RADICAL FAERIES AS EXCURSUS RELIGION
American Academy of Religion
Philadelphia, PA, November, 1995
Richard D Lamborn
©1997 All Rights Reserved

         After dusk, when the evening star had appeared, a black, horned bull hovered near a circle of over 200 naked and near

naked men.  It remained until a fireworks display startled it.  The bull appeared near the end of the first gathering of Radical

Faeries, held at an ashram in northern Arizona in September, 1979.  Some considered its appearance supernatural (Timmons,

268; Thompsonb, 276-277).  These Radical Faeries were gay men who had decided to come together to explore what they

saw as their unique, essential identity.  As gay men, they felt excluded from mainstream society and religion.  In addition, they

also felt alienated from the assimilationist elements of the Gay movement.  Their group sharing, development of  religious ideas

and rituals constituted the emergence of a new tradition.  Such new religions are sometimes called sects or cults; however, this

paper will refer to them as emergent religions.  The purpose of this paper is to examine similarities between the history of

Radical Faeries and other emergent religions.  To do this, it relies upon the work of Robert S. Ellwood, Jr., a sociologist of

religion.

         Ellwood uses two metaphors to discuss emergent and established religions in the United States.  In Alternative Altars:

Unconventional and Eastern Spirituality in America, Ellwood pictures established religions as the Jewish temple.  The

metaphor denotes powerful and pervasive religion.  Borrowing from Plato, his metaphor for emergent religions is the cave.

This metaphor brings to mind escape and enlightenment.  According to Ellwood, individuals involved in cave religions separate

from the dominant culture and go on their own excursions.  This journey is necessitated because the religious seekers want to

resolve dissonances that they feel between themselves and the dominant culture (Ellwood, 4-6).  Because seekers usually do

not completely escape their culture, they live in two worlds, the "ordinary world" of  the temple and the "alternative" world of

the cave.  Thus, these two worlds coexist and help to define each other (Ellwood, 11-16).  Shamans, magi, tricksters and

clowns negotiate the boundaries between them (Ellwood, 44, 46, 49, 56).

         Religious seekers make their alternative world concrete by the use of symbols, altered states of consciousness and the

creation of communities.   Sometimes the symbols are borrowed from older traditions in an attempt to make the emergent

religion appear ancient and therefore, authentic (Ellwood, 27, 44-46).  Altered states of consciousness can be produced by

meditation or other psychological or physiological techniques (Ellwood, 58-60).  Furthermore, Ellwood maintains that in

realizing this alternative world using touch, taste and smell, as opposed to sight and sound, is important.  These senses all come

into play in sexual relations, and Ellwood argues that cave religions use both overt and veiled sensuality in accessing and

realizing the alternative world (Ellwood, 59-61).  Because of the emphasis on feelings and consciousness, cave religions usually

lack formal officers and  are lead by charismatic figures (Ellwood, 16, 33, 44).

         As participants in an emergent religion, Radical Faeries live in the ordinary world and work to realize an alternative

world.  Thus, they accept parts of the dominant society and reject others.  Many of the issues raised by this acceptance and

rejection center around what it means to be a man in the United States.  In American Manhood:  Transformations in

Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era, E. Anthony Rotundo finds that what it means to be a man in the twentieth

century grows out of American individualism and begins with the idea that "each individual . . . [has] an inner essence"

(Rotundo, 285).  According to Rotundo, the privilege of realizing this inner essence principally belongs to men (Rotundo, 285,

292, 293).  Radical Faeries accept this part of the ordinary world.  They think that gay men have a unique essence and, as

men, claim the privilege of realizing it.  Rotundo also argues that the dominant culture holds that men's essential character

consists of being domineering, aggressive and competitive (Rotundo, 284-288).  This conception of  masculinity excludes

nurture, intimacy and the creation of close knit community (Rotundo, 284, 292).  Furthermore, John Stoltenberg argues in

Refusing to be a Man:  Essays on Sex and Justice that in the twentieth century,  masculinity consists of men treating others as

mere objects to be acted  upon (Stoltenberg, 50, 51).  Radical Faeries reject objectification, dominance, aggression and

competitiveness and seek nurture, intimacy and community.

