Witches who work the nine-to-five

`Devil worshipers?" sniffs Silja Muller, a laconic public face of Dublin's burgeoning pagan underworld. "Oh yes. I can tell you all about them. Those guys can be a real pain."

She sighs and fidgets distractedly with the silver pentagram dangling at her neck. Her elfin features change into a delicate muddle of amusement and perplexion. She fields a lot of questions about, well, black magic, human sacrifice, airborne broomsticks . . . She is, after all, a high-ranking witch. "I don't think those people really understand what we're about. They ring me up and start babbling on about demonology and stuff. One chap even asked me if we practised free love." She smiles sharply. "When I told him I was married he lost interest real quick . . ."

Unstable young men are drawn to Silja like aspiring car thieves to convertibles. There are a lot of them out there, she admits, heavy-metal-fixated no-lifers who have found the Book of Revelations glimmering between the grooves of their Cradle of Filth records. It goes with the territory, she says, matter of factly.

As one of the few practisers of witchcraft in this country who is comfortable openly discussing her beliefs, Silja, at only 24, is spiritual leader of one of Ireland's most significant pagan groups, the seven-member Coven of the Silver Wheel of the Stars. And she is both well practised at weeding out extremists who want into the pagan community and adept at deflecting the wider public's misconceptions. She uses the word paganism as an umbrella term for a range of disciplines including witchcraft (referred to as "wiccan" by followers), its eastern equivalent, Shamanism, and the worship of figures from ancient myth. She neither flirts with diabolism nor subscribes to the concept of an Anti-Christ. "Belief in the Devil implies acceptance of Christianity as a whole because Lucifer cannot inhabit a universe where there is no God."

She does not trade in hexes or love potions, and has never forged an unholy pact with evil spirits. She refutes any suggestion that the latter-day pagan is spiritual successor to the haggard crone of popular myth, but nevertheless Silja is a witch. The pagan tradition to which she adheres harkens back to the ancient exhaltation of the witch as terrifying embodiment of womanhood-run-wild; wielder of secret magics, cruel ensnarer of men, sensuously in command of her destiny. But don't let that put you off. Witches are just like the rest of us most of the time, Silja says. They go shopping, watch TV, work for a living.

While Silja's day typically begins with deep converse with her patron, Brigit, ancient Celtic goddess of fire and light ("I believe that the gods actually exist on another plane. I have seen them and spoken with them," she says), by 8.30 a.m. she is behind her desk at the American Airlines booking centre in Mount Street, Dublin where she is a telesales operator. She enjoys her work but admits a telephone sales position doesn't exactly square with public perceptions of modern paganism.

The other members of her circle have equally everyday jobs. Even their instruments of worship have decidedly common-or-garden origins; an old chest of drawers has been pressed into action as the coven's alter while Silja's sacred dagger - an important status symbol among witches - is a regular, if especially ornate, paper knife. Silja moved to Ireland from Switzerland to attend boarding school seven years ago. Her conversion to paganism sprang from a passing interest in the meditative and inner-exploration techniques popularised by the plethora of mind and body self-help guides which cram the religion sections of ordinary book stores. After beginning her Sociology and Politics degree at Trinity College, she came into contact via the Internet with a vast on-line community of witches, shaman and spiritualists.

"As a pagan it is very important for me to stay in tune with nature but I can't just uproot to the countryside and spend all my time communing with the spirits," she says. "I need my job, I need to get by. If you look hard enough you can find the natural world anywhere, even in the middle of a big, overcrowded city." Blooming from the withered stalks of Britain's late 1960s new-age movement, a mud-spattered take on America's free-love craze, modern paganism diversified during the 1970s into a Europe-wide, nature-based, belief system incorporating an array of pre-Christian deities drawn predominantly from Celtic, Greek and Norse myth cycles. And because Celtic folklore, with its rich tapestry of love, lust, high tragedy and bloody battle, burns perhaps brightest of all in the pagan litany Ireland has become a flocking-point for the faithful. The rebirth of paganism can be traced to the growth of secularisation in Western society according to Dr Gabriel Daly, lecturer in Christian theology at Trinity College Dublin.

"Pagans are hearkening back to naturism. The growth in these new age beliefs is not due to any shift in other religions rather than an increase in environmental awareness," he says. In the past, Ireland's pagan community comprised in the main Continentals who had forsaken their dreary suburban existences to cloister in the green hills and unspoilt woodland of isolated beauty spots in places such as west Cork and Wicklow. But the last number of years have witnessed a dramatic rise in the native pagan population. "I receive many requests to perform old Celtic marriage rites - we call them blessings - and christenings from people who may be reluctant to submit to traditional church ceremonies but feel a ritual of some kind is still appropriate," Silja says.

She and the humped crone of storybook tradition do share one thing, however; an unshakeable belief in the existence of magic. At each major feast day - such as the summer and winter solstices, spring and autumn equinoxes, full moons, and Halloween, the coven gathers and, under Silja's expert gaze, practises spell craft. They disavow any belief in sorcery as a physical force, regarding it rather as a powerful spiritual transaction which, they say, can have very real results. Silja gives as an example a healing ritual in which the coven employ a sanctified candle to metaphorically "burn" the illness from a person; a rite which she claims can bring tangible benefits. But life as a witch is not all high magic and deep thinking, she insists.

"It's fun too. It is a good way to come into contact with people with the same interests as you. Often when we meet we will just go to a movie or have a coffee. We are, after, all normal people with normal lives. And most of us don't even listen to heavy metal."