Women Drawn to Gathering of Witches by Religion’s Belief in Veneration of Females

Pilar is a 19-year-old student at Irvine Valley College who holds a nearly full-time job at a chiropractor’s office and lives with her family in Laguna Canyon.

In her free time, she studies to be a witch.

On Saturday, Pilar (she prefers to be known only by her first name), was attending the Reclaiming the Goddess Within conference in Laguna Niguel, a gathering of established and would-be witches. After being involved with the conference sponsor, the First Wiccian Universal Life Church, for about six months, she said she has no doubt she will eventually be ordained a witch.

“In the craft, we call them priests and priestesses,” said Marsha Smith Shaw, head of the Laguna Niguel chapter of the church, where local members and others gathered Saturday for the second day of the weekend-long seminar.

“We don’t sacrifice babies, we don’t worship Satan,” said Smith Shaw of the religion, which is based on the ancient role of women as healers and emphasizes the feminine deity. “We’re life-affirming and tied to the earth, helping others find a happy, harmonious life.” Most of those attending Saturday’s women-only conference were not church members. The mix of women--young and old, married, divorced and lesbian--were drawn to the conference because the ancient religion venerates women.

“I think the biggest thing to heal in this world is women’s self-image,” said Diane Stein, a priestess from Pittsburgh, who led the Saturday workshop. An avowed lesbian, Stein insisted that men who belong to the church not attend Saturday. “I want the women to look at themselves, at their own issues.”

Although a high priestess, Stein says she has no healing powers herself, but uses the tools of the craft--rocks, wands, herbs, mental communication--to help others heal themselves. During a rock-laying ritual, where different colored stones believed to have healing power are placed on the body of the patient, conferees questioned the technique. Stein provided simple advice, and then a rule of thumb, “You just have to use your intuition.”

Smith Shaw says people she works with apprentice with her at least 18 months before she will ordain them to become witches and warlocks, able to perform all duties, including weddings, funerals and entrance rites, which is similar to baptism, for children.

And despite the array of pentagrams, symbolic snakes and other typical witch fixings throughout Smith Shaw’s two-story home, these witches maintain their claim to doing no evil.

“We’re trying to reclaim those symbols . . . and the word witch ; they’ve been misused and perverted,” she said, comparing the religious movement to the black pride movement of the 1960s.

Like many of those who paid the $40 fee to attend the conference, Pilar knew she was different from other people at an early age.

Ancient Egypt and medieval Ireland were the playgrounds of her childhood imagination, where her psychic abilities took over showing her the past and future, she said.

She said that with a Latino mother and an Irish/German father, she endured 10 years of Catholic schooling and upbringing before finding a more individual, less hierarchical religion.

Said Stein, expressing sentiments that Pilar and many of those gathered for the conference often feel, “I deal on the astral level, I’m not in this world.”