The Witch of Portobello

This road, known around the world for its antique shops and its Saturday flea market, was transformed last night into a battlefield, requiring the intervention of at least fifty police officers from the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to restore order. By the end of the fracas, five people had been injured, although none seriously. The reason behind this pitched battle, which lasted nearly two hours, was a demonstration organized by the Rev. Ian Buck to protest about what he called "the Satanic cult at the heart of England."

According to Rev. Buck, a group of suspicious individuals have been keeping the neighborhood awake every Monday night for the last six months, Monday being their chosen night for invoking the Devil. The ceremonies are led by a Lebanese woman, Sherine H. Khalil, who calls herself Athena, after the goddess of wisdom.

About two hundred people began meeting in a former East India Company warehouse, but the numbers increased over time, and in recent weeks, an equally large crowd has been gathering outside, hoping to gain entry and take part in the ceremony. When his various verbal complaints, petitions, and letters to the local newspapers achieved nothing, the Rev. Buck decided to mobilize the community, calling on his parishioners to gather outside the warehouse by 1900 hours yesterday to stop the "devil worshipers" from getting in.

"As soon as we received the first complaint, we sent someone to inspect the place, but no drugs were found nor evidence of any other kind of illicit activity," said an official who preferred not to be identified because an inquiry has just been set up to investigate what happened. "They aren't contravening the noise nuisance laws because they turn off the music at ten o'clock prompt, so there's really nothing more we can do. Britain, after all, allows freedom of worship."

The Rev. Buck has another version of events.

"The fact is that this witch of Portobello, this mistress of charlatanism, has contacts with people high up in the government, which explains why the police--paid for by taxpayers' money to maintain order and decency--refuse to do anything. We're living in an age in which everything is allowed, and democracy is being devoured and destroyed by that limitless freedom."

The vicar says that he was suspicious of the group right from the start. They had rented a crumbling old building and spent whole days trying to renovate it, "which is clear evidence that they belong to some sect and have undergone some kind of brainwashing, because no one in today's world works for free." When asked if his parishioners ever did any charitable work in the community, the Rev. Buck replied: "Yes, but we do it in the name of Jesus."

Yesterday evening, when she arrived at the warehouse to meet her waiting followers, Sherine Khalil, her son, and some of her friends were prevented from entering by the Rev. Buck's parishioners, who were carrying placards and using megaphones to call on the rest of the neighborhood to join them. This verbal aggression immediately degenerated into fighting, and soon it was impossible to control either side.

"They say they're fighting in the name of Jesus, but what they really want is for people to continue to ignore the teachings of Christ, according to which 'we are all gods,'" said the well-known actress Andrea McCain, one of Sherine Khalil's, or Athena's, followers. Ms. McCain received a cut above her right eye, which was treated at once, and she left the area before your reporter could find out more about her links with the sect.

Once order was restored, Mrs. Khalil was anxious to reassure her eight-year-old son, but she did tell us that all that takes place in the warehouse is some collective dancing, followed by the invocation of a being known as Hagia Sofia, of whom people are free to ask questions. The celebration ends with a kind of sermon and a group prayer to the Great Mother. The officer charged with investigating the original complaints confirmed this.

As far as we could ascertain, the group has no name and is not registered as a charity. According to the lawyer Sheldon Williams, this is not necessary. "We live in a free country, and people can gather together in an enclosed space for non-profit-making activities, as long as these do not break any laws such as incitement to racism or the consumption of narcotics."

Mrs. Khalil emphatically rejected any suggestion that she should stop the meetings because of the disturbances.

"We gather together to offer mutual encouragement," she said, "because it's very hard to face social pressures alone. I demand that your newspaper denounce the religious discrimination to which we've been subjected over the centuries. Whenever we do something that is not in accord with state-instituted and state-approved religions, there is always an attempt to crush us, as happened today. Before, we would have faced martyrdom, prison, being burned at the stake, or sent into exile, but now we are in a position to respond, and force will be answered with force, just as compassion will be repaid with compassion."

When faced with the Rev. Buck's accusations, she accused him of "manipulating his parishioners and using intolerance and lies as an excuse for violence."

