The guitarist was a woman of forty or fifty, with long gray hair and a whole lot of jewelry. The flautist was a person of indeterminate gender with squiggly snakes painted on his/her cheeks and forehead. The singer was an Asian girl in her late teens.
Beyond the musicians, eleven women and one man followed the instructions of a woman clothed in an intricately embroidered robe.
“Raise your hands to the heavens.”
Twenty-four arms went up.
“Inhale deeply. Follow your breath. Feel it enter each part of your body, moving down your throat, to your heart, your breasts, your solar plexus, your genitals, your feet. Repeat. One. Two. Three. Four times.”
A lot of breathing and arm waving followed.
“With each breath receive blessings from the universe. Five. Six. Seven times.”
More air intake.
“Accept a deep inner calm. Be filled with peace.”
Embroidery woman drew her hands to her mouth.
“Now, thank yourself. Love yourself. Kiss each of your hands.”
Embroidery woman kissed her palms. The others did likewise.
“Kiss your knuckles. Your fingers. You are love!”
Mercifully, at that moment I spotted Jennifer. She was wearing jeans and a black hoodie, adjusting logs in the fire with a long iron pole. Sparks spiraled around her, like tiny red stars carried on a cyclone.
Skirting the edge of the trees, I joined her.
“Hey,” I said.
Jennifer looked up, skin amber in the glow of the flames. A smile lit her face. “You found us.”
“The group is” – I was quite at a loss – “larger than I expected.”
“This is actually a small gathering. Since we’re between holidays, we’re not celebrating anything special tonight.”
I must have looked confused.
She smiled. “Let’s sit down.”
I followed her to one of the logs circling the fire.
“OK. Wicca one-oh-one.”
“Condensed version,” I said.
Jennifer nodded. “Wiccans recognize the existence of many ancient gods and goddesses – Pan, Dionysus, Diana. But we also view the God and Goddess as symbols, not as living entities.” She swept one arm in an arc. “In the trees, the lake, flowers, the wind, each other. All nature’s creatures. We view, and treat, all things of the Earth as aspects of the divine. You with me?”
I nodded, not sure that I was.
“The Wiccan calendar is based on the ancient Celtic days of celebration, with eight commonly recognized holidays. Four occur at the time of the solstices or equinoxes, the other four fall roughly midway between. Historical research shows that these holidays were celebrated throughout Europe and the British Isles in early pre-Christian times. Many festivals were so popular the Church couldn’t stamp them out, so they appropriated and linked many to various saints.
“Brigantia, or Imbolc, the day when newborn lambs begin to nurse, became the Christian Candlemas, honoring the purification of the Virgin. Held February second, it marks the end of winter and the beginning of spring. Brigantia is the day of Brigit, the Irish goddess of smithcraft, healing, and poetry. Moving on toward spring, the vernal equinox usually falls around March twentieth.”
“Twelve hours of darkness and twelve hours of light,” I said.
She nodded. “Roman Catholics turned this one into the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Next comes Beltane, on May first.”
“The day for dancing round maypoles.”
“Exactly. An obvious fertility ritual. Summer solstice, the longest day of the year, falls around June twenty-first. For Wiccans, the summer solstice is when the maiden gives way to the mother aspect of the Goddess.
“Lammas, celebrated around August first, announces the coming of autumn and the beginning of the harvest. Then it’s on to the fall equinox, around September twenty-third.”
“The point when day becomes shorter than night and winter looms.”
“Right again. The fall equinox was also the time of the second harvest, and of winemaking. For Wiccans, it is when the mother prepares to yield way to the Crone aspect of the Goddess.
“Samhain falls on the last day of October, and is celebrated today as Halloween. In ancient times, it was customary to slaughter livestock and begin smoking meat on Samhain. In the old Celtic calendar, it was the end of one year and the beginning of the next, so the separation of the living from the dead was especially dicey at this time.”
“So we dress up in scary costumes to keep the spirits at bay?”
“That’s one interpretation. Finally, the winter solstice falls on or about December twenty-first. Also known as Yule, this is the shortest day and longest night of the year. For Wiccans, it’s the period of the year during which the Crone aspect of the Goddess reigns. Many religions have placed the birth of their gods at the solstice. Jesus, Horus, Dionysus, Helios, and Mithras all claim Yule as their birthday.”
“Makes sense to me. The days begin growing longer, so it’s a time of rebirth and regeneration.”
“Right on, again. So, to make a long story short, tonight we’re not celebrating anything special. Just coming together for companionship and to worship the God and Goddess.”
I thought of Slidell’s reports from neighbors concerning activity the night before Jimmy Klapec was found.
“How often do you gather?”
“Typically, the second Tuesday of each month.”
Funderburke first spotted Klapec’s body the previous Tuesday.
“Always?”
“Usually.” Her brow furrowed. “Why do you ask?”
“What about last Monday?”
“Yes, of course. There was a planning session that night for the Samhain festival. I forgot because I wasn’t here.”
Maybe she was being honest, maybe not. Her expression gave no hint.
“Did Asa Finney attend that meeting?”
She looked off into space.
“No. He attends very few.”
“Do you know where he was?”
She shook her head.
“Did you try contacting him?”
“I called several times to see if he would be going out to camp that night.” She looked down at her hands. “I got no answer.”
I watched the bonfire reshape the features of her face, elongating her nose and deepening the hollows below her eyes and cheekbones.
She looked up into my gaze.
“Asa is incapable of harming another human being.”
“He’s a self-proclaimed witch.”
“So am I. So is every person here.”
I said nothing.
“Asa is fully committed to Wicca, and, therefore, to a reverence for life. I know in my heart of hearts he could never take a life.”
She shook her head in frustration.
“There are so many misconceptions about us. We’re linked to Satanism, vampirism, Freemasonry. Some say we engage in group sex and human sacrifice. It’s all madness, based on ignorance.”
She turned to me, body tense, reflected firelight flickering in the darks of her eyes.
“Fear of women’s power runs like a subtext through most of today’s religions. Modern church doctrines are full of stories of sirens and witches and enchantresses under the full moon. Empowering male propaganda.
“And it’s so ironic, because ancient artifacts suggest people first worshipped a female deity, a goddess or earth mother. Did you see the image over the coven house door?”
“It’s modeled after the Venus of Willendorf,” I said, referring to a Paleolithic figurine unearthed in Austria in 1908.
“Of course.” She smiled. “You would know your prehistoric archaeology. And you would also know that the earliest written records suggest worship of both gods and goddesses. And that these early female deities eventually lost out to patriarchal storm gods like Baal, Raman, and Yahweh.”
Her eyes moved over my face.
“Wiccans are modern pagans who imagine our first mother as the Goddess worshipped in prehistory, before the old boys’ deity network came along. We strive to bring the subtext of female subjugation to the forefront, and to change that mind-set. We want a different world here and now, one in which women and men are equal, in which assumptions about who should hold power and what has value are different.