PUBLICATIONS Magazine is a cauldron of ideas

You must treat your computer right, or you'll risk upsetting your vaettir.
By PETER CARLSON
WASHINGTON POST
New Witch is a magazine for your young, hip new breed of witches. That explains the subtitle, which is "not your mother's broomstick."
Your young, hip witch has needs that her mother didn't have. For instance, she needs to know what to do with her computer when she's busy casting spells. And New Witch provides that information, in capital letters when necessary.
"TURN THE COMPUTER OFF COMPLETELY WHEN YOU ARE WORKING MAGIC," the Rev. Galina Krasskova writes in New Witch's spring issue. "I cannot emphasize this enough. I've had friends who have had their computers completely crash due to simple energy overload when they inadvertently left them on while doing spellwork."
Krasskova also suggests that a witch should name her computer and talk to it in a soothing, friendly manner. This is because vaettir, which are "nature spirits," can take up residence in your hard drive.
Ghosts in the machine
"Do not curse, yell, smack or otherwise vent your anger on your computer," she writes. "Most vaettir are extremely sensitive to emotions."
If you do curse at your computer -- and even the most even-tempered witch sometimes does -- you can clean away the bad energy by shaking a coffee can full of coins around the computer. Or, better yet, you can bless the machine.
"Simply put your hands on the computer," Krasskova suggests, "and bless it in the name of your patron Goddess or God."
Skeptics might scoff at Krasskova's advice, but she is an eminently qualified expert. We know this from the italicized identification that runs at the bottom of her column:
Rev. Galina Krasskova is currently gythia of Urdabrunnr Kindred in New York and has been a dedicated Odinswoman, practicing seidhrkona and would be ju-ju woman for close to a decade.
Most of the writers in New Witch are equally qualified. Linda Bellaluna, whose "WitchCrafting" column reveals how to make magic candles, is "a priestess initiate in the Sisterhood of the Silver Branch."
New Witch was launched last fall by the folks who publish the "three largest goddess/pagan/wicca magazines" in America, says Anne Newkirk Niven, who is one of those folks. The other is her husband, Alan Niven.
The Nivens, who consider themselves witches, publish SageWoman, a 17-year-old magazine devoted to "women's spirituality," as well as PanGaia, founded in 1996 as "a pagan journal for thinking people" and the Blessed Bee, a newsletter for pagan families with children.