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WIKIMAG n. 7 - Giugno 2013
Wicca
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Wicca
(English pronunciation:
/ˈwɪkə/)
is a
modern pagan,
witchcraft
religion. It was developed in
England
during the first half of the 20th century and it was
introduced to the public in 1954 by
Gerald Gardner, a retired
British civil servant. It draws upon a diverse set of
ancient
pagan and
20th century hermetic
motifs
for its theological structure and
ritual
practice.
Wicca is a diverse religion with no central authority or figure
defining it. It is divided into various lineages and
denominations, referred to as "traditions", each with its own
organisational structure and level of
centralisation. Due to its decentralized nature, there is some
disagreement over what actually constitutes Wicca. Some traditions,
collectively referred to as
British Traditional Wicca, strictly follow the initiatory lineage of
Gardner and consider the term "Wicca" to apply only to such lineaged
traditions, while other
eclectic
traditions do not.
Wicca (English
pronunciation:
/ˈwɪkə/)
is a
modern pagan,
witchcraft
religion. It was developed in
England
during the first half of the 20th century and it was
introduced to the public in 1954 by
Gerald Gardner, a retired
British civil servant. It draws upon a diverse set of
ancient
pagan and
20th century hermetic
motifs
for its theological structure and
ritual
practice.
Wicca is a diverse religion with no central authority or figure
defining it. It is divided into various lineages and
denominations, referred to as "traditions", each with its own
organisational structure and level of
centralisation. Due to its decentralized nature, there is some
disagreement over what actually constitutes Wicca. Some traditions,
collectively referred to as
British Traditional Wicca, strictly follow the initiatory lineage of
Gardner and consider the term "Wicca" to apply only to such lineaged
traditions, while other
eclectic
traditions do not.
Wicca is typically
duotheistic, worshipping a god and goddess traditionally viewed as a
mother goddess and
horned god. These two deities are often viewed as facets of a
greater
pantheistic
godhead.
However, beliefs range from "hard"
polytheism to even
monotheism. Wiccan celebration follows approximately eight
seasonally based festivals known as
Sabbats. An unattributed statement known as the
Wiccan Rede is the traditional basis of Wiccan morality. Wicca
involves the ritual practice of
magic.
Terminology
The term "Wicca" first achieved widespread acceptance when referring
to the religion in the 1960s and 70s. Prior to that, the term
"Witchcraft" had been more widely used. Whilst being based upon the
Old English word wicca, a
masculine term for sorcerers, the actual individual who coined the
capitalised term "Wicca" is unknown, though it has been speculated that
it was
Charles Cardell, who certainly used the term "Wiccen" during the
1950s.
Application of the word Wicca has given rise to "a great deal
of disagreement and infighting".
Gardnerian and Alexandrian Wicca are often collectively termed
British Traditional Wicca, and many of their practitioners consider
the term Wicca to apply only to these lineaged traditions. Others
do not use the word "Wicca" at all, instead preferring to be referred to
only as "Witchcraft," while others believe that all modern witchcraft
traditions can be considered "Wiccan."
Popular culture, as seen in TV programmes like
Buffy the Vampire Slayer tends to use the terms “Wiccan” and
"Wicca" as completely synonymous with the terms “Witch” and “Witchcraft”
respectively.[citation
needed]
Beliefs
Beliefs vary markedly between different traditions and individual
practitioners. However, various commonalities exist between these
disparate groups, which usually include views on theology, the
afterlife, magic and morality.
Theology
Altar statues of the Horned God and Mother Goddess as
crafted by Bel Bucca, and owned by the 'Mother of Wicca',
Doreen Valiente.
Wiccan views on
theology are numerous and varied and there is no universally
agreed-upon
religious canon, but Wicca is traditionally a duotheistic religion
that venerates both a "Triple
Goddess" associated with the Moon and stars and fate, and a
Horned God associated with forests and animals and the realm beyond
death. These two deities are variously understood through the frameworks
of
pantheism (as being dual aspects of a single
godhead),
duotheism (as being two polar opposites),
hard polytheism (being two distinct deities in a larger pantheon
which includes other pagan gods) or
soft polytheism (being composed of many lesser deities). In some
pantheistic and duotheistic conceptions, deities from diverse cultures
may be seen as aspects of the Goddess or God.
However, there are also other theological viewpoints to be found within
the Craft, including
monotheism, the concept that there is just one deity, which is seen
by some, such as
Dianic Wiccans, as being the Goddess, whilst by others, like the
Church and School of Wicca, as instead being genderless. There are
other Wiccans who are
atheists
or
agnostics, not believing in any actual deity, but instead viewing
the gods as psychological archetypes of the human mind which can be
evoked and interacted with.[citation
needed]
According to the Witches
Janet and
Stewart Farrar, who held a pantheistic, duotheistic and
animistic
view of theology, Wiccans "regard the whole cosmos as alive, both as a
whole and in all of its parts", but that "such an organic view of the
cosmos cannot be fully expressed, and lived, without the concept of the
God and Goddess. There is no manifestation without polarisation; so at
the highest creative level, that of Divinity, the polarisation must be
the clearest and most powerful of all, reflecting and spreading itself
through all the microcosmic levels as well".
Duotheism
Wicca is traditionally and primarily a religion centred upon the idea
of
gender
polarity and the worship of a
Moon Goddess and a
Horned God. (This core theology was originally described by Gerald
Gardner, the founder of the religion; and Doreen Valiente, who wrote
much of the original liturgical materials.) The Goddess and the God may
be regarded as the Divine Feminine and the Divine Masculine. They are
complementary opposites or dualities, bearing similarities to the
concept of
yin and yang in Taoism. The God and Goddess are generally seen as
lovers and equals, the Divine Couple who together co-create the cosmos.
The God and
the Goddess
For most Wiccans, the God and Goddess are seen as complementary
polarities in the universe that balance one another out, and in this
manner they have been compared to the concept of
yin and yang found in
Taoism.
As such they are often interpreted as being "embodiments of a life-force
manifest in nature"[6]
with some Wiccans believing that they are simply symbolic of these
polarities, whilst others believing that the God and the Goddess are
genuine beings that exist independently. The two divinities are often
given symbolic associations, with the Goddess commonly being symbolised
as the Earth
(i.e.
Mother Earth), but also sometimes as the
Moon, which
complements the God being viewed as the
Sun.[7]
The Gods are real, not as persons, but as vehicles of power.
Briefly, it may be explained that the personification of a
particular type of cosmic power in the form of a God or
Goddess, carried out by believers and worshippers over many
centuries, builds that God-form or Magical Image into a
potent reality on the Inner Planes, and makes it a means by
which that type of cosmic power may be contacted.
Traditionally the God is viewed as a
Horned God, associated with nature, wilderness, sexuality, hunting
and the life cycle.
The Horned God is given various names according to the tradition, and
these include
Cernunnos,
Pan, Atho and Karnayna.
At other times the God is viewed as the
Green
Man,
a traditional figure in European art and architecture, and they often
interpret him as being associated with the natural world. The God is
also often depicted as a
Sun God,particularly
at the festival of
Litha, or the summer solstice. Another expression of the God is that
of the Oak King and the Holly King, one who rules over winter and
spring, the other who rules over summer and autumn.
He has also been seen in the roles of the
Leader of the Wild Hunt and the Lord of Death.[12]
The Goddess is usually portrayed as a
Triple Goddess, thereby being a triadic deity comprising a Maiden
goddess, a
Mother goddess, and a Crone goddess, each of whom has different
associations, namely virginity, fertility and wisdom.
She is also commonly depicted as a
Moon Goddess,
and is often given the name of
Diana after the ancient Roman deity. Some Wiccans, particularly from
the 1970s onwards, have viewed the Goddess as the more important of the
two deities, who is pre-eminent in that she contains and conceives all.
In this respect, the God is viewed as the spark of life and inspiration
within her, simultaneously her lover and her child.
This is reflected in the traditional structure of the
coven.
In one
monotheistic form of the Craft,
Dianic Wicca, the Goddess is the sole deity, a concept that has been
criticised by members of other more egalitarian traditions.
According to Gerald Gardner, "the Goddess" is a deity of prime
importance, along with her consort the
Horned God. In the earliest Wiccan publications, she is described as
a tribal goddess of the witch community, neither omnipotent nor
universal, and it was recognised that there was a greater "Prime
Mover", although the witches did not concern themselves much with
this being.
The concept of having a religion venerating a Horned God accompanying
a goddess had been devised by the Egyptologist
Margaret Murray during the 1920s. She believed, based upon her own
theories about the
early modern witch trials in Europe, that those two deities, though
primarily the Horned God, had been worshipped by a
Witch-Cult ever since western Europe had succumbed to Christianity.
Whilst now widely discredited, Gerald Gardner was a supporter of her
theory, and believed that Wicca was a continuation of that historical
Witch-Cult, and that the Horned God and Goddess were therefore ancient
deities of the British Isles.
Modern scholarship has disproved his claims, however various horned gods
and mother goddesses were indeed worshipped in the British Isles during
the ancient and early medieval periods.
Pantheism, Polytheism and Animism
Many Wiccans believe that the God and Goddess are merely two aspects
of the same
godhead, often viewed as a
pantheistic deity, thereby encompassing everything in the universe
within its divinity. In his public writings, Gardner referred to this
being as the
Prime Mover, and claimed that it remained unknowable,
although in the rituals of his tradition,
Gardnerianism, it is referred to as Dryghten,[21]
which had originally been an
Old English term meaning
The Lord. Since then it has been given other names by different
Wiccans, for instance
Scott Cunningham called it by its name in
neoplatonism,
The One.[22]
Other Wiccans such as
Starhawk use the term Star Goddess to describe the universal
pantheistic deity that created the
cosmos,
and regard her as a knowable deity that can and should be worshipped.[23][24]
As well as pantheism and duotheism, many Wiccans accept the concept
of
polytheism, thereby believing that there are many different deities.
Some accept the view espoused by the occultist
Dion Fortune that "all gods are one god, and all goddesses are one
goddess" —that is that the gods and goddesses of all cultures are,
respectively, aspects of one supernal God and Goddess. With this
mindset, a Wiccan may regard the Germanic
Ēostre,
Hindu Kali,
and Christian
Virgin Mary each as manifestations of one supreme Goddess and
likewise, the Celtic
Cernunnos, the ancient Greek
Dionysus and the Judeo-Christian
Yahweh
as aspects of a single, archetypal god. A more strictly
polytheistic approach holds the various goddesses and gods to be
separate and distinct entities in their own right. The Wiccan writers
Janet Farrar and
Gavin Bone have postulated that Wicca is becoming more polytheistic
as it matures, tending to embrace a more traditionally pagan worldview.
Some Wiccans conceive of deities not as literal personalities but as
metaphorical
archetypes or
thoughtforms, thereby technically allowing them to be
atheists.
Such a view was purported by the High Priestess
Vivianne Crowley, herself a
psychologist, who considered the Wiccan deities to be
Jungian archetypes that existed within the subconscious that could
be evoked in ritual. It was for this reason that she said that "The
Goddess and God manifest to us in dream and vision."[27]
Wicca is essentially an
immanent religion, and for some Wiccans, this idea also involves
elements of
animism.
A belief central to Wicca is that the Goddess and the God (or the
goddesses and gods) are able to manifest in personal form, most
importantly through the bodies of Priestesses and Priests via the
rituals of
Drawing down the Moon or Drawing down the Sun.
Afterlife
Belief in the afterlife varies among Wiccans,
although
reincarnation is a traditional Wiccan teaching dating back to the
New Forest coven in the 1930s. The influential High Priest
Raymond Buckland said that a human's soul reincarnates into the same
species over many lives in order to learn lessons and advance
spiritually,[29]
but this belief is not universal, as many Wiccans believe in the
reincarnation of the soul through different species. However, a popular
saying amongst Wiccans is that "once a witch, always a witch",
indicating a belief that Wiccans are the reincarnations of previous
witches.[30]
Typically, Wiccans who believe in reincarnation believe that the soul
rests between lives in the
Otherworld or
Summerland, known in Gardner's writings as the "ecstasy of the
Goddess".
Many Wiccans believe in the ability to contact the spirits of the dead
who reside in the Otherworld through
spirit mediums and
Ouija
boards, particularly on the Sabbat of
Samhain,
though some disagree with this practice, such as the late
Alexandrian High Priest
Alex Sanders, who stated that "they are dead; leave them in peace."
