Something in the news yesterday got me a bit on edge, and while I commented on it on my Facebook page, I debated commenting about here but have decided that I would like to share my thoughts and see what everyone else might have to say.  The story was about a cemetery in La Joya, Texas, a town in southern Texas not far from the Mexico border.  A woman took her daughter to a local cemetery to do work on a class project and when they got there she found “signs of witchcraft” throughout the cemetery.  Things like a broken egg in a jar, burned papers, chili peppers wrapped in plastic, a cow tongue, and pictures with words on the back like “death” and “illness” were found through out the location.  And then the one item that naturally got everyone in our community riled up; a pentagram (that looked to be drawn on the ground) with markings where candles lined it was found.  Here is a link to the story and video.

So what had me so upset?  Was it the claims of “witchcraft” or the commentary in the article?  Not at all; in fact I thought the article, both the news clip and the write up on the website (which is just a transcript of the news clip) were clear, concise, to the point, and not terribly incendiary.  But it was still enough to insight some crazy comments from people on Facebook when people were sharing the article which I first found when looking at the latest news on The Witches’ Voice Facebook page.

It seemed that everyone read and heard the article as “witch/witchcraft = Wicca/Wiccans”.  At no point in the article were the words Wicca or Wiccan uttered or implied.  The article did mention that the woman who reported the items felt it was Satanic and evil, but again, no mention of Wiccans.  Yet somehow this seems to be what a lot of people heard or assumed when reading and seeing that article.  In truth it does sound like a lot of what was found may have had ties to Santaria, at least from my experience.  However, as I urged on my own Facebook page, I think that we, as a community, would be best served not making any assumptions of who did this or who we can “blame” for apparently sullying the good name of Witches the world over, since that seems to be the stance some people feel the need to take with such a piece.

Here are my personal thoughts on this story and the comments that I’ve seen from people regarding it.  I think it’s important to keep in mind that Wicca is not the only magickal path or path of the Witch.  The apparent assumption that Witch is synonymous with Wiccan has become a problem in the magickal community in our age of bad teaching, bad writing, bad resources, and the Internet, where misinformation in the guise of Craft teachings run rampant.  Because of this many people assume that as soon as someone brings up the word “witch” in a news article like this that the finger is being pointed at Wiccans.  It’s not.  Believe it or not, in this day and age, there are still people don’t know what the heck Wicca is, so there’s no reason to assume that you (if you’re Wiccan and taking offense) are being singled out.

With that said, I think it’s also important to remember that we need to keep our personal practices and ethics in check and not impose them on others, even if they are the proverbial “other”.  So in this case, people who have been responding saying “That’s not witchcraft, and that’s not Wicca.  Read a book and educate yourself,” may have a point but it’s horribly misguided.  Yes, that person would be right in that this might not be Wiccan magick, but is it magick and is it a form of Witchcraft?  It sure sounds like it!  And if someone did “read a book and educate” themselves, yes, they would also come to the conclusion that it’s highly unlikely that a Wiccan Witch would have done magick with a cow tongue or worked a death curse on someone.  But that doesn’t mean that someone of another path didn’t.  There was one comment that I had read on the actual news channel’s website where someone actually tired to reason away what was found in the cemetery.  Claiming them were a lifelong practitioner of magick, this person believed that everyone had things wrong and that rather than the inscribed photos meaning to bring death or illness to those individuals, they were being used in the cemetery as petitions of sorts, left at the graves of departed loves ones and asking for them to watch over those individuals in the photographs to prevent death and illness.  Somehow I’m inclined to think otherwise, but that could just be me.  However, it still brings up the point that just because you personally might not work that kind of magick doesn’t mean that someone else doesn’t.

It was also interesting to me to see a small group of comments where one person suggested that it sounded like Voodoo to them to which someone replied that Voodoo isn’t Witchcraft which received a comment from someone else saying that Voodoo is an accepted form of Witchcraft by many people.  Again it’s the land of bad information (and I’m doing my best to avoid the “F” and “B” words here as well).  Witchcraft is a magickal practice and discipline, not necessarily a religion, even though many people may practice it in a spiritual way.  Voodoo is a religion that involves magick, often along the lines of Hoodoo.  And, as anyone that knows me is away, I have absolutely nothing against Satanists and I think they get a horribly bad wrap from everyone, including others of alternative religions, especially from many Wiccans and Pagans.  Frankly I think Wiccans spend far too much time and energy on trying to separate themselves from Satanists to make other people comfortable.  I think this is another case where the “pick up a book and educate yourself” would be a wise suggestion; read the Satanic Bible or some of the other writings of Anton Lavey or other modern Satanists and you might be surprised at what you find.  The irony to me here is that many people have been making comments about how “people shouldn’t cast judgment about things they don’t understand” but in their own way, they’re doing the same thing.

So, like I said, I wasn’t going to rant on about that here, but I couldn’t help myself and I have been feeling a little lack of spark and soul in the blog these days since I haven’t been injecting much of my personal take on things like this lately.  And now you have it!  I don’t think there’s any real reason to get riled up about this as a community.