Forget Sabrina, Shannen and Blair. Witchcraft, or Wicca, is one of the country's fastest-growing and most tolerant religions.

On a Wednesday night, the first official day of autumn, the back room of a small shop off South Street is a beehive of activity.

A man in jeans and a t-shirt is mixing up some sort of concoction from herbs and powders; a woman in a flowing black dress and dark lipstick darts in and out carrying bowls, candles and incense to the small, enclosed back yard. In the center of the yard is a table with a small ceremonial flame.

Some 40 or so people are crammed into the shop, chatting merrily and browsing the merchandise, while a few don ceremonial robes and hooded capes. They’re getting ready to ring in the fall season the same way their predecessors did a thousand years ago. They’re witches, and this is their fall equinox celebration.

Once the members are gathered in a circle in the back yard, the black-robed Wiccan High Priestess gets the festivities under way. She welcomes the group and invites them all to take a deep breath and relax. She then blesses the water and the salt on the table in the name of the Lady and the Lord, that all may be fit to dwell in the circle. The High Priestess closes her eyes, raises her hands to the star-filled night sky and begins speaking in a loud voice.

"We are between the bounds of time," she calls out, "where birth and death meet."

The High Priestess’ name is Fran Toscani, and for a witch she’s a real sweetheart. The plump, middle-aged entrepreneur with the winning smile is leader of the Church of the Three Witches and a practitioner of magick, with a k. Wiccans spell magick that way, Toscani explains, to differentiate it from illusion, which includes sleight-of-hand card tricks and the corny, saw-a-woman-in-half stuff you see David Copperfield do on TV.

Toscani owns and operates the Hand of Aries II at 620 S. 4th St., the only store in town dedicated exclusively to Wiccan culture. It’s a quaint little shop full of strange and interesting books, charms, jewelry, crystals, roots, herbs, incense and talismans, as well as clothing and even music. It’s a Wal-Mart for modern-day Philly witches.

They’re followers of an increasingly popular yet frequently misunderstood faith. Wicca, or witchcraft, is a centuries-old religion that’s seen a powerful resurgence in the past decade. According to ReligiousTolerance.org, an online interfaith information group, Wiccans comprise "one of the fastest growing faith groups in North America."

"About 13 years ago, I found Wicca, although I guess it’s always been part of my belief system. Until then I just didn’t have a name for it," she says, flashing that smile. "And when I bought the store two years ago, we were in the midst of a huge increase in interest in witchcraft that’s still going on. Of course, that increase was partly due to an explosion of the occult in pop culture, with TV shows like Charmed, Sabrina, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer and movies like The Craft.

"But the people who get interested because of pop culture fade away quickly, because true witchcraft is nothing like you see on television. They think they’ll be able to move objects using mental powers or use spells to make someone fall in love with them. When they find out they won’t have secret powers, they get disappointed and move on. But there are many, many people who are genuinely interested in the ancient arts, and in earth-based religions, and we try to show those people the way."

For those people, Toscani started Wicca 101, a seven-week crash course in witchcraft for beginners that she teaches every Monday night in the back room of the store. During the course, she teaches the rites and rituals of witchcraft, as well as charting the phases of the moon and seasons, and the meaning of the pagan holidays. At the end of the seven-week course, there is an oral exam, and the practicum: students each perform a 20-minute ritual. There’s even a graduation of sorts.

Most experts figure there are about 500,000 practicing Wiccans in the United States alone. But estimates vary widely, from as low as 20,000 up to 5 million, because Wiccans are almost impossible to track.

First, many, if not most Wiccans, are solo practitioners, plying the ancient craft via books and the Internet. Second, there’s no central organization or council that tracks covens (a group of witches who practice together). There’s also no hierarchy, or chain of command, or anyone who even pretends to be in charge.

But that lack of formal structure may be part of its appeal, combined with its remarkably tolerant belief system. Wiccans acknowledge the good in all religions, and never proselytize or actively recruit new members. They emphasize respect for the beliefs of others, and avoid debates on religion for fear of offending anyone. They talk constantly about harmony with nature, achieving balance in one’s life, and our oneness with each other and with the world — all philosophies that have gained popularity with the rise of New Age culture.

Wiccans have only two iron-clad tenets. The first is "Do what you will, but harm none." A Libertarian viewpoint if there ever was one, it stresses freedom of worship, ideas and expression as long as no one is harmed or even offended. This rule also prevents witches from practicing spells or rituals intended to harm or influence another person. So no magic love amulets, no secret potions to keep your husband from straying, and no sticking pins in voodoo dolls of your boss.

And if that one’s not enough to discourage a witch from going bad, the second tenet surely will: "The Law of Three," a strict Wiccan belief that whatever you put out into the world, you’ll get back threefold. So if you project love, peace and respect, you’ll get it back times three; and if you attempt to harm, injure or unduly influence another, you’ll get back three times the amount of injury yourself. It’s kind of like the Golden Rule, with potentially dire consequences.

