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Along Maryland Route 5, Wiccans Work Their Magic
Near Leonardtown, Anne Rutherford explains the meaning of Amber Rose on the Route 5 sign.
(By Mark Gail -- The Washington Post)
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In Calvert County, Bonnie Smith, 57, works as a gardener for a landscape company. She is a solo Wiccan practitioner, who in good weather performs rituals outside her house in Lusby.
"I like to face the morning sun," Smith said.
Russell, the coven's high priestess, said she has practiced Wicca since 1969. She said the coven, which was formed in Baltimore, came up with "Amber Rose" from her first name and from the fact that the original members were florists.
She met her husband, also a Wiccan, 11 years ago when he noticed her bumper sticker in a parking lot. (It said "Blessed Be," a common Wiccan term.)
They live in Leonardtown, in an apartment above a large room where people meet for classes and rituals. As an example of a ritual, Russell said Wiccans have decorated masks with paint, glitter and feathers, which ushers in feelings of self-improvement. "Amber lives by one motto, and that is: 'Do no harm,' " said Linda Wible, who works with Russell.
According to Leach and his co-authors, there are fringe elements to the religion. And at some festivals, adherents walk around nude, or "skyclad." But the practice appears more akin to nudist camps than orgies. "It's not necessarily associated with being sexual," said Helen Berger, one of the Pagan census authors. She said many Wiccans are countercultural, but "there's nothing innately in their religion that makes them scary."
As for devil worship, just 26 of more than 2,000 respondents to the survey defined themselves as Satanists. "The link created between witchcraft and Satanism in the historic witch trials during the early modern period of Europe and colonial America continues to influence popular images of contemporary Witchcraft," the Pagan census authors note. "To counteract these images, Witches and Neo-Pagans usually differentiate themselves quite forcefully from Satanists."
Rutherford, another Wiccan who gathers litter on Route 5, acknowledges that she is friends with Whitbeck, which may have been the basis of the campaign rumor last month.
Rutherford has attached two Wiccan bumper stickers to the back of her minivan. She works for a law firm in Washington, which she asked not be identified.
"If we did half of what we are accused of doing," she said, "we would not have time to work, or go to PTA meetings, or do any of the things that are required in normal life, like laundry."
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