The women wear flowing gauzy skirts and stand on a floor marked with chalk from a drawing class. Her inspiration for alternative spirituality was Jim Morrison, she says. They gather to honor Samhain, which in Celtic tales is the end of the harvest. On a tiny altar sit lavender candles and castanets, for dancing. Smoke curls out of a burner that holds a woodsy incense.
Teamwork is tricky in any religion.
A woman, Schmidt says, is in the cave. Someone saw her own mother. Another, a woman in a gorgeous black dress. Later, the women do the grapevine around a shrine. They break into a near-Polka, clapping, and yelling, with trills.