LEONARD NIMOY: Here on
"Ancient Mysteries," experience the horror of the
Burning Times when thousands of accused
witches were tortured and burned at the stake. Discover the startling truth
behind the terrifying legend of the witch. Before we unlock the future, we
must find the keys to the past. I'm Leonard Nimoy. Join me, and open the
door to ancient mysteries, beginning now here on A&E. [theme music] [dramatic music] The witch, evil sorceress,
seductive enchantress flying in the moonlight-- what do we know of her
mysterious origins? Who were the real women
behind the myth of the witch? Who are these people with
extraordinary supernatural powers? Where did they come from? And what did they do? Are they here now? These are questions the human
community has been asking for a long time. It may be that the witches are a
remnant of a long lost goddess, a figure of incredible power
who brought life and death. LEONARD NIMOY: Why were
witches tortured and burned at the stake during
the Middle Ages? How did the belief begin
that witches could fly? How did a child's game spark
the tragedy of the Salem witch trials? And why, despite the
witch's fearsome legacy, are thousands again practicing
the ancient arts of witchcraft? Discover the enduring power
and forbidden secrets, the myth and the magic of the witch
on "Ancient Mysteries." [tense music] [soft heavy music] The witch, sorceress,
enchantress, the devil's consort. A fearsome being of
fairy tale and myth, she has haunted the
human consciousness for thousands of years. The witch remains a chilling
specter that still captures the human imagination and
baffles us with grim mysteries. For a psychologist,
the witch definitely represents the dark side
of the female presence. She is the shadow. She is the woman out of control. LEONARD NIMOY: What is a witch? When did the belief
in witches originate? Do they exist? Or are they merely
bizarre creations of the human imagination? Over centuries, the
image of the witch has undergone a
strange transformation. [liquid bubbling] In ancient Scandinavia,
Freya, goddess of prophecy, soared through the
heavens in a chariot. [powerful music] In Greek mythology, the
witch was as beautiful as she was deadly. The sorceress Circe
enchanted Ulysses' sailors with her magical
brew of honey wine. Then, with a touch
of her magic wand, she turned each man into a pig. Even earlier, in
Hebrew tradition, a woman named Lilith, her
long, red hair streaming, slipped into unprotected
homes, preying on newborns and stealing men's seed. [soft music] Perhaps no figure
in myth or legend has been so despised
and feared as the witch. BRIAN LEVACK: Being a witch
was just about the worst thing you could be accused of
being because you practiced cannibalistic infanticide. You danced naked. You practiced promiscuous sex. You were part of the
nightmare of society. LEONARD NIMOY: The
image of the witch is indelibly imprinted on
the modern consciousness. And yet in their
earliest beginnings, magical female beings who
possessed supernatural powers were not seen as
a source of evil. Surprisingly, some scholars
trace the origin of the witch back to ancient deities who
were as benign as they were powerful. Witches have been around as
long as the human community has been trying to deal with
disease and avert disaster. It may be that they developed
from early goddess cults, that these are the women
who served the goddess. [soft music] LEONARD NIMOY: These goddess
figures, some dating back 20,000 years, were revered
for their magical ability to enhance fertility
and nurture the land. All-powerful creation deities,
they held sway over the forces of the universe. For thousands of years,
the creation goddess was honored as the
all-powerful divine force. She was known by many names. In ancient Mesopotamia,
she was called Inanna, the Queen of Heaven. In Egypt, the
predominant civilization of the ancient world,
she was known as Isis. In the land of Canaan,
she was Asherah. All of them were supreme
goddesses who presided over the sacred forces
of life and death, worshipped by those who
relied on the Earth's fertility for their survival. [gentle music] People who depended on
the Earth for sustenance, on the cycles of nature, on
the reproductive capacities of the Earth to survive
and the association of those natural forces with
the female body and, therefore, the identification of the female
as sacred makes perfect sense. LEONARD NIMOY: Not only
did the ancients worship powerful female deities, but
throughout the Middle East, often those who practiced the
holiest of rituals were women. Could these priestesses
trained in the sacred arts have been the earliest
antecedents of the witch? Over the centuries,
these ancient priestesses came to be known
as the wise women. These women made house calls. They removed impurity,
[non-english].. They took off sorcery,
[non-english].. They cured babies. They dealt with infertility. They had cures for impotence. And they even did sort of
