Other television shows like Saturday Night Live depicted, in their Halloween special, witches as your ``standard'' broom-toting, haggard, older ladies, dressed in black flowing robes, and pointed hats who were encircling a large cauldron filled with a strange, smoking, bubbling concoction.
The mass media at present day, seems to depict Wicca in a negative light. Surely, if you ask a common man on the street to explain what comes to his mind when the word Witch is uttered, more oft than not, evil will surface. The roots of this negative connotation can be traced back to the Fourth Century when Constantine (Emperor of Rome) instantiated Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire.[1, p. 58 ] Shrines in pagan cultures were looted and sacked; rivers and wells polluted; priests and especially priestesses exposed as heretics and executed.
A recent article in the populist Philadelphia City Paper seemed to have done a good job at attempting to dispel some of these myths. The author, Daryl Gale, started by a participant observation of the Fall equinox ritual, reporting all accurately, according to many of my sources. Originally I had intended to stay clear of the mass media as a source of information. However, my informant, whom I shall refer to as Carol throughout this essay, suggested that I use this article as a nice starting point for my research into the Wiccan religion.