This belief was likely influenced by
Spiritualism, which was very popular at the time of Wicca's
emergence, and with which Gardner and other early Wiccans such as
Buckland and Sanders had some experience.
Despite some belief therein, Wicca does not place an emphasis on the
afterlife, focusing instead on the current one; as the historian
Ronald Hutton remarked, "the instinctual position of most [Wiccans],
therefore, seems to be that if one makes the most of the present life,
in all respects, then the next life is more or less certainly going to
benefit from the process, and so one may as well concentrate on the
present".
Magic
Many Wiccans believe in
magic, a force they see as being capable of manipulation through the
practice of
witchcraft or
sorcery. Some spell it "magick", a variation coined by the
influential occultist
Aleister Crowley, though this spelling is more commonly associated
with Crowley's religion of
Thelema
than with Wicca. Indeed, many Wiccans agree with the definition of magic
offered by
ceremonial magicians,
such as Aleister Crowley, who declared that magic was "the science and
art of causing change to occur in conformity with will", while another
prominent ceremonial magician,
MacGregor Mathers stated that it was "the science of the control of
the secret forces of nature".
Many Wiccans believe magic to be a law of nature, as yet misunderstood
or disregarded by contemporary science,
and as such they do not view it as being
supernatural, but being a part of the "super powers that reside in
the natural" according to
Leo Martello.
Some Wiccans believe that magic is simply making full use of the five
senses that achieve surprising results,
whilst other Wiccans do not claim to know how magic works, merely
believing that it does because they have observed it to be so.
"The point [of magic in Witchcraft] is to make the
"bendable" world bend to your will... Unless you possess a
rock-firm faith in your own powers and in the operability of
your spell, you will not achieve the burning intensity of
will and imagination which is requisite to make the magic
work."
Wiccans cast
spells or workings during ritual practices, often held inside
a
sacred circle, in an attempt to bring about real changes in the
physical world (these rituals are further explained in the "Ritual
practices" section below). Common Wiccan spells include those used for
healing, for protection, fertility, or to banish negative
influences.
Many early Wiccans, such as
Alex Sanders,
Sybil Leek and
Doreen Valiente, referred to their own magic as "white
magic", which contrasted with "black
magic", which they associated with
evil and
Satanism. Sanders also used the similar terminology of "left
hand path" to describe malevolent magic, and "right
hand path" to describe magic performed with good intentions;[40]
terminology that had originated with the occultist
Helena Blavatsky in the 19th century. Some modern Wiccans however
have stopped using the white-black magic and left-right hand path
dichotomies, arguing for instance that the colour
black
should not necessarily have any associations with evil.
The scholars of religion,
Rodney Stark and
William Bainbridge, claimed, in 1985, that Wicca had "reacted to
secularisation by a headlong plunge back into magic" and that it was
a reactionary religion which would soon die out. This view was heavily
criticised in 1999 by the historian
Ronald Hutton, who claimed that the evidence displayed the very
opposite, that "a large number [of Wiccans] were in jobs at the cutting
edge [of scientific culture], such as computer technology."
Morality
"Bide the Wiccan laws ye must, in perfect love and perfect
trust... Mind the Threefold Law ye should - three times bad
and three times good... Eight words the Wiccan Rede fulfill
- an it harm none, do what ye will."
There exists no
dogmatic
moral or
ethical
code followed universally by Wiccans of all traditions, however a
majority follow a code known as the
Wiccan Rede, which states "an it harm none, do what ye will" (a
variation of the Thelemic abjuration put forward by
Aleister Crowley:"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law;
Love is the Law, Love under Will"). This is usually interpreted as a
declaration of the freedom to act, along with the necessity of taking
responsibility for what follows from one's actions and minimising harm
to oneself and others.[43]
Another common element of Wiccan morality is the
Law of Threefold Return which holds that whatever benevolent or
malevolent actions a person performs will return to that person with
triple force, or with equal force on each of the three levels of body,
mind and spirit,[44]
similar to the eastern idea of
karma.
The Wiccan Rede was introduced into Wicca by Gerald Gardner and
formalised publicly by
Doreen Valiente, one of his High Priestesses. The Threefold Law was
an interpretation of Wiccan ideas and ritual, made by
Monique Wilson[45]
and further popularised by
Raymond Buckland, in his books on Wicca.
Many Wiccans also seek to cultivate a set of eight virtues mentioned
in
Doreen Valiente's
Charge of the Goddess,
these being mirth, reverence, honour, humility, strength, beauty, power,
and compassion. In Valiente's poem, they are ordered in pairs of
complementary opposites, reflecting a
dualism
that is common throughout Wiccan philosophy. Some lineaged Wiccans also
observe a set of
Wiccan Laws, commonly called the Craft Laws or Ardanes,
30 of which exist in the Gardnerian tradition and 161 of which are in
the Alexandrian tradition. Valiente, one of Gardner's original High
Priestesses, argued that the first thirty of these rules were most
likely invented by Gerald Gardner himself in mock-archaic language as
the by-product of inner conflict within his Bricket Wood coven
- the others were later additions made by
Alex Sanders during the 1960s.
Although Gerald Gardner initially demonstrated an aversion to
homosexuality, claiming that it brought down "the curse of the
goddess",
it is now generally accepted in all traditions of Wicca, with certain
groups like the Minoan Brotherhood openly crafting their philosophy
around it,
and various important figures in the Craft, such as Alex Sanders and
Eddie Buczynski, being openly homosexual or
bisexual.
Five elements
Five Elements with Pentagram
Many traditions hold a belief in the five
classical elements, although they are seen as symbolic as
representations of the
phases of matter. These five elements are invoked during many
magical rituals, notably when consecrating a
magic circle. The five elements are
air,
fire,
water and
earth, plus
aether (or spirit), which unites the other four.[50]
Various analogies have been devised to explain the concept of the five
elements; for instance, the Wiccan
Ann-Marie Gallagher used that of a tree, which is composed of earth
(with the soil and plant matter), water (sap and moisture), fire
(through
photosynthesis) and air (the creation of
oxygen
from
carbon dioxide), all of which are believed to be united through
spirit.
"Darksome Night and Shining Moon,
East and South and West and North,
Hearken to the Witches' Rune;
Hear me now, I call thee forth."
Traditionally in the Gardnerian Craft, each element has been
associated with a cardinal point of the compass; air with east, fire
with south, water with west, earth with north and the spirit with
centre.
However, some Wiccans, such as
Frederic Lamond, have claimed that the set cardinal points are only
those applicable to the geography of southern England, where Wicca
evolved, and that Wiccans should determine which directions best suit
each element in their region, for instance, those living on the east
coast of
North America should invoke water in the east and not the west
because the colossal body of water, the
Atlantic ocean, is to their east.[52]
Other Craft groups have associated the elements with different cardinal
points, for instance
Robert Cochrane's Clan of Tubal Cain associated earth with south,
fire with east, water with west and air with north,
and each of which were controlled over by a different deity who were
seen as children of the primary Horned God and Goddess. The five
elements are symbolised by the five points of the
pentagram, the most prominently used symbol of Wicca.[54]
Natural cycles
The natural cycles are significant in Wicca. The lunar and solar
cycles are most often the basis around which Wiccans place ritual
celebrations. While both the God and the Goddess are usually honoured at
both kinds of rituals, the
Goddess is mainly associated with the
Moon, and
the
God is mainly associated with the
Sun.
Practices
The Neopagan researcher and High Priestess
Margot Adler, who defined ritual as being "one method of
reintegrating individuals and groups into the cosmos, and to tie in the
activities of daily life with their ever present, often forgotten,
significance" noted that rituals, celebrations and rites of passage in
Wicca are not "dry, formalised, repetitive experiences", but are
performed with the purpose of inducing a
religious experience in the participants, thereby altering their
consciousness.
She noted that many Wiccans remain sceptical about the existence of the
gods, afterlife etc but remain involved in the Craft because of its
ritual experiences, with one, Glenna Turner, saying that "I love myth,
dream, visionary art. The Craft is a place where all of these things fit
together - beauty, pageantry, music, dance, song, dream."
The High Priest and Craft historian
Aidan Kelly claimed that the practices and experiences within Wicca
were actually far more important than the beliefs, stating that "it's a
religion of ritual rather than theology. The ritual is first; the myth
is second. And taking an attitude that the myths of the Craft are 'true
history' in the way a
fundamentalist looks at the legends of
Genesis really seems crazy. It's an alien head-space."
Similarly, Adler stated that "ironically, considering the many
pronouncements against Witchcraft as a threat to reason, the Craft is
one of the few religious viewpoints totally compatible with modern
science, allowing total scepticism about even its own methods, myths and
rituals".
Ritual practices
An
athame, ritual knife or dagger used in Wiccan practices.
The practice of Wicca often involves the
ritual
practice of
magic, ranging from the "low magic" or "folk magic" of shamanism and
witchcraft to more elaborate and complex rites influenced by the
ceremonial magic of the
Western Hermetic Tradition.
There are many rituals within Wicca that are used when celebrating
the
Sabbats, worshipping the deities and working magic. Often these take
place on a
full
moon, or in some cases a new moon, which is known as an
Esbat. In
typical rites, the coven or solitary assembles inside a ritually cast
and purified
magic circle. Casting the circle may involve the
invocation of the "Guardians" of the cardinal points, alongside
their respective classical elements; air, fire, water and earth. Once
the circle is cast, a seasonal ritual may be performed, prayers to the
God and Goddess are said, and spells are sometimes worked; these may
include various forms of 'raising energy', including raising a
cone of power for the purposes of sending healing or other magic to
persons outside of the sacred space. These rites often include a special
set of
magical tools. These usually include a knife called an
athame,
a wand, a
pentacle and a
chalice,
but other tools include a broomstick known as a
besom, a
cauldron,
candles,
incense
and a curved blade known as a
boline.
An altar is usually present in the circle, on which ritual tools are
placed and representations of the
God and the
Goddess
may be displayed.[59]
Before entering the circle, some traditions fast for the day, and/or
ritually bathe. After a ritual has finished, the God, Goddess and
Guardians are thanked, the directions are dismissed and the circle is
closed.
A central aspect of Wicca (particularly in Gardnerian and Alexandrian
Wicca), often sensationalised by the media is the traditional practice
of working in the nude, also known as
skyclad. This practice seemingly derives from a line in
Aradia,
Charles Leland's supposed record of Italian witchcraft.[60]
Other traditions wear robes with cords tied around the waist or even
normal street clothes. In certain traditions, ritualised
sex
magic is performed in the form of the
Great Rite, whereby a High Priest and High Priestess invoke the God
and Goddess to possess them before performing
sexual intercourse to raise magical energy for use in spellwork. In
nearly all cases it is instead performed "in token", thereby merely
symbolically, using the athame to symbolise the penis and the chalice to
symbolise the womb.
One of Wicca's best known liturgical texts is "The Charge of the
Goddess".[12]
The most commonly used version used by Wiccans today is the rescension
of
Doreen Valiente,[12]
who developed it from Gardner's version. Gardner's wording of the
original "Charge" added extracts from the works of Aleister Crowley's
work, including
The Book of the Law, (especially from Ch 1, spoken by Nuit, the
Star Goddess) thus linking modern Wicca irrevocably to the revelations
of
Thelema. Valiente rewrote Gardner's version in verse, keeping the
material derived from Aradia, but removing the material from
Crowley.[62]
Wheel of the Year
Wiccans celebrate several seasonal festivals of the year, commonly
known as
Sabbats. Collectively, these occasions are termed the Wheel of the
Year.
Most Wiccans celebrate a set of eight of these Sabbats; however, other
groups such as those associated with the
Clan of Tubal Cain only follow four. In the rare case of the Ros an
Bucca group from
Cornwall, only six are adhered to.[63]
The four Sabbats that are common to all British derived groups are the
cross-quarter days, sometimes referred to as Greater Sabbats.
They originated as festivals celebrated by the ancient
Celtic
peoples of
Ireland,
and possibly other Celts of mainland Europe.[64]
In the Egyptologist
Margaret Murray's The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921) and
The God of the Witches (1933), in which she dealt with what she
believed to be a historical
Witch-Cult, she stated that these four festivals had survived
Christianisation and had been celebrated in the pagan Witchcraft
religion. Subsequently, when Wicca was first developing in the 1930s
through to the 1960s, many of the early groups, such as
Robert Cochrane's Clan of Tubal Cain and
Gerald Gardner's
Bricket Wood coven adopted the commemoration of these four Sabbats
as described by Murray. Gardner himself made use of the English names of
these holidays, stating that "the four great Sabbats are Candlemass [sic],
May Eve, Lammas, and Halloween; the equinoxes and solstices are
celebrated also."
