Are Cornwall schools teaching kids paganism?

Schools in Cornwall, home to some of the most beloved stone circles in Britain, may soon start teaching students about paganism. Or will they? Photo by Flickr user iknow-uk.

The ever-sensationalistic Daily Mail ran a story this week claiming that teachers in Cornwall will now be required to teach paganism in religious education classes.

They write:

Paganism has been included in an official school religious education syllabus for the first time.

Cornwall Council has told its schools that pagan beliefs, which include witchcraft, druidism and the worship of ancient gods such as Thor, should be taught alongside Christianity, Islam and Judaism.

The requirements are spelled out in an agreed syllabus drawn up by Cornwall’s religious-education advisory group.

They add that the council’s advice has made Cornish Christians unhappy that the school system would give attention to what they call “a fringe eccentricity.”

Jason Pitzl-Waters already vetted this story over on his blog, The Wild Hunt, and brought some of the Mail’s claims into alignment with reality:

1. This isn’t a mandate; the recommendations of the religious-education advisory council are non-binding.

2. The syllabus maintains that 60% of religious education should be devoted to Christianity. The other 40% would be devoted to all other religions — Judaism, Hinduism, Islam, paganism, etc. Pitzl-Waters wrote, “I would be surprised if this lead to even a full day in any British school on modern Paganism.”

The only other item the new syllabus recommends is some coverage of Cornwall’s pre-Christian sites, such as stone circles and their importance for modern-day pagans. I certainly hope that’s being taught, since Cornwall is home to dozens of stone circles, such as the Merry Maidens and the Hurlers, which are certainly important to Cornwall’s tourism industry even if their importance to the pagan community is sometimes left in the dust.

Cornwall is also home to the Museum of Witchcraft, which documents the long history of pagan and folk practices in the region.

One has to wonder whether the ubiquitousness of these ancient circles has made the Cornish people blind to the pagans living in their midst, not to mention their peaceful practices. After all, when a beloved horse was slaughtered, some locals were quick to blame local pagans and/or Satanists. Better religious education could nip such horrible rumors in the bud before they make it to the BBC. Today, there are similar rumors in Edinburgh, Scotland after horses’ manes and tails were cut off.

It would be wishful thinking to believe that Cornwall will begin to teach local schoolchildren about paganism in a way that is fair, respectful, and accurate. It’s certainly nice to see such teaching recommended, but will it happen? Time will tell.

Barring faith from criminal trials: new ways to protect minority faiths from defamation

What does Druidry have to do with homicide? Absolutely nothing — which is why a judge has forbidden any mention of an Illinois man’s (not pictured) faith during his upcoming trial. Photo by Flickr user owenski.

In recent weeks, the news has been flooded with criminal cases where the alleged perpetrator belonged to a minority faith.

In Ohio, a couple has been arrested for the sexual assault of a 15-year-old family member. The male half of the couple, named Daniel Hess, allegedly told police that the assault was part of the Wiccan faith.

In Chicago, 54-year-old Joseph Nerone claims he stabbed his 84-year-old mother to death, and that he was possessed by Satan when the attack took place.

And in South Africa, two young men who set a teenage girl on fire, allegedly as part of a “Satanic ritual,” were sentenced to 17 years each in jail.

It’s worth saying that Wiccan practices don’t involve nonconsensual or illegal sex, and that Satanic practices don’t involve murder.

And it’s also worth saying that the mere mention of minority faiths in the same sentence with a crime suggests that the two are related. Most of the time, they aren’t.

So it’s interesting that, in Illinois, a judge has ruled that Christopher Vaughn’s Druidic beliefs may not be mentioned in the courtroom during his murder trial. Vaughn is accused of shooting his wife and three children in 2007, and has remained in jail awaiting trial since then.

The move to strike mention of his faith from the courtroom was made by Vaughn’s defense attorney, who argued that such discussions could prevent Vaughn from receiving a fair trial.

