She sits on her bedroom floor in front of an altar doubling as a dresser that holds an assortment of crystals and candles.

Incense burns. Soft music plays. Let the healing begin.

Eryn Z. casts a circle for protection. She breathes in deeply and envisions a ball of gold light swell in her chest. It seeps into the floor, reconnecting with the energy of the universe, before traveling up her spine and back into her body.

“It cleanses and chases out anything dark, anything negative,” the 21-year-old University of Detroit graduate student said about the practice, called grounding. She asked that her full name not be used in this article, worried that it could affect hiring prospects in her chosen field of intelligence analysis.

The Canton woman identifies as a witch. To be exact: A solitary practitioner of Celtic witchcraft.

Replace the fictional lore of witches with grotesque features wearing black pointy hats, poisoning apples and cavorting with the devil.

This is the modern witch: an incense-burning, moon-loving, energy-working feminist who’s all about good vibes and fits in cleansing rituals between class and a waitressing job.

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Paganism, rooted in ancient tradition, is experiencing a dramatic resurgence as rising numbers flock to traditions like witchcraft, Wicca, goddess worship and more.

These spiritual and religious traditions are popular today largely because they intersect with progressive ideals like feminism, environmentalism and acceptance at a time when many are feeling stifled by strict, dogmatic religions.

“Paganism is a very freeing place,” Eryn said. “A place you can be 100% yourself, and be loved and be accepted for that.”

Rising interest

Naturally inquisitive, Eryn was labeled a troublemaker in Catholic school for asking questions during religion class.

Her doubts were met with the same frustrating answer: "Just have faith."

That just wasn't working for her.

She tried out Wicca after a friend introduced her to it, but found it too structurally similar to the faith in which she was raised. That spurred her on a years-long hunt for truth, during which she gathered tidbits to create her own practice-oriented spirituality.

“It’s the answers that work for me,” Eryn said. “They don’t have to work for anybody else.”

Finding refuge in paganism after turning away from organized religion as Eryn did is not uncommon. In fact, it's one of the factors contributing to the rising numbers, data shows.

For the first time this year, people who identify with “no religion” surpassed all other religions in the United States, according to a Ryan Burge, a political scientist at Eastern Illinois University.

Nonreligious people just barely topped all other groups, accounting for 23.1% of the population, while evangelical Christians make up 22.8% and Catholics number just more than 20%, down 3% in the last four years, according to Burge.

At the same time, the number of people who self-identify as “spiritual but not religious” is skyrocketing, with more than a quarter of Americans in the category, according to a 2017 Pew Research poll.

“It’s a very eclectic group that tends to be more open to practice-related groups,” said Arthur Versluis, a Michigan State department of religious studies professor who teaches a class on new religions. “So you see the development — out of the category ‘spiritual but not religious’ — interest in New Age, in paganism, shamanism, and Buddhism.”

These beliefs are gaining traction. Roughly six in 10 Americans believe in at least one New Age belief like astrology or reincarnation, according to a 2018 Pew Research study. Four in 10 believe in psychics and that spiritual energy can be found in physical objects like mountains or trees.

Pagan traditions typically revolve around practice and place a sanctity on nature, but differences abound.

Witchcraft, for example, includes practitioners of Celtic or British witchcraft, followers of the feminist goddess movement and those striving to reclaim ancient Hellenic or Russian traditions, among others. Some are solitary while others practice within a coven.

“We’re all walking very unique paths,” said Phyllis Curott, a globally recognized Wiccan priestess and author who headlined a major Michigan pagan festival in June.

This attracts people who don't wish to be boxed into a certain framework of beliefs.

LeAnn Crouch, co-organizer of Michigan Pagan Festival, was raised Catholic but said she became a witch years ago because of the open, loving community.

“They did not shove answers at me,” Crouch said. “I didn’t feel like I was pushed, guided or directed — I was able to find out who I was as a person and have support while doing that. You don’t find that in a lot of communities.”

Paganism is not just relegated to a niche corner of society. It has popped up in politics, like when an astrologer used progressive U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez's exact time of birth to make predictions about her political career.

