Wicca Casts Spell on Teen-Age Girls

1 Comment | Insight on the News, Oct 25, 1999 | by Catherine Edwards

"There is a great spiritual hunger among kids out there" says Bob Waliszewski, manager of the youth-culture department at the conservative group Focus on the Family. "I understand the initial draw of Wicca for girls. For a young teen-age girl with no spiritual roots, if Wicca promises them power I could see how they would be tempted" After all, despite a history of cauldrons and Satan worship, modern witches claim that Wicca is a positive and life-affirming religion. The Wiccan Rede, an ethic that often is cited, directs: "Do what you will but harm none" Wiccans also claim to believe in the Law of Three-Fold, which states that whatever you do comes back to you three times as strong.

Adherents usually follow their own path, says Ravenwolf, which allows for great subjectivity. As Crowley notes, "In the circle there are no absolutes -- no rights and wrongs."

Critics aware of the long history of witchcraft regard such claims as naive. "Encouraging people to think they are divine is very dangerous -- it takes the limits off and doesn't leave any moral restraints," says Phillip Davis, author of the Goddess Unmasked and professor of religion at the University of Prince Edward Island in Canada. Tal Brooke, director of the Spiritual Counterfeits Project, who once was involved in Eastern mysticism, warns that witchcraft is "narcissistic, amoral and pleasure-seeking -- the perfect postmodern religion for the nineties."

Since Wiccans deny a single standard of truth and laws of right and wrong, how do they know the difference between what is harmful and not harmful? Alex Sanders, a flamboyant publicist and self-named "King of the Witches" who died in 1988, wrote that "a thing is good for me until I feel it's not right for me." The witch Stewart Farrar elaborates: "The witches' own conscience must be the final arbiter." Art Lindsley of the C.S. Lewis Institute, a Washington-based think tank focusing on different religions, notes that for Wiccans "there is no objective evil that someone ought not do. There is no ought in Wicca -- it is all based on subjective feeling."

Making your own rules and doing what feels good naturally appeals to inexperienced teens. Says one lath-grader, "Wicca allows me to create my own religion and that suits me; it's malleable."

And all the help she needs to engage in this witchcraft is right at her fingertips on the Internet. The Covenant of the Goddess, one of the largest witchcraft associations in the country, offers five pages on its Website with links to other sites for a "new generation of witches" complete with recommended reading lists for youth and children and ways to join the organization. More homespun sites simply link magic and occult sites. witchvox.com's Jung has counted 3,000 current pagan sites.

The Church of All Worlds worships the goddess and encourages sexual promiscuity on its Website. Titled a "Bouquet of Lovers" an essay there on "polyamourous love" details how to have multiple sexual partners with agreement between marriage partners that other sexual relationships will exist and are important to maintain. Participants are cautioned to sign onto the "condom commitment" and have sex only with members of their "condom cadre" Kids can start learning these ways of pagan life by subscribing to the Church of All Worlds magazine for youth, How About Magic.