INTERVIEW WITH A WITCH: PART 2

 

INTERVIEW WITH A WITCH: Part Two

By Bob Gersztyn
This is a continuation of my interview with Wiccan radio talk show host Marcus Tempe. We continued to talk about the battle between cultures and religions as human civilization evolved into its current manifestation.

THE DOOR: An objective study of world history reveals that every culture and ethnic group has relocated, exterminated or assimilated another. Some feel that this progression of history is in actuality orchestrated by a shadow organization, who in fact call the shots. This organization is usually associated with Witchcraft and the occult. What do you know about the illuminati?

THE BEAR: Robert Anton Wilson wrote a wonderful series of books of fiction. I enjoy the heck out of it; he did something that is absolutely crucial to any storyteller. He borrows enough of the truth to be able to make you go, you know that sounds possible. What if? Now he’s got you. Any good science fiction writer will base his story on good hard practical scientific fact. State of the art technology that goes one step further. What if? Political theory as far as criminal conspiracies are concerned are very much the same sort of thing. People can take any three unrelated facts and go, what if? Maybe they’re on to something, but maybe they’re not.

THE DOOR: You can’t fool us. What do you know about the controlling council on the 7th level of the illuminati, and its plans to subjugate the entire human race for its evil purposes?

 

 

THE BEAR: Absolutely nothing. Frankly I’m more concerned about 2nd Amendment issues. Because I am one of those rarities, an ACLU supporter, who has been invited by the ACLU as a moderator of one of their forums on a new web site they are putting up. This will take place when the move from AOL occurs. AOL has invited the ACLU to end its interaction and its website in AOL’s umbrella. The move will take place sometime during November 1999. This has got a lot of people very upset, because AOL has come across like they are kicking out the ACLU. The ACLU has maintained a presence there for a number of years and this is not what I would regard as a good thing.

THE DOOR: Wait a minute. The ACLU is being kicked off AOL because of its support of the 2nd Amendment?

THE BEAR: No. Mainly because of 1st Amendment violations. There are occasions where people will use dirty words, and naughty language and talk about female body parts. This has a lot of the more Church Lady types in the AOL user community very upset with the ACLU because they allow dirty words in ACLU discussions. Isn’t this terrible? No it isn’t. But it’s modern day American Protestant Christianity that has recognized or attached to these particular body functions and body parts the dirty word syndrome. Every time that you establish something as sinful simply because it’s sinful. It says in scripture here it’s sinful. Then reason and judgment effectively shut down. You have people who have made up their minds and stop looking. You can’t have a free and open discussion and explore possibilities if you’re worried about dirty words violating some ancient sheep herders taboo, out of a body of lore that was put together 4 or 5,000 years ago.

THE DOOR: I guess you don’t agree with Josh McDowell then? What do you think will eventually happen with religion on a global scale?

THE BEAR: I think that we’re heading to a shift in consciousness. If you read books like Jose Ortiaz and The Mayan Factor, if you read any of the works on Native American traditions, the Hopi elders, the prophecies that they have. New interpretations of Nostradamus coming through. A lot of different teachers and seers and forecasters have come to the conclusion that we are entering a paradigm shift, which is going to be a pretty bumpy ride for the next 15 years or so.

THE DOOR: So you equate Nostradamus with Native American Seers.

THE BEAR: I think that if you have the same message coming across like boats, there’s going to be a major change in the world happening between now and 2015. Be prepared for it. You see these things happening in the Mayan’s, in the Hopi, in the Navajo, in Nostradamus and in people who are doing interpretations of a lot of sources. We need to at least look at these things, and see if the forecasters and visionaries are right. Even if not.

THE DOOR: Even Christianity has its doomsday prophets going back to Jesus Himself.

THE BEAR: However, Christianity generally does not check itself with non-Christian sources. The people I’m talking about are coming from Native American sources, from Nostradamus, which is a cabalistic magick source, from people who are psychics, which gets into ESP and the parapsychology field, which may have absolutely nothing to do with either Native American or Cabalistic magick. The point is, when you have all these different people, from all these different traditions saying, yeah we’re entering into a bad patch, the prudent person would say, just in case the power does go out and the flood waters do rise I think it would be prudent to lay in an extra case of food and maybe another couple of dozen candles. Just in case. Because even if nothing happens it’s like having insurance. Very cheap insurance to guarantee your survival over a bad patch. Whether the disaster happens to be Y2K,or going through a bad winter, like a couple of years ago, with the flood waters rising above the 500 year flood level, or a sustained blizzard or the long overdue earthquake actually strikes. Fill in the blanks for whatever disaster happens to strike.

THE DOOR: Let’s go back to your sources of information. You said witches are very eclectic and choose from a smorgasbord of spiritual ideas, borrowing from any and all existing religions. Yet there are these rituals that you speak of and I assume they go back a long ways.

THE BEAR: They are an attempt to reconstruct from fragments of oral tradition, which is all that we have left after the burning times.

THE DOOR: So there were books that were written and burned? During which period?
THE BEAR: No, no not books that were written, oral traditions that were handed down from high priestess to student. Often times from Mother to daughter or from Father to son. I know a few people who claim a family tradition of witchcraft. They are called Famtrad for short. Family traditional witches have a certain body of lore, which they don’t teach to anybody outside of that family. They claim the lore was handed down from generation to generation. These people are very hard to get to talk about any of this.

THE DOOR: Why?

THE BEAR: Because, the penalty for revealing this was usually a short trip to being burned at the stake. So what we do have in the way of modern witchcraft are fragments of oral tradition, which are handed down in story. Discovered by people like Gerald Bruce O’Gardiner, who wrote about witchcraft for the first time, in modern times, in 1950.

THE DOOR: What was the title of the book?

THE BEAR: He originally wrote a book called “High Magic”, by the pen name Seire. Then he wrote a couple of other books on modern day witchcraft, which you can find in major libraries and occasionally you’ll find in large bookstores, like Powell’s, here in Portland. Gerald Bruce O’Gardiner is credited with being sort of the father of the modern resurgence of witchcraft.

