Students slowly filed into room 2283 in the Biology-Psychology Building for the first day of Professor Susan Lee’s Psychology of Women class. Most probably came to retrieve the syllabus and endure a quick speech from the professor before heading to the pool to savor summer’s last rays.
As the professor mentioned a portion of the class would cover the impact of language, specifically the use of certain slang, on the psychology of women, Jennifer Castagna, a short senior psychology major with long, curly blond hair seated at the front of the class, raised her hand.
“Are we going to have a full-blown cunt discussion?” she asked forthcomingly.
The question provoked awkward silence and sneers among her classmates – a reaction Castagna often prompts from onlookers, but one she rarely takes note of. Whether attending class or trekking around the campus with her navy blue cape, gnarled walking stick and bare feet, Castagna is instantly recognizable as “the walking stick girl.”
Many students who have had a class with or seen Castagna may have wondered about her eccentric style and and brazen comments. However, few know her name or recognize what’s beyond the unique clothes and wacky accessories is a woman fiercely devoted to the pagan religion that has shaped so much of her identity.
“Everybody knows who she is, but I don’t think we all have a very positive perception of her, which is unfortunate,” said Halle Finan, another one of Castagna’s classmates and a senior communication major.
As a pagan and president of the Pagan Student Union, Castagna said one of her main preoccupations is trying to give pagans on the campus a safe place to unite and meet up on a regular basis. That’s why she and friends started the Pagan Student Union about a year and a half ago.
Castagna said paganism is not at all like the common perception that it is a religion based on sin and deviltry.
“They think we’re all evil, but we’re just normal people- I don’t have time to be evil. I have rent to pay, tests to take,” Castagna said. “Our religion is not about doubting yourself or finding everything that’s wrong with yourself and fixing it. It’s about emphasizing the good and enhancing it until the bad becomes immaterial.”
Aside from being a pagan, Castagna is a bright young woman who skipped high school and will graduate this spring with a bachelor’s in psychology at age 20. After scoring a 1280 on the SATs in eighth grade, she said she enrolled in Howard Community College at 14 and transferred to this university in fall 2003. In the future, she plans to be a psychiatrist and start a medical practice using “traditional approaches like herbalism and diet modification to try to better create a mental health paradigm,” she said.
Castagna is also a free spirit and self-described survivor who doesn’t regularly shave her armpits and raises eyebrows with her rants about ancient medicine, random trivia and why men shouldn’t rule the world.
“We let men make decisions so they screw up everything; if women were ruling the world, wars would be like ‘Gimme chocolate, no one gets hurt,'” she proclaimed passionately.
It is precisely this type of commentary that garners the attention of so many of her classmates.
“Yeah, she’s really smart … but she tries to flaunt it way too much,” said Haran Levenberg, another classmate and senior history and psychology major. “She’s a know-it-all.”
Every Friday Castagna heads to the Stamp Student Union to lead the Pagan Student Union meetings. Passersby often stare in quizzical awe as her metal headdress clinks along to the rhythm of her walking stick, her black purse – the one with the deer antler button she bought at the Renaissance Festival in September – slung over her right shoulder.
“She’s eccentric,” said Christina Puglisi, a classmate and senior government and politics and psychology major. “She carries around a walking stick.”
One Friday afternoon, as she waits fruitlessly for other pagans to show up for the meeting, Castagna passes the time smoothing out the wrinkles in her dark blue skirt like she’s spreading a tablecloth. You can almost see the gears turning inside her head – she’s putting together the convoluted memories of her childhood, the dark path that led her to paganism.
She said she doesn’t remember much from the childhood she spent in Virginia Beach, Va., and Ellicott City. Her memory loss is a result of the post-traumatic stress disorder she said her therapist diagnosed seven years ago, brought on by physical and sexual abuse by a male family member that drove her to attempt suicide at age 13. She said she doesn’t remember “95 percent, if not more” of her life.
It was during this dark period when she discovered a book on paganism that gave her hope while on a routine visit to the public library. As she sat in her bedroom reading the 500-page book, which she has yet to finish, she thought, “Oh my god, I have a religion!”
Castagna said she’s certain she wouldn’t have survived her childhood if not for her faith. “If I had given into the idea that I deserved to take whatever punishment because I was inherently evil, I would have been annihilated,” she said.
An authoritative definition of paganism doesn’t exist, as even pagans can’t agree on one. Traditionally, a pagan is someone who believes in multiple gods and is not Christian, Muslim or Jewish. They have been called heretics and witches and endured centuries of persecution and violence.
“It didn’t become a derogatory term until we became a more Judeo-Christian society,” said Dianne Salzberg, a practicing pagan and co-owner of Spark of Spirit, a pagan store in College Park.
Though she does perform and study witchcraft with a local high priest, Castagna said she doesn’t use it for malicious purposes. She refuses to cast spells for or on other people. She is also much more careful when casting spells for herself as a result of an overly successful spell she once used to bring her a lover. It brought her a misguided suitor whom she said “didn’t quite understand the idea of a one-night stand,” and before she knew it, the love mojo had spread to her four snails as they quickly multiplied to more than 50.
Castagna has also embraced paganism’s acceptance of sexual taboos that other religions scorn. She is bisexual and polyamorous, which means she and her boyfriend can date several people.
She’s glad her religion embraces masturbation, her online porn career and her aspiration to become a stripper – expressions of sexuality that are perfectly healthy, she said. She chats openly about her double dildos and her new Rabbit vibrator, which, by the way, “works great!”
“I am completely secure in my sexuality,” Castagna said. “We don’t have to be ashamed of our sexual desires.”
While not all pagans share Castagna’s level of sexual liberation, they’re usually “more accepting of what normal society rejects, like homosexuality,” said Kira Bucca, a pagan and senior psychology major. Pagans also tend to be “exceedingly pro-women,” which, Bucca jokes, is one of the reasons “everyone should be pagan.”
As to what the future holds, Castagna is unsure as to what will happen to her club. Unfortunately for Castagna and others involved in the Pagan Student Union, magic can’t drum up membership, which has sharply dissipated over the last year. Last year, there were five or six core members, but they’ve all moved on, Castagna said.
Though she’s been called a know-it-all, Castagna openly admits that she doesn’t have all the answers, only that she’s passionate about her faith and making the most of what she has.
“I have a lot of doubts about myself, but I’ve learned to put them aside,” she said. “Eventually you just have to learn to accept it, play the hand you’re dealt. Life is short; even if you have 10 million of them, what was the point if you didn’t enjoy it?”
Contact reporter Brianna Bond at bonddbk@gmail.com.
