Out of Hiding, Into the Bible Belt

Pagans in Arkansas endure years of fear and harassment in the most socially conservative region of the United States — the Bible Belt. 

Story by Kari Adams

Marie didn’t think she deserved to die. The two boys yelling out the bus window thought otherwise.

“F—king witch!”

“Cut yourself and die, you emo whore!”

The boys’ voices carried down the empty street on the quiet October morning in 2009. It had been rather serene before they got there; everything was cast a cool blue as the sun peaked above the horizon line, only 6:30 a.m. Marie’s house was one of the first on the bus route. 

She was sitting in the driveway of her family home, still wearing the clothes she slept in, waiting to wave at her friends as they drove by. Marie was 12 years old at the time and had started seventh grade in Quitman, Arkansas, a small town about 60 miles from Little Rock, a few months prior. But, a day ago, her parents pulled her from school. 

Since school started in August, she went to class every day as an outcast. Students told her she was an abomination. They told her she was going to Hell if God didn’t save her soul. They told her to kill herself — all because Marie practices Wicca, a modern form of Pagan witchcraft, and has been since the fifth grade. When the taunts took a toll on her mental health, her parents decided leaving the school was the best option.

She was sitting in her living room when she received a call earlier that morning. It was a small room with nothing but a long, rust-colored couch, worn and rough, with a matching love seat, a small coffee table, and old TV. Marie had woken up early that day, her body too accustomed to an early morning school routine. It was her best friend’s name that popped up on the screen, but her friend’s brother was on the other end. He told Marie to wait outside for the bus; he and his friend wanted to wave as they passed her house. 

Marie waited outside for 10 minutes on the chilly fall morning, rubbing her bare arms for warmth. When the bus finally turned down her street, the boys slid down the windows and screamed obscenities, flipping her off and laughing like hyenas as the bus rolled past her. She just watched, paralyzed. 

After her mother convinced Marie to tell her what happened, they walked into the Quitman High front office demanding accountability, but the school officials told them that nothing could be done. The exchange wasn’t on camera, the bus driver said he didn’t hear anything, and Marie was no longer a member of the school system. 

“I went numb to the world,” Marie recalled. 

***

Marie, now 24, lives with religious trauma and prefers to keep her identity hidden. Today, she is afraid of even placing an altar in her backyard. “Others can display crosses in their front yard with no fear,” Marie said, “but if I put anything near my house on the outside, I put myself in real danger.”

What Marie experienced was something many Pagans face over and over again throughout their life, stories of hatred and disgust — especially in Arkansas, a Bible Belt state. Arra Graskewicz, 24, a central Arkansas resident, told her mother she was Pagan when she was a teenager. Her mother told their pastor, and Graskewicz sat through a sermon bashing Paganism. Afterward, he came to their home and cleansed her bedroom because she had been “communing with demons.” Tesha Baker, 44, of central Arkansas, was the subject of a nasty Facebook post, instigated by her ex-husband’s fiancée after he told her about Baker’s witchcraft. People commented that Baker would go to hell if she didn’t find Jesus. Baker is a Christian witch who prays to God. 

Paige Hines, 21, of southeast Arkansas, only celebrates Pagan holidays like Easter and the autumn equinox ­­— called Mabon — shielded by the trees and free from drawing too much attention. She is afraid of being accused of Satan worship. In Little Rock, the urban center of the state, Elizabeth Scott, 29, heard whispers at her waitressing job after she revealed she was Pagan. Her co-worker was talking behind her back, telling people she was in a sex cult and sacrificed animals for fun. 

Modern Paganism ­— also known as contemporary Paganism or Neo-Paganism — is a movement more than it is an organized religion, and it encompasses a variety of nature-oriented paths, including Wicca, eclectic Paganism, herbalism, Druidism, and many others. It is a polytheistic or pantheistic worship, meaning there are multiple gods, surrounding a central theme of celebrating the earth. Some Pagans identify as witches while others ignore the word entirely. It is not a religion in a traditional sense, but if it must be, then it is a religion that preaches the gospel of self-expression and empowerment. 

No two Pagans practice the same, but a yearning for autonomy and a connection to nature is a unifying feature amongst all Pagan paths. Some people place altars in their room or in their backyard where they leave offerings to deities or speak to lost loved ones. Many meditate to ground themselves to the earth or read Tarot cards to learn about the past, present, or future. Witchcraft is the use of spells, like a protection spell, or rituals to materialize intentions by focusing energy onto herbs, crystals, or candles. People do what they feel drawn to. 

