For everyone with something to say, about Pagan Moon, life, religion or anything else, here's your space. Please submit your opinions for Sound Off to morte@dreamseeker.org. Anything published will be at the editor's discretion. We will accept anonymous submissions. We gave you "Our Two Cents," feel free to give us yours.

Dear Karistan,

You bring up some very good points on gathering information about the Craft. [See Karistan's Sound Off (Vol. 01, Issue 01)] I have been reading and studying, off and on, for a couple of decades and been a practicing witch for the past few years. Perhaps I can offer, if not a complete explanation, an insight to the problem as I see it.

We are talking about a religion that has been hidden away for centuries on pain of death. Yes, the English anti-witch craft laws were repealed in the 1950's but that was not that long ago. And if memory serve the last two state sponsored murders, executions, for witch craft were in 1998. One in one of the Russian republics and the other in Saudi Arabia. The important parts of the craft were hidden for good reason, life and death, and to expect the ancient practitioners to come completely out of hiding even now is not practical. Many know the current climate of tolerance can last only as long as the economy is good, in periods of depression the old hunt for scapegoats starts right back up again. Add to that years and centuries of bad press and you can understand their reluctance. Some one has to survive to keep it alive.

Then again what we know as the Craft is, for the most part, a new thing. How many traditions are all that old? Really and truly old in a way that can be traced back beyond two millennia? Not many so we are groping along, trying to re-discover who and what we really are. Holding on to some basic truths and recreating or creating the rest based of general guide lines. Then we have the media and the screen writer coming up with the most outlandish nonsense that is taken as true by everyone. Even those who should know better.

And at last we have the basic human being, who comes equipped with ego, hard headedness and prejudice. Many is the time, I am sure, you have seen women or men hold on to an idea that every one else thinks is ludicrous. Or hold out for spite, jealousy, anger or any other negative emotion. We are dealing with normal people and all their faults and frailties, strengths and virtues they come with. That has to color one's view of things. How often have two people witnessed an event and given three versions of it? Each as honest and sincere and the others? All to often.

With all that I think the best we can do is the best we can do. Read, think, study, talk, compare and use the holy, natural talents we were blessed with to seek out the true, uncover it and explore it. In that I wish you the best of luck and remind you of times the looking is better and often more rewarding than the finding.

Blessed be!

Gonzalo Roig