The other four festivals commemorated by many Wiccans are known as
Lesser Sabbats, and comprise the
solstices and the
equinoxes,
and were only adopted in 1958 by members of the Bricket Wood coven,[66]
before subsequently being adopted by other followers of the Gardnerian
tradition, and eventually other traditions like
Alexandrian Wicca and the
Dianic tradition. The names of these holidays that are commonly used
today are often taken from
Germanic pagan and
Celtic polytheistic holidays. However, the festivals are not
reconstructive in nature nor do they often resemble their historical
counterparts, instead exhibiting a form of
universalism. Ritual observations may display cultural influence
from the holidays from which they take their name as well as influence
from other unrelated cultures.[67]
Rites of passage
Bust of Diana wearing a moon crown.
Various
rites of passage can be found within Wicca. Perhaps the most
significant of these is an
initiation ritual, through which somebody joins the Craft and
becomes a Wiccan. In
British Traditional Wiccan (BTW) traditions, there is a line of
initiatory descent that goes back to
Gerald Gardner, and from him is said to go back to the
New Forest coven; however, the existence of this coven remains
unproven.[70]
Gardner himself claimed that there was a traditional length of "a year
and a day" between when a person began studying the Craft and when they
were initiated, although he frequently broke this rule with initiates.
In BTW, initiation only accepts someone into the first degree. To
proceed to the second degree, an initiate has to go through another
ceremony, in which they name and describe the uses of
the ritual tools and implements. It is also at this ceremony that
they are given their
craft name. By holding the rank of second degree, a BTW is
considered capable of initiating others into the Craft, or founding
their own semi-autonomous covens. The third degree is the highest in
BTW, and it involves the participation of the
Great Rite, either actual or symbolically, and in some cases ritual
flagellation. which is a rite often dispensed with due to its
sado-masochistic overtones. By holding this rank, an initiate is
considered capable of forming covens that are entirely autonomous of
their parent coven.
According to new-age religious scholar
James R. Lewis, in his book Witchcraft today: an encyclopaedia of
Wiccan and neopagan traditions, a high priestess becomes a queen
when she has successfully hived off her first new coven under a new
third-degree high priestess (in the orthodox Gardnerian system). She
then becomes eligible to wear the "moon crown". The sequence of high
priestess and queens traced back to Gerald Gardner is known as a
lineage, and every orthodox Gardnerian High Priestess has a set of
"lineage papers" proving the authenticity of her status.[73]
This three-tier degree system following initiation is largely unique
to BTW, and traditions heavily based upon it. The
Cochranian tradition, which is not BTW, but based upon the teachings
of
Robert Cochrane, does not have the three degrees of initiation,
merely having the stages of novice and initiate.
Some solitary Wiccans also perform self-initiation rituals, to
dedicate themselves to becoming a Wiccan. The first of these to be
published was in
Paul Huson's
Mastering Witchcraft (1970), and unusually involved recitation
of the
Lord's Prayer backwards as a symbol of defiance against the
historical
Witch Hunt.[74]
Subsequent, more overtly pagan self-initiation rituals have since been
published in books designed for solitary Wiccans by authors like
Doreen Valiente,
Scott Cunningham and
Silver RavenWolf.
Handfasting is another celebration held by Wiccans, and is the
commonly used term for their weddings. Some Wiccans observe the practice
of a trial marriage for a year and a day, which some traditions hold
should be contracted on the Sabbat of Lughnasadh, as this was the
traditional time for trial, "Telltown
marriages" among the Irish. A common marriage vow in Wicca is "for as
long as love lasts" instead of the traditional Christian "till death do
us part".
The first ever known Wiccan wedding ceremony took part in 1960 amongst
the
Bricket Wood coven, between
Frederic Lamond and his first wife, Gillian.
Infants in Wiccan families may be involved in a ritual called a
Wiccaning, which is analogous to a
Christening. The purpose of this is to present the infant to the God
and Goddess for protection. Despite this, in accordance with the
importance put on free will in Wicca, the child is not necessarily
expected or required to adhere to Wicca or other forms of paganism
should they not wish to do so when they get older.[citation
needed]
Book of Shadows
In Wicca, there is no set sacred text such as the Christian
Bible,
Jewish
Tanakh or Islamic
Quran,
although there are certain scriptures and texts that various traditions
hold to be important and influence their beliefs and practices. Gerald
Gardner used a book containing many different texts in his covens, known
as the
Book of Shadows (among other names), which he would frequently add
to and adapt. In his Book of Shadows, there are texts taken from various
sources, including
Charles Godfrey Leland's
Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches (1899) and the works of
19th–20th century
occultist
Aleister Crowley, whom Gardner knew personally. Also in the Book are
examples of poetry largely composed by Gardner and his High Priestess
Doreen Valiente, the most notable of which is the
Charge of the Goddess.
"The Book of Shadows is not a Bible or Quran. It is a
personal cookbook of spells that have worked for the owner.
I am giving you mine to copy to get you started: as you gain
experience discard those spells that don’t work for you and
substitute those that you have thought of yourselves."
Similar in use to the
grimoires of
ceremonial magicians,[77]
the Book contained instructions for how to perform rituals and spells,
as well as religious poetry and chants like
Eko Eko Azarak to use in those rituals. Gardner's original
intention was that every copy of the Book would be different, because a
student would copy from their initiators, but changing things which they
felt to be personally ineffective, however amongst many Gardnerian
Witches today, particularly in the
United States, all copies of the Book are kept identical to the
version that the High Priestess
Monique Wilson copied from Gardner, with nothing being altered. The
Book of Shadows was originally meant to be kept a secret from
non-initiates into BTW, but parts of the Book have been published by
authors including
Charles Cardell, Lady Sheba,
Janet Farrar and
Stewart Farrar.[79]
Today, adherents of many non-BTW traditions have also adopted the
concept of the Book of Shadows, with many solitaries also keeping their
own versions, sometimes including material taken from the published
Gardnerian Book of Shadows. In other traditions however, practices are
never written down, meaning that there is no need for a Book of Shadows.
In certain Traditional Witchcraft traditions, different forms
of literature are used, for instance in the
1734 Tradition, the published articles of
Robert Cochrane along with letters he wrote to
Joseph Wilson,
Robert Graves[80]
and others are held in high esteem[81]
whilst in the Sabbatic tradition, various grimoires are followed, such
as the Azoetia of
Andrew Chumbley.
Symbols
A range of
symbols are used by Wiccans. The most common is the
pentagram, the five pointed star, as a representation of (microcosmic)
quinaries. Each of its points are associated with one of the five
classical elements, the five human appendages, etc. Other common
symbols include the
triskelion,
triquetra,
Three hares, and
Triple moon.
Traditions
In the 1950s through to the 1970s, when the Wiccan movement was
largely confined to lineaged groups such as
Gardnerian Wicca, a "tradition" usually implied the transfer of a
lineage by initiation. However, with the rise of more and more such
groups, often being founded by those with no previous initiatory
lineage, the term came to be a synonym for a
religious denomination within Wicca. There are many such traditions[82][83]
and there are also many
solitary practitioners who do not align themselves with any
particular lineage, working alone. There are also covens that have
formed but who do not follow any particular tradition, instead choosing
their influences and practices eclectically.
Those traditions which trace a line of initiatory descent back to
Gerald Gardner include
Gardnerian Wicca,
Alexandrian Wicca and the
Algard tradition; because of their joint history, they are often
referred to as
British Traditional Wicca, particularly in
North America. Other traditions trace their origins to different
figures, even if their beliefs and practices have been influenced to a
greater or lesser extent by Gardner. These include
Cochrane's Craft and the
1734 Tradition, both of which trace their origins to
Robert Cochrane;
Feri, which traces itself back to
Victor Anderson and
Gwydion Pendderwen; and
Dianic Wicca, whose followers often trace their influences back to
Zsuzsanna Budapest. Some of these groups prefer to refer to
themselves as Witches, thereby distinguishing themselves from the
BTW traditions, who more typically use the term Wiccan (see
Etymology).
Many traditions, including those of British Traditional Wicca,
require formal
initiation within an established
coven for
membership of their respective traditions. In this manner, all BTW's can
trace a direct line of descent all the way back to Gardner. Other
traditions, however, do not hold this to be necessary.
Covens
Lineaged Wicca is organised into
covens of
initiated priests and priestesses. Covens are autonomous, and are
generally headed by a High Priest and a High Priestess working in
partnership, being a couple who have each been through their first,
second and third degrees of initiation. Occasionally the leaders of a
coven are only second-degree initiates, in which case they come under
the rule of the parent coven. Initiation and training of new priesthood
is most often performed within a coven environment, but this is not a
necessity, and a few initiated Wiccans are unaffiliated with any coven.[29]
A commonly quoted Wiccan tradition holds that the ideal number of
members for a coven is
thirteen, though this is not held as a hard-and-fast rule.[29]
Indeed, many U.S. covens are far smaller, though the membership may be
augmented by unaffiliated Wiccans at "open" rituals. When covens grow
beyond their ideal number of members, they often split (or "hive") into
multiple covens, yet remain connected as a group. A grouping of multiple
covens is known as a grove in many traditions.[citation
needed]
Initiation into a coven is traditionally preceded by an
apprenticeship period of a year and a day.[84]
A course of study may be set during this period. In some covens a
"dedication" ceremony may be performed during this period, some time
before the initiation proper, allowing the person to attend certain
rituals on a probationary basis. Some solitary Wiccans also choose to
study for a year and a day before their self-dedication to the religion.
Eclectic Wicca
A large number of professed Wiccans do not exclusively follow any
single tradition. These
eclectic Wiccans each create their own
syncretic spiritual paths by adopting and reinventing the
beliefs and
rituals
of a variety of religious traditions connected to Wicca and broader
Paganism.
While the origins of modern Wiccan practice lie in
covenantal
activity of select few
initiates in established lineages, eclectic Wiccans are more often
than not
solitary practitioners uninitiated in any tradition. A widening
public appetite, especially in the
United States, made traditional initiation unable to satisfy
demand
for involvement in Wicca. Since the 1970s, larger, more informal, often
publicly advertised camps and workshops began to take place.[85]
This less formal but more accessible form of Wicca proved successful.
Eclectic Wicca is the most
popular variety of Wicca in America[86]
and eclectics now significantly outnumber lineaged Wiccans.
Eclectic Wicca is not necessarily the complete abandonment of
tradition. Eclectic practitioner may follow their own individual ideas
and ritual practices, while still drawing on one or more religious or
philosophical paths. Electic approachs to Wicca often draw on
Earth religion and
ancient Egyptian,
Greek,
Saxon,
Anglo-Saxon,
Celtic,
Asian,
Jewish,
and
Polynesian tradition.
History
Origins,
1921–1935
In the 1920s and 30s, the Egyptologist
Dr. Margaret Murray published several books detailing her theories
that
those persecuted as witches during the
early modern period in Europe were not, as the persecutors had
claimed, followers of
Satanism, but adherents of a surviving pre-Christian
pagan
religion - the
Witch-Cult. These hypotheses, which were argued over by academics
for decades, have since been widely rejected.[88]
It was during the 1930s that the first evidence appears for the
practice of a pagan Witchcraft religion[89]
(what would be recognisable now as Wicca) in England. It seems that
several groups around the country, in such places as
Norfolk,[90]
Cheshire[91]
and the
New
Forest had set themselves up as continuing in the tradition of
Murray's Witch-Cult, albeit with influences coming from disparate
sources such as
ceremonial magic,
folk magic,
Freemasonry,
Theosophy,
Romanticism,
Druidry,
classical mythology and Asian religions.
Early development, 1936–1959
The history of modern Wicca starts with
Gerald Gardner (the "Father of Wicca") in the mid-20th century.
Gardner was a retired
British
civil servant and amateur
anthropologist, with a broad familiarity in
paganism and
occultism. He claimed to have been
initiated into a
witches' coven of
New Forest,
Hampshire, in the late 1930s. Intent on perpetuating this craft,
Gardner founded the
Bricket Wood coven with his wife Donna in the 1940s, after buying
the
Naturist Fiveacres Country Club.
Much of the coven's early membership was drawn from the club's members
and its meetings were held within the club grounds.[94]
Many notable figures of early Wicca were direct initiates of this coven,
including
Dafo,
Doreen Valiente,
Jack Bracelin,
Frederic Lamond,
Dayonis,
Eleanor Bone and
Lois Bourne.
