PAGANS are to launch a fund-raising campaign to find out how many of them live in Scotland.
The cash will be used to meet the £2000 cost of collating information from official census figures.
The Pagan Federation of Scotland decided to act after MSPs rejected their plea to order census bosses to release the data.
The figures must be counted by hand because information on "other religions" on the forms is not machine-readable
The federation, based in Crail, Fife, sent in a petition to the Scottish Parliament asking for action.
But John McAllion, convener of the public petitions committee, said the General Register Office had said if pagans wanted the figures, they should foot the bill.
The pagans' move follows a campaign by Star Wars fans in the 2001 census. In England and Wales, 390,000 said their religion was Jedi.
Last night, pagan federation official John Macintyre said: "We don't know how many pagans there are in Scotland - but we are convinced there is a substantial number."