A Love Fetish: Put a live frog in an ant's nest. When the bones are clean, you will find one flat, heart-shaped, and one with a hook. Secretly hook this into the gar­ment of your beloved, and keep the heart-shaped one. If you should lose the heart-shaped bone, he will hate you as much as he loved you.

Sounds like something you'd find in your local science muse­um? This year I found it in mine.

Over a recent vacation I packed my van with an assortment of kids and headed for the San Francisco Exploratorium, perhaps the most child-friendly, hands-on science museum in the world. This year planted inside, like a lilypad in the center of a pond, a spe­cially-created miniworld offered a superb frog exhibit. The kids and I crossed a drawbridge with raindrops rattling on a copper roof, then plopping onto stones below. On the other side we found frogs from all over the world. replete with everything we wanted to know about frogs and more. Including how to use a frog to cast a spell.

Merely and innocent image, for amusement purposes only? Surely the exhibit designers would be amused to receive a complaint regarding this frog-related bit of arcana. Yet they hadn't chosen to include any biblical references to frogs.

Ask any practitioner of the ancient art of Wicca, or witchcraft — she will see this as a small but significant victory. Just as diverse ingredients are swirled together in a witch's cauldron, the elements of witchcraft — and other branches of neopaganism — are being swirled into our own mainstream stew.

Postmodern society has stripped away the luxury we once enjoyed of assuming our cultural icons would be based on a moral or even neutral worldview. As Christian influence has eroded, many distinctly anti-Christian forces have arisen to fill the resulting spiritual vacuum. Among those positioned to most influence our culture — filmmakers, music producers, school administrators, and textbook publishers — neopaganism, particularly Wicca, has found great favor.

• In the past year at least six films celebrating witchcraft (including the successful comedy Practical Magic) have been released.

• Public schools, where Christian prayer has been outlawed, now teach children how to seek their inner guides, to dream visions, and to cast spells.

• Already in its third printing, Teen Witch: Wicca for a New Generation is "flying off the shelves at Borders, Barnes & Noble, and other mainstream stores," according to U.S. New & World Report (March 1, 1999). In its 250 pages, 10- to 17-year old girls can learn everything they need to become "a pentacle-wearing, spell-casting, completely authentic witch!"

When we talk about witches nowadays, we're no longer talking Grimm's Fairy Tales. We're talking about the girl next door, the school bus driver, your tax preparer, the veterinarian — not "bad" people, just people looking for answers who've asked the wrong questions, only to be seduced by the current glamorization of neo­paganism.

We need to stand ready to help them ask the right questions when their pseudo-answers fall short in helping them meet life's challenges.

But more. My own research leads me to this conclusion: Every Christian needs to understand the roots and beliefs of Neo-Paganism, to take it seriously, and to remain alert to its contaminating influence in media, literature, schools, and even our own churches.

Although in a postmodern society we may well have to accept that we live in the midst of corruption, we must constantly "test the spirits" (1 John 4:1) and work diligently to teach our children what is from God and what is not.

What is Neopaganism?⤒🔗

The word paganism comes from the Latin "paganus," meaning "country dweller." Anthropologists use the word pagan to refer to any folk religion — Native American, Polynesian, African, for example. But it also points to the deep connection pagans feel with the earth.

The Columbia Encyclopedia (Edition 5, 1993) defines neopaganism thus:

Polytheistic religious movement, practiced in small groups by partisans of pre-Christian religious traditions such as Egyptian, Greek, Norse, and Celtic. Neopagans fall into two broad categories, nature-oriented and magical groups, and often incorporate arcane and elaborate rituals.

Not far from the definition of the neo-paganists themselves, as I found on several Internet sites. The Internet is a good place to learn about neopaganism. Because their rituals are practiced in small groups rather than large, the Internet has become an important hub of information and communi­cation. The Church of All Worlds offers this definition:

Neo-paganism is a revival of ancient Nature religions adapted for the modern world. It is a reli­gion of the living earth — a religious motif especially appropriate for the Aquarian Age, as Christianity was the dominant motif of the Piscean age. Neo-Paganism is a natural religion, viewing humanity as a functional organ within the greater organism of all life, rather than as something special created special and "above" the rest of the natural world. Neo-Pagans seek not to conquer nature but to harmonize and integrate with Her. Neo-Paganism should be regarded as "Green Religion," just as we have "Green Politics" and "Green Economics." (Note the natural connection between neopaganism and environmentalism, in which extremists believe humanity to be a cancer on the face of the earth. and will lay down their lives for the sake of a tree.)

