Thank you for that informative and insightful post. I've come to count on MOJO as a source of learning and information - thanks.

I find that the Pentagon is wrong here. You wrote:
"He was a member of the Wiccan religion, which is not recognized by the Department of Veterans Affairs for use in veterans' cemeteries"

There are many reason's why this is wrong, but the primary reason is that Wicca is an established religion, as well as ancient.

I am certainly not a Wiccan, I'm a Christian, but if an outsider were to examine my religion and some of it's customs, the observations may border on bizzare.

So, what's the problem here?

Van, I think one of the reasons is, as stated in the article, that many Wiccans are afraid to identify themselves--there is so much misinformation about the religion. So Wicca has been kept hidden, with few people to speak up on its behalf.

You may recall the Wiccan woman in Virginia who filed a petitition demanding that Wiccans be put on the list of people who could give the invocation at the Board of Supervisors meetings. She lost. Or the judge in Indiana who ruled that a man and his former wife could not expose their child to their Wiccan religion. That decision was overturned. I think you will be seeing more of these cases now that some Wiccans have come forward.

Wicca is not an 'ancient' religion, it's a rewrite of various bits and pieces from animistic principles that gained ascendency during the late 50s/early 60s, but I do recall that Satanism (Anton Svandor LeVey's version) was recognised as a religion by the Pentagon in the 1980s.

All I'm wondering is what I get put on my Headstone as a 'Jedi' (cf 2001 UK census).

http://www.statistics.gov.uk/census2001/profiles/rank/jedi.asp

James

Is this crap in the bible? Why can't we carve christmas trees & donkeys and elephants, etc. etc.

Susan, why would the Bible have anything to do with Wicca? What would the Bible have to do with any religeon except Christianity?

In re to Patrick Stewart & a wiccan symbol. There are wiccan I.D. tags in the United States military due to a law passed in 1986.

Cathe McConiga