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THE WICCAN WITCH OF THE WEST: A Look at Popular Depiction of Wiccans in the United States and Ensuing Anti-Wiccan

Prejudice !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Paula de Carvalho-Nichols

Religious Studies 490-002: Seminar in Religious Studies April 29, 2010

!Abstract

The United States has a long history of anti-witch persecution, dating from the early pre-

modern witch trials to contemporary anti-Wiccan prejudice. Scholars of Wicca, largely witches

themselves, have offered a few theories on the endurance and dangers of witchcraft fears for con-

temporary Neo-Pagans, but such speculation runs far and few between. This paper attempts to 1

weave those theories together, provide a general picture of American Wicca, and introduce a cu-

riously ignored facet of contemporary witchcraft prejudice; namely, Wicca’s depiction in popular

culture. It argues that the images of the Wiccan witch in American film and television since the 2

1996 movie The Craft agitate pre-existing, cultural anti-witch fears, contributing to real life prej-

udice against practitioners. In developing this argument, the author utilizes historical, textual,

and discursive analysis, as the heart of the subject is found (quite appropriately) in the history,

text, and discourse surrounding Wicca. Finally, the author suggests topics for further study, and

encourages awareness as a tool for anti-Wiccan prejudice.

A Brief Portrait of Wicca

Here, it seems appropriate to introduce Wicca’s basic belief systems; however, I must do

so with intense caution and slight reservation, acknowledging the intense diversification of be-

liefs between covens and individual members. As Wiccan priestess and author Margot Adler

wrote in her own piece on Wicca, “Don’t look to find exactly what has been described in these

pages. You may not find it, or, everything may all be a little different. That is the real beauty of

Wicca when it is true to itself.” Nevertheless, I shall attempt to paint a portrait of Wicca with 3

broad strokes, to provide the reader with a general image of witches today.

Wicca is a nature-based and largely animistic Neo-Pagan witchcraft religion which draws

from a number of ancient pagan sources, and tends to emphasize ritual over belief. Wiccans 4 5

may practice either individually or in covens—groups of witches ranging from three to twenty in

number —and no centralized authority or unified clerical system exists. Being quite self-aware 6 7

of the cyclical process of witch hysteria and the prejudices in place against practitioners, Wicca

is a secretive religion by nature. Covens generally have firm initiation rituals and secrecy oaths 8

in place, and individual witches often keep their practice secret even from friends and family. 9 10

In fact, Wiccans sometimes refer to revealing their religion as “coming out of the broom

closet,” a phrase which clearly showcases the tenderness surrounding the subject. Due to this 11

intense secrecy, acquiring an accurate number of practitioners is impossible, but the generally

accepted estimate is that more than 750,000 Americans practice witchcraft, making it the fifth

largest religion in the US, following Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism. 12

While no cannon or dogma exists in Wicca, their generally accepted cosmology consists 13

of two deities, the Mother Goddess and the Horned God (which is not to be confused with the

Christian Devil). Individual witches may conceive of these as two separate deities who are 14

lovers and equals, as two aspects of the same monotheistic god, as two among a pantheon, or in

any number of ways—they can even be interpreted atheistically. Because Wicca is female-orient-

ed, there is an almost universal emphasis on worship of the Goddess over than the Horned God;

often she is conceived of as a triple goddess—the maid, the matron, and the crone —and is as15 -

sociated with the moon, sea, and earth. Rituals vary widely from coven to coven and individual 16

to individual, but are generally practiced in the nude, outdoors if possible, and often consist of

dancing and singing in blessed circles during the full moon. Ritualistic objects vary, as with 17

everything in Wicca, but they generally include incense, candles, mandalas, and athames—18

which are small, double-bladed, black-handled knives used for blessings (as in blessing the ritu-

alist circle) and never for penetration. Wiccans have eight widely recognized holy days, called 19

Sabbats, which are based in European pagan origins. Furthermore, the pentagram—a star with 20

five points—is a central symbol in many Wiccan traditions and rituals (much as the crucifix for

