The letter arrived on a separate piece of paper, included inside the usual nondescript envelope with my issue of PanGaia magazine. "In these difficult times," it began, "we all need to be quick on our feet and willing to examine our preconceptions." It went on to explain how PanGaia, a magazine with one of the largest subscriber bases in Pagan periodicals, had been created for experienced practitioners in opposition to its sister title newWitch, which aimed for newer entrants to Paganism. This divide was "no longer a functional paradigm," though. "What we really need today," the letter continued, "is a single, united magazine- a Pagan journal of record— that covers a broad spectrum of Pagan lifestyle, theology, and community; equally able to profile Pagan celebrities and deeply engage with the issues of being Pagan in a new millennium."

And so, with the publication of its 50th issue, PanGaia ended with the promise of emerging as the new magazine Witches and Pagans, a combination of PanGaia and newWitch.

"It was incredibly tough to make that call," says Ann Newkirk Niven, editor of PanGaia as well as its sister titles newWitch and SageWoman. "Financially, PanGaia has always operated on a break-even basis, at best— and although it had a small core of dedicated readers, it never developed a large enough base to support itself." As BBI Media employs "the thinnest staff possible— just our family," producing all three quarterly titles also drained Niven's energy. This state continued until finally, Niven knew the time had come. "I spent an entire morning crying my eyes out when I finally came to grips with the fact that we could no longer publish PanGaia," she says.

PanGaia's fate is not a new one for Pagan magazines. "The mortality rate is truly staggering," Niven says, even for mainstream magazines: "Industry pundits like to say that only one magazine in ten survives two years, and less than 2% make it a decade." The size of the Pagan population is still notoriously difficult to judge with accuracy, but the most current number is the American Religious Identification Survey's count of 2.8 million for adherents of "other religions," where Paganism is lumped in with Shintoism, Jainism, and Jediism, among others. Surprisingly, publications abound for our population despite its comparatively small size: SageWoman and the forthcoming Witches and Pagans and Crone from BBI Media, Thorn, Hex, Circle, the academic journal The Pomegranate, White Dragon and Pentacle in the UK, and an abundance of ezines: the reborn Green Egg, Rending the Veil, the family-friendly Broomstix, Pagan Pages, The Wiccan / Pagan Times, and countless others.

A search for current Pagan publications, though, will also yield a roster of those that have passed on: Enchante, Mezlim, Modern Witch. Says Niven with a laugh, "I couldn’t even count all the Pagan 'zines I’ve seen come and go." Even ezines, with their lower production costs, struggle to continue publishing with the costs of domain registration and hosting: The Pagan Heart, Widdershins, and The Pagan Activist have all joined the ranks of defunct online publications.

In spite of the populated ranks of dead magazines and the limited number of Pagans themselves, new titles appear and existing titles continue, often with an enthusiastic fan base. It seems there is a general hunger in the Pagan populace for new reading material outside of what we find in books. Where does the Pagan fondness of periodicals come from? What are we looking for in these publications? Why is the desire for them so widespread and how can so many of them fail when there is such demand?

The story of Pagan journalism as we think of it today began in March 1968, on Gaslight Square in St. Louis, Missouri. Here, in a four-story Victorian mansion, Oberon Zell-Ravenheart with the Church of All worlds printed the first issue of what would become the legendary Pagan magazine Green Egg. "It was only a single page," he says, "dittoed in green ink, and contained a brief introduction to the CAW and a calendar of upcoming events, including our first Ostara festival."

Little by little, the one-page newsletter published on the 13-month cycle of Grave’s "tree calendar" expanded over the years. By Issue #51, the magazine had grown to 48 pages-- but the rapidly growing publication’s days were numbered. "With me and the others of the St. Louis nest leaving for NorCalifia in the late 70s," Zell-Ravenheart says, "the energy and the creativity that had sustained the magazine over the past decade were no longer there, and further publication was abandoned." So Green Egg seemed finally to come to an end with its Yule 1976 issue, #80, ending with a total of sixty pages.

It took twenty years, but 1988 saw the return of Green Egg with its Beltane issue, featuring a full-color image of a Phoenix spreading its wings. The magazine immediately resumed its place as the seminal publication of the Pagan movement, claiming the Most Attractive Format and Best Graphics prizes from the Dragonfest Awards and the Wiccan-Pagan Press Allicance’s Silver Award for Most Professionally Formatted Pagan Publication, as well as its Readers’ Choice Award— three times.

The second generation of Green Egg was powerful, influential, and likely to sweep any awards contest it entered. It seemed as if the magazine could continue like this for decades. In the end, however, it was not a lack of resources or energy that killed the second generation of Green Egg. "With all this success," Zell-Ravenheart says, "and so many people involved, there soon arose conflict, contention and power struggles. After the 136th issue at the turn of the Millennium, the CAW Board of Directors dissolved the magazine altogether." The magazine that had launched the careers of so many famous Pagan writers had once again stopped production—this time, it seemed, for good.

Seven years later, Green Egg once again rose from its ashes... this time, in a purely virtual format. Editors Ariel Monserrat and Tom Donohue, both close friends of Zell-Ravenheart, took over the production of the re-launched magazine with his blessing and published the first third generation issue for Ostara 2007 as a PDF document. The Phoenix once again adorned the first issue cover of a reborn Green Egg, as indomitable as the legendary publication itself. This third incarnation continues publishing today.

By its rapid growth from one-page calendar of events to the sixty-page journal that swept the awards for Pagan journalism, it's clear that Green Egg commanded enough attention that it could single-handedly shape the direction of Pagan thought and conversation. What's all the fuss about? How did a little newsletter in Missouri grow so quickly and with such force?

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