The Witchcraft religion became more prominent beginning in 1951, with
the repeal of the
Witchcraft Act of 1735, after which
Gerald Gardner and then others such as
Charles Cardell and
Cecil Williamson began publicising their own versions of the Craft.
Gardner and others never used the term "Wicca" as a religious
identifier, simply referring to the "witch cult", "witchcraft", and the
"Old Religion". However, Gardner did refer to witches as "the Wica".[96]
During the 1960s, the name of the religion normalised to "Wicca".[98]
Gardner's tradition, later termed
Gardnerianism, soon became the dominant form in
England
and spread to other parts of the
British Isles.
Adaptation and spread, 1960–present
Following Gardner's death in 1964, the Craft continued to grow
unabated despite sensationalism and negative portrayals in British
tabloids, with new traditions being propagated by figures like
Robert Cochrane,
Sybil Leek and most importantly
Alex Sanders, whose
Alexandrian Wicca, which was predominantly based upon Gardnerian
Wicca, albeit with an emphasis placed on
ceremonial magic, spread quickly and gained much media attention.
Around this time, the term "Wicca" began to be commonly adopted over
"Witchcraft" and the faith was exported to countries like
Australia and the
United States.
It was in the United States and in Australia that new, home-grown
traditions, sometimes based upon earlier, regional folk-magical
traditions and often mixed with the basic structure of Gardnerian Wicca,
began to develop, including
Victor Anderson's
Feri Tradition,
Joseph Wilson's
1734 Tradition,
Aidan Kelly's
New Reformed Orthodox Order of the Golden Dawn and eventually
Zsuzsanna Budapest's
Dianic Wicca, each of which emphasised different aspects of the
faith.[99]
It was also around this time that books teaching people how to become
Witches themselves without formal initiation or training began to
emerge, among them
Paul Huson's
Mastering Witchcraft (1970) and Lady Sheba's Book of Shadows
(1971). Similar books continued to be published throughout the 1980s and
1990s, fuelled by the writing of such authors as
Doreen Valiente,
Janet Farrar,
Stewart Farrar and
Scott Cunningham, who popularised the idea of self-initiation into
the Craft. Among witches in Canada, anthropologist Dr.
Heather Botting (nee Harden) of the University of Victoria has been
one of the most prominent, having been the first recognized Wiccan
chaplain of a public university.[100]
Original high priestess of
Coven Celeste, she is one of the founders of the Canadian
Aquarian Tabernacle Church.[101]
In the 1990s, amid ever-rising numbers of self-initiates, the popular
media began to explore "witchcraft" in fictional films like
The Craft and television series like
Charmed,
introducing numbers of young people to the idea of religious witchcraft.
This growing demographic was soon catered to through the
Internet and by authors like
Silver RavenWolf, much to the criticism of traditional Wiccan groups
and individuals. In response to the way that Wicca was increasingly
portrayed as trendy, eclectic, and influenced by the
New Age
movement, many Witches turned to the pre-Gardnerian origins of the
Craft, and to the traditions of his rivals like Cardell and Cochrane,
describing themselves as following "Traditional Witchcraft". Prominent
groups within this Traditional Witchcraft revival included
Andrew Chumbley's Cultus Sabbati and the Cornish Ros an Bucca coven.
Debates over the origin of Wicca
According to Gerald Gardner's account in
Witchcraft Today and
The Meaning of Witchcraft, Wicca is
the survival of a theoretical European witch-cult that was
persecuted during the
witch trials.[102]
Theories of an organised pan-European witch-cult, as well as mass trials
thereof, have been largely discredited, but it is still common for
Wiccans to claim solidarity with witch trial victims.[103]
The notion of the survival of Wiccan traditions and rituals from
ancient sources is contested by most recent researchers, who suggest
that Wicca is a 20th-century creation which combines elements of
freemasonry and 19th-century occultism.[104]
However, historians such as
Ronald Hutton have noted that Wicca not only predates the modern New
Age movement but also differs markedly in its general philosophy.
In his 1999 book
The Triumph of the Moon, Ronald Hutton researched the Wiccan
claim that ancient pagan customs have survived into modern times after
being Christianised in medieval times as folk practices. Hutton found
that most of the folk customs which are claimed to have pagan roots
(such as the
Maypole
dance) actually date from the Middle Ages. He concluded that the idea
that medieval revels were pagan in origin is a legacy of the
Protestant Reformation.[105]
Modern scholarly investigations have concluded that Witch trials were
substantially fewer than claimed by Gardner, and seldom at the behest of
religious authorities. For example, in the 1996 book Witches and
Neighbors, Robin Briggs examines the history of witchcraft in
medieval Europe and refutes the widely-told story that large numbers of
independent women were burned at the stake by vindictive Christian
ecclesiastics for the crime of practising naturalistic healing or
neopagan religion. Most scholars estimate that a total of 40,000 people
were executed as witches during the entire medieval period, and that
church authorities participated reluctantly in this process, which was
largely fuelled by the political turmoil of the Reformation.[107]
Demographics
The actual number of Wiccans worldwide is unknown, and it has been
noted that it is more difficult to establish the numbers of members of
Neopagan faiths than many other religions due to their disorganised
structure.[108]
However,
Adherents.com, an independent website which specialises in
collecting estimates of world religions, cites over thirty sources with
estimates of numbers of Wiccans (principally from the USA and UK). From
this, they developed a median estimate of 800,000 members.[109]
In the United States population alone, there have been many attempts at
finding a figure, with the 2001
American Religious Identification Survey estimating that at least
134,000 adults identified themselves as Wiccans, compared to 8,000 in
1990.[110]
Wiccans have also made up significant proportions of various groups
within that country; for instance, Wicca is the largest non-Christian
faith practised in the
United States Air Force, with 1,434 airmen identifying themselves as
such.[111]
"[The average Wiccan is] a man in his forties, or a woman in
her thirties,
Caucasian, reasonably well educated, not earning much
but probably not too concerned about material things,
someone that demographers would call
lower middle class."
In the United Kingdom, census figures on religion were first
collected in 2001. A campaign by the
Pagan Federation before the
2001 Census encouraged Wiccans, Heathens, Druids and others to
describe their religion simply as "Pagan"[citation
needed] but no deatiled statistics were reported
outside of the six main religions.[113]
For the
2011 census a more detailed breakdown of responses was reported with
56,620 people identifying themselves as Pagans, 11,766 as Wiccans and a
further 1,276 describing their religion as "Witchcraft".[114]
Acceptance of
Wiccans
The use of the inverted pentagram by the
Church of Satan has contributed to the misidentification
of Wiccans as
Satanists.
Wicca emerged in a predominantly
Christian country, and from its inception suffered opposition from
certain Christian groups and from the popular tabloids like the
News of the World. Some Christians still believe that Wicca is a
form of
Satanism, despite important differences between these religions,[115]
such as the lack of a
Satan-like
figure in Wiccan theology. Due to negative connotations associated with
witchcraft, many Wiccans continue the traditional practice of secrecy,
concealing their faith for fear of persecution. Revealing oneself as
Wiccan to family, friends or colleagues is often termed "coming out of
the broom-closet".[116]
In a similar way, some people have accused Wicca of being
anti-Christian, a claim disputed by Wiccans such as
Doreen Valiente, who stated that whilst she knew many Wiccans who
admired Jesus,
"witches have little respect for the doctrines of the churches, which
they regard as a lot of man-made dogma".[117]
In the United States, a number of legal decisions have improved and
validated the status of Wiccans, especially
Dettmer v. Landon in 1985. However, Wiccans have encountered
opposition from some politicians and Christian organisations,[118][119]
including former president of the United States
George W. Bush, who stated that he did not believe Wicca to be a
religion.[120]
In Canada, Dr.
Heather Botting ("Lady Aurora") and Dr.
Gary Botting ("Pan"), the original high priestess and high priest of
Coven Celeste and founding elders of the
Aquarian Tabernacle Church, successfully campaigned the
British Columbian provincial government and the Canadian federal
government in 1995 to allow them to perform recognised Wiccan weddings,
to become prison and hospital chaplains, and (in the case of Heather
Botting) to become the first officially recognized Wiccan chaplain in a
public university.[121][121][122]
The Bottings had been initiated into Wicca in 1966 by Gerald Gardner's
London-based high priestess,
Lysbeth Turner.
References
Notes
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^
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Samuel, Geoffrey (December 1998).
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^
Ravenwolf, Silver (1998). Teen Witch: Wicca for a New
Generation. St Paul, Minnesota: Llewellyn. p. 25.
ISBN 1-56718-725-0.
-
^
a
b
c
Pearson, Joanne E. (2005).
"Wicca". In Jones, Lindsay. Encyclopedia of Religion
14. Detroit: Macmaillan Reference USA. p. 9730.
-
^
Crowther, Patricia (1974). Witch Blood! The Diary of a
Witch High Priestess!. New York City: House of Collectibles.
ISBN 0-87637-161-6.
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^
Cunningham, Scott. Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary
Practitioner.
ISBN 0-87542-184-9.
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^
"Charge of the Star Goddess-Starhawk".
Wicca-spirituality.com. 2013-04-20.
Retrieved 2013-05-02.
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"Charge of the Star Goddess-"Book of the Goddess" (Co-edited by
Julie Ann Rhoads and Ann Forfreedom in 1979-80):".
Barsoomfishrap.org. Retrieved
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Crowley, Vivianne. Wicca: The Old Religion in the New
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a
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^
Valiente, Doreen (1973). An ABC
of Witchcraft Past and Present. Hale. pp. Introduction.
ISBN 0-919345-77-8.
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Huson, Paul (1970). Mastering
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Sanders, Alex (1984). The Alex Sanders Lectures.
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Mathiesin, Robert; Theitic (2005).
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Lamond, Frederic R (2004). Fifty
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ISBN 0-9547230-1-5.
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Valiente, Doreen (1988) [1973]. An ABC of Witchcraft Past
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Custer: Phoenix Publishing. p. 264.
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Crowley, Vivianne. Wicca: The
Old Religion in the New Age (1989) London: The Aquarian
Press.
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^
Leland, Charles (1899).
Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches. David Nutt. Page
7.
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^
Guiley, Rosemary Ellen (1999). The Encyclopedia of
Witches and Witchcraft (2nd ed.). New York: Checkmark Books.
p. 52.
ISBN 0-8160-3849-X.
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Gary, Gemma (2008). Traditional
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Evans, Emrys (1992). Mythology.
Little Brown & Company.
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Lamond, Frederic (2004). Fifty Years of Wicca. Sutton
Mallet, England: Green Magic. pp. 16–17.
ISBN 0-9547230-1-5.
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^
Crowley, Vivianne. Wicca: The
Old Religion in the New Age (1989) London: The Aquarian
Press.
ISBN 0-85030-737-6 p.23
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^
Simpson, Jacqueline (2005). "Witching Culture: Folklore and
Neo-Paganism in America". Folklore 116.
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[1] Witchcraft today: an encyclopedia of Wiccan and neopagan
traditions - Page 238, by James R. Lewis
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Huson,
Paul (1970). Mastering Witchcraft: A Practical Guide for
Witches, Warlocks and Covens. New York: Putnum. pp. 22–23.
ISBN 0-595-42006-0.
OCLC 79263.
-
^
Lamond, Frederic (2004). Fifty
Years of Wicca. Page 14. Green Magic.
-
^
Crowley, Vivianne (1989). Wicca:
The Old Religion in the New Age. London: Aquarian Press.
pp. 14–15.
ISBN 0-85030-737-6.
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Gardner, Gerald (2004). Naylor, A R (ed.), ed. Witchcraft
and the Book of Shadows. Thame: I-H-O Books.
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Lindop, ed. (24 May 2010).
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Cochrane, Robert; Michael Howard and Evan John Jones (2003).
The Robert Cochrane Letters: An Insight into Modern
Traditional Witchcraft. UK: Capall Bann Publishing.
ISBN 1-86163-221-5.
-
^
"Beaufort House Index of English Traditional Witchcraft".
Beaufort House Association. 1999-01-15.
Retrieved 2007-04-02.
-
^
"Different types of Witchcraft". Hex Archive.
Retrieved 2007-04-02.
-
^
Guiley, Rosemary Ellen (1999). The Encyclopedia of
Witches and Witchcraft (2nd ed.). New York: Checkmark Books.
p. 169.
ISBN 0-8160-3849-X.
