Salem's Witches fight for Civil Rights

[Guest guest]

By Jason Szep

Tue Oct 31, 1:35 PM ET

 

 

 

SALEM, Massachusetts (Reuters) - She brews potions, wears flowing

black caftans and says she can speak with the dead and cast spells

with a gentle wave of a wand.

 

Laurie Cabot is a proud witch, and she's fighting for her civil

rights.

 

At age 73, the official witch of Salem says her craft is stronger

than ever, as she sits in an overstuffed chair behind a pink table

where she does psychic readings -- and where, she says, spirits of

the dead often " pop through. "

 

" I can't see them with my eyes, I just know they are there, " said

Cabot, whose cheek is tattooed with a spiral and whose long gray

hair, streaked with black, covers her shoulders and much of her back.

 

" They talk to me and tell me things that no one would know. And of

course the person I'm reading for is either totally shocked or they

end up crying a lot, " she said.

 

Cabot says she became the first to openly practice witchcraft in

Salem, a historic New England city made infamous in 1692 when young

girls accused servants, neighbors and relatives of being witches. As

fear, bigotry and denunciation spread, 19 people were executed before

reason prevailed.

 

As Cabot prepares for her busiest season, the Wiccan New Year of

Samhain that falls on Halloween, she is doing something she hasn't

done in nearly two decades -- fight publicly for the civil rights of

witches.

 

In between psychic readings and running a shop that sells everything

a witch needs to get started, Cabot is mailing letters to civic

leaders across Massachusetts warning them of the legal perils of

portraying witches as grisly old hags.

 

Posters hung on government property of witches as haggard women on

broomsticks or as green-faced outcasts with an evil glint in their

eye could lead to defamation lawsuits by witches protesting what they

see as violations of their civil rights.

 

" If they don't protect us and take care of us like everyone else,

then they could be sued, " said Cabot, who in 1986 founded the Witches

League for Self-Awareness after the filming of " The Witches of

Eastwick, " a movie witches said made them look " stupid. "

 

'NOT SATANISTS'

 

In the 1980s, Cabot waged a letter-writing campaign to major

newspapers and television networks explaining witches are not

Satanists, do not practice evil and follow a peaceful pagan witch

religion, Wicca, which is legally recognized.

 

After that burst of activism, she returned to her main passion -- her

witchcraft and her shop. " I handed over the work, the letter writing,

to another group, but all these years they have done nothing, so we

are starting over this month. "

 

" I'd like to canvass the whole of the United States, city by city,

and give every official this law memorandum, " she said, producing a

white four-page pamphlet on the constitutional rights of witches.

 

In one section, the pamphlet quotes from a U.S. Court of Appeals

ruling that reads: " While there are certainly aspects of Wiccan

philosophy that may strike most people as strange or

incomprehensible, there mere fact that a belief may be unusual does

not strip it of constitutional protection. "

 

She also wants the military to let Wiccan soldiers have faith symbols

inscribed on their government-issued tombstones.

 

In 1975, Massachusetts' then-governor Michael Dukakis proclaimed

Cabot the official witch of Salem, a city synonymous with witchcraft.

 

Today the city teems with an estimated 500 to 1,000 practicing

witches and pagans. Shops that sell Tarot cards and magic supplies

line its streets, which swell with tourists leading up to Halloween

on October 31.

 

A " Dairy Witch " parlor sells ice cream. Shops such as " The Broom

Closet " and " Angelica of the Angels " conduct " psychic channeling. "

There's a " Salem Witch Museum, " " Witch House " and a " Witch Dungeon. "

 

" This is looked at as fantasy land in the pagan community, " said

Jerrie Hildebrand, a witch and an ordained minister with the Circle

Sanctuary, a Wiccan organization that provides counseling and

spiritual services. " We refer to it jokingly as the rent-a-witch

season. "