In a third-floor room of the Kent Student Center, a group dressed in the jeans, T-shirts and sweatshirts typical of all college students discusses possibilities for fundraising. A bake sale is one option and so are spell kits. Psychic fairs have worked well in the past.

Spell kits and psychic fairs? Welcome to the Kent Neo Pagan Coalition. Newcomers are asked if they have come to join or if they have come to gawk at the pagans, who are often the subject of outsiders' curiosity. After business is taken care of, there will be a discussion about Imbolc (IM-bulk), a holiday celebrated in honor of the Irish goddess named Brighid (Breed). It is OK if you don't celebrate the holiday or if you don't agree with everything you hear at the meeting. No one here will tell you what you should think or what to believe. A commonly held belief among the pagans is that what's right for one person isn't necessarily right for another.

Nonpagans sometimes wander in because of the flyers used to advertise meetings. MIDGET JELL-O WRESTLING and FREE HOT SEX get attention, but not everyone reads the fine print. Upon closer examination, one flyer says, "If you want to see MIDGET JELLO WRESTLING, get cable," and another says, "The meeting is FREE. We like our chili HOT. We accept people of either SEX." The pagans are amused by the reactions of people who read only the large print.

The Kent Neo Pagan Coalition was founded in 1994 and is registered with the Office of Campus Life. All are welcome at pagan meetings. Twenty-two people regularly come to meetings, while another 15 attend on occasion.

"This is a religion and a social system where you have to figure it out. No one is going to tell you what to do," Alyssa Portwood, a senior psychology major, says. She has been attending the meetings for about one year now.

Figuring out paganism may not be easy. No two people really define it in the same way. Just as Christianity has Catholics and Protestants, pagans have Wiccans, shamans, neo-Druids and other such categories. Most people don't fit into one specific category.

"The best part is you don't have to be defined by anything specific," Portwood says. Some pagans may choose to study witchcraft, herbs or tarot cards.

Amy Mundhenk, co-founder and president of the Kent Neo Pagan Coalition chose to study Wicca, although her parents raised her as a Presbyterian.

"Dad lives in a world where there is nothing but money. Life is a series of bills to be paid. My mom is convinced I'm going through a phase," Mundhenk says. Her mother remembers an earlier phase of heavy metal and big hair and seems to think Wicca will pass as well, Mundhenk says. Her mother still pays her church dues for her.

Mundhenk and her boyfriend were married in a pagan ceremony in October. A pagan minister presided over a handfesting ceremony, held in Brady's Cafe. "it's a binding of the hands, it's a Greek tradition," Mundhenk says. "And we did the jumping over a broom thing. It symbolizes a permanent relationship." Broom jumping was a tradition practiced by black slaves and Irish indentured servants because they were not legally permitted to marry.

Pagan friends recognize Mundhenk and her boyfriend as being married, but a legal ceremony is planned for spring for the benefit of their parents.

"[Wicca] wasn't something that just happened," Mundhenk says. "I was on a spiritual quest. I couldn't stand all the sexism in Christianity. I started reading about Wiccan stuff because I wanted a spell to make a guy fall in love with me. I never found that [spell], but I kept reading and reading and reading." She met a girl in a college class who was a priestess and told her more about the religion.

"The practices of Wicca make more sense to me than the practices of Christianity," Mundhenk says. "The basic belief of Wicca is that there is a duality of deities. There's a god and a goddess. We are not separable from the earth. We are not separable from nature. Wicca is about directing energy in a positive way." Wicca is also liberal about social issues. "Nudity is central to some people's beliefs," Mundhenk says. "It works for me. If you really want to raise the right kind of energy, you've got to take your clothes off." She stresses, however, that nudity is not a necessity and it shouldn't deter people who are uncomfortable with it from practicing Wicca.

People often ask if she can make people fall in love or turn people into animals. No on both counts, she says, citing a Wiccan tenet - "Harm none, do what thy will."

But there is a rumor floating around her apartment complex that she turned two children she didn't like into turtles. The two turtles actually came from a shelter, but not everyone is open-minded when it comes to pagans.

"The best thing about the Neo Pagan group is you want to exchange ideas. You get insight into what other people think about religion," Portwood says. But not many outsiders have any insight to paganism.

