The Yeti\’s Cyber Smithy

The only true Wiccan Church

Many thanks to Andrea F. (not sure if I should publish her last name) for pointing me towards Dettmer v. Landon.

From the Frost’s Blog - “The Church and School of Wicca is the only true Wiccan church that has been recognized as such not just by the IRS but also by the Fifth District Federal Appeals Court”

The Frost’s Blog

When I google with quotes around “Fifth District Federal Appeals Court” I come up with only a reference to the Frost’s statement and a second reference on which the term is not used. I am thinking there is no such thing as the “Fifth District Federal Appeals Court”. So I thought maybe it was a mistake and they intended to say the “Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals”. So I search there endlessly for references to the Church and School of Wicca, desperately trying to discover if it is possible that the courts of a country which are forbidden to make such a determination did in fact decide to respect an institution of religion.

What’s that? Oh yes, you see the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America is rather clear in that my government may not decide what is and is not an institution of religion. Yep, right there in the Bill of Rites, first one in fact. What our government will do is decide if an organization meets qualifications to be a tax-exempt religious organization. Something many, many Wiccan organizations have done. Yep, lots of Wiccan churches out there.

The other thing our government will do is decide in matters under the First Amendment if a practice is protected by law. As an example, if a prisoner states that he should receive a book, lets say the Good Witches Bible by Gavin and Yvonne Frost and the prison refuses to allow him to have it, the prisoner can sue on First Amendment grounds. Then the first thing the court has to do is to determine if what the prisoner wants to practice is a religion because it has to determine if the First Amendment is even applicable but NOT to determine if the practice constitutes a church. Once it is established that the matter is a First Amendment issue, the court can then decide if the book is allowed in. In the case of the Good Witches Bible, it generally would not be allowed in because being a prisoner one forfeits many rights. In this case, the right to possess pedophilic literature and other items which might adversely effect matters of security or rehabilitation.

So as you might imagine, I was very confused as to the Frosts claims about being “the only true Wiccan church that has been recognized as such not just by the IRS but also by the Fifth District Federal Appeals Court”. Confused until I received the email turning me on to Dettmer v. Landon which was heard in 1986 by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Ok, it isn’t the “Fifth District Federal Appeals Court” as the Frosts claim, but it appears as if there is no such court. So maybe they were speaking about what the email turned me onto.

Dettmer v. Landon, 799 F.2d 929 (4th Cir. 1986),
United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit

The short of the story is that Herbert Daniel Dettmer, a student of Gavin and Yvonne Frost’s school of Wicca, found himself in prison and desirous of ritual tools to practice Wicca. In an effort to obtain permission, he sued Robert Landon, the Director of the Virginia Department of Corrections in federal court.

The Department of Corrections had taken the stance that Wicca was not a religion but instead it was a “conglomeration” of “various aspects of the occult, such as faith healing, self-hypnosis, tarot card reading, and spell casting, none of which would be considered religious practices standing alone”. As Herbert Daniel Dettmer was suing on First Amendment issues, the court had to first determine if Wicca was or was not a religion. It determined that Wicca is indeed a religion for the purposes of the suit. It then denied the request for access to ritual tools because “[t]he decision to prohibit Dettmer from possessing the items that he sought did not discriminate against him because of his unconventional beliefs.”

Dettmer v. Landon at Wikipedia.com

Could this be what they are talking about? An issue that a prisoner who was taking their mail order correspondence court brought suit about? If so, wow. That is one hell of a claim to arise from somebody else’s actions.