THE DOOR: He was a witch himself?

THE BEAR: He was a practicing witch himself. He claimed that he had been introduced and initiated into Wicca by a family traditional witch in England.

THE DOOR: How many witches are there worldwide would you say?

THE BEAR: Impossible to estimate. In the United States I’ve heard figures anywhere from 100,000-600,000.

THE DOOR: So way under a million.

THE BEAR: I’ve talked to Z Budapest who is another very well known figure in the witchcraft world. She is a refugee from Hungary. She got out of Hungary after the 1956 Soviet invasion, when she was 16 years old. She feels that with family traditionalists it’s impossible to make an accurate estimation worldwide.

THE DOOR: Is there any sort of Wiccan governing structure? Do you ever combine forces for a specific purpose and how?

THE BEAR: It depends on the issue for example on the Web you will find the coalition for religious freedom that is run by an attorney in Pennsylvania, who is also a practicing, witch. You will find the WADL (Witches Anti Discrimination League). That is another long running pagan religion organization. Locally we have the nine houses of Gaia and many of the groups listed in the community directory will be able to turn you on to additional groups, which they are local chapters of or have a loose working relationship with.

THE DOOR: What about you specifically? When and what were the circumstances of your becoming a witch?

 

 

THE BEAR: I began my spiritual pursuit when I was between 13 & 15 and decided consciously to actually stop being a good Catholic kid, according to my mom.

THE DOOR: Mom should know.

THE BEAR: By the age of 17 I completely severed all ties with the Catholic Church and really began an active pursuit of my own spiritual traditions. I became interested in Zen Buddhism. I read a lot of works by David Reps, who is an American Zen Buddhist.

THE DOOR: How did you get interested in your spiritual pursuit initially?

THE BEAR: As I became more of an adult I began to realize that what I had been taught as the answers were not complete answers. Somebody was holding something back. There were things happening that did not make sense. For example, the teaching and decimation of the Catholic Church is that this is the be all and end all of solution. This is the one possible answer, this explains everything, and it’s not only ridiculous, it’s a mortal sin to start inquiring any further. Well the more education I got, especially by the time I got into college and started taking courses in philosophy, anthropology and other things that you normally don’t get taught in Jr. High School, I began to realize that there were a lot more answers, and also a lot more questions, than the Catholic Church had been willing to teach me as a kid. I became interested in witchcraft in the early 70’s and was initiated into witchcraft in 1975. So I’ve been a practicing pagan for almost a quarter of a century now.

THE DOOR: How old are you now.

THE BEAR: Lets see, what year is this? 51.

THE DOOR: How have other religions treated Paganism, Witchcraft, etc.? Whether Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Islam, whatever, in countries like India, Japan or Saudi Arabia. Do they have any sort of policy against it?

THE BEAR: As a rule in a Muslim country, today for example, you are technically allowed to have a book of your own particular religion. For example Christians are theoretically allowed to bring in a Bible. However, Islam in practical terms can be very, very intolerant about public celebrations of anything other than Islam. To an extent, I found that in the brief visit that I made to Israel, I found that attitude also applied to a nation, which had based itself upon the Jewish religion. To a lesser extent you may find that in other countries such as Japan, which as you pointed out is officially Shintoist, but which also has a large Buddhist population. The Buddhist countries however, such as Thailand are generally quite open and accepting of a wide variety of other religions. I spent two years in Saudi Arabia, which gave me a good up close look at a fundamentalistic religious theocracy, in 1980-82.

THE DOOR: Why were you there?

THE BEAR: I was on contract, as a computer technician and light equipment maintenance technician, with a company installing a medical computer system. The first one to go into Abha, the capital of the Asir Highlands, in Southwest Saudi Arabia.

THE DOOR: Ah yes, one of our favorite places. What were your observations and conclusions?

THE BEAR: I had a chance to see what Islam is like from the inside, up close and personal. I went, that’s interesting. When I came back to the United States it also gave me very sharp appreciation about what it is like to live in a free country, as opposed to what it is like to live in a theocracy. Then I began working very seriously on the idea of promoting in whatever humble way that I could the notion of getting people to use their thinking of spirituality in terms of not sacrificing their souls to God, but using it as a vehicle of personal liberation, on a level that has not been normally experienced before. Most questions of liberation politics at that time had been political not economic. I wanted to expand the realm, because I believe very strongly that the spiritual element is precisely where questions of freedom are decided, and that any spiritual tradition that emphasizes freedom is one worth looking at. That tied very well into my training and experience in Wicca.

THE DOOR: What about Jesus’s statement in the Gospel of John concerning knowledge of the truth being the catalyst for freedom?

THE BEAR: First of all, that’s an example of something that a Wiccan, or Pagan, or Buhhdist, or Hindu or somebody else might find to be very true, because it is true whether or not it’s in the Bible, Koran, Torah, Bagavad Gita or any other sacred text. In other words you do not accept something that’s true simply because of the authority figure attached to it you accept it as true because it checks out. It checks out and it happens to ring true. It’s something that you can rely on. In the case of Wicca, the idea is that you are responsible for your spirituality. You are responsible for putting yourself through the training and discipline.

THE DOOR: Somebody had to train or at least get you pointed in the right direction occasionally. Who was that?

THE BEAR: The lady who inducted me into Wicca is living on the Oregon coast right now. She’s in her 60’s. She was a very good friend, who was a practicing witch for a number of years. She initiated me into the Wicca tradition as a Gardinarian witch.

THE DOOR: Gardinarian, is that like a denomination?

THE BEAR: Gerald Bruce O’Gardiner established a tradition of witchcraft through his books and through his students, who all went on to teach other witches. That’s why Gardiner is regarded as the father of modern witchcraft.
THE DOOR: Just like John Wesley is the father of Methodism or even the first Pope?