practical family therapy because they would
come to a house and cleanse it of evil words. LEONARD NIMOY: From
the early rituals sprang the sacred
ceremonies which would later be known as witchcraft. What magical powers did these
so-called ancient wise women possess? Accounts from ancient Turkey
describe how the wise women would sit inside a sacred
circle drawn with salt to recite their magical incantations. [mysterious music] Their ritual
objects were simple. But they were believed
to possess awesome powers of healing and protection. What's interesting about-- is that they are so
clearly understood to be positive figures
in their society. No king could be
without their counsel. No army could
recover from a defeat without their ritual activities. No baby could be born
without their presence. LEONARD NIMOY: The question
fascinates scholars. How did the benign
image of the wise woman become transformed into the
malevolent figure of the witch? [soft heavy music] Some scholars believe
the answer may lie in events which took
place three millennia before the birth of Christ. [steadfast music] In this turbulent
time, tribes of nomads known as the Indo-Europeans
invaded the Western world from the east. They were a warrior people
who brought with them a strong belief in
aggressive male gods of war. Over the centuries, the
belief in their male sky gods would come to dominate the once
mighty female Earth deities. One of the things we see in
the development of the history of religions is that very
often goddesses start out in very prominent roles
and are gradually demoted. We actually see their names
moving down on the list that the scribes are copying
over and over and over again. [soft music] LEONARD NIMOY: Some
scholars believe that when the Hebrews,
worshippers of one god, settled in the land
of Canaan around 1300 before the common
era, they perpetuated this male-dominated vision
of their own creation story. Some believe that in the
biblical story of creation, Eve is the mortal version of
the earlier goddess Asherah. In the Garden of Eden, it is
Eve who bears responsibility for the fall of all humanity. And the sacred
tree and the snake, once benign symbols of the
earlier goddess culture, become something both
dangerous and forbidden. Obeying the laws of
the Bible, the Hebrews condemned witchcraft
as a pagan practice, banning it from
the land of Canaan. WOMAN: "Let no one be found
among you who practices divination or
sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft,
or consults the dead." Deuteronomy 19:10. LEONARD NIMOY: Strangely,
despite this prohibition, one of the most mysterious
stories in the Bible describes a magical encounter
between a biblical king and a witch. This story is set in a period
when King Saul is locked in a ferocious battle with the
Israelites' formidable enemy, the Philistines. On the eve of the
fateful battle of Gilboa, a troubled King Saul seeks
out a forbidden sorceress, hoping that she may call up
a spirit who can counsel him from beyond the grave. It's a fascinating story
because Saul has already banished all the
witches from the land. And yet when push
comes to shove, he's showing up at the
local wise woman's house to get the true skinny
on the upcoming battle. WOMAN: "Then Saul said
unto his servants, 'Seek me a woman that
hath a familiar spirit, that I may go to her
and inquire of her.' And his servant said
to him, 'Behold. There is a woman that hath
a familiar spirit at Endor." 1 Samuel 28:7. [light music] LEONARD NIMOY: King
Saul visits the witch in the village of Endor on
the outskirts of Nazareth. He asks her to summon the
prophet Samuel from the dead so that he may receive Samuel's
wisdom before the battle. The witch obeys
the king's request. CAROLE FONTAINE: She
digs a ritual pit, makes a little sacrifice, and,
sure enough, she brings up the ghost of Samuel the prophet
from the land of the dead. LEONARD NIMOY: Tragically, the
ghost has only ominous news for the troubled king. The specter of Samuel predicts
that Saul will die in battle. On the next day, Samuel's
terrible prophecy of doom is fulfilled. Why does the Bible, while
forbidding witchcraft, contain this enigmatic story of
a revered Hebrew king visiting a witch in his time of need? It is an ancient mystery
which remains unanswered. [heavy music] LEONARD NIMOY: In
the 14th century, all Europe was overrun by
a mysterious plague known as the Black Death. As the scourge swept
across the land, whole villages were decimated. In all of Europe, one in
every three would perish. With the onset of
the Black Death came hysteria, the fear that
a great inescapable evil had descended upon the land. With this fear came the belief
that this misfortune was the work of the devil himself. Throughout Europe, the
Church established a tribunal known as the Inquisition to
root out all religious heretics feared as the dangerous
accomplices of the devil. [mysterious music] By the late 14th century,
one form of heresy was judged to be
especially malevolent. Witchcraft is defined as