         Radical Faeries emerged in the late 1970's as both a part of and a rejection of certain aspects of gay male culture in the

United States.  Gay male culture arose in the late nineteenth century and as the century turned,  differentiated itself from the

larger culture (D'Emilio, 11-13).  World War II sped the growth of the gay male subculture as men left home and family and

entered new social situations.  Whether in the military or in industry, such men were now more likely to meet others who

shared their sexual orientation (D'Emilio, 24-30).  Following the war, homosexual men had to resist society's attempts to

reestablish the primacy of the heterosexual nuclear family and sharply differentiated roles for men and women (Adams, 66).

These men's increased self-awareness lead them to contest the societal attitudes and constraints that were now being

reimposed on them (Berube, 273).  This lead to the creation of  homosexual organizations, the most successful of which was

the Mattachine Society began in 1951 in Los Angeles.  The Mattachine Society would come to debate whether homosexuals

were a minority group with a unique inner essence or whether homosexuals were more or less like everyone else except for

their sexual practices.

          In the late 1970's, the thought and practice of Radical Faeries developed out of this debate.  They drew on four main

sources:  (1) the idea that gay men had a unique consciousness, (2) the establishment of rural gay male collectives, (3) the

practice of "gender fuck" and (4) Arthur Evans' Faery¹ Circle.

         Harry Hay was one of the principal, if not the principal founder of Radical Faeries.  In the 1940's, he was living in Los

Angeles and  thinking about issues of homosexual identity (Timmons, 135).  He was a member of the Communist Party who

had studied and taught Stalin's writings on minority groups.  He concluded that homosexuals fit Stalin's definition of a minority

because in Hay's view they shared a common language, psychology and culture (Timmons, 136).  Hay wrote papers about

these ideas and circulated them among his friends.  He also participated in an informal discussion group about homosexual

issues (Hay 1992, 411).  In 1951, the group began calling itself the Mattachine Society after secret medieval European

peasant societies that danced in costume "during the Feast of Fools, at the Vernal Equinox."²  Hay saw in these societies

organized, yet covert, "protests against oppression" (Hay 1992, 412, 413).  In choosing this name, the Society had selected

the image of the "clown" who, in cave religion, could traverse the boundaries between the ordinary and the alternative world.

When a new member joined the Mattachine Society, the members stood in a circle in a candle lit room while "music carefully

chosen for its emotional effect" played and the initiate took an oath (Timmons, 155).  This ceremony symbolized entrance into

an alternative society safe for homosexuals, apart from the dominant society which marginalized them.

       Charles Rowland, an early member, remembers arguing that

we're not like everybody else.  I don't think or feel like a heterosexual.  My life was not like that of a heterosexual.  I had emotional experiences that I could not have had as a heterosexual.  My whole person, my whole being, my whole character, my life differed and differs from heterosexuals, not by what I do in bed (Rowland, 32, 33).

recalled that as boy he was told "'you don't throw the ball like a girl.  You throw it like a sissy!'" (Hay 1987, 283).  Hay's and

Rowland's pursuant of how they felt within themselves created dissonances with the dominant society which insisted on binary

categories of masculine and feminine.  It also created a division within the Mattachine Society.  Jim Kepner, another early

member, recalls some members were of the opinion that homosexuals were not  "an oppressed cultural group. . . .[and that]

[t]hey wanted to be like everybody else" (Kepner, 32).  Hal Call, whose view would eventually prevail in the Mattachine

Society, thought that gay people should be more public and that in order to do so safely they should try and fit in to society

(Call, 63).  Hay opposed this call to respectability in the name of social acceptance; he argued that homosexuals' uniqueness

had made valuable contributions to society.  Therefore, this uniqueness should be emphasized and the dominant society could

come to value it (Hay, 1992, 410).  However, Hay could see that his position would not carry the day at the 1953 Mattachine

Society convention.  He and the other founders of the Mattachine Society resigned their positions and withdrew from the

organization (Hay 1992, 417-420; Call, 62).

