c. 1999 Religion News Service

ST. HELENS, Ore. _ Some of Kimberly Balog’s neighbors think she’s a real witch, and they’re not wrong.

As high priestess of the Circle of Creative Spirit, Balog is a devotee of Wicca, a neo-pagan faith with an estimated 100,000 followers in North America. They call themselves witches _ good witches, if you must ask.

Although witches aren’t uncommon in big cities, where you might see bumper stickers such as”Practice safe hex,”they make some people anxious in St. Helens, a Columbia River city of 9,060. Balog’s coven, which casts its spells on the first floor of her $700-a-month rental house on West Street, has endured what she calls religious persecution. But neighbors say witchcraft is only a fraction of it.

Some neighbors have accused Balog of keeping a messy yard, running what amounted to a business out of her home and being so open about her religion it confused a few neighborhood children. They complain that Balog lets her 3-year-old son run around au naturel and creates a fire hazard with all the candles she burns in her rituals.

One night a few weeks ago, Leslie McDermott peered across West Street and found Balog’s coven, all in black cloaks, chanting. They carried lighted candles and”purified”the front yard with burning sage, which looked to McDermott like sparklers.”Sparklers,”she snorted.”Bunch of dry grass in their yard. Good combo.” McDermott, a 30-year-old Lutheran, fought fire with fire. The next afternoon, she drove to a Christian supply store, bought a portrait of Jesus Christ that reads”Awesome God”and tacked it to her garage so it faced Balog’s house.”Everybody has their own religion,”McDermott said.”And up until that point, everybody kept it to themselves.” Since then, a kind of cold war has settled over West Street.

The Circle of Creative Spirit meets once a week at Balog’s house in a space her three small children have dubbed the”Magic Room.” On a bright day recently, Balog lit some frankincense in a brass urn, welcomed a visitor to the room and, with Tracy Chapman singing on the stereo and children playing noisily upstairs, began to explain Wicca. It’s an ancient pagan belief rooted in the Earth, crops and the cycles of life and re-popularized in the 1950s by Englishman Gerald B. Gardner. Followers do not believe in the Christian God, but a god and a goddess.

Wicca is not black magic or Satanism, Balog said, but a healing faith. Adherents believe in reincarnation. Wicca’s unshakable law, she said, is,”Do what ye will as long as it harm none.””There’s no casting of hexes or curses,”said Balog, 30.”That is the (faith’s) biggest taboo.” For rituals, the witches of St. Helens convene in circles. As high priestess, Balog stands in the middle as her coven chants and dances around her to work up positive energy. Suddenly they stop, sending this energy through their fingertips into her. Balog says she collects the energy and casts it into orbit to heal problems such as hatred.

The Circle’s 10 members _ a cross-section of homemakers, factory and retail workers, men and women _ also burn things to send their essence into the”spirit world,”Balog said. Those offerings, typically herbs, often are burned in a black cast-iron cauldron about the size of a beach ball.

The trouble on West Street began about six weeks ago, a year after Balog’s family moved from Northern California.

Balog was public about her witchcraft, a faith she claims to have inherited from her mother. She told her next-door neighbor, Marlena Fadden, she was recruiting for new members of her coven and hoped the Circle would one day open a craft, herb and magic store. Some mistakenly thought she planned to run a home business.

One day, Fadden’s 6-year-old daughter, Jordynn, marched home saying neighbor Ashley’s mother didn’t believe in Jesus and she might join up as a witch, too.”That really caught me off guard,”Fadden said.”You talk to them about drugs. You talk to them about talking to strangers. But (witchcraft) doesn’t come up.” Fadden and Balog talked things out. Balog counseled Ashley not to volunteer to people that her mom’s a witch _ unless they ask. The Fadden and Balog children still play together, and their mothers remain friendly.

Balog and her husband cleaned up their yard. But things remain chilly between Balog and McDermott, who have never exchanged a word. Fadden finds herself acting as go-between.”It’s a clash of wills,”she said.

DEA END DENSON