I have been astonished to read the savage comments on Facebook about the ‘mosque’ that is being planned a couple of blocks away from what is called ground zero of the 9/11 incident. What was apparently planned as a conciliatory gesture was turned into an insult by the spinners.

I recently had the good fortune to go to a local high school to have a Q/A about Wicca. The group was about a dozen lads and lasses, but they all had that “We are able to think outside the teen box” blue energy. Such a pleasure to see people who are more ready to evolve than to live by the reflex knee jerks of everyone else’s programs. What follows is a summary of some of the stuff the questions brought forth with a couple of additions to emphasise Beltane. A sort of Wiccan history 101 with Beltane as a theme, and my own part in it to make it personal.

We are currently in the Chinese New Year and not all that far from our own. We have finished with the crass commercialism surrounding the celebration of the Christians’ Master and are heading into the other pagan season in honour of the goddess Estara, the goddess of fertility whose ancient pre-Christian symbols are the egg and the hare or rabbit.

I remember an animated conversation between two people at a pagan meeting. One was a Celtic Wiccan and the other a Kabbalist ritual magician. The Wiccan was insisting that doing a money ritual was best organized using green as the color motif. The Kabbalist was insisting that for prosperity the best color was blue.

Neither noticed until much later that they were not talking about the same thing. There is a fundamental difference between doing a ritual to manifest money and doing one to manifest prosperity.