         Later, Hay would argue that the dissonances between himself and both the dominant society and the mainstream Gay

movement was not just social or political, they were also spiritual.  He felt them deeply within in himself as part of his unique

emotional, temperamental and intellectual essence (Thompsonb, 264; Hay 1987, 284).  Thus, Hay and those who agreed with

him needed to find a way to express this difference while still living in a society which rejected homosexuals and while

participating a movement that sought accommodation with that society.  In doing so, Hay and others began to cross the

boundary between the ordinary world and the world of cave religion.  However, realization of this alternative world would

have to wait for more than two decades.

        The moderate position adopted by  the Mattachine Society became known as the homophile movement and

predominated for the next 16 years.  This position did not completely reconcile homosexuals to the larger society.  However,

its underlying theory created less dissonance between homosexuals and society than did Hay's position.  On the other hand,

Hay's ideas, or ideas similar to his, did not disappear.   In 1968, Carl Wittman circulated a draft of his "Gay Manifesto" among

his friends.  Wittman had been national secretary of Students for a Democratic Society and was a veteran of the anti-war and

civil rights movements.  His Manifesto argued that gay people were a distinct group with common characteristics and called for

the "end to homophile conformity" (Adams, 84; Timmons, 254).

       The homophile movement was shaken on June 27, 1969 when a riot broke out at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village.

The drag queens and people of color who were the principal patrons fought the police who were raiding the bar (Duberman,

181-182, 192-209, 224).  In the aftermath of the riot, the militant Gay Liberation Front (GLF) was founded in New York

City  (Duberman, 217-221).  Before the year was out, Hay helped establish the Gay Liberation Front of Los Angeles

(Timmons, 230).  However, the militant stance taken by the GLF did not last.  In New York City, the GLF gave way to the

more moderate Gay Activist Alliance (GAA) founded in December, 1969.

       While the GAA was more progressive than the homophile movement, it was not a revolutionary organization (Duberman,

231, 232).  The moderation of GAA and later, the National Gay Task Force (Adams, 88) did not fit with Hay's more radical

orientation.  Hay was opposed to the urban gay male culture that was developing during the 1970's.  He thought that gay men

were being assimilated into the masculinist culture identified by Rotundo.  One critic of gay male culture thought that gay males

could not and should not be "real men" and called assimilationists, "male impersonators" (Timmons, 253).  Radical Faeries

would define themselves against this assimilationist  culture.  What Hay envisioned was a movement that was "not-men" and

that  would be "at odds with . . . society" rather than being assimilated into it (Timmons, 254).  Hay's tribe of "not-men" would

be a realization of an alternative world that would resolve the dissonances that he felt between himself and both the dominant

society and the mainstream Gay movement.

       One of Hay's concerns was finding his own language to express a homosexual identity (Timmons, 251).  Gay men had

been referred to by a number of labels including "homosexual," "faggot," "queer," "Uranian," "androgyne," "invert," and

"sodomite."  On February 14, 1970, in a speech before the Western Regional Homophile Conference, Hay suggested that gay

men could claim the word "faerie" to describe themselves.  He argued that mythically, faeries had been able to call themselves

into existence when they heeded the call to freedom (Timmons, 136, 252; Thompsonb, 265).  The choice of "faerie"

expressed Hay's belief in an alternative world, a world that could be partially realized by finding language that would properly

identify it.  Faeries moved between the boundaries of the ordinary world and the alternative world and brought the alternative

world in the ordinary.

       Shortly after his Homophile Conference speech, Hay and his lover, John Burnside, moved from Los Angeles to a Tewa

Native American village in northern New Mexico where Hay had traveled after leaving the Mattachine Society (Timmons,

199-202).  Hay and Burnside called their home "Circle of Loving Companions" and were later joined in the circle by another

pair of lovers (Timmons, 261; Thompsonb, 265).  Other gay men had also created rural collectives, one of them at Grinnell,

Iowa.  In 1974 it began publication of RFD: A Country Journal for Gay Men Everywhere after Mother Earth News rejected

an advertisement that referred to gay people.  Some of the early contributors eventually became Radical Faeries and later it

published articles about Radical Faeries.  The journal developed the idea that gay men were different from heterosexual men

and argued for the creation of a rural gay male culture that rejected assimilationism.  Today it serves as the unofficial

publication for Radical Faeries (Thompsonb, 263, 264; Timmons, 253, 254).

