An overgrown tree obscures the full moon. Lightning flickers in the dark sky. Thunder growls in the distance. Midway through the ritual, the wind kicks up. Dirt and sand sting eyes, and the warm night air turns chilly.
"Isn't this wonderful?" Morgan asks. "We have all the elements here: air, fire, earth and I think pretty soon we'll have water." The group chuckles.
Morgan begins by casting a circle around the motley group of Wiccans assembled on the old baseball field across from her shop. Using her fingers rather than a wand, she creates a protective invisible bubble around them. She warns the group that if people need to leave the circle, they must raise their hands and wait for one of her assistants to cut a door in the bubble.
"Hail and welcome," the 20 or so Wiccans say to the deities, and then also to the four quarters -- air, fire, water and earth. The group forms a five-point star with their outstretched hands after each. Morgan pours colored liquids into a bowl, merging the God and Goddess into one supreme being. She lights this mixture on fire, creating a blue flame to awaken "the ancient ones," and calls the Goddess down from the moon. The blue flames flutter dangerously close to the tablecloth on which the bowl rests, but Morgan remains unruffled.
The goal tonight is to harness the Goddess' energy, which Morgan brings into the circle and shares with the other Wiccans so they can prepare themselves for the Fall Equinox next week. After each request to the Goddess, the group repeats in unison:
"So mote it be" -- Make it so.
***
Back inside Morgan's Cauldron, a tiny shop just south of South Street, the Wiccans unwind with some cake -- an important part of the ritual. Without this time to relax (or as Morgan calls it, "ground"), Wiccans often develop headaches or suffer from insomnia. By eating and socializing, the group feeds the energy it raised during the ritual back to the earth.
In addition to leading rituals, Morgan -- whose real name is Fran Toscani -- sells crystal balls, incense and other Wiccan paraphernalia. She is middle-aged with a shrill voice and a soft face and has been practicing Wicca since the '80s. In 1998, she opened Morgan's Cauldron, named for the alias she goes by during rituals. Now, she leads about 32 open rituals annually.
"It just came to me while I was doing some meditation," Fran says of her magical name. "It was a personal journey that I made. I don't believe in using my magical name outside of the circle, it's something special."
Fran is the co-founder and high priestess of the Church of the Three Witches, which offers local Wiccans a place to worship and perform rites of passage, including weddings and funerals. She's not a witch in the pointy-nosed, wart-ridden, Wizard of Oz kind of way, though. She's short and plump and she doesn't cackle, she laughs. She doesn't worship Satan or fly on a broomstick, and she doesn't know how to combine eye of newt and toe of frog to make a charm of powerful trouble.
And yet, because she follows Wicca -- an earth-based polytheistic religion often confused with black magic -- many people assume Fran is out to summon the devil and wreak havoc on the world around her. In reality, Fran and other Wiccans are about as close to worshipping Madonna as they are to worshipping Satan.
While misconceptions about rituals and magic can be traced back hundreds of years, it was in the '30s and '40s that a new religion called Wicca developed in Britain. Many Wiccans consider Gerald B. Gardner -- who, in 1954, published Witchcraft Today, the first major book that examined the existence of Wicca and witchcraft in the twentieth century -- to be the grandfather of their religion.
According to Helen Berger, a sociology professor at West Chester University who has been studying the religion for nearly 20 years, it was in the '60s and '70s that Wicca really caught on in the United States. The religion has been growing and changing ever since.
Right now, approximately 200,000 Wiccans live in the United States, about 4,800 of whom are in Pennsylvania, according to Berger. Many of these Wiccans tend to be well-educated people who work in computer-related fields and read fantasy literature. Berger speculates that their interest in these "altered universes" may be what draws these people to Wicca. Others are attracted to the religion because of the presence of both male and female deities, occult experiences and a connection to nature, she says.
It was all four for Ivo Dominguez, a petite Harry Shearer look-alike who serves as an elder in the Assembly of the Sacred Wheel -- a Wiccan organization that includes six Delaware and Philadelphia-based covens (groups of witches who practice their religion together). At age 10, Dominguez, now in his late forties, began to question the Catholic religion he was born into. "I didn't know whether the wafer was really turning into the body of Christ or what all that meant, and nobody could really give me a straight answer," he recalls.
When he heard about Wicca, "Nature's what drew me first," he says. Wiccans believe in the integrity and freedom of the animal kingdom, which causes many of them to adopt vegetarianism or serious environmentalism. They see their deities everywhere and therefore strive to live in harmony with nature. Because of this desired oneness with nature, Wiccan celebrations take place on naturally occurring events, rather than human-made holidays. The eight yearly Sabbats -- "the witches' Sabbaths" -- occur on equinoxes and solstices and celebrate the God, who is linked to the sun. Rituals for full and new moons take place about 24 times annually, and honor the Goddess, who is associated with the moon.
