Posted on 10/22/2007 9:50:39 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
Bonnie Thompson's Hicksville house is bedecked with all kinds of witch decorations.
There are witch-on-broomstick weather vanes staked in her flower beds and witch chimes dangling below her mailbox. Sitting atop the sill of her bay window are small iron cauldrons and witch figurines.
But none of these objects is there because Halloween is coming.
Thompson is a real witch, or wiccan to be more exact, who follows the concepts and rituals taught by Richard and Gypsy Ravish. The Salem, Mass., couple are head priest and priestess of the Temple of Nine Wells and initiated Thompson into wicca.
As the wicca holiday of Samhain - which falls at the same time of year as Halloween - approaches, Thompson's split-level ranch house is a hive of activity.
Those who enter the front door are first met with the smoky fragrance of burning incense before walking into a world dedicated to her vocation as a "third-degree Alexandrian high priestess" who leads her own Long Island sect, the Coven of the Crescent Moongoddess.
"The neighbors are really good. We've never had any problems because they know we are good people. We have a dog and a turtle and two children. We are a normal family," said Thompson, 36, who has been married to her husband, Bob, 42, a hospital MRI technologist, for 13 years.
Thompson's dining room table is covered with paperwork, laminated credentials, programs and other material in preparation for her third annual New York Witch Festival, which will be held Saturday in the grand ballroom of the Sheraton Long Island Hotel in Hauppauge.
Last year's event, she said, attracted more than 1,000 participants on a stormy day. She is expecting even more at this year's festival, which features a day's worth of workshops with such titles as "Energy Healing" and "Spirit Communication," taught by a number of authors, psychics and full-time witches. There's even a kid-friendly workshop called "Real Wizardry for the Harry Potter Generation," conducted by writer Oberon Zell-Ravenheart, whom Thompson is flying in from San Francisco.
Thompson, who is hosting a 2p.m. ritual, is quick to dispel any notions of brewing up potions with dried bat wings or casting evil spells and hexes on enemies. That, she says, is the stuff of Hollywood.
The modern-day witchcraft she practices as an initiate of wicca, a nature-based religion steeped in the symbolism of European pre-Christian paganism, is benevolent.
"We honor the gods and goddesses of ancient mythology. We honor the sun, the moon, the Earth. There is nothing evil about it," said Thompson, who works part-time as a florist in Old Bethpage. "Many witches believe in the wiccan rede - that what you do to others comes back to you threefold. So we don't do harm."
Thompson, who grew up on Long Island before moving as a teen to upstate New York, was raised Catholic, like her husband, who still considers himself a Catholic. The couple has baptized both their daughters, Sara, 11, and Bridgette, 5, as Catholics.
Bob Thompson said he supports his wife's religion, but, as a tradeoff, he is raising his girls as Catholics until age 16, when they are free, he said, to choose whatever religion they like.
Where do I start?
She couldn't get there on her own broom?
Does she get to roll extra dice with that title?
They honor ancient admitted myths, just like the Democrats. "Fake but accurate".
It's new and as phony as that Christmastime newfangled thing supposedly from Africa.
LOL!!!
Oberon is a guy...
One mans religion is another mans pratfall...
No relation, I promise you.
True, very much so.
The wiccans essentially white-wash what witchcraft and paganism really is: worship of nature gods and the devil himself.
Benevolent. Ha.
These people are posers. Druids and "wiccans" practiced human sacrifice. And the Celts became Christians for a reason: they wanted freedom from their abusive and wicked service to the gods they knew all too well.
Read Thomas Cahill's "How the Irish Saved Civilization" for more background.
Is this what you saw in the mirror this morning?
The guy has a serious Gandalf fixation going on.
Looks like he’s deliberately going for the Dumbledore effect.
Oddly enough... I think Zell’s real first name actually is “Tim”... ;-)
So those ten years I was a practicing pagan, I was really worshiping the Devil? How about all those yeas I was a Luthern? Was I actually worshiping Mohamed?
I wonder if he’s a “...manky Scottish git”...
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