Khadija Magardie
Mention the word “witch” and the imagination is likely to conjure up a host of images, ranging from black-shrouded spinsters bent over cauldrons to New Age hippies dancing naked in the moonlight.
Few will expect them to be a group of rather pleasant-looking women and men, lounging around a garden patio with a keg of wine on a lazy spring afternoon. But that is how a group of witches, adherents of a local branch of the Wiccan Church, gathered to explain their faith to the Mail & Guardian.
Donna Darkwolf, high priestess of Kali, and president of the Pagan Federation of South Africa, hardly fits the archetypal description of a witch. A bit too much make-up perhaps, but hardly sinister- looking. The only sign of her life’s inclination is a five-pointed star, the pentagram, dangling around her neck. Darkwolf describes herself as a pagan – an Earth worshipper.
The increasing number of pagans in South Africa and their associates worldwide have fallen victim to a nasty smear campaign. Branded Satanists, most pagans are extremely secretive about their beliefs, but categorically deny that they are devil worshippers.
“If we don’t believe in the concept of Jesus and redemption for our sins, how can we recognise his so-called arch- enemy, the devil?” asks Reverend Anthony Kemp, high priest of Cerridwinn, who is visiting South Africa from France.
The highly articulate Kemp”found himself” in paganism, after becoming disillusioned with organised religion. Emphasising that paganism, unlike other religions, allows its followers to “set their own tones”, Kemp says organised religion has “no middle road between salvation and damnation”.
As a senior pagan, in terms of learning – there is no religious hierarchy in the Wiccan Church – he recites the creed by which all good pagans are supposed to abide: “Do as you will, and harm none.”
For pagans, divinity can appear in any form, particularly in nature. There is no need for explanatory dogmas or priests, whose job is to tell the faithful what to do and ensure that the religion is correctly taught.
What fascinates many about paganism, particularly feminists, is the absence of any divinely sanctioned gender hierarchy, neither in the form of the divinity nor in the quasi-priestly class, who serve as teachers.
In fact, for most pagans, the Earth- worship has feminine undertones. Most of the initiation chants used at Wiccan coven gatherings refer to the “Great Mother” or the “Goddess”.
“Unlike some other religions, pagans do not treat women as chattels,” says Silver- Don, sitting next to her husband of 21 years, Kwazimodo. The reverence for women stems from the principle of “Mother Earth”, and the fact that women are the givers of life.
Darkwolf is dismissive of the widely prevalent notion that paganism is a mere European import and, in South African terms, “a white thing”.
Like members of other religions believe theirs is the natural order into which human beings are born, pagans believe “all people, especially South African blacks, are natural pagans”. She blames the curious absence of a significant number of black Wiccans on cultural differences and language barriers.
For the average person, the line between fact and fantasy becomes blurred when Wiccans start talking about spells and potions.
Wiccans spend hours over their cauldrons, cooking up an assortment of things, from poultices to love potions. Yet this seemingly mumbled hocus-pocus is no kids stuff, and certainly no fiction, says Darkwolf. But, as with everything, effectiveness has got more to do with the strength of the belief.
Pagans do not believe in a concept of God. They refer to a higher power as the GBWII – the Great Big Whatever It Is; a blasphemous suggestion to some.
The idea of “do as you will” could be interpreted as nothing more than a flimsy pagan excuse to indulge in blatantly hedonistic pursuits like licentiousness, drunkenness and, of course, orgies.
If shocked denials are what the pagan- unfriendly are looking for, they will be disappointed. Pagans, says Kemp, are certainly no ascetics. “Life is wonderful; and the fruits of the Earth are there for us.”
So, essentially, why not indulge in them?