"A lot of people don't clearly have an idea of what is a pagan," says the Rev. Chuck Graham, a Methodist minister with United Christian Ministries. "Traditionally, for example, when I am talking or lecturing in churches, the question comes up, 'Well, what about the pagans or Satanism?' And they generally lump those groups together."

This lumping together is something the Neo Pagan Coalition has learned to deal with.

It also needs to be taken into account that not all pagans believe in the Devil because not all pagans believe in God. Some pagans are monotheistic, but others are polytheistic or atheistic. In Wicca, it is believed that there is a god and goddess who work together, each in control for half of the year. One could not exist without the other, just as dark could not exist without light. Other pagans may look to the Greek and Roman gods or Norse gods like Thor, the god of thunder.

"There is a real complexity or diversity within that segment of people who call themselves pagans, neopagans and so forth," Graham says. "Those people who I know fairly well want to differentiate themselves from those who would describe themselves as Satanists."

"They also want to be careful that they are not broad brushed with the cult image, and that grows out of a lot of stereotyping by Hollywood. Whenever anything pagan is brought up, the pagan representative within the movie industry is always portrayed as 'primitive.' I think that has a lot to do with people's notions of what it's all about," he says.

Defining paganism for themselves is one reason the Neo Pagan Coalition meets every Tuesday evening. Because religion is something very personal, they almost never agree.

"Most people end up solitary practitioners," Portwood says. "You don't worship together."

For some members this means creating altars in their homes.

"I have an altar to Bastet at my apartment," Mundhenk says. "Bastet is the goddess of fertility and joy. She is also the goddess protector of temple cats." In Egypt, cats were considered sacred because it was believed they were sent by the god Mau, who had a cat head. Mau sent the cats to people's houses to protect their grain from mice. Mundhenk chose Bastet as her house deity because she thought Bastet was cool and because she had five cats. Since setting up her altar, four more cats have joined the family.

Paganism can be seen as a nature-based religion and has its roots in early agricultural societies.

"It predates organized religious behavior. It predated what was going on in Judaism," Graham says. "It goes back to the very beginning of time and the earliest recognition on the part of humankind that there were powers, there were things outside their realm of control that they needed to somehow influence or worship."

Natural phenomena became important in pagan society.

"Some things pagans tend to mark are astrological events, like eclipses and equinoxes," Portwood said. - stara (o-STAR-uh) marks the spring equinox and Lunasa (LOO-nah-sah) is the fall equinox. Yule is the celebration of the winter solstice and Litha (leetha) is the summer solstice. Other holidays exist for different segments of the year and for individual gods and goddesses.

Although paganism is not organized, there are some beliefs that are held by most members.

"The primary thing is there aren't any rules," Portwood says. "Anything you do comes back to you. It's all a circle."

This is similar to karma and is the reason most Wiccans and witches won't cast harmful spells. Portwood says that although Christians don't say they believe in reincarnation, as most pagans do, the theory of good acts getting people into heaven and bad acts getting people into hell is similar because how a person acts now affects what will happen to that person later. "I don't think my parents would be happy to hear about this," she says of her pagan beliefs. But her early religious convictions remain strong.

"Shaking off the clothes of my early religion would be difficult. When I think of God, I think of the Judeo-Christian God," Portwood says. But as she read and learned about paganism, it fit with her views.

"I always had open views about religion. I've always believed in the notion of assistance from the gods. I don't believe there's only one god," she says. "I'm a polytheist at heart."

"I don't find anything particularly wrong with the Christian religion, I just find oversights and needs that aren't fulfilled. Most people in the group don't have anything against Christians. I think Jesus was a cool guy who would be outraged by what's being done in his name."

Graham says people who are truly Christian will show it through their own actions rather than putting down other religions and trying to force people to convert.

"Part of the problem of what's going on in Christendom now is we are such a dominant force within society," Graham says, "that we make brazen, blatant assumptions about what should be and what ought to be, and then we attempt, by all kinds of means, to enforce that upon people. That results in some very ugly behavior."

"Religion, when it gets in the hands of those in power, all too often gets used to club and beat people into submission," he says. "As Christians, if we believe what we believe and say what we say, why do we need to be so quick to pounce?"