PagaNZ was initially intended to be a magazine catering to the wider Pagan Community in New Zealand. However, after the demise of the resources provided by the NZPC (New Zealand Pagan Centre), we decided that a website to replace and expand on the networking section of the NZPC website would be appreciated by the community and should be our primary goal.

New Zealand has approximately 5000 pagans if you read between the lines of the 2006 Census data. Yet it's apparent to most Pagans in New Zealand that the community seems substantially smaller.

The goal of the PagaNZ concept is to bring more pagans out of the woodwork by providing a mechanism to locate people, groups, events, shops and services which align themselves with the community.

We're using the word Pagan in a very loose meaning of the word. Basically, if you consider yourself Pagan, are happy to spend time around those who consider themselves Pagan, or even dislike like the word Pagan but have some things in common with those who don't dislike the word.

As a result of this, we've attempted to use a more neutral language in designing parts of the website by steering away from using terms which are specific to a particular path. This has had the unfortunate side-effect of sounding a bit clinical but we hope that people will look past this and embrace this concept.

Our online community is fairly active and is an integral part of Paganism in New Zealand. However, there's a shift back to people wanting to see a more active offline community and we thought hard about how we can help achieve this.

New Zealand has a relatively small population which is spread out across the nation. Pagans also make up a small percentage of the population. A significant portion of the offline community are simply unaware there is a New Zealand Pagan Community online or are uncomfortable for whatever reason in using the internet to connect with others.

Our plan to work with these issues is to go back to the initial idea of a magazine for Pagans in New Zealand.

We plan to work with retailers, and any other physical locations that are happy to help out, to provide the magazine and auxiliary resources to help people get in contact with others.

Run in tandem with the website, the magazine will also hopefully help people travelling outside their local region get in touch with Pagans no matter where they are.

To be completely transparent it's worth mentioning that as organisers, we have Zero plans to act as a Media Liasion or as an authority on Paganism in New Zealand (or in general). Our hope is that it will be the community that will end up driving the magazine and website and that we as organisers are just providing a platform to enable the community to do so.

As with any idea like this, it succeeds or fails based on participation. As organisers of this idea we've made a longterm commitment to making this work and we'd love for people to join with us in this venture!