I should also say that nobody can speak for all Witches or all Pagans. The view I present is my own, but I do believe it articulates many of the things we hold in common and that characterize our traditions.

For Pagans and Witches, ‘believing’ just isn’t the central issue that it seems to be for a lot of faiths. It’s not that we don’t believe in things—like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, we often believe six impossible things before breakfast, just to keep in practice! But for us, the Goddess is immanent, that is, present in the world around us, continually revealing Herself, always speaking, and visible in the most common, everyday things: stones and stars, roots and falling leaves, the flight of the eagle and the lowly castings of the worm. Our spiritual practice is about learning to open our eyes and ears and hearts so we can appreciate this revelation, approaching the world around us with wonder, gratitude and reverence, and so be moved to experience a deep connectedness, a love that goes beyond words.

The Pagan worldview is one of a dynamic universe that moves in cycles, where seeming opposites are polarities held in dynamic balance. Diversity and unity or integrity are one such dynamic polarity. In order for there to be diversity—in an ecosystem or a human system—each thing needs to first be itself, and must have the space and resources necessary to develop its identity. But the system as a whole needs enough difference to provide a spectrum of responses to change and disturbance in order to have resilience. And the diversity that sustains a system is not just the diversity of elements in it, but the diversity of relationships between them. Healthy, resilient systems are those in which the elements are capable of forming webs of mutually supportive relationships. Elements which destroy that balance, impoverish relationships or commandeer resources would be destructive and not desirable, even if they are diverse.

I realize that’s getting a bit abstract, so let me give an example. An old growth redwood forest is far more diverse than a forestry plantation of single-age, cloned Douglas fir. Yet the forest would not be improved by introducing a cactus, which couldn’t grow under the same conditions as a redwood, or a voracious disease organism, or a runamuck logger with a chainsaw. An old growth forest has actually relatively few species of trees and understory plants that can adapt to the low-light conditions under redwoods. Yet it has an amazing diversity of relationships—between trees, fungi, lichens, animals, birds. To have the full complement of relationships, to provide habitat for the full range of creatures that have coevolved to live there, it needs to be a certain size, measured in miles, not acres. The integrity of that forest then can be an element of diversity in the larger mosaic of ecosystems in an area.

As far as religion goes, Pagans would not find it desirable to convert everyone in the world to our views. We do find it desirable to have enough social space and freedom to allow our traditions to develop, to be able to practice it and teach it to our children and to those who are drawn to it, to have our values and worldview given the same kind of respect and consideration of other religions. We hold some deep core values—and violation of them is not considered useful diversity but a destructive act. For example, for us sexuality is considered sacred, one of the most powerful ways we experience the presence, ecstasy and love of the Divine manifest in the world. For that reason, we value and welcome a range of diverse sexual orientations and expressions. “All acts of love and pleasure are my rituals,” says the Goddess in one of our most common liturgies, as one commentator noted. But we do not value coercion, cruelty, violence, or power-over. So sexual coercion, abuse, sexual exploitation of children or the less powerful, any form of sexualized violence is particularly repugnant, a violation of what should be the arena of most tender caring, beauty, and love.