Response to Witch Way to Prison Michael Coren -  August 16, 2003 Sun Media
	Please excuse any errors in my prose today. There is a good reason. Last week I was turned into a newt. I suppose it was inevitable, and I deserved it. In my Aug. 2 column, I dared to make fun of people who call themselves pagans, making reference to Harry Potter, Bewitched and the like. I received more than 70 e-mails of complaint (the Sun received scores more). And then, suddenly, there I was crawling along the ground, all green and reptilian. Hey, nobody said the life of a columnist was easy. My wife, who remains in human form but is very understanding and has become quite the animal lover, read the e-mails and said I couldn't make this sort of stuff up if I tried. She has a point. Although they came from the United States, Canada, Britain and Australia, my new friends mostly said the same thing. They were very "offended," they almost all insulted me, many were venomously anti-Christian and anti-Jewish and, spare me darling, hardly any could spell. In all honesty, I have never encountered such an inability to spell basic words in my life. Funniest of all were the names. The sender headers on the e-mails listed names as common as Smith and Jones. But the writers signed themselves with names such as Mystic Tiger, Dancing Seaweed and, most enjoyable of all, "Calitha: High Priestess, Sacred Moon Circle Coven. Founder and Chair Southeastern Michigan Pagan Alliance. Co-Leader, Global Goddess Region 10." Golly, I'm impressed. There were, of course, the ones that just threatened me, and one that consisted of a single word that means a person's bum, in the largest letters I've ever seen on a computer screen. Another tried to send me a virus, several promised to sue me, one said "Its abowt time people like yu got wat they disirved." Quite so. I thought I'd already encountered all of the humourless, thin-skinned special interest groups in North America, but I hadn't yet met the pagans. They could teach others a lesson. Whoops. A short pause here while I dive into the pond and gobble up a water bug. Sorry, back to the column. To extend and paraphrase G.K. Chesterton, when people stop believing in God they don't believe in nothing at all, they believe in anything and everything. I can't help thinking of that wonderfully funny movie Spinal Tap; the scene with the Druids and the tiny Stonehenge. Many of us listened to progressive rock, wondered about stone circles and earth cults and so on at one time. But we grew up. Put away childish things, as it were. Lyrical Flower, Wandering Shadow Essence, Yellow Panpipe, et al. seem to miss the delicious contradiction in their arguments. They look to the ancient past for inspiration, but it's clear to me they are drenched in a very modern neurosis. "I've been criticized. Help me, help me. I'm offended." So what. Join the club. Many of my correspondents took me to task for criticizing them because I hadn't done my research. In fact, I know quite a lot about all this nonsense and treat it thus. Yes, I am aware that Buffy doesn't represent the real life of people who call themselves pagan. Mind you, if pagans were that cute ... And, yes, I understand that people who call themselves wiccans don't wiggle their noses or ride broomsticks. But just because I've read their books doesn't mean I have to give any credence to the claims of people whose thinking is as woolly as the sweater my mum knitted me when I was 6 years old. Which, by the way, had a black cat on the front! They may huff and puff about not being satanists and satanism being a Christian concept. But the entire context of pagan acceptance of virtually any fashionable whim allows all sorts of craziness to flourish. Judging by my experience of the past week, pagans are not really pagans, any more than most satanists are really satanists. They're just silly. But hold, my tiny body vibrates and I feel the goddess Vulra losing ground to the one God above. Yes, I am restored! Oh, pooh. I'm once again an overweight, bald man with a mortgage. I rather enjoyed newtism.                                                ---------------------------- Michael Coren is a Toronto-based writer and broadcaster. He can be emailed at info@michaelcoren.com and his web site is michaelcoren.com. Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@sunpub.com. Copyright © 2003, CANOE, a division of Netgraphe Inc.All rights reserved.