Saturday, October 31, 1998

Pop culture helps bring witchcraft out of the broom closet

By STEVE RABEY

Religion News Service

"Practical Magic," the latest in a long line of Hollywood films to dabble in the mysteries and rituals of witchcraft, opens with a historical flashback scene showing 17th century witch Maria Owens magically escaping her attempted execution by a mob of angry Puritans.

But gradually the film, based on a popular Alice Hoffman novel, turns its attention to Maria's present-day descendants: sisters Sally and Gillian Owens (played by box-office heavyweights Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman), two modern-day witches who try to decide whether to use ancient spells and arts in their search for happiness and love.

Over the past four centuries, witchcraft -- which is both an ancient tradition of rites and a rapidly growing modern-day religious movement -- has survived persecution and execution, earned a sometimes grudging toleration, and undergone a series of revivals, both in Europe and North America.

Now, movies like "Practical Magic" and a host of books, TV shows and other pop culture products promise to take Wicca -- which is what many of its modern practitioners call it -- to unprecedented levels of popularity.

"What helps the cause is for people to see that witches are not green-faced hags cavorting with Satan, casting evil spells, and baking Hansel and Gretel in the oven," said Phyllis Curott, a New York attorney and Wiccan High Priestess who is currently on a 21-city publicity tour for "Book of Shadows" (Broadway Books), her autobiographical look at the contemporary witch craze.

Like Starhawk, Margot Adler, and Zsuzanna Budapest, three of today's better known witches, Curott sees Wicca as a welcome alternative to "the three patriarchal Western religions" -- Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

"Wicca is a system of practices and techniques that are very accessible, are easily learned, provide astonishing results, and enable you to discover the Goddess within and the Divine that's present in the world all around us," said Curott, who believes the rituals she and other witches have performed helped her book sell out its first printing and land her a pre-Halloween appearance on Roseanne Barr's TV talk show.

Books about Wicca have fueled steady growth at Llewellyn, the St. Paul, Minn.-based company which publishes titles on a wide range of spiritual, occultic and esoteric topics. In addition to established best sellers like Raymond Buckland's "Complete Book of Witchcraft," with 25 printings and 271,000 copies in print, and Scott Cunningham's "Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner, with 20 printings and 290,000 copies in print, the company has successfully launched many new Wicca titles.

Last year, Llewellyn debuted its attractively illustrated Witches' Calendar 1998, which sold more than 90,000 copies. This year, the company is selling a 1999 Witches' Calendar, along with a spiral-bound Witches' Datebook. Also successful is "Teen Witch: Wicca for a New Generation," a book the company's promotional material says was "written specifically for the teen seeker" by Silver RavenWolf, "the mother of four young witches."

Perhaps the publisher should consider buying ads on the popular ABC sitcom, "Sabrina, the Teenage Witch," which is based on a 1996 movie of the same name, which was based on an earlier Archie Comic book series.

The show features cute, perky Melissa Joan Hart, who survives life as a high school student with the help of her spells, two witchy aunts (Zelda and Hilda), and a talking black cat named Salem.

TV shows like "Sabrina" have played witchcraft for laughs ever since Samantha Stephens first twitched her nose on "Bewitched," the popular, Emmy Award-winning show that enchanted viewers from 1964-1972.

But "Something Wicca This Way Comes," the Oct. 7 debut episode of "Charmed," the new WB network program featuring Shannen Doherty ("Beverly Hills 90210") and her two witchy sisters, brimmed over with realistic chants, spells, and incantations.

In the 1990s, movies about wicked witches have been far outnumbered by those portraying witches as benign, or even hip. In "Practical Magic," Bullock and Kidman dabble in the magical arts to mixed results before transforming critical townspeople into supporters and converting some of the town's more tolerant women into members of the coven. As one of the movie's matriarchs says, "There's a little witch in all of us."

Both stars studied books about witchcraft as they prepared for their roles. Bullock, whose company, Fortis Films, co-produced "Practical Magic," said the experience changed her views about witches. "Basically," she said, "they are just more in touch with something larger, spiritually, than we are."

Witches also seem to be in touch with popular tastes. One can find Wiccan accents in the music of Tori Amos, and in recent print advertising campaigns for Cover Girl makeup and Finesse shampoo. Some universities and divinity programs now offer degrees in Goddess spirituality. And the Internet is teeming with witchcraft-related sites, many of which help connect online seekers with local covens.

Wicca, as Fitness magazine accurately proclaimed in a headline for a recent story, is "Coming Out of the Broom Closet."

And while Salem, Mass., may have been the hotbed of witchcraft during the heyday of the infamous witch trials of the 1690s, in which nearly two dozen women lost their lives, San Francisco Chronicle religion writer Don Lattin says California has provided fertile ground for Wicca during the past two decades.

"On the West Coast, where there's less allegiance to traditional Judeo-Christian belief than in the rest of the country, many Californians are drawn to Wicca and other neo-pagan groups because they blend spirituality, ritual and a deep concern for environmental issues," says Lattin, co-author of the recently published book, "Shopping for Faith: American Religion in the New Millennium" (Jossey-Bass).

"It's an earth-based, be-here-now kind of spirituality, and dovetails with rising interest among many feminists in 'goddess' religion."

High Priestess Curott, who describes Wicca as "an ancient, elegant spirituality," said, "There isn't any other religion that respects women's power." She praises the women who are part of her New York coven for their poetry, sensitivity, honesty and relevance, adding that they may wear black, but only because "it's slimming."

While she finds some of pop culture's treatment of witches cliched and superficial, she believes most of it is beneficial. "I've been able to jump on the back of their broomstick," she laughed.