THE BEAR: Not like the pope, more like John the Baptist. He was a voice crying in the wilderness to make clear the path.

THE DOOR: So then, is there a Messiah coming?

THE BEAR: No. That whole Messiah trip, you have to; again this is the trap of Orthodox Christianity and the mindset. Christians are very guilt driven. They believe that we’re guilty and that the Messiah died for our sins, he’s gonna come back, and that sins will be washed away. This whole sin, guilt, fear trip is something that is very particular to the Semitic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. It is not something that has any parallel with the normal pagan religions that you’ll find elsewhere in the world.

THE DOOR: So, you don’t have any guilt problems?

THE BEAR: No. We don’t have a guilt problem as far as original sin and the whole concept of sin, because we have a sense of right and wrong.

THE DOOR: Then you believe in free will?

THE BEAR: Yes, as a matter of fact I believe that the free will we exercise directly creates the manifestation of the universe that we experience. In other words, free will is the way that we approach the limitless facets of the diamond. Which facet we choose to look at, that is the exercise of our free will.

THE DOOR: What about good and evil?

THE BEAR: I believe in the “as ye sow, so shall ye reap” type of approach, or looking at it from the viewpoint of other people: “By their fruits ye shall know them”.

THE DOOR: That sounds familiar. What if you were put in a situation where you were forced to do something that was evil in order to survive? As an example you embezzled some money from your work to avoid bankruptcy. How would you view this?

THE BEAR: You would have to look at the harm done and the total dynamic of who was doing what. Who benefited from it, who lost from it?

THE DOOR: So you’re advocating relativism?
THE BEAR: In my personal book I’d say that relativistic ethics are probably about the only ethics that you actually can apply to the real world. Because the exact same action in 12 different environments and circumstances could have 12 different evaluations and 12 different consequences. For example killing someone: “Thou shalt not kill”. The Bible says, according to Billy Graham and some other Fundamentalist ministers “Thou shalt not murder”. Lets take it at the face value that most people are familiar with. “Thou shalt not kill.” Okay, I teach armed self-defense as a certified pistol instructor. I have an Oregon concealed handgun licensee. I have one of the first 2000 licensees issued in the state for 10 years now. I have come close to dropping the hammer on 4 maybe 5 people in the last 10 years. I also work security so that ups my exposure to situations. Do I feel happy about the prospect of taking a life? No. Would I hesitate to take a life if in my estimation that became necessary? No, because at this point I’ve rehearsed it and studied the issue and I’m aware of the full dynamics of actions, contributing factors, and the repercussions, which would flow from that, to be able to widen the game so to speak. In other words I don’t look at just the killing itself, but everything that led up to the killing, the killing and the results that flowed from the killing, as part of an integrated dynamic. All of which have to be looked at. If for example the person I encountered happened to be a career felon and I didn’t kill them, I feel that I would share in the moral blame that would accrue from every criminal act in the future that, that person would commit.

THE DOOR: I guess you would support capital punishment then?

THE BEAR: In certain circumstances. Again, there have been too many cases where capital punishment has been to hastily applied or applied to the wrong person. That’s legalized murder.

THE DOOR: In a case like John Wayne Gacy or Jeffrey Dahlmer, who have committed heinous crimes, yet are indifferent to them, and may even be psychologically incapable of complying with societies laws or morality. What would your verdict be?

THE BEAR: In my book that person has volunteered for the death penalty.

THE DOOR: Interesting. Let’s go back to guilt for a minute. According to Freudian psychology human beings are motivated by guilt stemming from suppressed thoughts and experiences, ranging from infantile masturbation to oedipal fantasies and beyond. How do you view this?

THE BEAR: Freudian guilt is the product of an essentially Christian culture.

THE DOOR: So then if there were no Christianity there would be no Freud?

THE BEAR: Without Christianity there would be no Freud. There would be no need for a Freud.

THE DOOR: What about Jung?
THE BEAR: Jung is a different case. Jung very much focused on archetypes. He believed that people regardless of culture or background felt and experienced certain spiritual truths in much the same way. It’s simply the the symbolism and the language by or through which they interpreted that transmortal experience varied from person to person and culture to culture, and there’s good argument for that.

THE DOOR: So then in some cases, as you’ve already stated you’re in agreement with certain parts or pieces of different religions and philosophies but you don’t have any particular set structure, except the book you mentioned by Gardiner?

THE BEAR: Even that has been extensively modified.

THE DOOR: Okay, lets put it another way. If somebody wants to become a Christian what they do is find a church. Next they ask to speak with the Pastor, they tell him “I want to become a Christian.” Next the minister will tell them whatever that denominational formula requires for them to become a good Christian.

THE BEAR: Accent on the word formula. It’s a very external structure imposed. You see in the founding days of Christianity.

THE DOOR: Yeah, but how do you do that with Witchcraft? Let’s forget about Christianity for the moment. How would anyone even begin to look? Are their any witch ministers, clerics, priests, priestesses etc.?

THE BEAR: In some cases. Again study the list of organizations in the directory I gave you and ask for some basic information. You’ll find a huge range of responses. Some people who practice paganism and witchcraft adopt or create a very hierarchical structure. There will be initiates, 1st degree witches, 2nd degree witches and 3rd degree witches.

THE DOOR: Is this group called a coven?

THE BEAR: Yes, a coven. They will have the kind of formal structure that you’re talking about. Some people function best in that type of formal structure. Other people are solitary witches; they will have nothing to do with a coven. In fact they will often times have only a few years of training, or they will be entirely self taught. Some people find that they adhere to a particular divinity. In fact I’ve talked to some witches who have actually had an intense visualization of some goddess or god figure, totally unexpectedly, without anything in their background to predicate that, that is the goddess or god figure to whom they would give their allegiance. Others, like me are syncretic or eclectic. We look and we find things that are true in many different god forms, and many different pantheons in many different disciplines including religions that have very little if anything to do with Witchcraft, such as Christianity.

