With a cauldron, book of spells and ritual knife among the tools of her faith, you could feel spooked by the sound of Dundonian Pamela Norrie. Craig Horne finds out more about her beliefs.
Mention a pagan witchcraft tradition and you may picture a crooked woman, standing amid a flaming pentagram perhaps, casting blight on those around her. Yet such images are at odds with the laid-back, friendly and thoroughly modern 25-year-old who happens to follow Wicca.
“When it comes to Wicca, one of the main principles is that you don’t harm anyone with your magic,” said Pamela. “Basically, you can do what you like as long as it’s not harmful to anyone else. So that includes you can’t really do curses or hexes, you can’t make someone fall in love with you, you can’t steal someone’s job — that sort of thing, because that’s all classed as negative.”
Paganism is the UK’s fastest growing religion. According to the Office of National Statistics, there were 31,000 pagans living in the UK in 2001. Last year, the Pagan Federation estimated there were around 360,000. At one point, a tick-box for ‘Pagan’ under the religion section of next year’s census was even considered.
Pamela believes Wicca holds a certain appeal for women. Followers worship the figures of both god and goddess — the equal, if not superior, standing of the latter coming as a revelation to many.
“Women are drawn to Wicca because they celebrate a female figure,” Pamela said. “There’s not this male figure that’s like this angry, stern father figure that’s going to punish you for what you do because you’re always doing wrong. That’s how Christianity felt to me when I was growing up and then, when I found Wicca, it’s like — it’s okay to be a woman, it’s okay to be female, you’re not any less than any man.”
She added, “I think because the way Wicca’s publicised, with shows like Charmed and Buffy, it appeals more to a female audience. Books as well, they tend to be more written for women than men. They don’t exclude men — there are still a lot of male Wiccans — but I think there are more women who are interested in it.”
It was a visit to a bookshop, at the age of 14, which first set Pamela on a pagan path.
“Before that, I was always sort of interested in magic and the belief that there’s more to the world than what you saw and what you were told in school,” she said. “So I’d always believed that there were things like fairies and nature spirits and things like that. Then, I was in a bookshop and I found out there were actually books on Wicca. I was going for just a spell book but then finding out there was a belief system as well was more interesting for me.”Celebration of festivalsWiccans celebrate festivals known as sabbats which are held eight times throughout the year and mark changes in the seasons. These sabbats are winter solstice or yule on December 20/21, summer solstice or midsummer on June 21/22 and the spring and autumn equinoxes (March 20/21 and September 20/21). The other four festivals are Imbolc, February 1/2; Beltane or May Eve on April 30/May 1; Lughnasadh also known by its Anglo-Saxon name of Lammas or Loaf Mass, August 1/2, and Samhain, also known as All Hallow’s Eve, October 31/November 1.
Deities are also honoured at monthly rites known as esbats, which are held on the full moon. One of Pamela’s most profound experiences came one full moon night when she first attempted the ritual of ‘drawing down the moon.’
“The moon is the symbol of the goddess, and all the power the goddess holds, so when you do the ritual of drawing down the moon you’re effectively trying to take in some of that power into yourself. Basically you just stand in front of the moon, you raise your hands with your palms facing upwards towards the sky — that’s called the goddess position, that’s to invoke the power of the goddess. You can say a chant if you want or you can say it mentally in your head what your intentions are. The first time I tried that it did feel quite powerful, to the point I looked around me and it looked like everything was bathed in a silvery glow, like moonlight had struck the whole room.”
Wiccans use a variety of tools in their worship — though, as Pamela pointed out, “You can direct your energy; the energy’s not in the tools themselves, it’s in you as a person. So you don’t necessarily need the tools but it’s easier to focus energy that way.”
She added, “I have a cauldron; I use it to light small fires in, burn herbs, put candles in for safety and burn incense on a charcoal block. I’ve got a ritual knife called an atham; you can use it to inscribe symbols on candles or if cutting a doorway. When you cast a circle you put up a magical protection around you while you work your magic. Some people like to draw a circle around them, like with chalk on a wooden floor or to have rope to mark out the circle or put candles; I just prefer to visualise. It’s more like etheric energy around you and the atham can be used to cut a doorway in that to let either yourself out if you need to get something or let other people into your circle.”
When it comes to spells, Pamela maintains a Book of Shadows — a nod to key Wicca figure Gerald Brosseau Gardner and his influential work by that name. When a certain need arises, Pamela will either compose a suitable spell on the spot or refer to one she has previously logged in her book.
“Some of us do believe in fate but we also believe that we’re in control of our paths and using things such as magic, it makes you feel like you’ve got more control,” she said.
“To draw love you wouldn’t specify a person, you would just do a spell to ask for love and ask for the right person to come to you. So you leave it up to the universe and you would state that person would have to be single so you wouldn’t draw someone who was attached. And if there was a career you like and someone had the job, you wouldn’t do a spell to take the job from them. Instead you would do one to open up opportunities because there’s nothing to say that that would be the right job for you anyway.”
An adherent of the Rule of Three, or ‘Threefold Law’, Pamela believes negative magic rebounds on the perpetrator. Accordingly, she does not deal in curses and hexes, though she is not entirely without the means of tackling nuisances.
“If someone was really negative in your life you can do a banishing to banish them out of your life. You’re not cursing them but you’re not allowing them to cause further harm to you.”
Though Pamela knew from an early age that Wicca was for her, she concedes that coming out of the broom closet is not without its pitfalls.Fear of persecution”I’ve not met many others that are out — a lot of people like to keep their faith private. Persecution is one thing. If they’re in a profession they may worry it would go against them. Say someone was a primary school teacher — the parents might not be too happy that there’s a Wiccan as a teacher, even though their personal beliefs don’t come in to what they’re good at.
“Also, Wiccans don’t really feel the need to advertise their faith or to really justify it to anyone. You won’t find them handing our leaflets or giving speeches in the city centre, citing passages from their books or knocking on doors — we don’t try to convert. We believe that if the path is right for you, you will find it yourself.
“Most of the time if I’m comfortable around someone I don’t mind speaking about my faith but if I’m unsure of them or what their attitude might be, or if they have some very strong opinions, then I might just keep my faith quiet, which feels a bit sad to have to do that.
“One time, a friend of the family who was a churchgoer, shall we say, had some very strong opinions and saw my pentacle necklace and believed it to be a symbol of evil, a symbol of the devil. She was trying to tell me that I was actually invoking the devil by wearing this pendant and because I was also wearing the colour black, which is associated with satanists as well, I was drawing negative energy towards me. I haven’t spoken to her since.”
When asked how life for pagans could be improved, Pamela said, “What people don’t understand they fear, and there’s not really education when it comes to paganism so people are still in the dark about it. Pagan weddings are now legal, so that’s a bonus, that’s something positive. I think it should be educated in RE classes — not in a converting sort of way but if they can teach all other faiths then I don’t see why they can’t teach about paganism.”
The face of 21st century Wicca is that of an intelligent, empowered woman rejecting dogmatic, male-centred faiths in favour of one that celebrates nature, creativity, the formation of one’s own values and sees the female as divine.
As a final point, however, Pamela stressed, “Although we believe in a god and a goddess and Christians believe in just a god, we still believe that all deities are basically the same energy — we just give them different names. So you’re still praying to the same source of everything.”