OBIT: Rosemary Kooiman; Championed Witches' Rights

[MountainLaurel]

Rosemary Kooiman, 77, a self-described witch who won the legal right to perform neopagan weddings in Virginia, died March 5 of a heart attack at her home in Laurel. She was a former Mitchellville resident.

Mrs. Kooiman, a retired government worker and the high priestess of a neopagan group in Mitchellville called the Nomadic Chantry of the Gramarye, sought to marry a Virginia couple in 1998 but was denied a clergy license after a Fairfax County judge ruled that Wicca did not qualify as a religious organization. A judge in Alexandria also denied her a license.

With assistance from the American Civil Liberties Union, she applied for the same license in Norfolk Circuit Court and received it by mail in September 1998, allowing her to officiate at weddings -- known as "handfastings" among neopagans -- anywhere in Virginia. She also performed wedding ceremonies in Maryland and Pennsylvania, which do not require clergy to have a license, and was licensed to conduct weddings in the District.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/09/AR2006030902425.html

[htuttle]

1. She'd recently been working on allowing pagan headstones at Arlington

Merry meet, Rosemary.

We all come from the Goddess
And to her we shall return
Like a drop of rain
Flowing to the ocean.

-Traditional Chant

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

3. I've danced that chant

very beautiful.

[htuttle]

4. I first heard it as a funerary chant

But have since heard it in other contexts.

It's short, but metaphorically quite deep as you think about it.

When a rain drop flows into the ocean, what happens to it? Can you find it again? No. Is it gone? Well, yes and no. It's 'identity' is gone, but it's part of something bigger now. Understood even in a strictly biological context, it still rings true to me.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

5. That's an analogy used

by my Pir-o-Murshid, who talks of an idividual as a drop or wavelet from the ocean-there for an instant, and then back to Unity. Notice too that the drop is made of the same stuff as the rest of the ocean-there is no seperation.

I have danced this chant at women's gatherings and at Dances of Universal Peace camps, btw.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. Blessed be

I'm glad she won the rights, and hope her group continues to grow and prosper.

[Chovexani]

6. May she be at rest until her return

But one thing bugs me. It's 2006 and newspapers are still pulling this "self-described witch" nonsense.

You never read about "self-described Catholics" or "self-described Jews". :argh: