I'm not sure what set me off thinking on this, but maybe it's the fact that sometimes the news is so horrible that I vow never to read another newspaper again.

Now I know there are certain groups out there that just love the word evil. The media loves it because it makes a great headline...Evil yobs do this... evil hoodies do that... and some of the things they describe are so horrific that yes, the word evil is probably right. But there are other times when I think the word has been overused, to the point that it loses much of its meaning.

So what is evil? Is there really more of it about now than there used to be? Does it matter?

Start talking about evil and it makes many pagans, particularly Wiccans, a bit uncomfortable. THis is because when some people (notably the religious types) start talking about evil, what they mean is witchcraft and the devil. Now I'm a witch but like most of my kind I don't believe in a devil. Not the figure with horns and hooves and a nasty little trident for prodding people as they roast in the eternal flames.

Why? Because when Christianity ousted the earlier pagan faiths (of which there were many strands, not just one) it appropriated sacred sites and even some deities (Brigid the goddess became St Brigid for example) and Christianised them. That was the easy bit.

But some deities weren’t so easy to assimilate, so these had to be demonised. And the pagan Horned God (who goes by many names, but the most popular nowadays are Herne and Cernunnos) became the Devil (Satan, Lucifer. Beelzebub etc.)

That's not to say I don't believe in evil. I do. There is great good in the world, great evil, and an awful lot of middling stuff too. But for me the biggest problem with believing in a devil is that it's an easy cop out. When someone has committed a horrible crime and says ‘The Devil made me do it,’ it’s just a way of denying their own guilt. A way of saying 'look, I'm a good person who just had a bad day.'

Now for me this is where we run into a few problems. Do good people do evil things? Or are evil actions confined to only evil people? And what exactly constitutes evil anyway?

For me, doing something evil means doing something outside the normal realms of ‘bad.’ It's something so alien to our natures that it shouldn’t come easily to us. An evil act is so far outside the norm it is impossible to justify (although that doesn't stop people trying). That’s why oppressive regimes first begin by demonising and dehumanising the enemy, because then the normal rules of society no longer apply.

And this, in my paranoid moments makes me panic when people still demonise people like me - pagans, witches etc. Just what are they planning, I wonder?