The Starwood Festival, the largest pagan gathering in North America, has taken place each July for the past 27 years in an isolated campground in New York State. As followers of an earth-based religion without leaders, dogma or official texts, pagans seek to re-establish a connection to the cycles of the natural world through different forms of ritual. Lacking the European history of ancient pagan traditions, the North American Neo-Pagan movement is characterized by its eclecticism, borrowing ideas from a wide range of sources from Celtic ritual to environmentalism to contemporary self-help philosophy.
The Starwood Festival, the largest pagan gathering in North America, has taken place each July for the past 27 years in an isolated campground in New York State. As followers of an earth-based religion without leaders, dogma or official texts, pagans seek to re-establish a connection to the cycles of the natural world through different forms of ritual. Lacking the European history of ancient pagan traditions, the North American Neo-Pagan movement is characterized by its eclecticism, borrowing ideas from a wide range of sources from Celtic ritual to environmentalism to contemporary self-help philosophy.