This is very interesting- I’m curious to see what the census will find! I guess I can’t participate since I’m living and practicing in Europe now- but we have many wonderful witches from the USA here in the forums who may be interested in joining the census!
I’m curious too, but I don’t know if they’ll be sharing their data or not. I hope so. I don’t know if you would count or not but it may be that you count as an American citizen who lives somewhere else. You could always ask.
Canadian here so I’m out lol there is actually a law here that you cannot practice witchcraft if you are not a real witch orsomethi g to that effect. It is actually on the government web site. Lol
This was interesting to me, so I looked it up and found this information. Seems like it’s mostly to protect consumers from being scammed out of money by opportunisitc “fortune tellers”.
Section 365 has been law in Canada since 1892. It originated in a British statute from 1735 that repealed an earlier British law classifying witchcraft as a felony, after centuries of witch hunts in early modern Europe. The 1735 repeal reserved “a minor punishment” for “cheats and rogues” pretending to practice witchcraft, according to a paper in the Marquette Law Review.
The law remained unchanged in Canada over the centuries but for the addition of the word “fraudulently” in the 1950s.
This means that practicing witchcraft is not a crime in Canada, but faking it in order to extort or deceive others is.”
I completed the survey on that site however I felt some of the questions were unnecessary. There’s a comment on the Patheos article which I agree with.
Frances Billinghurst:
In all honesty, I found the questions asked in this census rather clumsy and not seriously thought out at all. Who is “Witch With Me” anyway? Why do they want to know so much personal (and rather irrelevant) information on one hand then ask something flippant like “what is your favourite sabbat?”? No disclosure as to where this information will be released, or for any real purpose save for their “community” … is that an alternative way to say “marketing database”??
According to the website, it was created in Jan 2020 by Louisa Moon and Meg Rosenbriar. Both of them seem pretty active online with social media. Louisa seems to also run a Facebook market for witchy type things and Meg has a book coming out in October 2020 called The Healing Power of Witchcraft. They both seem to be based in the UK.
I always like to assume that people have good intentions but this could be a clever way to gather as many email addresses as possible ahead of a book release for marketing purposes. Just a hunch.
I am still confused about where this information from the census is supposed to actually go, though. Who is it for?
I was wondering why something like that was still on the books but then I read what @Willowe wrote and it made sense. Still, you’d think that would be covered in with regular con artists.
I agree with @Francisco, but I thought the potential was there for good. @Willowe I’m not sure where this data is going, all I know is in that article, but if they start spamming me I can always just block it. I hope the information is going to a good cause.
Fascinating about the law in Canada- I had never heard of it before, thank you for bringing that up, @Katt and @Willowe! And I am glad that it doesn’t forbid witchcraft as a valid religious or life practice- it seems that it’s only outlawing taking advantage of others .
However, I imagine this creates a very grey area in the law- who gets to decide which practices are ‘real’ and which are ‘witchcraft’ (Such as astrologists, fortune tellers, herbalists, doctors of Chinese Traditional Medicine or Ayurveda Medicine, and any other practice not backed by traditional western science). And then how would they know which practioners are authentic, and which are scammers? It seems like it could be a beneficial law, but it also seems like it may lead to more controversy than it solves! But of course I’m no lawyer and I’m not Canadian, so this is just my rambling opinion on the matter
Very true! Fingers crossed the data is going to a good cause. As a practice that many do in solitude, I think it would be very interesting to learn more about the demographics, geography, and styles of magick of witches around the world!
That’s why I wanted to respond to this poll, for the interest I have in out demographics. It would be nice to know how many pagans there are in the US.
I guess I can’t participate since I’m living and practicing in Europe now- but we have many wonderful witches from the USA here in the forums who may be interested in joining the census! 
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It seems like it could be a beneficial law, but it also seems like it may lead to more controversy than it solves! But of course I’m no lawyer and I’m not Canadian, so this is just my rambling opinion on the matter 
