I recently had the good fortune to go to a local high school to have a Q/A about Wicca. The group was about a dozen lads and lasses, but they all had that “We are able to think outside the teen box” blue energy. Such a pleasure to see people who are more ready to evolve than to live by the reflex knee jerks of everyone else’s programs. What follows is a summary of some of the stuff the questions brought forth with a couple of additions to emphasise Beltane. A sort of Wiccan history 101 with Beltane as a theme, and my own part in it to make it personal.

We are currently in the Chinese New Year and not all that far from our own. We have finished with the crass commercialism surrounding the celebration of the Christians’ Master and are heading into the other pagan season in honour of the goddess Estara, the goddess of fertility whose ancient pre-Christian symbols are the egg and the hare or rabbit.

In my Christmas series I suggested that you remember that the Pilgrim Fathers whom we are supposed to honor, kept Christmas as a fast day, and no celebrations were allowed. The –ism worshipped today in this country is Commercialism, the God of which is money and its derivative, power.

I remember an animated conversation between two people at a pagan meeting. One was a Celtic Wiccan and the other a Kabbalist ritual magician. The Wiccan was insisting that doing a money ritual was best organized using green as the color motif. The Kabbalist was insisting that for prosperity the best color was blue.

Neither noticed until much later that they were not talking about the same thing. There is a fundamental difference between doing a ritual to manifest money and doing one to manifest prosperity.

The difference is in the difference between High and Low Magick. There are no Wiccans from far Northern countries or from arid deserts. Wiccans and the four seasons go together.

In 1991 I was talking by invitation to a group of pagans, mostly Wiccans, and someone raised the question of rituals like the Banishing Pentagram and Hexagram and other practices which seemed to be connected to magickal work based on the Kabbalah.

His question was: What does Kabbalah have to do with Wicca? Isn’t that all just Jewish stuff? My reply, though necessarily long, is still relevant, and may interest some readers. Here it is.

Josh Billings once said “It isn’t what folks don’t know that’s the trouble…it’s what they do know that ain’t so.”

EVERYBODY knows that witches worship Satan, kidnap babies for sacrifice, desecrate the Host, and enjoy cursing their innocent neighbors and anybody who offends them. And none of this is true.