley. So I started to get more focused on that aspect of Pagan religion."

Within contemporary Wicca, there exists a variety of Traditions, with theologi- cal understandings and worship styles as diverse as those found among the various Christian denominations. By the time she left for her next tour in Korea, Drewry's reading had made her aware of this spectrum, but she had not yet found her own place within it. Nonetheless, she was ready to begin working with a Wiccan group. Before long, she was drawn into a leadership role.

"I was still looking for the identity I needed. I wasn't satisfied with calling myself a Witch because by then I realized that there are all kinds of Witches. And what did these names really mean on a religious level? So now I was getting more in depth. I got into that Pagan mode of 'my library has to have a thousand books or I 'm not happy.' So I started reading and reading and reading and reading.

"When I next got back to Korea, I met a Gardnerian Witch, who was located up near the border, where I had been on the last tour. I would take the bus up there and spend a couple of hours with him and his group on a weekend. He would tell me about the Gardnerians. It wasn't what I was looking for for me- - too formal--but I still found that it was getting closer than anything that I had seen up to that point.

"I said, 'I don't know what Tradition I 'm in, because yours doesn't completely appeal to me.' So finally he said 'well, you're one o f those tree-hugging, dirt-loving nature freaks. There are people like you in Wicca. You just need to find some.'

"Then when he was getting ready to leave Korea, he said, 'you need to step up to the plate.' I asked what he meant and he said, 'we need a Designated Faith Group Leader to keep the group going because there aren't any Wiccan chaplains.' I laughed and told him that this was not going to happen, I didn't think I knew enough to lead a group. And he said, 'you've been living it your entire life, you just didn't have the label.'

"I soldiered on and continued to read and research. Finally, I felt comfortable enough, and he was pushing me hard enough that I went into the chaplain's office down in Seoul, and said, 'Hi, I 'm here and I 'm a Witch. I want to offer my services to you, if there are people around that need to have a group of Witches, then I 'm here.'"

Distinctive Faith Group Leaders (DFGL) are people who, in addition to their

64 Gender Issues / Fall 2005

regular military duties, act as voluntary liaisons between their particular faith groups and the local chaplain. To become a DFGL requires the sponsorship of an organiza- tion that has been authorized by the Corps of Chaplains to train, sponsor, and super- vise such people. Although some chaplains were supportive of minority religious practice in their area, others used this rule to obstruct their meetings.

Drewry agreed that she needed more training before leading a group. She be- gan by working through a correspondence course offered by a civilian Wiccan orga- nization. The course gave her a more systematic understanding of Wicca, but that organization was not authorized by the military to sponsor DFGLs. Next, she dis- covered the Sacred Well Congregation: which is an authorized Ecclesiastical Spon- soring Organization. The leadership of Sacred Well is comprised of members of a particular Wiccan Tradition called Greencraft.

In Greencraft, Drewry found a spiritual identity and a spiritual community where she finally felt at home. She explains:

"Why Greencraft? Trees for one. Nature for another. And finally comfort. To understand that everything in this earth and elsewhere in the vast universe is inter- connected is to feel at home to me. To understand that we are not meant to dominate, but exist with everything.

"I am not going to throw away living in today's society in order to 'get into the dirt.' But Greencraft helps me understand how I interact with my own special tem- porary parcel of the environment. To understand it and to learn its magic and myster- ies. To relate to it on a personal level and really feel it with all senses, material and in the mind. To live the Wheel of the Year not based on a set date that this or that will occur, but by being intuned to the changes in that year, that season, on a primal and instinctive level and recognizing it at a higher one. To bless the life force that is given to us and that will always be in tune with the universe.

"I do not believe in the supernatural because the real magic exists all around me and inside of my essence. I need only to breathe to experience Nature, and that is enough. I only need to see a hawk flying to know that the God and Goddess are present. The cycle of life, death, and rebirth is not to be feared but embraced as a true learning experience."

Drewry became a Distinctive Faith Group Liaison in Korea, under the aegis of the Sacred Well Congregation. By then, gender discrimination was becoming less pervasive within the military. But as a publicly identified member of a minority, and often badly misunderstood, religion, she began to face religious discrimination in- stead.