That’s an interesting approach — but the correct one. Even though Druids are peaceful, and their practices center on the veneration of nature, the jury is likely unfamiliar with those facts. That ignorance can quickly turn to discomfort or fear, coloring their views of Vaughn. (However, Vaughn made posts on a Druid listserv saying he wanted to live on his own in the Canadian wilderness, and the judge has allowed such posts to be admitted in the courtroom, though likely without mention of where they were posted).

Divorcing a defendant’s faith from his or her criminal actions, both inside and outside the courtroom, can protect both those on trial and those who practice the same faith. If this could happen in every trial — because faith is essentially never the motivation for violent criminal activity — as a culture we might stop associating beliefs we don’t understand with frightening acts.

This week, journalism site Poynter.org published a piece I wrote offering tips to journalists who are assigned to write articles where crime and minority faith overlap. There are many ways of making sure faith and violent crime aren’t falsely and unfairly connected; journalism reform is one, and barring mentions of faith in the courtroom such as in Vaughn’s case is another.

What others can you think of?

Must be the singing of the witch

Is Glee going to the witches? Or will the show’s writers raise hackles among Wiccans as they did in the disabled community?

What’s that funny pentagram that has been popping up on posters recently on Glee? Some sharp-eyed viewers say it’s an ad for a “Wicca Club” at the fictional McKinley High School, where those golden-throated kiddos give their diaphragms a workout.

We’ve seen plenty of representations of “Wicca” in television and film before, from the witchy wedding in The Doors to the girl-power-gone-wrong in The Craft. Both Charmed and Buffy The Vampire Slayer put witches front and center. These were definitely stylized Wiccans though, many of them with fantasy-style magic powers that make for good fiction, but don’t exactly represent the Wiccans you might bump into at the corner market.

So, how will Glee represent this minority faith, if the show’s writers decide to run with the idea of a “Wicca club” on campus? Will they tackle it in the same way they’ve handled a number of controversial topics? Will Wiccans come out feeling misrepresented, as some in the disability community have done? And, if they’re the stars of an episode, what will they sing? “Witchy Woman?” “Santeria?”

Glee has millions of viewers, giving the show a chance to change minds by showing Wicca in a fair, positive, and even fun light. Whether the writers will manage it remains to be seen. After all, starting out with an upside-down pentagram — typically associated with the Left-Hand Path, not Wicca — doesn’t bode well.

How will Knox shed the “She-devil” image?

American Amanda Knox was acquitted today of murder charges after spending four years in an Italian prison.

How do you return to your life after being accused — even convicted — of killing your friend in a “Satanic rite” involving rough sex? How do you live down being called everything from a “She-devil” to “Foxy Knoxy?”

That’s what Amanda Knox must figure out. Today, she was acquitted in an Italian courtroom of murdering her friend, Meredith Kercher, in 2007. Originally, Knox was convicted of the murder, but a higher court released her this evening.

From the moment she was arrested, Knox was dragged through the mud, by tabloids and prosecutors who saw in the fresh-faced 20-year-old Seattleite some kind of kinky, bloodthirsty occultist, and they spared no effort in letting the world know what they thought of her. Now, as she returns to her former life, echoing the release of the West Memphis Three, it seems that the only sex games or Satanic practices were in the minds of the prosecutors.

In a New York Post piece, Nina Burleigh breaks down how the Knox trial turned into a “witch hunt”:

[Prosecutor Giuliano] Mignini always included witch fear in his murder theory, and only reluctantly relinquished it. As late as October 2008, a year after the murder, he told a court that the murder “was premeditated and was in addition a ‘rite’ celebrated on the occasion of the night of Halloween. A sexual and sacrificial rite [that] in the intention of the organizers … should have occurred 24 hours earlier” — on Halloween itself — “but on account of a dinner at the house of horrors, organized by Meredith and Amanda’s Italian flatmates, it was postponed for one day.”