THE DOOR: An evangelical Christian would call these visualizations of gods and goddesses a demonic experience. From a Jungian perspective then you would have had an archetypal experience. However, putting that aside for the moment, what good are these experiences?
THE BEAR: I’m relating them to how people see the truth. Some people need and depend upon a very rigid structure. They’re going, okay I have jumped through these particular hoops, I’ve taken this particular training, I must be doing this right. That’s the particular structure with which they approach the universe.

THE DOOR: Then there’s the Zen Buhhdist approach where you have to come to a point where you know nothing.

THE BEAR: That’s my point, everything is illusion, it’s all a matter of will. Read the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The opening chapter is essentially a recitation of about how everything is a matter of the viewpoint that you choose or allow yourself to default to. What is the Ultimate reality?

THE DOOR: Please tell us.

THE BEAR: Well, from a mortal viewpoint you will find as many different answers as you’ll find mortals. The whole purpose of the show in the practice of the show in the practice of paganism, that I personally adhere to is, by their fruits you shall know them.

THE DOOR: Where have we heard that before?

THE BEAR: If somebody is on a particular path that reads well upon them, they’re bright eyed, bushy tailed, happy, productive and a benefit to the people around them. You can tell by their body language, posture, tone of voice, how they relate and how they handle themselves in their relationships, whether they are a healthy or not healthy individual. Then I don’t really care what the name of the religious structure of the spirituality is that you hang on it. Sahheed Hamid for example is a Black Muslim. He is also a friend. He has been a friend of my families and mine for more than 20 years now. He is probably as far away from my particular spiritual orientation as you could possibly get. In that he’s African American, he’s a Muslim practitioner, he is very loyal to his faith and has found a huge amount of benefit in Islam. I’ve had him on my show and we’ve spoken of this at length. The commonality that we experience however, is not one of the same ritual, or the same name of God or even the same practice of spirituality. The commonality we see, is that each of us recognize that the other is on a path which is good for us, because we are benefiting the lives of those around us.

THE DOOR: What occupation do you work in to pay the bills?

THE BEAR: I’m in the security field right now. I’ve been trained and licensed by the State of Oregon as a private security advisor site supervisor for a local security company. I’m also a certified pistol instructor and I do self-defense training, as well as working with a martial arts school.

THE DOOR: So you are proficient in all these self defense techniques?

THE BEAR: Yes, I believe in the concept of personal empowerment.
THE DOOR: So then witchcraft isn’t pacifistic?

THE BEAR: Witchcraft is, in that most people are what I would call bunny huggers. They are very pro-ecology and pro-animal rights. Their lifestyle and mindset reflects this. Ninety nine out of a hundred would not know which end of a firearm goes bang.
THE DOOR: You already said that you supported capital punishment if the crime warranted it. What about abortion?

THE BEAR: I come down on the side of “free choice,” with the proviso that any man who attempts to pass judgment on what any woman does with her body is showing perhaps more bravery than sense. Women, I’ve noticed, get into one form of Paganism or another because they’re drawn to the empowering aspects of spirituality that emphasizes the pre-eminence of feminine over masculine power, the Goddess over God; Witches like Z Budapest or Starhawk in San Francisco have strong opinion on the subject, which they’ve written books about. At the same time, Pagans disagree about abortion probably as much as they disagree about vegetarianism, or any other political subject. Sienna, a Witch friend of mine in Vancouver, who own Laughing Bird Books and teaches classes on Witchcraft, said, “Getting Pagans to agree on ANYTHING is like herding cats.”

THE DOOR: Very interesting. While were on politically controversial subjects How about drug usage to enhance the spiritual dimension, much like Native Americans and other regional aboriginal peoples use conscious expanding substances, such as mescaline, psilosybin or marijuana in their rituals?

 

 

THE BEAR: I know of no Pagans who use drugs as part of ritual; raising the “Cone of Power” requires discipline, the ability to visualize clearly, and the ability to coordinate and work well with other in the Circle—all of which are skills which are damaged or defeated by drugs, not enhanced by them. The kind of “high” you get from any pharmaceutical means that it’s the pharmaceutical that’s working—not you; so, whatever “power” you think you’re generating, is strictly a chemical-based delusion. True, there ARE some ethnic groups whose spiritual traditions involve psychedelics like peyote and mescaline—but as their “medicine men” and “medicine women” will tell you, it takes literally years of work, training, and discipline (there’s that word again), studying as an apprentice under a master of some sort, before you can safely and effectively use drugs as a tool for the controlled raising and directing of spiritual or Magickal “Power” of any sort.
Unfortunately, in this day and age of instant gratification, there are too may teenyboppers who’ve seen The Craft or The Blair Witch Project, picked up a book, and decided that they’re “really” Witches and so want to be casting spells, etc.—and right now. Since they’re used to getting high, they figure, “Why not?” and start to “experiment” with ritual Magick and various drugs. However, teenagers will be teenagers, and may have to learn the hard way that drugs don’t “improve” anything you do that’s at all important—including raising Power and working Magick. This is not to say that Neo-Pagans are all prudes and teetotalers. Some are; others aren’t, to varying degrees, just like the population at large. I know of one Pagan who drinks, smokes tobacco, AND smokes pot; his wife smokes tobacco and pot, but doesn’t drink. Another Pagan friend of mine drinks occasionally, but doesn’t smoke anything at all. The basic rule, again, is what we know as the Wiccan Rede:
“Eight words the Wiccan Rede fulfill;
An Ye Harm None, Do What Ye Will.”
When you couple that with the Three-fold Law—that what you do, will rebound upon you three times, good returning for good and evil returning for evil—you’ll find that most Neo-pagans (both drug-users and “straight) just don’t abuse, misuse, or over-indulge in drugs of any sort. There’s no point to it, and some heavy dues to pay for screwing up, so why bother?

THE DOOR: Do you believe in God?

THE BEAR: A divinity? Yes. God in term of Jehovah or Yahweh? No.

