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Bonewits, P. E. I. (Isaac) (1949–?) One of the brightest and most colorful figures of
the Neopagan movement, Philip Emmons Isaac Bonewits is best known
for his leadership in modern Druidism. He is a priest, magician,
scholar, author, bard and activist, and has dedicated himself
to reviving Druidism as a “Third
Wave” religion aimed at protecting
“Mother Nature and all Her children.“
Bonewits was born on October 1, 1949, in Royal
Oak, Michigan — the perfect place, he likes to joke, for
a future Archdruid. The fourth of five children (three girls,
two boys), he spent most of his childhood in Ferndale, a suburb
of Detroit. When he was nearly 12, the family moved to [Southern
California, first on the actual beach of Capistrano Beach, later
to] San Clemente, California.
From his mother, a devout Roman Catholic,
Bonewits developed an appreciation for the importance of religion;
from his father, a convert to Catholicism from Presbyterianism,
he acquired skepticism. He bounced back and forth between parochial
and public schools, largely due to the lack of programs for very
bright students — his I.Q. was tested at 200.
His first exposure to magic came at age 13,
when he met a young Creole woman from New Orleans who practiced
Voodoo. She showed him some of her magic and so accurately divined
the future [and so successfully performed spells] that he was
greatly impressed. During his teen years, he read extensively
about magic and parapsychology. He also read science fiction,
which often has strong magical and psychic themes.
In ninth grade, Bonewits entered a Catholic
high-school seminary. He soon realized, however, that he did
not want to be a priest in the Catholic faith. He returned to
public school and graduated a year early. After spending a year
in junior college to get foreign language credits, he enrolled
at the University of California
at Berkeley in 1966. At about the same time, he began practicing
magic, devising his own rituals by studying the structure of
rituals in books, and by observing them in various churches.
 His roommate at Berkeley, Robert Larson, was a Druid,
an alumnus of Carleton College,
where the Reformed Druids of North America
(RDNA) had been founded in 1963. Larson interested Bonewits
in Druidism and initiated him into the RDNA. The two established
a grove in Berkeley. Bonewits was ordained as a Druid priest
in October 1969. The Berkeley grove was shaped as a Neopagan
religion, unlike other RDNA groves, which considered the order
a philosophy. The Neopagan groves became part of a branch called
the New Reformed Druids of North America (NRDNA).
During college, Bonewits spent about eight
months as a member of the Church of Satan, an adventure
that began as a lark. The college campus featured a Spot where
evangelists of various persuasions would lecture to anyone who
would listen. As a joke, Bonewits showed up one day to perform
a satirical lecture as a Devil’s evangelist. He was so successful
that he was approached by a woman who said she represented Anton
Szandor LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan. Bonewits attended
the church’s meetings and improved upon some of their rituals
but dropped out after personality conflicts with LaVey. The membership,
he found, consisted largely of middleclass conservatives who
were more “rightwing and racist”
than Satanist.
Bonewits had intended to major in psychology
but through Berkeley’s individual group-study program fashioned
his own course of study. In 1970 he graduated with a bachelor
of arts degree in magic [and thaumaturgy], the first person ever
to do so at a Westem educational institution. He also was the
last to do so in the United States[?]. College administrators
were so embarrassed over the publicity about the degree that
magic, witchcraft and sorcery were banned from the individual
group-study program.
 The fame of
his degree led to a book contract. In 1971 Real
Magic was published, offering Bonewits’ views
on magic, ritual and psychic abilities. A revised and updated
edition was published in 1979 and reissued in 1989.
In 1973 Bonewits met a woman named Rusty [Elliot],
a folksinger in the Berkeley cafes. They moved to Minneapolis,
where they were married, and where Bonewits took over the editorship
of Gnostica, a Neopagan journal published by Carl Weschcke
of Llewellyn Publications.
He gave Gnostica a scholarly touch and turned it into
the leading journal in the field. But the job lasted only 1 1/2
years, for the editorial changes resulted in the loss of many
non-Pagan readers, who found the magazine too high brow.
