One of the highlights of Pantheacon 2011 was a long-awaited public screening of Alex Mar’s documentary American Mystic.  The film, long anticipated by the Pagan community, follows the lives of three Americans pursuing their own mystical path.  Like the mainstream conception of a mystic, each of the film’s subjects lives on the fringes of society, just slightly outside the every day world as they seek spiritual truth.

Kublai is an Upstate New York farm hand studying to become a Spiritualist medium.  Perhaps the most philosophical of the film’s three subjects, Kublai brings us into his deep questions about life’s struggles and the peace offered by his faith.

Chuck is a Lakota Sioux Sun Dancer who began life on the reservation, but now lives and works in Rapid City in order to feed his family.  The Sun Dance connects him to his heritage, his ancestors, and his land in a way that only a person of Native blood can fully understand, saving him from the scourge of alcoholism and nihilism that had infected him earlier in life.  Poignantly, Chuck had to leave the reservation to learn of his tribe’s ancient ways.

Morpheus Ravenna is a Witch from the San Francisco Bay Area.   In the film, we see her and her husband Shannon creating Stone City Pagan Sanctuary in the northern California hills.  They tell us of the struggles of living off the grid and outside of society’s expectations while creating a sacred place that brings them and their guests closer to the gods.

American Mystic is a touching poem of a film.  Rather than employing the services of some omniscient narrator to describe each individual, Mar chose to let them tell their own stories.  Her choice to use each person’s own words and highlight the important themes with music and visuals allows the audience to seek their own interpretation and ask their own questions.

Importantly, American Mystic is extremely sensitive and sympathetic to the people it portrays.  Each one is outside of mainstream society, and yet the film never once portrays them as eccentric or bizarre.  There is no sense of a normative, “hey, look what these weirdos do,” storyline.  Each story is treated with love and respect.  This alone represents a significant step forward for the Pagan community.

Still, a clear question seems to arise from the film.  Chuck, Kublai, and Morpheus all live outside of the mainstream.  Each one struggles with poverty and deprivation.  Chuck and Morpheus, for their parts, are at peace with this, but Kublai raises significant questions about a world in which spiritual pursuit necessitates material deprivation.

Most modern Pagans live as much in the physical world as in the spiritual world.    We hold down regular jobs, own homes, support families, and at least 2,303 of us can afford to travel to San Jose once a year to attend Pantheacon.  Can we still be mystics?  Can we still pursue and experience the deeply spiritual and magickal experiences enjoyed by those who dedicate their lives to mysticism with our feet firmly planted in the everyday world?

To be fair, the film does not suggest that we can’t.  None of the participants suggests that they are in any way “mystically superior” to anyone else.  Yet it is one of the questions confronted by Kublai, and the theme of sacrifice threads itself throughout the documentary.

American Mystic is a beautiful film that sensitively depicts modern mystical practices.  Like any good film, it leaves the viewer with questions that linger long after the last shot dissolves.  Perhaps future documentaries will follow its lead, answering these questions.  Of course, that will just lead to more questions…questions that can only be answered on the individual path of the mystic.