Do you believe in witches?
Listen to the words of the great mother.
Come to this sacred place to commemorate those who died for our freedom.
We remember those and we are the living commemoration of the nine million witches that were tortured,
burned and hanged during the burning times.
Here we emerged and opened our hearts and our minds and said, here we are, we're the
witches, we're still alive and well and living in Salem, you know, and all over the world
and everybody was like, oh my god, witches.
We had some people who would say to me, you should go to church, April, you should go
to church, come with me on Ash Wednesday and I'll absolve you, but before you do that would
you go with me in the conference room and work my back?
The word witch frightens many people and confuses many others.
With the energy of the goddess.
I have no desire to ever say, oh the heck with it, I'm never going to tell anybody I'm
a witch again.
You know, how could I?
It's like telling someone I'm never going to tell someone I'm a woman again.
Is a witch a creation of fairy tales?
An ugly old hag who brews hemlock and belladonna in her cauldron while casting evil spells
upon children?
Or is a witch a Satanist, as the Bible would have us believe?
Witches are very real indeed, they're not evil or satanic, they live in every community,
they have jobs and families and practice an ancient goddess-oriented nature religion that
predates Christianity, but how did witches become such negative and unbelievable characters
in history?
Witches are beginning to publicly emerge from centuries of persecution and secrecy and their
numbers in this country are growing.
In Salem, Massachusetts alone, there are over 2,000 modern day witches.
They take their lifestyle very seriously and they don't like the way history is being
told.
We are wrongly feared by many and we are misunderstood by most.
Our ancestors rose from the mists of Babylon and were burned, hanged and tortured in the
Christian Holocaust, yet we have survived.
Our story begins here at the home site of Reverend Samuel Parris, who in 1692 began
the dark chapter of the Salem witch hysteria, step with us now into the true discovery of
witches.
Welcome to Salem, Massachusetts, population 38,000, a typical New England town tucked
away just 40 miles north of Boston, typical with one exception.
It's known internationally as the Witch City.
Salem is the site of the most infamous and well-documented witch trials in American history.
During the hysteria of 1692, the imaginations of a handful of children would lead to the
hangings and death of 20 innocent people and the imprisonment and financial ruin of hundreds
more, all for practicing what they thought was summoning the devil through witchcraft.
Much of modern day Salem, however, seems to have come to comfortable terms with their
dark passage in history.
The trials of 1692 and the mysterious excitement generated by witchcraft in general has become
a local multi-million dollar industry.
Well, I think probably Salem and witchcraft have been synonymous for quite some time.
I've only been the director of the chamber for four years, but in that time I realized
that many, many of the tourists who come here come because they are very interested in the
fantasy of whatever it is about witchcraft.
They're fascinated at the whole concept.
Many of our tourist attractions are witchcraft related, not all.
We have the Peavy Museum, we have the Maritime History, but we also have the Witch Museum,
the Witch Dungeon, the Witch House, and Crowhaven Corner, of course.
Welcome to the famous Salem Witch Museum.
We are going to show you the witchcraft trials which took place in Salem Village in 1692.
Do you believe in witches?
Each year, thousands of tourists from all over the world flock to Salem by the busload.
They view presentations and recreations of the witch trials, tour historic sites, and
buy everything from witch t-shirts to beer mugs, postcards to disposable witch lighters.
The Salem Police Department boasts a witch on a broom flying across their emblem, as
does the Salem Evening Newspaper and Chamber of Commerce.
Tourists can buy ice cream at the Dairy Witch, or have dinner at the Witch's Brew, or have
their picture taken in the stocks in the center of town, or outside of the Salem Shell Station.
Salem is unique indeed, and it's big business.
But to over 2,000 modern-day witches who live and work in Salem, it has also become a battleground
for their dignity, religion, and constitutional rights.
It means a lot to tell the story about witches from Salem because the issue of the word witch
meaning wise people as opposed to the word witch meaning something that is connected
to Satanism or crime needs to be expressed because even in Salem today, there are questionable
authorities who believe that witchcraft in 1692 has nothing to do with witchcraft in
time immemorial, but it really does.
We need to express that in America.
It's a way of gaining our freedom under the constant.
