Modern Wicca

by Michael Howard

  Practitioners of Wicca in modern South Africa are mostly drawn from the white population, because indigenous Africans have their own distinctive form of witchcraft, with an estimated 200,000 traditional healers operating in the country. Unlike Wicca with its maxim of “Harm no one” the belief in African witchcraft includes the use of magic to cause physical injury and even death. Possibly because of this factor and the racial element, “very little African practice has found its way into [European] Pagan ritual and practices but [they] remain almost exclusively based on British and American models” (Ibid.).

  This cultural clash was emphasized in 2007 when the provincial government of Mpumalanga put forward a draft proposal for a new anti-witchcraft law to reinforce the existing Witchcraft Suppression Act of 1957. This legislation mostly defined witchcraft specifically within a black African context as “the secret use of muti [the mutilation of human bodies for body parts used in magic], zombies, spells, spirits, magic powders, water mixtures, and so forth, by any person with the purpose of causing harm, damage, sickness to others or their property” (Wallace 2008). This proposed legislation did not directly affect Wiccans, who do not follow such native magical practices. Many, rightly or wrongly, saw it as an attack on their democratic right of freedom of religious expression, because the law specifically categorized witchcraft per se as a cruel and evil practice.

  It was evident that those who had drawn up the legislation did not consider or foresee the impact it would have on the Wiccan community. In June 2007, Luke Martin, the convener of the South African

  Pagan Council (SAPC), met with the Mpumalanga government to discuss the issue. As a result, another meeting was held with the SAPC at which representatives of the Traditional Healers Organisation (THO) were also present. The government agreed to freeze the bill and called for the Wiccan and THO representatives to make themselves available for further discussions on the matter. A copy of the draft bill was widely circulated on the Internet by the South African Pagan Rights Alliance (SAPRA), formed in 2004, and the SAPC, and a conference was called to elect the required representatives to negotiate with the government.

  In September 2007, the first National Pagan Conference was held under the auspices of the SAPC and attended by sixty-one delegates. This group agreed a united approach should be adopted between the Wiccans and the traditional healers. Then SAPRA submitted an alternative draft called the “Witchcraft Protection Bill.” This defined witchcraft in a more European and Wiccan way. The THO opposed this new bill because they believed its definition of African witchcraft falsely labeled its members as practitioners of harmful magic. Overall the combined opposition to the new legislation only served to highlight the differences between European Wicca and African witchcraft that had not previously been considered by either of the parties.

  An added complication was the issuing of a statement by Adrian Williams, the provincial deputy secretary of the South African Communist Party and High Priest of the Wiccan Coven of the Silver Sickle. He proposed “in the interest of cultural and spiritual unity,” that the Wiccan community should compromise and stop using the words “witch” and “witchcraft” to describe themselves and their activities (Ibid.). This was because of the negative connotations these emotive words had in the minds of the black African majority. Williams also called on the Mpumalanga government to assist Wiccans by issuing free licenses allowing them to practice divination using the tarot and healing legally under the new law. This statement immediately began a heated debate among Wiccans as to whether or not they should call themselves witches anymore and accept government control over their activities.

  At the National Pagan Conference, the Wiccan contingent voted to reject any form of legislation against witchcraft on the grounds it would adversely affect the human rights of its practitioners. They pointed out that the new South African Constitution and Bill of Rights guaranteed freedom of religious expression and any new law would contravene them. It was also decided to launch a campaign to promote neopagan witchcraft through the media to specifically clarify the identity of Wicca. A vote was also taken on dropping the terms “witch” and “witchcraft” to describe Wicca, but was comprehensively defeated. In contrast, several speakers representing traditional healers recommended the proposal should be passed to avoid any confusion between Wicca and African witchcraft.

  As a direct result of the differences of opinion that surfaced at the conference, a new Wiccan organization was set up as an alternative to SAPRA and SAPC called the Progressive Pagan Alliance (PPA). Its members supported the idea that the words “witch” and “witchcraft” should no longer be employed, on the grounds they were derogatory terms used in historical times by the Christian Church to label practitioners of the Craft of the Wise as heathens and unbelievers. In the interests of South African pagan unity, the PPA said they would no longer use this outdated terminology that had “contributed to centuries of colonialism and repression for the vast majority of South Africans.” They also said they opposed any person or group who refused to compromise on this important linguistic issue and not support legislation that outlawed the use of magic to cause harm.

  In response to this ultimatum, the SAPC claimed they were given a mandate at the National Pagan Conference to challenge both the existing and proposed legislation against witchcraft. In this respect they aligned themselves with the THO and would also resist any attempt to relinquish the words “witch” and “witchcraft.” This was because they were in general usage among South African neopagans who overwhelmingly were practitioners of Wicca. Meanwhile the proposed anti-witchcraft legislation had been suspended and in September 2008 a meeting was held by the South African Law Reform Commission to discuss the matter. This was attended by representatives from the SAPC and the THO (Ibid.).