THE DOOR: Do you believe in a personal God?

THE BEAR: Myself, I’d have to say no. I believe in a trans-mortal something, but it’s bigger than I am and I haven’t got the means to put a handle on it. Let alone define it and label it.

THE DOOR: What about the devil?

THE BEAR: The devil? Satan? Prince of evil? Christian concept. Anti-God. I gave that up when I gave up the church.

 

INTERVIEW WITH A WITCH

INTERVIEW WITH A WITCH: THE BEAR INTERVIEW Parts One and Two

BY: Bob Gersztyn
(October 1999)

Part One:
My interview with the Bear, alias Marcus Tempe took place 15 years ago this month. It was for the Wittenburg Door and the reason why I thought that the Door would be interested in it was because Mr. Tempe was a witch that had a radio talk show, in Portland, Oregon on KBOO, their community supported radio station. He had an ax to grind with Christianity and I gave him a platform to vent for “the world’s pretty much only religious satire magazine.”
His show was on during the witching hour, a 3 hour period between 3:00 AM and 6:00 AM, every other Sunday morning. It was a strange time to be up listening to the radio, but at the time I had a very normal job at the main post office in Salem, Oregon. At that hour we would be unloading semi trailers full of 3 class mail sacks and 4th class parcels and sorting them according to destination in a maze of containers on the truck dock.
My friend Joe Brandner was the one who always played KBOO, while we worked and it was more interesting than the radio stations that kept playing the same songs over and over. How many thousand times did we hear “Freebird” and “Stairway to Heaven.” So, after listening to him for about 6 months, I called the radio station and left my contact information and interview request. The Bear called me a couple of days later and I set up the interview for a Friday afternoon at 4:00 PM at the KBOO radio station. It was their fundraising weekend so the place was hopping with DJ’s, guest’s and journalist’s like me.
We talked about witchcraft and its persecution by Christianity, along with many other subjects all from a Wiccan perspective. The interview was never published by the Door, so after 15 years of anticipation here is my interview with Marcus Tempe. It is presented in 2 parts because it’s long, nearly 10,000 words. At the same time it’s a very timely interview because it’s October once more, and “The Day of the Dead,” Samhain and Halloween are rapidly approaching.

Part One:

THE DOOR: Your actual name is Marcus Tempe, why do you go by the Bear?

THE BEAR: I feel a great deal of affinity with bear type creatures. In that we are both large, warm, round, furry, appreciative of good food and I like to go mrph a lot.

THE DOOR: Go what?

THE BEAR: Mrph.

THE DOOR: What is that?

THE BEAR: Mrph. It is the sound of a disgruntled grizzly bear when he is awakened from a sound sleep. Since, I like to sleep in and real life demands that I be up and around a lot. Mrph is sort of my expression with which I begin to regard the day.

THE DOOR: Disgruntled like a postal worker or you’re just not in a good mood?

THE BEAR: I wake up very slowly. I’m usually very reluctant.

THE DOOR: You call yourself a witch yet you are a male. I thought that male witches were Warlocks?

THE BEAR: No Warlock is derived from an ancient Anglo-Saxon or Northern European Germanic language root, which means oath breaker. If you talk to modern day Asatru people, who follow a Northern European ancient religion, like the Nordic peoples, the Vikings
THE DOOR: Odin, Valhalla, etc.. Didn’t Hitler want to re-establish the Nordic gods?

THE BEAR: That’s kind of like saying that the Roman Catholic Church had a relationship with Mussolini in 1922, therefore the Roman Catholic Church is Fascist. Guilt by association is a very tricky thing. Actually Hitler stole a lot of occult practices and symbolism, and slapped a Germanic political agenda on it, for the purpose of getting the German people thinking that they were the latter day equivalent of God’s chosen people and were destined to kill and conquer and rule the world. Well that kind of backfired.

THE DOOR: You make it sound like a negative version of the Biblical Exodus and conquest of Palestine.

THE BEAR: Surprise, surprise. Looking at it from the Canaanites point of view how do you think they regarded the whole invasion and conquest by the Hebrews. For more information just do a word search on Asatru on the internet; there is abundant information available. Anyway, they are Reconstructionist Asatru and have gone through a major meeting between North American and English Asatru movements. These were specifically designed to remove any taint of skin heads, racists, neo-nazis or any other attempt to retake the Asatru movement by the racist right wing political element. They are attempting to reclaim for themselves the Pantheon of the traditions of Northern European witchcraft. Steve McMallen is one of the leading founders of the Asatru free assemblies.

THE DOOR: That’s very interesting. Please continue on your explanation of the term Warlock.

THE BEAR: If you talk to Asatruar’s or anybody else who is a practicing pagan from most traditions they do not use the word Warlock, because in ancient times a person who broke their oath was considered to have virtually incurred the wrath of the gods. In other words it was like the modern day equivalent of selling your soul to the devil for a brief temporary advantage. You condemned yourself to basically eternal bad Karma. You would be digging your way out for a lot of lifetimes.

THE DOOR: That is a very negative connotation.

THE BEAR: Highly negative. Not only in intent but in act as well.

THE DOOR: Perhaps the reason why Warlock came to be used by non Wiccan’s so much was to give the entire belief system a negative spin.

THE BEAR: Especially in preliterate times in Europe. You have to understand that a man’s word was his bond, literally. If you broke your word, you were literally breaking your bond, your oath, your reliability, your standing in the community. You were effectively announcing yourself to be criminal in intent and action.
THE DOOR: It looks like the campaign was effective because most people I know think a warlock is a male witch. They also think of witches as having sold their souls to the devil. If your word is no good what good are you, that’s true in any society.

THE BEAR: In verbal or preliterate societies this becomes crucial, because your spoken word is the only recourse that you have. You don’t have a written contract to fall back on.

THE DOOR: It’s the same Biblically with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, etc., they would make deals with the local inhabitants. Sometimes they would get broken and you’d have negative repercussions.