Lori Kavett cuts a dramatic figure walking through the streets of Salem, dressed in her
traditional witch's black robes, and proudly displaying her golden pentacle, a five-pointed
star which is a symbol for protection.
Lori was declared the official witch of Salem in 1975 by then Massachusetts Governor Michael
Dukakis.
She, and many witches across the country, are beginning to take action against negative
stereotypes.
I have heard that 25 years ago Salem was really pretty run down, that this was a poor city.
Richard and Amy Gypsy Ravish own and operate white-like pentacles, sacred spirit products.
They are Alexandrian witches who have lived and openly practice their craft in Salem for
many years.
As tourism developed here, as people began to express the interest in witchcraft, as
they began to take the logo and plaster it all over every location possible in this town,
that money began to slowly flood into this area, that they built up the center of town,
that there was a new wave of investment in businesses, that tourism became a big industry
here, and now we see hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people walking through a relatively
affluent center of town with a lot of commerce, and these are tourists in search of witchcraft
or magic.
Unfortunately, some people get very very exploitive about this, and they start bringing in a lot
of the propaganda about, oh, you know, witches worship the devil and things like that, which
of course is totally untrue, and these people have been told time and time again, this isn't
true.
They know it's not true, but it makes money.
I can see the three perceptions of witchcraft, there's the fantasy witch in the broom that's
like the Disneyland character, there's what happened in the 1700s and there's witchcraft
today, and those are three really very distinct categories, and people seem to mesh them all
into one and consider that Laurie's running around the city in a broom with a hat on.
For the first time in history, we have the Witches League for Public Awareness, which
is the witch's anti-defamation league that is spanning the globe.
We have for the first time in history put together a law memorandum for this country,
which shows every witch and every person who is interested, any lawyer or judge can put
this law memorandum in their hands and understand that witches are recognized by the United
States government and therefore are afforded the same freedoms as every other religion.
The Witches League also is very concerned with the media and the written word and how
witches are portrayed in movies or in any kind of promotion such as the city of Salem
has decided to do, they're promoting their city on a very sad history.
Alison DiMario is the Director of History at the Salem Witch Museum.
The museum draws over a hundred thousand tourists per year who view a multimedia recreation
of the 1692 Salem witch trials.
The practitioners of witchcraft now are very concerned with how the stereotype of a witch
is projected in places like the Salem Witch Museum.
Again I would say that what we do here is a historical presentation, we stay as close
as possible to the history of what happened in 1692.
The word witch is a problem because it brings to mind the stereotype of the witch and the
Wizard of Oz and our logo, a witch with a hat and a familiar, a cat.
Equating witchcraft with devil worship or with Satanism or evil, that is totally inaccurate
and incorrect.
And then also the logo with the witch on the broom is a way of demeaning women and witches.
A hysteria that happened in 1692 here could happen again because if they can't recognize
a witch today, they can't define it historically, accurately and refuse to do that.
If we also find that women still make sixty cents on the dollar and there's not an equal
rights for women in this country, yes it could happen again if women are not careful and
if witches are not careful about their civil rights.
All the witches of Salem wear their pentacles, they wear, they're black most of the time
and being in the open public that you are a witch is helping a lot.
For people to come up to you and to still be able to say, well I don't believe in witches,
how do you feel about that?
It doesn't change who we are and what we don't do, I mean it doesn't change who I am, it
doesn't prevent me from being a witch, that's what I am, that's what I choose to call myself
and I'm very proud of being a witch.
The religious ideas of witches are quite beautiful, it is the oldest and one of the most beautiful
nature religions on the face of the earth.
In their belief systems, most witches believe in a goddess, instead of a god they have a
goddess who is the encompassing force that creates all things in the universe and also
in the major religions some people believe there is a god and a goddess, that they are
balanced and equal which is a very nice system.
A magic circle is the major ritual that is used in most holidays and in most major rituals
that are not holidays, when we do our magic circles on new moon and full moon it's a process
that we do to produce magic and energy.
I cast this circle to protect us from all negative and positive energies and forces
that may come to do us harm, so might it be.
We pull from the sky the energy of the sun and moon and stars in their most perfect aspects
and I charge this chalice with the energy of the virus, so might it be.
The reason we wear black and are known to wear black is because the color black is an
equal combination of all colors, it's like wearing a rainbow and scientifically absorbs
light.