Christians, or the Star of David for Jews), as is its counterpart, the pentacle—which is simply a

pentagram enclosed in a circle, and which represents resurrection. 21

Wiccans refer to themselves as witches, and while they practice magic, the majority reject

the popular conception of magic as supernatural, understanding it instead to be a part of nature,

one misunderstood and disregarded by science, observable only through experience and experi-

mentation, and not under a microscope. Adler explains: “Most people define [magic] as supersti-

tion or belief in the supernatural. In contrast, most magicians, Witches, and other magical practi-

tioners do not believe that magic has anything to do with the supernatural.” An anonymous 22

witch quoted in Adler’s Drawing Down the Moon further illustrates the Wiccan view of magic: “I

have no trouble believing in [magic], for there are things in life which cannot be explained by

logic and rationality… But the trick is to keep from forgetting that candles, incense, images, etc.,

are props. [original emphasis]” Furthermore—while Wicca has no sacred text such as the 23

Christian Bible or Islamic Quran—Wiccan founder Gerald Gardner’s Book of Shadows has been

called the “‘sacred cookbook’ or ‘liturgical manual’ of the movement.” The contents of indi24 -

vidual Books can vary widely, as witches are encouraged to add, remove, and revise their own

personalized versions of the Book as they experiment with magic and discover what is personally

effective or ineffective. 25

Wiccan philosophy can be summed up in their central tenant, the Wiccan rede, which is

“the core ethical statement of [their] religion.” The Wiccan rede, constructed by Gardner, is: 26

“An it harm none, do what thou wilt.” This rede has incited a number of Wiccans to adopt a 27

type of “Gandhi-style pacifism” in addition to other philosophies founded on non-violence. It is 28

important to view Wiccans’ practice of magic in light of these philosophical beliefs, for Wiccan

ideology forbids the use of magic for malicious purposes. Furthermore, they indulge in neither

ritual sacrifice nor group orgies, and find accusations of such to be anywhere from laughable to

offensive to dangerous—as well they should.

Scholarly Views on Western Anti-Witch Prejudice

Maria Beatrice Bittarello, a religious studies scholar with a number of published, peer-

reviewed articles, displays that paganisms such as Wicca meet with strong opposition because

their polytheistic nature threatens monotheistic thought structures. She argues that “‘polythe29 -

ism’ as category is an academic abstraction” developed as the subordinate category in a false 30

mono-/poly-theistic binary, and shows that “negative connotations have been attached consistent-

ly to the concept of polytheism by theologians and academics in Western culture.” Ultimately, 31

Bittarello concludes that paganisms like Wicca are feared in Western culture because:

polytheism represents a threat also to a series of concepts implicitly regarded as naturally positive, such as ‘unity,’ ‘wholeness,’ ‘homogeneity,’ ‘stability,’ which in the West have found a religious expression/representation in the idea of the one supreme and transcendent god. Therefore, in Western culture the idea of polytheism [of which Wicca is a part] was received negatively by connecting polytheism to a constellation of concepts charged with negative (or, at best, ambiguous) connotations … [including] multiplicity, 32

division, and fragmentation—in turn, these can easily be identified with confusion or even chaos. 33

!

Bittarello thus finds the reasoning for anti-witch prejudice in its pagan/polytheistic nature, and

the surrounding Western culture’s theoretical oppositions to it on a binary level: monotheism/

polytheism, civilization/nature, unity/division, etc.

On the other hand, Graham Harvey, Head of Religious Studies at the Open University,

points to the Christian Bible when discussing the roots of anti-witch prejudice. He illustrates that

passages from the Bible have been used to attack witchcraft as a “false religion.” Harvey fur34 -

ther draws attention to the immense influence of Exodus 22:18 —“Thou shalt not suffer a witch 35

to live” —as well as the fact that witch itself is never defined, in appearance nor action, leaving 36

it to later generations to interpret the word. Harvey then illuminates that, “[i]n fact, the tradi37 -

tional European image of the witch (an ugly crone dressed in dark ragged clothes, haunting

graveyards and harming people, crops, and animals by magic) derives from pagan Roman

sources.” 38

And whereas Harvey turns to the Bible for clues to anti-witch prejudice, Ronald Hutton

points to history. These Roman-derived witch images developed over time, and by the early

modern period the Christian theological conception of the witch envisioned her as in league with

and enslaved by Satan, and thus witches were “made into key images of misrule, disorder and

freedom from moral constraint.” Such images incited much fear and loathing in Christian 39

hearts, leading straight into the early modern witch hunts. However, such trials are just the sur-

face; by adopting witch imagery from antiquity, Christians, knowingly or not, incited deep-seed-

ed and age-old prejudices. Hutton, professor of History at the University of Bristol, explains that

