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- The
Religion Report with John clearly (Radio National), 13/12/00.
Author Fiona Horne and Anglican Archbishop Peter
Hollingworth, take on the lighter side of the dark arts. Just goes
to show how misguided and close minded Christians are about the
craft. Especially that damn Peter Hollingworth, always whinging
about something, this time he's whinging about the church not
having a say about the Queensland witchcraft ban being lifted. Go
have a cry.
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http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/8.30/relrpt/stories/s223250.htm
Witches in
Queensland?
Summary:
This week, the Witch Craze. Author Fiona Horne and Anglican
Archbishop Peter Hollingworth, take on the lighter side of the dark
arts.
John Cleary: Today it’s all about Witchcraft.
Fiona Horne: I don’t consider that any great victory for
witches at all, I think that as a piece of legislation wasn’t worth
the paper it was written on, it’s just rubbish. There was a general
piece of legislation passed, it was from a law that came out in
England, the Anti-Witchcraft Laws; it basically said anyone who
proposes to divine the future by fraudulent means, practice I think
spiritual mediumship, or witchcraft. Basically everything listed,
and then put ‘witchcraft’ in the same bracket is everything that
witchcraft isn’t. So again it was a misappropriation of the word, a
misuse of the word. The piece of legislation, it was not what real
witchcraft is, so I don’t consider it any great victory, it’s just
another piece of useless legislation.
John Cleary: Fiona Horne, author of ‘Life’s a Witch’, on
recent changes to legislation in Queensland.
John Cleary: So what’s with the Witch Craze. There’s
Charmed, Angel, Sabrina, and of course Buffy. Sabrina could be
classed with an older tradition of family programs of the ‘60s such
as ‘Bewitched’, but with Charmed and Buffy the demonic engages with
adolescent hormones to produce an altogether richer brew. Recently
the Queensland Government announced it was to remove statutes which
outlawed witchcraft, and this met with some criticism from the
Anglican Archbishop, Peter Hollingworth. We shall hear of his
concerns shortly. But first, author and journalist Fiona Horne has
published her own guide for teenage Witches, ‘Life’s a Witch’, and
as she told Michela Perske, she did not begin life as a child of
Satan.
Fiona Horne: In my teens I was brought up Catholic and went
to a Catholic school, and we had religious education to do with
Catholic faith. I absorbed it, but I didn’t really feel that it was
answering the questions I was asking about my spiritual life and
self. Later in my teens though, when I had moved out of home and
established a bit of independence I started thinking about how I
felt as a spiritual creature on the planet again, and I was drawn
to witchcraft, Wicca in particular, the religion of witchcraft that
I work with is Pagan, it’s nature-worshipping. So out of that
interest in Paganism, I discovered witchcraft and being that
witchcraft, you recognise not only a god but a goddess, and you can
do spells and make magic to create change in your life. I mean
these are all the things that certainly were very appealing to me
and made sense to me.
When I was going to mass I was always surprised that there were so
many images of pain and torture, there just seemed to be such an
emphasis on pain and suffering, and you go into the church and
there’d be all these horrible, macabre images of this man being
tortured, suffering so much pain for the world’s sins, and there
was just this incredible emphasis on everything that was wrong and
nothing that was right. And there was this fear of God, I mean, in
my school, the fear of God was like, it was really beaten into you,
literally, looking for empowering female role models within their
own – I always found it quite strange that the mother of God had to
be a virgin, which implied there was something inherently dirty
about female sexuality. And certainly one of the first Bibles I was
given, The Children’s Living Bible that I was given on my first
communion, there was a line in it I’ll never forget reading which
said ‘Women are doomed to bear children in pain and suffering
because they are the source of all evil and sin.’ I mean these are
all the things I was sort of picking up, more of that stuff than
the benevolent, loving image of Jesus. The things that Jesus talked
about I really relate to, but certainly at my school it was more
the Old Testament.
Michaela Perske: So you haven’t actually rejected your own
Catholic faith, have you?
Fiona Horne: No, I just – I respect it, I think there’s room
for everyone’s spiritual proclivities. I think the world religions
are fascinating and there’s room for all of them. So I mean with
witchcraft, even though I write books about it, I’m not on some
crusade to convert, I’m just providing information that’s real,
that will work towards overthrowing the negative stereotypes that
are bound to the word ‘witchcraft’.
Michaela Perske: What are some of those negative stereotypes
that we have about witchcraft?
Fiona Horne: Well still the obvious, the Satan rubbish. I
mean it’s really just quite obvious. You have to be Christian to
believe Satan exists, and witches aren’t Christian, so that just
sorts that out straight away. We don’t worship Satan, and if anyone
says they worship Satan and they’re a witch, they’re just
misappropriating the word. I mean there was this kind of group,
this Satanic church that developed in the ‘60s by a guy, Anton
Levay, but everything he was doing was just a knee-jerk reaction to
Christianity. He wasn’t talking about all-practising real
witchcraft.