In the fire of the moon to project prosperity and health.
The god goddess is the energy that supplies the earth and the cosmos and the universe
with all its energy and all the things that happen and what they do is perfect, that they
do no evil.
We have no satan or evil god structure, it's one of the basic laws of witchcraft is do
what you will and it harm none.
We always do our spells, our projections, our magic with a stipulation that the end
of the thought or the projection is that it be correct and for the good of all people.
It's never for your own good alone because things are too synchronous.
I Lauren ask that this new year bring for the whole world and all creatures in it all
of life's necessities and more than adequate amounts and that the spirit of love permeate
the fabric of all that is manifest, so more to be, so more to be.
I feel I carry my strength in many ways but my main strength is myself.
This circle is undone and the energy is sent into the cosmos to do our bidding.
The altar, the ophthalm, potions and herbs, pentacles and oils, curls of incense and burning
wax are all tools of the ancient and modern day witch.
Do what you will and it harm none is the law of the goddess but the craft of these magical
women of power dates back before the Celtic tribes and the mighty pharaohs of Egypt and
magicians of Rome.
To truly understand the real roots of witchcraft and the centuries of persecution and hatred,
we must go back to the beginnings of civilization when the world was new and god was a woman.
In early pagans or country folk, the earth was mother.
Some anthropologists believe that the first god was female who, according to myths, impregnated
herself, gave birth to the universe and ruled alone.
Associated with her was the moon and water.
Her symbol became the cauldron in which she made magical brews of herbs and roots and
the foam of the ocean.
It boiled for a year and a day and bestowed intelligence, inspiration and magic.
She taught her early witches how to capture the magical energy of herbs, stones and stars
to heal and produce positive spells.
As times and civilizations evolved, she became known in different regions by different names.
Isis, Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Aphrodite.
She was goddess and woman was her high priestess.
Eventually, there emerged a divine mate.
He was Hearn the Hunter, Pan, Janus, the god of new beginnings.
He was the lord of the woodlands, the hunt and animals.
On his head was a crown of stag antlers, symbolizing the fertility of the hunts.
He was known as the horned god, all good, all powerful, equal to the goddess and an
image that the coming age of Christian inquisitions would be distorted and perverted into the
incorrect image of a devil.
His ideas of witches appeared between 43 BC and AD 410 when Britain was a part of the
Roman Empire.
Migrating Celtic and Druidic tribes brought their systems of science, magic and philosophy
to Egypt, Greece, Rome and European civilizations.
The history of witchcraft and the roots of witchcraft come out of Great Britain, the
Celts and the Druids.
We find that their magic science and art is the magic science and art that we still practice
today.
The times of the pharaohs and pyramids were mystical indeed.
Ancient Egyptians made no distinction between magic and science, and people worshipped
Isis, the great golden goddess who stressed only goodness and wisdom in her craft.
Romans worshipped Diana, goddess of the moon and the night.
Her symbol, the crescent moon, represented growth and fertility.
Magical doorways led in many directions, healings were performed in temples, arks were used
as talismans for everlasting life and reincarnation.
The scarab beetle was a charm for resurrection after death and protection against evil magic.
Candles were lit to dream true or obtain psychic answers during sleep.
Small pieces of paper were worn bearing prayers, spells and magical names.
Ointment and potions were worn, their sacred formulas preserved in hieroglyphics and papyrus.
Rings were worn and scribed with magical formulas and eye makeup was said to emulate the goddess.
Many of these early Egyptian and Roman systems of magic are the same rituals and tools used
by modern day practitioners of witchcraft.
In ancient Egypt, the black cat was sacred and said to imbibe Bast, the goddess of marriage.
During the coming witch hysteria, the European Catholic Church would insist that cats embodied
witch's familiars and were hunted down and burned by the hundreds.
Emperors and pharaohs began to fear magic and sorcery as threats to their political
powers and personal lives.
Women of magical power became suspect and evil.
Any magical ritual or incantation that was not a part of publicly approved rites was
outlawed and the accused were tortured and executed.
During the second century A.D., Roman poet Ovid reflected the growing fear of magical
women in his literature.
She knows the black arts and the spells of Circe.