the most heinous of all forms of heresy because it is when
you sell your soul to the devil. And it puts not just
the individual, not just the Church at risk. It puts all of society at risk. LEONARD NIMOY: Spawned
by the growing panic, the image of the
witch became magnified by the popular imagination
into a terrifying reality. In the hysteria
of the time, many believed that witches
possessed the powers of flight. Surprisingly, as early
as the 16th century, scholars suspected there
might be a medical reason why those who practiced witchcraft
believed they could fly. One German physician at
the time, Johann Bayer, suggested that the
fantasies of flight were actually a result of
witches anointing themselves with a hallucinogenic
drug called datura. [soft music] As depicted in this
early silent film, it was believed that witches
flew to their dreaded nocturnal gatherings
known as sabbaths. BRIAN LEVACK: The
witch was believed to have made a face-to-face
pact with the devil. And the witch was believed
to actually worship the devil in large nocturnal assemblies. And, indeed, at these sabbaths
to which they allegedly flew, there were various forms
of immoral activity. It was believed that there was
promiscuous sex taking place at the sabbath. So, indeed, you have the
image of a secret society that reverses all the moral
norms of society. LEONARD NIMOY: The
sabbath was believed to be a frenzy of naked
dancing and gluttonous feasting on the flesh
of human infants. It reached its climax with
the appearance of Satan, the prince of
darkness himself, who would have sexual intercourse
with the assembled witches in an unbridled orgy. [ominous music] The imagery of the witches'
sabbat with its panoply of prohibited sexuality
had a fascinating appeal to the people of
that time, especially when we consider that celibacy
and control of sexual impulse has always been considered
an appropriate expression of Christian behavior. [soft flute music] LEONARD NIMOY: In 1486, a book
was written to assist the witch hunters in the grim task of
identifying and prosecuting witches. The work was entitled
the "Malleus Maleficarum" or the "Hammer Against Witches." Penned by two Dominican monks
in Germany, Jacob Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer,
the "Malleus" expressed the prevailing
belief of the time, that women were
sexually vulnerable beings, easy prey for the devil. MAN: "What else is a woman
but a foe to friendship? They are evil, lecherous,
vain, and lustful. All witchcraft comes from
carnal lust, which is, in women, insatiable." The "Malleus Maleficarum." CAROLE FONTAINE: Although there
had been witch hunting manuals before the printing of
the "Malleus Maleficarum," it was actually Jacob Sprenger
and Heinrich Kramer who linked lust and the particular
condition of women's bodies to demonology and witchcraft. ELIZABETH SAY:
It's very specific. I mean, it's
incredibly detailed. How do you know witches? How do you target them? For example, you never
begin asking someone, "Are you a witch?" You ask them, "When did
you become a witch?" LEONARD NIMOY: For 200
years, the lurid descriptions in the "Malleus" would serve
as a manual for zealous witch hunters. Ironically, this book of
intolerance and persecution was, in its own
time, second only to the Bible in popularity. [soft music] The victims of the persecution
that the "Malleus" helped to inspire were often the
people who were doing the most to help their community. BRIAN LEVACK: When villagers
felt that they had been harmed magically, that they had been
the victims of witchcraft, there was a natural tendency
to suspect that women were the witches who had harmed them. And that probably is because
women performed functions that were very, very closely
associated with magic. Women were the cooks. Women were the healers. Women were the midwives. [baby coos] LEONARD NIMOY: Most
of the accused witches were older, widowed, or single. Many were adept in the
use of herbs for healing. Ironically, these
skills made them objects of suspicion, for
if these women could heal with potions and
herbs, could they not also do terrible
harm as well? There are cases on record in
which, for example, a midwife has been practicing apparently
with great success for 15, 20, 30 years. Suddenly, she's accused of
witchcraft, killing babies at the behest of Satan. And out of the
woodwork, there come people who she has
delivered babies with for a generation who
suddenly say, in fact, she's guilty. [heavy music] LEONARD NIMOY: Why were
friends and family members so quick to accuse the
innocent of witchcraft? It is a question which baffles
historians to this day. And still, the worst
was yet to come. Fueled by intense
fear and hatred, the flames of the Inquisition
seemed unquenchable. Soon, thousands would be
snared in the web of terror and betrayal. Once the accused
witches were arrested, the true horror began. LEONARD NIMOY: By the end of
the 1600s, throughout Europe, the witch hunting hysteria