Michaela Perske: Now this is actually your third book on
witchcraft, and this one you’ve decided to aim at the teenage
market. Now why have you decided to aim this book at teenagers?
Fiona Horne: The other two books I wrote, I got a lot of
feedback from teens, just loads and loads and loads of teenagers
hitting my website, asking me specific questions to do with issues
that directed affected them: their parents, peer pressures,
siblings, school, leaving school, all that kind of stuff, and they
were writing to me and coming out to me at book launches I was
doing and this and that, saying, ‘Look, this is great, but we want
to know more, we want to know specifically about this stuff’, and
that’s why I wrote this book because I had to answer those
questions.
Michaela Perske: It’s interesting that it is aimed at a teen
market, because in the last sort of four to five years I suppose,
we’ve seen this renewed fascination with witchcraft. We’ve got a
multitude of shows that actually deal with, I suppose, what would
be termed the supernatural. How do you think it is we go about
trying to understand or explain this renewed fascination in things
that are supernatural?
Fiona Horne: Well I think with these shows, I mean Charmed
only started last year, Buffy only sort of embraced the concept of
witchcraft or Wicca and had that extra character that’s come on
that says she’s a witch. I mean it’s all been fairly recent.
Sabrina the Teenage Witch has been around for a little while, but
it’s become very popular last year. I think it’s because they’ve
got the power of the consumer dollar more than ever before, so
advertising’s geared at them, and to a degree they’re being
manipulated more than ever before and there’s more pressure. And I
guess what they’re drawn to is that these powerful, strong images
they see on television, especially the girls, like Buffy and the
Charmed girls, are all very, you know it’s very feminist in a
sense, to a degree in the sense that they’re strong girls, being
portrayed as strong girls who can get what they want out of life on
their own terms. I mean these are all the things that witchcraft
talks about. You can do spells, you can do rituals to create change
to get what you want out of life. What I find though is with the
teens that go past the dabbling, voyeuristic stage and actually do
really look into the real witchcraft, they find it really, really
rewarding.
Michaela Perske: But don’t you think it can also be a little
bit dangerous if we give not only young people, but just people in
general, this idea that conjuring up a few spells and doing a few
incantations can actually change your life in some way?
Fiona Horne: Well I very much talk about in all my books
that you take action on the metaphysical plane and the physical
plane. So it’s not just about going ‘ogga-booga’ and crossing your
fingers and hoping something will work. I don’t sort of promote
spell-casting as a cure-all for all things, it’s a facet of
witchcraft, but it’s not the entire thing. Witchcraft and Wicca is
a way of living life, a way of approaching life, a way of looking
at life, and the spell-casting is just one facet of it. So I’m not
sort of trying to airbrush the whole thing and say, ‘Oh yes, you
know, you just –‘ say for example you got kicked out of school
because you were misbehaving, ‘just do a spell and it’ll all be
OK’. Not at all. Witchcraft is not a New Age bandaid, it’s not a
lightweight, fluffy,
Oh-let’s-all-think-positive-white-light-and-it’ll-all-be-good.
Witches honour the cycles of death, destruction and decay as much
as birth, growth renewal, rebirth, whatever. One of the festivals
is a Festival of the Dead, Samhain, which is the descent into
winter. It’s a time to honour the dead and to honour the fact that
everything ends, and at the end is another beginning. It’s not
about dressing up in white robes and running around like we’re out
of the wickerman??? or something. It goes beyond image; and it’s
one of the fastest growing religions in the western world. I’ve
just got back from the UK because my books are out over there, and
so many people turned up to the launches, so many people. I did so
much media, there was so much interest. I think also too, because I
don’t fit into that stereotype of what they expect. I certainly
think that what I’m talking about in my books is where the craft is
now, and where it’s going, rather than where it supposedly came
from. And we’re in an important evolutionary period of the craft,
and it’s very modern.
John Cleary: Bibbety-bobbity-boo. Author of ‘Life’s a
Witch’, Fiona Horne, speaking with Michaela Perske.
So is there anything really to be fussed about? When the Queensland
Government recently removed the crime of witchcraft from the
statute books, many welcomed it as a long overdue move to cast off
the last vestiges of superstition. They were surprised then, when
the urbane Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane, Peter Hollingworth,
voiced his concerns not just about the statute, but the dismissive
treatment of such adolescent fantasies.
Peter Hollingworth: The primary issue there was that the
Queensland Government had proceeded without any consultation with
anybody as far as we could tell. Certainly none of the churches had
an opportunity to express a view on it. And this is the kind of
thing that happens with a unicameral system, where you it just goes
through one House of Parliament, and that’s the end of it. The
first thing we knew about it is that it had happened, and we were
disappointed about that because I think however the Attorney might
explain it, there are some serious issues affecting people’s mental
health and general wellbeing, that we don’t want to further
jeopardise.
John Cleary: Couldn’t you be concerned of over-reacting just
a tad? I mean it’s a current popular fad for sort of witchcraft,
it’s seen as little more than an amusing tool for sort of teenage
fantasies, such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Charmed, and
Sabrina the Teenage Witch on television.
