Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Pagan
Gateways to Paganism: The Wicker Man

Gateways to Paganism: The Wicker Man

Last updated on: April 29, 2014 at 12:53 pm by Jason Mankey

Gateways to Paganism: The Wicker Man 2014-04-29T12:53:49-06:00 Jason Mankey

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

(Pagans don’t proselytize, and the majority of us don’t have Pagan parents; as a result, people come to Modern Paganism through various means. For many of us, books, movies, and music provided the impetus to walk the Pagan Path. Gateways to Paganism is one guy’s attempt to document some of the things that have led various people to Paganism, and why those things had that effect.)

I am not good with movies. If it doesn’t have a superhero or an elf in it I’ve probably never seen it. Such has been the case with The Wicker Man (The 1973 version of course) for the last forty years. Oddly I’m a big fan of horror movies, but I somehow just never got around to The Wicker Man. I’ve known of the movie of course, and due to various conversations over the last twenty years knew exactly how it would play out when I finally sat down to watch it this weekend. The Wicker Man isn’t the perfect Beltane movie, but it’s close in a weird sort of way. As a Pagan (and perhaps more specifically a Pagan steeped in the myth of the eternal English Scottish countryside) there were just moments in this film that had me going “holy shit” this is awesome. (Warning now, spoilers ahead. This edition of Gateways to Paganism assumes you’ve seen The Wicker Man or don’t mind me spilling some of its secrets.)

There have been some important mainstream movies in relation to Paganism over the last forty-five years, and if The Wicker Man is not number one, it’s definitely in the top three (the other two being Rosemary’s Baby from 1968 and The Craft in 1996). A quick summary of the movie doesn’t do it justice and is really not the point of this article but I feel like it’s necessary. To put it simply a rabidly Christian police sergeant named Neil Howie visits an isolated Scottish island in search of a young girl after receiving a letter that she’s missing. The locals give Sargent Howie the run-around in his search, but he’s also kind of an asshole about the whole thing because the island is full of Pagans! People run around naked and have sex publicly in the great outdoors. Children are taught about the regenerative forces of nature etc etc. Technically The Wicker Man is a horror film because the Christian Sergeant is burned to death at the end as a sacrifice to the God of the Sun and the Goddess of the Fields, but up until then it’s all pretty awesome.

Despite the gruesome end to Sergeant Neil Howie most of the movie shows an imaginary and mostly ideal Pagan world. Sexuality is celebrated and there’s this lovely intermingling of the modern and natural worlds. A maypole in the middle of town (just on the eve of Beltane) is an accepted part of everyday life, and most of the townsfolk seem like nice folk (if a little creepy now and again, but just a little). That the Lord of Summerisle is Christopher Lee himself makes things even cooler. Who wouldn’t want Christopher Lee as the Lord of their island?

What makes The Wicker Man so important historically in context to Modern Paganism is that much of it simply feels like Modern Paganism. The Wicker Man was the first movie to share rituals that look passably Pagan. It’s all just in bits and pieces but I’ve been to rituals with lovely naked people jumping over a small fire. (A scene that leads to the Christian Sergeant exclaiming “But they are… are ‘naked'” with Lee’s Lord Summerisle replying with “Naturally! It’s much too dangerous to jump through the fire with your clothes on!”) Maypole dances and processional revelry . . . . forty years ago you most likely took what you could get in regards to seeing anything that might be thought of as “Pagan.”

The Wicker Man also speaks to the writings of Margaret Murray, James Frazer and other early Twentieth Century scholars who had a lasting impact on what would become Modern Paganism. Summerisle is the kind of place that Murray hints existed just a few hundred years ago in The Witch Cult in Western Europe, with every British Beltane tradition being an ancient pagan relic no matter its true date of origin. Sergeant Howie is sacrificed because he’s the substitute for the actual Lord of the Isle and set himself up to be so by donning the clothes of the Lord of Misrule.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMSFSG7NVIo
Willow’s Song

The idea of the sacrificial deity and later sacrificial king (and his sometimes substitute) were ideas essential to both Murray and Frazer and were ideas popular in the Modern Paganism of the 1960’s and 70’s. (Not that Pagans were sacrificing folks, but the idea of a sacrificial king in the history of the English monarchy was a strong one in Murray’s writings, especially her final work on Witchcraft The Divine King in England.) There’s not much in The Wicker Man that feels out of place, well until the death of the movie’s sort of hero in a giant burning Wicker Man at the end of the film, but even that comes with caveats.

