When it comes to the wacky 1980’s, there certainly were a number of fads the rebellious youth dabbled in at one time or another: MTV, Pac Man, Break Dancing, Valley Girl talk, Boom Boxes, Miami Vice, Trivial Pursuit, and Moonwalking to name just a few.
But Witchcraft?
When it was recently disclosed that Delaware Republican Senatorial candidate Christine O’Donnell ``dabbled in Witchcraft’’ during the 1980’s, more than a few eyebrows were raised about her rebellious past. Left wing bloggers generally and HBO host Bill Maher in particular seized on her Witchcraft disclosure to further lampoon another Tea Party candidate as being downright loopy and out of touch with mainstream America.
O’Donnell, speaking on the ABC show ``Politically Incorrect’’ in 1999 told Maher: ``One of my first dates with a Witch was on a satanic altar, and I didn't know it. I mean, there's a little blood there, and stuff like that. We went to a movie, and then we had a little midnight picnic on a satanic altar.’’
The Republican Party nominee in Delaware recently told Sean Hannity on Fox News that her ``dabbling in Witchcraft’’ was merely a form of teenage rebellion. ``Who doesn’t regret the ‘80s’’? , O’Donnell said.
O’Donnell’s `` teenage rebellion’’ might make you wonder exactly how widespread Witchcraft really is in the 21st century, and whether other teenagers also may fall prey to its magical irresistible influences.
First, a modern definition of Witchcraft. According to Margot Adler in her book, ``Drawing Down The Moon’’, the word ``witch’’ comes from the Old English wicce, wicca and these words derive from the root wic or weik, which relates to religion and magic.
Exactly how many Witches are there in the United States.? Obviously, such a number is hard to come by-since claiming you’re re a Witch isn’t something you check on your Census form, include in your resume, or post on your Facebook profile.
Sociologist Helen A. Berger, Research Associate at Brandeis University, who has authored a number of books on Witches, including ``Teenage Witches’’ and ``Voices from the Pagan Census’’, estimates there over 300,000 Witches in the United States. And according to the 2008 ARIS (American Religious Identification Survey), out of Trinity College in Hartford CT), they found 342,000 Wiccans, 29,000 Druids and 340,000 Pagans. But as Berger points out, Witchcraft is seen as separate from Wiccans, although there was a time when that wasn’t the case.
Berger feels O’Donnell was nothing more than a dabbler, which is a different thing altogether from real Witchcraft. ``There are lots of spell books geared toward Teenage Girls. They tend to have pink or purple covers and promise to teach the reader how to do a series of spells (like turn your boyfriend into a frog or some such). These have sold millions of copies. Are these kids Witches, not really, they don't practice the rituals, venerate the deities, or adhere to any of the beliefs associated with it.’’
In ``Teenage Witches’’ which Berger wrote along with Douglas Ezzy, for every young person who became a Witch there were about four others that didn't stay. ``They dabbled’’ Berger said, `` found that they couldn't turn their boyfriend or girlfriend into a frog and stopped‘’
So exactly which category does O’Donnell fall under: Satanism or Wiccans? Since O’Donnell in her 1999 clip refers to her Witchcraft experience by describing blood and a ``Satanic Altar’’; we can assume she was referring to dabbling in ``Satanism’’, since Wiccans don’t worship, believe in Satan or sacrifice blood.
Of course, as Douglas Ezzy, Professor Sociology at the University of Tasmania, Australia, makes clear to me, teenage Satanism or Satanic tourism, which is something O'Donnell may have dabbled in as a teenager is entirely different from organized Satanism. It's quite common, in another words, for teenagers to be told by their Christian parents that the activities they consider fun, namely, drinking, dancing, and sexual experimentation are ``Satanic''. ``The teenagers’’, according to Ezzy,`` inspired by their Christian parents, then begin to use Satanic imagery in their leisure time. This is called Satanic tourism. Satan becomes a symbol of rebellion and a way of adding a bit of dramatic theatre to what they are doing. A "Satanic altar" could be something as simple as the table that was used for last week's drinking games. ‘’
Organized Satanism is different from Witchcraft. It started out as a theatrical overlay on a night club strip show in which Satanic symbols and characters were used to make it more exciting. And according to Ezzy, it developed into a religion of pleasure and self-empowerment. It should also be pointed out that Satan is a Christina deity and he has no place in Wicca or Witchcraft.