Likewise, Candace Dempsey writes for the Seattle PI about the parallels between the Knox case and the West Memphis Three, down to the prosecutor’s obsession with sex and the occult:

In the Amanda Knox and West Memphis cases, even high-profile reporters at major networks cling to exciting crime theories, no matter how loony or baseless. … In Amanda’s case, tabloid journalists are of course the worst offenders–still enraptured by the satanic four-way drug-fueled orgy that made them so much money, even though it was just a sexual fantasy on the part of prosecutor Giuliano Mignini. Independent experts have rejected the DNA that put the two college students at the crime scene.

There is also the matter that plenty of people celebrate rites on or near Halloween — Satanic or not — without killing anyone, because murder and human sacrifice are not part of their practices. In other words, even if Knox was a devout Satanist, she wouldn’t have been any more likely to murder than if she belonged to any other religion.

If you were Knox today, what would you do? Would you make an effort to clear your name? Or would you ignore the bad press, hoping it would eventually be forgotten?

A sequel to the “Satanic Panic?”

Kids and adults play together at the annual Summerstar pagan festival in Washington State. Photo by Dannelle Meyers Photography.

The people of New Forest, England, recently faced an unlikely scourge: an anonymous “whistleblower” going by the name of “Alice,” who claimed in several online forums that Rosicrucian and Wiccan practitioners in the area were sexually abusing children.

In one such posting, shared on ShameOnYou.mobi, she wrote:

There is the secret Wiccan group in New Forest, England. Praying to “witches” and the devil and worse torturing children for the sake of their sick “religion”. They film and make fotos, which they distribute on the net.

Their leader, a demented Nick ####, called “Your Highness” by the other cult members. He lives in Minstead, preaches in the local church and pretends to be the “good guy” next door. Privately he boasts to be “an important Mason”, “your Highness” and doing incredibly sick stuff to children in his garage. He also abducts children occasionally, in the New Forest area. He abuses the children of his friends, drugging them and scaring them to death, so the children do not confide to anybody.

Other members of that particular paedophile ring are: His entire family. These family members have been abused and introduced into the Wiccan doctrine by Nick #### himself. They now abuse their own children.

“Alice” also turned up in the comments on a GodDiscussion.com post in which theistic Satanist Diane Vera addressed the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s and early 1990s, pointing out that allegations of child abuse by Satanic groups had been entirely debunked. In those comments, and in many other postings, “Alice” identifies specific residents of New Forest and the surrounding areas. Many of her posts have since been removed, likely because her actions could qualify as libel.

This is almost precisely how the first “Satanic Panic” began, in the late 1980s, as locals were accused of sexually abusing children during Satanic and/or Wiccan rituals in UK towns. In all, 52 children were taken from their parents and made wards of the court, while three men faced charges — but police found no evidence of the alleged “Satanic abuse.”

In America, the fires were stoked by books such as Michelle Remembers, written by psychologist Lawrence Pazder about a patient he said suffered from multiple-personality disorder as a result of her abuse experiences. (She later married him.) Those stories were eventually debunked, but not until well after the story had been picked up by the mainstream press, including Oprah, frightening millions. There don’t seem to be any good statistics on how many children were separated from their families — or from preschools they loved — during this period.

It’s true that, as a nation, we know more than we used to about Wiccans and even Satanists than we did in the 1980s. They’ve emerged as a much more everyday and benign presence in society. But fear is not behind us, and the conservative religious movement — embodied in the Evangelical Christian and to some extent the Tea Party movement, is gaining both ground and power in America.

Ultimately, the demonization and criminalization of people who practice alternative faiths, from Wicca to Satanism and everywhere in between, is not over. As long as reporters continue to draw connections between criminal activity and paganism, this can’t end. Facts must supersede fear, and paranoid individuals like “Alice” must be taken for what they are.