had reached its peak. Thousands were arrested and
brought before inquisitors for examination. [slinking music] [shouting] Under the inquisitor's
brutal scrutiny, the accused witches were
stripped and searched. And they were prodded
mercilessly with long needles to find the mark of the devil. With the Inquisitor, any
suspicious wart, mole, or birthmark could be enough
to condemn someone to death. [shouting] Once evidence of
witchcraft was found, a confession was required,
for it was against the law to execute a witch without one. The practice of torture, which
had been banned for centuries, was revived to extract them. Some of the most
horrendous and, in some ways, sophisticated methods of
torture that were developed were developed during the
Inquisition, tortures that are really too horrific
almost for us to imagine any human being
surviving through. The whole phrase
"the third degree" can be traced back to this
medieval period of torture that there were three
degrees of torture and that the third degree
was the degree that killed the person being tortured. [heavy music] LEONARD NIMOY: Instruments such
as thumbscrews, leg screws, head clamps, and the iron
maiden were all designed to inflict unbearable pain. Incredibly, even under
torture, the witch was viewed as highly dangerous. The "Malleus Maleficarum"
warned the torturer never to look a witch in the eye
for fear of her evil powers. Because if you
look into her eyes, you might have
compassion for her. And in the book, it says this
is her casting her spell on you. But what that means is
there was no room left-- no room left--
for the Inquisitor to have any compassion for the
person that was being tortured. LEONARD NIMOY: Under torture,
most accused witches confessed to the most heinous of crimes. To avoid more suffering,
they told their torturers what they thought
they wanted to hear. BRIAN LEVACK: In the hope of
getting these people to confess to the fantasies that judges
and inquisitors had developed and, indeed, had acquired
from their reading, these people were subject to
excruciating physical pain. And we do know that if
the pain is severe enough, we will confess
to almost anything that our inquisitors
want us to confess to. LEONARD NIMOY: To determine
guilt or innocence, the English devised a method
known as swimming the witch. [tense music] If the accused floated,
she was judged a witch and condemned to death. If she sank and drowned,
she was judged innocent. Either way, the
suspect was doomed. For thousands of
others in Europe, however, death came by fire. But why this method
of execution? Scholars believe it was thought
that only when the witch's body had been reduced to ashes
would her evil sorcery truly be destroyed. [soft music] On the fateful
day, the condemned would be packed into
a wagon and paraded through narrow cobblestone
streets to the village square. There, the accused witch
was bound to the stake. Records show that on a
single day in one village square in Germany, 139 alleged
witches were burned to death. The town historian noted
that the place of execution looked like a small wood
from the number of stakes. [screaming] For the 200 years known
as the Burning Times, witch hunts erupted
like sporadic wildfires across Europe. The worst persecution would
take place in the rural villages of France and Germany. There, under
interrogation and torture, suspects were
forced to surrender the names of their neighbors. But why did the fury
of the witch hunts escalate so rapidly? Who did you practice with? Who else is involved
in your rituals? You torture someone
enough, you will give what is wanted in
order to end the torture. And if it means naming
someone, then you name someone. But this begins an
escalating circle, an ever-widening circle. And eventually, you would
have dozens, maybe hundreds of people who have been
named as a result of one or two women originally
being identified as witches. [soft music] LEONARD NIMOY: Perhaps no town
in the 16th century captured the horror of the Burning Times
more shockingly than Wurzburg, Germany. There, the overzealous
magistrates decided that almost
the entire town was possessed by the devil. They condemned 600
people to death. 19 were priests. 41 were children. There were towns, in Germany
in particular, where there were no women left after the
inquisitors came through. Everyone was killed. [dramatic music] LEONARD NIMOY: When the
fires of the Burning Times have finally smoldered into
ashes, thousands had perished. Exactly how many actually died
will perhaps always remain a mystery. Scholars estimates range from
60,000 to 300,000 victims. Although the fires of the
Burning Times in Europe started to die out
by the late 1600s, the witch hunting frenzy
would spread to the New World. LEONARD NIMOY: In the
strange and terrible history of the witch,
perhaps no incident is more startling or
more hotly debated than an event which took
place in an obscure village in Massachusetts, a phenomenon
which still haunts scholars with unanswered questions. During the Salem
