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Margot Adler (1946– )

Written and compiled by George Knowles

Margot Susanna Adler is a Wiccan High Priestess, writer, journalist, lecturer and author of “Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers and Other Pagans in America Today” (1979) a study of contemporary nature religions, and “Heretic's Heart:  A Journey through Spirit and Revolution” (1997) a memoir of the 1960’s.  A member the Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans, she is also an elder in the Covenant of the Goddess.  She has this to say about Witches, Wiccans and Pagans: 

“We are not evil. We don't harm or seduce people.  We are not dangerous.  We are ordinary people like you.  We have families, jobs, hopes and dreams.  We are not a cult.  This religion is not a joke.  We are not what you think we are from looking at TV.  We are real.  We laugh, we cry.  We are serious.  We have a sense of humour.  You don't have to be afraid of us.  We don't want to convert you.  And please don't try to convert us.  Just give us the same right we give you, to live in peace.  We are much more similar to you than you think”.

Margot Adler

Early life and education

Margot Adler was born the only child to a non-religious family in Little Rock, Arkansas on the 16^th April 1946.  Shortly after her birth the family moved to New York, where she was raised within the city’s intellectual community.  Her father Dr. Kurt Alfred Adler was a psychiatrist and a self-professed atheist, while her mother Freyda Nacque Adler was a Jewish agnostic and a radical educator (she died in 1970).  Her grandfather Alfred Adler (1870–1937) was a renowned Viennese psychiatrist considered by many to be the father of Individual Psychology.

Dr. Alfred Adler

Margot’s early education was spent at the City and Country Grammar School in Greenwich Village, where during her fifth grade one of her teachers taught the class about the May Day festivals of old, and how people used to dance around a Maypole singing in the May with songs.  The teacher arranged for a class outing to the country home of a sister, and early on the 1^st of May as the sun began to shine, they sang the songs of May and picked flowers from the fields.  Later they took flowers back to school and decorated a Maypole, which they danced around while singing.  Ever since then Margot has been fascinated with rituals. 

Later while in 7th grade, Margot spent the whole year studying myths of ancient Greece.  She was particularly drawn to the Greek deities Artemis and Athena, and could imagine their feminine strengths and powers.  As part of a school project she wrote a play about the Trojan War, which was part musical as it included hymns to Zeus and poems sung by Hera and other gods.  Coming from a fairly atheistic family of no particular persuasion, Margot mentally identified the ancient Greek religions as part of her own primal religion.

After graduating from City and Country Grammar School, Margot next studied at LaGuardia High School of Music & Art in Hamilton Heights.  While there she began to question and research her own beliefs about religion.  As her family had no particular interest, she started to explore various churches and denominations in her neighbourhood.  She was particularly taken with the Quakers for their belief in pacifism, social equality and education, but was also mightily impressed with the rituals she witnessed in the Catholic Church.

Her interest in religion was put on hold however, when in 1964 she started a politically active life at University.  As a freshman at the University of California, Berkeley, she joined the Freedom of Speech Movement (FSM), and as a member of the Executive Committee was among 800 protesters arrested during a massive sit-in protest at Sproul Hall.  This was Berkeley’s campus administration building, which they took over to promote the rights of student groups to support off-campus issues, and student rights to free speech and academic freedom.

In the following year she helped to register black voters rights in the civil protests taking place in Mississippi, and in 1968 was an activist against the Vietnam War and demonstrated at the Democratic convention in Chicago.  Later in 1968, Margot received a B.A. degree in Political Science from Berkeley and a “Phi Beta Kappa” for outstanding scholarship.  She then went on to earn a Master’s degree from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University in New York.  Much later in 1982 Margot was awarded a prestigious one-year Nieman fellowship at Harvard University. 

Main life work 

After graduating from Berkeley in 1968, Margot worked for Pacifica Radio, where she started as a volunteer at KPFA.  She then became a reporter, then a producer and later head of Pacifica’s Washington News Bureau.  From 1968 to 1977 she also hosted three radio talk shows:  “Hour of the Wolf”, “Unstuck in Time” and “The Far Side of the Moon”.  Her talk shows dealt with cutting-edge topics and ideas about science, psychology, feminism, ecology, parapsychology, religion and spirituality.

In 1979 Margot joined National Public Radio (NPR) as a general assignments reporter working in their New York News Bureau.  There she helped to create and host the radio shows:  “All Things Considered”, “Morning Edition” and “Weekend Edition”.  Margot was always keen to document issues of national and societal importance, and covered such controversial issues as:  the confrontation between radicals and the Ku Klux Klan in Greensboro, North Carolina, AIDS in San Francisco, homeless people living in subways, and the state of the middle classes in society.  She also reported on the Winter Olympic Games in Sarajevo in 1984, and again in Calgary in 1988.

On the 19^th June 1988 Margot married her long time companion John Lowell Gliedman in an out door handfasting ceremony held at Lambert’s Cove Inn on Martha's Vineyard in West Tisbury, Massachusetts.  Selena Fox the founder of Circle Sanctuary performed the ceremony inside a circle of flowers, after which they jumped the broom, in keeping with old Pagan traditions.  Their wedding was the first Pagan handfasting to be written up in the society pages of the prestigious New York Times. 

