My Mom Is a Witch

By Judith Barish

Here's 7-year old Casey talking about the witch. "She had a green face, red eyes, really pointy nose, a pointy black hat and an owl." It was Halloween, and the kindergarten class was reading about monsters and witches.

Casey's mother Deborah called the teacher to complain. "I'm so sorry," said the teacher. "Is Casey scared? Is he having nightmares?" "No," said Deborah. "His father and I are witches, and we don't appreciate Casey being exposed to stereotypical images of crones on broomsticks."

While other kids attend Hebrew School or Easter Egg hunts, witch kids accompany their parents to pagan rituals. They dance around the Maypole on May Day. At Halloween, they attend the Spiral Dance. At the Summer Solstice, they help construct and burn a wicker man on the beach.

Most kids brought up in a pagan community take to the rites with zeal. "It's fun for them," said Anne Hill, who co-authored a book on raising children in a goddess tradition. It's cool to be a witch, said Casey, who even has his own witch name. Eleven-year-old Hazel assembled her own altar decorated with what her father called "power objects:" feathers, candles, bones.

Black magic? Nah. Pagan children apply their witchcraft to the mundane details of gradeschool life. "Casey's first spell was for the elephant at the zoo," Deborah told me. "The Asian elephant lost its mate, and Casey was very sad about it. When we got home, he made a circle of all his elephant toys, put a candle in the middle, and made a spell so that the elephant would get a new friend."

When fourteen-year-old Shannon got her first period, her parents and the rest of their coven celebrated a ritual in her honor, complete with presents. Another preteen wanted to know if there was a ritual for shaving the first hair that grew under her arms.

Do pagan children ever rebel and become, say, investment bankers or Mormons? Elissa was so embarassed by her parents that she told her friends she was a Christian. But she is a rare straight arrow. For most witch kids, equinox rituals and the sun god are their cultural heritage, like First Communion and the Virgin Mary are for Catholics.

In the Middle Ages, Deborah might have been burned at the stake. At the end of the millennium in California, she was invited to talk to Casey's class. Afterwards, the teacher heard a different parental complaint: "My child can't separate fantasy from reality -- he insists Casey's mom is a witch."