I was distressed to learn that NPR reporter Margot Adler passed away. She had endometrial cancer; she was only 68. She was a familiar voice on public radio, reporting on news stories and human interest stories in New York City.
But I knew her from her amazing 1979 book,Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today (Beacon Press, Boston). (This has been revised once or twice, but I have the 1981 paperback edition.) Adler was a practicing Wiccan herself, and in her book, she traced the history of the Neo-Pagan movement from early 20th century England through the 1960s-1970s counter-culture, as people searched for religious traditions informed by feminism and environmentalism, traditions close to nature and free of patriarchal or Judeo-Christian repression. Even when it was understood that that Wicca and other Neo-Pagan traditions were a modern mythology---that these traditions owed more to the imagination of certain writers than to genuine, surviving pre-Christian religions---Neo-Pagans developed a rich and varied religious community, and they valued their new religions all the more for having been newly created. Adler's treatment is sympathetic and richly detailed; her book would be required reading for anyone interested in Neo-Paganism or the counter-culture as it stood in the late 1970s.
My own involvement with Neo-Paganism was through close friends who have been involved an a still-thriving gay Neo-Pagan group, the Radical Faeries. The Radical Faeries hold 'heart circles' in members' homes, where members share their concerns and love; they also maintain several sanctuaries, including Wolf Creek, Oregon, where my friends regularly retreat. I never considered myself a full member of this group---I've tended to stay in the Western spiritual tradition, in the Episcopal Church---but I have shared and appreciated the warmth and friendship of their fellowship, and I share their values of love and reverence towards nature.