The people of Summerisle give Sergeant Howie all sorts of “outs” to keep from ending up as the island’s sacrifice. The gorgeous Britt Ekland (as the character Willow) attempts to seduce Howie at one point, but his misguided sense of morality keeps him from sharing her bed. Sexually active folks make poor sacrifices apparently, the island demands a virgin; the moral of the story is apparently that having sex will save your life. Howie also willingly comes to the site of the sacrifice and knocks out a creepy inn-keeper in order to don the bells of Punch, the jester and substitute for the actual “king” of the isle. Most of us would have had very little to fear on Summerisle because we’d have either wound up in Willow or Lord Summerisle’s respective beds.

Maypole

A lot of what makes the film work are the musical numbers sprinkled throughout. Music is so essential to The Wicker Man that it might nominally even be thought of as a musical. Everything on the soundtrack is credited to the band “Magnet” (a studio band created to record the movie’s soundtrack) but the soundtrack’s composer (and in some cases assembler) was American Paul Giovani. Giovani’s movie soundtrack is an ingenious collection of Middle English folk, poetry by Robert Burns, and all new compositions. The movie’s most famous tune, Willow’s Song, is littered with double entendres that were rather racy on the big screen back in 1973. It would have been nice if I could justify using some of the soundtrack for my own Beltane revels, but most of them are just off enough that I can’t bring myself to do it. I really dig the song Maypole for example, but theologically it’s pretty unbalanced, with a little too much wand and not enough grail.

And on that bed there was a girl
And on that girl there was a man
And from that man there was a seed
And from that seed there was a boy
And from that boy there was a man
And for that man there was a grave
From that grave there grew
A tree

Just a little bit of womb in there would have gone a long way.

While watching the film I could never quite decide if Sergeant Howie was the protagonist or the antagonist. There’s just enough antagonism (and possibly truth) directed at Christianity that as the movie rolls along it gets easier and easier to root for the Heathens. The Wicker Man (or most likely the novella on which it was based entitled The Ritual) wasn’t written as cultural commentary, but it provides some interludes in that direction none the less. I know it’s completely geeky and nerdy but anything Christopher Lee says just seems to have an extra degree of importance to attached to it. When his Lord Summerisle speaks to the failures of Christianity I can’t help but nod in agreement.

Sergeant Howie: And what of the true God? Whose glory, churches and monasteries have been built on these islands for generations past? Now sir, what of him?

Lord Summerisle: He’s dead. Can’t complain, had his chance and in modern parlance, blew it.
_____

Lord Summerisle: I think I could turn and live with animals. They are so placid and self-contained. They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins. They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God. Not one of them kneels to another or to his own kind that lived thousands of years ago. Not one of them is respectable or unhappy, all over the earth.

The use of “Wicker Men” in history is dubious at best (if they existed we should have come across their remains by now and we haven’t) but the influence of The Wicker Man on Modern Paganism is less so. Back when Paganism was still on the very edge of public awareness out came a movie that very nearly celebrated it. Certainly The Wicker Man doesn’t represent Modern Paganism in any real sense, but in brief flashes it looks and feels like something familiar. The Goddess is alive and magick is afoot, just be careful as to what costumes you put on the first of May . . . . . and if a future (James) Bond-girl attempts to seduce you, by all means go along with it!

(There’s more in this series too: Silver Ravenwolf, Paul Huson’s Mastering Witchcraft, Tori Amos, and Led Zeppelin.)

Uncategorized

Previous Post

April 24, 2014

Writing Beltane

Next Post

April 29, 2014 Beltane Ritual 2014

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Editorializing Gateways to Paganism Guest Posts Holiday Histories Led Zeppelin News and Views Occult Pagan Pagan TV Club Paganism polytheism Ramble On Reviews Ritual Strange Days Uncategorized

Select a Month August 2026 March 2026 February 2026 November 2025 September 2025 August 2025 April 2025 August 2024 April 2024 February 2024 December 2023 October 2023 August 2023 June 2023 May 2023 January 2023 October 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 April 2012 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What does "Emmanuel" mean?

Select your answer to see how you score.

God is Righteous God is Judge God is Peace God with Us