       Rural gay collectives were important sites where some gay men rejected the competitiveness and consumerism of the

dominant male culture in which assimilated gay men participated.  The gay men at these collectives supported themselves

through agriculture or a simple trade such as the Circle of Loving Companions'  kaleidoscope business (Timmons, 232).  Mark

Thompson, an early Radical Faerie, writes that "while complex gay business and social infrastructures were emerging in major

urban areas, it was rural gays who were largely questioning internal needs and values" for gay men (Thompsonb, 263).  Thus,

these collectives were also a rejection of the spiritual values of both the larger society and assimilated gay men.  Here, men

who were both gay and outside of the mainstream Gay movement could journey on their own religious excursion.  The

alternative world to which this excursion took them was realized in part by the existence of the community of like minded

individuals at the collectives.

       Another influence on  Radical Faeries was "gender fuck."³  Marjorie Garber argues in Vested Interests:  Cross-Dressing

& Cultural Anxiety that cross-dressing violates the dominant society's binary categories of male and female which are

maintained in part by dress codes (Garber, 10, 11, 16, 25).  In the early 1970's, a troupe of gay men, the Cockettes, crossed

these boundaries by both wearing women's clothes and displaying their masculinity.  For example, in their movie Luminous

Procuress the male actors are dressed in women's head-dresses and bodices.  However, one femininely dressed actor has a

beard while two others are naked from the waist down, their maleness clearly apparent  (Thompsonb, 51, 52, photos after

117).

       In the mid-1970's, the Angels of Light began performances similar to the Cockettes.  Unlike their predecessors, however,

the Angels of Light were more concerned with presenting an ideological message.  Early Radical Faerie, Mark Thompson,

quotes members of the Angels of Light saying that their performances were an "'expression that represents an inward dream

and vision" (Thompsona, 57).  The Angels of Light's principal writer, Adrian Brooks, said that the performances were "an

inversion of self portrayal, the shadow side of individuals. . . . and represented an intense experiment in self-discovery"

(Thompsona, 59).  These troupes' performances violated both masculine and feminine norms of dressing, thus, challenging

binary gender distinctions.  They dramatically made Hay's point that gay men were neither female nor male.  In doing so, the

troupes brought their inner dreams and visions into the ordinary world and led the participants toward self-discovery.  By

crossing the boundaries of binary gender distinctions and realizing an inner world,  participants acted as the tricksters and

clowns of cave religion.

       The final influence on Radical Faeries was Arthur Evans' Faery⁴ Circle.  Although Radical Faeries developed

independently of Evans' Circle, he wrote about his Faery Circle, gay consciousness, gay politics, witchcraft, the worship of

Dionysos and openness to sexuality in Fag Rag and Out  in the mid-1970's.  His writings influenced those who were to call the

first gathering of Radical Faeries in 1979  (Evans, 185,  Thompsonb, 1987, 262; Timmons, 272).  Evans' Faery Circle began

in 1975 at his apartment at the corner of Haight and Ashbury streets in San Francisco.  Evans had concluded "that an old

agrarian underground religion long existed in Europe and that it had a traditional place in its rites for lesbians and gay men"

(Evans, 185).  Evans believed that this religion had elements of the ancient Greek worship of Dionysos.⁵ This god could

appear as a transvestite and as an effeminate man.  His devotees were originally women but came to include both men and

women of  the underclass.  His worship included sex for its own sake, not only for reproduction.  Later, Evans was to write

that he saw in Dionysian religion a challenge to gender norms and oppressive society (Evans, 31, 52, 61, 111, 132).