However, many Pagans fear practicing out in the open, making a definitive count impossible. Dr. Helen Berger, resident scholar at the Women Studies Research Center at Brandeis University, has studied and collected survey data on the Pagan community for 30 years, but the number of Pagans in the U.S. still remains a “guesstimate,” she said. The total is expected to be nearing two million, less than 1% of the U.S. population. But this is most likely an undercount due to the amount of book sales, website traffic, social media involvement, and participation is Pagan festivals, Berger said.

Wicca, one of the most prominent expressions of modern Paganism witchcraft, has exploded in popularity, especially among the younger generations. In 1990, only 8,000 people identified as Wiccan, then in 2008, it grew to 340,000, according to World Religion News. Today, social media apps like TikTok are home to Pagan and witch influencers sharing educational videos, Tarot card readings, or horoscopes. The hashtag #witchtok has 20.4 billion views, #pagantok has 198.2 million.

The birth of modern Paganism is often traced to 1950 with the release of Witchcraft Today, a book by English writer and self-described witch Gerald Gardener, detailing Gardener’s experience meeting witches in the 1930s and starting his own coven. His influence from overseas trickled into the States around the 60s with New Age philosophies that took root in activism as the country was undergoing drastic social change. 

Since its rebirth, the rise of neo-Paganism has been slow but steady as young people sought freedom from authority, misogyny, racism, and homophobia by delving into the realm of magic. “There’s been an enormous increase in solitary practitioners,” Dr. Berger said. “Since between 1980 to 2021, it just keeps increasing. And part of the reason it can increase is that people learn about the religion, learn more about its practice, learn more about magic, and connect with others in the religion online.”

Though there is irony in a religion so grounded in nature thriving off technology, social media plays a large role in connecting Pagans across the United States as a way to avoid the backlash of public exposure, especially in Arkansas and other Bible Belt states. A Facebook group called “Arkansas Pagans and Witches” is a digital safe haven for more than 1,400 Pagans in the Natural State, including Marie. The group is teeming with posts every day. 

“What did y’all do for the full moon?”

“I’ve been set to deploy to the Middle East next month… Does anyone know of any good protection spells or an amulet or something I can take with me for protection?”

“Witchy bitch looking for community amongst like-minded individuals from my state.”

“I was wondering if anyone had any cutting ties spells… I have three people who I had a falling out with and wish for them to be out of my life for good…”

“Today is the day that I come out of the broom closet and tell my Christian husband that I am converting to Paganism.”

Other groups include “Witches of Arkansas” with 1,500 members, “Arkansas witches crew” with 753, “Arkansas Witches, Wiccans, Pagans” with 432, and a few others. Many Pagans practice alone but frequent the Facebook groups for advice, using others to learn about their own craft, and in the middle of the Bible Belt, find a sense of community in an otherwise unforgiving landscape.  

Marie was raised in nature. She lived 10 minutes outside of Quitman, Arkansas, in a little house enveloped by a thick line of trees, only one other house and a trailer home nearby. She spent most of her free time trudging through the woods with her dogs looking for mud holes or good climbing trees. 

As she got older, she started hearing small town gossip about evil witches that lurched in the woods around Quitman, stories about women sacrificing animals to Satan, but it was confusing. Kids at school rambled on about movies like The Craft from 1996, a movie about teenage witches in a Los Angeles Catholic school struggling with their newfound power of witchcraft. Students coated their hair with shampoos and conditioners, mimicking an iconic scene from the movie where one of the teen witches rubbed her hand over her head, changing her hair color instantly. “A few kids, despite being terrified of witches, still had this pull to do something crazy like that,” Marie said. “They wanted to stand out and scare people like, ‘I did a spell.’ Then, it would just be dropped at that, but I never dropped it.”

Marie started sneaking out at night to practice spells on her plants. She read books and watched more movies like Practical Magic, a 1998 movie about two sisters born into a family of witches. Then, when she was 11 years old, it was like the movie came to life before her eyes. Her father sat her down in the living room and told her he came from a line of practicing witches. Everything started making sense.

Marie didn’t grow up religious, but she was always looking for answers. Quitman was a predominantly Baptist area, most of the churches were Baptist and subsequently, most of Marie’s friends were Baptist as well. Her parents both actively avoided church, avoided talking about it all together, so when Marie started hearing kids at Pre-K talking about someone named God, she got curious. At four years old, for the first time, someone told her that she would go to Hell if God didn’t save her.

