Sunday, March 29, 2009

Well, I Met a Witch in Phoenix Just to Watch Him Fly

I know. It sounds like a bad parody of a Johnny Cash tune. Actually I did meet a Wiccan whose coven name means sun god. He was a calm, accessible person. He read my aura, said that I had a highly-developed spiritual chakra, but that I kept too much to myself. He loaned me a book about healing by redirecting energy fields: Hands of Light. He also introduced me to the writings of Starhawk, a wiccan eco-feminist and activist. Her epic utopian novel, The Fifth Sacred Thing, contains some of the most beautiful writing I've read.

If you believe that today's practitioner of true withcraft is an ugly crone with a crooked nose, who wears black, worships the devil, and places curses on people, you've fallen prey to Hollywood's penchant for misinformation and sensationalism. Wiccans include men and women from all walks of life who celebrate the wonders of our natural world and the seasonal cycles. They believe that whatever they do comes back threefold. Only the most masochistic person would open him/herself to a "hex" times three.

Can a pagan and a Christian co-exist or become friends? I explore this question in the short story, "Sacred Death", which is available through Echelon Press e-books. In Pagans and Christians: The Personal Spiritual Experience, Dr. Gus DiZerega states that "Neither [Christianity nor paganism] need be intrinsically better than the other, so long as they are followed with a good heart."

For a long time at the expense of protecting Mother Earth, many Christians have focused on eternal salvation found in the afterlife. With the current environmental crisis, perhaps we all need to more fully embrace our inner pantheist and expand our vision of the sacred.

1 comment:

  1. Amen, Brother! When are you going to get on Twitter, my friend? I would follow you in a heartbeat!

    ReplyDelete