
By: DAVID RICE
Re: Put Witchcraft Back In!

Halloween a Sober And Sacred Holiday For Witches,
Others: It's `about honoring our sacred dead'

Don Lattin, Chronicle Religion Writer

Like Christians who want to put Christ back in Christmas,
Bay Area witches are trying to put traditional pagan
values back into the celebration of Halloween.

For these celebrants, the rites of late October are about
much more than drinking, gender bending, the Hooker's Ball
or eating too much candy.

``This is my sacred holiday,'' said Francesca Dubie,
proprietor of the Third Road, a school for pagan religion
in San Francisco. ``This is a holiday about honoring our
beloved dead.''

All Hallows' Eve has become a major shopping season, with
Spirit Halloween Superstores, major retail displays and
consumer crusades launched weeks before the actual event.

People like Starhawk, San Francisco's most famous witch
and the author of numerous books on pagan spirituality,
have mixed feelings about the selling of the season.

While troubled by the rising materialism around the
holiday, Starhawk says she is nevertheless ``pleased that
so many people still celebrate Halloween.''

Her coven, the Reclaiming Collective, is holding its
celebration of Samhain, the Witches' New Year, with music,
trance and dance on Saturday night at Fort Mason's Herbst
Pavilion.

Although alcoholic spirits are a staple of most Halloween
parties, Starhawk said her witches dabble in another kind
of spirit.

``It's important for us that this be drug- and
alcohol-free,'' she said. ``We want our ritual to come
from an inner place of clarity.''

WITCHES, NOT SATANISTS

Starhawk and her band of witches call the event the Spiral
Dance, ``an ancient dance of ritual and renewal.''

Another organizer of the event at Fort Mason, Laura
Rose-Wind, said the biggest problem facing today's pagans
is being misrepresented as satanists.

``What bothers me most is that people are still freaked
out by the word `witch,' '' Rose-Wind said. ``They think
of satanism, but that's just how Christianity has
perverted it.''

Witches and pagans practice an eclectic blend of
divination, shamanism, magic, nature worship and goddess
religion. They like to pound on drums and dance around in
circles.

Today's witches are more likely to be found surfing the
Internet than riding on brooms.

Their Web page (www.reclaiming.org/cauldron/) defines
their religion as rooted ``in the magic of the Goddess''
and promotes ``Witchcamp'' summer retreats in the United
States, Canada and Europe.

DAY OF THE DEAD

In the Bay Area Latino community, there is also an effort
to put a more spiritual spin on the November 2 celebration
of El Dia de Los Muertos, the Day of the Dead.

``Family'' is the theme of this year's procession, which
begins at 6 p.m. at Bryant and 24th streets and ends at
Garfield Park.

``We're trying to give it a more spiritual focus,'' said
Rosa De Anda, whose Cultural Rescue Committee is
organizing the festivities. ``Partying doesn't bother me,
but the loss of spirit does. Everything has become so
commercialized, even in Mexico.''

De Anda worked with Starhawk, using magic and divination,
to come up with the theme and format of the Mission
District rites. ``We want to bring together all colors,
nationalities and spiritual persuasions,'' she said.
``Death is something we all share.''

Whether it's called Halloween, Samhain or the Day of the
Dead, pagans say the holiday is the time ``when the veil
is thin that divides the world of the living and the world
of the dead.''

Halloween has its roots in an old Celtic feast marking the
onset of winter and has always been a way to ritually
express the fear of death, to get through those long, cold
nights.

``We celebrate the turn of the wheel of the year into
darkness,'' said Starhawk. ``Witches have always gathered
at this holy time, to mourn and release the newly dead.''


The Chronicle Publishing Company
 
... Pious ignorance always regards intelligence as a kind of blasphemy.
* Shy.David@EdenBBS.com
 * Origin: "She blinded me with science!" (1:124/9005)