-
^
Howard, Michael (2009). Modern
Wicca. Woodbury, Minnesota: Llewellyn. Page 299-301
-
^
Smith, Diane (2005). Wicca and
Witchcraft for Dummies. Wiley Publishing. Pg. 125.
-
^
Guiley, Rosemary Ellen (1999). The Encyclopedia of
Witches and Witchcraft (2nd ed.). New York: Checkmark Books.
p. 234.
ISBN 0-8160-3849-X.
-
^
Heselton, Philip (November 2001). Wiccan Roots: Gerald
Gardner and the Modern Witchcraft Revival. Freshfields,
Chieveley,
Berkshire: Capall Bann Pub.
ISBN 1-86163-110-3.
OCLC 46955899.
See also
Nevill Drury. "Why Does Aleister Crowley Still Matter?"
Richard Metzger, ed. Book of Lies: The Disinformation Guide
to Magick and the Occult. Disinformation Books, 2003.
-
^
Bourne, Lois (1998). Dancing
With Witches. Hale. Page 51.
-
^
Heselton, Philip (2003). Gerald
Gardner and the Cauldron of Inspiration. Capall Bann. Page
254.
-
^
Fifty Years of Wicca,
Frederic Lamond, page 30-31
-
^
Gardner, Gerald B (1999) [1954]. Witchcraft Today.
Lake Toxaway, NC: Mercury Publishing.
ISBN 0-8065-2593-2.
OCLC 44936549.
-
^
Seims, Melissa (2008).
"Wica or Wicca? - Politics and the Power of Words". The
Cauldron (129).
-
^
Holzer, Hans (1972). The New Pagans. Garden City, NY:
Doubleday.
OCLC 281240.
-
^
Todd,
Douglas.
"University of Victoria chaplain marks solstice with pagan
rituals | Vancouver Sun". Blogs.vancouversun.com.
Retrieved 2013-05-02.
-
^
"ATC Affiliates – Canada". Aquarian Tabernacle Church.
Retrieved 2013-05-02.
-
^
Buckland 2002, p. 96.
-
^
Buckland 2002, 10: Roots of Modern Wica.
-
^
Allen, Charlotte (January 2001).
"The Scholars and the Goddess". The Atlantic Monthly
(287).
OCLC 202832236.
-
^
Davis,
Philip G (1998). Goddess Unmasked. Dallas: Spence.
ISBN 0-9653208-9-8.
-
^
Briggs, Robin (1998). Witches and
Neighbors. Penguin.
ISBN 0-14-014438-2.
-
^
Bonewits, Isaac (2005).
"How Many "Pagans" Are There?". Neopagan.net.
Retrieved 7 April 2012.
-
^
"Statistical summary pages: W". Adherents.com.
Retrieved 7 April 2012.
-
^
Banerjee, Neela (16 May 2007).
"Wiccans Keep the Faith With a Religion Under Wraps". The
New York Times. Retrieved
7 April 2012.
-
^
Holmes,
Erik (17 January 2010).
"Respect healthy for different faiths". Air Force Times.
Retrieved 20 October 2010.
-
^
Ruickbie, Leo (2004). Witchcraft Out of the Shadows.
Hale. p. 177.
ISBN 0-7090-7567-7.
-
^
[Census 2001 Key Statistics - Local
Authorities KS07 Religion (Excel sheet 78Kb)
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/census/census-2001-key-statistics/local-authorities-in-england-and-wales/local-authorities-ks07--religion.xls],
Office for National Statistics
-
^
Office for National Statistics, 11
December 2012,
2011 Census, Key Statistics for Local Authorities in England and
Wales. Accessed 12 December 2012.
-
^
Davis, Derek; Hankins, Barry (2003).
New Religious Movements and Religious Liberty in America
(2nd ed.).
Waco:
Baylor University Press. p. 75.
ISBN 0-918954-92-4.
OCLC 52895492.
"Much to the chagrin of practitioners of Wicca, there has been
confusion in the minds of many about their religion, which is
often linked with Satanism, although there are important
differences."
-
^
'Bewitched' (2003-12-04).
"Witch Way". Slate.com.
Retrieved 2008-05-16. "Believe me, coming out of the
"broom closet" is a one-way trip."
-
^
Valiente, Doreen (1973). An ABC
of Witchcraft Past and Present. Hale. pp. Introduction.
ISBN 0-919345-77-8.
-
^
Silk, Mark (Summer 1999).
"Something Wiccan This Way Comes". Religion in the News
2 (2).
ISSN 1525-7207.
Archived from
the original on 2007-05-24.
-
^
"Barr's Witch Project: Lawmaker Wants to Ban Witches from the
Military". LawStreet Journal. 1999-11-01. Archived
from
the original on 2000-02-29.
Retrieved 2007-07-11.
-
^
"George W. Bush Justifies Off-The-Cuff Bigotry". Positive
Atheism Magazine. 1999-06-01.
Retrieved 2008-11-30.
-
^
a
b
"Wiccan Chaplaincy | Aquarian Tabernacle Church Canada".
Atccanada.org. 2012-11-29.
Retrieved 2013-05-02.
-
^
Todd,
http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2010/12/16/pagans-celebrate-solstice-with-yule-rituals/
Sources
Academic books
Journal articles
Wiccan literature
-
Buckland, Raymond (September 2002) [First published 1971].
Witchcraft From The Inside: Origins of the Fastest Growing
Religious Movement in America (third edition ed.). St. Paul,
MN:
Llewellyn Publications.
ISBN 1-56718-101-5.
OCLC 31781774.
-
Buckland, Raymond (1986).
Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft.
Saint Paul: Llewellyn.
ISBN 0-87542-050-8.
OCLC 14167961.
-
Farrar, Janet;
Farrar, Stewart (1981). A Witches' Bible: The Complete
Witches Handbook.
London: Phoenix Publishing.
ISBN 0-919345-92-1.
OCLC 62866821.
-
Farrar, Janet;
Farrar, Stewart (1984). The Witches' Way: Principles,
Rituals and Beliefs of Modern Witchcraft. Phoenix
Publishing.
ISBN 0-919345-71-9.
-
Farrar, Janet;
Farrar, Stewart (1987). The Witches' Goddess: The
Feminine Principle of Divinity.
London: Robert Hale Publishing.
ISBN 0-7090-2800-8.
-
Farrar, Janet;
Farrar, Stewart (1989). The Witches' God: Lord of the
Dance.
London: Robert Hale.
ISBN 0-7090-3319-2.
-
Farrar, Janet;
Farrar, Stewart (May 1992) [1981]. Eight Sabbats for
Witches.
London: Robert Hale Publishing.
ISBN 0-7090-4778-9.
OCLC 26673966.
-
Farrar, Janet;
Bone, Gavin (January 2004). Progressive Witchcraft:
Spirituality, Mysteries, and Training in Modern Wicca.
Franklin Lakes, NJ: New Age Books.
ISBN 1-56414-719-3.
OCLC 53223741.
-
Farrar, Stewart (1983). What Witches Do: A Modern Coven
Revealed. Robert Hale Publishing.
ISBN 0-919345-17-4.
-
Gallagher, Ann-Marie (2005). The Wicca Bible: the
Definitive Guide to Magic and the Craft.
New York: Sterling Publishing.
ISBN 1-4027-3008-X.
- Gardner,
Gerald B. (1988) [First published 1959].
The Meaning of Witchcraft.
Llewellyn Worldwide.
ISBN 0-939708-02-7.
OCLC 1059746.
-
Valiente, Doreen (1973). An ABC of Witchcraft Past and
Present. Robert Hale Publishing.
ISBN 0-919345-77-8.
-
Valiente, Doreen (1989). The Rebirth of Witchcraft.
London: Robert Hale Publishing.
ISBN 0-7090-3715-5.
OCLC 59694320.
Further reading
- Significant historical works
-
- Practices and beliefs
-
- History of Wicca
-
-
Kelly, Aidan A (1991). Crafting the Art of Magic: A
History of Modern Witchcraft, 1939-1964. Llewellyn.
ISBN 0-87542-370-1.76
-
Heselton, Philip (2000). Wiccan Roots: Gerald Gardner and
the Modern Witchcraft Revival. Capall Bann.
ISBN 1-86163-110-3.
- Heselton, Philip (2001).
Gerald Gardner and the Witchcraft Revival: The Significance of
His Life and Works to the Story of Modern Witchcraft.
I-H-O Books.
ISBN 1-872189-16-4.
- Heselton, Philip (2003).
Gerald Gardner and the Cauldron of Inspiration: An Investigation
into the Sources of Gardnerian Witchcraft. Capall Bann.
ISBN 1-86163-164-2.
- Wicca in different countries
-
- General
-
-
Buckland, Raymond (1 January 2002). The Witch Book: The
Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, Wicca, and Neo-paganism. Visible
Ink Press.
ISBN 1578591147.
- Lewis, James R (1999).
Witchcraft Today: An Encyclopedia of Wiccan and Neopagan
Traditions. ABC-CLIO.
ISBN 1576071340.
- Rabinovitch, Shelly; Lewis,
James R, eds. (2002). The Encyclopedia of Modern Witchcraft
and Neo-Paganism.
Kensington.
ISBN 0806524065.
- Lewis, James R, ed. (1996).
Magical Religion and Modern Witchcraft.
State University of New York Press.
ISBN 0585036500.
- Luhrmann, T M (1994).
Persuasions of the Witch's Craft: Ritual Magic in Contemporary
England. Picador.
ISBN 9780330329460.
External links
Wicca is typically
duotheistic, worshipping a god and goddess traditionally viewed as a
mother goddess and
horned god. These two deities are often viewed as facets of a
greater
pantheistic
godhead.
However, beliefs range from "hard"
polytheism to even
monotheism. Wiccan celebration follows approximately eight
seasonally based festivals known as
Sabbats. An unattributed statement known as the
Wiccan Rede is the traditional basis of Wiccan morality. Wicca
involves the ritual practice of
magic.
Terminology
The term "Wicca" first achieved widespread acceptance when referring
to the religion in the 1960s and 70s. Prior to that, the term
"Witchcraft" had been more widely used. Whilst being based upon the
Old English word wicca, a
masculine term for sorcerers, the actual individual who coined the
capitalised term "Wicca" is unknown, though it has been speculated that
it was
Charles Cardell, who certainly used the term "Wiccen" during the
1950s.
Application of the word Wicca has given rise to "a great deal
of disagreement and infighting".
Gardnerian and Alexandrian Wicca are often collectively termed
British Traditional Wicca, and many of their practitioners consider
the term Wicca to apply only to these lineaged traditions. Others
do not use the word "Wicca" at all, instead preferring to be referred to
only as "Witchcraft," while others believe that all modern witchcraft
traditions can be considered "Wiccan."
Popular culture, as seen in TV programmes like
Buffy the Vampire Slayer tends to use the terms “Wiccan” and
"Wicca" as completely synonymous with the terms “Witch” and “Witchcraft”
respectively.[citation
needed]
Beliefs
Beliefs vary markedly between different traditions and individual
practitioners. However, various commonalities exist between these
disparate groups, which usually include views on theology, the
afterlife, magic and morality.
Theology
Altar statues of the Horned God and Mother Goddess as
crafted by Bel Bucca, and owned by the 'Mother of Wicca',
Doreen Valiente.
Wiccan views on
theology are numerous and varied and there is no universally
agreed-upon
religious canon, but Wicca is traditionally a duotheistic religion
that venerates both a "Triple
Goddess" associated with the Moon and stars and fate, and a
Horned God associated with forests and animals and the realm beyond
death. These two deities are variously understood through the frameworks
of
pantheism (as being dual aspects of a single
godhead),
duotheism (as being two polar opposites),
hard polytheism (being two distinct deities in a larger pantheon
which includes other pagan gods) or
soft polytheism (being composed of many lesser deities). In some
pantheistic and duotheistic conceptions, deities from diverse cultures
may be seen as aspects of the Goddess or God.
However, there are also other theological viewpoints to be found within
the Craft, including
monotheism, the concept that there is just one deity, which is seen
by some, such as
Dianic Wiccans, as being the Goddess, whilst by others, like the
Church and School of Wicca, as instead being genderless. There are
other Wiccans who are
atheists
or
agnostics, not believing in any actual deity, but instead viewing
the gods as psychological archetypes of the human mind which can be
evoked and interacted with.[citation
needed]
According to the Witches
Janet and
Stewart Farrar, who held a pantheistic, duotheistic and
animistic
view of theology, Wiccans "regard the whole cosmos as alive, both as a
whole and in all of its parts", but that "such an organic view of the
cosmos cannot be fully expressed, and lived, without the concept of the
God and Goddess. There is no manifestation without polarisation; so at
the highest creative level, that of Divinity, the polarisation must be
the clearest and most powerful of all, reflecting and spreading itself
through all the microcosmic levels as well".