Neopaganism includes:

• Asatru (Scandinavian and Teutonic pre-Christian religions) Celtic traditions (immigrants from Europe to the British Isles before the Romans)

• Druids (priests of the Celtic people, who emphasized the sun and public rituals)

• The Church of All Worlds (based on the novel Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein and now a legally accepted church in the United States)

• Mediterranean traditions (Egyptian)

• Native Americans

• Shamanism (Northeast Asia, Eskimos and Native Americans) Wicca (witchcraft)

What is Wicca?←⤒🔗

Of All the neopagan religions, Wicca, or witchcraft is currently the one to be reckoned with. A search on www.amazon.com (Internet booksellers) netted 1176 titles on witchcraft, including:

• Circle Round: Raising Children in the Goddess Traditions

• 21st Century Wicca: A Young Witch's Guide to Living the Magical Life

• Curse Tablets and Binding Spells Under the Ancient World

• The Family Wicca Book: The Craft for Parents and Children

• In the Utne Reader (Nov.-Dec. 1998), Andy Steiner writes, "Witchcraft or Wicca is claimed by its advocates to be the fastest-growing religion in the U.S. with some 400,000 supporters. Neo-paganists are striving for acceptance in the mainstream and removal of the stereotype which characterizes them as devil worshiper."

This is an important distinction for Christians, who may naively lump many non-Christian reli­gions together. Neo-paganists are not Satanists. "Christians are the ones who believe in Satan, not us," they insist. Some even accuse us of hypocrisy in claiming to worship one God, since Christians attribute so much power to Satan. Neither are neo-paganists New Age believers. New Age seekers, although eclectic in forming their individual belief systems — and though they may pay lip service to pantheism (God in everything) — all share the belief that the individual needs to recognize the divinity within him, and that each individual creates his own reality.

The New Age emphasis on the transcendence of the individual is not at all shared by today's Wiccans. In "A Witch's Manifesto" (Whole Earth Review, Spring 1992), Z. Budapest disavows the New Age as "male-dominated and male-identified self-help." Witches are much more concerned with connectedness — with Mother Earth (or "The Goddess") and with a small group of others of like mind. In a coven, the individual makes a binding commitment (they compare it to marriage), then gathers with coven mates for rituals based on the passing of seasons or cycles of the moon. Note the contrast with our Christian rituals and celebrations, which are based on events in Christ's life.

Rejecting the Father←⤒🔗

The current tidal wave of popular witchcraft began with a small quake in the early 70's when radical feminists — intent on rejecting all gender-based cultural landmarks began searching for their own roots.

I was a radical feminist then myself. And I vividly recall my excitement on finding a booklet, as serious as any religious tract, purporting to tell the story of the extermination of women's spiritu­ality. There I first encountered the proposition that women-based religion was the real thing, that all else was counterfeit. Assuming matriarchy to have once been the norm, the authors asserted that the rise of patriarchy had worked hand-in-hand with a false male-dominated religion to seek the destruction of women who practiced the Sacred Arts of Old — witches. Thus, these feminists claimed, women had suffered a gender-based holocaust, purposely expunged by "his" story (a femi­nist term pointing to the contrast they see with "her" story) in which millions of spiritual foremothers were exterminated.

What a surprise some 30 years later to see how this radical-fringe idea has become part of popular feminist culture, as well as part of the folklore of modern witchcraft. In researching this article I pulled from my files a local newspaper story headlined "Will the 'Burning Time' Return?" graced by a full color picture of a Woodacre, California woman, hands hovering about the crystal ball she uses for divination, surrounded by candles and deer antlers "for honoring animal life and nature."

The text bemoans the plight of modern witches, who fear that the witch-hunters of centuries past, once thought shackled by enlightened attitudes, may hide in the encroaching tide of conservatism.

"There's definitely a backlash," says Fallingstar, 42. "The Christian right is very threatened in the same way the church was feeling repressed in the Renaissance."

"The result during the Renaissance was the Inquisition, or the 'burning times.'"

I saved this article particularly because it illustrates. the sympathetic portrayal of neopaganism and the prejudice against Christianity we are facing today in the media.