By her skills, she turns back waters to their source.
I suspect that she flits through the shade of night and her aged body is covered with
feathers.
She summons from the ancient tombs her antique ancestors and makes the ground yawn open with
her incantation.
It was from this type of early folklore that confused Christians would later base the image
of the ugly evil hag on the broom and call her witch.
In 426 A.D., Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the empire and the
worship of the old gods and ancient ways helped to be destroyed.
During the time that we had been alive and living well and practicing for hundreds of
thousands of years, along came another religion, Christianity.
And when they moved into Great Britain, their only way of course of conquering was to demean
or get rid of the existing religions.
The great and powerful temples to Isis were either demolished or converted to Christian
churches.
Statues of the goddess were painted over and transformed into the church's Virgin Mary.
The public worship of the goddess went underground and people grew afraid.
For many years, Christianity and paganism co-existed, even within the same households.
Early Christians wore the pentacle as well as the cross as a religious symbol.
But the Catholic church needed autonomous power and used terror to convert.
It taught that those who worship the ancient gods worshiped demons, whether they knew it
or not.
Therefore, all pagans and witches could be viewed as Satan's plan to frustrate the salvation
of the world.
Witchcraft was evil because it taught powers beyond those of God.
That was very easily done for them because they brought with them a Satan or a devil,
which is in the Christian deity structure.
They turned around and then said, look at these people, they worship a horned god, which
is Pan.
Oftentimes, our high priests would don the horns of a deer to portray the earth god.
Of course, it was not evil in any way.
Our god and goddess have no evil side whatsoever.
They do no wrong and no harm.
They looked at that god and said, oh, there's a devil.
They worship a devil, which was not true.
This started the persecution and nine to 13 million people were burned, hanged and tortured
under that wrong definition of the word witch.
Natural disasters, illnesses, fires, impotence in men, babies that died at birth, crops that
would not grow, sudden storms, all became the result of evil witches casting spells.
It became easier to accept the misconception of Satan's power at work than to blame fate
or society or oneself for misfortune.
The new celibate patriarchy also began to express an intense fear and hatred towards
women.
It's threatening to men, for women to stand up and say and call themselves something different.
That's very threatening.
Isn't it more powerful than if you say, okay, I'm the high priest and only I can do these
things.
You just sit there and listen.
And so they took away the knowledge from the masses of people.
Most groups took this knowledge away and said, oh, this is forbidden to everyone, but only
to us.
We can do this.
Now, in our group, everybody has the knowledge and everybody has the ability.
It's very threatening to men because it is the woman's issue.
First of all, witchcraft was a matriarchal society.
When other religions went celibate, it caused a lot of problems.
They started doing a lot of killing of women and put men in a higher position, in an authoritative
position.
And therefore, our ways then were to be looked down upon because we were the healers.
The women were the healers, but it got turned around when the matriarchies were abolished
or looked down upon, and then men were given a great deal of power.
And so any woman with power was looked upon as a seducer, a seductress, a sorcerer, as
someone who would do evil to someone else.
The 15th century produced a large number of widows or single women living alone.
Opinionated women, healers, midwives, existing without the legal and physical protection
of husbands and fathers, became prime targets.
The church would later decree, if a woman dared to cure without having studied, then
she is a witch and must die.
When Christianity came in or the patriarchy, they had to be destroyed.
And so they were called whores, courtesans, harlots, the great harlot in the book of revelations,
that type of thing.
And these women of power were destroyed because they knew too much.
It's like I work with very sick children, and they know I'm healing them, and they
know I'm working them.
And the look in their eyes, and they are just so relaxed around a witch, because they can
feel that energy, that vibration.
And I always think to myself, why can't we keep you at this level?
Why do you have to grow up and start to hate us?
And so while I'm busy working these kids, I'm just programming their brains by, remember
me, remember.
One of the scientific things that we do with our brain is learn how to count into alpha
or to lower the brain waves so that we can be psychic, and we have a method to do it.
And one of the tests or ways we use this is to do medical and other kinds of diagnosis
from an altered state.
And what we're going to do now is when we decide who's going to work the case, the person's
going to count into alpha.
We have our own method.
We use the spectrum and numbers, and we count ourselves into an altered state, lowering
our brain wave.