Readers, how were your lives affected by the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s and 1990s? Did the stories frighten you? Were you suspected of wrongdoing because of your beliefs or interests? How could we keep it from happening again? Share your stories in the comments.

West Memphis Three could happen again

Half their lives ago, Damien Echols, Jessie Miskelly and Jason Baldwin were sent to prison for a crime they didn’t commit. They were released today.

In 1993, three teenagers from West Memphis, Arkansas — Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Miskelly, were convicted of murdering three young boys. Almost from the beginning, many have maintained that the teens were innocent of the crimes. Today, after spending half their young lives behind bars, they are free.

These boys — Echols and Baldwin particularly — prove what can happen in a society that mistrusts teen boys, particularly teen boys who wear black clothing, listen to heavy metal music, and practice Wicca. In some parts of the South, “Wicca” is indistinguishable from “Satanism,” and “Satanism” is indistinguishable from “child sacrifice.” Wear black and practice Wicca and you might as well go straight to the gas chamber.

It is, in many ways, a relief that they’re free men. They can go home to their families and try to put nearly two decades of wrongful confinement behind them. However, because of the plea deal which freed them, they won’t be allowed to pursue a wrongful conviction case against the State of Arkansas — a case which otherwise deserves to go forward. And because these men were robbed of their early adulthoods, it may take some time before they can settle into the world — a world very different from the one they left in 1993.

The mistrust that put these boys in jail has not gone away. There are still people out there that would have us fear teenagers, since we don’t understand what makes a handful of them violent enough to kill. There are those who want us to fear teens who play too many violent video games. There are those who want us to fear teens who listen to too much heavy metal. And there are certainly those who want us to fear teens who explore pagan faiths. There’s no reason to believe that this couldn’t happen again. There’s no reason to believe that it hasn’t happened to other teens currently in prison. The West Memphis Three are free, but this fight isn’t over.

Untangling pedophilia from occultism, again

William Lambert was found guilty of sexual assault on four girls between 11 and 14 years old in Cheam, England. He allegedly lured them with occult tales.

Another pedophile has been charged with sexual assault in England. And, once again, the British press is playing up whatever occult angle they can find, throwing around words like “warlock” and “Golden Dawn.”

William Lambert, a gravedigger at St. Dunstan Church in Cheam, southwest of London, was found guilty in a British court of one count of rape, two counts of indecent assault and two counts of procuring girls to have sexual intercourse by false pretenses and representations. According to a report from the Metropolitan Police,

Lambert used the outhouse, known as ‘The Shed’ as an unofficial drop-in centre / youth club. He in effect brainwashed his victims who were vulnerable and impressionable into believing he possessed special occult powers that could be transferred to them by having sex with him and that these powers would make their lives better.

In other words, he not only took advantage of these girls sexually, but he also took advantage of their emotional and psychological vulnerabilities at a crucial time in their adolescence. Let me be clear: this has everything to do with Lambert being a disturbed man, and nothing to do with the occult.

And yet, both the police and the press are including those claims. Why? Sure, it’s part of the narrative. But the terminology in some cases comes dangerously close to suggesting that Lambert was somehow involved with the Golden Dawn. Instead, Lambert’s claims were no more than bait. He could have told these girls he could get them into a Justin Bieber concert, or that he would give them an unlimited supply of ice cream, or anything else that would lure them. For whatever reason, these claims of “special powers” were what worked on these girls.

However, the association between the occult and pedophilia — treated as it so often is in the press — makes people who don’t know enough about the Golden Dawn or the occult or “warlocks” recoil when they meet an every-day person who associates with one of these spiritual paths. The incidence of pedophilia among alternative spiritualities is likely about the same as it is among Christians, Jews, and Muslims, which is to say, a small but nonzero incidence. However, because the general public knows a lot less about occultists and the Golden Dawn, it becomes easier to accept the suggestion that pedophiles lurk among their ranks.