“[t]o classify the famous witch trials as a Christian mistake, therefore, [is] not only to miss the

whole point of European witchcraft belief, but to underestimate the depth of its history.” For 40

example, Hutton illustrates that the sink-or-float test to determine whether one is a witch traces

back to Babylonian king Hammurabi’s law code, which is over three thousand years old. He 41

argues that “[s]cholars of historical witch trials still have a role to play in educating people about

the psychological realities of witchcraft and the dangers of panic and persecution.” 42

Hutton displays how Christianity simply inherited a fear of and prejudice against witch-

craft which preceded it, subsuming ancient images of the witch into its imagery and superstition,

providing witchcraft hysteria with a renewed force in early modern times. The early modern 43

witch hunts thus perfectly exemplify a pattern in the history of witchcraft belief, wherein “an an-

cient fear of the witch acquire[s] new potency in a much later and altered technological and reli-

gious context.” To believe that we are now immune to such bouts of hysteria, then, is a grave 44

error; and, in fact, such fears do indeed survive, even in secularized form. One need not believe

in the power of magic itself to believe his neighbor maliciously practices the rituals of animal

sacrifice, child abuse, and blood orgies in the dark of night.

Furthermore, as Hutton demonstrates, this pattern is not abstract; it may be seen again in

the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with the large-scale disappearance of Western be-

lief in magic, after which historians re-classified the witch problem of their Christian predeces-

sors. They “conceded that witchcraft was an illusion, but argued that the witches tried in the ear-

ly modern period had been practitioners of a surviving pagan religion. Furthermore, this had

been a disgusting religion, of orgy and blood sacrifice” —displaying clearly the secularization 45

of witchcraft hysteria. Through this theory, historians thus reaffirmed the validity of the church

and state’s actions during the early modern witch hunts, and did nothing to stamp out Western

witchcraft superstitions.

I propose that anti-Wiccan prejudice stems from a number of issues, including all those

mentioned above, which weave together to predispose the American psyche to look negatively

upon witches. Furthermore, I propose that pop-cultural depictions of Wicca amplify the preju-

dices already present—in history, biblical texts, and monotheistic thought structures—while si-

multaneously introducing “updated” witch stereotypes for the twentieth and twenty-first cen-

turies; stereotypes which are dangerous and prejudicial nonetheless.

Wicca in Popular American Film and Television

Wicca debuted on the big screen in the 1996 film The Craft, wherein “[a] newcomer to a

Catholic prep school falls in with a trio of outcast teenage girls who practice witchcraft and they

all soon conjure up various spells and curses against those who even slightly anger them.” The 46

Craft brought Wicca to the public eye, and with it a new image of the witch: no longer portrayed

as old hags with tell-tale warts, these witches looked very much like people in the community.

As the movie follows new-girl Sarah, the audience is gradually introduced to the three

practicing witches: Nancy, Bonnie, and Rochelle. It is obvious from their first appearance that

they are societal outcasts: their dress gives them away as part of punk subculture, and their peers

clearly reject them. They are harassed in the halls, and at lunch a jock named Chris gossips about

them to Sarah:

Oh shit, it’s the bitches of Eastwick… Whatever you do, stay away from them… Well, you see the one on the right [Nancy]? She’s a major slut. I mean I don’t know from experience or anything, but—and the one in the middle [Bonnie], she’s got these burn scars all over her body. I haven’t seen them, but friends of mine have…. They’re witches… Well, that’s what people say. 47

!Chris does not even bother explaining what is “wrong” with the third witch, Rochelle; for him it

is clear why one would not associate with her, and we hear it later from cheerleader Laura: they

“don’t like negroids.” This association between social outcasts—the “weirdos” of the 48

world —and witchery runs rampant throughout the film. However, while the prejudice and ha49 -

rassment shown is absolutely accurate, to associate witches with a particular style of dress (punk/

gothic) or social group (eccentrics/outcasts) is wildly inaccurate, and serves to further stigmatize