 Bonewits remained in Minneapolis for about
another year. While there he established a Druid grove called
the Schismatic Druids of North America, a splinter group of the
RDNA. He also joined with several Jewish pagan friends and created
the Hasidic Druids of North America, the only grove of which
existed briefly in St. Louis, where its membership overlapped
with that of the Church of All Worlds. In 1974–75, Bonewits
[partially] wrote, edited and self-published The
Druid Chronicles (Evolved), a compendium of the
history, theology, rituals and customs of all the Reformed Druid
movements, including the ones he invented himself.
 [During
this same time] he also founded the Aquarian Anti-Defamation
League (AADL), a civil liberties and public relations organization
for members of minority belief systems, such as the Rosicrucians,
Theosophists, Neopagans, Witches, occultists, astrologers and
others. [See The Aquarian Manifesto.]
Bonewits sought to convince such persons that they had more in
common with each other than they realized. By banding together,
they could effectively fight, through the press and the courts,
the discrimination and harassment of the Judeo-Christian conservatives.
Bonewits served as president of the AADL and
devoted most of his income — from unemployment insurance
— to running it. The organization scored several small victories
in court, such as restoring an astrologer to her apartment, after
she had been evicted because a neighbor told her landlord that
her astrology classes were “black
magic seances.” In 1976 Bonewits
and Rusty divorced, and he decided to return to Berkeley. The
AADL disintegrated shortly after his departure.
In Berkeley, Bonewits rejoined the NRDNA grove
and was elected Archdruid. He established The Druid Chronicler
(which later became Pentalpha Journal) as
a national Druid publication in 1978. He attempted to make the
Berkeley grove as Neopagan as the groves in Minneapolis and St.
Louis, which caused a great deal of friction among the longtime
members. After a few clashes, Bonewits left the organization.
Pentalpha Journal folded.
  [Also in 1978 , he researched and wrote
Authentic Thaumaturgy, essentially
a rewrite of Real Magic for players of fantasy role-playing
games such as Dungeons &
Dragons. It was published in booklet format, shown
left, in 1978 and 1979 by The Chaosium, publishers of the Runequest
and Call of Cthulu games. “A.T.” became
highly influential in the RPG community, even though no more
than 1,000 copies were ever printed. Many years later, in 1998,
he published a dramatically expanded and updated edition, shown
right, for Steve Jackson Games,
which released it as a large trade paperback. Excerpts from this
new edition can be found here.]
In 1979 he married for a second time, to a
woman named Selene [Kumin]. That relationship ended in 1982 [after
a brief stay in Santa Cruz, California, where he worked as a
typesetter]. In 1983 he was initiated into the New Reformed Order
of the Golden Dawn [the San Francisco Bay Area’s best known,
and stereotypically “eclectic,”
Wiccan tradition]. The same year, he married
again, to Sally Eaton, the actress who created the role of the
hippie Witch in the Broadway musical, Hair. [During the
early 1980s, Bonewits and Eaton were heavily involved in the
California revival of the Ordo Templi Orientis, or “O.T.O.,” best known
for its most important historical figure, Aliester Crowley.]
They moved to New York City in 1983 where Bonewits met Shenain
Bell, a fellow Neopagan, and discussed the idea of starting a
Druidic organization.
 The fellowship, Ár
nDraíocht Féin (“Our
Own Druidism” in Irish Gaelic), was
born as a fresh Neopagan religious organization with no ties
to the ancient Druids or to the RDNA, which by this time was
apparently [but not exactly] defunct. Bonewits became Archdruid,
and Bell became ViceArchdruid.
In 1986 Bonewits and Eaton separated, and
he moved to Kansas City for several months, where he worked as
a computer consultant. He then returned to Berkeley but could
not find work in Silicon Valley, which was in a slump [they had
a glut of unemployed technical writers at the time]. He moved
back to the East Coast, to Nyack, New York, near Manhattan, in
November 1987, with his intended fourth wife, Deborah Lipp, a
Wiccan high priestess [and married her in 1988]. He continued
work as a computer consultant and worked on the building of Ár
nDraíocht Féin. He also began work on a book
on the creation, preparation and performance of effective religious
rituals [finally published as Rites
of Worship: A Neopagan Approach in 2004 and as Neopagan Rites
in 2007].
