Frost Clears Up Witchcraft Misconceptions
Laura Rose
Jo Frost is just sitting down in the
cove at SAGA. She is approached by an
apparently embarrassed inquirer who,
with pronounced hesitation, manages to
ask, “Are you a witch?”
After a few people giggle around
the table, Jo looks up and smiles, “No, but
my parents are.”
Jo Frost, freshman at St. Andrews,
is the daughter of Gavin and Y vonne Frost,
practicing witches living in New Bern,
NC. Throughout her life, this graduate of
the North Carolina School of Science and
Math has had to cope with other people’s
reactions and misconceptions surrounding
this fact.
“I was ostracized when I was
little,” Jo said. “I had maybe one friend
until people were old enough to look past
who my parents were.”
It seems that past adverse feelings
toward Jo stemmed from common misper
ceptions about her parents’ beliefs. After
all, witchcraft is not widely accepted. Jo
explained, to the best of her knowledge,
some aspects of her parents’ religion of
life, spirituality, nature, and intelligence
and learning.
“They’re not Satanists,” Jo said.
“They don’t believe in Hell, because
through astral-travel, no witch can find it.”
Contrary to anything negative, Jo
said her parents believe in a ‘great good’,
which has no name because power over
something you worship is not good. They
celebrate the winter solstice, the rebirth of
the sun, instead of Christmas. They mourn
the summer solstice, because that is when
the sun begins to die, she said.
“There are gods and deities over
everything, and they celebrate each in their
own way,’’ Jo said of her parents. “There
are rituals and spells, but the only magic
comes from within - any power comes from
within.”
She explained that they believe
healing can be done with the hands, and
that meditation and prediction can be done
using any medium,beittarotcards,dice,or
sticks.
Jo also explained the religion’s
origins that her father discovered in his
native England when, at Stonehenge, he
first became interested in witchcraft
“Before Jesus Christ, witchcraft
was the accepted religion,” Jo said. “My
father found it in research of the ancient
Celts and Egyptians.”
The Druids as well were members
of this system of religion, philosophy, and
instruction in ancient Gaul, Britain and
Ireland. In the Irish and Welsh sagas, and
later Christian legends, the Druids ap
peared as conjurors, instead of priests
and philosophers.
“Today.people think of witches as
being bad, making potions, and being green
with a wart on their nose,” Jo said. “But
these images are Christian dogma.
Witches were suppressed after Christian
ity became supremist.”
Jo explained that views toward
witchcraft have been slowly changing, but
there has been a recent drop in the spread
of acceptance, perhaps due to TV evangel
ism.
Her parents have felt this trend
recently in actions toward their Church and
School of Wicca, an organization that
offers correspondence courses in predic
tion, tantra yoga, graphic analysis, and
cooking. The National Enquirer cancelled
these mail-order advertisements because
witchcraft is mentioned in them.
Jesse Helms tried to pass an ad
dendum on a tax law saying that all U.S.-
chartered witchcraft organizations would
be considered profit organizations, and
therefore, would have to pay taxes. This
addendum was namely directed toward the
Frosts’ Church of Wicca, because it is the
only chartered witchcraft group in the
United States.
“There was a huge uproar, Jerry
Falwell being among the protesters,” Jo
said, “because if the policy started there, it
might end in applying to Christian organi
zations, too.”
The addendum was removed, and
the Church and School of Wicca still oper
ate tax-free. The organization’s creed
remains, “And it harm none, do what you
will.”
Jo’s beliefs, different from her
parents’ in many ways, have changed since
her childhood.
“Until Christian society pounced
on my morals, I believed what my parents
did because I was allowed to,” Jo said. “I’m
not angry because of it. But it’s a very dif
ferent feeling sitting on the outside of
Christian society.”
Jo does not discuss religion with
her parents, as “it may be too touchy a
subject.”
“I still believe in a ‘great good’,
and think of the devil as the sandman —
something made up to scare little kids,” Jo
said. “I get angry sometimes when people
are closed-minded.”
Once, Jo wanted to try to help a
sick friend, but a priest told the patient that
Jo was a product of Satan. He threatened
Jo’s friend with excommunication from the
church if she let Jo heal her leukemia.
“I don’t think the same thing
would have happened,” Jo said, “if Ernest
Angeley (TV evangelist) would have
healed her.”
Jo does not feel negatively toward
Christianity, but she is often scared to tell
people who her parents are.
“But I’m also proud of them, be
cause they’ve done a lot,” Jo said. “Hope
fully, I can measure up in some way.”
St. Andrews freshman, Jo Frost talks about growing up "outside the Christian society."
Education from page 7
During the 1840s, a series of educa
tional reforms began to deal with the
new wave of immigrants to America.
Teachers were now viewed as special
ists, standardization of curriculum and
grade separations were incorporated at all
levels of public education.
“Schools in the 1840s were selecting
and sorting agencies, factories of
learning where students were the final
product,” said Schlechty.
“In the 1960s the pressure for school
reform was relieved by the belief that the
best predictor of student success in
schools is background variables,” said
Schlechty. In other words, just get an
estimate of father’s income to determine
IQ.”
Teaching has always been traditional
and conservative, Schlechty said, but
labeling is a problem - a way to get
around dealing with people.
“For example,” said Schlechty, “we
all want to teach the gifted, who don’t
need to be taught, where teachers don’t
make much difference anyway.”
In Kentucky, Schlechty is part of the
Center for Leadership and School
Reform, which is involved in creating a
new image for public education.
“The purpose of schools has a societal
end, that is, a child does not have the
right not to read.
“It is the schools obligation to make
sure that all students can read and think
critically today,” said Schlechty.
The difficult part about re-inventing
education today is that we can forecast
what the future will be like, but almost
everything kids will need to know when
they are 40 years old will not be
invented until after they graduate,
Schlechty said.