As much as it is killing me, I think it is time to call for a moratorium on the Wiccan jokes. You see, Wiccans are people too.

The excitement began when the former head of Anusara Yoga, John Friend, admitted that he is a Wiccan and had a sex coven called the Blazing Solar Flames which involved women in bikinis massaging oil into his body. He also spent lots of corporate money making t-shirts for his coven-mates (so, you know, they could identify each other as being on the same team), as well as paying for the FedEx bills to ship jars containing certain kinds of hair to each other for sacred sexual healing.

Apparently, this has been fodder for many people to make fun of the Wiccans. And I suppose in the interest of full-disclosure, I have been one of those people.

But truly, it is not right. I feel a little bad, and so I apologize to any and all I may have offended, especially to my two closest and dearest friends in the yoga world who I discovered are also Wiccans, or Pagans, or something I can’t pronounce but sounds like “cream-cheese-with-chives-ism.”

To set the record straight as an arrow: I don’t care what anybody does, or believes, or worships as long as nobody gets hurt. I am not going to war to change anyone’s religion, and I will not send my sons to a war on behalf of a religion – especially one on land that contains a lot of oil which makes me suspect that the deeply-held religious differences are really all about a tank of gas.

The reason I cared about what John Friend did is because all those years I spent studying Anusara and cultivating the essence of the Divine so I could be better and wiser, he was playing a grand joke on us. While my idea of the highest purpose of my life had to do with God, and my children and my Dharma as a mother and a wife and to get everyone to soccer on time, he was focusing on other men’s wives, some of whom have children, who are now wondering if they still have a family intact. There is so much collateral damage here.

All of which has nothing whatsoever to do with being a Wiccan. I mean, I’m assuming there are good Wiccans just as there are naughty ones. Wiccans are usually very kind and peaceful kind of people. They promote oneness with the Divine and harmonious living. To my knowledge, they have never started a war, especially over imaginary weapons of mass destruction. Just saying.

So in the interest of pissing everyone off equally and fairly, I thought I might make a few jokes at the expense of my other friends. Why would I go to a Jewish Sex Coven (if they had sex covens) instead of a Wiccan Sex Coven? So I can send the maid instead. Why would I go to a Catholic Sex Coven (again, if this exists)? So I can be a very bad girl. Why would I go to a Protestant Sex Coven? Actually, that’s a good question.

However, just one more for the road, since this may be a very long road. Where do you go to find information on John Friend? Wicca-pedia. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Okay, now I’m done. I promise.

Michelle Berman Marchildon is the Yogi Muse. She’s an award-winning journalist, a former corporate executive and a survivor of 50+ years of life. Known as the “Erma Bombeck of the Mat,” Michelle is the author of the memoir “Finding More on the Mat: How I Grew Better, Wiser and Stronger through Yoga,” and a Columnist for Elephant Journal and Origin Magazine.  She is an E-500 RYT with Yoga Alliance and teaches Aligned Vinyasa in Denver, Co. Even though she is uber-fabulous, she is NOT an Ambassador for Lululemon, and has been promised she will never be one. You can take her with you on your computer or I-thing by downloading her classes from www.yogadownload.com.