Why more occultists do not protest these associations is something I don’t really understand. Certainly there is reason to believe that anti-occult sentiment is on the rise. This is dangerous for everyday, law-abiding occultists, Thelemites, Satanists, and so on.

What comes to mind when you think of someone who is involved with the occult, Thelema, Satanism, Wicca or other pagan path? What is your impression of them? How has that opinion been shaped by news reports or other media representations?

Frightened By Your Teen’s Interests? Get Involved!

Just picture it: you’re dressed in black lace with cat’s-eye makeup, dancing in a dark, misty club to something called Switchblade Symphony. Or you’re in a surging hurricane of dancing bodies at a concert while a dude onstage screams into a microphone, lyrics unintelligible. Or you’re dressed in a cape, running through a park with a foam sword while 10 teenagers chase you. Can you imagine it yet?

For decades, certain media influences have been linked again and again to violent or suicidal behavior in teens. Reporters would have you believe that too many first-person shooters cause high-school massacres like the one at Columbine High School, or that becoming a Wiccan will make your kid start sacrificing chickens to Beelzebub. Meanwhile, heavy metal and goth culture have reputations as one-way roads to suicide, and role-playing games supposedly turn players into Satanic lunatics who see dragons on every street corner.

Yes, I’m exaggerating – but only a little.

Read the rest over at Radical Parenting…

Watch out, Wiccans; the Catholics are after you

Photo by Flickr user Fernando Gonzaga.

Once again, the Catholic Church is worried about the souls of teenagers. Apparently the idea of teens turning to Wicca (prompted, allegedly, by too much Harry Potter) is so abhorrent that the church in Britain has published a guide to converting witches to Christianity.

The guide, called Wicca and Witchcraft: Understanding the Dangers, is written by Elizabeth Dodd. Alas, Amazon isn’t offering a “look inside this book” feature for the title, but other news outlets have quoted a few handy phrases from the book, such as:

Recognition that Wiccans are on a genuine spiritual quest can provide the starting point for dialogue.

Okay, so far, so good. She also claims that 70 percent of Wiccans are young women seeking some form of spirituality. I’m not sure where she gets her statistics, but she doesn’t sound off the mark. But at another point, she says:

Whether spellwork is effective or not has no bearing on the psychological damage that can be done to a young person who is convinced that they have summoned the dead, or have performed a spell that has hurt or injured another.

Wait, what? Wiccans don’t typically summon the dead, and their core tenet is the threefold rule, which staunchly discourages people from casting harmful spells, specifically because the effort will come back upon them three times over.

And then, according to the Daily Mail:

Behind the glamour there [are] ‘grave dangers’ because of its link to the occult and the sinister movement championed by satanist Aleister Crowley, she said.

There are so many things wrong with this statement I don’t know where to begin. Crowley wasn’t really involved with the creation of Wicca, nor does Wicca really draw much from Crowley’s work. I’m not sure what “sinister movement” Crowley championed exactly. And he wasn’t a Satanist. The only semi-truthful statement here is that Wicca and the occult sometimes go hand in hand, but the only reason that would be seen as a “grave danger” is because divination and the like are forbidden by the Catholic Church.

So then we come to:

The use of magic, the practice of witchcraft, offends God because it is rooted in our sinful and fallen nature. It attempts to usurp God.

Well, at least that’s consistent with the teachings of the Catholic Church, and it explains why, even if they recognize Wicca as a “spiritual quest,” they view it rather differently than, say, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Sikhism, and so on. Those faiths don’t involve the use of magic, so the Catholic Church isn’t out to convert their followers necessarily. Wicca doesn’t get that kind of respect.

Unfortunately, such a guide is presumptuous. It assumes that conversion is the right thing (and that Catholicism is preferable). It’s true that many Wiccans are looking for spirituality. They’re often looking for a spirituality that gives them hands-on experience with the divine, rather than the mediated, top-down dogma they find within the Catholic Church. They may also be looking for a celebration of the feminine beyond the (admittedly very important) Virgin Mary. Teens, in particular, may break away from the church because they see it as hypocritical or judgmental. They want something welcoming and empowering, not harsh and off-putting.