And then what is going to happen is you're going to give us the first and last name of
a person that is unknown to her or us, their age and their whereabouts.
She will bring this person in on her screen of her mind where she visualizes, where you
see pictures, because she's going to draw the actual image of this person through her
pineal gland and place it up on her screen.
So probably use her hands to touch the person's face and body to detect the color, the eye
color, the hair, shape of the face, the weight, and get general impressions about the person.
If this is a medical case, which it should be, she will then go inside the body and diagnose
the different areas of concern.
And we like to work medical cases only that are already diagnosed and under the care of
a doctor.
And we usually only do this with the doctor.
And I understand that this case is approved.
So we'll be able to diagnose something that's already been diagnosed so there's proof of
what she's doing.
I'm going to put her head on.
Check it first.
Yeah.
May I do this, please?
Fine.
These little headaches are no little headaches.
Wow.
It's like my whole head is collapsing in on itself and it hurts so bad I want to cry.
And I'm feeling my whole body shake right now with this going on.
I mean, I really want to cry because of this right now and the electrical impulses are
not going correctly to the right side of the brain up into the temporal lobe.
So there are times when it's almost like I hallucinate or I hear things or I see things.
And it's almost like I'm having epilepsy attacks and it's temporal lobe epilepsy and I or she
gets hypergraphic.
She writes a lot during these times sees white flashes and it's like totally out of control.
And I mean her eyes are just going wild.
And it's interesting because now I understand why the weight problem is there because the
brain is not mediating everything correctly.
And so all of this in the brain is being taken out in the trunk.
And I'm seeing a major seizure coming up around the temporal lobe here and going straight
back and then moving up forward to encompass the entire right hemisphere coming soon.
Like she's she's going for tonight.
Can you stop it for please?
Okay.
Want to take her head up?
Yeah.
Her head's only throbbing but it's reducing a lot and she's getting more calm and she's
breathing better.
Okay.
Most damning action came in 1486 when Pope Innocent VIII commissioned two Dominican monks
and professional inquisitors to write the Malleus Maleficorum or hammer of witches.
It was a manual that would run in 14 editions that outlined for professional witch hunters
how to find, torture and execute accused victims.
It also gave the church and its emissaries full authority over local government to prosecute
and condemn.
It became legal to seize any suspected heretics, goods and land and imprison, torture and execute
on minimal evidence.
The church through a series of manuals and pamphlets would promote the idea that women
practicing witchcraft would make willing pacts with the devil and participate in secret nocturnal
Sabbaths.
Legend had it that they would rise from their beds at night and smear their bodies, brooms
or fence rails with a strong ointment that would make them fly through the air with demons
and entwine with the devil himself in lewd dancing, orgies and the sacrifice and feasting
upon of unbaptized babies.
The widespread belief that this was actually happening led to thousands of accusations,
arrests and bloody deaths.
Holy judges and courts believed that they were saving souls by getting confessions,
even through inhumane torture.
And if someone were truly innocent, God himself would surely intervene.
Once arrested, the victim, usually a woman, would be tortured for a confession that she
was in alliance with the devil.
Thumb screws, racks, scalding lime baths and drownings were common.
Others rotted in jail.
Witch hunters would strip female prisoners in front of crowds and prick them with witch
pins to find numb areas of their bodies where demons allegedly would suckle.
Oftentimes these areas were found under eyelids, tongues and on the genitalia.
Victims being tortured would be forced to reveal the names of others they had seen in
league with the devil.
Often at the end of physical endurance, people would recite the names of their neighbors
or enemies or anyone to make the torture stop.
If they confessed, the church would mercifully strangle them before their body was burned.
If they protested their innocence, they would be burned alive, all under the wrong Christian
definition of the word witch.
The church felt that fire was the only element of purification that would negate the evils
of witchcraft.
Burning on a large scale originated with St. Augustine who said that pagans, Jews and heretics
would burn forever in eternal fire with the devil unless saved by the Catholic Church.
As the Bible was being translated from its original Hebrew into Latin, Greek and other
languages, King James I, who had previously expressed a violent hatred of women and witches,
ordered that the biblical word, meaning malefic sorcerer, be translated to witch, thus provided
clear biblical sanctions for the extermination of innocent people and goddess worshippers.
