Bitchin’ Wiccan
Heh. It’s always amusing to see people grasp at straws to get some free publicity :
Thanks to certain tribulations in 1692, this historic seaport north of Boston is known around the world as Witch City.Salem treasures its supernatural reputation, marketing its witchiness to draw tourists. Along with witch walking tours and spooky cemetery excursions, dozens of small shops sell custom brooms and the latest styles in capes and cloaks. Two Salem pet boutiques offer pointy black hats for cats and dogs.
Witch plaques and statues abound in Salem. But when city leaders recently announced plans for a new bronze effigy ? a statue honoring the fictional witch Samantha Stephens from the television show “Bewitched” ? some in Salem felt the devil was at work.
“It is kind of disrespectful, because we are striving to get away from that TV image,” said Melissa Coombs, 23, who said she has been a witch since she was 14.
Coombs, who works in a witch store, said: “This is a religion, not something to make fun of. As it is, people come into the store and think we can make stuff move for them.”
Considering the fact that the people killed during the witch trials probably had nothing to do with Wicca or any other neo-Pagan faith, the protests of those wanting to defend Salem ring a little hollow to me. Have any of you ever been to Salem? The Wiccan community there has gotten a lot of mileage out of the Salem Witch Trials while mostly looking the other way[1] about the crass commercialization happening across the street. The town is crawling with cheesy merchandise depicting witches as green-skinned, broomstick-riding monsters and now they want to throw a fit about disrespecting Wicca?
1 : I don’t remember hearing any complaints when I was there ten years ago.
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It’s one thing for a private business or individual to sell caricatures of “green-skinned, broomstick-riding monsters” or otherwise mock witches, and a somewhat different thing for a city government to officially and financially perpetuate a stereotype. That said, it’s a statue of a character from a TV show (a pretty blonde at that). I think certain Wiccans may need to learn to relax a little (I say that as a Wiccan).
This is normally a much more liberal site. What happened, wake up on the right side of the bed this morning?
Comment by Jason — June 1, 2005 @ 11:48 am
ummm… You picked the wrong Wiccan story to talk about…
there’s another story about Wiccans in the news…
apparently a Judge decided that two Wiccan parents, who are divorcing, can no longer raise their 9 year old son in a “nonmainstream religious environment.” Let me again point out that BOTH parents are practicing Wiccans and it has nothing to do with the divorce. But the judge has decided that it would be a bad thing for them to involve their child in “nonmainstream religion” and therefore, neither parent can celebrate any of their pagan holidays with their own son.
Comment by tomN! — June 1, 2005 @ 12:06 pm
by the way- that wasn’t the best article to link to, but it was the first one that popped up on google news when i typed in “wiccan divorce”. there’s a lot of other articles about it too.
Comment by tomN! — June 1, 2005 @ 12:09 pm
Oh yeah. I remember reading about that story the other day. I’m sure we can look forward to the GOP elite to complain about judicial activism any moment now…
Despite what Jason seems to perceive as a rightward turn, I have no problem with Wicca. In fact, when I visited Salem in high school, there were Wiccans in our group. My problem is that the entire town of Salem (business owners, the city government, and the Wicca community) have been cashing in on the Witch Trials for years by using some pretty cartoonish portrayals of witches and/or piggybacking their own agenda on the murders of innocent people. Sure, a Bewitched statue is unbelievably tacky, but the rest of the town is too.
Comment by greg — June 1, 2005 @ 12:19 pm
“It is kind of disrespectful, because we are striving to get away from that TV image”
What are you, nuts?? Samantha was hot!
Comment by Roddy McCorley — June 1, 2005 @ 12:23 pm
In Greg’s defense, I think he’s had plenty of articles mocking Christianity’s willingness to commercialize their savior while demonizing those who belittle him.
I will say, though, that Wiccans claiming that their belief system extends back to those living over three hundred years ago is akin to Mormons who baptize dead people they’ve never met into the faith.
Comment by dAnimal — June 1, 2005 @ 2:48 pm
A statue celebrating celebrating a Samantha seems appropriate since Elizabeth Montgomery was as much of a witch as Sarah Good, Sarah Osborne, Tituba and the other women accused in Salem. I think we should take the next logical step and erect a statue of Bob Crane’s Hogan at Guatanamo Bay.
Comment by Joshua — June 2, 2005 @ 9:02 pm
Wicca: pretending to be an ancient religion since 1956
Comment by Anna — June 5, 2005 @ 11:24 pm