Maybe it’s time to put away the how-to-covert guides and just sit down and listen to teens who are questioning faith. And give them real credit for that questioning — rather than blaming it on a fictional wizard.

Did you break away from the church you grew up with? If so, why? Where did your explorations lead, and how did your parents react to them (if they knew about them at all)?

The occult “expert” strikes again

Image by Flickr user Adam Cohn.

Ever wonder where the police get their information about “occult” and “Satanic” crimes? Like any other professional group, they occasionally visit with experts and attend conferences so brush up on their knowledge or learn more about something related to their field. We recently got a peek into that aspect of police work when the Daily Press (Virginia) sat in on a presentation to police by “occult expert” and retired cop Don Rimer.

Unfortunately, the entire article reads like a massive game of telephone. What appears in print is probably a distilled version of what Rimer actually said, but Rimer’s own “facts” seem cobbled together from a variety of sources, and in ways that make no sense. Much of it seems focused on horror-based television and film, including True Blood and Twilight. Rimer also claims that occult crime among teens is on the rise, even though the reporter’s own information — obtained through local police departments — reveals otherwise.

In the article, Rimer recounts several crimes, one of which involves the beating and torture of a kid who claimed to be a vampire. Aside from being horrific, it’s also not what you’d expect when you hear “occult crime.” You would expect the so-called vampire to be the one committing the violence, right? In another example he describes a death by erotic asphyxiation, which seems to have nothing at all to do with the occult.

And then there’s this:

“Fantasy role-playing like Dungeons and Dragons … and vampire gaming are alive and well,” said Rimer. “There are people who take gaming to another level, one that results in deaths and suicides. In the world of gaming, there is evil.”

Vampire gaming, in particular, will often lure people, then send them out on a quest that involves blood or sex, sometimes with deadly consequences, said Rimer.

… In which I can only assume he’s talking about live-action Vampire: The Masquerade, which involves neither blood nor sex, except sometimes as part of the storytelling. It’s theater, not crime.

The piece ends with a list of supposed clues that a teen is into the occult, including suicide attempts, frequent runaway, alienation from family, bizarre cruelty, especially to animals, fascination with death, self-mutilation, and using secret messages or a diary. This is a very bizarre list, one that describes a teen who is (aside from the secret messages and/or diary) facing potentially serious mental-health issues and needs to be evaluated immediately. It’s no wonder parents can’t tell when their kids are facing psychological crises when “experts” like Rimer are going around saying these are symptoms of something else entirely.

Rimer has been around a long time, and he’s not the only one of his kind. In 1991, Robert Hicks wrote a book on these experts, and on police investigations into the occult, in In Pursuit of Satan. It wouldn’t be so bad if police forces were being educated by people who took the time and care to get their facts straight. Instead, a lot of these “experts” spread misinformation and fear, first to the police and (once police talk to the press about supposed “occult crimes”) then to the press and the public. Rimer offers a “handbook” (PDF) on occult crime on the Web, though it’s just as jumbled as his presentations sound. It would be funny if it weren’t so dangerously misinformed.

It’s no wonder, really, that most people don’t know the difference between a Wiccan and Satanic pentagram, between a serious Satanic ritual and a mock “Devil worship” ceremony, between actual Santeria practices and a half-dozen mutilated animals. Almost all of what gets attributed to occultists during criminal investigation should be attributed to pranks, sociopathy, or both. And in the meantime, peacefully practicing occultists get dragged through the mud, feared as violent and prone to take their victim without warning at any time.

Here’s a question for my readers today: How much do you know about occult practices, and where did you learn that information? Are you aware of any occult crime happening in your part of the world? Do you think such crime is on the rise? If so, what do you think is causing that trend?