THE WINDS are rising, leaves falling and the wheel of the year turns into darkness. As we prepare to celebrate the Witches' New Year, Samhain, otherwise known as Halloween, I am once again appalled by the kind of costumes of Witches and general paraphernalia that mark the consumerisation of this holy day.

Masks of old hags with green faces and warts are worn by children, who assume an evil persona commonly associated with Witchcraft. Many who sense the power of the craft, but who are uneducated in its mysteries respond by expressing fear. Conventional religions meanwhile rail against Goddess worshippers, linking them with radical feminists, as if this were a slur.

On the up side, this can be viewed as an indication that Witches and goddess worshippers are deemed a force to be reckoned with. Focusing on "radical feminists" last spring, Pope John Paul said to bishops visiting the Vatican from the U.S. East Coast, "In its extreme form it is the Christian faith itself which is in danger of being undermined. Sometimes forms of nature worship and the celebration of myths and symbols take the place of the worship of the God revealed in Jesus Christ."

This, of course, is an inversion of the truth. It is the symbols of the Christian faith which were derived from ancient symbols of the Goddess. As early as 7000 BC, the Goddess was revered as the supreme creator and flourished as such until the closing of the last Goddess temples about AD 500. She still survives today despite the effort by patriarchal religions to bury Her.

Advocates of patriarchy, "The rule of the fathers," persecuted and suppressed the Great Mother religion for centuries. The new macho religion held, and still embraces, that a male deity created the universe, produced man in his own divine image, and then from man, created woman to serve man. (The only time in history when a man gave birth to a woman.) The myth of the Garden of Eden, where Eve supposedly brought about the downfall of humankind, casts a shadow on women until this day.

Merlin Stone, author of the feminist classic When God Was a Woman points out that the word 'cult', "which has the implicit connotations of something less fine or civilised than 'religion' was nearly always applied to the worship of female deities, not by ministers of the church but by presumably objective archaeologists and historians. The rituals associated with the Judeo-Christian Yahweh (Jehovah) were always respectfully described by the same scholars as 'religions'."

Specifically 'cult' is used in conjunction with the adjective 'fertility'. Although in Goddess-centred art of the past a woman giving birth was the main religious image, it is overly simplistic to characterise the entire religion as a 'fertility cult'. In The Chalice and the Blade author Riane Eisler takes this idea a bit further. "It would be comparable, for example, to characterising Christianity as just a death cult because the central image in its art is the crucifixion."

Eisler maintains that since the central image in Goddess art was one of life, it is reasonable to deduct that the dominant theme in society was "life and respect for life - rather than death and the fear of death." Nevertheless it is constantly implied that the age of 'pagan' religions, when female deities were worshipped, was dark, evil, chaotic and without reason. This despite archaeological evidence that the earliest law, government, written languages, agriculture, medicine, architecture, ceramics and wheeled vehicles were first developed in societies that worshipped the Goddess.

The mythological cycle of Goddess and Consort, Mother and Divine Child was changed after 30 thousand years in existence to conform to the values of conquering patriarchies. Yet compelling similarities between the two religions remain.

"Just as the Neolithic pregnant Goddess was a direct descendant of the full-bellied Palaeolithic 'Venuses', this same image survives in the pregnant Mary of medieval Christian iconography," says Eisler. "The Neolithic image of the young goddess or Maiden is also still venerated in the aspect of Mary the Holy Virgin. And of course, the Neolithic image of the Mother-Goddess holding her divine child is still everywhere dramatically in evidence as the Christian Madonna and Child."

Back in pagan times the head of the holy family was a woman, the Great Mother or Goddess in her various forms. The male members of this pantheon, her consort, brother and/or son, were also divine. However in the Christian holy family, Mary, the sole female figure is mortal while the male figures, the almighty Father and his son Jesus, are divine. One can assume that the identification of Mary, as being a mere mortal is no coincidence and was posed to reinforce the notion that women are earthbound and inferior.

