From Insight Magazine:
By Catherine Edwards
In their universal quest for self-actualization, a devilish number of teen-age girls have become enchanted by the female-friendly but retrograde culture of witchcraft.
Before 16-year-old Jess lights candles on the small altar in the corner of her bedroom each night, she says her prayers. "Hail Fair Moon, ruler of the night, guard me and mine until the light. Hail Fair Sun, ruler of the day, make the morn light my way." On her altar are four porcelain chalices representing the elements of air, water, fire and earth. Each contains rose petals, semiprecious stones, melted candle wax and dried leaves. They rest on the corners of a five-pointed star. And Jess has a frog she says symbolizes "spirit" and "life" that sits on point five of the pentagram. Here she performs rituals and casts spells.
. . . . Jess is one of a growing number of American teen-age girls who practice Wicca, or witchcraft. In the last five years Hollywood has produced films including Practical Magic and The Craft celebrating such cults and featuring hip actresses Nicole Kidman, Sandra Bullock and Party of Five's Neve Campbell as witches. Prime-time TV has cashed in with its own witchy programming. Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed all feature young females with magical powers. The character of Felicity, on the program of the same name broadcast on the Warner Bros. Network, has a Wiccan roommate. And teen witches have cast nasty spells on the popular series X-Files.
. . . . Teen Witch: Wicca for a New Generation, a recent book by Silver Ravenwolf, has sold more copies for occult publisher Llewellyn than any other in its 95-year history, according to publicist Jamie Schumacher. And it's not just media hype, either. Danny Aguirre runs a Christian hot line at the Berkeley, Calif.-based Spiritual Counterfeits Project. He says, "In the last six months, I have received more inquiries about Wicca than any other religion in the 10 years I have worked here." The demographics of the callers? "All teen-age girls," says Aguirre.
. . . . As teens begin to ask questions about life and religion, they are turning in surprising numbers to Wicca or witchcraft for the answers. Drawn by Wicca's focus on a feminine deity, nature worship and self-empowerment, many young women have rejected traditional faiths as male-dominated, environmentally unfriendly and morally limiting. Critics of Wicca, however, fear that if teen Wiccans ignore the dangers of the occult in their quest for meaning and satisfaction, they may be putting themselves in harm's way.
. . . . Modern Wiccans trace their movement to Gerald Gardener in the middle of the 20th century. They credit him for reviving ancient witchcraft and pagan traditions with two books that appeared in the 1950s, Witchcraft Today and The Meaning of Witchcraft. The word "wicca" was drawn from the Anglo-Saxon. "It means to bend nature to your service," explains Derek Collins, who teaches a course in the history of witchcraft at the University of Michigan.
. . . . Although Wiccans differ about ritual practices, casting spells and semantics, some basics exist. In her book Principles of Wicca, psychologist and Wiccan priestess Vivianne Crowley says that Wicca is a pagan mystery religion as well as a nature religion. Wiccans worship a mother goddess and her consort, the horned god. "She is the immanent sacred life force," explains Phyllis Curott, attorney and author of The Book of Shadows: A Modern Woman's Journey Into the Wisdom of Witchcraft and the Magic of the Goddess. Curott details the various forms of this goddess as Mother Nature, omnipresent in the elements, taking on more specific forms such as the Greek goddesses Artemis, Gaia or the Roman goddess Diana. Some Wiccans even claim to worship Mary, mother of Jesus, as their goddess.
. . . . The horned god apparently manifests in nature as the Greek god Pan or Egyptian god Osiris, among many others. Wiccans espouse pantheism and claim to see the divine in everyone. Most celebrate eight holidays, or "sabbats," centered around the solar cycles, solstices and equinoxes, and "esbats," centered on the lunar cycles. On Halloween, they honor the spirits of their ancestors. The rest of the time -- usually daily -- they cast spells, customized recitations aimed at magically manipulating people or events to fulfill the desires of the Wiccan. Some of these witches meet in groups called covens, or circles, while others practice alone.
. . . . Demographics of Wiccans in the United States are difficult to find. There is much to-do about secrecy, and groups do not release membership rolls. Curott estimates there are 3 million to 5 million Wiccans. Helen Berger, associate professor of sociology at the University of Westchester in Pennsylvania, has surveyed more than 2,000 Wiccans for her research. Estimates cited by Berger and Christian-apologist Craig Hawkins in his book Witchcraft: Exploring the World of Wicca put the U.S. witch population at the 150,000 to 200,000 mark.
. . . . Fritz Jung and Wren Walker, practicing Wiccans who live in Clearwater, Fla., maintain that their Website witchvox.com is the busiest religious site in the world. In a Web survey conducted on that site in September, 60 percent of respondents were under 30 and 62 percent were female. Berger found in her survey that 90 percent of Wiccan respondents were white and well-educated.
Full Story:
CLICK HERE
