{"id":1069,"date":"2008-10-08T22:06:00","date_gmt":"2008-10-08T22:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1069"},"modified":"2008-10-08T22:06:00","modified_gmt":"2008-10-08T22:06:00","slug":"these-witches-have-no-covens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1069","title":{"rendered":"These Witches Have No Covens"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Times<\/span> profiles a California water witch<\/a> (dowser).<\/p>\n

How many rural witches are still around is an open question. Water witches have no trade unions \u2014 or covens. Few advertise, or dowse full time.<\/span><\/p>\n

I learned dowsing on a construction job, and I had no “intuitive sense” of where the rural gas line in question was, so I do not buy that explanation of how it works.<\/p>\n

There is a national society of dowsers<\/a>, headquartered in the same little Vermont town where M.’s father grew up. (A civil engineer by profession, he accepted dowsing too.) It used to be all practical dowsers like this guy, but in recent decades the “earth energies” crowd seems to have a growing impact.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Times profiles a California water witch (dowser). How many rural witches are still around is an open question. Water witches have no trade unions \u2014 or covens. Few advertise, or dowse full time. I learned dowsing on a construction job, and I had no “intuitive sense” of where the rural gas line […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[],"tags":[18,29],"class_list":["post-1069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-nature","tag-witchcraft"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-hf","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6142,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6142","url_meta":{"origin":1069,"position":0},"title":"1971: Witches in Bellbottoms, Talking Heads","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 4, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Here is a 1971 documentary from the BBC that is supposed to be about witches. But at the time it was made, no one was making much effort to sort out the new Pagan Witches, anthropological and folkloric witches, and Satanic witches of the Church of Satan variety. So what\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":196,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=196","url_meta":{"origin":1069,"position":1},"title":"Maxine Sanders interview The Wiccan\/Pagan\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"June 1, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Maxine Sanders interview The Wiccan\/Pagan Times has an interview with Maxine Sanders, another pioneer of the Craft. It was her often nude and then-blonde self who appeared skyclad in so many late-1960s and early-1970s books and articles, such as the Time-Life Books Man, Myth and Magic encyclopedia, not to mention\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":809,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=809","url_meta":{"origin":1069,"position":2},"title":"Lady Sintana","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 5, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Morning Glory Zell and Tim\/Oberon Zell of the Church of All Words with Lady Sintana (right) at the Church of Wicca Samhain Seminar in 1978. Photo by Chas S. Clifton.)Jason Pitz-Waters links to a newspaper article about Sintana (Candace Lehrman) and the House of Ravenwood, one of the best-known covens\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":909,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=909","url_meta":{"origin":1069,"position":3},"title":""Dowsing for the Dead"","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 21, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I cannot improve on the headline that Dallas religion journalist Rod Dreher put on his own blog post.But if you hang around dowsers, you will not hear the world \"occult\" much. The old ones, at least, were a practical bunch, although a newer generation got all wrapped up in \"earth\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"dowsing\"","block_context":{"text":"dowsing","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=dowsing"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7223,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7223","url_meta":{"origin":1069,"position":4},"title":"This is Not a Film for Your Wicca 101 Class","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 14, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"On 4 December 1969 a press party was held for a documentary film on Witchcraft, Legend of the Witches, directed by Malcolm Leigh. Among the media types attending was a magazine writer on assignment, a fifty-something man named Stewart Farrar, but that is another story. Legend of the Witches offers\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"England\"","block_context":{"text":"England","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=england"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10035,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10035","url_meta":{"origin":1069,"position":5},"title":"Season of the Witch(crap), Part 3","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 5, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Season of the Witch(crap), Part 1\" \"Season of the Witch(crap), Part 2\" \"Witchcrap\": superficial journalistic treatments of Wicca, Witchcraft, and related Pagan paths. \u2022 In The Atlantic,\"Young black women are leaving Christianity and embracing African witchcraft in digital covens.\" Except the article discusses a convention and gets to the digital\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/mercator.jpeg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/mercator.jpeg?resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/mercator.jpeg?resize=525%2C300 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1069\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}