Atlanta Witch Says Thousands Practice Here
By Rick Badie
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Donna Passaro presides over an altar she built in her front yard.
It's hard to pass up Donna "Ariell" Passaro's house this time of the year. She adorns the front yard with pumpkins and luminaries. An altar for the dead greets visitors as they walk toward the front steps. It's a tribute to ancestors and friends who have passed on.
You may call Oct. 31 Halloween, but Wiccans such as Passaro call it Samhain (pronounced "sow-in"), a Celtic term that means summer's end.

On that date, family and friends gather at Passaro's house for fellowship.

Children bob for apples, go trick-or-treating and carve pumpkins into jack-o'-lanterns. Guests dine on potluck dishes and beverages. Then they retreat to the back yard for a service to honor those who have died, as well as to worship gods and goddesses.

"It's the highest holiday for us," said Passaro, "high priestess" of the Harvest Hearth coven in Norcross. "Imagine the holiday of Christmas -- the trimming of the tree, the midnight service, the family dinner. Samhain is the same thing. It's where we give thanksgiving for the year's bounty."
Wicca is one of many earth-based religions that contain references to Celtic deities, symbols and seasonal days of celebration. It affirms the existence of magical powers, and its practitioners are called Wiccans.
Put simply, they're witches, but they decry the archetypal image they say society has bestowed on them.

Passaro's path to paganism was a gradual process formalized in the early 1980s when she chose to "step away from Catholicism." It wasn't a flighty decision. She'd grown up in the Catholic Church in Connecticut, even served faithfully as an adult.

"I was part of the parish council, on the liturgy committee, and sang in the choir," the 43-year-old witch said. "I was very active." But it wasn't enough to hold her to Christianity, said Passaro, who majored in sociology and minored in social work and theater at Oglethorpe University.

"I felt called to ministry," she said. "As a woman in the Catholic Church, there was no place for me. I didn't fit the Catholic Church model for women."

Passaro had known some pagans at Oglethorpe. She started studying the religion, which Gerald Gardner, a British civil servant, founded in the early 1950s. The faith, though, has roots thousands of years old.
Today, Wicca is considered one of the fastest-growing alternative religions in the country. It's a religious practice recognized by the military. The faith has had tax-exempt religious status in Georgia since 1981.

Ravenwood Church and Seminary of Wicca -- Atlanta's first public Wiccan church -- has existed nearly three decades. There are even discussion groups in metro Atlanta (the Pleasant Hill Border Pagans, for one) that meet at Borders bookstores.

Still, perceptions and misconceptions persist, a fact of life that makes Wiccans shy about revealing their faith. Some examples: That they worship Satan, that they cast evil spells.

Not true, Passaro said.  "If you told people we were slaughtering and sacrificing babies, a lot of people wouldn't think otherwise," she said. "We don't even believe in the deity of Satan, but people say we're Satanists. Our holidays, our gods and images have been demonized."
Passaro, meanwhile, has made paganism a lifestyle. She runs the Blessed Bee, an online pagan retail store, out of the basement of her home in Norcross. Customers worldwide buy pentacles, caldrons, herbs, ritual kits and other items.

"There are thousands of Wiccans" in metro Atlanta, Passaro said. "Within a one-mile radius of where we're sitting are dozens of them -- that I know of.