A Wiccan Reality Show

Starting tonight, a new reality show called "Living the Wiccan Life" will be shown on the website Magick.tv. The show will consist of 10 to 12 minute episodes shown approximately once per week and is produced by the now famous online Witch School.

Witch School Reality Show Airs

Hopefully this program will broaden awareness of alternative spirituality and help to counter some of the negative press that is put out by conservative Christians. However, along those lines I do find it kind of disappointing that the PR release tries to equate the school with Hogwarts from the Harry Potter books and movies. Anyone who is familiar with the Potter series should realize that if this isn't mainstream media spin, it's a blatant attempt to cash in on a mostly unrelated pop culture phenomenon.

I've posted a couple of articles complaining about how Christians don't do their homework and try to claim that the Harry Potter series teaches children the Wiccan religion. It in fact does no such thing, and it's kind of sad to see the same sloppy thinking from the other side of the debate. In the Harry Potter universe, magic is a neutral technology with no religious component. Many Wiccans do practice magick, but so do some esoteric Christians. It's unclear whether Harry himself is religious at all - there are few references in the stories to any of his specific beliefs, and he certainly is not a Wiccan. Can you imagine what the "Threefold Law" would do to the Potter universe?

A real "magick school" like Hogwarts would teach spellcasting techniques without any sort of religious framework. The closest that I've seen to this online is probably Oberon Zell's Gray School of Wizardry which claims to teach the magical arts as a technology rather than a religion.