Witches celebrate in Australia
2005-07-21 07:57
Sydney - Witchcraft, sorcery and fortune-telling are no longer illegal in Australia's second-largest state after the Victorian state parliament sitting in Melbourne on Thursday updated the statute book.
"It's almost 200 years old and is steeped in the language and attitudes of Dickensian England," Attorney General Rob Hulls said when introducing legislation to repeal the Vagrancy Act. "The times have long since passed when witchcraft and fortune-telling represented a danger to law and order or a focus for criminal activity."
The Vagrancy Act had outlawed "any kind of witchcraft, sorcery enchantment or conjuration" and threatened punishment to anyone who "pretends from his skill or knowledge in any occult or crafty science to discover where or in what manner any goods or chattels stolen or lost may be found".
Gavin Andrew, the spokesperson for a coven of witches that calls itself the Pagan Awareness Network, welcomed the legislative change.
"There'll be several thousand pagans in Melbourne celebrating this news under the full moon tonight," he told Australia's AAP news agency. - Sapa-dpa
- SAPA