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For the third year in a row, Coven Oldenwilde manned a “beer bracelet” booth during Asheville’s annual street fair held on the last weekend in July.

This year was heartrending since weeks before, City Council voted to discontinue the event after this, its last hurrah. Public input was not solicited prior to the surprise move.

We were stunned that our city renowned for cultivating tourism would dispense with the well-known event it had publicized nationally for decades. Further, forty local non-profits have benefitted from receiving a percentage of the proceeds they raise on behalf of the city by working the event. Worse still, we soon learned that two other festivals — LAFF and Goombay — are also cancelled this year.

Nonetheless, Coven Oldenwilde decided to go out with a bang. In addition to selling alcohol bracelets, we planned to elicit donations in exchange for handmade, organic divination kits, copies of The Goodly Spellbook, Coven T-shirts, and embossed Handfasting ribbons from Samhain 18 re-purposed as magical bookmarks.

While prep was duly extensive, it was well worth the effort because we made mad “tips” this year — often a fiver or sawbuck put in our cauldron in appreciation of our being public Witches!

As always, we received a kind reception from fellow citizens who sought out our booth and thanked us for saving local old magnolia trees from a developer’s ax; entertaining them with our annual public Samhain rituals; and for our various spiritual activism exploits.

Among the many vignettes we’ll never forget:

• Two precious wee sisters who fell in love with Lady Passion’s div kits. The stayed up all night planning to return and buy some with their allowance. They convinced their Pagan parents to bring them back to our booth the next day.
  

  Divination kits: 3 magic beans answer questions. Left: $10 pouches; right: $5 clear packs. (Click photo to view the two kits close up.)

  They beamed so proudly when picking out the kit that appealed to each of them. What a sterling example of parental support, we thought!

• A man buying a bracelet from us remarked that we had a friend in common: renowned Gardnerian elder and author Raymond Buckland. (Indeed, Raymond gave our The Goodly Spellbook a glowing review and gave us insider info on where to schedule signing events during our 2006 book tour throughout England.) *Diuvei gave the man two of our business cards — the back of which sports the magical alphabet Passing the River which Raymond publicized in his famous “Blue Book.”
  

  Coven Oldenwilde business card, with Magical Alphabets cheat sheet on back. (Click image to view in print resolution.)

  A few days later, Lady Passion got a sweet email from Raymond: The card had quickly made its way to him, and he appreciated our work. Wow!

• A former male student whom we’d trained from childhood came up repeatedly to relate how profoundly we’d affected his life.

  He’d named his firstborn girl-child Apassionata in honor of Lady Passion, and was writing a book of poetry based on magical techniques we’d taught him!

• Seeing the courageous strength displayed by two Friends of Oldenwilde when countering evangelical fundamentalists damning families attending the event.

  *Diuvei captured on video one of Bele Chere’s bullhorn-bullying street preachers being overwhelmed by a diverse crowd protesting fundamentalist religious intolerance, including Latisha and Abramsbane.

  

  Our friend “Abramsbane” protested the street preachers with a sign pointing out the “iron chariot” Bible contradiction in Judges 1:19. (Click photo to view sign larger in new window.)

  

  Latisha describing her experience protesting the street preachers (as seen in the YouTube video).

  Both exercised the Power to Be Silent to strong effect in their own separate ways: One man stood quietly holding a thought-provoking sign in front of a succession of men spewing ear-splitting screeds through a bull-horn, while the other (booth volunteer Latisha) used her break to stand beside one — the brazen Coven T-shirt she wore showing dignified resolve in opposition to the hysterical zealot.

  Interestingly, someone must have heard the suggestion we published after last year’s Bele Chere to counter the street preachers’ sonic disruptions with music. This year, festival organizers set up a karaoke stage in the central Vance Monument area. Sure enough, that area was freed from the amplified ranters for the first time in years. The only hate-speech zone festivalgoers had to endure was in Pritchard Park, where hundreds peacefully but powerfully responded by exercising their own First Amendment right to protest against the fundamentalists’ hypocrisy, intolerance … and their inhumane lack of humor :-). (Rumor had it shortly before the wild scene we captured on this video that one of the worst preachers gave up after catching a pie in the face.)



Helping out at Bele Chere will be a sorely missed source of survival funding for dozens of the Asheville area’s hard-working non-profits, which perform irreplaceable social and charitable services but receive few or no government or private grants in today’s increasingly stingy financial environment.

• Hearing pervasive poignant sadness regarding the unceremonious discarding of Bele Chere by the powers that be.
  Many related memories of their decades of observing the yearly festival, expressing in blue streak fashion their certainty that the decision would inevitably wreak financial ruin on the city. Grumbles about governmental disregard for the people’s pleasure abounded.

Coven Oldenwilde fulfilled our obligation in high Witch style, but it’s with heavy hearts that we bid Bele Chere adieu. We are proud, though, that for the past three years we represented Paganism with panache.

First time’s beginners’ luck; second time’s a challenge. That’s the “Rule of Two” we wrote about in The Goodly Spellbook, and our second year running a nonprofit wristband booth at Bele Chere, the Southeast’s largest street festival, bore it out on Friday and Saturday, July 27 and 28, 2012. We had a smaller crew handling a bigger crowd. Gangs of screaming street preachers took over downtown Asheville’s Pritchard Park, just around the corner from us (see below the letters we wrote to local media about how we successfully prevent such ilk from disrupting our public Samhain rituals). Festival organizers stocked too few wristbands, and when we sold out right at the peak of the party on the second evening, *Diuvei had to race like an artful dodger through the crowded streets to get more, while Lady Passion had to handle tactfully a pair of drunk evangelicals who took that opportunity to badger her with “questions”.