In Brooklyn, witches hexed then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh amid allegation of sexual assault against him, and witches calling themselves the magical resistance have placed binding spells on President Trump.

Social media is a ground zero for witchy recipes, spells, and inspiration, with a combined 12 million posts for the hashtags "witch" and "witchesofInstagram."

Paganism in Michigan

Growing attendance at numerous public gatherings of pagans throughout the state indicates that Michigan appears to be following the national spike in interest.

In late June, a record 250 people attended Michigan Pagan Festival during four days at the Wayne County Fairgrounds. Another gathering took place Saturday in Madison Heights. There are about a dozen pagan events throughout the state each year, including pagan pride events, a ball and an educational convention called ConVocation.

To passersby, the Michigan Pagan Festival could easily be mistaken for a typical weekend art fair.

People perused the aisles where local vendors had set up shop, picking up candles to sniff. They ate hot dogs, let their kids play in a children's area and caught up with old friends.

But after looking at handmade jewelry, they'd have the chance to stroll over to a spiritual drum circle where a staccato beat reverberated inside a barn and people chanted completely uninhibited.

Nearby, tarot card readers predicted people's futures, several wolves roamed on leashes and a fire pit burned for the duration.

Women gathered in one corner of a barn to share burdensome experiences and offer support during a workshop called Reclaiming your Warrior Spirit. They wore everything from jeans and flowing dresses to all-black outfits and cat ears. Some went barefoot.

One evening, the group performed the Spiral Dance, a ritual named after a book of the same title by Starhawk, an early leader in goddess worship from the Bay Area.

Eryn recalls grasping hands with others in the group while they moved in a spiral motion and chanted, raising a force of energy so powerful she felt warm despite the chilly night air.

“It’s moments like that where I feel like what we’re doing is definitely a sense of real to it because everyone’s feeling something,” said Eryn. “We can’t all be imagining it.”

Among the average festivalgoers were prominent community leaders, authors, and educators, such as Curott, a New York attorney-turned-Wicca priestess who experienced a spiritual awakening in the '80s after having unexplained dreams and premonitions.

That prompted her to take a bus each week after work to a downtown occult bookstore, where she'd meet with women in a broom closet lit by a dangling light bulb, jars of herbs and statues of goddesses surrounding them.

It was everything her rational, masculine work world was not: a diverse group of smart, fascinating women guiding each other to see the sacred in themselves and in the natural world.

That's the same guiding principle today, she says, although witchcraft has since come out of the shadows of a bookstore closet and into the mainstream.

“All of a sudden, you have a generation of young women,” Curott said, “who’ve discovered that the witch is the ultimate feminist icon.”

Facing skeptics, finding acceptance

When Eryn meets people and tells them she's a witch — it's not a fact she hides, although it's also not the first thing out of her mouth — she's often met with a Harry Potter joke.

And that's one of the better scenarios. Most often people are intrigued, but sometimes they're skeptical or outright afraid she'll put a hex on them.

In Canton, the cookie-cutter suburb where she was raised, Eryn always felt like a fish out of water. She wears more jewelry than other people, with piercings dotting her earlobes and tongue. She doesn't follow fashion norms. And she doesn't believe in God.

She has said she's never been the victim of outright discrimination for her beliefs, but it's the little things: A potential roommate never came back after she warned him he might hear chanting or smell incense coming from her room. Family members have forbidden her from bringing her lifestyle up at the dinner table. Her father still hopes it’s a phase.

Christmas and Easter are tense for the family. She goes to church to please her grandparents but isn't happy about it. Still, they always "kiss and make up" after a bout of grumbling, she said.

Eryn said she didn't have the courage to tell her family she practices witchcraft until she was no longer living under her parents' roof. It was a gradual, nerve-wracking process.

"It’s hard to look someone in the face and tell them 'I don’t believe what you believe,' especially when it’s something that means a lot to them," Eryn said.

Although she has experienced skepticism from her family, the pagan community has stepped in as a family of sorts as well.

Attending the festival feels like a family gathering of its own, she said, where people eat together, play music together and spend time with each other in a supportive environment.

"The minute I walk into the event," Eryn said, "I know I'm home."

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