The God and Goddess are considered equally important, as are male and female Wiccans. Dominguez says this "inherent equality of men and women" further drew him to the religion. Indeed, Wicca often serves as an expression or an extension of its followers' feminist values. Berger estimates that only about a third of Wiccans are males.
About the same time Dominguez became interested in this aspect of Wicca, he started having what he now classifies as "spiritual experiences." One such encounter involved a premonition that his healthy grandfather would die, followed by his grandfather's fatal stroke that very night. More recently, a friend of his was attacked and nearly beaten to death in Ethiopia. At the exact moment this was happening, Dominguez -- at home in Delaware -- experienced a nosebleed.
Strange occurrences like these attract many people to Wicca, a religion that embraces the occult. It's also the magic -- frequently spelled with a 'k' to distinguish it from rabbits pulled out of hats. Most Wiccan rituals involve magic in the form of meditation, chants, visualization or spells. Dominguez, who received a B.A. in English from the University of Delaware, says this magic is simply "prayer with muscle behind it."
It's hard to describe Wicca in more specific terms, as it is not a unified religion. There is one core belief that all Wiccans share, though: "An it harm none, do what ye will"-- If it harms none, do what you want. Other than that, there's no central text or set of rules in Wicca. "It's one of our strengths and also one of our weaknesses," explains Helena Domenic Anderson, an art professor who serves as an elder in the Assembly of the Sacred Wheel with Dominguez. "It makes it really hard for us to convey what we are to the outside world."
One thing they aren't is devil worshippers. In fact, there is not even a devil figure in the religion. "Devil is a Christian term," says Fran. "The only people who talk about the devil are Christians. We believe that no god or goddess is 100% dark or 100% light. It's the same with people. It means we have to take responsibility for our own actions."
And besides, even if they did practice black magic, it would only end up hurting them. Wiccans believe that everything they send out comes back to them three times stronger -- another reason they stick to healing and other helpful spells. When his friend was attacked in Ethiopia, Dominguez's coven held a healing ceremony in his honor. "Right afterward, I had a bit of bruising appear around my eyes," he recalls. "I took in a little too much."
+++
The sun pours down from a cloudless sky, warming the springy green grass of Free Speech Park in Old City. It's Pagan Pride Day, and some of these visitors look a little out of place.
While waiting for the opening remarks to begin, a woman wearing a black T-shirt that depicts "The Periodic Table of the Four Elements" talk to a large man with long hair and a full beard. Several feet away, a college-aged boy, dressed in blue plaid pants and sporting a Mohawk, suddenly topples backward into a full back bend. He continues to stretch in various positions, sweat beading on his fair-skinned brow and dripping down his nose. He wears a silver hoop between his nostrils and a necklace in the shape of a pentagram -- a five-point star inside a circle that symbolizes balance and unity.
Modeled after Gay Pride Day, this afternoon offers followers of all Pagan religions a chance to "come out of the broom closet," as one of the organizers puts it. In the words of Cecylyna Dewr, Executive Director of the Pagan Pride Project, "We will not hide in the shadows any longer, practicing our spirituality privately because we fear reprisals from members of monotheistic religions."
Today, these Wiccans, Druids and Heathens -- who all revere nature and worship multiple gods and goddesses -- will perform rituals in the middle of the open field, encouraging any passersby to watch or join in. At the edge of the grass, the Pagans have set up tables with pamphlets entitled "What is Wicca?" and "Pagans in the Workplace: A Guide for Managers and Human Resource Directors."
Wiccans often face discrimination at work, says Fran. They are frequently fired if their companies find out about their religious beliefs, though other reasons are used to terminate their positions. The "Pagans in the Workplace" brochure that the Delaware Valley Pagan Network is distributing today is intended to prevent this from happening by helping employers "understand the different experiences a [Pagan] employee might share with you."
When she first became a Wiccan, Anderson experienced discrimination firsthand, though not from her employers. "My family had a huge problem with it," she remembers. "I had friends who stopped talking to me. My parents were incredibly worried. I don't think any of them understood why I was interested in it."
In spite of this opposition -- or maybe even because of it -- Paganism has been growing. Berger estimates that there are currently between 300,000 and 400,000 Pagans in the U.S. -- over half of whom are Wiccan. While these numbers have steadily increased over the years, it's difficult to predict where Wicca is headed. "There are some indications that the religion is growing, but there are some others that it may have reached a peak," Berger says. "At this point in time it seems to me somewhat unclear which direction it will be going in."
As they walk in a circle during the closing ritual of the day, the Wiccans and other assorted Pagans head to the left. Dominguez leads a "pledge to the ancestors and the future," honoring "those that came before us and those that will carry the torch of the present when we are gone." As they eventually spiral out into the park, "releasing and sharing the blessings," the group sings softly:
Round and round/
Never end/
Open never broken,/
Oh, we will meet again/
Open never broken,/
Oh, we will meet again./