  In November 2008, The Times newspaper in London reported that, in a rural district of Tanzania, half of all the reported murders were “witch killings” carried out because people thought the victim had been bewitched. Almost all the victims of this modern witch-hunt were elderly women from poor families. The newspaper quoted Professor Raymond Fisman of Columbia University, USA, who said these epidemics of witch hunting and killing coincided with years when the crops failed. Suspected witches were sought out as scapegoats, as they were in medieval Europe, and the chosen victims were the elderly. The logical motive behind this was that elderly members of the family were the ones consuming the most resources and therefore resources would go further in times of economic hardship. The quickest and most effective way to deal with the situation was to provide government pensions to elderly women, transforming them from an economic burden to a generator of income for the family (November 24, 2008).

  It is understandable how Wicca could have been exported to predominantly English-speaking ex-colonial countries like the United States, Australia, and South Africa with their white European population and cultural links. It also arrived in countries where it seemed more unlikely there would have been an interest or it would have taken root. However, in the Asian countries we are going to examine next it has been largely due to outside influences or their European or American residents. In Hong Kong, for instance, a Wiccan group of Chinese teenagers known as the Celestial Moon Coven, ironically made up of students from a local Roman Catholic school, hold their rituals in Tai tam Country Park. In an interview with the magazine Post (n.d.) its young members used pseudonyms because a previous article had identified them and falsely claimed they practiced satanic devil worship. The interview said for Hong Kong residents there is more of a social stigma attached to practicing Wicca than is found in America.

  In Hong Kong, the interest in Wicca among young people was largely generated by the publication of J. K. Rowling’s best-selling novels about the boy wizard Harry Potter, even though they presented a fantasy version of witchcraft. In Hong Kong alone, more than five hundred thousand copies were sold. Not everyone was fond of them and a born-again teacher from the Hong
Kong International School condemned the books as “spiritual pornography” that lured children on to the “dangerous path” of witchcraft (pers. comm.). However, for the younger generation in Hong Kong, both Chinese and European, the attraction of Wicca is that it is a subversive alternative belief system, in a (communist) society regarded as autocratic, patriarchal, paternalistic, sexist, homophobic, and anti-environment. Ironically, this is also why today Wicca attracts people in democratic countries such as Britain and the United States.

  The Japanese have always been fascinated with the occult and a best-selling magazine in Tokyo is Twilight Zone, a glossy publication devoted to the supernatural, ceremonial magic, and UFOs. There is also a small Wiccan community, and the Craft was introduced into the country by Americans serving in the armed forces. For instance, Robin Wood was initiated into Wicca in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1978. The following year she married a soldier in the US Army who was then posted to Japan. There Wood founded and established her own Wiccan tradition before moving back to America and achieving fame as the creator of The Robin Wood Tarot.

  In June 2007, the US military’s newspaper Stars & Stripes reported on a group of Wiccans at the Misawa USAF base consisting of sailors, air crew, and their partners. Staff Sgt. Katie McDonald was quoted as saying that they still have problems with the 75 percent majority of Christians on the base. Another Wiccan complained she was glared at by a woman at a stall selling cookies on the base for a Christian group. Another overheard a woman in the Army and Navy Services bookstore telling her children that a display of Wiccan and neopagan publications were “bad books.”

  Not all the Japanese are happy about this foreign spiritual import. On a forum website devoted to Japan on the Internet, one correspondent said the Japanese did not need Wicca at all. This was because they had their own ancient pagan religion practicing the worship of nature gods and ancestral spirits called Shinto. The correspondent described Wicca as “a young upstart Western faith that is, at best, based on fluffy scholarship and, at worst, a make-it-up-as-you-go-along belief system” (pers. comm.).

  In India, the acceptable public face of Wicca is represented by Ipsita Roy Chakraverti, the so-called “Wiccan Queen,” as she has been dubbed by the press. In July 2007, the Reuters international press agency reported she had been appointed by the Indian government’s National Commission for Minority Educational Institutes. Her job was to help stop the feticide and infanticide of an estimated ten million female babies and young girls every year. In many parts of rural India male children are preferred to females, so females are either aborted or killed shortly after birth. Chakraverti was initiated into Wicca in Canada and claims the religion has made inroads into several rural areas in India.

  She has set up a “witches’ brigade” to try to stop the persecution and murder of women in remote villages who are accused of being witches. It is estimated that over seven hundred alleged witches have been killed in the states of Assam and Bengal alone since 2003. In one of the most horrific cases, four members of the same family were stoned and then buried alive for allegedly cursing a relative of the village chief. In another attack, the severed heads of two murdered witches were paraded in triumph through the streets. The national government has responded by teaching lessons on witchcraft in primary schools in an effort to debunk superstition. This approach is being challenged by academics who say that, as in Africa, it is poor economic conditions that create witch-hunts.

  Ipsita Roy Chakraverti is also a social activist and campaigns against domestic violence, which is prevalent in Indian households. Despite the reverence for Hindu goddesses, women are still often regarded in the country as second-class citizens. Like her colleagues in the West, Chakraverti is also trying to get Wicca recognized by the Indian government as a legitimate and official religion. She claims her government appointment as an educational advisor was “… a triumph for Wicca, as the establishment was against Wiccans for years” (Ibid.).

