It’s witching’s hour

On Oct. 31 – er, Samhain – Wicca adherents get ready to party like it’s New Year’s Eve

By Jennifer Willis

The Portland Tribune, Oct 31, 2006, Updated Oct 30, 2009

TRIBUNE ILLUSTRATION: JOAN McGUIRE

In medieval Europe, men and women accused as witches were rounded up and tortured into confessions of witchcraft.

By the time of public execution, the appearance of the condemned person was so drastically altered by battered, putrefied flesh and broken bones and teeth that they looked more monster than human – an image handed down in the green-faced, humpbacked hag we recognize today as the Halloween witch.

There are no exact figures for how many men and women met such gruesome ends in the witch hunts, but the stereotype of the witch as a Satan-worshipping, ugly old woman lives on.

In reality, many – but not all – modern witches are followers of Wicca, a relatively young but increasingly popular religion, practiced in private by individuals and in groups called covens. Some capitalize the word “witch,” others don’t, but with so much prejudice attached to the word, why would people want to identify themselves that way?

Sally McSweeney lives in Aloha and operates an online herbal apothecary business. She has been a practicing witch for nearly 30 years.

Why not call herself an empath, medicine woman or nurturer?

“I use the term ‘witch’ to remember and identify with those healers who went before me,” McSweeney says. “Prior to the medieval European witch hunts, herbalists, midwives, healers and the like were valued and revered members of the community.” They posed a threat to the church and medical profession, she says, and so were labeled witches.

Those persecuted as witches centuries ago have little in common with people bearing the title now.

“Modern witchcraft is a unique combination of folk traditions, fragments of pagan celebrations, ceremonial magic and other eclectic spice,” McSweeney says.

She says most people think a witch “worships the devil and flies about on broomsticks creating havoc and doing evil.” She is more likely to call herself a pagan “because it embraces so much more.”

Even in pagan-friendly Portland, the word “witch” still brings to mind “The Wizard of Oz,” the witches in “Macbeth” and Ichabod Crane’s mother in the movie “Sleepy Hollow.” Other stereotypes include the beautiful, “good witches” on television’s “Bewitched” and “Charmed” and the scary, goth witches from “The Craft” – not to mention Harry Potter.

Many witches practice their craft alone, and with no central, organizational body for witches, the exact number of witches in Portland is unknown.

They may no longer be burned at the stake, but once “out of the broom closet,” witches might lose their jobs, be physically attacked or have their property vandalized.

When McSweeney opened her brick-and-mortar store, Triple Aspect Herbs, in Beaverton, she had a great relationship with her landlady, but not with some of her landlady’s customers.

“They boycotted her store and threatened to continue the boycott until she stopped renting to ‘evil witches,’ ” McSweeney says. “They made assumptions about me – what I believed, what I do – based on pure hearsay. Invariably their objections involved the words ‘devil worship,’ and the threat that I was going to hell.”

McSweeney turned her business into an online-only store in 2001.

She is careful about discussing her personal beliefs. “If someone asks me, ‘Are you a witch?’ I respond by asking them what their definition of a witch is.”

An earth-based religion, Wicca is drawn in part from the traditions of agricultural communities in pre-Christian Europe. Wiccans celebrate eight major solar holidays – including the equinoxes, solstices, Beltane/May Day and Halloween – and observe monthly rituals following the phases of the moon.

Wicca first started gaining popularity in the mid-20th century, thanks largely to the 1951 repeal of Britain’s Witchcraft Act of 1735 – which allowed for the prosecution of anyone claiming to be a witch or to have magical powers – and the 1954 publication of “Witchcraft Today” by British civil servant Gerald Gardner.

Wicca is not a dogmatic faith with sacred texts. Each Wiccan is required to develop his or her own definition of, and relationship with, the divine. Just as there are many Christian denominations, there are different paths within Wicca and witchcraft.

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