WITCHES NO FANTASY TO PAGAN BELIEVERS.

Byline: Jeff Wright The Register-Guard

Nine-year-old Luna Sansone thinks she may want to be an artist when she grows up. Or a witch.

But not just any witch. "I want to be a real witch," she says, "someone who makes herbs and things, and helps people make lots of tea, and makes protective spells."

In the countdown to Halloween, Luna harbors some distinct notions about witches and witchcraft. That's because Halloween - what she and her Springfield family refer to as Samhain - is not just about costumes and trick-or-treating. It's about religious faith.

As Wicca and related earth-based religions reach into the mainstream, more parents are passing down those beliefs to their children.

Tracy Sansone, mother of Luna and two younger children, says she expects that her offspring eventually will choose their own religious paths. In the meantime, "I want them to have a good background of observing what's around them, so they're not walking through life on blind faith," she says.

In Eugene, Krystal Barger takes a similar approach with her 10-year-old twin daughters, Allison and Lydia. Every morning, she and her girls each choose a Tarot or fairy card to meditate upon as they sit around an improvised altar of stones, feathers, driftwood, candles, sage and other totems.

"If you're really connected with the earth and what's around you, then you're able to make clear decisions," Barger says. "That's the most important thing to me, to make sure they feel connected with what they came from, the planet and nature."

Because formal membership doesn't exist, the exact number of Wiccan believers is impossible to know. An American Religious Identification Survey in 2001 found 134,000 self-identified Wiccans, a 17-fold increase from 1990. Web sites list more than a half-dozen pagan groups in and around Eugene.

What is known is that Barger and Sansone are part of a growing wave of parents turning to books, Web sites and other resources aimed at spreading the Wiccan way to children.

It's long overdue in the eyes of Norma Joyce, a founding member of Women in Conscious Creative Action, a neopagan group formed in Eugene in 1983.

"The children have been left out of this movement for a long time, and the parents are saying, `Wait a minute, we're serious about this,' ' Joyce says. ` `And we've settled down - we're not running around in the woods.' '

But at the Barger household, they are running to the backyard tepee - at least on special holidays such as Samhain, also known as Summer's End or the Witches' New Year.

The festival morphed into Halloween after the Catholic church created All Saints Day, or All Hallows Day, on Nov. 1. The preceding night became known as "All Hallows Eve," which got shortened to Halloween.

The Bargers use representations of the four elements - earth, air, water and fire - in their ritualistic observance of Samhain (pronounced Sow-en or Sow-een). They also embrace the holiday as a time to honor the dead, mindful that Samhain is considered to be the night when the veil is thinnest between the worlds of the living and the gone.

But Krystal Barger also is busy this week trying to finish sewing her daughters' costumes - Robin Hood's daughter for Allison, a medieval noblewoman for Lydia - in time for Halloween trick-or-treating. It's a tradition she accommodates, even though she sometimes gets annoyed that "most people don't know what they're doing, imitating the spirits that are wandering right there beside them."

Barger's husband, Keith, is Unitarian Univeralist - but more than willing to take part in the family's witchy ways. "It's honoring the earth," he says of his family's practices. "Labels are not important to me. Earth is an expression of the divine."

Their girls are aware, however, that their beliefs are in the minority. When a friend on her soccer team recently asked if she believed in God, "I said yes," Allison says. "But I didn't tell her anything about the Goddess."

Like the Bargers', Sansone's kids in Springfield are home-schooled - in part to avoid what she calls "the Hallmark holidays" and the commercialization that come with them.

Sansone, her husband and kids attended last weekend's Witches Ball at the WOW Hall, and plan to take part in tonight's Celtic New Year Celebration - a time of ghost stories, turnip carvings and bobbing for apples - at the Kaufman Center in Eugene. But come Sunday, the kids will be in their cat costumes, made from thrift store purchases, to go trick-or-treating around the neighborhood.

Sansone says she's OK with Halloween because her children "know the stories" behind it. Daughter Luna says she likes Samhain because it makes her feel "all magic and tingly" - and likes Halloween for the candy. But she does offer one mild protest:

"I don't really believe in all those icky things, big skeletons and zombies, because Samhain isn't supposed to be gross and scary," she says. "People used to put on masks to make the bad spirits go away, and good faces to get the good spirits to move along."

Sansone says she has sought out plenty of books to explain the pagan holidays to her children, but with limited success. Once, she said, she was excited to find a book about Yule, the winter solstice holiday that precedes Christmas.

"But when I brought it home, it told about what people used to believe," she says. "I was so frustrated."

Ashleen O'Gaea, who grew up in Portland but now lives in Arizona, wrote one of the first books on pagan parenting, "The Family Wicca Book," in the early 1990s. Her latest book, "Raising Witches," outlines a half-dozen curriculum topics for children in five different age groups.

O'Gaea says she's unsure of total sales, but believes that demand warrants a planned update of her first book.

"I still get two to three e-mails a month saying, `Your books have helped me so much - where was this when I first needed this.' '

DEFINITIONS OF TERMS

Wicca: A religion emerging in the 1960s and based largely on the elements of an ancient pre-Christian Celtic religion. Most forms of Wicca recognize the divine feminine, embrace both God and Goddess, and revere nature and its cycles.

Witch: Any female or male who practices the magic of witchcraft - using spells or other means to alter the material world. Any practitioner of a nature-based or folk belief system. Not all witches are Wiccan.

Pagan: A variety of non-Christian/Jewish/Islamic religions that usually believe in multiple gods and are often nature-based. "Neopagans" favor a blend of ancient and contemporary practices. "Pagan" comes from the Latin "paganum," meaning, "one who is from the country." Not all pagans are witches or Wiccans.

Wiccan holidays: Samhain (Halloween); Yule (winter solstice); Imbolc or Brigid (Feb. 1); Eastara (spring equinox); Beltane (May 1); Litha (summer solstice); Lughnassad (Aug. 1); Mabon (autumn equinox)

Wiccan Rede: "Do whatever you want, as long as it harms no one, including yourself"

Threefold Law: Any good or harm that a person does to another returns to themselves, magnified three times

RESOURCES

Pagan parents list favorite books

"Raising Witches: Teaching the Wiccan Faith to Children" by Ashleen O'Gaea

"The Family Wicca Book" by Ashleen O'Gaea

"Circle Round: Raising Children in Goddess Traditions" by Starhawk, Diane Baker and Anne Hill

"Celebrating the Great Mother" by Cait Johnson and Maura Shaw

"The Ancient Celtic Festivals and How We Celebrate Them Today" by Clare Walker Leslie and Frank Gerace

"The Girl Who Kept Her Magik" by Laurel Ann Reinhart (children's fiction)

Online: www.paganparenting.com

CAPTION(S):

Tracy Sansone carves pumpkins with her son Taegan O'Rourke, 4. The family observes Samhain, a pagan fall holiday. Kevin Clark / The Register-Guard Tracy Sansone and Michael O'Rourke, with their children, have fun with pumpkins as they get ready to celebrate Samhain, the pagan holiday that brings an end to the harvest season.