As the witch craze moved northward to England, the punishments became less severe.
English law saw witchcraft as a crime against society and not as a crime against God.
Therefore, convicted heretics were hanged instead of burned.
The witch craze was a serious problem in England by 1560, but did not hit the New England colonies
until the 1640s, and the most memorable and well-documented trial was in Salem in 1692.
I'm still angry at the accusers of witch trials in 1692, yes, I think there is some anger
left because I think the same people are reincarnated and living in Salem now, and it looks as though
those same people or the same attitudes in the same positions of power for their own
financial, economical or ignorant reasons have not changed much.
The Salem witch hysteria was sort of a left over fervor from the witch holocaust in Europe.
It took some 10 or 15 years for that idea to come to the United States.
It was a hysteria again, and it was a lot of the idea that women were getting to be
too powerful over here.
Every Halloween on Gallows Hill, witches of Salem do a magic circle at the foot of Gallows
Hill, and it's to commemorate the people who died for our freedom.
We want to reclaim that sight.
In January of 1692, a little girl named Betty Paris began to exhibit very strange symptoms,
very frightening symptoms.
Her father was the minister of Salem Village, a town that is now Danvers, and he became
so concerned that he of course prayed for her and then called in a doctor, and the doctor,
Dr. Griggs, knew only what a 17th century doctor could know, and he diagnosed Betty
as being possessed.
Naturally, that struck a note of fear in the community when it became known, because there
were other girls that were exhibiting the same symptoms.
Once the diagnosis was announced, it made people so frightened that they started to
look for the people who might be possessing their children, and gradually, as the symptoms
became worse, the girls were persuaded to name who the people were that were causing
them such pain, and the first three people named were the first people accused of practicing
witchcraft, Tituba, Sarah Good, and Sarah Osborne.
From those accusations, two of the women, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne, refused to admit
that they had done anything wrong.
Tituba, on the other hand, confessed that she was practicing witchcraft, and that led
to a long and very painful summer of accusations and eventually trials and eventually 19 hangings
and one man, Giles Corey, who was pressed to death.
In October of that year, 1692, the court who had tried these people was disbanded.
From just the energies and the life of the goddess.
We come to this sacred place to commemorate those who died for our freedom.
We remember those, and we are the living commemoration of the nine million witches that were tortured,
burned, and hanged during the burning times.
Richard Bishop, Anne Croctor, Giles Corey, Anne Putnam, Mary Esty, Martin Luther King,
Rebecca Nurtz, Sarah Good, Alice Cutler, Jack Kennedy, Steven Biko, and then with our chimes
and bells and music and chanting and our lit candles, we have a procession back into the
center of Salem.
However we have survived through holocausts that people don't even whisper about.
We talk of the last holocaust, but the holocaust before that was nine million people.
They were burned and hanged and tortured as witches under the definition of another group.
Some of those people may have been witches, most of them were not.
We survived that, and yet we have reared our children and taught them the ways of healing
and psychic balance and protection, meditation, and herbalism, and it's carried through today.
You know Don Ankins and Barbara Cummings that own the Medieval Manor in Boston, and they
belong to a Methodist church because they're Methodist witches.
They use the witchcraft as a science and incorporate it into their religious belief.
Definitely I wouldn't say that Methodism is witchcraft or witchcraft is Methodism, but
there's always threads that cross and become the same a little bit and then go off in their
own tangents.
I think I always knew I was a witch, but wasn't sure if that was the right word to use.
It's something that's at least certainly for me, and I think for Don too, a part of my
daily life.
It's part of my way of life to try to tap into energies, to project for things, to try
to be aware of energies around me.
But it's not something that I practice very much ritual in, and also we don't practice
it as a religion at all.
We never have.
The role of a witch of course is to maximize and minimize, to perform calculus upon your
own life, where you make every effort to maximize those things that can happen for your good
and minimize those things that will happen for your ill.
Everything always done in correctness and for the good of many people.
Being a witch helps us be a seven day a week Christian rather than a seventh of a week
Christian.
Calder really didn't hear the term witch until he was about three or four, and his first
inquiries were sort of along the same vein of Santa Claus.
We don't want him to think that this is sort of a neat but silly thing.
