The Wiccan Year Disk is a tool used by Wiccans for tracking and celebrating the Wheel of the Year. The Wheel of the Year is a representation of the changing seasons and cycles of nature, and it is divided into eight major Sabbats or festivals. The Wiccan Year Disk typically consists of a circular wheel divided into eight sections, each representing one of the Sabbats. The sections are often color-coded to correspond with the associated season and symbolism. The disk may also include other symbols or images that represent the themes and energies of each festival. The eight Sabbats depicted on the Year Disk are as follows: Samhain, Yule, Imbolc, Ostara, Beltane, Litha, Lammas, and Mabon.
But city officials argued in court papers that they had not singled out the Wiccans, and had only pursued zoning violations as they would with any home-based church.
the unassuming wood-frame house on Mattison Drive, a dead-end street in Palm Bay, is the home of Roger Coleman, an engineer at the electronics giant Harris Corp. ON A HUMID EVEN-ing in August 1995, the Wiccans file into a Unitarian church in West Melbourne to celebrate the Nordic god and goddess, Frey and Freya,and give thanks for the first harvest.
The eight Sabbats depicted on the Year Disk are as follows: Samhain, Yule, Imbolc, Ostara, Beltane, Litha, Lammas, and Mabon. These festivals mark important points in the solar year and are aligned with the agricultural and natural cycles. For example, Samhain celebrates the end of the harvest season and the beginning of the dark half of the year, while Beltane marks the arrival of spring and the peak of fertility.
WITCH HUNT
the unassuming wood-frame house on Mattison Drive, a dead-end street in Palm Bay, is the home of Roger Coleman, an engineer at the electronics giant Harris Corp., and his wife, Jacque Zaleski, who has a master’s degree in business systems.
They are not the sort of couple you would expect to find at the center of a legal and religious controversy that evokes images of women burning at the stake.
They don’t look like witches.
But like thousands of people across the country who are searching for a spiritual message but are turned off by conventional religion, Coleman and Zaleski practice Wicca, or witchcraft, a pre-Christian pagan religion that worships nature, much like the religions of Native Americans.
Because of the stigma attached to the term “witch,” many Wiccans worship in secret. But Coleman, 54, and Zaleski, 48, are exceptions. Not only did they come out of the closet and start The Church of Iron Oak in 1992, but lately they have been fighting a public battle with the City of Palm Bay, hoping to recover damages in federal court from a protracted zoning conflict.
In the process, their case is mobilizing Wiccans nationwide, who are tuning in via the Internet and pagan newsletters and coming to Iron Oak’s aid with fund-raising festivals, pro bono legal advice, promotional songs and sales of a T-shirt that pictures a woman standing before a flame and reads, “Never again the burning.”
“Iron Oak has become a rallying point,” says Selena Fox, the high priestess of Circle Sanctuary, a Wiccan church in Mount Horeb, Wis., and director of an international Wiccan network that promotes religious freedom. “Salem was certainly not the last of the witch trials, but this is the first case of religious freedom to be networked on-line.”
In an unusual partnership, the zoning case – which focuses on the right to worship at home – has also mobilized local conservative Christians, who worry that if government can restrict the Wiccans it might impede their religious freedom too.
“This is the first time I can remember fundamentalists doing something to help the pagans,” notes Rel Davis, minister of the Unitarian Fellowship of South Florida in Hollywood, who is also a Wiccan priest.
Davis’ group conducted a ritual for Iron Oak this past summer, casting spells to protect them in their fight with the city, and helped a Wiccan group in Atlanta with a similar zoning dispute last year.
“Usually,” he says, “it’s the fundamentalists who are taking a shotgun blast at the pagans.”
ON A SATURDAY IN AUGUST, JACQUE Zaleski, wearing a leaf-patterned cinnamon and orange robe, is preoccupied with earthly matters, hurrying about her kitchen as she prepares part of the pot-luck dinner set for that night at the Unitarian church in West Melbourne.
Fifty Wiccans will gather to celebrate Lughnasadh, the first of two Thanksgivings in which worshipers thank the god and goddess for the harvest. Wiccan rituals generally involve singing, chanting, drumming, summoning the god and goddess, eating cakes and drinking wine or mead, followed by a lavish dinner.