  Chapter Fifteen

  Witches in Cyberspace

  During the 1980s, one of the founding fathers of Wicca International, Alex Sanders, was following a rather different path than his contemporaries. In the summer of 1979, he wrote to me in a philosophical mood about the need for unity in the Craft and apologizing for his past behavior. He asked me to publish an extract of his private letter in my magazine The Cauldron. It read as follows: “There are many ways to the Inner and many ways to the Outer and I believe that Wicca throughout the ages has been sensible in including the practices and activities of others sects while keeping in harmony with the Great Mother and Her Consort. It seems, though, that in the British Isles the bone of contention in the Wicca is whether the Gardnerian Book of Shadows or the Alexandrian book is the real one, whilst others say you do not need a book. Understood, and used correctly, both are valid according to the people who made the choice to adhere to one or other sect. And the same applies to followers of the Wicca who do not use a book.

  “I have many indoor rites and many designed for out of doors, whether by the sea, in the country, or on a Welsh mountain top. On May Eve I worked on Pook’s Hill [in Sussex] to be in harmony with the spiritual insight of the poet who felt the ancient magic of the old mound. It was a spontaneous and simple ritual that progressed itself to natural movement and beauty without the pre-conceived rituals of a book.

  “It is such a pity that the Wicca cannot accept the fact that if we were to unite in brotherly love before the face of the Lord and Lady, we could become great again and open and respected in the outer world. But until that day comes we can only do our individual best for the Mother and Her children. I realise while I write this that I am as guilty as the next, but now I am trying to make amends for some of the past hurts that I have given and the many public stupidities I created and for others of the Craft. As I have said in another letter to you, my house is open for sincere people of whatever belief—and creed” (TC #15, Lammas 1979).

  One of the outdoor rituals mentioned in the above letter was carried out by Sanders and his Sussex coven during his stay in Bexhill and was describe in a local newspaper as being a rite of “the Alexian cult.” Sanders played the part of the sacrificial Corn King and the ceremony was a symbolic death ritual. The Spring Queen struck the fatal blow and took away his crown. She was played by Betty Scott, the woman who had rented the cottage in Selmeston to the Sanderses. A young boy was also present and was described by the newspaper as “‘a sorcerer’s apprentice.” Other fire rituals were held above the Long Man of Wilmington hill figure featuring blazing torches and Sanders wearing an Aztec headdress and mask as the fire god.

  Following an acrimonious separation and subsequent divorce from his second wife, Maxine, Sanders had gone back to Sussex as one of his students had offered him an old cottage in Bexhill-on-Sea. Maxine Sanders was still living in their London apartment, where she ran a coven under the name of the Temple of the Mother with her new High Priest, David Goddard. Locally Sanders was regarded as a colorful character and could be found holding court in the Bell Hotel in Bexhill, telling stories about his witchcraft exploits. When visitors sought him at the hotel, a night of heavy drinking sometimes ended up with them returning to the cottage to be initiated.

  Despite the circumstances of their parting, Maxine Sanders still attended rituals in Sussex. In one of her autobiographies she described how at one ritual she was the only female present with eleven male witches, so she automatically took the role of High Priestess. Where there is a shortage of women, the usual practice during the cakes and wine ritual was for the chalice to be placed in the center of the circle as each male witch partook of the ritual communion from it. Traditionally Wicca is based on sexual and gender polarity so the chalice would be passed female to male around the circle. Maxine Sanders observed that instead the chalice was passed around male to male with a kiss. She was aware her ex-husband knew she would be upset by this breach of ritual protocol as she believed that “with
out the polarity of the sexes interacting and thereby transmuting the potential female energy into witch magic [it] would be difficult” (2008: 211).

  Despite his bisexuality and numerous homosexual affairs, Alex Sanders married his third wife, Gillian, in December 1982, and appointed her as the “Sussex Queen of the Witches.” The marriage was short-lived and they divorced a year later. Gillian accused Sanders of squandering her divorce settlement of $100,000, spending their wedding night with a male lover, and failing to have sex with her (Valiente 1989: 175). The last accusation had also been made by Maxine Sanders during their divorce case. In a newspaper article, Sanders’ new ex-wife said he did not have any magical powers and stated: “He’s no witch. He’s just a clever man with a high I.Q. and a strong desire to have sex with as many men as possible” (The Sunday Pictorial September 14, 1986).

  During the 1980s, Derek Leo Taylor (1939–2000), the owner of a property development company in Hasting, Sussex, met Alex Sanders and was initiated into his coven. He subsequently became a member of his magical groups, the Ordine Della Nova and the Hermetic Order of Alexandria, which practiced a mixture of Wicca, angelic magic (based on Madeline Montalban’s course), the Cabbala, Rosicrucianism, and the Grail Mysteries. Derek Taylor was a gifted psychic and trance medium, and in the 1980s he and Sanders worked together to contact spirits, both the departed and nonhuman entities. If one can believe the accounts of their mediumistic sessions, they were also in contact with aliens from outer space. The two men had constructed a device they described as a time machine. This apparatus consisted of copper plates, possibly connected by wires to a battery. These were placed on the floor and either Sanders or Taylor stood in the center and went into trance. The other man acted as the scribe, writing down the messages received from the spirits.