KIDS UNDER SABRINA'S SPELL

MANY kids in the grip of Harry Potter and TV shows like Sabrina the Teenage Witch - starring Melissa Joan Hart, left - and Buffy the Vampire Slayer are casting spells in their bedrooms.
And many leaders of mainstream faiths are worried... for witchcraft is one of the fastest- growing religions in the world.

Witches, or followers of Wicca, do not believe in Hell or that the Devil exists. What Christians call Heaven, Wiccans call the Summerlands.

Wiccans align their faith to nature and worship the balance in all things. They regard the Earth as their Mother. The word witch comes from the Anglo -Saxon word wicce, which means to bend or shape, and from which the modern word wicker is derived.

Witches live by what is known as "The Threefold Law". It states that whatever they send out into the world shall return to them three times over.

Recent statistics show that 40 per cent of UK teenagers are interested in the occult, while surveys show middle-class women are most likely to abandon traditional religion for white magic.
Recently, one bookseller in England refused to stock Harry Potter novels because he felt they would encourage children to dabble in the occult.

He said that, as a committed Christian, he could not allow the books inside his premises.