Wiccans believe they are part of nature, rather than apart from it, that the deity is within all of nature, including humans.
But they do not proselytize. Their only rules are the witch’s rede, “Harm none,” and the “law of threefold return” – what you give returns to you threefold.
One expert claims that paganism and witchcraft are the nation’s fastest growing religions, attracting baby boomers hungry for a faith that is sympathetic to their environmental or feminist beliefs. (Because the goddess is worshiped on par with the god, Wicca is seen as a feminist alternative.) Estimates of the number of Wiccans in the country range from 50,000 to 500,000.
“Most of the people in my age group were flower children involved in the peace movement,” Jacque Zaleski says. “As we’ve matured, a lot of us have gone through the corporate world and found that it doesn’t give us what we want.”
Contrary to the demonic caricatures created by Christians in the Middle Ages, and then enhanced by Halloween, witches are not wart-nosed women with green skin and black hats who ride broomsticks. They do not sacrifice animals or torture children, and they do not worship Satan.
Witches, defined in medieval times as those who could use nature to their advantage, got a bad rap during the Christianization of Europe, says Dennis Owen, professor of religion at the University of Florida.
The holdouts – the pagan priests called shamans – were believed to be able to enter the realm of the dead through trances; Christians called it devil worship on the grounds that there were only two supernatural forces, God and Satan. If you didn’t worship God, you must therefore worship Satan.
“Wicca is pretty innocuous stuff,” Owen says. “But the perception of it has become filtered through this long history of fabrication.”
CARRYING A BIG POT of barley soup, Jacque Zaleski walks through her back yard, which has a rectangular space for religious gatherings, a 4-foot replica of Michelangelo’s David on the east side and a statue of the Biblical Rebecca at the Well on the west. Deep into the yard, through thick brush, is a wooden deck, a sanctuary surrounded by trees, bushes and flowers.
Zaleski loads the food and ritual tools into her gray Ford Bronco, and drives through picturesque Palm Bay, a southern Brevard County town with a population of 73,000. This town, Zaleski says, has made her life a hell for the past 19 months.
Rev. Zaleski and Rev. Coleman, raised Lutheran and Catholic respectively, took up Wicca shortly after they married in 1987.
Coleman had been interested in paganism since college. Zaleski, raised as a tomboy who grew up to become a truck driver for Frito-Lay, a commercial pilot and restaurant owner, always disliked the male-dominated traditions of Christianity and found spiritual comfort in Zen Buddhism.
In the late 1980s a co-worker at an avionics company introduced Zaleski to a Wiccan group in Malabar but warned her to avoid discussing it at work, or they’d both be fired.
Zaleski and her husband joined the Wiccan group and four years later were ordained as a high priest and high priestess. They built their house on Mattison Drive in 1990, and began worshiping in their backyard.
From a small rented office in Melbourne, they attracted people from all over the Treasure Coast with their “Wiccan Ways” classes and festivals organized at rented sites. They began publishing a monthly newsletter, The Voice of the Anvil, and networking with Wiccan groups nationwide on the Internet. By the summer of 1993, the Church of Iron Oak was well known among Wiccans in Florida. “They’re definitely movers and shakers in the Southeast’s pagan community,” says Angus McGyver, a Wiccan elder whose wife, Lady Demeter, sells occult supplies at her Under the Stars Village store in Plantation.
The church went about its business in relative obscurity until the summer of 1993, when it moved its office into new quarters.
A Christian businessman who rented space in the same building objected to having witches as neighbors.
One Sunday morning in February, as members of Iron Oak were out cleaning up roadside debris as part of the county’s Adopt-a-Road program, the man drove up, tossed religious tracts at the group and accused them of Satan worship.
“We threw them back in the car and told him the idea was to keep the road clean,” Zaleski says.
When she got home, she wrote a letter to the editor of the local newspaper, Florida Today, which gave her complaints prominent display. That, Zaleski says, is about when the trouble started.
Soon after that, Zaleski says, the trouble started.
PALM BAY, 115 MILES NORTH OF West Palm Beach, is not an ideal place to be a witch. The town is located in southern Brevard County, until recently national headquarters of the Christian anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, and the county that banned G-strings, thong bikinis and other skimpy swimwear last May.
As it turned out, neighbors and city officials had been watching Iron Oak members for weeks when, in March 1994, police broke in on 60 Wiccans who were enjoying a post-ritual spring dinner in Zaleski’s backyard. A neighbor had complained of “loud chanting and screaming.”
When Zaleski called city officials about the complaint, she was told that she was violating zoning laws by operating a church in her home without a permit and could be fined $500 a day (a figure later revised to $250). Securing a permit could take months.
A city official showed her letters written by a neighbor named Elena McKnight and three others complaining that the “New Age church” and its parked cars were disrupting the neighborhood.
“This neighborhood is…not built for these powwows they’re doing,” McKnight told Florida Today. “The area is zoned residential/agricultural, and we want to keep it that way.”
Despite the city’s threats, in May the Wiccans celebrated the holiday of Beltane, or May Day – for Wiccans the most sacred holiday of the year – and danced around a maypole. City officials cited Coleman and Zaleski for holding a religious service at their home. A hearing was set for July, but the city dropped the violation when weeks passed without another infraction.
In August, the Wiccans held another celebration, a ritual marked by athletic games, with worshipers squirting water guns and tossing disks to honor the year’s first harvest. Again they were cited.
Rumors circulated around town that the Wiccans danced naked, tortured children and sacrificed animals during their rituals. When Zaleski tried to hire a zoning attorney, she was told to call a criminal lawyer.
Zaleski and Coleman decided that the citations were ruining their church. More than half of the original 36 members had quit, many fearing their employers would fire them. One member said she lost her job at a construction company after her employer learned of her beliefs. Some worried that the state would try to take away their children, which Wiccans say often happens to pagans in custody disputes.
In October, Zaleski and Coleman sued the city in federal court, asking for a restraining order to stop the citations and surveillance, charging civil-rights violations and requesting legal and court costs. (By this time, they had been forced to take a second mortgage on their home to pay the legal bills.)
City officials would not comment for this story, citing pending litigation, and the city’s attorneys did not return repeated phone calls from Sunshine.
But city officials argued in court papers that they had not singled out the Wiccans, and had only pursued zoning violations as they would with any home-based church.
Elena McKnight, the neighbor, wouldn’t comment either, but her attorney, Richard Cowen, says that his client’s complaints had nothing to do with the Wiccans’ unconventional beliefs.
“It’s a question of enjoying your rights as a homeowner,” Cowen says, “and having some peace and tranquility in an area that was designed to be a residential neighborhood. My client never signed up to have 16 cars outside and chanting and drum playing until 2 or 3 in the morning.”
Zaleski maintains that since November of 1993,, all cars have parked on her property and the rituals end by 11 p.m.
Meanwhile, the Wiccans began to receive support from an unlikely source – the pastors of local Christian churches, many of whom conduct their own prayer and Bible-study groups in peoples’ homes and don’t like the city telling anyone where they can worship.
“I have a tremendous problem with the Wiccans’ doctrine,” says Ken Babington, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Cocoa Beach, who lived in Palm Bay until 1993. “But regardless of what their teaching is, if one religion doesn’t have freedom, it’s just a matter of time before all religious practice is in jeopardy.”
Others, however, weighed in against the Palm Bay Wiccans. A year ago, a pro-life newsletter, The Champion, published a story tying the Church of Iron Oak to Melbourne’s abortion clinic and accusing the Wiccans of promoting child sacrifice.
After the newsletter appeared, Zaleski says she was spied on and harassed, and house guests were pelted with oranges.
“There’s nothing religious about what they’re doing,” says Lonny Salberg of Melbourne, a member of Christians for Life, who co-wrote the article.
“The spiritual force behind this abortion clinic has to do with the power of Satan. And one of the groups in this county that makes a plea to Satan to help them with their cause is the Church of Iron Oak.”
Last October, a federal judge denied the Wiccans’ request for a restraining order, largely on the grounds that the city was planning a hearing on the matter the next day. But the judge left the rest of the suit – the request for damages – open.
The city’s code-enforcement board, made up of local citizens, heard testimony over three days and ruled unanimously that the city was wrong. What the members of Iron Oak were doing at the house four to six times a year did not qualify them as a church under the city’s own definition of a church, the board said.
