As I pointed out last week, the irresistible combination of Halloween (aka Samhain to many Pagans) and real-live Witches causes a great flood of articles involving modern Pagans every October. I thought I’d do a quick check back in with the coverage so far, a sort of snapshot of “silly season” as it happens. So buckle in! Here we go!
At the Chico News & Review you learn a “new view” of Witches: “instead of flying on broomsticks, they’re honoring Mother Nature,” while in India the Hindustan Times exclaims that “Witches or Wiccans do exist.”
“Though most of the wiccans who come to Prakash to learn the craft are still at the beginner’s stage, they make up for their lack of wisdom, with enthusiasm. “I’m enjoying the class thoroughly and have advanced to learning spell crafting now,” says Savleen Lamba, an 18-year-old BMM student, one of Prakash’s 20-odd students, who made a documentary on wicca for college. But then there are others like 24-year-old Rutu Sharma, for whom, learning wicca was a natural extension of her interest in tarot and reiki. Today she is a wiccan priestess. “It’s all about worshipping nature. Witchcraft is only a part of wicca,” says Sharma, a Sion resident who also spearheads the wicca Go Green earth healing campaign.”
In Britain the BBC interviews Anglesey Druids in Northwest Wales and Druid priestess Cat Treadwell in Derbyshire.
“What does she think of the ghosts, the ghouls, the spooky costumes, the “trick or treat” approach: is it an exercise in hi-jacking? All fine and fun, she says – as long as it all avoids a false connection with evil. She is happy to be knee-deep in pumpkin pie as long as the memory persists of ancestral days when, with the harvest in and winter ahead, people lit the darkness, celebrated the dead and trusted that they would survive to see the spring.”
The Santee City Council City Council had Alan and Valera Childers, who run local shop The Village Witch, give an opening invocation (displeasing some), Alabama Wiccans are “finding faith in nature”, a Vermont Public Radio commentator finder her “pagan heart” in a local mummers play, and ”positive energy” in Australia is being sent in hopes that the Adelaide-based Community Church of Inclusive Wicca will receive tax breaks.
Ms Treleven says the decision early this month by Britain’s Charity Commission to recognise Druid worship of natural spirits as a religion had helped the Wiccan cause. But while Ms Treleven has applied on behalf of the church for tax concessions on any income the incorporated body might receive, the church’s income, as she explained in a later post, ”is squat”.
You’ve got Pagans in Leeds, a list of musicians who practice Witchcraft, a scuttled seance in Moose Jaw, and you can even learn a little something about a much-beloved (by Pagans) Dar Williams song.
After explaining that she’d written crowd favorite “The Christians and the Pagans” in an effort to attract Wiccan fans: “It didn’t work. All I got was Unitarians.”
So as you can see, I’ve got my work cut out for me. Before I end this post, it would seem unusual if I didn’t link to at least one article talking about Salem, the witch-trials, and the real-live Witches who live there today.
Real witches? Yes, outside witchcraft’s recent publicity in the political realm, such people exist in modern-day supernatural Salem, and they aren’t afraid to admit it. They live without fear of persecution and look, frankly, ordinary compared with the costumed characters in black lipstick and pointy hats at the masquerade balls.
So have fun this Samhain/Halloween weekend, and beware of journalists roaming the streets! Scary!
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