We want him to know that it's just part of life, and if it just sort of gradually becomes
absorbed, then it will just be there with him.
It is a factual, it's a part of their life that they are witches.
It's a part of your life that you are a witch, whether or not you use that to your own advantage
is up to you.
I decided it was time for Calder to learn how to work at Alpha, and that he was still
young enough so that he didn't question it too much.
He just figured, yes, he could do it if his mother told him and his father told him, then
yes, he was powerful enough to do it.
At the same time, he was old enough to really understand a little bit more and work at it.
He goes into Alpha, now he asks me, now, if he, Mommy, will you count me into, he calls
it dice for some reason, but that's his little word that triggers it off for him.
We count down and we work on things together.
His hives, finally, they're getting better and better.
He doesn't seem to have the reactions he was having, he's not having the outbreaks.
He now feels like he's more in control and he's been happier about it.
He was getting very miserable about his hives, he's feeling very badly about himself, and
now he feels like, hey, I don't have to live with this, and he doesn't, he's not drugged
up and he's not taking anything that's going to have some other side effect on him.
Remember to say to yourself, every day, in every way, I am getting bigger and I am becoming
a better person.
We're certainly not telling the children that they have to wear black or perform ritual,
but we will present, continue to present in the way that we live and the way we will continue
to live, a belief system which tells them they have to be responsible for what they're
doing, that if they want their life to be a good life, they have to perform good, and
to not fear or hate evil, but to try and transform it into something that is not endangering
to them.
I've met very few Methodists that begrudge anyone, any secular attempt at ordering their
life, and that is what we're talking about, as long as we don't start drinking blood or
something, I don't think anybody has any reason to complain.
And what it's like to be a witch parent is very tough, because we face a lot of problems
as far as people wondering why we weren't having a Catholic christening done, when telling
us how terrible we were for not having it done, and how sorry we'd be when something
happened, everyone seemed to want to project terrible things.
The anointing of a child is probably one of the most beautiful ceremonies and rituals
that we have.
The child will be brought inside a magic circle of witches, the child will be anointed with
an oil that is prepared just for the child from their astrological signs, and all the
chakras of the child will be opened by this oil.
Nothing harmful would ever happen from witchcraft or a ritual, if it did happen in what people
would call a witchcraft ritual, then it wouldn't be a witchcraft ritual, it would be something
that someone has made up, but not a true craft ritual.
My family and friends are all aware that we are witches, and they accept it pretty readily,
they're all Catholic, but they don't seem to mind.
My family's first reaction was, oh you're going through a phase, and you'll outgrow
it, and we haven't outgrown it, so they accepted it.
But my friends and family were good, because they took the time to listen and ask questions,
they didn't judge us before that, because growing up with me, they knew that I wasn't
a terrible person, and they knew that I wouldn't all of a sudden become a terrible person,
so they were nice enough to let me explain what we were doing, and things like that.
We draw down into the circle, into the being of JJ, the most perfect energies of the goddess.
And the god.
So motive be.
And now the gifts of all the witches will be granted.
I give you a clear and powerful voice, and the art of singing, blessed be.
Your self confidence, and the ability to overcome any obstacles in your life.
I give you medical knowledge, and the knowledge of healing, blessed be.
Ingenious mind and creativity, psychically and mentally, blessed be.
I give you the gift of investigative knowledge, may you always be curious and open enough
for the results.
I give you the ability to love, respect, live in harmony with, and appreciate all the creatures
of the goddess on this planet, and all others in the cosmos.
You will always find joy in learning.
My gift to you is self nurturing and self loving, blessed be.
In the name of the goddess and the god, I grant you magical mastery and deep understanding.
I grant you total wisdom and beauty, so motive be.
I don't feel mad at people because they're Jewish or Catholic or anything else, Buddhist,
it doesn't matter.
If that keeps their life in order and makes them happy, then that's what they should do.
That they should feel the same way about other people when they have a preference.
This circle is undone and not broken.
We cast this magic out into the universe to produce all the most perfect and correct things
and to do our will, so motive be.
Welcome JJ, welcome into our community.
We welcome your being with us, and we'd like to introduce ourselves, we are your fairy
godparents.
What does the future hold for the rights and freedom of the modern day witch?
