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Witches' BrouhahaFending off religious tourists and struggling to organize a coven on Halloween.

By Lee Ann KinkadePosted Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2008, at 6:56 AM ET

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Mark Oppenheimer argued that Wiccans should back off some of their historical claims. Tim Harford said that it's dangerous to be a witch in a recession. In 1998, Walter Shapiro examined witches as a voting bloc. A Wiccan reader asked Slate's advice columnist, Prudence, for advice on coming out of the "broom closet" to her family. Emily Bazelon praised store-bought Halloween costumes, and Torie Bosch explained why celebrities and politicians can't stop their faces from being made into masks.

These problems aren't restricted to our Halloween celebrations. A few years ago, I led the Lughnasadh ritual. The festival, which takes place on Aug. 1, 2, or 6 (we can't even agree on a date), honors the beginning of the harvest and the sun god, which bring me to my two major complaints about Lughnasadh. I hate making corn muffins in August. It makes the house much hotter than it ever needs to be. In addition to corn muffins, the festival calls for a bonfire—in August. In Virginia. There's nothing quite like a grumpy high priestess to set the tone for a spiritual experience. As soon as we had cast the circle, it began to pour. As members of a nature-based religion, this seems like the sort of condition we should be able to cope with. And I suppose we did. My sister removed my wrap (it's a good thing it was a private ritual, because that's all I was wearing), and we held it over the as-yet-unlit bonfire until we successfully ignited it. So far, so good. But the spell, as it were, was broken. As I was invoking the relevant deities, I heard a crack and a hiss. Someone had opened a beer. I glared. She ignored me and began to chat with somebody else. I began to think longingly of religions that stress obedience, remembered that those traditions tend to have poverty and chastity associated with them, and felt a certain nostalgia for of my days as a solitary witch.

These sorts of events inspired me to leave the coven behind. I currently work with one other witch, whom I've known since we were 3 and 5. We plan our rituals with little fuss and no doctrine. Our litmus test is, Does it feel right? One decision we've made is to rebuff curious friends who ask to join our Halloween rituals. It seems like half the people I know want to be pagan on Halloween. I have no problem with a little religious tourism. I'm a bit of a spiritual slut. I have never turned down an invitation to a Seder. Bach thundering through a church transports me. But when I see visions of bacchanals dancing in my nonpagan friends' heads, I get a little testy. Certain experiences are too comforting, too sacred to be spectacles. For me, Samhain is one of them.

So it will be just the two of us this year—imperfect people doing our best to honor the pagan ideal of "perfect love and perfect trust." We will light the candles, cast a circle, honor our dead. We are aware of our connection to all other pagans, who are doing the same thing in big rituals, in solitary practices, celebrating with children who will behave like kids at any religious celebration: with wide eyes, wondering attention, giggles at the wrong moment. My working partner and I will close the ritual with words that Starhawk, one of the leaders of the neopagan community, wrote not long before we were born but that nonetheless feel traditional to us: "The Circle is open but always unbroken. May the peace of the Goddess go in your heart. Merry meet, merry part, and merry meet again."