Wicca

Earlier this month, a Halifax hedge-witch and her two pagan friends were
attacked leaving her home, leading her to decide she must leave the city for
the safety of her children. The woman said she has been repeatedly targeted
because of her religion.

Imagine if the violence had been directed at Jews leaving a synagogue, or
Muslims leaving a mosque. Would Haligonians tolerate such an attack?

Wicca is a religion deeply imbued with negative images. We all know what a
witch looks like: pointy hat, green face, warts, giant nose. Anti-Semitic
cartoons use a similar image. Both were born out of hate campaigns.

Vanessa Smith of Little Mysteries on Barrington Street says the attack was
doubly unfortunate - because of the pain caused to those attacked, and
because it does not reflect the Halifax she knows.

“Halifax is a very open city,” she says, and most Wiccans practice in peace.

A Wiccan herself, she estimates there are 200 Wiccans/pagans in HRM. Most
practice as individuals, or in small groups or families. Wider covens are
not common here.

“This word used to be positive,” she says of “witch.”

“Some (practitioners) use it to shed the negative baggage,” while others
prefer Wicca as a more neutral term that allows them to explain their
religion, rather than being saddled with stereotypes.

On that front, Smith says she is encouraged by more positive - though not
necessarily accurate - depictions of witches in pop culture lately.

“I’d rather a Harry Potter witch than a Wizard of Oz one,” she jokes.
Wicca, she says, is an Earth-based religion that celebrates a variety of
goddesses and gods that are aspects of the one Goddess and one God. The
balance between this male and female energy is key to Wicca.

“It’s two sides of a coin. They balance each other like day and night.”
Key days are the solstices and equinoxes - the most important of these being
Samhein on Oct. 31. This is the Wiccan new year - a time to reflect on the
past and prepare for the future.

Some Wiccans pray to Greek or Roman gods - but Nova Scotia’s roots show
through with a focus on Celtic deities locally.

Wiccans use “natural magic” to help others, Smith says. This is done by
tapping into the planet’s energy and using that force to help someone who is
ill recover faster.

“We nudge the natural healing process along,” she explains.

Scott Cunningham, the late, celebrated writer on Wicca, argues there can
never be one “pure” form of Wicca. “There are no central governing agencies,
no physical leaders, no universally recognized prophets,” he writes in
Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner. He describes “the Craft,” as
it is also known, as “a loosely organized Pagan religion centring toward
reverence for the creative forces of nature, usually symbolized by a goddess
and a god.”

Linda, a hedge-witch in HRM, began studying Wicca after coming across
Cunningham's writings.

”When I read him, I thought, ‘This is how I think,’ Linda says of
Cunningham. “It was such an opening of my mind.”

She had been raised a Christian, but had not found a home there as an adult.

“That religion was not about what I was, but what I wasn’t,” she explains.
In Wicca, she found a more open, tolerant way of celebrating creation.

While Linda is open about her religion, she didn’t want to use her last name
in the paper, for fear of repercussions for her two school-aged sons, whom
she is raising Wiccan (her husband is a “not very good Catholic,” she
jokes).

“People are very afraid of ‘otherness,’” she explains. “You have to be aware
of it all the time.”

She notes the attack was rare in terms of a physical assault, but her sons
are frequently teased about Wicca, and her younger son has been called a
devil.

Their strategy is to lay low – “They keep their mouths shut all the time.”

The teasing touches on a common misnomer: that Wicca is a form of Satanism.

Not so, says Linda. “Nothing could be further from the truth. There is no
concept of hell or Satan in Wicca.”

Wiccans believe in reincarnation and karma - and that what you do will come
back to you threefold. So, far from casting evil spells on their enemies,
motivation for wishing ill on others is low.

“Do what you will, but harm no one,” is how Linda surmises Wicca’s version
of the Golden Rule.

Wicca’s modern incarnation started in the 1950s, with the publication of
Gerald Gardner’s writings on the pre-Christian religion. While many modern
Wiccans dismiss his work as an eclectic mixture of whatever shiny bits of
paganism caught his eye, it did pave the way for a revival of the pagan
religion that had been persecuted for centuries.

England first officially outlawed witchcraft in 1401 and variations of the
act that did so stayed on the books until 1951. When the law was repealed,
it allowed the religion to come out into the open.

“It is just sheer joy,” Linda says of her religious experiences. She prefers
not to say “worship,” as that implies the relationship of an inferior to a
superior. In Wicca, all are revered equally.

“Wicca gives people the tools to make decisions,” she says, rather than
telling them what is true.

An aversion to hierarchy is common among Wiccan, as it tends to attract
strong-willed individuals who don’t fit in anywhere else.

“Herding us is like herding cats,” Linda jokes. “It appeals to people who
are uncomfortable with structures” - refugees from Christianity and other
mainstream religions.

Despite the attacks and the fears that force her to keep her joy low key,
Linda has no regrets about becoming a witch.

“I am a much happier person for it,” she says. “I am much more
compassionate, and stronger. Witches are the new gays - and we’re finally
coming out.”

First published in the Sunday Daily News Sept 30 2007