Duotheism
Wicca is traditionally and primarily a religion centred upon the idea
of
gender
polarity and the worship of a
Moon Goddess and a
Horned God. (This core theology was originally described by Gerald
Gardner, the founder of the religion; and Doreen Valiente, who wrote
much of the original liturgical materials.) The Goddess and the God may
be regarded as the Divine Feminine and the Divine Masculine. They are
complementary opposites or dualities, bearing similarities to the
concept of
yin and yang in Taoism. The God and Goddess are generally seen as
lovers and equals, the Divine Couple who together co-create the cosmos.
The God and
the Goddess
For most Wiccans, the God and Goddess are seen as complementary
polarities in the universe that balance one another out, and in this
manner they have been compared to the concept of
yin and yang found in
Taoism.
As such they are often interpreted as being "embodiments of a life-force
manifest in nature"[6]
with some Wiccans believing that they are simply symbolic of these
polarities, whilst others believing that the God and the Goddess are
genuine beings that exist independently. The two divinities are often
given symbolic associations, with the Goddess commonly being symbolised
as the Earth
(i.e.
Mother Earth), but also sometimes as the
Moon, which
complements the God being viewed as the
Sun.[7]
The Gods are real, not as persons, but as vehicles of power.
Briefly, it may be explained that the personification of a
particular type of cosmic power in the form of a God or
Goddess, carried out by believers and worshippers over many
centuries, builds that God-form or Magical Image into a
potent reality on the Inner Planes, and makes it a means by
which that type of cosmic power may be contacted.
Traditionally the God is viewed as a
Horned God, associated with nature, wilderness, sexuality, hunting
and the life cycle.
The Horned God is given various names according to the tradition, and
these include
Cernunnos,
Pan, Atho and Karnayna.
At other times the God is viewed as the
Green
Man,
a traditional figure in European art and architecture, and they often
interpret him as being associated with the natural world. The God is
also often depicted as a
Sun God,particularly
at the festival of
Litha, or the summer solstice. Another expression of the God is that
of the Oak King and the Holly King, one who rules over winter and
spring, the other who rules over summer and autumn.
He has also been seen in the roles of the
Leader of the Wild Hunt and the Lord of Death.[12]
The Goddess is usually portrayed as a
Triple Goddess, thereby being a triadic deity comprising a Maiden
goddess, a
Mother goddess, and a Crone goddess, each of whom has different
associations, namely virginity, fertility and wisdom.
She is also commonly depicted as a
Moon Goddess,
and is often given the name of
Diana after the ancient Roman deity. Some Wiccans, particularly from
the 1970s onwards, have viewed the Goddess as the more important of the
two deities, who is pre-eminent in that she contains and conceives all.
In this respect, the God is viewed as the spark of life and inspiration
within her, simultaneously her lover and her child.
This is reflected in the traditional structure of the
coven.
In one
monotheistic form of the Craft,
Dianic Wicca, the Goddess is the sole deity, a concept that has been
criticised by members of other more egalitarian traditions.
According to Gerald Gardner, "the Goddess" is a deity of prime
importance, along with her consort the
Horned God. In the earliest Wiccan publications, she is described as
a tribal goddess of the witch community, neither omnipotent nor
universal, and it was recognised that there was a greater "Prime
Mover", although the witches did not concern themselves much with
this being.
The concept of having a religion venerating a Horned God accompanying
a goddess had been devised by the Egyptologist
Margaret Murray during the 1920s. She believed, based upon her own
theories about the
early modern witch trials in Europe, that those two deities, though
primarily the Horned God, had been worshipped by a
Witch-Cult ever since western Europe had succumbed to Christianity.
Whilst now widely discredited, Gerald Gardner was a supporter of her
theory, and believed that Wicca was a continuation of that historical
Witch-Cult, and that the Horned God and Goddess were therefore ancient
deities of the British Isles.
Modern scholarship has disproved his claims, however various horned gods
and mother goddesses were indeed worshipped in the British Isles during
the ancient and early medieval periods.
Pantheism, Polytheism and Animism
Many Wiccans believe that the God and Goddess are merely two aspects
of the same
godhead, often viewed as a
pantheistic deity, thereby encompassing everything in the universe
within its divinity. In his public writings, Gardner referred to this
being as the
Prime Mover, and claimed that it remained unknowable,
although in the rituals of his tradition,
Gardnerianism, it is referred to as Dryghten,[21]
which had originally been an
Old English term meaning
The Lord. Since then it has been given other names by different
Wiccans, for instance
Scott Cunningham called it by its name in
neoplatonism,
The One.[22]
Other Wiccans such as
Starhawk use the term Star Goddess to describe the universal
pantheistic deity that created the
cosmos,
and regard her as a knowable deity that can and should be worshipped.[23][24]
As well as pantheism and duotheism, many Wiccans accept the concept
of
polytheism, thereby believing that there are many different deities.
Some accept the view espoused by the occultist
Dion Fortune that "all gods are one god, and all goddesses are one
goddess" —that is that the gods and goddesses of all cultures are,
respectively, aspects of one supernal God and Goddess. With this
mindset, a Wiccan may regard the Germanic
Ēostre,
Hindu Kali,
and Christian
Virgin Mary each as manifestations of one supreme Goddess and
likewise, the Celtic
Cernunnos, the ancient Greek
Dionysus and the Judeo-Christian
Yahweh
as aspects of a single, archetypal god. A more strictly
polytheistic approach holds the various goddesses and gods to be
separate and distinct entities in their own right. The Wiccan writers
Janet Farrar and
Gavin Bone have postulated that Wicca is becoming more polytheistic
as it matures, tending to embrace a more traditionally pagan worldview.
Some Wiccans conceive of deities not as literal personalities but as
metaphorical
archetypes or
thoughtforms, thereby technically allowing them to be
atheists.
Such a view was purported by the High Priestess
Vivianne Crowley, herself a
psychologist, who considered the Wiccan deities to be
Jungian archetypes that existed within the subconscious that could
be evoked in ritual. It was for this reason that she said that "The
Goddess and God manifest to us in dream and vision."[27]
Wicca is essentially an
immanent religion, and for some Wiccans, this idea also involves
elements of
animism.
A belief central to Wicca is that the Goddess and the God (or the
goddesses and gods) are able to manifest in personal form, most
importantly through the bodies of Priestesses and Priests via the
rituals of
Drawing down the Moon or Drawing down the Sun.
Afterlife
Belief in the afterlife varies among Wiccans,
although
reincarnation is a traditional Wiccan teaching dating back to the
New Forest coven in the 1930s. The influential High Priest
Raymond Buckland said that a human's soul reincarnates into the same
species over many lives in order to learn lessons and advance
spiritually,[29]
but this belief is not universal, as many Wiccans believe in the
reincarnation of the soul through different species. However, a popular
saying amongst Wiccans is that "once a witch, always a witch",
indicating a belief that Wiccans are the reincarnations of previous
witches.[30]
Typically, Wiccans who believe in reincarnation believe that the soul
rests between lives in the
Otherworld or
Summerland, known in Gardner's writings as the "ecstasy of the
Goddess".
Many Wiccans believe in the ability to contact the spirits of the dead
who reside in the Otherworld through
spirit mediums and
Ouija
boards, particularly on the Sabbat of
Samhain,
though some disagree with this practice, such as the late
Alexandrian High Priest
Alex Sanders, who stated that "they are dead; leave them in peace."
This belief was likely influenced by
Spiritualism, which was very popular at the time of Wicca's
emergence, and with which Gardner and other early Wiccans such as
Buckland and Sanders had some experience.
Despite some belief therein, Wicca does not place an emphasis on the
afterlife, focusing instead on the current one; as the historian
Ronald Hutton remarked, "the instinctual position of most [Wiccans],
therefore, seems to be that if one makes the most of the present life,
in all respects, then the next life is more or less certainly going to
benefit from the process, and so one may as well concentrate on the
present".
Magic
Many Wiccans believe in
magic, a force they see as being capable of manipulation through the
practice of
witchcraft or
sorcery. Some spell it "magick", a variation coined by the
influential occultist
Aleister Crowley, though this spelling is more commonly associated
with Crowley's religion of
Thelema
than with Wicca. Indeed, many Wiccans agree with the definition of magic
offered by
ceremonial magicians,
such as Aleister Crowley, who declared that magic was "the science and
art of causing change to occur in conformity with will", while another
prominent ceremonial magician,
MacGregor Mathers stated that it was "the science of the control of
the secret forces of nature".
Many Wiccans believe magic to be a law of nature, as yet misunderstood
or disregarded by contemporary science,
and as such they do not view it as being
supernatural, but being a part of the "super powers that reside in
the natural" according to
Leo Martello.
Some Wiccans believe that magic is simply making full use of the five
senses that achieve surprising results,
whilst other Wiccans do not claim to know how magic works, merely
believing that it does because they have observed it to be so.
"The point [of magic in Witchcraft] is to make the
"bendable" world bend to your will... Unless you possess a
rock-firm faith in your own powers and in the operability of
your spell, you will not achieve the burning intensity of
will and imagination which is requisite to make the magic
work."
Wiccans cast
spells or workings during ritual practices, often held inside
a
sacred circle, in an attempt to bring about real changes in the
physical world (these rituals are further explained in the "Ritual
practices" section below). Common Wiccan spells include those used for
healing, for protection, fertility, or to banish negative
influences.
Many early Wiccans, such as
Alex Sanders,
Sybil Leek and
Doreen Valiente, referred to their own magic as "white
magic", which contrasted with "black
magic", which they associated with
evil and
Satanism. Sanders also used the similar terminology of "left
hand path" to describe malevolent magic, and "right
hand path" to describe magic performed with good intentions;[40]
terminology that had originated with the occultist
Helena Blavatsky in the 19th century. Some modern Wiccans however
have stopped using the white-black magic and left-right hand path
dichotomies, arguing for instance that the colour
black
should not necessarily have any associations with evil.
The scholars of religion,
Rodney Stark and
William Bainbridge, claimed, in 1985, that Wicca had "reacted to
secularisation by a headlong plunge back into magic" and that it was
a reactionary religion which would soon die out. This view was heavily
criticised in 1999 by the historian
Ronald Hutton, who claimed that the evidence displayed the very
opposite, that "a large number [of Wiccans] were in jobs at the cutting
edge [of scientific culture], such as computer technology."
Morality
"Bide the Wiccan laws ye must, in perfect love and perfect
trust... Mind the Threefold Law ye should - three times bad
and three times good... Eight words the Wiccan Rede fulfill
- an it harm none, do what ye will."
There exists no
dogmatic
moral or
ethical
code followed universally by Wiccans of all traditions, however a
majority follow a code known as the
Wiccan Rede, which states "an it harm none, do what ye will" (a
variation of the Thelemic abjuration put forward by
Aleister Crowley:"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law;
Love is the Law, Love under Will"). This is usually interpreted as a
declaration of the freedom to act, along with the necessity of taking
responsibility for what follows from one's actions and minimising harm
to oneself and others.[43]
Another common element of Wiccan morality is the
Law of Threefold Return which holds that whatever benevolent or
malevolent actions a person performs will return to that person with
triple force, or with equal force on each of the three levels of body,
mind and spirit,[44]
similar to the eastern idea of
karma.
The Wiccan Rede was introduced into Wicca by Gerald Gardner and
formalised publicly by
Doreen Valiente, one of his High Priestesses. The Threefold Law was
an interpretation of Wiccan ideas and ritual, made by
Monique Wilson[45]
and further popularised by
Raymond Buckland, in his books on Wicca.
Many Wiccans also seek to cultivate a set of eight virtues mentioned
in
Doreen Valiente's
Charge of the Goddess,
these being mirth, reverence, honour, humility, strength, beauty, power,
and compassion. In Valiente's poem, they are ordered in pairs of
complementary opposites, reflecting a
dualism
that is common throughout Wiccan philosophy. Some lineaged Wiccans also
observe a set of
Wiccan Laws, commonly called the Craft Laws or Ardanes,
30 of which exist in the Gardnerian tradition and 161 of which are in
the Alexandrian tradition. Valiente, one of Gardner's original High
Priestesses, argued that the first thirty of these rules were most
likely invented by Gerald Gardner himself in mock-archaic language as
the by-product of inner conflict within his Bricket Wood coven
- the others were later additions made by
Alex Sanders during the 1960s.