       Evans' Faery Circle held a ritual on Halloween with some participants wearing dresses and others  wearing robes and

veils.  Evans writes that as the men chanted he felt "warm and comfortable within" and as he focused on the feeling, "it filled my

consciousness" (Evans, 186).  The ritual concluded with the participants touching each other and having sex.  Evans writes that

"it made no difference at all to me how anybody looked" and that his capacity for sex expanded beyond being attracted to "a

certain range of age, weight, and so on" (Evans, 187).   On another occasion, Evans and the other participants drew on Native

American practice and took peyote.  After some ill effects, the experience left him feeling renewed (Evans, 190).  Evans writes

that the Faery Circle was
 

an exercise in spiritual and sexual self-determination.  Religion in consumerist America has become a canned commodity . . . all the brands are basically cranked out by the same patriarchal machine.  The Faery Circle's ritual was an attempt to identify spiritual needs and to articulate them outside of the hackneyed Judaeo-Christian tradition with a sense of humor and subversiveness (Evans, 187, 188).

       Evans' practice illustrates a number of Ellwood's elements of excursus religion. The dresses and other costumes challenged

the dominant society's dress codes.  The costumes also harkened back to the shamans, magi, tricksters and clowns of cave

religion.  Evans' consciousness was changed through chanting, focus on the sensation of warmth, through sex and the use of

peyote.  The Faery Circle created a community in which the realization of an alternative world could occur.  This emergent

religion was given legitimacy by associating itself with Native American religious practice and Greek mythology.

       In 1976, Hay circulated his paper, "Gay Liberation:  Chapter Two" which moved beyond Marxist dialectic and attacked

the binary categories of "men-women" or "subject-object."   He argued that all people are "real," and that no one should be

objectified; thus, relationships should be "subject-subject" as opposed to "subject-object."  In such relationships, neither party

would be dominant and there would be no competition between the parties.  Hay's position contradicted the societal

requirement that men should be competitive and domineering.  RFD thought the paper unintelligible, refused to run it and it was

never published (Hay 1987, 286; Timmons, 257).

       Also in 1976, Hay began corresponding with Mitch Walker, a psychotherapist in Berkeley, California.  The next year,

Walker published Men Loving Men: A Gay Sex Guide and Consciousness Book.  He wrote that his goal was to "break down

all the rules about touching, the taboos and fears of warmth" (Walker, 143).  Walker connected the sensual with the spiritual

and argued that "[w]arm bodies are spiritual" and encouraged "the spirit of touching, the warmth of bodies."   In 1978, Walker

went to New Mexico to meet Hay.  Together they began to plan a gay men's retreat (Timmons, 255).

       Hay and Walker met again in November 1978 along with Don Kilhefner.  Kilhefner had founded the Los Angeles Gay

and Lesbian Services Center and was living in a yoga commune.  He  had been raised in a Mennonite community, worked in

the Peace Corps, studied cultural history at Howard University, was a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating

Committee and studied Mao's writings (Timmons, 257; Thompsonb, 121).  Kilhefner's experiences later led him to write that

"[f]or a long time gays have been trying to minimize our differences from heteros as an act of survival.  But now . . . gay

people  are being urged to begin to maximize our differences from straights as an act of love -- to ourselves and to them"

(Kilhefner, 129, emphasis in original).

       In the spring of 1979, Hay, Walker and Kilhefner finalized their  plans for a retreat and Hay issued a call for "A Spiritual

Conference for Radical Faeries" to be held Labor Day weekend at the Sri Ram Ashram near Benson, Arizona (Timmons,

261,  264; Thompsonb, 267).   At the ashram  there was no one around except approximately 200 gay men.  The gathering

began with the men in a circle.  Both spiritual and social themes were present during the proceedings. "Invocations were

offered to the spirits," the men chanted, shook rattles and small bells, and spoke as they wished. Hay told the gathering that,

"[w]e must recognize that there is a qualitative difference between hetero social consciousness and gay social consciousness."

He invited the participants to "discover the lovely gay conscious 'not-man' shining underneath our disguises" (Thompsonb, 272,

273).

