Friday, November 3, 2006

Grab your wand, it's Election Day

Jay Cridlin cridlin@tampabay.com

On Sunday, Vivienne D'Avalon prayed.

She prayed for peace. She prayed for courage and fairness and freedom. She prayed for truth and wisdom and humility from our leaders in Washington, D.C.

She lit a stick of acrid moldavite incense; carved a pentagram and the letters "USA" into a fat white candle; and rubbed scented oils into a scrap of brown paper bearing the inscription "Goddess Bless America." She slowly exhaled, lit the candle and prayed.

Vivienne D'Avalon did all this because she is a Wiccan. A Wiccan with an agenda.

"I was raised as a patroit," D'Avalon said, standing in the back room of a spiritual supply shop in Orlando. "I was raised by Democrats who weren't necessarily liberals but they were patriotic. They filled in me a love for the country and a love for the principles of democracy and the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence."

So D'Avalon, 37, wrote a booklet for politically minded Wiccans like herself: The Patriot's Spell Book, a 100-page, self-published ode to liberalism and Wicca, a neo-pagan religion centered on positive spells.

It consists of the breathless rabble-rousing one might expect from a hard-core liberal like D'Avalon - calling George W. Bush the Antichrist, lambasting Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly, writing that we are "dangerously close to an Armageddon," etc.

It also lists techniques to help Democrats achieve their goals in Washington. Take the use of a "reversing candle," which is half black and half white. Carve something you want to banish (say, "torture") on the black half, and something you'd like to see replace it ("compassion") on the white half. Turn it upside down and light the wick from the bottom. Voila: You have just cursed waterboarding.

D'Avalon is aware that Republicans might well call her a kook, or that her fellow Democrats might (at best) nod politely and back away, smiling nervously.

In fact, she expects rejection. "Vivienne D'Avalon" is not her real name; she is not "out of the broom closet," as Wiccans like to say, to her coworkers at the Orlando law firm where she works as a secretary.

D'Avalon's beliefs are not unique. She belongs to an online community of Wiccans called Spells for Democracy ("Casting spells now so we can cast votes later"), whose members focus their spiritual energies on the world of politics. Every Tuesday through Election Day, Spells for Democracy's members are asked to cast the same spell.

Sept. 12: "Leave pictures of the opposition in the hot sun and call on the light of Truth to expose their evil."

Oct. 24: "Set up an energy matrix on the astral around all polling places to ensure fairness."

Republicans did have a rough October, but D'Avalon isn't taking credit. She likens the feeling she gets from casting spells to the strength Christians derive from daily prayer.

"Magic is using your will to make a change in the world that accords to your will," she said. "It's something that becomes part of your life and part of your attitude towards life and everything in it."

D'Avalon doesn't expect the book to change the world, or even the minds of all Wiccans. At a recent Wiccan meetup in Altamonte Springs, she was hit with negative feedback from non-Democrat Wiccans, including Wiccan Libertarians and, yes, one Wiccan Republican. They had a spirited political debate.

The midterms are almost here, and D'Avalon plans to keep praying. Each night, she will cast spells to the chants and music on her sleek black iPod: Wiccan incantations and Celtic folk music; songs by Neil Young and the Dixie Chicks; and rock hits from the '70s and '80s.

Like Black Magic Woman.

I Put a Spell On You.

And Do You Believe in Magic?