***

She was five years old when she decided she needed to go to church. Her mother dropped her off in the parking lot and waited in the car while Marie went in alone. It was the biggest church in town, white and pristine with a large, white steeple in the middle of the roof, a bit intimidating for little Marie, and it smelled stale, like a closet that hadn’t been opened in a while. 

The day started off at Bible study where kids memorized Bible verses that they pulled from a hat. John 3:16 was the first verse Marie ever learned. After she memorized it, she got a piece of candy, a treat like she was one of Pavlov’s dogs. After that, the rest of the experience was a blur of buzzing voices and big smiles and songs and alleluias and sermons. Her first time listening to a sermon was strange. The pastor’s voice was loud, sickly sweet yet intimidating at the same time. It filled the room and rammed against her eardrums like he was trying to drill into her skull. She didn’t like what she was hearing either. Marie thought God sounded scary. She didn’t want to worship Him. She just wanted to go home.

After that, she lost her sense of wonder surrounding God and church, but it was all people talked about in her little town. A few years later, her friend begged her to start going to church again. This time it was a smaller Baptist church on the outskirts of town, barely inside city limits. She started going on Sunday and Wednesday every week, but eventually stopped going to Sunday service because they didn’t serve food. Marie’s family was poor, and Wednesdays became an opportunity for an easy meal. But people in the church noticed that her heart wasn’t in it. They started picking on her, singling her out to answer questions during Bible study. Eventually, she got yelled at when she tried to get seconds during dinner. She stopped going after that. 

So, she kept playing outside, making forts out of sticks and rocks and mixing potions out of wild berries. Nature wasn’t mean to her. When her father sat her down to tell her about his family of Pagan witches, she almost wasn’t surprised. 

Her father didn’t know his family, only his mother, so when an ancestry test resulted in a call from a woman asking for her brother, nobody knew what to think. These people were Marie’s long-lost aunts and great aunts and uncles and cousins. They were strangers but also familiar. 

When she was 10 years old, everyone met in Alabama for a family reunion. People were drunk and talkative, conversation flowed more freely with every drink. Marie’s father was heavily tattooed, full sleeves with skulls and pentagrams, and his great aunts finally pulled him aside when they decided he would be understanding after seeing his appearance and told him that they were a family of generational witches. Then, he explained that he grew up Wiccan as well. “There was always a pull,” he said. Marie was watching from the corner of the room, putting all the pieces together.

A year later, her father finally sat Marie down in the living room after her mother went to bed. He talked about how his family members were witches. He talked about how he practiced in the past but doesn’t anymore. He talked about how he got into some really bad stuff through Paganism, did things he shouldn’t have, and wanted Marie to be better than he was. Marie started calling herself Wiccan the very next day.

Marie started fifth grade soon after and couldn’t wait to tell her classmates about her new self-discovery. Harry Potter was one of the most popular movie franchises at school. Magic was on everyone’s minds, and Marie was dreaming about being the most popular kid in school. A real witch. Instead, she was called a devil worshipper. She walked down the hallways and heard whispers that someone should “burn the witch”. One teacher pulled her aside at recess to ask her to come to church, saying God needed to save her soul. It felt more selfish than anything like she didn’t actually care about Marie and instead just wanted to be in God’s good graces. It was the same questions over and over again, asking if Marie believed in God or if she knew Jesus died for her sins. 

Eventually, she started lying, agreeing with people and hoping they would leave her alone, but she couldn’t help the fear bubbling up inside her, little seeds of hesitancy and anxiety in the back of her mind growing with every interaction. 

“That’s the devil getting into your heart.”

“You don’t want to go to hell, do you? All your family is going to heaven, and you don’t want to end up in hell and burn for eternity.”

“I can save your soul if you just come to church with me.”

It kept happening in sixth grade, and seventh grade was shaping up to be the same. Soon, Marie stopped sleeping. She left school at 12 years old, moving out of Quitman a few years later. There was no place for her in Quitman, but there was a place for her in Wicca and Paganism. Many women were finding the same.

***

It started in the 1960s. The Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell, or W.I.T.C.H, was founded as a feminist organization fighting alongside other causes like the Civil Rights movement, the anti-war movement, and the gay rights movement — all protests not typically aligned with traditional southern history. Even today, the members show up to protests covered head to toe in black attire, faces concealed by black cloth, but the most notable feature is a tall, wide-brim hat with a distinct conical point ­­— a witch’s hat. 