       Hay's biographer, Stuart Timmons, writes that at the next morning's circle, participants stopped wearing clothes but

decorated themselves with feathers, beads and bells.  The men sat in circles and told their stories of growing up gay (Timmons,

266).  A black board posted diverse topics for other circles:  the  politics of gay enspiritment, massage, rape and violence,

ritual makeup, silly sissies, myths of male bonding and nutrition (Timmons, 266, 267).  Circles also centered on music,

movement and dance, chanting, touching and sex.  At one circle, naked men slowly "began to explore  each other's bodies --

arms and feet, faces and backs.  No one was too fat or thin, too perfect or old. . . ." (Thompsonb, 275).  Some participants

engaged in a naked mud bath that ended with the group hugging all at once (Thompsonb, 272, 275- 277 and photos following

254).  Timmons quotes Neal Twyford as saying that at the gathering "we're in another world.  We're back in time" (Timmons,

267).  It was at the last circle of the gathering that the horned, black bull wandered near the men and stayed until a fireworks

display began.  While some considered it supernatural, others did not see it (Timmons, 266, Thompsonb, 276-277).

       A gathering was held the following year in Boulder, Colorado.  This gathering became known as the Faerie Woodstock.

It began with Mitch Walker, as  self appointed shaman, going alone to the area where the Faeries would gather.  Wearing

"bangles, beads and bells," he blessed the area (Timmons, 272).  At this gathering, Faeries began to take new names such as

"Flower," "Toy," and "Beautiful Day" (Timmons, 273).  Participants used sweat lodges, joined ecstatic dances and ran naked

(Timmons, 273, 275).   Also, at this gathering Dennis Melba'son of Louisiana Sissies in Struggle presented the sacred Faerie

shawl he had crocheted.  It depicted a horned and bearded god based on the Celtic god Cernunnos and the Greek god Pan.

The design had been "inspired by a vision;" the shawl is now worn by speakers at important Radical Faerie circles (Timmons,

273).

       After this gathering, Radical Faeries met only on a local and regional basis.  Thompson writes that by 1985 more than one

hundred Radical Faerie gatherings had been held in North America.  Gatherings have also been held in Europe and Australia.

Local and regional groups are organized with a minimum of official administrators (Thompsonb, 267, 268).    In addition, the

residents of several gay men's collectives are  Radical Faeries (Thompsonb, 252).⁶  At Radical Faerie gatherings, as well as on

other occasions, many Faeries wear pants, skirt and vest of military camouflage material; the skirt is trimmed with lace and a

women's blouse is worn under the vest (Ariel).

       Radical Faeries have accepted the individualistic, American idea that people have an inner, unique essence.  They claim

their privilege as males to discover and express this essence which they see as their gay male consciousness.  However, they

find that this consciousness brings them into conflict with the dominant society and creates dissonances within themselves which

they seek to resolve.  These dissonances arise because as gay men, Radical Faeries' not only partially reject the dominant

masculinist society but also the assimilationist elements of the mainstream Gay movement.  In turn, the dominant society and the

mainstream Gay movement marginalize Radical Faeries.  Radical Faeries try to resolve these dissonances by accessing and

realizing an alternative world.  They do this by rejecting the binary norms of masculinity and femininity, symbolized, in part, by

nudity and by their dress.  They also adopt ancient symbols and practices from pagan and Native American religions in order

to legitimize their realization of this alternative world.  The alternative world is manifest in Radical Faeries' altered states of

consciousness such as the appearance of the black bull and the vision of the sacred Faerie shawl.  Consciousness is altered in

part by their sexual practice as well as by their coming together in community.  In this community, they find another world, the

world of cave religion.

         ¹Evans' spelling.

          ²Hay maintains that this Feast became April Fool's Day (Timmons, 129).

         ³Mark Thompson applies this term to gay men wearing dresses and beards (Thompsona, 51).

         ⁴I have used Evans' spelling wherever I refer directly to the Faery Circle organized by him.

         ⁵Evans uses this spelling as the transliteration of the Greek name.

         ⁶Radical Faerie collectives are located at Golden, Oregon,  the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state, at Wolf Creek, Oregon, at Running Water, South Carolina and Short Creek, Tennessee (Thompsonb, 252).
 

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