Strange Brew

National Review, July 12 1999

THERE are no atheists, it is said, in a foxhole, but there may, it seems, be witches. Earlier this year, some soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, the country's largest military base, celebrated the arrival of spring in the way that they, as witches, enjoy. They prayed to the goddess Freya and then leapt over a fire straight into battle with Rep. Bob Barr, the Georgia Republican. In Barr's view, allowing these ceremonies "sets a dangerous precedent that could easily result in all sorts of bizarre practices being supported by the military under the rubric of religion.' What's next? Will armored divisions be forced to travel with sacrificial animals for Satanic rituals?" Democratic congressman Chet Edwards from, riskily, Waco, thinks that's wrong. He is quoted as having "serious differences with the philosophy and practices" of the witches, "but it would be terrible policy to require each installation commander to define what is a religion."

The Army, perhaps remembering the success of earlier pagan militaries (Roman Legions, 300 Spartans, the Mongol Horde), would appear to agree with Edwards. It has worked out an accommodation with the witches, or "Wiccans" as they prefer to be known. Wicca is recognized as a bona fide religion by the Army. Puzzled padres need only turn to the Army chaplain's hand-book. Religious Requirements and Practices of Certain Selected Groups, for guidance on how to deal with recruits who wish to put the war in warlock.

The Army is not alone. Wicca has been recognized as a religion by such authorities as the IRS, Michael Dukakis, and, of course, the courts. In Dettmer v. Landon (1985), the District Court of Virginia noted that Wicca "is clearly a religion for First Amendment purposes," a view that was upheld by the appeals court. That case concerned the right of prisoners to Wiccan ceremonies. More recently, Crystal Seifferly won her legal battle to be allowed to wear her pentacle, a Wiccan symbol, to high school in Michigan. Michael Dukakis? When governor of Massachusetts, he appointed Laurie Cabot the official Witch of Salem.

Which is a safer job than it used to be. In modern America, witchcraft is out of the broom closet and onto the Internet (with over 2,000 websites). The old popular image of Oz's Wicked Witch is melting, melting away, replaced by the sirens of Eastwick, the girls on TV's Charmed, and Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock in Practical Magic. ABC has a hit with Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Even Willow, the sensible one in the, er, cult show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, turns out to be a follower of Wicca. Among teenage girls, there's a Generation Hex, with witches becoming something of a role model.

And Wicca is big business. Its books sell well (the Supermarket Sorceress's Enchanted Evenings offers "75 simple spells from supermarket ingredients"). And many cities and towns can boast a supernatural store or two, even Brookland, Ark. (pop: 1,000), where some locals are protesting the opening of Dagda's Cauldron Occult Shop. But don't worry: If Dagda's not around, there's always mail order (Enchantments, Inc., say) for your Hemlock Bark, Twinkle Toes incense, and Squint Oil ("will bring home a straying mate. Secretly sprinkle on clothes").

How many witches are there in America? Accurate calculations are hard to come by (the Canadians, who like to count these sorts of things, recorded 5,500 "pagans" in their last census), but it is generally estimated that there are around 50,000 Wiccans in the United States, a total that is said to be growing fast.

This might surprise poor Bob Barr. Citing an image of George Washington at prayer, the congressman managed to suggest that witchcraft was somehow un-American. He could not be more wrong. For if ever a religion was tailor-made for a contemporary America in full flight from the Enlightenment and the Founding Fathers, it is Wicca.

It is, first of all, bogus. Its origins, we are told, stretch back to the dawn of time, to an age when men worshipped the Goddess. This explains why so many Wiccans communicate in Hobbitspeak, with olde worlde talk of Athanes, Stangs, Runes, Summerland, and scrying-glass. In fact, much of Wicca has a different source; the ancient and fabled culture that was Britain in the 1950s, where numerous Wiccan rites were thought up by one Gerald Gardner, a retired civil servant with a reported interest in nudism and flagellation. (So Wicca is approximately as old as Kwanzaa.)

But there was only so much that Gardner could do. He did put forward a few principles (such as the idea that anything one does, good or bad, will be repaid threefold), a bit of nature worship, and some "magick" (spelled with a k to distinguish it from the David Copperfield variety). In essence, though, he left his religion as something of a blank slate. Transplanted across the Atlantic, it was perfect for a society that attaches a cachet to "spirituality" but where many people don't want the inconvenience of difficult rules or dogma.

So, no coven has a monopoly on Wiccan truth. If you don't like one proposition, just find another, or set out on your own as a "solitary." To be sure, some more general principles are evolving. Lacking much of a structure, Wicca has proved even more susceptible to the fads and fancies of the late 20th century than its more conventional competitors. It tends to be loopily feminist (if you are a man, don't even think about going to the Circle of Aradia's Goddess Campout) and gushingly environmentalist.

And, temptingly, it is a fantasy so much more exciting than humdrum reality. All those Smiths and Browns and Joneses can reinvent themselves as Mountainwaters, Summerwinds, and Willowsongs. Best of all (this is America), new Wiccans become automatic victims, complete with their own personal holocaust. The old European witch manias have been dubbed the "burning times." Of course, most of those killed were not witches in any sense of the word, but no one seems to mind.

What they do care about is the privileged status this supposed victimhood might give them in our grievance society ("warlock," by the way, is held to be a derogatory term, so be careful). The old witch's cackle is being replaced with the litigant's whine. Bill O'Reilly of Fox News ran into complaints from the Military Pagan Network (an actual group, complete with its own website) when, in discussing the Fort Hood controversy, he insensitively referred to a "Bradley Fighting Broomstick."

Aftcr the recent tempest in a cauldron in Massachusetts, he should have known better. There, the unflattering image of a witch contained in a campaign ad run by Gov. Paul Cellucci helped provoke protests (there were, to be fair, more complex issues involved) by the Witches' League for Public Awareness and the attendance of 75 witches at one of the gubernatorial debates. Still, Cellucci won the election.