Those ‘Pagan Rituals’: Please Say It Isn’t So

I need a word of reassurance. Please tell me that Janet Phelan’s Social Climes column entitled “Pagan Rituals” (Oct. 4) was a tongue-in-cheek look at a support group for people who were deprived of participating in Halloween as children and feel the need to act out some type of cosmic fantasy as adults.

Honestly, these people cannot be serious, can they? I mean, glass wands filled with dirt for healing and the “Goddess Guild.”

Oh, and hey, check out the crowd this place draws--witches, psychics--and, of course, what would a pagan coffeehouse be without your token college philosophy professor?

The only thing more frightening than the fact that places like this exist, and that people actually buy into this, is that a newspaper such as yours would devote space to writing about it.

But then you do publish the daily horoscope, albeit with the disclaimer that it is intended for “entertainment purposes only”--or is it?

STEVEN K. GAFFREY

San Diego