

		From: Kathi Sharpe [Kathi] Sent: Wednesday, November 01, 2000 6:44 AM To:aog (at) associate.com Subject:[AOG] RE: Witches Mike wrote: > Something to think about this Halloween: > "Academic experts put the U. S. witch population at 500,000, but that's > up roughly tenfold from a decade ago." > >From an article in today's Wall Street Journal by Molly Williams. As a person who spent ten years immersed in the Pagan community, I would say that number is rather low. I couldn't begin to guess what it actually is, but when I saw that figure I blinked twice. "Witchcraft", also known as Wicca (and which also includes a couple dozen other neo-pagan religions like druidism, kemetics, etc.) is one of the fastest growing religions in the U. S. right now. Books by popular authors like Silver Ravenwolf are being marketed to teenagers. A bookstore recently was selling "teenage witch kits" complete with a portable altar and instructions on how to cast spells and call on the goddess. From what I heard, they sold out of them in a few hours. If you talk to any of these people, they'll tell you (as I spent years patiently doing) that their religion is gentle, earth-centered, pre-dates Christianity, and is loving. On the surface, all these things are true. Many of them have had bad experiences with church/Christianity and are running from God. Many of the teens were raised without a firm foundation (of any kind) and are turning to something which is being marketed as both stable and powerful. It took a powerful knock over the head by God to wake me up … over the years, several people had tried to talk to me about Jesus and I either brushed them off or stunned them because I knew more about the Bible than they did. But it's turned out, I didn't know the right parts of it ;) Satan has a great marketing department, yanno? -Kathi -- To unsubscribe, send ANY message to Please see our FAQ at http://joywell.org/AOG/

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© 2001 by Richard A. Tatum
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