Wicca by associating it with counter-cultures and deviant behaviors. 50

Though the film’s four witches are never explicitly referred to as Wiccan, the religion’s

influence on the film is clear from the start. The film consists of a plethora of Wiccan imagery

and ritualistic items, including a pentagram, crystals, candles, incense, bags of herbs, and an

athame. Furthermore, the girls practice from a book called The Craft which is very clearly mod-

eled after The Book of Shadows, and claim reverence for an animistic deity, denying accusations

of Devil-worship. In all these aspects, the film draws heavily on Wicca. 51

However, Satanic imagery fills the film at least as much as Wiccan imagery, confusing

the two in the audience’s mind. Worse, Sarah’s descent into witchcraft is clearly portrayed as a

fall from grace. After Sarah acquires a copy of The Craft—signaling her transformation into a

practicing witch—a crazed man chases her down the street prophesying her death, and a man in

priestly garb can be heard shouting “Come back, child! Come back to Jesus!” The implications 52

of this scene are clear; in becoming a witch, she is rejecting the Christian God and risking death

(of her soul). She must return to God before it is too late. Indeed, their practice becomes increas-

ingly more disturbing—more Satanic and less Wiccan—as they drink each other’s blood, pull out

victim’s hair for spells, and cause the deaths of those who scare or anger them. 53

The teenage witches continue to pervert Wicca, poisoning the audience against witches in

the process. In the most dramatic example, at the film’s climax, Nancy tries to murder Sarah for

leaving their coven, reminding her that “in the old days, if a witch betrayed her coven, they

would kill her.” Notably, while Nancy uses fantasy-style magic to fly and scare Sarah and pro54 -

pel herself across the house, she does not try to kill Sarah with a spell. Rather, she attacks her

physically with an athame, turning a sacred Wiccan object into a murderous weapon. This is sig-

nificant because the audience does not need to believe in supernatural magic to believe a

“weirdo” like Nancy would seduce their daughters into a Satanic cult with promises of power,

and then stab them to death at a perceived betrayal when they want out. The film’s end seems to

drive this point home. Nancy, rather than simply being stripped of her powers, or even dying her-

self, winds up in an insane asylum, strapped into a bed. She writhes and screams and rants and

raves, and the message is clear: those “weirdos” who have nose rings and wear too much black

or long flowery skirts are criminally insane. They believe they can worship Satan and practice

magic, and in their crazed mania have the propensity to kill. And these “weirdos” are not a fanta-

sy, confined to the silver screen—they are real, they are neighbors, and they are to be feared.

This is how the makers of The Craft chose to portray Wicca in the religion’s pop-cultural debut;

it is no wonder prominent Wiccan High Priestess Margo Adler declared it “the worst movie ever

made.” 55

Witch films in the years following The Craft largely followed in its footsteps, trivializing

Wicca as a religion, basically turning Wiccans into early modern witches with updated

wardrobes, and showcasing magic as a dark force, dangerous to tamper with. Buffy the Vampire

Slayer does this, for example, with Willow Rosenberg, Buffy’s best female friend, who adopted

witchcraft in the television series’ second season. Despite being expressly referred to as Wic56 -

can, Willow’s depiction does not draw in any significant way on the actual Wiccan religion.

There is a single exception to this depiction, however, and it is quite a significant one. In the

1999 episode “Hush,” Willow meets with a university group of Wiccans on campus, all of 57

whom are female. These women, portrayed as feminists who have more interest in cupcake-sale

fundraisers than the practice of magic, scoff when Willow brings up the idea of practicing spells

together. This depiction is detrimental to Wicca as it trivializes it as a religion, poking fun at its

emphasis on the female over the male, and erroneously making its feminist tendencies the central

focus of Wicca.

