LIFESTYLES

Witches celebrate Halloween

From page 39

to the divine as well. We think that
this creative principle came first
and that maleness came from that.
Part of it comes from the old
pre-Christian traditions of nature
worship in northern Europe. Part
of it is a reaction to Christianity.
For the most part, the Christian
churches have not given women an
equal piace. Many of the
theologians actively despise
women.

We're strongly influenced by
feminism. Some male and female
witches are threatened by it, but on
the whole, because we recognize
the power of the divine female, we
look around us and see that
women aren’t given much power in
the real world.

Most of us are involved in
ecological concerns of some sort
because nature in and of itself is
sacred and humankind is a product
of nature, not the rulers of nature.
Nature came first.

NSN: Who is the Horned God?

The Horned God is the main
symbol of maleness. What he rep-
resents is that all the things that
come into the world live and die
and are tied to the cycles of nature.
He’s a fertility figure in one
respect but more just a figure of
things that grow and change.

NSN: You describe Halloween as
one of your two greatest holidays
and as a time when the veil be-
tween the living and the dead is
thignest. Do witches belicve in life
after death?

To most witches, death is not the
end of existence. Many witches
believe in reincarnation. A person
dies, goes off some place (the
summer land) and spends a period

of time reflecting on his life and
deciding what he’s done and then
he or she is born again.

The summer land is not a par-
ticular place, it’s something you
can always be in touch with. At
Halloween, in the good old days in
Northern Europe, around this time
of year, you'd harvested
everything you could harvest. The
final crops were in. You had to
decide what animals you could af-
ford to feed over the winter and
you had to slaughter the rest. So
this is literally a time of death. It
was very important to get in touch
with the forces that looked after
dead people and that looked after
luck and chance and good fortune
in general to celebrate the fact that
the harvest was in and to ask for
the geds’ best wishes to look after
us through the winter. And that’s
why all the ghosties and ghoulies
wander about. The spirits of the
dead come out.

NSN: Why do the popular percep-
tions cf witches persist?

There have always been groups of
people that have been horribly
slandered. The early Christians,
the Jews, the witches, various
Christian heretic groups have all
been slandered with the same set of
accusations. The satanists are now
being slandered with the same
things — That they kidnap and
torture children to death, that they
engage in bizarre sexual practices,
that they do things every human
being finds horrible and
disgusting. And it’s all lies. There
seems to be some deep-seated
human need to believe that there
are groups out there doing these
horrible, awful things. With the
dark, horrible stuff going on out
there that is normal in society like

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rape and incest, people need to
project this persecution.

NSN: How did you become a
witch?

Seven years ago I was an
evangelical atheist. Not only was I
an atheist but ! went around trying
to convert others to atheism. What
happened is that a very close friend
of mine in Kitchener died. | went
to his funeral and I was crushed.
Here was something I had no way
of dealing with. Here was some
person that I really loved and he
had died. The ceremony was a
traditional Roman Catholic cere-
mony. And it just didn’t make
sense to me. They were talking
abcut how great it was that he was
dead and could be with Jesus. No
offence to Catholics out there, but
it just didn’t ring true to me. So I
looked up a friend of mine who
was a witch and said, ‘Look, tell
me about this stuff. My sense is
that I need comforting from a fe-
male divinity.’ Since then I’ve been
involved in the craft. [ became a
priest in 1984 and a priest of the
Covenant of the Goddess last
year.”

On Tuesday night, the evening
when kids dressed as Teenage Mu-
tant Ninja Turtles solicit for candy
and adults play dress up in the
bars, Wagar and his coven will be
dancing, feasting, tarot card
reading and celebrating the dead,
in the nude.

What does a real witch do when
a kid comes to the door and says
trick or treat? Said Wagar, ‘‘You
hand out the candy. Sure, that
stuff is fun. There’s no way any-
body should object to that pagan
stuff. We celebrate it and hand out
candy.””

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