The former burlesque dancer who founded what may be the nation’s most public house of witchcraft 32 years ago in Atlanta is nearing age 70, seriously ailing and living quietly out of state.

But as Lady Sintana, Candace Huntsman Lehrman, who started the Ravenwood Church and Seminary of Wicca at her home near Little Five Points in 1975, remains a revered figure in her Atlanta witches’ coven. The church and seminary was the first tax-exempt pagan religious institution in Georgia.

“She is our elder priestess and my spiritual guide and teacher in the craft,” said Lady Larina, also known as Deniz Zoeller. Zoeller, a Sandy Springs mother of four boys, was chosen by Lehrman seven years ago to lead Ravenwood.”I have a lot of love and respect for her,” Zoeller said. “She’s like a mother to me in many ways.”

Witches — a term she readily uses — are not crones in black pointed hats who cast spells, Lehrman said. “I think we’ve educated Atlantans over the years and gotten past those stereotypes.” For instance, she said, they do not believe in Satan, and they abhor blood sacrifice.

Wicca is a pre-Christian, nature-centered, matriarchal religion from Western Europe that dates back more than 800 years to the Celts, Lehrman said. The Old English word Wicca means “wise woman,” she added. The “Old Religion,” as Lehrman calls Wicca, sees the “creative life force,” or the divinity — defined as god and goddess — existing in all living things.

“Candy” Lehrman, a native of Kansas, grew up on a dairy farm and is the granddaughter of a Baptist minister. She said she became disenchanted with Protestant Christianity because she found few people who lived up to her grandfather’s standards. A year spent at a Roman Catholic nunnery when she was 15 left her still disillusioned.

After graduating from high school, she married. Four years later she was a widow with an infant daughter when her husband was killed in a traffic accident. Desperate to support her child, she turned to exotic dancing at clubs in Las Vegas and other cities, including Atlanta, under the name Sintana.

“I was a class act,” she recalled in an interview last week. For two years in the late 1960s, she said, she owned Sintana Burlesque at 63rd Street and Lexington Avenue in New York. Later, disturbed by what she saw as the “blending of burlesque and the pornography industry … and the abuse of young dancers,” she sold the theater.

She worked several years in Buffalo, N.Y., in product promotion, where she met a Wiccan priest who sparked her interest in the Old Religion. When a friend in Atlanta became ill, she came to nurse him and started Ravenwood in a dilapidated, two-story house on Moreland Avenue.

She became known among Wiccans by the title “Lady,” a term of respect for a woman considered, by knowledge and commitment, to be a teacher of witchcraft.

Besides serving as a center for Wicca, Ravenwood became known as a refuge for abused girls and battered women, Lehrman said. “They’d call or come by in the middle of the night, seeking safety, needing help and sanctuary,” she said.

It also became a target for vandals and others offended by “the witch house.”

Zoeller said someone once took a chain saw to the building’s 8-foot sign. “People would sic their pit bulls on us, and fraternities would use us for initiations — ‘go [urinate] on the witches’ house.’ ”

In 1979, a young female runaway was shot to death in the living room by the friend of a Ravenwood resident. Neither was formally affiliated with Ravenwood, but the incident attracted unwelcome attention and more hostility, including threats. Lehrman hired off-duty police to provide security.

In the mid-’80s, she moved Ravenwood to a neighborhood on the south side of Decatur. There the Wiccan center survived court challenges and zoning battles. Ravenwood is now located in a private home near Sandy Springs and has about 75 to 100 committed Wiccans, Lehrman said.

“We find that security is not the problem it used to be,” Zoeller said. “We don’t need guards any more.”

Lehrman left metro Atlanta in 1996 and moved to Washington state to care for her terminally ill mother. Today she lives in a small community in western North Carolina, although she remains chief executive officer of Ravenwood and maintains weekly contact with Lady Larina about Wiccan matters.

She also battles a deadly disease.

In 1994, she was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a physically debilitating and degenerative disease commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Lehrman is philosophical about her illness.

“You know, things happen. But I’m doing incredibly well. I’m in a very safe place, and I have been blessed with a wonderful support group and a caregiver.”

She spends much of her time enjoying the quiet, reliving her memories and reveling in “a freedom when you get older that’s really nice,” she said.

“It’s so quiet, I can listen to classical and mood music, and go through my scrapbook and recall memories at my leisure,” she said.

Her fondest pleasure, in mild weather, is to sit on the back porch and watch the birds. Hawks and owls are her favorites.

“I’m known as the bird lady,” she said. In the spring, she said, she hopes her fellow Wiccans will come to plant flowers at her house.

Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution

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