Charmed, a television series about the eventful lives of three witches—the Halliwell sis-

ters—largely follows suit. Like The Craft, Charmed draws heavily on Wicca; the series includes

a Book of Shadows, athames, pentagrams, and the Wiccan rede, among other elements of Wicca,

while showcasing supernatural magic rather than Wiccan magic. Like Willow in Buffy, the Hal-

liwell sisters are expressly referred to as Wiccan, but Wicca is ultimately used as a substitute 58

for the word witch, and does not actually indicate any religious affiliation. In fact, the entire se-

ries exists within a Christian context: the sisters fight demons and the seven deadly sins, explicit

reference is made to heaven and hell, and the show’s canon holds that ordination in the Catholic

Church is the only way to ensure one’s magic does not make them evil. Charmed, Buffy, and The

Craft—though using supernatural magic and thus partly moving witchcraft from the real to the

fantastic realm—nonetheless affiliate themselves enough with Wicca to propagate misconcep-

tions about it, incline the audience dismiss it as a religion, and help contribute to the persecution

of witches.

In the nearly two decades since Wicca’s introduction to film, the only thing that appears

to have changed about its depiction is the removal of the supernatural element in certain portray-

als, which can be argued as either a good or bad trend. One the one hand, by removing the super-

natural, these depictions more accurately reflect Wiccan beliefs. On the other, since a high

amount of prejudicial elements remain, it can be argued that removal of the supernatural only

serves to ground Wicca in the real (rather than fantastical) world, and increase the propensity for

secular witchcraft fears. Recently, these new representations of Wicca have appeared in two

crime-solving murder-mystery shows, Bones and The Mentalist.

In 2009, The Mentalist aired an episode entitled “Red Rum,” featuring Wiccan

characters. A pentacle is found at the murder site, indicating “black magic” and “sacrifice” to 59

the detectives—despite their insistence that there is “no such thing” as supernatural magic. Af60 -

ter talking with the victim’s parents and surveying their home, the local Wiccan becomes the

prime subject; when they question her, she proclaims herself a witch, and accurately claims wor-

ship of the Wiccan Horned God and Triple Goddess. However, she then openly admits to casting

a killing spell on the victim Cody; such magic is forbidden in Wicca, and no such spell exists in

Gardner’s Book of Shadows. Furthermore, as the investigation continues and it becomes clear

that, though the Wiccan may have had something to do with the murder, she did not commit it,

virtually every character retains immense animosity towards her. Her religion is dismissed as a

silly, alternative lifestyle, and she’s portrayed in a consistently negative light. Later it’s revealed

that she is troubled and has a history of psychiatric problems—making her reminiscent of The

Craft’s Nancy. In the end, the mentalist reveals that Cody’s murderer is his father, a physically

abusive parent whose violence got out of control. One would think that in exonerating the Wic-

can, her depiction would change, become more positive. In fact, the opposite holds true: the

mentalist claims he unraveled the mystery after Cody’s brother said he felt safe in the Wiccan’s

home. “Who feels safer at a witch’s house than at home?” he asks, and the answer is simple: an

abused child. No normal, safe, sane person would want a witch’s company—or so The Mental61 -

ist would have us believe.

In 2010, Bones followed suit and released “The Witch in the Wardrobe,” which featured a

Wiccan coven that was named outright as such. In the episode, a Wiccan is the murder victim; 62

her body is found along with the skeleton of a Salem witch, and her coven becomes the central

focus of suspicion. As in The Mentalist, the protagonists of Bones are dismissive of the religion,

as are all the other, “normal” non-witches. The victim’s brother calls his late sister’s witchcraft

“really weird stuff” and Special Agent Seeley Booth, the male protagonist, shows disgust with

the Wiccan’s ritual nudity. In the end, as in The Mentalist, the witches of Bones are cleared of 63

guilt, up to a point. The investigation concludes they had unknowingly ingested the same LSD-

type hallucinogen believed responsible for the Salem witch hysteria, and—believing their fellow

witch to be a demon, due to their hallucinations—fought and killed her. Together, the representa-

tions of Wicca in Bones and The Mentalist reveal that the prejudices and misconceptions preced-

ing Wicca’s entrance into popular culture—and subsequently amplified by The Craft, Charmed,

and Buffy—persist in the minds of the general public; and, furthermore, Hollywood does not

seem inclined to correct itself, so long as these depictions remain profitable.

