Norway: Witch wins government grant

[emad]

Good news for Wiccans, as the UK's BBC News reports that:

A Norwegian woman setting up shop as a witch has won a 53,000 kronor ($7,500; £4,500) government grant. Lena Skarning, aged 33, was given the money because her business plan - acording to officials from the regional development fund which gave the grant - was "pretty reasonable and well thought out". Her business, Forest Witch Magic Consulting, will tell fortunes, teach magic tricks at corporate seminars, and offer potions and creams to cure for problems ranging from sleeplessness to bad habits. A condition of the grant is that she has promised not to try any spells that might hurt anyone.

Ms Skarning acknowledged that the success of the Harry Potter books might well have helped her gain official acceptance, but said there was one essential difference. "I'm the real thing," she said. "I'm Norway's only state-backed witch."

Habitually dressed in black and with a white cat, Ms Skarning said she had been a "nice witch" for 13 years. But she said she had only recently come up with the idea of applying for the grant after she attended a seminar on entrepreneurship. "I'm an ordinary witch who came up with an original business idea," she said.

<snip>

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3203687.stm

Faith-based initiative? Any $$$ left in the federal budget for minority enterprises?

[DarkPhenyx]

1. Excellent! Good for her.

It does tread dangerously clsoe to the seperation of Church and State, but in Norway I say let her go for it.

I wouldn't be as thrilled here. I am a Pagan, but the type of business she is running will be too close to a religious store for many people. We'll end up in the whole C&S argument and we all know where that's going to end up. I don't want my Gov't backing a Christian Book Store so I can't be willing to let them back a Pagan Book Store.

[Dhalgren]

2. But a pagan bookstore

would actually be interesting and fun to visit! And the information available at a pagan bookstore would actually be beneficial to human beings. I think these are good working distinctions between the two tyes of stores you mentioned.

[DarkPhenyx]

3. Oh, I disagree.

CBS's can be great fun to visit...particularly when I am wearing my biker leathers, a couple of chains, and pentacle. They also have a great deal to offer which is beneficial and helpful to human beings. There is nothing inheriantly wroing with most of the teachings of Christianity. There are just a few of the more intolerant teachings, the imbedded hypocrasies, and some of the louder voices that I tend to take issue with. That whole "consrot not with wizards nor suffer them to live" thingy is really ahrd to swallow.

[emad]

4. It would be kind of ironic, to go to a Bush govt funded wiccan

bookshop to buy the 'hardware' for a spell to make Chimpy turn into a toad on prime time TV.....

[DarkPhenyx]

6. Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwww. bad karma.

Definately better to get the "hardware" to cast a spell for healing and tolerance. Wicca is definately more "pacifist" leaning when it comes to actual use of power and energy. Tolerance and learning. That sort of thing. Not to say that Wiccan's are pacifist by nature. I know a few Astartians (sp?) who would happily take yur head if you piss them off. Thye'd just rather do it with a sword than with a spell. Better karma and less effort.

[emad]

7. None of the local Wiccans round here are what you might call

pacifist. Two I know were once members of the Red Brigade and one is married to a former Hamas accountant from Baalbec.

There is a lot of interaction with the Druids, whose Order holds 'multi-faith' solstice/equinox ceremonies down the road on Primrose Hill and Parliament Hill (weather permitting). This year's Beltane Bottle Party and open air barbecue included a Solemn Rite to Astarte (so they MAY be Astartians, like those you warn about above) bemoaning Tony Blair's rush to war. Samhain looks to be equally interesting if they can guarante to gey their Special Speaker from the Gambia for a special 'guest-ritual-invocation'.....

[noonwitch]

5. I wonder if I could get money to start a wiccan charter school?

Leave no pagan child behind!
Seriously, if churches can do it, and big soulless corporations can do it, why can't a bunch of neopagans get government money to run a wiccan school?

[kimchi]

8. This was my husband's idea.

He wants me to start a pagan school. I'd have to go back to college and get a teaching degree, though. Right now we are working on trying to get a building to use as a community center--and that will be years down the road. But the idea has merit.