Now, the Wiccans say, they are out more than $30,000 in legal fees and court costs – a figure that Zaleski predicts could climb dramatically by the time the case is concluded. She wants her money back.
She also wants the federal judge in Orlando to set a precedent and rule that the city discriminated against the Wiccans because of their religious beliefs. A hearing is set for next July.
ON A HUMID EVEN-ing in August 1995, the Wiccans file into a Unitarian church in West Melbourne to celebrate the Nordic god and goddess, Frey and Freya,and give thanks for the first harvest.
A circle of chairs dominates the large room where they are to meet. In the center is a main altar from which the high priest and priestess – Coleman and Zaleski – will lead the ceremony, with four smaller altars placed at the north, south, east and west points of the room.
Atop each of the small altars are artifacts relating to the elements – air (incense, a bell); water; earth (salt, plants, crystals) and fire (a red candle, lingerie, chili peppers).
As the ritual begins, “Lady Circe,” – Jacquelyne Wasik – who runs a pawnshop in Melbourne, moves through the room with a broom, symbolically sweeping away negativity and cleansing the worshiping space. She has long black hair and is wearing a black robe.
The worshipers line up, women in one line, men in the other, to take their places in the circle of chairs. Coleman and Zaleski stand at the entrance to the circle, Coleman in an orange robe with Egyptian letters on the sleeves, Zaleski in a cinnamon and orange robe and flowered headband.
“With this oil of Freya, I consecrate you and ask her that she give you her love and blessings, and I welcome you to the circle,” Coleman says, as he dabs each worshiper’s forehead with the oil.
Then a woman escorts members one by one into the circle, moving clockwise as taped music plays by candlelight.
The first order of business is a grounding meditation, in which members stand by their chairs and push out the concerns of the day. Then come announcements, including an update on the aid that Wiccan groups nationwide are giving Iron Oak. A recent fundraising festival in Maryland has raised $2,000, and another is scheduled in Massachusetts. A California-based pagan magazine called Green Egg has donated advertising space. Another group is recording a CD of pagan songs, and will donate the proceeds to Iron Oak’s defense fund. About $15,000 has been raised so far.
Coleman and Zaleski stand at the center altar with two bowls of water, one fresh and one salt, which when mixed will represent the creation of Earth. There were two deities in the beginning, Coleman says, the goddess of the sea and the god of the waters of the land. The waters joined to create the sky father and the earth mother.
The worshipers then call for the elements at the north, south, east and west to enter the circle. The group sings and claps: “Air I am. Fire I am. Water, earth and spirit I am.”
The god and goddess of the harvest – played by two members of the church – are invited in; “villagers” walk to a hay pile and pick up corn and bring it to the gods, who are sitting on thrones near the altar, as an expression of thanks.
Worshipers then pass around cakes, mead and apple juice, taking in the grain of the earth and the gift of energy from the fermented drink.
At the end people hug, and everyone says, “Merry mate, merry part and merry meet again.”
The lights go on and everyone moves to the dining area for a pot-luck dinner of chicken, rice, salad and cake on paper plates.
The crowd is a mix of regular members and newcomers who want to learn about Wicca. Of the regular members, two are electrical engineers, two work for defense contractors and 10 are in computers. Most will give only their magical names, or first names, for fear of reprisals.
“People don’t hate us for what we are, but for what they think we are,” says Bill, also known as Lord Eaglerocc, a commercial photographer who was raised Lutheran and is now a Wiccan elder. “We have fun. A lot of Christians aren’t allowed to have fun.”
EVEN IF THE WICCANS WIN THEIR SUIT, IT DOESn’t mean they’ll be left alone.
Lonny Salberg, who is working with Christians for Life to shut down the Melbourne abortion clinic, says he’s about to move to Palm Bay, a block away from Zaleski’s house, so he can keep an eye on the Wiccans’ activities.
He plans to drive by the house, check out the cars. See who’s there. Keep notes.
His group has intercepted Wiccan messages on the Internet, and claims it is involved in an ongoing investigation of Wiccan ties to the abortion clinic.