Wiccans honor the ancient gods and goddesses, including Isis and Diana from Egyptian and Roman mythologies, and believe that each of us has the capacity to reach oneness within ourselves and the forces of nature. Witches are damn careful when they perform spells or rituals, because even seemingly innocuous spells, according to Fran Toscani, can have unintended results.

She illustrates this by telling the story of a witch who recently performed a spell asking for harmonious peace and quiet in her home. Days later, her husband packed up the kids and moved out while she was at work.

At Wicca 101 on a Monday evening, the 11 students introduce themselves, say why they’re taking Wicca classes and recount for the group what Wicca means to them. Most say they believe they’re already Wiccans, and are looking for formal guidance in the craft. All claim to be seeking simple spirituality and self-awareness. None of the 11 wish to be named in this article, for fear of persecution from family or employers. While they’re personally proud to be witches, most claim to have already suffered some form of harassment as a result of confessing their beliefs, and aren’t keen to have their names in the paper. Even in our modern, supposedly progressive society, where alternative religions and lifestyles hardly raise an eyebrow anymore, the very word "witch" still conjures up negative stereotypical images and misconceptions they’d rather avoid.

Listening to their stories, it’s easy to understand their reluctance to go public. One has already been fired from a previous job; another tells of being both a witch and a lesbian, and the resultant double whammy of slurs from the ignorant who can’t decide which is worse. Toscani herself recounts the time she was shopping in Wawa, wearing her pentagram necklace, when another shopper recoiled in horror, screamed that Toscani was a devil worshipper, crossed herself several times and ran from the store. That type of reaction is not unusual, say Toscani and her students.

For the record, Wiccans are definitely not devil worshippers. They don’t even believe in the devil, Satan being the manifestation of evil for Christians, not for them. They believe that evil, just like good, is attributed to people, not unseen spirits.

Wicca 101 begins with a short period of meditation, followed by a discussion of the week’s reading material, and then the group separates into smaller groups of three or four who study the tools of the trade. And there are many: wands and charms, and a knife called an Athame, whose cleansed and consecrated blade can never be used to cut anything on the physical plane, but to channel power and slice through the unseen curtain which separates us from the spirit world. All the tools are symbolic, and are used to aid the practitioner in focusing energies and concentration on the spell or ritual at hand.

"Wiccans do not deem to control nature," Toscani says. "They deem to move in harmony with nature. Our tools are used to collect energy, but the power behind the tool, the driving force, is our Wiccan heritage."

It is a long and troubled heritage, hidden for centuries and often stained with blood. Wicca — literally "wise one" — is based on a modern reconstruction of several traditional earth-based religions originating in Ireland, Scotland and Wales hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus. The wise ones, mostly women, were once respected and sought-after healers, as they possessed an extensive knowledge of herbs and natural medicines, as well as physiology. The wise ones’ knowledge of the moon, tides, seasons and weather patterns made them invaluable as counselors in their tribes and villages, advising on everything from farming to childbirth to when to go into battle.

That attitude began to change sometime around the 12th or 13th century, when Christian missionaries adopted a new strategy in their efforts to convert people to Christ and away from the ancient ways. This was best accomplished, unfortunately, by attaching fear and loathing to the arts of the wise ones. Their deities were demons, their healing arts were the devil’s work and the wise ones themselves were Satan’s emissaries, sent to wreak havoc on behalf of the forces of darkness. In an atmosphere now charged with hatred and fear, the wise ones who refused to renounce their religion were tortured and killed in great numbers, driving the rest underground to practice in secret, where most remain to this day.

The Wiccans call the period of witchhunts "The Burning Times," since burning alive was the customary fate of those convicted of witchcraft. The burning was usually a relief, though, to the thousands of women sentenced in this manner, because death came only after prolonged sessions of progressively excruciating tortures, including having their joints dislocated on the stretching rack, their breasts torn off with metal claws or the soles of the feet burned with hot irons in an effort to extract confessions and redeem their souls before they were cooked alive in the town square.

The official start and end dates of the Burning Times, as well as the number killed, vary widely depending upon your sources of information, but it’s generally accepted that between the years 1200 and 1750 A.D., some 100,000 to 300,000 people, mostly women, were hunted, tried and executed for the crimes of witchcraft and heresy — many of whom were good Christians falsely accused. And although most Christians are considerably more tolerant today, the Wiccans have stayed in the shadows for the most part, forever fearful of a repeat performance. And there’s plenty of evidence to back up that fear, at least in some parts of the world. Between 1986 and 1996, 300 people were executed in South Africa, ostensibly for witchcraft. More than 100 suspected witches were killed in Indonesia in 1998 alone.