Satanism, generally speaking, symbolizes someone who looks out for the themselves and celebrates pleasure. Ezzy tells me that there are various churches of Satan which are loosely organized.
Wicca has its origins in England; and Gerald Gardner, in particular, an English civil servant created the religion, the most influential subset of Neopaganism, in the 1940's. By the 1960’s, Wicca had made its way to the United States through the efforts of Raymond Buckland, who was greatly influenced by many of the social movements taking place in America during the ‘60’s, including the women’s movement, the counter-culture, the environmental movement and young people’s quest for individualism.
Wicca, moreover, accept Judeo-Christian cosmology. They don't believe in Satan, and therefore can't be Satanists.
The normal practice is for Wiccans to join a coven (assembly of Witches) and train in specialized knowledge, and engage in dance, chanting, mediation, drumming and other practices in order to create mystical or magical experiences. Wiccans, both males and females, venerate the gods and goddesses.
As chronicled in Berger and Ezzy’s book, ``Teenage Witches’’, Wiccans use magic for a variety of reasons, including doing well on exams, finding a job, and dealing with relationships in which they see themselves as linked to the universe; in some instances they experience direct contact with the deities.
As Hans Peter Broedel from the History Department at the University of North Dakota points out, `` Wicca is a recognized religion with millions of adherents; Satanism is not. Despite the forest of trees that have been lost publishing books about "Satansim," it has no recognized doctrine or even set of core beliefs, no organized following, no institutional structures, none of the things one would normally associate with a religion.’’ `` ``Honestly’’ Broedel writes in an email, ``O'Donnell's comments strike me as a fairly typical, but heavily embellished, teen-age experience narrative, related primarily for shock value, but also to let people know that she has had some sort of "dark past," that allows her to speak with some authority about things she actually knows absolutely nothing about.’’
Richard B. Latner from the History Department at Tulane University, who has focused a great deal of his attention on the Salem Witch trials, thinks O'Donnell was merely dabbling in Satanic worship, but not willfully rejecting God or planning to harm someone.
``If this were the 17th century,'' Latner adds, ``her [O’Donnell’s] best defense would be to say that the devil or a witch took her to the altar and tried to force her to sign on — but she refused. Then she could name the person who tried to get her to sign and accuse him or her of witchcraft: doubtless, a Democrat.'
So what’s the future of Witchcraft in the 21st century?
Undoubtedly, since the 1990’s, Witchcraft or more accurately, Paganism has become hugely popular, especially with the publication of `` ``Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner’’ which made it possible for adherents to practice Wicca with one or two people-or simply alone.
But just last year in Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies’’ Ezzy and Berger published an article: ``Witchcraft: Changing patterns of participation in the early twenty first century’’ in which they show that those seeking information about Witchcraft has been declining since 2004, which is not to suggest Witchcraft is dying out or has been eliminated.
Rather, according to Ezzy and Berger’s research, Witchcraft and Paganism appears to be in a period of change in which communities, through the Internet and chat rooms are still thriving, but the intensity of individual participants is slowing.
The Web site, adherents.com, meanwhile, estimates one million neo-pagans worldwide, with the majority of those being Wiccans, which also includes figure from a Wiccan/Pagan poll that gives 768,000 neo-pagans in the US, again with Wiccans as the majority group.
Since Wicca is a recognized religion, I thought I would be able to find at least some high profile personalities who practice a form of Witchcraft. But other than singer Stevie Nicks (another dabbler), however, I came up empty. But as Michael D. Bailey from the Department of History at Iowa State University reminds me, ``unlike Kaballah or Scientology, neo-pagan Wicca still carries a stigma in some quarters - associations with Satanism etc. that I doubt many celebrities are willing to risk.’’
-Bill Lucey
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This is an wonderful article. Very well researched and well thought out! Thank you for bringing back the logical to the outrageous media spectacle that has occurred around this political situation. And, you did it with an aim toward clarification of fact. Excellent!
Posted by: Natalie Rand | 09/27/2010 at 11:55 AM