THE BEAR: There are parallels today in Saudi Arabia. One of the things I found, when I was there for two years, was that this idea of the sanctity of the oath and the spoken word, and the power of the oath is still held to be very important, in Muslim cultures. You do not use swear words against somebody. You do not cast oaths upon somebody, because that is regarded in Saudi law as well as religious usage the same as cursing them before God, or calling down injury upon them, or actively wishing them harm. It’s almost the equivalent of a physical attack on them as well. In other words if you’re using oaths or curses against somebody you can be hauled into court and imprisoned.

THE DOOR: Another area that is sometimes confusing relates to identification labels. Are the terms Witchcraft, Wiccan and Pagan interchangeable?

THE BEAR: No. There is a lot of variation in that. Usually what I do for people asking about basic information is refer them to volumes which have already been written by people, who have done an excellent job of covering this basic information. One of the beginning reference works that I know of is titled “Drawing On The Moon”, by Margot Adler. The first edition was published in 1977 and has gone through several editions since then. Margo Alder has a reputation of giving, probably the best single overview, if you will, about paganism, witchcraft, etc.. Another reference for witchcraft 101 so to speak is “To Ride A Silver Broomstick” By Silver Ravenwolf. It’s put out by Luelen publications. For the basics, this is one of the best books that I know of. It’s a very safe non-judgemental book, that is user friendly to anyone coming from any other religious or spiritual tradition. It shows you how to get started in witchcraft safely, without signing your soul to the devil, or blood sacrifice or any other of the hollywood stereotypical nonsense that people normally approach witchcraft with.

THE DOOR: Would you also recommend some of the earlier scholarly works on pagan roots like the “Golden Bough” and “The White Goddess”?

THE BEAR: Oh yes. I would certainly include those in my basic overview. The books I mentioned were an attempt to distill down to, what I would consider to be a bare minimum. That which you would need to have to become at least noddingly familiar with modern day neo-paganism practices.
THE DOOR: Throughout history the only references that we see towards witchcraft in the context of society is negative, usually a trial or and execution. Now it was co-existing with Christianity and the other religions since antiquity. Where are the historical writings?

THE BEAR: The history is important to note and it can be partially derived from the syntax of the word witch, which derives from the old Anglo-Saxon word WICCA. Which means “wise one”. That in turn derives from the ancient WICE (WEE-KAY), which is the old German for to shape or to bend. Basically the people who practice witchcraft or the craft are people who were the village apothecaries, the village midwives, healers, herbalists, etc.. These were the people who were the conservators of the survival lore that a village needs to survive from year to year and from generation to generation. The Roman Catholic Church signed a deal with Constantine to become the official state religion of the Roman empire in the 4th century AD. Then it began its missionary expansion and it began a process of first discrediting the opposition and second moving into the power vacuum that it created through fear and intimidation.

THE DOOR: So then the Roman Catholic Church didn’t set an example of religious tolerance your saying?

THE BEAR: The Roman Catholic Church signed a deal with the emperor Constantine circa. 318 AD, in which they became the official state religion of Rome. Immediately they went from being the persecuted victims being fed to the lions to the people who were feeding other people to the lions, so to speak. They began a series of what would eventually become Holy Crusades wiping out not only non-Christian religions, but all other competing forms of Christianity. Such as Nestorians, Manichaeists, Pelagianists, Gnostics and anybody else that got in their way. They tried to do it with the Greek Orthodox Church , but it had at that point moved to Byzantium and was militarily, economically and politically too powerful for them to knock off.

THE DOOR: I guess the Inquisition began earlier than we thought, but then again Spain was a Roman colony.

THE BEAR: When the church’s missionaries went north and west they found an existing religious structure, which varied from locality to locality but had several things in common. First of all was the worship of a goddess and a god. The goddess figure often times being given first pre-eminence of place.

THE DOOR: Why is that?
THE BEAR: Because the goddess was the giver of life. She was the force that allowed life to regenerate after the death of the winter. She was the one women turned to for questions of childbirth. To guarantee fertility of the crops. To assure the survival of the next generation. The names of the God and Goddess vary from culture to culture; In the matrifocal religions, not patrifocal ones, they recognize both a Male and female deity or divine principle of some sort, but hold that the Mother-goddess is the more important of the two, as it is She who gave birth to the Universe. Wicca is one such. On the other hand, some Pagan religions such as Asatru simply refer to “the Gods,” and give pre-eminence of place to the God (i.e. Odin Allfather). One of the determining factors in an individuals choice of pantheons and religions is whether you lean primarily toward the Goddess, the God or some balance between them.

That being said, here are some of the names of the Goddess and Her Consort God, respectively (see Silver RavenWolf’s book, To Ride A Silver Broomstick). Cerridwen (pronounced “KAIR-ih-dwen”) and Cernunnos (“ker-NOON-ose”). Welsh goddess and god, often worshipped in Wicca. Isis and Osiris, worshipped and invoked by practitioners of Qabbalistic magick, including Thelema and Ceremonial Witchcraft.
Odin (a.k.a. the Allfather) and Freya, His Wife/lover and commander of the Valkyries. Two of the chief gods of the Aesir, or Norse pantheon, worshipped by followers of the Asatru (“AH-sa-tru”) religion. Kali (a.k.a. Kali-Ma), Creative/destructive Goddess, and Shiva Her Consort, God of the universal birth-life-death-rebirth cycle. Hindu pantheon.

Some Neo-Pagans worship a Goddess or a God exclusively, or nearly so; e.g. Stregha (“STRAY-ga”) Withches are women who worship Aradia, Queen of Witches, and daughter of the goddess Diana. Their tradition dates back to 14th cent. Italy. Dianic or “Feminist” Witches, such a Z Budapest, work entirely with other women; they worship Diana, Roman goddess of the Moon and the hunt. There are “Eclectic Pagans,” who borrow gods and/or goddesses from a number of different traditions, e.g. Native American, Celtic, and Egyptian deities, and mix them up with rituals borrowed from as many different sources.

