Witches across America are rejoicing after the Veterans Administration agreed to permit service members to have their graves at military cemeteries marked with a Wiccan symbol known as a pentacle or pentagram.

“This is a very important victory for natural religion, not only in America but around the world,” a prominent Wiccan priestess, the Reverend Selena Fox of the Wisconsin-based Circle Sanctuary, said.

The VA agreed to put the symbol on headstones after several adherents of the faith filed a federal lawsuit charging that they and their family members were being discriminated against in violation of the religion clauses of the Constitution.

“The government acted to settle in the interest of the families concerned and to spare taxpayers the expense of further litigation,” a spokesman for the VA, Matt Burns, said in a statement sent by e-mail.

One of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Karen DePolito, complained that she was unable to get the Wiccan symbol on the marker for the grave of her husband, Jerome Birnbaum, who served in the Korean War.

Asked about the settlement, Ms. DePolito said, “Every so often we Americans get it right.” She said she and her husband, a longtime public high school teacher in New York, were involved in the local pagan community between 1987 and 2002, when he retired.

One leader of the Wiccan campaign was Roberta Stewart, whose husband, Sergeant Patrick Stewart, was killed in Afghanistan in 2005. The federal government ignored her request for a pentacle, but the State of Nevada eventually agreed to install the symbol late last year. “I’m extremely ecstatic and happy we finally prevailed but disappointed my country forced me to do this,” she said.

A VA official, who asked not to be named, said the pentacle would join 38 other “emblems of belief” placed on graves of the fallen. In addition to the Jewish Star of David, the Islamic crescent and star, and a variety of Christian crosses, the existing options include Baha’i, Hindu, Sikh, Sufi, and Mormon symbols, as well as the atom-based logo of American atheists. The approved list also includes a Buddhist “wheel of righteousness” and a stylized rendering of the letters “EK,” representing a Minnesota-based religion that promotes “soul travel,” Eckankar.

A spokesman for a group that filed the suit said there were indications that the headstone requests were slow-walked because officials thought President Bush was opposed to accommodating witches.

“People in the VA were operating from the assumption that the president had some concerns about Wiccans in the military,” Robert Boston of Americans United for Separation of Church and State said.

The perception that Mr. Bush was hostile to Wiccans stemmed from an interview that he gave to ABC News while running for president in 1999. “I don’t think witchcraft is a religion,” Mr. Bush said. He also urged the military to reconsider a policy allowing Wiccans to carry out worship ceremonies at Fort Hood in Texas and at other military facilities.

The Pentagon’s decision to permit Wiccan services on bases led some conservative organizations to call on Christians to refuse to enlist in the military until the policy was reversed. However, several key groups, such as the Christian Coalition and the American Family Association, backed away from the boycott soon after it was announced.

A survey taken in 2001 estimated about 134,000 American adults considered themselves to be Wiccans.