[From 1988 through 1995, Bonewits and Lipp
were partners (along with several others across the continent)
in making ADF the largest and most successful Neopagan Druid
organization in North America, with legal standing and tax exempt
status in the USA. For most of this time, they were also partners
in running a Gardnerian Wiccan “Pagan
Way” group and then a coven in New
York and New Jersey.]
 [1990 saw the birth of Bonewits’ first known
child, Arthur Lipp-Bonewits, at their home in Dumont, New Jersey.
Arthur quickly became known among East Coast Neopagans as an
intelligent, self-aware, and hyperactive child. 1990 also saw,
however, a serious blow to Bonewits’ health, when he began
showing symptoms of a new disease called Eosinophilia Myalgia Syndrome, caused
by chemically contaminated L-Tryptophan
tablets manufactured in Japan and consumed by tens of thousands
of Americans in 1989. This multisystemic disease caused Bonewits
an increasing inability to perform his secular or Archdruidic
duties, leading to his loss of employment in 1992 and his resignation as Archdruid
of ADF, and assumption of the Archdruid Emeritus title, on January
1, 1996. In 1997 and 1998, Bonewits began to show signs
of recovering from the disease’s worst effects, except for
relapses in the winter months, but by this time the disease had
also caused severe damage to his marriage with Deborah, and in
1998 they separated.]
The “10–year gap.”
Bonewits has discovered, he says, a “10–year gap” between
many of his views and their acceptance among Neopagans. In 1973
he was the first Neopagan to state publicly that the alleged
antiquity of Neopagan Witchcraft (Wicca) was “hogwash.”
The Craft, he said, did not go back beyond Gerald
B. Gardner and Doreen Valiente [Now he is willing to push it
all the back to the 1920’s. See Witchcraft: A Concise
Guide]. Bonewits was held in contempt by many for that, yet
by 1983, Neopagans generally acknowledged that Neopagan Witchcraft
was a new religion, not the continuation of an old one. The Aquarian
Anti-Defamation League was also ahead of its time. In 1974–75,
Neopagans were not ready to admit that they needed public relations
and legal help. By a decade later, a number of such organizations
were in existence.
Around 1985 Bonewits began regularly discussing
the need to provide social services for domestic and personal
problems and drug dependencies. Neopagans, he points out, represent
a cross section of the population, and such problems cut across
religious lines. Bonewits estimates that as many as 80 percent
of Neopagans come from “non[‘dys-’]functional
family” backgrounds. Neopagans, he observes, are brighter
and more artistic than average, but also, therefore, “more
neurotic.” [He now thinks much of it may be related to “Aspergers
Syndrome”] The community has been quick to address these
social issues with programs [such as various “Pagan
12-Step Programs”].
Bonewits also began lobbying for financial
support for full-time Neopagan clergy (the priesthood is essentially
a volunteer job), but the idea fell on uninterested ears. In
1988 Bonewits was pursuing a goal of buying land and establishing
an academically accredited Pagan seminary. [As of 2006, there
are dozens of Pagan-owned land sanctuaries, and a few Pagan seminaries
earning accreditation from the national accreditation agencies.
Alas, ADF is not among them, though a couple of ADF groves own
their own land. A few Neopagan clergy have managed to obtain
employment via the Covenent of
Unitarian Universalist Pagans (CUUPS) as UU ministers.]
[On July 23, 2004, Isaac was handfasted to
ceremonial magician, Wiccan priestess, and early member of CUUPS, Ms. Phaedra
Heyman. On December 7th of 2007, Isaac and Deborah were legally
divorced and Isaac and Phaedra were wed on December 31, 2007.
They now reside in Rockland County, New York, and have recently
written a book together: Real
Energy: Systems, Spirits, and Substances to Heal, Change, and
Grow (New Page, March 2007).]
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