“They have the gall to call themselves a church,” Salberg says. “I’m sure they find a humanistic temporal fulfillment, but nothing like the fulfillment of Jesus Christ.”
If he can’t persuade the Wiccans to convert, he at least wants them back in the closet.
“The abortion clinic, the Wiccans, homosexuals – they all have the same agenda,” he says. “They want to do as they please. Total freedom.”
The Wiccans say they hope the courts will keep harassment at bay, but acknowledge that the conflicts that have dogged America’s witches ever since Salem won’t disappear with one court case.
Wiccans can rattle off cases of alleged discrimination as readily as Christians rattle off passages from the bible.
In Madison, Wis., Wiccans are fighting opposition from residents as they try to develop a retreat center on 34 acres. And in Rhode Island, Jessica Spurr has accused social workers of removing her three foster children after a newspaper ran a story about her induction as a Wiccan high priestess.
In 1985, North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms tried to have Wicca removed from tax-exempt status.
Cases like these mean that Wiccans often operate in secrecy.
Arawn Machia, a high priest in Fort Lauderdale, admits he has conducted pagan weddings at Vizcaya without telling the guests. In one case he passed the ceremony off as a Rennaissance-era theme wedding; another doubled as a Catholic ceremony – easy because the service was in Latin and Italian, he explains.
At a Wiccan ritual in June in Pompano Beach, a doctor admitted that she practices Wicca without telling her husband. She attends the gatherings with her teenage son, and tells her husband they’re taking a class.
“As a result of becoming more public we’re drawing adverse reaction from a public that was previously ignorant of our presence,” says Rae Blackhood, a nurse from Boca Raton who is a Wiccan.
“If you go public – and Iron Oak is very public – you’re bound to be the butt of a lot of wrath,” adds Angus McGyver, the Wiccan elder from Plantation. “But it’s time we forced the issue. The pagan movement is finally coming into its own.”
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Wiccans use the Year Disk as a visual aid and reference point for connecting with the energies and significance of each Sabbat. It serves as a reminder of the cyclical nature of life, both in nature and in our own personal journeys. By observing and honoring the changing seasons, Wiccans seek to attune themselves with the natural rhythms of the Earth and the cycles of birth, growth, death, and rebirth. In addition to its practical uses, the Wiccan Year Disk can also be seen as a representation of the Wiccan wheel of life and the concept of the "as above, so below" principle. It reminds practitioners of their connection to the divine and the interplay between the physical and spiritual realms. Overall, the Wiccan Year Disk is a valuable tool for Wiccans to deepen their understanding and practice of the Wheel of the Year. It helps to celebrate and honor the changing seasons and to align oneself with the natural cycles of the Earth..
Reviews for "The Wiccan Year Disk and the Celebration of the Divine Masculine"
1. Mary - 2 stars - I was really disappointed with the Wiccan year disk. The information seemed very basic and was not in-depth at all. I was expecting more detailed explanations and insights into the various Wiccan holidays and practices, but it didn't deliver. The content felt rushed and lacking in substance. I would not recommend this to anyone looking for a comprehensive guide to Wicca.
2. John - 1 star - The Wiccan year disk was a complete waste of money for me. The information provided was not accurate and seemed to be a mishmash of different sources. There were numerous inconsistencies and contradictions that left me confused and frustrated. Additionally, the layout and organization of the disk were difficult to navigate, making it even more challenging to find the information I was looking for. Overall, I felt like I wasted my time and money on this product.
3. Sarah - 2 stars - As someone relatively new to Wicca, I was hoping that the Wiccan year disk would provide a comprehensive overview of the different rituals and practices throughout the year. However, I found the content to be lacking depth and detail. It felt more like a surface-level introduction rather than a guide for practitioners. I would have appreciated more explanations and guidance for each holiday or event. Overall, I was left feeling underwhelmed by this product.
4. David - 1 star - I found the Wiccan year disk to be poorly designed and executed. The information provided was scattered and difficult to follow. It lacked coherence and failed to provide a clear structure for understanding the various aspects of the Wiccan calendar. The visuals and graphics were subpar and did not enhance my understanding of the material. I would not recommend this disk to anyone looking for a well-organized and informative guide to Wiccan practices.