There is a controversy right now with the tercentenary committee, which means that in
1992 they're going to commemorate the witch trials in Salem, and the mayor has put together
a committee, a board, to plan out their activities for 1992.
On this board of directors, there is not one witch.
There also is not one person who has the definition of witch correct or who is interested in any
way in including us, and they also say that witchcraft as a crime in 1692 had nothing
to do with witches today.
Of course it does have a lot to do with it, and we find a lot of issue with several of
the board members calling this a celebration.
I don't think it's something to celebrate.
One of the board members, however, Joan Gormley of the Chamber of Commerce said something
very wonderful.
She said, I think that we should commemorate this lest we forget.
And I think that should be the motto, that Salem should take on.
Lest we forget what happened here in 1692.
It really should not be happening again, but in many ways it is still happening, and this
board of directors has not changed one thing.
If I had said I was a Native American, they'd be fascinated.
They want to hear about my grandmother telling the future with stones and what, you know,
I don't know, I'm not sure what Native Americans do exactly, but I'm just saying that some
of the things that you associate with Native Americans, though they would find it fascinating,
but which still unfortunately has, you know, that wrong connotation.
So if we could get them to accept.
It's almost as if they're being selectively enlightened as to which groups they will choose
to accept, like the American Indians, which their whole history is beautiful, but when
it comes to witches and the power of a witch and the science of a witch, it's like, no,
we choose to close the door on that.
I think they were worried had we ever been on the cover of the National Enquirer, you
know, but that's what they really, because I had mentioned our pictures had been in different
magazines or that there had been more than one time that some media source had approached
us.
And I think that, you know, they were worried that we had appeared, you know, as witches
have babies with two heads, read it in the Star.
It's the same old thing that has not been taken care of since the Reformation, since
the burning times when nine million people were tortured and hanged and burned, because
Christianity is where the point comes in, just has a devil, and they attributed Satan
to witchcraft.
We don't have a Satan.
I am a product of that integrating into society.
I just happen to want to step out and say, I'm a witch, and wear the clothing of a witch.
And I'm proud of my mother that she stood up and, you know, really dared to be different.
It wasn't in then when she did that.
I know a lot of times when I cried because the things that hurt me the most is not just
because she was my mother, but people didn't know her, and just because somebody decided
to wear a black cape, I don't think it's hurting anybody.
And she wasn't frightening, and it makes me very emotional because they just didn't know
her, and because she wore a cape or, I mean, I don't even think that that's different,
because she wore black if it was red or something that was more acceptable, you know, probably
wouldn't have affected people so much.
But the fact is that they didn't even know who that human being was, and sometimes it's
very easy for people who don't look at themselves to make fun of other people.
That hurt me as a child, and it still does, and it hurts me for them even more because
maybe they'll never have the opportunity to know what kind of a person that she was.
It used to hurt me too sometimes when people would cackle and make terrible remarks, and
the worst remark that really hurt me the most is when you and Penny were real little one
day, and we were walking down the street in Salem, and this car came by and stopped, and
the guy looked at me and says, you're going to get burned again.
I hope they burn you.
And there I was standing there with two beautiful little girls, and he was nasty and rude, and
to say something like that about their mother to anyone, why, you know, why do that?
What was his purpose?
It was so nasty, and they both were frightened.
They didn't say a word, and I just said, don't worry, that's never going to happen.
And nobody understood who this woman was, walking around with two little kids and a
blonde black captain.
I mean, now she's just like, people will walk downtown and say, oh, hi, Laurie, no, they
don't know her.
And she'll say, hello, how are you, and bring the little kids over.
But then it was like, who is this?
I mean, it was like, so it's evolved very slowly under that caftan as a human being.
And it's been a very, very gradual thing.
It's time Christianity took responsibility for their definitions.
Don't you think it's time for them to be gracious enough to offer us space on this earth and
to say, we realize now that we were wrong, that you're not satanic in any way.
We are going to study what you do.
It is time for all those religions to take responsibility and look at us and realize
we are not their satans and their devils, that we are a group of people that have been
here since the beginning of time.
We will survive, and we will always be here, because we are not the evil ones they're looking
for.
We are not the evil they are looking for.
We are probably the answers they are looking for within their own religion.
Lest We Forget
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