Many members were or are not real witches, but they saw the reaction that their imagery had. It was eye-catching, and it made people afraid. With the power women found in paganism, some forged ahead despite negative public opinion with a hunger for change. In 2018, a group of New York witches gathered for a group hex on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh before the midterm election. Kavanaugh has been accused of sexual assault by three women. 

Witches across the state gathered at Catland Books, a metaphysical shop and bookstore in Brooklyn, with the intention to incite change by using “the only means of exacting justice available to those of us who have been wronged by men just like him,” according to the bookstore’s Facebook event. More than 18,000 people responded to the post.  

Their mission to hex Kavanaugh resulted in outrage among the Catholic community — Kavanaugh being Catholic himself. California priest and exorcist Father Gary Thomas told the National Catholic Register, “This is conjuring evil — not about free speech.” He described the witches as “real evil people” who “should not be underestimated or dismissed.” 

This was not the only instance of public hexing. The year before, the same bookstore called witches to cast a spell on Donald Trump, accused of sexual assault by 26 women. The Christian Nationalist Alliance called it “a declaration of spiritual war.” Women were weaponizing the fear that Christianity manufactured. But with bad blood brewing between Paganism and Christianity, it also made practicing freely in the Bible Belt that much more difficult.

For Paige Hines, the two religions coexist every day. Hines is a Christian witch, meaning that the Christian God has power over all, but she has power over herself as well as what happens around her. When Hines was reading the Ten Commandments, she said that “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” led her to believe there were gods below the Christian God rather than no other gods at all. Though she believes in those gods, she does not pray to them.

Hines is from southeast Arkansas where she, her family, and a few friends are the only people nearby that practice witchcraft. She chose her path at 10 years old after finding her mother’s spell books, planting a seed of curiosity that compelled her to learn more.  

She grew up going to a Southern Baptist church, then a Pentecostal church, a Free Will Baptist church, and a Catholic church before choosing Christian witchcraft. Christianity had “become so muddled,” she said. Like many others, she was seeking empowerment and could not find it in the rigid and patronizing environment of traditional Christianity, but she said what she had learned as a kid in church still made sense to her. Hines said God is the Creator, but she controls her own being. Christian witchcraft plugged up the holes that Christianity alone couldn’t fill.

However, she still retains a small fear of Christianity that she hopes will fizzle out as modern Paganism grows. Though, in Hines’ small town, everyone knows everybody, and backlash or judgment is always lurking.

Pagans aren’t free from judgment from family either. Even after formally choosing her path at 16, Elizabeth Scott couldn’t escape Catholicism. An explosive argument with her mother after her decision resulted in Scott being grounded. “If you live under my roof,” her mother said, “you’re going to go to church.” 

So, for two years, Scott went to church with her family. She would walk in and grab the weekly bulletin, carefully avoiding the eyes of the other churchgoers around her. Sometimes, she would take the bulletin and walk out, and other times she would hide in the quiet room where mothers took their crying infants during sermons. 

Her mother thought making her go to church would change her mind but really it made Scott more determined, more defiant. The week she moved out at 18, she told her mother that she wouldn’t go to church again. “I did what you said,” Scott told her. Her mother does not support her decision to this day, 12 years later.

Today, Marie lives in central Arkansas, and she can’t escape feelings of isolation. She fears dying, afraid that people are right and she will rot in hell because she can’t connect with Christianity. She stopped telling people she is Wiccan. She stopped practicing out in the open. She stopped collecting spell books, candles, crystals, and herb boxes because she is afraid people will find them. Marie has one set of Tarot cards, and she sits hidden away in the back room of her house to read them. She also stopped wearing Pagan jewelry, no symbols or hints of her beliefs.

Regardless, Marie doesn’t regret the path she chose. 

“The most amazing thing about Wiccanism, Paganism…is it’s all free,” Marie said. “If dancing naked under a full moon isn’t for you, then don’t do it. If doing spells isn’t your thing, then you don’t have to do them. If you want to just sit outside and make the wind blow, you’re free to do so.”

As a child, she felt trapped, cornered like a wounded animal, but she never questioned who she was. 

“I have always been told to trust my gut,” Marie said, “and this is something deep in my gut — in my bones — that feels so right that I could never doubt or deny it.”