witch trials of 1692, in a few terror-filled
months, nearly 200 people would be condemned as witches. 14 women and five men would be
hanged on Salem's Gallows Hill. How did the witch
hunt of 1692 begin? And why here? The settlement of Salem was
named after the holy city of Jerusalem. But here, the Puritans had
found no land of milk and honey. Salem had endured 20
years of Indian wars. It was wracked by internal
pressures, land disputes, and deep religious divisions
tore at the struggling community. Though the Puritans clung
to their strict religion, it offered little comfort. Eternal damnation was
an ever present threat. And the world of demons seemed
as real as the hard New England soil. [heavy music] RICHARD GODBEER: People living
in the 17th century tended to believe that most
things could be explained supernaturally. If you stumped your toe
or if your cow fell sick or if your food went rotten
before it should have done, there must surely be some kind
of supernatural explanation for this. [mysterious music] LEONARD NIMOY:
Ironically, scholars believe that the
witch hysteria of 1692 began in the home of a Puritan
minister, the Reverend Samuel Parris. Even more surprisingly, the
event which sparked the ensuing terror was a child's game. It started when the Reverend
Parris's daughter, Elizabeth, and his niece, Abigail
Williams, were playing a game with the household
slave, Tituba. RICHARD GODBEER: They had been
using a primitive crystal ball. This consisted of
a glass of water with a raw egg broken into it. And then they would gaze
into it, ask a question, and hope that images would come
out or appear in the water. Well, at one of these
experiments, one of the girls believed that instead
of seeing the features of a wealthy, attractive
future husband, she saw, instead, a coffin. [heavy dramatic music] LEONARD NIMOY: Besieged
by apparitions of death, the girls were soon
thrown into convulsions. Within days, nine
other girls in Salem was simultaneously stricken with
the same mysterious affliction. Under pressure from
the Reverend Parris, the girls reveal the names of
three witches whom they said had caused their possession-- Tituba, the household slave,
Sarah Good, a poor beggar woman, and Sarah
Osborne, a widow rumored to have had an
illicit affair with one of her servants. All three were outsiders in
the community, easy targets for suspicion. What motivated the girls to make
their astonishing accusations? What was the source
of their possession? There are two possible
explanations of the girls' fits at Salem. One is that they were
experiencing some kind of psychological malady
that they were hysterical in one way or another. The other explanation is that
they were being deliberately deceptive, that they were
practicing some kind of fraud. CAROLE FONTAINE: It may have
been, at least on the part of the young girls who
claimed to be bewitched, a real form of social release. They were so tightly
controlled and their status in patriarchal
Puritan households was so marginal that this
was a way of becoming the center of attention. [soft music] LEONARD NIMOY: Although
it might seem incredible in modern times, the accusations
made by the possessed girls in Salem were taken seriously
by the local authorities. They set up a tribunal to
investigate the charges. What compelled the
local magistrates to convene these
extraordinary trials? Surprisingly, some
scholars believe that the trials may have
concealed a political agenda. One common
explanation has been that the parents and
relatives of the girls used the accusations as a
way to attack their enemies. And it's extremely striking
that most of the accusers came from one side of
the factional dispute and most of the accused
from the other side. LEONARD NIMOY: Sparked by the
Salem trials, the hysteria spread to 24 outlying villages. By September 1692, the jails
overflowed with nearly 200 accused witches. 27 were found guilty,
and 19 were hanged. After execution, their
bodies, forbidden a proper Christian burial, were
left to rot in the open air on Salem's Gallows Hill. Why did the witch
trials finally end? Some scholars believe the trials
ended quickly because the witch hunters accused one
victim too many, the wife of the governor
of Massachusetts. With the power structure in New
England seemingly threatened, the leaders saw to it that the
trials were abruptly stopped. What ultimately brought the
terrors of the Burning Times in the Old and New
World to an end? It remains an
intriguing mystery. Some scholars believe
that the advent of science may be a decisive factor. ELIZABETH SAY: The
witchcraft trials come to an end for many reasons. But I think a large
part of the reason was that society moved away from
its fear of the supernatural and the unexplainable. You curse your neighbor's cow,
and the cow dies the next day, and suddenly, you're a witch. Well, as different explanations
for why the cow bloated up and died become available,
the identification of witchcraft as the source