Lambert’s Cove Inn 

Gliedman is a psychologist and science writer, and co-author of a report for the Carnegie Council on Children called:  “The Unexpected Minority:  Handicapped Children in America”.  Raised in Lutherville, Maryland, his father the late Dr. Lester H. Gliedman was a psychiatrist.  Gliedman attended Park School in Baltimore, before moving on to Harvard University from where he earned a B.A. degree with a Magna Cum Laude (“with great praise”) as a mark of excellence.  He later received a Ph.D. degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  After getting married, Margot retained her maiden name for professional reasons, and in 1990 gave birth to their only son Alexander Gliedman-Adler.

Margot still works as a Bureau Chief and Correspondent for National Public Radio (NPR) in New York, as well as hosting “Justice Talking”, a weekly one-hour show recorded before a live audience in Philadelphia.  The show takes an in-depth look at key cases and controversies being dealt within the nation’s courts.  As the host of the show, Margot challenges and explores such cases and examines the impact of their consequences on society.  The show is then broadcasted nationwide.

Ever since the 9/11 terrorists attack on New York in 2001, Margot has spent much of her time reporting on its aftermath, and documenting the human side of the tragedy.  In her reports Margot looks deeply into issues affecting those people directly involve, like those who have been deprived of their homes, or who have lost their jobs, the trauma of grieving relatives and those involved in relief efforts.  She is also the co-producer of an award-winning radio drama called “War Day”. 

Paganism and Wicca

Away from her busy life as a news correspondent and radio host and while living in New York in the early 1970’s, Margot took time out to visit England.  While there she was inspired to investigate the history of the Druids, during which she discovered a number of evolving Witchcraft and Pagan organizations, one of which was being spearheaded by a fellow American called Joseph B. Wilson.  Wilson was the founder of the “Waxing Moon” publication in 1964, the first magazine devoted to Witchcraft in America, and at the time was on a US Air Force posting in the UK.  There he was collaborating with John Score the founder of “The Wiccan”, the UK’s equivalent magazine and its background organization “The Pagan Front”, to set up a similar organization in the USA called the Pagan Way.

On her return to New York, Margot subscribed to the “Waxing Moon” magazine, which led to her introduction and long time interest with Witchcraft and Paganism in America.  She first became involved when she attended a study group led by New York Coven of Welsh Traditional Witches headed by Ed Buczynski.  Then in 1973 she left the study group and took a more active role in a practicing Gardnerian coven called Iargalon, through which in 1976 she was elevated to High Priestess.

By this time Margot was also running a Pagan Way grove in Manhattan, and was conducting Sabbat rituals at her own home.  At the time there was still little information about the new age of Wicca and Witchcraft being published, except for magazines like “The Waxing Moon” by Joseph B. Wilson, “Nemeton” by Gwydion Pendderwen and Alison Harlow, and the “Green Egg” by Oberon Zell.  As such Margot’s journalistic instincts triggered in, and she started to explore outside her own immediate environment.

It was about this time that Margot was introduced to a literary agent called Jane Rotrosen, who suggested she write a book.  With Rotrosen’s help Margot wrote and sold a proposal for the book to Viking Publishers who liked what they saw.  She was awarded a $7.500 advance minus ten percent to Rotrosen, to cover her research and expenses.  Margot spent the next 3 years writing, travelling, interviewing and researching her book, the result being “Drawing Down the Moon”, first published in 1979.  Initially outside of academic circles it received a mediocre reception, however updated and re-issued in 1986 and again in 2006, over the years it has become a classic best seller.

Drawing Down the Moon  -  Heretic's Heart

In 1982 after taking a year out from her coven practise to concentrate on her Nieman fellowship at Harvard University, Margot returned to New York but decide not to rejoin her coven, preferring to practice as a solitary.  She later joined the Church of All Souls, a Unitarian Universalist church in New York, and for the following ten years acted as an adviser on the board of the Covenant of Unitarian Universalist Pagans (CUUPS).  In 1997 Margot published her second book “Heretic's Heart:  A Journey Through Spirit and Revolution” a fascinating memoir of her time during the 1960’s.

Into the new millennium Margot remains one of the most visible and available leaders of the pagan community in North America, and continues to educate people about Wicca and Witchcraft and other topics related to Paganism.  She regularly travels to give lectures, workshops and rituals around the country.  Many of her workshops involve ecstatic singing, chanting and seasonal celebrations.  She still lives in New York with her husband John and her son Alexander.

End.

Sources:

Books:

Encyclopedia of Wicca & Witchcraft  - By Raven Grimassi

The Encyclopedia of Witches &Witchcraft  - By Rosemary Ellen Guiley

The Encyclopedia of Modern Witchcraft and Neo-paganism - By Shelley Rabinovitch

Websites:

http://www.answers.com/topic/margot-adler

http://www.fsm-a.org/stacks/bios/bio_margot.html

http://www.biographybase.com/biography/Adler_Margot.html

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=2100166

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE2D61E3CF93AA25755C0A96E948260

Plus to many others to document.

Written and compiled on the 09th March 2008  ©  George Knowles

Best wishes and Blessed Be