Published: July 08, 2006 12:48 am         

Devotees say area has long witch history

DANVILLE — Cheap, available property was only one of the reasons two witches decided to build a school in Vermilion County.

The other reason was the Correllian form of Wicca they practice actually started right here in Danville.

“Vermilion County has one of the oldest (Wiccan) populations in the country,” said Witch School CEO Ed Hubbard of Hoopeston.

In fact, as Hoopeston residents struggle to come to terms with one witch temple, Danville has had four of them all along — two of which are secret.

“We have history,” Witch School chancellor Don Lewis of Hoopeston said. “We have pictures.”

According to Lewis, his grandmother, Caroline High-Correll, established Danville’s first Wicca temple at her home at 424 S. Washington St. in 1879.

She named her worship center the Correll Mother Temple Under-the-Hill after the steep precipice that overshadowed her house.

High-Correll passed on her knowledge to family members by word of mouth without writing anything to record her teachings, Lewis said.

“A lot of people doubt her existence for this reason,” he added while pointing to a black-and-white picture of his grandmother.

Today, the hill and the former site of High-Correll’s home and temple are used by the Untouchables Motorcycle Club behind the Knights of Columbus building.

Hubbard estimates 120 Vermilion County residents now practice the form of Wicca established by High-Correll, with another 500 to 600 practitioners living in Champaign.

“Any time there’s a college,” membership rises, Hubbard noted.

A temple in the Wiccan religion does not necessarily refer to a physical place, but rather to a group of Wiccans who can choose to meet at any location.

Most of the Vermilion County Wiccans are divided between the Correll Mother Temple, the Enchanted Realm Temple and two other temples that pursue a more private form of membership.

“It changed my life,” Hubbard said about his decision to follow the Wiccan tradition established by High-Correll.

While Hubbard grew up with the Correllian tradition of Wicca in Danville, Hubbard grew up as a fundamentalist Southern Baptist in Chicago.

“I had a friend die in People’s Temple, Guinea,” Hubbard said.

In November 1978, more than 900 members of the Christian doomsday cult People’s Temple committed mass suicide by drinking Kool-Aid laced with cyanide.

Hubbard’s friend, Jonathan Rice, was among the dead.

“At that point, I couldn’t believe in Armageddon,” Hubbard said.

Shortly thereafter, he met Lewis and became a practitioner of Wicca, a religion that does not believe in Armageddon.

Hubbard then followed Lewis to Hoopeston as the two worked to establish a school of Correllian Wicca near the religion’s Vermilion County source.

“The most important thing is the history and the origin,” Lewis said.