Halloween is approaching quickly and the witches are organizing, but they are not necessarily the type of witches one normally associates with the holiday.

Clark Ford, professor of food science and human nutrition and faculty adviser of the Iowa State Pagan Community, said Halloween occurs simultaneously with one of the Wiccan solar holidays: Samhain.

“The veil between the Earth and universe is the thinnest then, and this is the Wiccan new year — the final harvest celebration,” Clark said. “It’s the celebration of death and rebirth and of the connection.”

The pagan group consists of about 40 ISU students who are holding their first meeting Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Margaret Sloss Women’s Center.

Ford said the most common and most damaging misconception about witchcraft is that it is the same thing as Satanism.

“Witches do not worship evil, nor do they sacrifice animals,” he said.

Elisa Strachan, junior in journalism and mass communication, is a self-described witch. She said she was looking for some people to network with when she got to ISU, so she got in touch with people in the New Age Philosophies Club.

She has been a practicing Wiccan for a couple of years now.

“Basically, the terms Wiccan and witch can be interchanged,” she said. “Witches stick to old traditions more. We do cast spells — it’s our form of prayer — but [Wiccans] respect all life and don’t sacrifice animals.”

Strachan said she explored witchcraft on her own during high school.

“I tend not to do rituals as much, like healings,” she said. “I’m more into herbalism and using more natural remedies.”

Strachan said she is looking forward to ISU Pagan Community meetings.

“Hopefully we’ll get speakers and make it sort of like a networking system,” she said.

Ford said there is no strict definition of a pagan.

“A pagan is someone who calls himself or herself pagan,” Ford said. “They all have their own ideas of how the world works, and [they] enjoy looking beyond the traditional explanations.”

He said pagan is an umbrella term, and Wicca is a part of the pagan tradition.

According to the ISU Pagan Community Web site, the term “pagan” derives from the Latin word for country dweller because country people were the last to give up their old religion and convert to Christianity.

Ford said the downfall of the last Wiccan/pagan club at ISU caused the ISU Pagan Community to develop the guiding principles, “An ye harm none, do as ye will. And ever mind the Rule of Three: What ye send out, comes back to thee.”

“Pagans often embrace the old ways, the old gods and goddesses, and see many facets of the divine in the mysteries of the universe,” Ford said.

“Pagans often have a deep reverence for nature and a mystical individualism grounded in the natural world that relies on personal intuitions rather than revealed truths,” he said.

Ford said typical Wiccan rituals revolve around “creating sacred space” which is done by “casting a circle.”

After creating a place of safety from the world, Wiccans invite the gods and goddesses and the four elements — earth, air, water and fire, into their space.

This ritualized activity is usually led by the priest, who calls the god and then becomes the god, and the priestess, who calls the goddess and then becomes the goddess. More skilled priests and priestesses can evoke a stronger response.

“It’s very personal,” Strachan said. “I don’t know that I have visions, [but] you feel something in the way the wind blows.”

Ford said everybody in the region is a priest or priestess in the Wiccan religion.

There are eight major solar celebrations of the Wiccan year, and the ISU Pagan Community members around Ames have been marking them, Ford said.

He said for the fall equinox celebration, known as Mabon, about 85 Wiccans celebrated their own, personal harvest at the Open Mabon Celebration on Sept. 22, at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Ames.

The ISU Pagan Community was a co-sponsor of the event.

“We shared food and danced the spiral dance,” Ford said.

In celebration of nature and harvesting, the ISU Pagan Community also went on an apple-picking outing recently.

“We went to the Berry Patch apple orchard and had a picnic and picked apples … then we made apple sauce, apple pie and apple crisps,” Ford said. “The people involved are generally nature lovers — people who see the divine manifested in nature.”

Although Wiccans do not have organized churches, Ford said they sometimes form “covens” that meet in living rooms during the 13 full moons.

He said most involvement with the religion is initiated by the Internet.

“It’s funny — most Wiccans are drawn to the Internet,” he said.

“I read a lot about it, and it seemed to be something I already believed in,” Strachan said.