Advocates of the male religion aimed to destroy the Goddess religion and its customs by denigrating and falsifying images of female worship. today these images influence the attitudes of society in general through literature, psychology and the media.

In rock 'n' roll terms, a lot of Heavy Metal tends to support the status quo with the gimmicky use of Satanism, which is widely confused with Witchcraft - this was the prime intention of the Christian faith when it converted the symbol of male principle in Goddess traditions, the Horned Bull God, into a symbol of evil.

Hollywood is also guilty of perpetrating the association of Witchcraft with evil - to take an obvious example, Hocus Pocus , a recent Disney film, related a story about three seventeenth century Witches who return to present day Salem to gobble up children. Although the film may have been developed with humour, the underlying suggestion is that horror arises from witchcraft. In actuality it is the other way around: Witches were the ones who experienced horrors at the hands of patriarchal male religions.

As Starhawk describes in what many consider to be the Witches' 'bible', The Spiral Dance, persecution began in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Mary, who had taken over many aspects of the Goddess, was honoured with splendrous cathedrals, while Witchcraft was declared a heresy. In 1342, an Irish coven led by Dame Alice Kyteler was tried by the Bishop of Ossory for worshipping a non-Christian god. Although Dame Kyteler was saved by her high social class, her followers were burned.

In 1486 the publication of Malleus Malleficarum, "The Hammer of the Witches", by the Dominicans Kramer and Sprenger paved the road for a reign of terror imposed by the Roman Catholic Church that gripped Europe into the eighteenth century. Guilty until proven innocent was the law of the land during what became known as the Inquisition, and it was common practice to arrest those suspected of 'Witchcraft' without warning. They were then stripped naked and shaved completely in hope of finding the devil's "marks" - anything from moles to freckles.

In England, suspects were deprived of sleep and subjected to slow starvation before hanging. On continental Europe, outrageous punishments were practised including the rack, thumbscrews, and beatings. The accused were tortured until they named a quota of thirteen, and signed confessions admitting to consorting with Satan. Confessors earned strangulation before the stake. People who maintained their innocence were burned alive.

Homosexuals, the mentally ill, the elderly, anybody who went against the norm was a potential victim, although the persecution was strongly directed against women and girls. Of an estimated 9 million Witches executed, 80 percent were women.

Witches who could do so escaped to America and other areas the inquisition did not reach. But the craft went underground and became wrapped in secrecy. The persecutions ended in the eighteenth century, but recollections of the true craft dimmed and till this day stereotypes remain . . .

Twentieth-century Witches are setting the record straight; Witchcraft is a nature religion that celebrates eight solar Sabbaths: the solstices, equinoxes and cross-quarter days; love and respect for life in all its forms is basic to the craft; religion is a way of life and not separate; innerwork is balanced with outerwork and today many Witches express this responsibility by being politically active.

Justice in Witchcraft is based on the boomerang effect . . . that every act brings consequences, that harmful acts toward others harm ourselves. The golden rule is "What you send returns three times over." There are many traditions of Witchcraft but the element common to all is magic, "the art of sensing and shaping the subtle unseen forces." Covens who preserved this knowledge were called Wicca or Wicce from the Anglo-Saxon root word which means "to bend or shape."

Magic rites begin with the creation of sacred space. Stone circles, which remain beside dolmens and passage graves still standing today throughout Europe and Ireland, can be recreated in one's living room by "the casting of the circle." Within this temple the imagination is stimulated and we can explore the depths of reality.

Although in Witchcraft, the Goddess is the world and encompasses the male principle, the female nature is stressed because the miraculous process of creation is a birth process. The world was not commanded into being, it was born.

So many negative connotations are attached to Witchcraft that some, including myself in certain social settings, are hesitant to admit our religious beliefs. Yet in order to reclaim our right to be free and powerful we must resurrect the word Witch. As Starhawk succinctly articulated, "To be a Witch is to identify with nine million victims of bigotry and hatred and to take responsibility for shaping a world in which prejudice claims no more victims."

With that in mind, I'll close by saying, "Blessed Be."