Although Gerald Gardner initially demonstrated an aversion to
homosexuality, claiming that it brought down "the curse of the
goddess",
it is now generally accepted in all traditions of Wicca, with certain
groups like the Minoan Brotherhood openly crafting their philosophy
around it,
and various important figures in the Craft, such as Alex Sanders and
Eddie Buczynski, being openly homosexual or
bisexual.
Five elements
Five Elements with Pentagram
Many traditions hold a belief in the five
classical elements, although they are seen as symbolic as
representations of the
phases of matter. These five elements are invoked during many
magical rituals, notably when consecrating a
magic circle. The five elements are
air,
fire,
water and
earth, plus
aether (or spirit), which unites the other four.[50]
Various analogies have been devised to explain the concept of the five
elements; for instance, the Wiccan
Ann-Marie Gallagher used that of a tree, which is composed of earth
(with the soil and plant matter), water (sap and moisture), fire
(through
photosynthesis) and air (the creation of
oxygen
from
carbon dioxide), all of which are believed to be united through
spirit.
"Darksome Night and Shining Moon,
East and South and West and North,
Hearken to the Witches' Rune;
Hear me now, I call thee forth."
Traditionally in the Gardnerian Craft, each element has been
associated with a cardinal point of the compass; air with east, fire
with south, water with west, earth with north and the spirit with
centre.
However, some Wiccans, such as
Frederic Lamond, have claimed that the set cardinal points are only
those applicable to the geography of southern England, where Wicca
evolved, and that Wiccans should determine which directions best suit
each element in their region, for instance, those living on the east
coast of
North America should invoke water in the east and not the west
because the colossal body of water, the
Atlantic ocean, is to their east.[52]
Other Craft groups have associated the elements with different cardinal
points, for instance
Robert Cochrane's Clan of Tubal Cain associated earth with south,
fire with east, water with west and air with north,
and each of which were controlled over by a different deity who were
seen as children of the primary Horned God and Goddess. The five
elements are symbolised by the five points of the
pentagram, the most prominently used symbol of Wicca.[54]
Natural cycles
The natural cycles are significant in Wicca. The lunar and solar
cycles are most often the basis around which Wiccans place ritual
celebrations. While both the God and the Goddess are usually honoured at
both kinds of rituals, the
Goddess is mainly associated with the
Moon, and
the
God is mainly associated with the
Sun.
Practices
The Neopagan researcher and High Priestess
Margot Adler, who defined ritual as being "one method of
reintegrating individuals and groups into the cosmos, and to tie in the
activities of daily life with their ever present, often forgotten,
significance" noted that rituals, celebrations and rites of passage in
Wicca are not "dry, formalised, repetitive experiences", but are
performed with the purpose of inducing a
religious experience in the participants, thereby altering their
consciousness.
She noted that many Wiccans remain sceptical about the existence of the
gods, afterlife etc but remain involved in the Craft because of its
ritual experiences, with one, Glenna Turner, saying that "I love myth,
dream, visionary art. The Craft is a place where all of these things fit
together - beauty, pageantry, music, dance, song, dream."
The High Priest and Craft historian
Aidan Kelly claimed that the practices and experiences within Wicca
were actually far more important than the beliefs, stating that "it's a
religion of ritual rather than theology. The ritual is first; the myth
is second. And taking an attitude that the myths of the Craft are 'true
history' in the way a
fundamentalist looks at the legends of
Genesis really seems crazy. It's an alien head-space."
Similarly, Adler stated that "ironically, considering the many
pronouncements against Witchcraft as a threat to reason, the Craft is
one of the few religious viewpoints totally compatible with modern
science, allowing total scepticism about even its own methods, myths and
rituals".
Ritual practices
An
athame, ritual knife or dagger used in Wiccan practices.
The practice of Wicca often involves the
ritual
practice of
magic, ranging from the "low magic" or "folk magic" of shamanism and
witchcraft to more elaborate and complex rites influenced by the
ceremonial magic of the
Western Hermetic Tradition.
There are many rituals within Wicca that are used when celebrating
the
Sabbats, worshipping the deities and working magic. Often these take
place on a
full
moon, or in some cases a new moon, which is known as an
Esbat. In
typical rites, the coven or solitary assembles inside a ritually cast
and purified
magic circle. Casting the circle may involve the
invocation of the "Guardians" of the cardinal points, alongside
their respective classical elements; air, fire, water and earth. Once
the circle is cast, a seasonal ritual may be performed, prayers to the
God and Goddess are said, and spells are sometimes worked; these may
include various forms of 'raising energy', including raising a
cone of power for the purposes of sending healing or other magic to
persons outside of the sacred space. These rites often include a special
set of
magical tools. These usually include a knife called an
athame,
a wand, a
pentacle and a
chalice,
but other tools include a broomstick known as a
besom, a
cauldron,
candles,
incense
and a curved blade known as a
boline.
An altar is usually present in the circle, on which ritual tools are
placed and representations of the
God and the
Goddess
may be displayed.[59]
Before entering the circle, some traditions fast for the day, and/or
ritually bathe. After a ritual has finished, the God, Goddess and
Guardians are thanked, the directions are dismissed and the circle is
closed.
A central aspect of Wicca (particularly in Gardnerian and Alexandrian
Wicca), often sensationalised by the media is the traditional practice
of working in the nude, also known as
skyclad. This practice seemingly derives from a line in
Aradia,
Charles Leland's supposed record of Italian witchcraft.[60]
Other traditions wear robes with cords tied around the waist or even
normal street clothes. In certain traditions, ritualised
sex
magic is performed in the form of the
Great Rite, whereby a High Priest and High Priestess invoke the God
and Goddess to possess them before performing
sexual intercourse to raise magical energy for use in spellwork. In
nearly all cases it is instead performed "in token", thereby merely
symbolically, using the athame to symbolise the penis and the chalice to
symbolise the womb.
One of Wicca's best known liturgical texts is "The Charge of the
Goddess".[12]
The most commonly used version used by Wiccans today is the rescension
of
Doreen Valiente,[12]
who developed it from Gardner's version. Gardner's wording of the
original "Charge" added extracts from the works of Aleister Crowley's
work, including
The Book of the Law, (especially from Ch 1, spoken by Nuit, the
Star Goddess) thus linking modern Wicca irrevocably to the revelations
of
Thelema. Valiente rewrote Gardner's version in verse, keeping the
material derived from Aradia, but removing the material from
Crowley.[62]
Wheel of the Year
Wiccans celebrate several seasonal festivals of the year, commonly
known as
Sabbats. Collectively, these occasions are termed the Wheel of the
Year.
Most Wiccans celebrate a set of eight of these Sabbats; however, other
groups such as those associated with the
Clan of Tubal Cain only follow four. In the rare case of the Ros an
Bucca group from
Cornwall, only six are adhered to.[63]
The four Sabbats that are common to all British derived groups are the
cross-quarter days, sometimes referred to as Greater Sabbats.
They originated as festivals celebrated by the ancient
Celtic
peoples of
Ireland,
and possibly other Celts of mainland Europe.[64]
In the Egyptologist
Margaret Murray's The Witch-Cult in Western Europe (1921) and
The God of the Witches (1933), in which she dealt with what she
believed to be a historical
Witch-Cult, she stated that these four festivals had survived
Christianisation and had been celebrated in the pagan Witchcraft
religion. Subsequently, when Wicca was first developing in the 1930s
through to the 1960s, many of the early groups, such as
Robert Cochrane's Clan of Tubal Cain and
Gerald Gardner's
Bricket Wood coven adopted the commemoration of these four Sabbats
as described by Murray. Gardner himself made use of the English names of
these holidays, stating that "the four great Sabbats are Candlemass [sic],
May Eve, Lammas, and Halloween; the equinoxes and solstices are
celebrated also."
The other four festivals commemorated by many Wiccans are known as
Lesser Sabbats, and comprise the
solstices and the
equinoxes,
and were only adopted in 1958 by members of the Bricket Wood coven,[66]
before subsequently being adopted by other followers of the Gardnerian
tradition, and eventually other traditions like
Alexandrian Wicca and the
Dianic tradition. The names of these holidays that are commonly used
today are often taken from
Germanic pagan and
Celtic polytheistic holidays. However, the festivals are not
reconstructive in nature nor do they often resemble their historical
counterparts, instead exhibiting a form of
universalism. Ritual observations may display cultural influence
from the holidays from which they take their name as well as influence
from other unrelated cultures.[67]
Rites of passage
Bust of Diana wearing a moon crown.
Various
rites of passage can be found within Wicca. Perhaps the most
significant of these is an
initiation ritual, through which somebody joins the Craft and
becomes a Wiccan. In
British Traditional Wiccan (BTW) traditions, there is a line of
initiatory descent that goes back to
Gerald Gardner, and from him is said to go back to the
New Forest coven; however, the existence of this coven remains
unproven.[70]
Gardner himself claimed that there was a traditional length of "a year
and a day" between when a person began studying the Craft and when they
were initiated, although he frequently broke this rule with initiates.
In BTW, initiation only accepts someone into the first degree. To
proceed to the second degree, an initiate has to go through another
ceremony, in which they name and describe the uses of
the ritual tools and implements. It is also at this ceremony that
they are given their
craft name. By holding the rank of second degree, a BTW is
considered capable of initiating others into the Craft, or founding
their own semi-autonomous covens. The third degree is the highest in
BTW, and it involves the participation of the
Great Rite, either actual or symbolically, and in some cases ritual
flagellation. which is a rite often dispensed with due to its
sado-masochistic overtones. By holding this rank, an initiate is
considered capable of forming covens that are entirely autonomous of
their parent coven.
According to new-age religious scholar
James R. Lewis, in his book Witchcraft today: an encyclopaedia of
Wiccan and neopagan traditions, a high priestess becomes a queen
when she has successfully hived off her first new coven under a new
third-degree high priestess (in the orthodox Gardnerian system). She
then becomes eligible to wear the "moon crown". The sequence of high
priestess and queens traced back to Gerald Gardner is known as a
lineage, and every orthodox Gardnerian High Priestess has a set of
"lineage papers" proving the authenticity of her status.[73]
This three-tier degree system following initiation is largely unique
to BTW, and traditions heavily based upon it. The
Cochranian tradition, which is not BTW, but based upon the teachings
of
Robert Cochrane, does not have the three degrees of initiation,
merely having the stages of novice and initiate.
Some solitary Wiccans also perform self-initiation rituals, to
dedicate themselves to becoming a Wiccan. The first of these to be
published was in
Paul Huson's
Mastering Witchcraft (1970), and unusually involved recitation
of the
Lord's Prayer backwards as a symbol of defiance against the
historical
Witch Hunt.[74]
Subsequent, more overtly pagan self-initiation rituals have since been
published in books designed for solitary Wiccans by authors like
Doreen Valiente,
Scott Cunningham and
Silver RavenWolf.
Handfasting is another celebration held by Wiccans, and is the
commonly used term for their weddings. Some Wiccans observe the practice
of a trial marriage for a year and a day, which some traditions hold
should be contracted on the Sabbat of Lughnasadh, as this was the
traditional time for trial, "Telltown
marriages" among the Irish. A common marriage vow in Wicca is "for as
long as love lasts" instead of the traditional Christian "till death do
us part".
The first ever known Wiccan wedding ceremony took part in 1960 amongst
the
Bricket Wood coven, between
Frederic Lamond and his first wife, Gillian.
Infants in Wiccan families may be involved in a ritual called a
Wiccaning, which is analogous to a
Christening. The purpose of this is to present the infant to the God
and Goddess for protection. Despite this, in accordance with the
importance put on free will in Wicca, the child is not necessarily
expected or required to adhere to Wicca or other forms of paganism
should they not wish to do so when they get older.[citation
needed]
Book of Shadows
In Wicca, there is no set sacred text such as the Christian
Bible,
Jewish
Tanakh or Islamic
Quran,
although there are certain scriptures and texts that various traditions
hold to be important and influence their beliefs and practices. Gerald
Gardner used a book containing many different texts in his covens, known
as the
Book of Shadows (among other names), which he would frequently add
to and adapt. In his Book of Shadows, there are texts taken from various
sources, including
Charles Godfrey Leland's
Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches (1899) and the works of
19th–20th century
occultist
Aleister Crowley, whom Gardner knew personally. Also in the Book are
examples of poetry largely composed by Gardner and his High Priestess
Doreen Valiente, the most notable of which is the
Charge of the Goddess.