On her next assignment, in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Drewry continued as a Distinctive Faith Group Liaison and established an on-base Pagan Circle. She reports:

"In 2001-2002, I was the DFGL at Fort Bragg. When you're in that position in

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the military, the chaplains need a phone number at your duty station, so that when they need to contact you, or if they've got a soldier that needs to contact a Wiccan, they've got that information. They also put out a list with contact information for all the DFGLs, for distribution to soldiers who want to contact the one for their own faith group.

"So there was nothing illegal about my name and the office phone number being on a list. Still I was investigated and harassed for having done so. I chose not to fight this, just gave the chaplain my personal cell phone number instead."

After Fort Bragg, Drewry's next, and final, assignment was to Kuwait, where they were preparing for the invasion of Iraq, Her unit was one of the first to move up to Baghdad. On the road from Kuwait to Baghdad, she encountered a moment of profound crisis that suddenly deepened her understanding of Deity.

"There was a small village along the road ahead of us. Our executive officer went into a briefing before we left. When she came back, she was rather pale. I asked her what was wrong, and she said, 'there are children on the streets of this town.' I said O.K., and she said, 'the orders are not to stop for anything.' She said, 'you understand what that means, don't you?' ! kind of did, but I wanted to hear it from the commander's mouth.

"She said, ' i f anybody runs out in front o f the vehicle and tries to stop the convoy, you're to run them over.' I said, 'that includes children?' She said, 'that includes anybody. They're running out in front of the vehicles and they're stopping convoys and they're looting the convoys. They're stealing everything.'

"So, our marching orders were that, if a child stepped out in front of my ve- hicle, I was to run that child over and kill it. That was probably the only time during the entire war that I was numb, at the thought of having to kill an innocent child because they were hungry."

In a part & t h e tape that was damaged, Drewry described blessing her vehicle and others before they left, warding them against any possibility of harming a child. She continued: "I had a green bottle that I still have to this day on my altar. It was a bottle that a friend of mine from the circle at Fort Bragg had made up as a protection spell for me. I kept glancing up at that, and I had my wand up there. I hooked these things up right above the windshield, so I could see them.

"'You know, you don't even think that you're breathing when you're in a situa- tion like that. You don't think that somebody's going to throw a hand grenade under your vehicle or something like that. The only thing that I thought was 'I am not going to kill a child today. I am not going to let that happen because I do have magic, and it does work, and it is strong. And it's not going to happen today.' Those things were running through my mind as we were driving the five or six miles to and through that village.

66 Gender Issues / Fall 2005

"'There were children, and they were running out in front of vehicles, but they were missing me by three, four, five inches. And I just kept driving. And nothing happened. And I was so relieved afterwards.

"This was one of the times that I've really realized that it was there, that it was working, that there was something beyond, and it wasn't supernatural or anything like that, but there was just something there, that it was going to be O.K., that there was no question.

"And then we got out onto the regular roadways, and I just knew. I had this weird sense of peace inside that I was not going to get hurt, that I was going to be alive at the end of this, that I was not going to have to worry. After that, I never feared anything while I was in Iraq.

"I just felt this intense peace. It was like there was something else there with me that whole time. It just blew my mind. I just never thought that something like that could ever really happen. It wasn't like, 'gee, I saw ghosts or people running around with lightning flying from fingers,' or anything like that. It was just this peace, that something larger than me was telling me there was no reason to be afraid.

"At that point in time, for that period, it all became one. Not a specific God concept, but a Deity concept of something that was much larger than me, that was not necessarily in control of the situation like a fate or a destiny.

"There was no gender at all. It was both. It was all o f the thoughts and the emotions. It wasn't "this is a male entity that I 'm thinking about fight now," or "this is a female entity that I 'm thinking about right now" It was just a benevolence. It wasn't a person. It wasn't male. It wasn't female. It was everything. It was universal to me. A reaction of every single piece of me was involved in it.

"Later on, when things were getting to as normal as they could, I felt the dual- ity come back, but I had learned that it was a part of a whole, that the God and the Goddess are split out from something that was both. Since then, when I 'm looking at the duality, the spirituality, of male and female, I understand that it's the parts of this whole that I look at.

