Pagan's Night Out

Pagan's Night Out, or PNO, is a regularly scheduled social get-together, usually monthly, held in hundreds of Pagan and Neopagan communities around the world. Begun in Houston, Texas in 1992 as a way for users of the Brewers' Witch BBS to meet face to face, Pagan's Night Out has become a worldwide phenomena. [a Google search for "pagan +night +out" turns up over 750 matches. Adding "pno" increases the matches threefold but with less relevance.] Held in bars, pubs, coffee shops, cafes, restaurants and meeting halls, PNO is a social event for Wiccans, Asatruar, Thelemites, Druids, Setians and the hundreds of other Neopagan sects and sub-divisions.

Origins

The Brewers' Witch BBS

The Brewers' Witch BBS was started in May 1992, running on a DOS PC using the Waffle BBS software and a single phone line. [http://bbsdocumentary.dreamhost.com/photos/034donal/index.html BBS: The Documentary] ] It was one of three Pagan-oriented BBSs in Houston at that time and, thanks to its USENET newsgroups and email, quickly became a favorite haunt of the online Neopagans there.Boardwatch Magazine, October 1995] Later expanding to 5 phone lines and an ISDN feed running on a FreeBSD UNIX system, the BBS eventually spawned a webpage and, as the BBS era came to a close, moved totally onto the newly emerging Internet. [ [http://www.brewich.com The Brewers' Witch BBS website] ] In its time the website garnered numerous 'Net awards including Pagan Best of the Web, and the BBS was featured in Boardwatch Magazine. Although the dialup BBS ceased operations in 1998, andthe website saw the end of its heyday by 2000, the website still exists in a mostly static form. At their Beltaine celebration in 2005, Donal, the BBS's SysAdmin, received the first Lifetime Achievement Award from the Council of Magickal Arts for his work on The Brewers' Witch BBS and Pagan's Night Out, as well as his work creating the USENET newsgroup, soc.religion.paganism. Donal was the author of the newsgroup RFD and charter, and husbanded the newsgroup through its creation. * [http://groups.google.com/group/alt.pagan/browse_thread/thread/347363acd23c3eba/0b42c95c71a41444?lnk=gst&q=soc.religion.paganism&rnum=5#0b42c95c71a41444 Call For Votes (and results) for soc.religion.paganism] on Google Groups]

Donal had quickly realized that many tensions existed between the members of various traditions that were using his BBS and, influenced by a regular weekly party held by a chat board he was familiar with, decided to get his users together for a casual social outing to try to get them to view each other as friends first and practitioners of widely differing faiths second. The announcement on his BBS regarding Pagan's Night Out, made a few weeks before the suggested date, said everyone should "leave the Bolines and starched robes at home", meaning there was to be no discussion of inter-tradition politics.

First PNO

The first PNO was held on August 25,1992 [Notes and on-line logs of the Brewers' Witch BBS in the possession of Silverflame, one of the original participants.] at [http://www.mcgonigels.com McGonigel's Mucky Duck Pub] in Houston, Texas, with barely more than a dozen in attendance. By the next year monthly attendance was closer to 50 with occasional "special" PNO's (such as Yule and Samhain celebrations) exceeding 120. [Signed logbooks of many of the early PNOs are in the possession of Donal, the SysAdmin of The Brewers' Witch BBS.]

History

A PNO was started in the Washington, DC, area in 1998 when a resident from Houston moved to the nation's capital and wanted to offer a similar program for Pagans in the area. Originally sponsored by the now defunct Mystic District Planning Coalition, the DC area PNO is currently sponsored by [http://www.openhearth.org The Open Hearth Foundation] . The DC-PNO originally met on the 13th of each month and rotated locations among DC, Northern Virginia, and suburban Maryland. It now meets on the third Friday of the month.

Impact

Trivia

*Pagan Night Out is a song by [http://www.wiccabilly.com Loke E. Coyote's Wiccabilly Circus]
*The band at the first two PNO's was the Celtic folk duo [http://www.loosegoose.com/Muse Ceili's Muse] . This was not intentional, but merely serendipitous.

External links

* [http://www.brewich.com The Brewers' Witch BBS]
* [http://www.magickal-arts.org Council of Magickal Arts]
* [http://www.witchvox.com The Witches Voice]
* [http://www.wiccabilly.com Loke E. Coyote's Wiccabilly Circus]

References