Occultists at the end of the nineteenth century regarded psychological as the ultimate aim of the Adept, partly because of a belief that humans were androgynous before the Fall, and partly because of a belief in the androgyny of the divine. As Wicca draws in part on the Western mystery tradition, it has inherited these ideas, which are expressed in the Dryghtyn Prayer, which is addressed to an entity that is "male and female, the original source of all things."

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The Wiccan celebration of nature may also have a special appeal for glbtq adherents. Early gay rights pioneer Edward Carpenter was an enthusiastic advocate of nature as a place of freedom. Following him, his friend E. M. Forster made the hero of his novel Maurice (written in 1913) feel "at one with the forests and the night" as soon as he had made the decision to adopt an actively gay lifestyle. Harry Hay, founder of the Radical Faeries, who was a Carpenter enthusiast, also stressed the importance of communing with nature.

Many Wiccans believe that the celebration of darkness, which mainstream culture regards as the realm of evil, allows us to transcend boundaries and to recover lost and repressed aspects of the psyche, and to honor the ideas associated with them. It may also allow us to escape the hierarchical view of the cosmos, which is associated with the honoring of the light.

Wicca also emphasizes the interaction of light and darkness, as played out in the Wheel of the Year (the cycle of Wiccan festivals). Instead of seeing them as opposed, Wiccans see light and darkness interact in a dance or sexual union. This is the basis of the idea of polarity.

One way to make the idea of polarity more inclusive is to regard the primary polarities as self and other, lover and beloved, rather than male and female. Thus, rather than regarding the Great Rite of Wiccas as the union of masculine and feminine polarities, Lynna Landstreet sees the first touch of lightning on the primordial waters as the "true Great Rite, of which all other enactments, sexual or not, are merely symbolic."

It could be argued that Wicca is inherently queer. The word wicca (Anglo-Saxon for a male witch) apparently derives from an Indo-European root meaning "to bend" or "to shape," actions of adaptation and creativity that are frequently associated with same-sex love. The emphasis on the need to become psychologically androgynous (frequently couched in terms of developing men's feminine side and women's masculine side) and the use of the Dryghtyn Prayer add to the feeling of queerness at the heart of the tradition.

In addition, the figure of the witch, derived in part from the spae-wives (fortune tellers) and seiðr-workers (practitioners of a type of shamanism that included men-loving men) of Northern Europe, is often associated with sexual and gender transgression. These ideas may not be very current in Wicca generally, but they are part of the historical discourse about witchcraft.

Just as glbtq people have reclaimed the word "queer" as a badge of resistance to and as a tool for liberation, Wiccans and other contemporary pagans have similarly reclaimed the word "witch" to mean a shaper, a changer of consciousness, and a radical. There is a strong strand of ecological, political, and sexual radicalism in Wicca and its variant traditions.

Moreover, since Wiccans have incorrectly been associated with Satanism and black magic, they have suffered some of the same discrimination as have glbtq people. Not surprisingly, they have often kept their religious beliefs secret. Tellingly, the practice of acknowledging oneself as Wiccan to others is sometimes known as "coming out of the broom-closet."

Goddess religions, especially those that feature a singular Great or Mother Goddess, honor female energy for its role in fertility and the creation of new life.

A movement that emerged in the late 1970s, the Radical Faeries identify with the gender variant sacred outsider that has appeared and reappeared in many cultures throughout human history.

Santería, Vodou, and related belief systems comprise a complex of religious ideas, practices, and imagery whose origins can be traced to West African traditions.

Today's glbtq spirituality movements must be seen as part of a long history in which gender-special people were considered sacred to their tribe or family because of their obvious spiritual gifts.

A set of 78 cards with evocative imagery, the Tarot is often used in fortune-telling, and also for self-discovery, meditation, and intuitive work.

Edward Carpenter, a champion of both women's and homosexuals' liberation, was one of the great socialist visionaries of England at the turn of the twentieth century.

An important figure in the European occult movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Aleister Crowley was publicly reviled in his time, but he was recently cited by the BBC as one of England's most influential citizens.

One of the finest English novelists of the twentieth century and a tireless defender of humane values, Forster deserves a special place in the gay and lesbian literary heritage.

Activist Harry Hay, an original member of both the Mattachine Society and the Radical Faeries, is recognized as one of the principal founders of the gay liberation movement in the United States.