Covenant of the Pentacle Wiccan Church

The Covenant of the Pentacle Wiccan Church was founded in 1994 in New Orleans by Arch-Priestess Emeritus Velvet Rieth. While their website offers little in the way of their founding and their history in New Orleans, it does detail their theology well. The mission of the church is to bring people of many backgrounds together for worship and learning. Wiccans worship the anthropomorphized embodiment of nature, the Mother Goddess, and her consort Cernunnos, the Horned God. The Horned God, portrayed as a man with antlers embodies the creatures in nature, as well as the various death and rebirth cycles that keep nature flourishing. To equate him to Satan due to his appearance would be grossly incorrect; since Wiccan has no embodiment of evil and that the Horned God doesn’t embody anything that would be considered evil. Wiccan traditions date back to the Stone Age peoples of Northern Europe.  They view everyone as divine and that divinity is gender neutral. Wiccan ethics, like most other religions, is based off of the Golden Rule, although they do not accept the concept of sin. Wiccan festivals like Beltane and Lammas celebrate natural forces and occurrences like fertility and the harvest. The full moon of every month is a very important day, and the month it takes place in determines which spells would work best. All members of the church can become priests and priestesses, and there are a number of ranks of priesthood ranging from First Degree to Elder. The New Orleans clergy is made up of Rev. Velvet Rieth and Debra Jeffreys, both Fourth Degree Priestesses (an honourary title in the church) as well as Susan Kagan and Linda Murphy, Third Degree Priestesses. The Church offers various religious services for the community of New Orleans as well as Prison Ministry and Military Outreach. Their website does not mention anything about charity services. Their website is: www.swampwitch.net/