Witch Says Christine O'Donnell is Confused About Witchcraft
Wiccans don't believe in Satan and don't hold date-night picnics at the altar.
Sept. 20, 2010— -- Christine O'Donnell take note. Those who "dabble" in witchcraft don't build Satanic altars and there's no blood or "stuff like that."
The fiesty Delaware Senate candidate and Sarah Palin-protege, who suffered another bout of media scrunity after a 1999 video surfaced of her telling comedian Bill Maher that she "dabbled in witchcraft," was seriously confused about what she saw, according to a longtime witch and national Wiccan leader.
"It leads me to believe she's making it up completely out of whole cloth with poor information," said Sylvia T. Webb, the first officer of the Covenant of the Goddess, a national non-profit organization.
Comments like O'Donnell's, she said, are "bizarre" and contribute to misinformation about the religion.
The O'Donnell video re-surfaced over the weekend on Maher's new HBO show "Real Time." Maher brought out the video as part of a campaign to get O'Donnell on his show, threatening to air clips of her appearances on "Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher" until she agreed.
The witchcraft clip, which originally aired in October 1999, was the first.
"I never joined a coven," a young O'Donnell professed 11 years ago.
"One of my first dates with a witch was on a Satanic altar and I didn't know it," she said. "There was a little blood there, and stuff like that."
"We went to a movie and then had a midnight picnic on a satanic altar," she said.
Webb scoffed at O'Donnell's claims.
"It's very hard to worship something you do not believe in and Satan is a Christian concept," she said. "Wiccans don't have Satanic altars."
While they don't have Satanic altars, they do have altars, but "there would be no blood," Webb said.
"She might have had a date with some ... want-to-be goth child who was into thinking he was Satanic or something," Webb said. "There are a lot of misinformed young people trying to be wild."
O'Donnell's comments were made during one of nearly two dozen appearances on "Politically Incorrect."
She laughed off the controversy at a GOP picnic in Delaware on Sunday, The Associated Press reported.
"How many of you didn't hang out with questionable folks in high school?" she asked supporters. "There's been no witchcraft since. If there was, Karl Rove would be a supporter now."