Witch Watch: Are healers in fiction just unidentified witches?

from the Farmington Observer November 2, 1978

I generally pick the Witch Watch columns to post solely based upon the year they were printed so that I can have a selection of several years work to compare style, sentiment and information presented among other things. It's too early to make a judgment about whether or not her style changed but from the 10 or so I have posted the content remains varied and consistent in the paranormal sciences with occasional tangents into psychology and self-help topics.

This one is very interesting as it focuses on witchcraft itself and is greatly aided by a very observant and intelligent question from a reader of the column. In response to the question of whether many literary figures appear to have magical powers and thus could be considered latent witches, Gundella spells out that while that may suggestively hold true, one isn't a witch unless she/he is part of a coven that practices the Old Religion and its three basic tenets: 1. a belief in a universal power which we all come from, are part of and will return to. 2. a belief in reincarnation or a progression of the soul towards perfection. 3. the ability to call upon those powers to perform magic.

I've seen in several articles where she emphasizes that there are many practitioners who don't follow these tenets and wrongly call themselves witches. A fact which seemed to perturb her quite a bit. I think it was her way of calling them charlatans without being nasty but I could be wrong. I often am.

On a more curious note I just realized that this was printed in the FO 32 years ago to the date! Nice synchronicity.