By Rachel dares
Old ladies on broomsticks soaring past the full moon. Black cats, pointy hats and bubbling cauldrons of green potion.
The tales have been told. But the pointy hats and broomsticks that will parade the streets on Oct. 31 won’t capture the true meaning of being a witch.
Many Canadians have less conventional ways of celebrating Halloween. Modern-day witches who follow pagan religions such as Wicca are reviving elements of Celtic festivities that date back more than 2000 years.
Halloween started with the ancient pagan festival of Samhain (pronounced Sow-in), which celebrated the end of the harvesting period and the beginning of the New Year. On Oct. 31, there was feasting, singing and dancing, says Kimberly Stratton, a Carleton University religious studies professor and expert in witchcraft. The veil between the living and the dead was said to be the thinnest on this night, so people would try to contact dead ancestors.
When Christianity made its way into Britain towards the end of the 4th century, a number of pagan deities and festivals were given similar roles within the church to help convert the locals, says Danica Whyndham, a senior instructor at a school called the Ottawa Pagan Schola. The Christian feast of all saints, called All Hallow’s Eve, was placed on Oct. 31 in the hopes of cancelling out the pagan tradition.
“Sadly, nowadays, much of the public does not realize how much of their practices originated with pagans,” says Whyndham. The name Danica Whyndham is an alias she prefers to go by, but her birth name is actually Marie. Many pagans take on names that have special significance to them.
Refusing to give up their beliefs, thousands of European pagans were proclaimed devil worshippers and were burned at the stake between the 15th and 18th centuries. Halloween became associated with witchcraft because it was thought that witches came together to celebrate on that night. The holiday later caught on in North America, but lost its original meaning. However, the past century has witnessed a resurgence of interest in pre-Christian religions and Halloween celebrations, says Stratton.
Despite what some people may think, Wicca and other forms of Paganism are, in fact, religions.
These belief systems are gradually joining mainstream Canadian society. Statistics Canada says Wicca has 21,000 followers in Canada and its numbers are on the rise.
Wicca is an earth-loving religion in which followers worship the sun, moon and seasons, says Dale Dalessio. She is a board member of the Pagan Federation of Canada and the high priestess of an Ottawa Wiccan group called the Firestone Coven. Wiccans generally believe in reincarnation, gender equality and both a god and a goddess.
Many pagans perform their rituals in covens, which are congregations of witches often limited to 13 or fewer people. A coven translates into a church group, with a system of worship and guidelines for members to follow, says Whyndham.
Members practice magic and celebrate the eight seasonal sabbat holidays including Samhain, she says. Spells focus energy on tasks like making the world a better place or finding a partner, says Stratton.
The religion has few concrete rules and no written code. A guiding rule, called the Wiccan Rede, is that practitioners can take part in anything that doesn’t harm others or themselves, says Stratton.
“The biggest thing to remember is that it is a religion,” says Dalessio. “Ritual is mass and spells are prayer. It’s the same idea.”
Some modern-day pagans say they are still struggling for tolerance in a society where not everyone understands what witchcraft really is.
“I still think there’s prejudice among a lot of people,” says Stratton. “There’s still a lot of baggage and a lot of misperception.”
Pagan religions often get associated with devil worshipping, says Whyndham. However, Satan is strictly a Christian concept that doesn’t exist in Paganism.
Lucie DuFresne, a board member of the Pagan Federation and a religious studies professor at the University of Ottawa, is more optimistic about the situation in Canada, but says people are not so lucky in the United States.
“We have the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and religion is one of the freedoms,” says DuFresne.
In the U.S., it took months for the army to allow a fallen soldier to have the pagan symbol of a five-pointed star, called the pentacle, to be displayed on his grave.
During the campaign for the U.S. presidency in 2000, former Texas governor George W. Bush answered an online debate that asked whether religions like Wicca should be banned from recognition by the military.
He responded by saying: “Whether Mormon, Methodist, Jewish, or Muslim, Americans should be able to participate in their constitutional free exercise of religion. I do not think witchcraft is a religion, and I do not think it is in any way appropriate for the U.S. military to promote it.”
Many people are misinformed because of movies such as The Craft, which confuse Wicca with stereotypes about witchcraft generated in the middle ages, says Stratton.
“Even though most people will acknowledge that [Hollywood] is a fantasy-land, they also tend to believe these fantasies are built on a grain of truth,” says Colette Connolly, a pagan practitioner in Ottawa.
Dalessio says she hopes people will recognize these misconceptions. “I’m a normal person. I have a normal job and I have a mortgage and a van and a dog. There’s nothing freaky about me.”