Contemporary Prejudice Against Wiccans

Tempest Smith lived in Lincoln Park, Michigan. At five years of age, she expressed 64

interest in the Goddess; as she grew, so did her interest, and she began asking her mother Annette

for pagan books. At first, even Annette was apprehensive of Wicca, and Tempest’s witchcraft 65

made her nervous. But she read up on the religion, educated herself, and realized witchcraft is 66

nothing to be feared; it is not dangerous, despite its infamous reputation. Unfortunately, Tem67 -

pest’s classmates were less receptive and utterly unwilling to understand. She became a victim of

intense bullying; at one point a group of girls surrounded her in the halls, called her a witch, and

chanted “Jesus loves you”—when her mothers complained to her teacher, she called Tempest “a

cry baby.” Then, on the 20th of February, 2001, Annette went into Tempest’s room to fetch her 68

for school, not prepared for what she would find. Tempest Smith, beloved daughter, a mere 69

twelve years old, had hung herself. Her reasoning for suicide was easily discerned; her diary 70

was “a log of years of abuse including names and dates.” Tempest, unable to face the cruelties 71

of her anti-Wiccan classmates, had decided death was the only escape from her torment.

Despite the tragic nature of Tempest’s death, that it occurred a full thirteen years ago

may incline one to imagine anti-Wiccan prejudice has died down in the years following, but this

is not so. Certainly, Wiccans have made some advances; due to the anonymity of the Internet and

its ability to foster online communities (some Wiccan covens now exist online rather than in per-

son), Wiccans have developed a strong web presence, so that a quick Google search of the term

“Wicca” produces primarily accurate information. Furthermore, in 2007, the Wiccan pentacle

was finally recognized as a religious symbol eligible for engravement on government-issued

gravestones. Before then, a Wiccan solider who died defending the United States was denied 72

this right. This gain may be seen as a great stride, but appears less so when one realizes that it

took nine years of ignored requests, “lost” applications, and stalling by the Department of Veter-

ans Affairs (VA) before the pentacle was approved—versus two weeks for the approval of other

emblems—and furthermore that approval was only gained after widowed Roberta Stewart took

the VA to court. Finally, the VA relented, to prevent the release of 73

documents [suggesting] the VA had political motives for rejecting the pentacle… Dur-ing his first campaign for president… George W. Bush told ABC’s ‘Good Morning America’ in 1999 that he was opposed to Wiccan soldiers practicing their faith at Fort Hood, Tex. ‘I don’t think witchcraft is a religion, and I wish the military would take another look at this and decide against it,’ he said. [emphasis added] 74

!Bush’s comments were taken as orders, and, coupled with existing anti-Wiccan prejudice, pre-

vented the pentacle’s approval for nearly a decade. 75

Still, such prejudices continue. For example, Fox News did a piece on the University of 76

Missouri, which publishes a guide to the religious holidays of its faculty and staff, including

Wicca. All three hosts—Tucker Carlson, Clayton Morris, and Anna Kooiman—poke fun at 77

Wicca throughout the segment.

Morris: You get twenty holidays now, if you’re a Wiccan. And, I mean, I guess that’s the one to go with, right? I mean that’s certainly the one, if you’re gonna pick one, go with the one with the most holidays. Carlson: Except, any religion whose most sacred day is Halloween, I just can’t take seriously. [laughter from Morris]… Every Wiccan I’ve ever known is either a compul-sive Dungeons and Dragons player [laughter], or is a middle-aged, twice-divorced, older woman living in a rural area who works as a midwife.

Morris: And likes a lot of incense. Carslon: Yeah, totally. 78

!With that, the segment ends, as the hosts laugh their way through bigotry. I believe the cruelties

and prejudices presented are obvious, but will touch on a few for good measure. (1) Morris

stresses the words “pick one” in his discussion, as though witches choose to follow Wicca by

flipping open a handbook to see which religion will give them the most holidays (read: days off).

(2) Carlson scoffs at Wicca’s reverence for Halloween—apparently forgetting that the holiday as

he knows it is a bastardization of what was once a pagan holiday, and which Wiccans have at-

tempted to re-appropriate in their revival of paganism. (3) Finally, they fall back on the same 79

image of Wiccans propagated by The Craft and later films and series—witches are the “weirdos”

of the world, the nerds who play role-playing games, the cat ladies of the world. Worse, they in-

still in viewers that these derisive comments are more than okay, they are funny—because Wic-

cans are weird and their religion is fake and who gives a damn what they want or do or celebrate

anyway? The hosts blatantly imply that there is no need to recognize Wicca as a legitimate faith,

and relegate witches to an almost less-than-human status.