According to the sociologist Arthaud Lenox, phenomena like this will become increasingly common in the future, possibly involving more serious clashes between established religions. "Now that the Marxist utopia has shown itself incapable of channeling society's ideals, the world is ripe for a religious revival, born of civilization's natural fear of significant dates. However, I believe that when the year 2000 does arrive and the world survives intact, common sense will prevail and religions will revert to being a refuge for the weak, who are always in search of guidance."

This view is contested by Dom Evaristo Piazza, the Vatican's auxiliary bishop in the United Kingdom. "What we are seeing is not the spiritual awakening that we all long for, but a wave of what Americans call New Ageism, a kind of breeding ground in which everything is permitted, where dogmas are not respected, and the most absurd ideas from the past return to lay waste to the human mind. Unscrupulous people like this young woman are trying to instill their false ideas in weak, suggestible minds, with the one aim of making money and gaining personal power."

The German historian Franz Herbert, currently working at the Goethe Institute in London, has a different idea. "The established religions no longer ask fundamental questions about our identity and our reason for living. Instead, they concentrate purely on a series of dogmas and rules concerned only with fitting in with a particular social and political organization. People in search of real spirituality are, therefore, setting off in new directions, and that inevitably means a return to the past and to primitive religions, before those religions were contaminated by the structures of power."

At the police station where the incident was recorded, Sergeant William Morton stated that should Sherine Khalil's group decide to hold their meeting on the following Monday and feel that they are under threat, then they must apply in writing for police protection and thus avoid a repetition of last night's events.

(With additional information from Andrew Fish. Photos by Mark Guillhem.)

HERON RYAN, JOURNALIST

I read the report on the plane, when I was flying back from the Ukraine, feeling full of doubts. I still hadn't managed to ascertain whether the Chernobyl disaster had been as big as it was said to have been, or whether it had been used by the major oil producers to inhibit the use of other sources of energy.

Anyway, I was horrified by what I read in the article. The photos showed broken windows, a furious Reverend Buck, and--there lay the danger--a beautiful woman with fiery eyes and her son in her arms. I saw at once what could happen, both good and bad. I went straight from the airport to Portobello, convinced that both my predictions would become reality.

On the positive side, the following Monday's meeting was one of the most successful events in the area's history: many local people came, some curious to see the "being" mentioned in the article, others bearing placards defending freedom of religion and freedom of speech. The venue would only hold two hundred people, and so the rest of the crowd were all crammed together on the pavement outside, hoping for at least a glimpse of the woman who appeared to be the priestess of the oppressed.

When she arrived, she was received with applause, handwritten notes, and requests for help; some people threw flowers, and one lady of uncertain age asked her to keep on fighting for women's freedom and for the right to worship the Mother. The parishioners from the week before must have been intimidated by the crowd and so failed to turn up, despite the threats they had made during the previous days. There were no aggressive comments, and the ceremony passed off as normal, with dancing, the appearance of Hagia Sofia (by then, I knew that she was simply another facet of Athena herself ), and a final celebration (this had been added recently, when the group moved to the warehouse, lent by one of its original members), and that was that.

During her sermon, Athena spoke as if possessed by someone else.

"We all have a duty to love and to allow love to manifest itself in the way it thinks best. We cannot and must not be frightened when the powers of darkness want to make themselves heard, those same powers that introduced the word sin merely to control our hearts and minds. Jesus Christ, whom we all know, turned to the woman taken in adultery and said: 'Has no man condemned thee? Neither do I condemn thee.' He healed people on the Sabbath, he allowed a prostitute to wash his feet, he promised a thief that he would enjoy the delights of Paradise, he

ate forbidden foods, and he said that we should concern ourselves only with today, because the lilies in the field toil not, neither do they spin, but are arrayed in glory.

"What is sin? It is a sin to prevent Love from showing itself. And the Mother is Love. We are entering a new world in which we can choose to follow our own steps, not those that society forces us to take. If necessary, we will confront the forces of darkness again, as we did last week. But no one will silence our voice or our heart."

I was witnessing the transformation of a woman into an icon. She spoke with great conviction, with dignity and with faith in what she was saying. I hoped that things really were like that, that we truly were entering a new world, and that I would live to see it.

She left the warehouse to as much acclaim as she had entered it, and when she saw me in the crowd, she called me over and said that she'd missed me. She was happy and confident, sure that she was doing the right thing.