THE DOOR: Is there a Holy Book, Scripture type document common to all practitioners within the craft?

THE BEAR: This is a difference in structure that has to be addressed. First of all Christianity is based on orthodoxy. It has a text. It has a very rigid set of laws. It has a lineal decent from Jesus through St. Peter the first Bishop of Rome, etc. etc..

THE DOOR: I take it you think this is bad.
THE BEAR: Witchcraft and Wicca follow a very different approach. They do not believe in an orthodox structure from without, i.e. by not sitting and paying your dues and all the rest of this external stuff you will buy your way into heaven. It is very much an individual approach. Very much like Gnostic Christianity was. In other words, your inner knowledge of the truth and your faithfulness to adhere to what you know on a spiritual level to be true is the guiding factor of how well you will succeed in life. Witchcraft, then isn’t a matter of “scripture”-based “orthodoxy”; it has none. It is, to the contrary, quite heavily based on personal experience, choice, responsibility, intuition, “feeling,” and personal “revelation,” if any. Some of us have seen the Gods and/or Goddesses we worship, and have personal relationships with them; others of us can spend a whole lifetime looking, researching, exploring—and this pursuit, itself, becomes our “Tao” or “way” of approaching the Infinite and the Divine. Still others use ritual not so much for “worship,” but to invoke deities, spirits, sprites, fairies, elementals, etc. to raise, shape and direct Power to accomplish certain goals—i.e., their Witchcraft is more “craft” than religion. Thelemic and Qabbalistic Magickians are such. Also there is no dividing line between mortal life as we know it and the trans-mortal experience that most Christians wait until they die to experience. As above so below, that’s one of the tenets.

THE DOOR: Okay, so the answer to the original question concerning the existence of a written history or scriptural documentation of your roots is that it doesn’t exist except in oral traditions. You did raise another question you could elaborate on. How do you experience the trans-mortal experience before you die?

THE BEAR: By a variety of working of spirituality through ritual, which is effectively a form of guided visualization to tap the energies which logical, empirical, scientific thought denies the existence of. In order to help tap the energy to make changes in real world here and now, which we can experience and appreciate. For example, if you have a problem regarding a relationship with somebody: the typical hollywood approach would be to cast a curse on them. The proper witchcraft approach would not be to inflict harm on somebody else, but to properly to defend yourself in accordance with the threefold law. Which states basically that what you put out will rebound upon you threefold. If you put out harm to somebody else you will suffer three times that harm yourself. If you put out good to somebody else, you will enjoy three times that good yourself.

THE DOOR: A Witches golden rule.

THE BEAR: In order to defend yourself ethically and Karmicly however, you have to have a way to neutralize the damage being done to you. One of those ways is by what is called a mirroring spell. You visualize the energy that is being sent directly against you by somebody else as striking a mirror and rebounding upon the person who is doing the sending. I have found this to be a very potent tool. I was under attack here at KBOO as a matter of fact by a volunteer, who engineered the removal of my program, “The Witching Hour” from the air for a while. Then last spring I simply began a series of meditations where I visualized this person’s energy.

THE DOOR: How did you know this person was attacking you?

THE BEAR: Because he was vocal and very public about it. He actually used his official position on the KBOO board of directors and the program committee. Suffice it to say that the guy was very vocal and very public about his opposition to me and to the “Witching Hour”. As soon as it became apparent that this person was not going to be
reasonable, but simply reduce this to a level of personal attack I began a series of visualizations in which I visualized the energy coming from him to me and then rebounding from me unto him.

THE DOOR: Deflection, sounds like a happy medium between martyrdom and murder.
THE BEAR: Like his hatred and negativity striking a glass mirror and reflecting right back on him.

THE DOOR: What if you put a bad curse on somebody? Can you then put up a mirror spell to deflect the rebound from the three-fold law’s reciprocation?

THE BEAR: Magick is governed as much or more by intent as it is by sheer mechanics. If you intend to do some harm to somebody, you are in that active intent creating a negative thought form, which will already start to do harm to somebody else and correspondingly rebound upon you. If you try to play lawyer by doing an active curse spell on somebody and then whipping up a mirror spell in order to try and deflect it, you cannot move fast enough to step out of your own footprint. You cannot move fast enough to get out of your own shadow. You are going to create the reality that you experience.

THE DOOR: Let’s backtrack a little. When you make reference to time periods in history you use the terms BC and AD rather than BCE and CE. This seems unusual in light of your negative views on Christianity.

THE BEAR: I am not a politically correct type person. I’m the product of a culture that speaks English that uses the standardized Gregorian reformed calendar as its benchmark. I could use the term CE and BCE, which I recognize. I simply, however, have for most of my life been using BC and AD as a shorthand convention, because that’s what most people use.

THE DOOR: When you are speaking of gods and goddesses are you capitalizing or using lower case?

THE BEAR: There’s an interesting approach to that. In the pagan community you’ll find that some people believe in a unified god force that transcends any ability to personify it or personalize it. Other people believe in a personalized divinity that is a super conscious being but transcends gender. Other people believe in a pantheon of gods and goddesses. So it really depends upon your viewpoint and approach.

THE DOOR: When I type this out on the word processor should I use an initial uncial or minuscule for Ggod and Ggoddess?

THE BEAR: I would think the general rule would be leave it lower case, because I refer to gods and goddesses usually in the generic sense unless I am specifically creating a ritual where I am invoking the Goddess or God. At which point I’ll capitalize, because I believe that all these different religions and approaches are dealing with essentially the same quality, the same energy, the same being if you will. Simply by different names, however.

THE DOOR: You mentioned the word karmic, is that the same as the karma concept in Buddhism? If so did you borrow it from them?

THE BEAR: Hinduism also generated a lot of concepts, such as karma, which is also found in Buddhism. See there is a great deal of syncretism among pagans, in that we don’t believe that you should be bound by an orthodox text. You have to rather test it according to your own internal chime, or bell. If it rings true for you on a spiritual level you will know that on a spiritual level. It will feel like the right thing to do and it will test out because it will in fact be the right thing to do.