I would hope, by this point, the reader can see that this is not true. That Wicca is a legiti-

mate religion, though quite different from the Abrahamic faiths, and that its practitioners are

genuine and largely devout. Wiccans can indeed be “weirdos,” but can be “normal” too—just as

Christians and Jews and Muslims can, individually, go with the grain or against it. Mostly, I hope

the reader can see that inaccurate portrayals of Wicca on screen and prejudicial comments like

Carlson’s can and do result in intense bigotry. Tempest Smith is evidence of that.

Suggestions for Further Research

Up to this point, the academic study of Wicca has largely if not entirely been the work of

practitioners themselves. In itself, this is not a bad thing, but I encourage academics of all back-

grounds and faiths to consider Wicca and other Neo-Pagan religions as possibilities for research

subjects. I firmly believe that once religious scholars accept Wicca as worthy of study, its reputa-

tion will begin to shift from “made up” religion to “legitimate” religion—an important step in

decreasing prejudice. I also encourage historical scholars to analyze and shed greater light on the

immense history of witchcraft belief and prejudice, from Babylonian witchcraft fears to modern

fears of satanic Wiccans. That way, anti-witch prejudice may properly be described in future his-

tory textbooks as a dangerous hysteria that constantly resurfaces, rather than being written off as

a Christian mistake made in Salem once, long ago, without the possibility of return. Furthermore,

academics of many fields (historians, anthropologists, sociologists, etc.) have an immense oppor-

tunity before them in the form of Wicca—religious studies scholars especially. Wicca is no less

legitimate for being born in the early twentieth century, but it undeniably appeared then, and we

now, as scholars of religion, have an entire faith born at a time when its entire history is record-

able, its origins knowable in ways the so-called world religions will never be. By studying it’s

growth, the influences contributing to it and deriving from it, and its growing number of practi-

tioners, I believe we can learn much about not only Wicca, but also religion in general. And, fur-

thermore, we can perhaps eliminate the prejudices against it, and ensure no one else is made to

suffer a fate as tragic as Tempest Smith’s, or perhaps more tragic still.

Works Cited

1.Wicca is only one amongst a number of religions considered Neo-Pagan. While this paper focuses on the beliefs and depictions of Wiccans in particular, it should be noted that the general American public uses “Wicca” and “(Neo-)Pagan” interchangeably, and so anti-Wiccan prejudice becomes anti-Pagan prejudice as well.

2. For the purposes of my research, I focus exclusively on images of what I term the “Wiccan witch”—one which finds its inspiration from the actual Wiccan religion, and depicts aspects of Wicca, even if the witch is not expressly referred to as such. The second popular image, the “Halloween witch” (exactly what one would think: she wears robes and black pointed hats, flicks a wand, has a talking cat; her skin may be green, or she may have a wart on her nose, or perhaps pointed feet) has been excluded due to constrains on time and space, and my belief that “Wiccan witch” imagery is of more relevance. However, further research on the topic could prove illuminating.

3. Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers and Other Pagans in America Today (New York: Penguin Group, 1986), 135.

4. Ibid., 4.

5. Ibid., 170.

6. Ibid., 108.

7. Ibid., 1.

8. Gerald Gardner, “Living Witchcraft,” in The Paganism Reader, ed. Chas S. Clifton and Graham Harvey (New York: Routledge, 2004), 158.

9. Ibid.

10. Neela Banerjee, “Wiccans Keep the Faith With a Religion Under Wraps,” New York Times, May 16, 2007, accessed April 15, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/us/16wiccan.html?_r=1&.

11. Ibid.

12. Sherrill A. Kuckuck and Jennifer Zucco, “The Eight Largest Faith Groups in the United States,” IUP.e-du, accessed April 2, 2014, http://www.iup.edu/page.aspx?id=11805.

13. Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon, 173.

14. Ibid., 10-11.

15. Graham Harvey, introduction to “The Triple Muse” in The Paganism Reader, 128.

16. Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon, 35.

17. Gerald Gardner, “Living Witchcraft” in The Paganism Reader, 156-58.

18. Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon, 157.

