I Goth Pagan practice and the Gothic lifestyle are different for everyone. Each person gets something out of each lifestyle that others may not. I can say only so much about each without generalizing about the whole. These lifestyles carry a different message for each person, and it would be foolish to generalize about a movement as diverse as Goth or Pagan culture. However, there are a few points that must be conveyed in order to more easily classify and recognize aspects of each movement. What''s a Goth? Alternative culture is the result of similar energy patterns coming together, kinship being found, and the disassociated once again becoming united. One of these alternaneocultures is the dark art, or "darksider," community, many of whose members consider themselves to be part of the modern Goth subculture. The terms Goth and Gothic have been in use only since the 1970s to describe peobelonging to a particular subcultural faction.

Goths can be described in a number of ways, but let''s begin with the origins of the word itself. Historical Goths A tribe called the Goths originated in present-day Götland, Sweden, in the first cenBCE and later made their way through Europe, all the way to Spain. By the third century BCE, they split off into the Ostrogoths (eastern Goths) and Visigoths (western Goths). I will use the spelling "Gothick" to distinguish the historical tribal Goths from the nineteenth-century Romantics and modern Goths. One Germanic tribe or another seemed to be constantly invading Rome. Integraoccurred between the Romans and the Germanic tribes over time. Though the two peoples were fighting, much of their cultures became intertwined through alliances, including the fostering of numerous sons and daughters. The Visigoths'' infamous sackof Rome occurred in 410 CE.

The Goths were originally uncivilized heathens, meaning they did not live in a city and they had a similar god structure to that of the Norse and other Germanic tribes. Before the rise of the Church, they saw no separation between their ways and those of others. The Goths were one of the last European tribes to want to remain nomadic (traveling) rather than become citizens of a political empire. The majority of the tribes that wished not to become part of the greater Roman political structure saw the system itself as a violation of their freedom, as those in Rorulership were believed to have the "mandate of the gods," particularly if a pure tribal bloodline was maintained. Every tribal culture that became a part of this political empire was absorbed, losing a great deal of its former culture. With the coming of each generation, more and more of the former tribal ways were lost, replaced by the greater government''s unionized system. It is for this reason that so much animosity existed between the tribes and the city-states. Nancy Kilpatrick, author of The Goth Bible: A Compendium for the Darkly Inclined , bethat modern Goth is facing a similar dilemma: the threat of absorption into the mainstream.

The Gothick people converted to Arian Christianity before being overtaken by the Græco-Roman Christians, even calling their way "Gothick Christianity." The Goths saw the Christ not as the world''s one and only figure of salvation, but as a warrior, magician, and shaman. Following a number of invasions and forced integrations by the Roman Catholics, Huns, and Muslims, the ancient cultures of the Goths became virtually extinguished. The culture and its ideology survived only as an underground occult movement within persecuted and converted peoples, preserving the teachings of the Norse, the Gothick language (documented as early as 300 CE), and the adopted symbolism of the runes. The Goths established secret traditions, greatly influencing nobility, but this unmovement largely remained exclusive to the lower classes. Further perseof the Goths fluctuated over time; either they had legitimate political power with royalty and were left alone, or they were too underground and unnoticed to be targeted. This impact can be seen even now, considering the number of currently existsurnames that are Gothick in origin. Even members of Spanish nobility are called gotos ("Goths") today.

Though the ancient Gothick tribes virtually vanished upon the Muslim invasion in 711 CE, some of their culture survived all the way up to the Renaissance, when its spirit was restored in painting, sculpture, and architecture, becoming the Gothic Removement. The architectural style of the time differed from the common Græco-Roman idea of proper form, gaining the title "Gothic." Because the art and architecture were unique and quite eerie-definitely against the grain at the time-the term Gothic was used in a derogatory fashion. At that time, the term was negatively associated with the bardark, and uncultured. Gothic architecture is characterized by its towering vertical appearance, pointed arches, curved doorways, large spires and columns, ribbed vaults, stained glass, flying buttresses, and, of course, gargoyles! European Romanticism was the origin of the literary use of the word Gothic, which evoked a particular lugubrious style of literature. Darkly themed stories around that time period began to be associated with the reawakened Goth movement. The Gothic literary style addressed the mechanisms of fear and sexuality within the human psyche. At the time of the Gothic Renaissance, fear and superstition were stereotyped as being representative of old Gothick belief.

Authors over time (if I may jump around in history) who might be said to have had an influence on the resurrection of the Gothic(k) spirit both in the Gothic Renaisand the later nineteenth-century Romantic movement include Giordano Bruno, Morris Berman, Horace Walpole, William Shakespeare, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, William Blake, and Oscar Wilde, to name a few. Also included is the Swiss author Hermann Hesse (1877-1962), known for his kinwith the Germanic peoples, having been born German and having an interest in Germanic mysticism. Hesse was a naturist (nudist), vegan, and earth-worshipper-defPagan in many ways. His works, including Siddhartha, Steppenwolf, and Demian, influenced movements like the hippie counterculture. Poets such as Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Baudelaire, and Sylvia Plath also reintroduced characteristically dark, foreboding writing to the people. The Victorian English poet AlTennyson spent a lot of time in cemeteries, even lying on the cemetery ground for long periods of time. The turn-of-the-century poet Edith Sitwell insisted on wearing exblack for years, declaring herself to be "in mourning for the world." Many curwriters, like Poppy Z.

Brite, Anne Rice, Storm Constantine, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Kala Trobe, and Nancy A. Collins, are known for writing fiction in a "Gothic" manner, explorcultural taboos and controversial issues in the confines of dark settings, atmospheres, and moods. According to occult scholar Edred Thorsson, the word Gauts, which is the Germanic root word of Goth, means "divine progenitor" or "God." For one to be called Gothick meant to be a descendant of God or a "child of God," if you will. This concept came from the idea of a certain group of peoples having a holy bloodline. "Books can be burned, religious leaders can be killed," writes Thorsson in his essay The Secret of the Gothick God of Darkness, "but the blood endures." This, he believes, is the way the knowledge of the Norse/Gothick god Odin (Woden) has survived, even into the current Goth movement.

Commenting on modern Goth culture, Thorsson writes: "This revival, or reawakenof the Gothick spirit in many respects follows the characteristics of all the previous revivals." There are plenty of similarities between present-day Goths, historical Goths, and the artistic movement of the Renaissance, though all three are separate entities. I''ve heard theories that modern-day Goths may be the reincarnation of the early Goths, now spread worldwide. I suppose this is possible, but that would bring up the unanquestion "Who''s Goth and who''s not?" That aside, I do believe that people rein certain situations mirroring past-life experience; that is, souls come into alignment with other people and acute situations in life directly carried over from the vibrational patterns of incarnations past. Could it be that we reincarnated aside others from our past whose interactions with us carry similar lessons as before? I agree that Gothic consciousness is not new to the earth plane. Well before the modern Goth movement, there were writers, painters, musicians, and other artists crecharacteristically dark material. I would guess that writing poetry in solitude or walking about a burial ground contemplating life are not phenomena reserved for the modern age. Going against the grain has been a common theme in human history.

People have been "Goth" for aeons; it''s only recently that labels for such dark artists have arisen. Modern Goths Back in 1970s England, when the street punks would pose for pictures with Amertravelers for beer and concert money, a new subcultural movement was being spawned. Punk was beginning to evolve and define itself as a real counterculture, apto youths of a different mindset, and was starting to branch out in a number of directions. Members of the punk movement tended to take their anger and dissatisfaction with the world, society, and their personal lives, and express them through music, activism, and aesthetics. This provided a much-needed venue of exp.