But we followed our own advice about the Rule of Two — “no matter what happens, remain precise and persistent throughout” — and all of us worked hard and well, keeping our spirits high by experiencing as well as encouraging the joy, freedom, and beauty people who come from every continent radiate when they visit our mountain cultural oasis here. As the first-time volunteers discovered, the exhilaration far outweighs the exhaustion when you’re representing Asheville’s Witches to the world!

We experimented this year with using a greenery-decorated cauldron to collect tips, topped with a little bell people could ring for a blessing. It worked very well, and many people told us they enjoyed hearing the bell’s clear tone float over the crowd noise every time someone got a blessing.

Local residents tend to avoid Bele Chere — they’re not big fans of Budweiser, for one thing, which still holds a controversial near-monopoly on the festival’s beer and ale sales in a city that’s become world-famous for its local breweries — but many went out of their way to find us and thank us for saving the magnolia trees and, in the doing, changing Asheville for the better (to sum up: more preservation, less corruption!). An artist, Tristan Hertz, who makes terrariums — living landscapes in glass containers — expressed his gratitude to Lady Passion by giving her the beautiful little pendant terrarium pictured here.

Other folks from all over came by to tell us how much they were learning from The Goodly Spellbook, show off their pentagrams (one man had 11 pentagram tattoos and counting!), pick up Lady Passion’s card in case they need magical or psychic help, or drop in a donation. One well-dressed man who came by to do so related to us that he was a elder in a conservative church whose pastor’s son was a big fan of the Harry Potter books. One Sunday the pastor was delivering a fiery sermon on the life to come. At its climax, he demanded of all assembled, “And when you get to heaven, who do you think you’ll see?” His son piped up loudly: “Witches!”, breaking the congregation up in laughter. As the man dropped in his donation, he looked toward the sky and smilingly prayed, “Jesus forgive me!”

When our last shift ended Saturday night and we’d folded up our starry tablecloth, rolled up our fringed banner, and packed away everything but the heavy iron cauldron, one more person stopped by to drop a donation in it. (We’re keeping it in there for luck.) Then, we heard Dixieland music coming from the middle of a huge, dancing crowd writhing up the street past us from the stage, as Yo Mama’s Big Fat Booty Band closed the show by marching off the stage and away through the Bele Chere crowd.

At times we swore we’d never do this again … but if we can get a larger crew of volunteers in 2013, we probably will. After all, if you survive the Rule of Two: “Third time’s the charm!”

Letters to the Editor: How to Beat Street Preachers

To Mountain Xpress:

Street preachers have been invading Bele Chere like poison ivy in a park. This year they spread their amplified hate beyond Vance Monument and took over Pritchard Park.

Just around the corner by the Battery Park Stage, however, we wicked Witches of Coven Oldenwilde — whom many might assume to be a natural target for puritanical ranters — actually welcomed thousands of festivalgoers at our non-profit wristband booth unmolested.

Here’s why, based on our two decades of experience in preventing the disruption of our annual public Samhain ritual by brigades of anger-addicted Bible thumpers bused in from out of town: The preachers’ sole weapon is sound — a loud megaphone drone of accusatory spew that intentionally ruins the spirit of the festival. Their tactic only works in a relative sonic vacuum — easily neutralized if the local sound-scape is filled with amplified live or recorded music, as by a stage or concerted drumming, such as a drum circle.

Asheville can’t afford to lose the valuable publicity boost the Southeast’s largest street festival gives it each year. Here are two suggestions for keeping future Bele Cheres from being expensively buzz-killed by evangelical agitators: A) Asheville’s drum-circle regulars could organize and raise funds from affected merchants to pay a rotating crew of skilled drummers to keep a danceable beat going at Vance Monument and Pritchard Park throughout the festival; or, B) pre-recorded music (preferably by local bands and DJs) could be played continuously there, amplified loud enough to defeat megaphones but not interfere with the live bands nearby.

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To Asheville Citizen-Times:

Hate-spewing street preachers have been invading Bele Chere like a Christian Taliban — this year commandeering not only Vance Monument but also Pritchard Park. Just around the corner by Battery Park Stage, however, we wicked Witches of Coven Oldenwilde peacefully welcomed thousands of festivalgoers at our non-profit wristband booth without interference from the puritanical ranters.

After two decades of experience in preventing the disruption of our annual public Samhain ritual by bused-in brigades of Bible thumpers, we know that their only weapon for disturbing the peace is sound. Their droning condemnations are easily neutralized if the local sound-scape is kept filled with amplified live or recorded music, such as by a stage or concerted drumming.

We offer two suggestions for keeping evangelical buzz-killers from turning Bele Chere into a fest to avoid: A) Merchants adversely affected by the miasma of moralizing could hire rotating crews of recruits from Asheville’s drum circles to play an ongoing dance beat at Vance Monument and Pritchard Park; or, B) pre-recorded music (preferably by local bands and DJs) could be piped in at a volume that drowns out the megaphones of doom without interfering with the live bands on nearby stages.

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Credited photos by Jack Hedden, Backspace Photography, backspacephotography-at-gmail-dot-com. All others by *Diuvei unless noted.