"I don't think that I have since then felt that way. So it may have just been the circumstance where that Almighty came in there and it was a direct buzz line. It was 'O.K., yes, I 'm God and I 'm Goddess, but today I 'm everything. I 'm just there for you.'

Whatever it was, whatever was there, was total magic. It was the ultimate in spirituality to me. And I don't think I've ever lost it, because I still feel that it's there. But also, like I said, I can turn around and say 'Epona, today, would you please make my horse act the way that I really need her to act, because she really needs to behave herself.'"

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Arriving safely in Baghdad, Drewry entered upon a highly demanding assign- ment in military security under extremely difficult working conditions. In addition, she became DFGL and primary point of contact for all Pagan military personnel in the country. In a war zone, with people widely scattered and extremely busy, sus- taining her own spiritual practice and nurturing that of others was difficult and chal- lenging. Drewry reports:

"I got my credentials from Sacred Well, and went up to meet with the chap- lains. I said, 'look, I would like to at least show some semblance of support for the Wiccan population' that I knew was there. They made some phone calls back to Fort Bragg, and then they felt better about me being there. They told me pointblank that, yes, they knew there were Pagans, that there were Wiccans, but they weren't sure exactly how we were going to fit all this stuff together.

"So, I was authorized to go ahead and look at my compound as a location where the Pagan community could meet. They said, 'yes, go forth, and we give our blessing. You have now become our Wiccan advisor. If we hear of anything, or if we get any situations, now we've got you.' So I think it was a kind of sigh of relief on their part that they actually had somebody legitimate.

"One major problem we had in Iraq was compartmentalization of the military. They had a chaplain for every battalion or brigade. Each of them had a little area, and that was his domain. Some of these chaplains used the rules as a way to obstruct minority religious activity. If you wanted to post something on the bulletin board, you had to be a DFGL in that particular little tiny area.

"So our biggest issue was how to communicate. We had units and people scat- tered everywhere. I posted on Witchvox 6 and, of course, on the Sacred Well net as well.

"I started getting e-mails from soldiers saying where they were and asking where I was. We had very few folks that could attend rituals in Baghdad. We couldn't realistically say 'O.K., we need everybody in Iraq to travel four or five hundred miles to this place because we're going to have Samhain or Mabon or whatever.'

"When I had a ritual, there were usually only three or four folks that could actually meet with me at any given time, because of their location. We could get together on a semi-regular basis, depending on what duties everybody had. But I ended up mostly as a kind of oversight mentor to people scattered all over the country.

"We found, for example, that we had 13 people at one installation that was a long ways away from me. It was impossible for me to be able to get over there to meet with this group. So I provided oversight and found a young man who did not have sponsorship to be a designated DFGL himself, but was willing to take on the task of leading the group. We coordinated with the chaplains, and brought them

68 Gender Issues / Fall 2005

under our umbrella. Because we had legitimacy, these chaplains said, 'fine and dandy, we'll let these guys meet. We won't make it official, but we're not going to harass them. We'll let them have their Circle."

"So there was a lot of e-mailing back and forth among the Wiccan population that was there. I did a lot of mentoring and a lot o f question answering and a lot o f

encouragement. I would sit down and write meditations and send them out. When

people were hurting, they knew that they had somebody that - -maybe they couldn't pick up the phone and talk to all the t ime--but that was there for them. Sacred Well has always been very good at doing that and being very supportive in that way.

"What really amazed me was that these other folks that were trying to run a circle, and doing a fairly decent job of it, would come over, not as a group, but one of

them would volunteer to come to Baghdad, and risk going through areas that were truly dangerous. They would drive down roads that were called names like 'suicide highway' and 'IED (Improvised Explosive Device) alley.'

"Wiccans were literally risking their lives to come and interact for 20 minutes or an hour with me in a parking lot full o f vehicles that were next to a mess hall or next to a fuel depot or wherever. That was a real heavy-duty responsibility that I felt

because you can't tell them no. 'No, I don't want you to do this.' I was not free to just get up and go to them because of my job. So, my hat's off.

"In that kind of an environment, you have to make every minute count, be- cause that may be all you have. It was important for them to know they had some-

body there. I could take time out to talk with them in my vehicle because my com- mander understood that it was important to them.