19. Ibid., 109.

20. Ibid., 110.

21. Gerald Gardner, “Living Witchcraft” in The Paganism Reader, 160. The pentacle and pentagram are often confused with the symbol of Satanism, which is an inverted pentagram—the leading point faces downwards, rather than upwards.

22. Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon, 6.

23. “Letter” (Long Beach, CA: 1977), quoted in Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon, 134-5.

24. Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon, 81.

25. Paul Huson, “Preliminary Preparations” in The Paganism Reader, 181-2.

26. Judy Harrow, “Initiation by Ordeal” in The Paganism Reader, 289.

27. Graham Harvey, introduction to “The Book of the Law” in The Paganism Reader, 68.

28. Judy Harrow, “Initiation by Ordeal” in The Paganism Reader, 289.

29. Maria Beatrice Bittarello, “Western Suspicions of Polytheism, Western Thought Structures, and Con-temporary Pagan Polytheisms,” Journal of Religion in Europe 3, no. 1 (2010): 68.

30. Ibid., 73.

31. Ibid., 77.

32. Ibid., 78.

33. Ibid., 80.

34. Graham Harvey, introduction to “Jeremiah” in The Paganism Reader, 9.

35. However, in his text, Harvey misattributes the passage to Exodus 22:17.

36. Exod. 22:18 AV

37. Graham Harvey, introduction to “Jeremiah,” 10.

38. Ibid.

39. Ronald Hutton, “The Status of Witchcraft in the Modern World,” The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies 9, no. 2 (2007): 124.

40. Ibid., 126.

41. Ibid.

42. Ibid., 121.

43. Ibid., 126.

44. Ibid., 127

45. Ibid., 122

46. “The Craft,” IMDB.com, accessed April 15, 2014, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115963/.

47. The Craft, directed by Andrew Fleming (1996; Los Angeles, CA: Columbia Pictures, 1996), Amazon Instant Video.

48. Ibid.

49. Ibid. In a famous scene from the film, Nancy proclaims “We are the weirdos, mister.”

50. Ibid.

51. Ibid.

52. Ibid.

53. Ibid.

54. Ibid.

55. Brooks Alexander, Witchcraft Goes Mainstream, (Eugene: Harvest House Publishers, 2004), 95.

56. “Becoming: Part 1” from Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 2, created by Joss Whedon (1998; Los An-geles, CA: Twentieth Century Fox Film, 2001), Netflix.

57. “Hush” from Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 4, created by Joss Whedon (1999; Los Angeles, CA: Twentieth Century Fox Film, 2002), Netflix.

58. “Something Wicca This Way Comes” from Charmed: Season 1, created by Constance M. Burge (1998; Hollywood, CA: Paramount, 2005), Netflix.

59. “Red Rum” from The Mentalist: Season 1, created by Bruno Heller (2009; Burbank, CA: Warner Brothers, 2009), iTunes Videos.

60. Ibid.

61. Ibid.

62. “The Witch in the Wardrobe” from Bones: Season 5, created by Hart Hanson (2010; Los Angeles, CA: Twentieth Century Fox Film, 2010), Netflix.

63. Ibid.

64. Heather Greene, “Tempest Smith Foundation Closes Its Doors,” The Wild Hunt, Nov. 3, 2013, accessed Marc. 25, 2014, http://wildhunt.org/2013/11/tempest-smith-foundation-closes-its-doors.html.

65. Ibid.

66. Ibid.

67. Ibid.

68. Ibid.

69. Ibid.

70. Ibid.

71. Ibid.

72. Jason Pitzl-Waters, “Wiccan Pentacles at Arlington and Why Litigation was Necessary,” The Wild Hunt, Jan. 31, 2012, accessed April 20, 2014, http://www.patheos.com/blogs/wildhunt/2012/01/wiccan-pentacles-at-arling-ton-and-why-litigation-was-necessary.html.

73. Ibid.

74. Ibid.

75. Ibid.

76. The clip is easily found on YouTube, and I encourage its viewing, for simply writing about it cannot accurately convey the dismissiveness of the hosts’ words and their mocking tones.

77. Tucker Carlson, “Fox News Bashes Pagans and Wiccans,” YouTube Video, 2:59, posted by “OphisPa-ganConsulting,” Feb. 17, 2013, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwJqUQzghhM.

78. Ibid.

79. Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon, 110.