Students share Wiccan religious beliefs, faith

Losing one’s religion may never be called easy, and some may not consider it a choice.
But two CMU students who dared to explore their convictions found that the peace, freedom and closeness of their new faith, missing in their former religions, was worth any heartache.
Angela Bavar, Davison freshman, was raised Catholic, but has been a Wiccan witch for the past 5 years. She recalls the painful moment she told her parents about her new beliefs.
“There were very long discussions, yelling and arguments. They started threatening to throw me out of the house. Every time I’m home it’s not a happy situation,” Bavar said.
“I’m generally told I’m wrong for what I believe in and I’m going to hell for it, and that they hope I change my life around so that I can be with them when they die. They don’t accept it and they really don’t try to understand it.”
Bavar’s friend, Tiffany Davidson, Iron Mountain sophomore, has been a Wiccan witch for 7 years. Davidson, raised Presbyterian, said her mom was afraid of her new beliefs.
“She’s very, very Jesus-Christ oriented, very Christian,” Davidson said. “She was very afraid because a lot of people don’t link different religions with each other.”
Davidson said she is very close to her mom and considers her to be her best friend.
“She’s always been there for me. And when she found out that I was different than she believed I was after being so close, … that was something that kind of hurt her,” Davidson said.
Growing up, both women said they questioned their parents’ religions and found some aspects they disagreed with. Bavar began exploring other religions while in sixth grade, questioning Catholicism.
“I questioned a lot of it,” she said. “It wasn’t a part of nature. It was more set apart, and I felt my religion should be more nature-based. I didn’t like how people lived in fear. I didn’t like how if people did bad things that they would go to hell.”
Bavar said Catholicism is also very male-oriented.
“I thought a religion with more equality and balance would be more fitting for me,” she said.
“I didn’t like the fact that there was a lot of recruiting going on,” Davidson said. “I thought that if someone wanted to believe a certain aspect of life, they would take up that aspect, not be pushed into it.
“The other thing was I didn’t like the attitudes of the churches in my area, saying that if you believe in something other than Jesus Christ, or other than the Christian God, or in something other than their doctrine, you were damned.”
But Wicca and Christianity do have similarities, Davidson said.
“There’s no two Christians that will believe the exact same thing. The same is true of Wiccans and witches. There’s no two witches that believe exactly the same thing,” she said.
Ironically, Davidson said she heard about Wicca from her mom about 9 years ago. Davidson’s mom participated in a women’s group in Iron Mountain that talked about each woman’s beliefs.
“And me being interested in religion, my mom came home and told me all the stuff that had happened at the meeting, and told me about some of the beliefs,” Davidson said.
One of the beliefs was about Wicca, derived from the Celtic word “Wicce” meaning “the wise people,” Davidson said.
She said “witch” also comes from “Wicce” and a “Wiccan” is a practitioner of Wicca.
She said she first learned about Wicca through books and the Internet because Iron Mountain was not open minded about Wicca at the time.
“When I got to college, I got a little information by word of mouth, and started building a stronger community,” she said.
Bavar said she first heard about Wicca from a Wiccan. Then she read more about the religion and talked with more Wiccans.
Wicca involves many different traditions and beliefs, Bavar said, but one belief most Wiccans agree on is “harm none and do what thy will.
“It basically means that if you don’t harm anything, then live your life as you feel it should be lived,” Bavar said.
“In other words, it’s kind of like ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you,’” Davidson said.
The Wiccan afterlife is often called Summerland and is obtained after life lessons are learned through reincarnations, Davidson said.
The two women said they believe in a goddess and a god, who created all things on Earth and are also viewed as regulators.
But the women said they don’t believe in any absolute good or evil and not in a devil or Satan.
Davidson said any consequences for bad deeds will come on Earth.
“Originally, before the New Testament was written, there was no Satan. The only evil, the only wrath, was that of God,” Davidson said. “The theory of Wicca- and any Christian will debate this with me- was that Satan was a creation of the church to try to bump off the pagan religion.
“And as we saw throughout time, with the witch trials and such, people of my religion had to go into hiding.”
Bavar and Davidson have defended a symbol of Wicca, the pentagram, as a religious symbol. The pentagram is a five-pointed star inside a circle.
Both women belong to the Michigan chapter of Witches Against Religious Discrimination, and have helped the American Civil Liberties Union fight for religious freedom.
