I am a Witch. No, not a folk-tale hag with a pointy hat and a penchant for frogging the local supply of princes. Nor am I a Satanist by any stretch of the imagination, unless you insist upon defining any deity other than the Biblical Jehovah as Satan in disguise.

Modern Witchcraft (or "Wicca", or "the Craft") is a revival/reconstruction of the polytheistic and shamanic aboriginal religions of Celtic and other European cultures. Our own origin myths speak of unbroken traditions of worship stretching back over thousands of years. But in fact, the very few Witches who can legitimately claim a lineage that predates the twentieth century have so little in common with the mainstream of modern Wicca that most of them don't bother staying in touch with the neo-Pagan community. The forms of our rituals come partly from historic reconstruction, partly from various ceremonial magical traditions loosely related to freemasonry, and partly from the fertile imaginations of each new generation of its practitioners.

It takes intelligence to be a Witch. There are no orthodox doctrines to blindly follow. We are each our own priest/ess, responsible for our own beliefs and worship. We have Elders, whose experience and wisdom most of us respect, but no gurus, and no Popes. We're an anarchistic bunch, hard to organize even for our own good. The typical worship group is a coven, with a maximum of 13 members, because beyond this number small-group dynamics tend to fall apart. Many of us prefer to worship in solitude.

Wicca is a mystery religion. This means that the basic things Witches have in common are not ideas or intellectual beliefs, but experiences. They're very hard to talk about -- like trying to describe a sunset to a blind person, or sex to a virgin -- because they mostly function upon the nonverbal parts of the mind.