of all evil in society will begin to diminish. And it eventually
will disappear. LEONARD NIMOY: And yet,
strangely, despite the growth of science, the belief in
witchcraft was far from over. LEONARD NIMOY: Over
hundreds of years, with the rise of science, the
fearsome image of the witch gradually faded. [liquid bubbling] By the early 20th century,
the dreaded sorceress was reduced to the
outrageous Halloween witch of popular culture. Yet surprisingly,
in our own time, there has been a dramatic
rebirth of the ancient arts of witchcraft. An estimated 200,000 men and
women in the United States and Europe have
dedicated themselves to following the ancient
path of the witch. After so many centuries
of persecution, why would anyone choose
to be called a witch? Through the centuries,
there have been so many misconceptions about witches-- the green-faced warted hag
that wears the conical hat, the night flyer, the
sorceress or sorcerer who works as the devil's consort. There are many negative
connotations and myths about witches. But I will assure you
that all are very untrue. LEONARD NIMOY: What
sparked the modern revival of ancient witchcraft? Scholars have traced
its rebirth back to the astonishing work of a
young British archaeologist named Margaret Murray. In her controversial book, "The
Witch-Cult in Western Europe," published in 1921, Murray
presented a startling theory. She insisted that
in European history, witchcraft had not
been an obscure cult but a dominant religious force. She argued that the
witches who were prosecuted in the 15th and 16th
and 17th centuries were actually the practitioners
of a pagan religion, which she claimed was the main popular
religion throughout Europe. LEONARD NIMOY: Murray's
romantic vision of a powerful cult
of witches was soon discredited by historians. But her popular book sparked
a renewed fascination with witchcraft. By the mid-20th century,
modern witchcraft had become the spiritual path
for thousands of believers. They called their religion Wicca
from an ancient Anglo-Saxon word meaning craft of the wise. Inspired by these early
origins, modern witches rely on the simplest
of ritual elements-- candles, herbs, incense, and
crystals, which they believe can be imbued with
magical power. But how might these powers work? BARBARA AMADEA MACGRAW: When we
harness the forces of nature, in essence, what we're doing is
kind of like a very directed, powerful sending of a prayer. LEONARD NIMOY: Of
all the rituals of contemporary
witchcraft, the sabbath is perhaps the most important. WITCH: Powers of the west,
powers of the waters, be here now! WITCHES: Blessed be. LEONARD NIMOY: The
modern witches' sabbath is in no way connected to the
dreaded sabbath of the Burning Times. There is no pact with the devil. Instead, the roots of
this modern sabbath can be traced back to much
earlier traditions, the pagan rituals that marked the
Earth's changing seasons. This midsummer night's
sabbath is traditionally observed on the shortest
night of the year. In the hills above Los Angeles,
these witches come together to celebrate the season. BARBARA AMADEA
MACGRAW: For a witch, the divine is not
separate from the world. This is the plane of the sacred. There isn't some
place else to go. We are not on some linear course
that ends in some judgment. We are in an ever-continuing,
ever-changing circle. LEONARD NIMOY: How
do modern witches use their magical powers? Claiming their ancient
heritage, the followers of Wicca seek to live by a code
of conduct summed up in a single age-old phrase. "Do what you will,
but harm none." When you become a witch,
the first thing you learn about this natural power
of the universe, which is all around us and that
we use all the time-- every single member of
the human race uses it-- is that it hurts. You can burn your
fingers with it. Therefore, you use it wisely. You use it in a positive sense. [soft music] I think modern people, at
least for most of this century, probably didn't believe in
witchcraft because we now live in a mechanistic world. Matter is dead for us. It is something to be exploited. It is not imbued
with magical powers. I think, though,
that we're beginning to shift from that
old Newtonian universe through Einstein's universe
of infinite possibilities into a postmodern world where
we powerfully understand the effect of random events and
the effect of the observable. [soft music] LEONARD NIMOY: After enduring
centuries of misunderstanding, the witch has once
again returned to reclaim her ancient heritage,
one that for generations was branded as evil but which
scholars believe was, in fact, a legacy of ancient wisdom. [light music] In our own time Wicca, the
spiritual path of the witch, is recognized as an
official religion. And like other
religions, it is imbued with a faith in divine powers,
with a profound respect for the forces of nature,
and the love of humanity. Like all quests of the
spirit, it is one rich with magical possibilities. [theme music]
