Royal Purple

Issue date: 10/31/07 Section: Arts & Lifestyle

Media Credit: Brad McAllister Avery Stann burns a stick of incence and at a PSSO meeting. He also makes incense by crushing herbs like nutmeg and cinnamon in a pestle and mortar.

For most people, Halloween evokes visions of candy corn, wild costumes and jack-o-lanterns, but to Wiccans, Halloween marks a time to memorialize, revere and possibly contact the dead.

The chances of spotting a Wiccan, pagan, or real witch at Madison's "Freakfest" are slim to none because followers of these religions celebrate Samhain, the Celtic New Year, rather than America's commercialized version of Halloween.

Samhain is similar to the spanish speaking world's Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, which is celebrated in early November.

"Everyone celebrates the same thing but calls it a different name," Emily Foti, a senior and secretary of the Pagan Spirituality Student Organization, said.

Samhain marks the beginning of the Celtic New Year and the end of the harvest season, a time when the veil between the spirit world and our own world is the thinnest and ideal for communication with the decesased, according to Pagan teachings.

"Pagans try to attract the dead," Sharon Rogalski, a senior PSSO member, said. "Christains try to scare them away."

Despite stark differences in opinion on communicating with the deceased, Wiccans, and those who practice similar pagan religions, share some common core beliefs with Christians.

The golden rule of doing to others as you would have them do unto you is a simpler way of explaining the Wiccan's rule of three.

"Ever mind the rule of three, what you do comes back to thee," Krystal Rutzen, president of PSSO, said.

The rule of three enforces the belief that one pays for deeds done in previous lives.

Wiccans do not believe there is a heaven or hell. Instead, they believe in reincarnaton and that after each life, the soul goes to summerland where it reflects on its previous life and waits for an earthly body.

"Until you experience every life experience, you'll keep coming back," Avery Stann, a senior PSSO member, said. "You have to be a man, a woman, straight, gay."

Some Wiccans would even add mental and physical ailments to the list of human experiences that one must live before achieving eternal summerland.

Continued...

Page 1 of 2 next >

Article Tools