THE DOOR: So then when you read the sacred writings of any religion from the Bible to the Bagavad Gita you’re testing what rings true to you in them?

THE BEAR: Actually you’re exploring them.

THE DOOR: So if you read the Bible and there are parts of it that you feel are relevant to you, you keep them. Such as say the 23rd Psalm?

THE BEAR: There are people who count themselves as Christian witches, because they came from a Christian background and tradition.

THE DOOR: Let’s back up a bit. I thought I heard you say there are Christian witches.

THE BEAR: Um huh.

THE DOOR: That should send our letters to the editor through the roof.

THE BEAR: It’s very unusual, in that a lot of people who are practicing witches, including a lot of ex-Christians like myself, take a look at this and say, given the bloody history of Christianity and the burning times, how do you do this?

THE DOOR: You make it sound as if Christianity is the bad guy. What denomination did you belong to?

THE BEAR: I’m a recovering Catholic as are most of the witches I know in fact.

THE DOOR: Surprise, surprise. I think you mean ex-Catholic. When was the last time that you went to confession?

THE BEAR: I gave up going to confession and church entirely before I was 17 I believe.

THE DOOR: That would be in the mid 1960’s?

THE BEAR: Yes, about 35 years ago

THE DOOR: Do you run into many other Witches who are from a Christian background, and what denominations are they?
THE BEAR: I would say that most witches come from either Catholic, Jehovah’s Witness or a Mormon background.

THE DOOR: That’s interesting. What is the greatest percentage of the three?

THE BEAR: It would be hard to do demographics on that. I would say from personal experience, perhaps anywhere from 2/3 to 4/5 of the witches that I know come from a Catholic background.

THE DOOR: Why do you suppose that is?

THE BEAR: Catholicism #1 has been around longer internationally that virtually any other form of Christianity practiced in the west. It has also a very strong pagan appeal in itself, in that Catholicism borrowed much of its rituals, much of its holidays and much of its holy places from pre-existing pagan religions. For example December 25. Historically the Catholic Church ripped off the Saturnalia in order to have a competing holiday to offer the peasantry, in order to lure them away from the practice of the ancient Roman pagan midwinter holiday.

THE DOOR: Right, in fact some Christians won’t celebrate Christmas and Easter for that very reason, but why is the percentage of Catholic converts to witchcraft so high?

THE BEAR: I think it’s because Catholicism is very external driven, it is very external oriented, it is very much a religion that looks like it was put together by a bunch of politicians who said if we keep the sheep terrorized, submissive and paying their tithes we’ve got ourselves a nice little empire. It’s not any accident that the Roman Catholic Church has an organizational structure that is modeled directly after the ancient Roman civil administration.

THE DOOR: Right, like the Diocese, its administrator the bishop (procurator), College of Cardinals (Senators), Pope (Emperor). However, again, why are so many Witches ex-Catholics?

THE BEAR: The point being that if Roman Catholicism is that much external structure imposed, you must obey or you’re going to be punished. Not you must obey because you understand. Then a lot of us are left with a spiritual hunger going well wait a minute, what happens when the house of cards is revealed for what it is? When you see that the emperor has no clothes.

THE DOOR: So you’re saying that the Roman Catholic Church was devoid of any spiritual substance for you and other witches. Why do you suppose that you only encounter former Roman Catholic, Jehovah’s Witness and Mormons as Wiccan converts? Why not mainline Protestant denominations like: Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist etc.?
Do you think that they are more fulfilled in their faith?
THE BEAR: I’ve known relatively fewer mainline Protestant converts to Wicca than I have met Roman Catholic ones. I think that without doing an accurate diagnosis it would be hard to say whether they are more fear based, and just fearful of making the step out of Christianity into what might actually be a more simpatico religion for them.

THE DOOR: A more what?

THE BEAR: A more sympathetic religion, which they might find to be actually more fulfilling of their needs. The massive crush of negative propaganda that you can find on any televangelist show on any Sunday sermon, from any mainstream pulpit against pagans, Wiccans, Witchcraft and all the rest of it. Especially during the Halloween season. The fear alone might be a major hold up for anybody even remotely considering this. As a matter of fact the one segment in the Christian population I have found to be most sympathetic and open minded toward us would probably be the Universalist Unitarians, who are often times described as not even being Christian by Fundamentalists.

THE DOOR: That’s what Dr. Walter Martin said in Kingdom Of The Cults. Since you mentioned Halloween, explain what is the significance of it to a Witch?

THE BEAR: Halloween or All Hallows Eve is the Christian co-opting of the ancient holiday of Samhain, which is pronounce saw-when. In the Celtic languages when you have an mh put together it’s pronounced as a “W”. Samhain is the time of year when the veil between the mortal world and the life and the world hereafter is at its thinnest. In Celtic tradition the dead, the ancestors were not entities to be feared i.e. ghosts, hauntings and all the Christian claptrap. They were an actual part of the community if you will. They were ancestors to be consulted, to be revered, to be communicated with, especially at this time of year, when it became psychically easiest to do so. The Christians moved in and took it over and established the holiday of All Saints Day, on November 1, Hallowmass and All Hallows Eve. Isaac Bonewits does a wonderful write up on the origins of Halloween. It was essentially an attempt to take over and Christianize a holiday, which the church could not browbeat its new converts into giving up entirely.

THE DOOR: Another popularly referred to pagan religion that usually comes up during Halloween is that of the Druids. It is especially villanized because of its use of human sacrifice, even though many ancient religions practiced it. Is human sacrifice or any type of sacrifice in any way a part of any Witchcraft movements at this particular point in history?

THE BEAR: No. As a matter of fact, for more information about Druidry or Druidism you can check out the web site I just mentioned that is posted by Isaac Bonewits.

 

To Be Continued.