Peter Hollingworth: Yes, I’m aware of that. That’s the
reason why we didn’t make an overly strong reaction to it. But
equally it has to be said that there are growing numbers of
examples of where young people, and vulnerable people, have been
drawn into spells and caught into psychologically controlling and
manipulative situations, which has led to very serious and
dangerous outcomes for them, and often separation and alienation
from their families, and a real effect upon their mental and
emotional wellbeing. You only need to talk to consulting
psychiatrists and medical practitioners who have experience of that
kind of thing, to know that whilst a lot of it is harmless, there
is also a good deal of it that is not.
John Cleary: How do you react then to a book like Fiona
Horne’s?
Peter Hollingworth: Well it looks trivial. You mean ‘Life’s
a Witch: A Handbook for Teen Witches’. It’s hard to know what you
make of this thing, it’s a funny sort of mixture of trivia and
clever writing. I don’t know who Fiona Horne is, and I don’t know
what her beliefs and her practices are, but I can tell you that
witches’ covens and activities of that kind are alive and well all
up and down the coastline of Queensland. I don’t think that it’s
something that we should simply take lightly, or unadvisedly and
just assume that it’s all harmless.
John Cleary: Are you saying that those people who go around
saying ‘Look, the Devil made me do it’ and ‘There are Satanic
cults’, are actually saying that the physical presence of the Devil
is there, and that they’re actually right?
Peter Hollingworth: Well they certainly would say that. I
can cite a few cases of where people have tampered around with
magic and witchcraft that they’ve been very severely frightened and
traumatised by some of the outcomes. I mean we are playing with
fire, and I had to say that. I don’t want to wish anyone ill over
this, if someone is simply practising an alternative religion in a
harmless way that is not manipulative. It is a free country and we
do have freedom of religion, and I wouldn’t want to take that away.
And I’m not over-reacting, but I do think people have to be a bit
cautious when they say all kind of activities associated with
witchcraft are harmless.
John Cleary: Is this fire the presence of real evil, or is
it simply the manifestation of psychological hysteria?
Peter Hollingworth: Well I’d have to say, and I think that
most Christians would hold the view, that there is such a thing as
evil, and there are evil forces at work. You can articulate that by
talking about Satan or the Devil, that’s sound, Scriptural
teaching. Equally it’s true to say that one could get into serious
danger over manipulation and entry into bizarre psychological
states, which are equally dangerous. I don’t know where the one
begins and the other one ends. I certainly know that the presence
of active evil is real and alive, and it does touch people’s lives,
particularly when they’re vulnerable.
John Cleary: What would you suggest about such programs as
the ones we’ve mentioned on television, and about such books as
Fiona Horne’s? I mean you’re not suggesting censorship?
Peter Hollingworth:No, I’ve watched Buffy once or twice and
you wouldn’t censor that, and I wouldn’t want to censor Fiona
Horne’s ‘Life’s a Witch’, that would only encourage people to buy
more copies. And of course the risk about all these things, and
even us talking about it, it’ll encourage people to do likewise. I
think that the important thing, and I do this as a Christian
leader, simply to warn people that what might look superficially
harmless may not turn out to be so. And that young people, older
people, vulnerable people, should be very wary and keep their
spiritual antennae up, and if there’s anything at all that they
enter into that’s likely to be harmful to them, they should avoid
it.
John Cleary: Many people are saying that this really is
harmful, things like Wicca are simply attached to a revived
interest in Paganism, and that really is about the old feminine
fertility rituals and the idea of the mother goddess and those sort
of things, and there’s a gentle slide in from sort of traditional
Christianity, even on the boundaries of Christianity people are
talking about these things. Such people as those talking about
original blessing and other things, Starhawk, the witch has been
associated with the work of Christian institutes in California,
those sorts of things, so isn’t there a sort of boundary problem
here anyway?
Peter Hollingworth: Indeed there is a boundary problem, and
I think what’s happened is that with the, not the collapse, but the
decline in the influence and authority of traditional institutional
religion, and a general view of particularly the younger generation
of post-Modernists that these things are to be cast aside; into
that kind of void, that spiritual void, can then enter a whole
series of methodologies, rituals, liturgies, alternative Pagan
rites, and I’m just mindful of the fact that if you sweep the house
clean of the first demon, seven deadly demons more deadly than the
first, may enter. I just think in this world of extreme religious
pluralism, the great spectrum of things ranging from the healthy
and the respectable, and the balance and the true and tried, you go
down to quite bizarre things which are very risky for people,
particularly people who are young or vulnerable or unable to
discriminate.
John Cleary: The Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane, Peter
Hollingworth.
We’re out of time. Sorry we couldn’t bring you the advertised
interview with the Reverend Dr Barney Pityana of the South African
Human Rights Commission; we shall try for next week.
That’s it for today. Thanks to Michaela Perske and John Diamond for
production.
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