Last year, a girl at Lincoln Park High School was successfully defended by the ACLU for wearing a pentagram, or pentacle, in school. The court found the pentacle was a symbol of her religious beliefs.
“Lincoln Park is not alone in this,” Davidson said. “There are many schools that look on the pentagram as a symbol of evil. And this is not true. You look at the symbol of the cross as a symbol of protection. The same is true of the pentacle.
“It can stand for an outstretched body. It stands for humanity, for the holiness of the human body.”
The pentagram can also stand for four elements – air, earth, fire and water – with spirit at the top, she said.
“There was a lack of information out about the pentagram, and the lack of understanding usually brings fear,” Bavar said.
Wicca is now recognized in U.S. courts and also included in the U.S. Army Chaplain’s Handbook.
Davidson said medieval Christian churches first tried to incorporate witches into Christianity, and when conversion failed, the pentacle, and witches, began to be considered evil.
Wicca is about 35,000 years old and many of its beliefs predate Christianity, she said. Davidson calls herself a witch in remembrance of the people who died for being accused of witchcraft. She also uses the term Wiccan and pagan.
“Pagan is an all-inclusive term,” she said. “It’s used in the Bible to refer to those who are not Christian.”
Bavar calls herself eclectic because she uses a variety of traditions.
Both women said they use a form of magick, spelled with a k to differentiate it from illusionary magic.
“I don’t think magick is set aside only for pagans and witches,” Bavar said. “Magick is usually manipulating your own energy for yourself, or using your energy to help others.”
Contrary to misconceptions, witches don’t use magick to hurt people by casting spells, Bavar said.
“We don’t try to hurt anybody in any way,” she said. “We abide by the Rule of Three.”
The Rule of Three states that all energies sent out, whether good or bad, return times three.
“You’re not allowed to manipulate people, because that will come back to you,” Davidson said. “We don’t try to make people do things that they don’t want to do.”
Other myths include the use of brooms and black attire. Davidson said brooms were originally used by the Pennsylvania Dutch who practiced a form of folk magick. Brooms were used to sweep away bad energies.
“If I was going to use something to ride around on these days the vacuum would be much quicker,” Davidson laughed. “It would be more jet-propelled.”
Many witches wear black because it is thought to absorb the most energy, she said. Witches in the old times wore black simply to hide better in the night from persecution, she said.
Both women said Hollywood movies such as “The Craft” and “Practical Magic” often throw in stereotypes or twists of truth to provide better entertainment.
Bavar said she likes how “The Craft” used The Rule of Three.
“People can’t just manipulate things and expect nothing wrong to happen because of it,” she said. “But I also kind of laugh at the movie because some of the things are so far from being possible or true. In the movie they just automatically switch somebody’s hairstyle and color and I don’t think that could happen. It would require hair dye.”
Davidson said “Practical Magic” was more accurate than “The Craft,” but said, “we typically do not draw pentacles on people’s chests with whipped cream.”
Bavar has not seen “The Blair Witch Project,” while Davidson said it had nothing to do with witches.
They said a large Wiccan and pagan community exists at CMU in which they participate. Overall, Bavar and Davidson said they enjoy their Wiccan religion more than the one they grew up with.
“I feel more at peace with myself and with the world around me,” Bavar said. “Just knowing that this is who I am, this is what I believe, and not having to feel that it’s wrong or different.”
“I enjoy the closeness in this religion,” Davidson said. “I feel a lot closer bond with my Wiccan community, and my pagan community in general. They’re almost like sisters and brothers to me.”
The arguments with her parents may last awhile longer, Bavar said, and won’t stop “until they realize that there is more than one way to living life. More than one right way.”
Davidson said, “It took my mom a while to get used to the fact that her daughter was not Christian. She’s finally come to terms with it.”
Davidson said Iron Mountain is more open to witches today as well.
Both women own traditional Wiccan dress, such as a long robe or gown, and they may dress this way during Wiccan rituals or when celebrating holidays. Bavar said Wiccans celebrate nature-based holidays, such as the spring equinox and summer solstice. Halloween, or Samhain, is The Wiccan New Year, Davidson said.
But unless they’re in their traditional dress, people may not recognize these two students as witches.
“Don’t look for the stereotypes of witches around this campus,” Davidson said, “because the person standing next to you might be one of us.”