Ready or not: The way of the Wiccan

Hoopeston Witch School more messy than scary

BY JOE LARSON

HOOPESTON — Controversy about Witch School has swirled around Hoopeston the last three years, but very few people step inside the building to see for themselves.

If they did, they would probably be surprised — and disappointed.

“Everyone gets this glorious vision of it,” said Witch School CEO Ed Hubbard, 43, of Hoopeston. “We have to start from scratch.”

After operating behind closed doors, the school opened to the public and for classes this week.

“We are in great disarray because we’re rearranging,” added Don Lewis, 43, of Hoopeston. He is the chancellor of Witch School at 112 W. Main St.

During its lifetime, the building has been a livery stable, a makeshift morgue and a car dealership.

It now serves as a store, school and temple for witches, although it doesn’t look quite like one might expect.

The Temple of Selu on the second floor offers the biggest surprise.

“It’s still set up from our last event, which was a séance,” Lewis said.

Mismatched chairs sit around two tables pushed together in front of an altar, which is little more than another table covered with candles.

The naked boards that form the floor of the temple have been patched in numerous places to keep people from falling through.

The room is hot, dirty and dark and more closely resembles its livery stable origin than its current use as a pagan worship center.

“In the summer it’s kind of warm, and in the winter it’s kind of cold,” Lewis said.

Downstairs, Hubbard works to transform a former garage into a learning center.

Dozens of bags of powdered cement stand ready to smooth over the floor’s cracked, uneven surface.

“This is going to be the new library, hopefully by Monday,” Lewis said.

The Witch School library boasts copies of the “Pagan Press,” books on metaphysics, and one copy of “The Catechism of the Catholic Church,” which rests on a shelf next to several spiral-bound lessons on witchcraft.

“If you look in the library, we have a very large Christian section,” Lewis said.

The building also holds a production area for the store portion of Witch School.

“Our membership makes up most of our income, but we sell about 200 packages a week (over the Internet),” Hubbard said.

Last year, the school’s Web site did more than $178,000 worth of business by selling memberships, spells and Wiccan items.

“This year, we should move a quarter of a million” dollars worth of subscriptions and merchandise, Hubbard said.

The most popular purchases are mini spells, small printed pieces of paper with instructions on how to improve one’s life with a wish and a candle.

Hubbard’s staff makes 400 to 500 of the mini spells a day and sells them for 45 cents each to dollar stores and other retail outlets.

“They are a novelty that explains magic in a way that most people can understand,” Lewis said.

The Internet has proven much more receptive to the school’s Wiccan ideals and products than the Hoopeston community.

Since opening to onsite classes this week, between 15 to 20 students have attended each learning session.

Online, however, more than 100,000 people have registered to take classes since September 2001.

“We have a Web site that is a multimillion dollar Web site,” Hubbard said.

He estimates its value based on how much companies have paid to purchase other sites with similar traffic levels.

It will be many years before the brick and mortar component of Witch School rivals the importance of its electronic counterpart.

The Witch School building doesn’t look like much on the outside — or the inside — but its online component has kept the school linked with a large body of eager students and customers who should be able to sustain the religious center for years to come.

“We’ve been here three years, and we’ve done more than it looks like,” Lewis said.

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