"I also gave a lot of materials to these folks, because they didn't have anything.

So I would give them one or two books to read. I don't know how many books I gave away like that. I was able to get books and supplies in because we were right there at the airstrip.

"'These are the kind of things that Wiccans do. I don't know any other people that were in Iraq that did so much to commune and get close to being spiritual and to

find other Wiccans as these folks did. I was just thankful that we had Witchvox and that we had the Internet, and that people could find me, because it was very, very difficult to get over the bureaucratic red tape hoops to even exist, let alone to make

it known that I was there and that we were running a circle." After returning from lraq, and after over 23 years of active service, Drewry

retired from the Army on 1 November 2004.

"I retired because there are things in my life, promises that I made to my hus- band. I 've had a pretty phenomenal life because I have had the freedom to go where I want to go, do the things I want to do. I 've had a very loving husband who has said

"spread your wings and fly as high and as far as you would like to.'

Harrow 69

"I haven't been home a whole lot for about 13 years. I felt the need to drop some roots, because I have done so much traveling, and so much extensive work outside of my own space. At this point in my life I needed to create some space for myself and for my family, and be able to not just live out of a suitcase for months on end.

"We have a farm. We're pretty organic here. I have seven horses and five cats in the house now. I see my horses getting older. I have animals that I bought when I was young and new to the military, and now they're older, and dogs that are older, and a husband that is older. And now I need to refocus my life in another direction.

"I have a green, grungy frog on my altar, a gift from the leader o f one of the Pagan groups I oversaw in Iraq, a man named Larry. Larry had this frog. He ran transportation, so he risked his life in a big truck every day in convoys running up and down Suicide Highway, getting shot at, a couple o f times almost getting blown up. And he had this frog.

"The last meeting that I had with Larry, he was getting ready to leave Iraq. I remember we were in the parking lot of the mess hall. It was very, very dark there. There were these lights that were shining all along the wall. On beyond were the snipers and the mortar guys that would bombard us nightly. We were there in the

dark. He handed me this frog. "He'd talked about this frog every time that I had met with him, saying that it

was his Wiccan good luck charm, that he knew that, as long as he had the frog, everything was going to be hunky-dory. On his last trip, he said, ' I 'm leaving, and I've been OK. You're not going to leave quite yet, and I wanted to show my apprecia- tion that you were there for inc. 'And he gave me his frog. I have this frog, to this day. It sits in a place of honor. And Larry made it back without the frog.

"When I first joined the army I was looking for adventure and I found i t - -and it was wonderful. Now, I 'm looking for new adventure. I think that it will come along. It might be Sacred Well. It may be just me on the farm and maybe I do need to write a book."

Today, as a civilian, Marci Drewry serves as Director o f Military Affairs for the Sacred Well Congregation.

Notes

I. See http://www.cherryhillseminary, org 2. Eck, Diana. A New Religious America. Also see the web site of the Harvard Pluralism Project

at <http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~pluralsm/> 3. Adler, Margot. Drawing Down the Moon. 4. For information on Korean shamanism, see the two books by Laurel Kendall in the bibliog-

raphy. 5. See the Sacred Well web site at <http://www.sacredwell.org/index2.htm>

70 Gender Issues /Fall 2005

6. The Witches' Voice web site, which functions as the principal networking venue for En- glish-speaking Wiccans and Pagans. See <http://www.witchvox.corn>

References

Adler, Margot. (1997). Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today. NY, NY: Penguin.

Crowley, Vivianne. (1996). Wieca: the Old Religion for the New Millenium. London: Thorsons. Curott, Phyllis. (1999). The Book of Shadows: a Woman's Journey into the Wisdom of Witchcraft and

the Magic of the Goddess. London : Piatkus. Eck, Diana L. (2001). A New Religious America: How a "'Christian country "' Has Now Become the

World's Most Religiously Diverse Nation. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco. Kendall, Laurel, (1985). Shamans, Housewives and Other Restless Spirits. Honolulu, HI: University

of Hawaii Press. Kendall, Laurel. (1998). The Life and Hard Times o f a Korean Shaman: o f tales and the telling o f

tales. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press. Neihardt, John G. (2004). Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story o f a Holy Man o f the Oglala Sioux.

Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.