Selena Fox is an American Wicca high priestess. Known for her leading role in the witch community. She is the founder of the Sanctuary of the Circle, a legal Wicca church, and has been a pastoralist in her church.
Selena was born on October 20, 1949 in Arlington, Virginia. Fox grew up in a fundamentalist family of Baptism.
As a child, she experienced several spiritual experiences, including out-of-body travel and mystical visions. As a teenager, Fox was interested in dreams, psychologists told her and learned to predict from Tarot cards.
In high school, she renounced Southern Baptism, arguing that the church disapproved of dancing and forbade women to be pastors. Fox went to college and graduated with honors in 1971 with a bachelor's degree in psychology.
At the age of 21, she performed her first pagan ritual for a student society interested in ancient history, which was called Eta Sigma Phi. Fox initiated the society into the Dionysian ritual of spring.
After college, Fox took part in the archaeological site in Hampton, Virginia. There she met a hereditary witch. Realizing that her own orientation was close to her friend's craft, Fox turned to the Wiccan religion and was later ordained high priestess in several Wiccan traditions.
In October 1974, Fox opened the name, location, and spiritual center of the Circle. The beginning of the Circle was formed by Fox, along with her close friend Jim Alan and several friends, periodically arranging meetings at Alan's house and her own. In 1978, Fox decided to devote her Wiccan work to shepherding. In the same year, the Circle Sanctuary was incorporated into the Wicca Church.
In 1979, Fox and Alan were driven from their farm by a superstitious landowner. For several months they wandered on different farms, and then settled. The land that is now in the possession of the Sanctuary of the Circle is a natural preserve, farm and church land at the same time. Fox and Alan broke up in 1984. Alan left the Circle Sanctuary and became a writer.
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In 1986, Selena Fox married David Carpenter, a Wiccan priest and former school psychologist. Fox and Carpenter jointly coordinate the activities of the Circle Sanctuary and its flock.
By the early 1990s, researchers were talking about tens of thousands of Fox fellow believers in the States. "There are about 50,000 Wiccans in the United States," states the Military Chaplain's Handbook, published in 1990.
Craig Hawkins' article, The Modern World of Witchcraft, published in the Christian Research Journal over the winter and spring of the same year, noted:
“For various reasons, it is difficult, if not impossible, to give the exact number of 'witches' in North America. A rough estimate from the conservatives is from 5 to 10 thousand. More liberal estimates range from 30 to 50 thousand, and from 70 to 80 thousand for neo-pagans in general. The real number is probably on the lower end of a conservative estimate."
A 1990 poll suggested that there were about 8,000 Wiccans in the United States. A 2001 poll results in a figure of 134,000, and a 2008 poll of 342,000 Wiccans. And this is without other neo-pagans, whose number in 2001 was determined to be 33 thousand "Druids" and 134 thousand simply "pagans". Thus, according to ARIS data, in 2001 about 300 thousand representatives of different pagan movements lived in the United States.
Selena Fox prefers to call herself a priestess of Wicca, and not a witch, as, in her opinion, this more fully and better characterizes her activities.
She travels a lot throughout North America, giving lectures, leading circles and seminars on paganism, spiritual growth and psychology for a diverse audience in colleges, universities, training centers, conferences, etc.
She is engaged in natural therapy, various types of spiritual healing, physical healing, fortune telling with tarot cards, interpreting dreams and visions.
She is a leading Wiccan speaker and speaks on behalf of the Wiccan Church to the press. From time to time she speaks to representatives of Christianity and other major religions.
Participates in many pacifist actions. She has also worked on Wicca and Gentile eligibility issues, allowing Wicca priests to visit congregations in prisons, paid pagan holiday leave for Canadian officials, and helped North American Indians defend sacred ancestral graves in Kentucky.
“I am a pagan. I hear the cry of Mother Earth. I see pollution in air, land, water. I see games played by states with nuclear fire. I also see spiritual pollution - selfishness, hatred, greedy desire for money and power, despair.
I feel these things, but I also feel cleansing, healing energy, manifesting on the planet. I know I can help her balance if I strive for balance in my life. I know that my attitude, my lifestyle, matters. I try to be a source of healing and balance."
Fox founded Wiccan shamanism, an ecumenical branch of the Wiccan religion that includes elements of shamanic practices from various tribes and humanistic psychology.
In May 2011, a mini-Stonehenge was set up near the Colorado Air Force Academy for Wiccan and Druidic rites. During the consecration of this place of worship, the head of the Wiccan Church in Texas, David Orindgreff, exclaimed: "Nowhere, except the USA, this would not have been possible!"
In recent American media, you can find, for example, photos and videos of Wiccan rituals at Lakeland Air Force Base in Texas, where Wiccan rituals are held in a convention hall provided by the base administration.
According to journalists, these rituals - with equipped altars, brooms and swords - come on Sunday by 300-400 military personnel of the base, although they are not always Wiccans.