How could this possibly come about? It came about because with the rise of the feminist agenda items of equal opportunity and equal pay for equal work, came also the promulgation of every radical fringe idea of early 70's feminism: test-tube babies, women in the military, God as an oppressor of women, and witchcraft as women's spirituality.

The most vocal feminist analysts always understood the value of pushing a radical agenda. Z. Budapest, in "A Witch's Manifesto" (Whole Earth Review, Spring 1992) asserts:

"Feminism needs a cosmology. No powerful movement can hold the minds of millions without sto­ries, theologies, lore, ritual, and blessings."

Thus, Francine Prose, an outside observer, writes in Harper's Bazaar ("Goddess Worship", August 1995):

The women I meet describe Goddess worship as a reminder of their deep connection with nature, a way of being in harmony with the earth's rhythms and the cycles of female biology. 'The Goddess is about beauty, sensuality, and pleasure,' says (High Priestess Amy Sophia) Marashinsky, 'not suffering and flagellation' — a sentiment echoed more bluntly by feminist theologian Delores Williams at the controversial con­ference Re-imagining, a Global Theological Colloquium for Women. 'I don't think we need folks hanging on crosses and blood dripping and weird stuff.'

For some, the objection is not to the imagery of the Judeo-Christian tradition, but to its insistence on surrendering to a higher power. Goddess religion offers an alternative, aiming to help women find spiritual strength in themselves.

But those on the inside of Wicca say it is more than that. Starhawk, a highly respected and celebrated witch whose only detractors seem to be those Wiccans objecting to her blend of eco-feminist-spirituality, insists in her book The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess, "The symbolism of the Goddess is not a parallel structure to the symbolism of God the Father. The Goddess does not rule the world; she is the world."

During my research I read over and over that witches were motivated by a deep desire to return to their ancient roots. Yet I couldn't help feeling that the ladies "doth protest too much." For what stood out as the dominant, most vehement feeling was the bitterness toward and rejection of "a patriarchal religion" the Father and His Savior Son.

Listen to what these two feminist theorists say on the subject:

The feminist movement in Western culture is engaged in the slow execution of Christ and Yahweh ... It is likely that as we watch Christ and Yahweh tumble to the ground, we will completely outgrow the need for an external God. (Naomi Goldenberg, Changing of the God: Feminism and the End of Traditional Religions, 1979)

To put it bluntly, I propose that Christianity itself should be castrated ... The idea of salvation uniquely by a male savior perpetuates the problem of patriarchal oppression. (Mary Daly, Theology After the Demise of God the Father, 1974)

Note these writings are twenty something years old. Both women are writing on the same issues and from the same perspective today.

A Christian Response←⤒🔗

We can't even count on shelter from the tide of neopaganism within the church.

Consider: Mary Daly, the castration proponent quoted above, bills herself as a Christian feminist. She probably has her share of speaking engagements in churches, the better to broaden the perspective of so many narrow-minded fundamentalist Christians.

Increasingly, discernment is being brushed aside in many mainstream churches in favor of the new cultural commandments of "tolerance" and "acceptance." Some denominations have adopted a "big tent" policy, shaping their theology to fit the trends and the times. This means we can blend elements of Christianity with elements of Buddhism, New Age, or even neopaganism and witchcraft to produce something more conducive to unity and brotherly love.

Those who shine the light on the growing momentum of neopaganism within the culture and its trickle down into the church are too often regarded as alarmists.

And yet, aren't we right to sound the alarm? Weren't we warned our world would come to this?

For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want them to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.2 Tim. 4:3-4

Not so the followers of Jesus, who set our feet on the proper course and taught us how to stay there:

Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.Matthew 7:13-14

Despite the Exploratorium exhibit's nod of the head to witchcraft, I found much to remind me why I worship the Creator rather than the creation. The many frog varieties and their reverberating calls were a vivid reminder of the limitless expanse of God's creativity, the infinite variety of forms — living and non-living, plant and animal life — with which He chose to cover this never-boring world.

I always tell my children, "You know, He didn't have to make so many colors. He could have made everything flat. He could have made it all one temperature. He could have made one kind of bird, one kind of tree." In the incredible detail of His created world, I see His immense love for us.

This touches me and makes me feel responsible for my actions here on earth. And it strikes me I would never dream of putting a frog in an anthill to be eaten alive.