Saturday, May 04, 2002
Pagan holiday down on farm in Oxford
By David Krechevsky,  Waterbury Republican-American  

OXFORD — Selectman Paul Schreiber wants to preserve his 400-acre family farm as open space, and to help support it often rents out a portion of it for group events — with one condition.

"They need to have a very strong concern about the environment," he said.
"They have to make sure they leave the property as they found it."

A group using his land this weekend epitomizes that effort — even if some people might consider them "witches."

The Pagan Community Church is holding its fourth annual Beltaine Festival and camp-out this weekend on Schreiber's farm on Quaker Farms Road, celebrating the pagan holiday marking the beginning of the second half of the year.

Schreiber said the event has been held on his land the past four years, and that anyone who thinks there are satanic rituals involved is sadly mistaken.
"There's not anything like that," he said. "It's just a group of good people who embrace that (pagan) philosophy.

"My philosophy is, if they're not damaging the land and they're legal, they're welcome."

The festival began Thursday and will end Sunday, according to the Rev. Alicia Folberth of the Pagan Community Church, which she described as "pagan Unitarian." "We are a lot of different things," she said in a telephone interview. "We have different traditions of Wiccan, Celtic traditions, even Italian and Native American ... a whole variety. It really depends on what people bring to it."

The church has 40 members and uses various locations for its services and events, including the First Unitarian Universalist Church in New Haven and Osborndale State Park in Derby. The festival is expected to attract up to 200 people, some of whom will camp on the farm all four days.

Events range from classes — such as an introduction to soap making, Celtic mythology and the psychology of the healing arts — to drumming circles, bonfires, a children's mummer's parade and dancing around a 30-foot maypole.

Folberth, 36, was born and raised in North Salem, N.Y., and now lives in
Shelton. She has been a practicing pagan for 17 years, though she was raised Presbyterian. "I was aware of my Native American roots growing up, so I was headed in this direction anyway," she said. "I found the divine in nature, not in a building."

Her formal title is High Priestess — but she often refers to herself as
reverend because of the stigma paganism carries with it. "People have a very strange idea of what we do," she said. "If they realized that we're just a bunch of tree-huggers, they would calm down. People would change their opinion if they knew what we were about."

The public is welcome to attend, she said, "as long as nobody wants to try and ‘save' us."

Schreiber said such events and others on his property gives the public a
chance to see why preserving it is so vital. "The public doesn't have a
chance to see this type of area anymore; there are very few farms left in the area."

We're using education and recreation to keep our farm open."


For information, visit the Pagan Community Church Web site at
www.pagancommunitychurch.org