"The Book of Shadows is not a Bible or Quran. It is a
personal cookbook of spells that have worked for the owner.
I am giving you mine to copy to get you started: as you gain
experience discard those spells that don’t work for you and
substitute those that you have thought of yourselves."
Similar in use to the
grimoires of
ceremonial magicians,[77]
the Book contained instructions for how to perform rituals and spells,
as well as religious poetry and chants like
Eko Eko Azarak to use in those rituals. Gardner's original
intention was that every copy of the Book would be different, because a
student would copy from their initiators, but changing things which they
felt to be personally ineffective, however amongst many Gardnerian
Witches today, particularly in the
United States, all copies of the Book are kept identical to the
version that the High Priestess
Monique Wilson copied from Gardner, with nothing being altered. The
Book of Shadows was originally meant to be kept a secret from
non-initiates into BTW, but parts of the Book have been published by
authors including
Charles Cardell, Lady Sheba,
Janet Farrar and
Stewart Farrar.[79]
Today, adherents of many non-BTW traditions have also adopted the
concept of the Book of Shadows, with many solitaries also keeping their
own versions, sometimes including material taken from the published
Gardnerian Book of Shadows. In other traditions however, practices are
never written down, meaning that there is no need for a Book of Shadows.
In certain Traditional Witchcraft traditions, different forms
of literature are used, for instance in the
1734 Tradition, the published articles of
Robert Cochrane along with letters he wrote to
Joseph Wilson,
Robert Graves[80]
and others are held in high esteem[81]
whilst in the Sabbatic tradition, various grimoires are followed, such
as the Azoetia of
Andrew Chumbley.
Symbols
A range of
symbols are used by Wiccans. The most common is the
pentagram, the five pointed star, as a representation of (microcosmic)
quinaries. Each of its points are associated with one of the five
classical elements, the five human appendages, etc. Other common
symbols include the
triskelion,
triquetra,
Three hares, and
Triple moon.
Traditions
In the 1950s through to the 1970s, when the Wiccan movement was
largely confined to lineaged groups such as
Gardnerian Wicca, a "tradition" usually implied the transfer of a
lineage by initiation. However, with the rise of more and more such
groups, often being founded by those with no previous initiatory
lineage, the term came to be a synonym for a
religious denomination within Wicca. There are many such traditions[82][83]
and there are also many
solitary practitioners who do not align themselves with any
particular lineage, working alone. There are also covens that have
formed but who do not follow any particular tradition, instead choosing
their influences and practices eclectically.
Those traditions which trace a line of initiatory descent back to
Gerald Gardner include
Gardnerian Wicca,
Alexandrian Wicca and the
Algard tradition; because of their joint history, they are often
referred to as
British Traditional Wicca, particularly in
North America. Other traditions trace their origins to different
figures, even if their beliefs and practices have been influenced to a
greater or lesser extent by Gardner. These include
Cochrane's Craft and the
1734 Tradition, both of which trace their origins to
Robert Cochrane;
Feri, which traces itself back to
Victor Anderson and
Gwydion Pendderwen; and
Dianic Wicca, whose followers often trace their influences back to
Zsuzsanna Budapest. Some of these groups prefer to refer to
themselves as Witches, thereby distinguishing themselves from the
BTW traditions, who more typically use the term Wiccan (see
Etymology).
Many traditions, including those of British Traditional Wicca,
require formal
initiation within an established
coven for
membership of their respective traditions. In this manner, all BTW's can
trace a direct line of descent all the way back to Gardner. Other
traditions, however, do not hold this to be necessary.
Covens
Lineaged Wicca is organised into
covens of
initiated priests and priestesses. Covens are autonomous, and are
generally headed by a High Priest and a High Priestess working in
partnership, being a couple who have each been through their first,
second and third degrees of initiation. Occasionally the leaders of a
coven are only second-degree initiates, in which case they come under
the rule of the parent coven. Initiation and training of new priesthood
is most often performed within a coven environment, but this is not a
necessity, and a few initiated Wiccans are unaffiliated with any coven.[29]
A commonly quoted Wiccan tradition holds that the ideal number of
members for a coven is
thirteen, though this is not held as a hard-and-fast rule.[29]
Indeed, many U.S. covens are far smaller, though the membership may be
augmented by unaffiliated Wiccans at "open" rituals. When covens grow
beyond their ideal number of members, they often split (or "hive") into
multiple covens, yet remain connected as a group. A grouping of multiple
covens is known as a grove in many traditions.[citation
needed]
Initiation into a coven is traditionally preceded by an
apprenticeship period of a year and a day.[84]
A course of study may be set during this period. In some covens a
"dedication" ceremony may be performed during this period, some time
before the initiation proper, allowing the person to attend certain
rituals on a probationary basis. Some solitary Wiccans also choose to
study for a year and a day before their self-dedication to the religion.
Eclectic Wicca
A large number of professed Wiccans do not exclusively follow any
single tradition. These
eclectic Wiccans each create their own
syncretic spiritual paths by adopting and reinventing the
beliefs and
rituals
of a variety of religious traditions connected to Wicca and broader
Paganism.
While the origins of modern Wiccan practice lie in
covenantal
activity of select few
initiates in established lineages, eclectic Wiccans are more often
than not
solitary practitioners uninitiated in any tradition. A widening
public appetite, especially in the
United States, made traditional initiation unable to satisfy
demand
for involvement in Wicca. Since the 1970s, larger, more informal, often
publicly advertised camps and workshops began to take place.[85]
This less formal but more accessible form of Wicca proved successful.
Eclectic Wicca is the most
popular variety of Wicca in America[86]
and eclectics now significantly outnumber lineaged Wiccans.
Eclectic Wicca is not necessarily the complete abandonment of
tradition. Eclectic practitioner may follow their own individual ideas
and ritual practices, while still drawing on one or more religious or
philosophical paths. Electic approachs to Wicca often draw on
Earth religion and
ancient Egyptian,
Greek,
Saxon,
Anglo-Saxon,
Celtic,
Asian,
Jewish,
and
Polynesian tradition.
History
Origins,
1921–1935
In the 1920s and 30s, the Egyptologist
Dr. Margaret Murray published several books detailing her theories
that
those persecuted as witches during the
early modern period in Europe were not, as the persecutors had
claimed, followers of
Satanism, but adherents of a surviving pre-Christian
pagan
religion - the
Witch-Cult. These hypotheses, which were argued over by academics
for decades, have since been widely rejected.[88]
It was during the 1930s that the first evidence appears for the
practice of a pagan Witchcraft religion[89]
(what would be recognisable now as Wicca) in England. It seems that
several groups around the country, in such places as
Norfolk,[90]
Cheshire[91]
and the
New
Forest had set themselves up as continuing in the tradition of
Murray's Witch-Cult, albeit with influences coming from disparate
sources such as
ceremonial magic,
folk magic,
Freemasonry,
Theosophy,
Romanticism,
Druidry,
classical mythology and Asian religions.
Early development, 1936–1959
The history of modern Wicca starts with
Gerald Gardner (the "Father of Wicca") in the mid-20th century.
Gardner was a retired
British
civil servant and amateur
anthropologist, with a broad familiarity in
paganism and
occultism. He claimed to have been
initiated into a
witches' coven of
New Forest,
Hampshire, in the late 1930s. Intent on perpetuating this craft,
Gardner founded the
Bricket Wood coven with his wife Donna in the 1940s, after buying
the
Naturist Fiveacres Country Club.
Much of the coven's early membership was drawn from the club's members
and its meetings were held within the club grounds.[94]
Many notable figures of early Wicca were direct initiates of this coven,
including
Dafo,
Doreen Valiente,
Jack Bracelin,
Frederic Lamond,
Dayonis,
Eleanor Bone and
Lois Bourne.
The Witchcraft religion became more prominent beginning in 1951, with
the repeal of the
Witchcraft Act of 1735, after which
Gerald Gardner and then others such as
Charles Cardell and
Cecil Williamson began publicising their own versions of the Craft.
Gardner and others never used the term "Wicca" as a religious
identifier, simply referring to the "witch cult", "witchcraft", and the
"Old Religion". However, Gardner did refer to witches as "the Wica".[96]
During the 1960s, the name of the religion normalised to "Wicca".[98]
Gardner's tradition, later termed
Gardnerianism, soon became the dominant form in
England
and spread to other parts of the
British Isles.
Adaptation and spread, 1960–present
Following Gardner's death in 1964, the Craft continued to grow
unabated despite sensationalism and negative portrayals in British
tabloids, with new traditions being propagated by figures like
Robert Cochrane,
Sybil Leek and most importantly
Alex Sanders, whose
Alexandrian Wicca, which was predominantly based upon Gardnerian
Wicca, albeit with an emphasis placed on
ceremonial magic, spread quickly and gained much media attention.
Around this time, the term "Wicca" began to be commonly adopted over
"Witchcraft" and the faith was exported to countries like
Australia and the
United States.
It was in the United States and in Australia that new, home-grown
traditions, sometimes based upon earlier, regional folk-magical
traditions and often mixed with the basic structure of Gardnerian Wicca,
began to develop, including
Victor Anderson's
Feri Tradition,
Joseph Wilson's
1734 Tradition,
Aidan Kelly's
New Reformed Orthodox Order of the Golden Dawn and eventually
Zsuzsanna Budapest's
Dianic Wicca, each of which emphasised different aspects of the
faith.[99]
It was also around this time that books teaching people how to become
Witches themselves without formal initiation or training began to
emerge, among them
Paul Huson's
Mastering Witchcraft (1970) and Lady Sheba's Book of Shadows
(1971). Similar books continued to be published throughout the 1980s and
1990s, fuelled by the writing of such authors as
Doreen Valiente,
Janet Farrar,
Stewart Farrar and
Scott Cunningham, who popularised the idea of self-initiation into
the Craft. Among witches in Canada, anthropologist Dr.
Heather Botting (nee Harden) of the University of Victoria has been
one of the most prominent, having been the first recognized Wiccan
chaplain of a public university.[100]
Original high priestess of
Coven Celeste, she is one of the founders of the Canadian
Aquarian Tabernacle Church.[101]
In the 1990s, amid ever-rising numbers of self-initiates, the popular
media began to explore "witchcraft" in fictional films like
The Craft and television series like
Charmed,
introducing numbers of young people to the idea of religious witchcraft.
This growing demographic was soon catered to through the
Internet and by authors like
Silver RavenWolf, much to the criticism of traditional Wiccan groups
and individuals. In response to the way that Wicca was increasingly
portrayed as trendy, eclectic, and influenced by the
New Age
movement, many Witches turned to the pre-Gardnerian origins of the
Craft, and to the traditions of his rivals like Cardell and Cochrane,
describing themselves as following "Traditional Witchcraft". Prominent
groups within this Traditional Witchcraft revival included
Andrew Chumbley's Cultus Sabbati and the Cornish Ros an Bucca coven.
Debates over the origin of Wicca
According to Gerald Gardner's account in
Witchcraft Today and
The Meaning of Witchcraft, Wicca is
the survival of a theoretical European witch-cult that was
persecuted during the
witch trials.[102]
Theories of an organised pan-European witch-cult, as well as mass trials
thereof, have been largely discredited, but it is still common for
Wiccans to claim solidarity with witch trial victims.[103]
The notion of the survival of Wiccan traditions and rituals from
ancient sources is contested by most recent researchers, who suggest
that Wicca is a 20th-century creation which combines elements of
freemasonry and 19th-century occultism.[104]
However, historians such as
Ronald Hutton have noted that Wicca not only predates the modern New
Age movement but also differs markedly in its general philosophy.
In his 1999 book
The Triumph of the Moon, Ronald Hutton researched the Wiccan
claim that ancient pagan customs have survived into modern times after
being Christianised in medieval times as folk practices. Hutton found
that most of the folk customs which are claimed to have pagan roots
(such as the
Maypole
dance) actually date from the Middle Ages. He concluded that the idea
that medieval revels were pagan in origin is a legacy of the
Protestant Reformation.[105]
Modern scholarly investigations have concluded that Witch trials were
substantially fewer than claimed by Gardner, and seldom at the behest of
religious authorities. For example, in the 1996 book Witches and
Neighbors, Robin Briggs examines the history of witchcraft in
medieval Europe and refutes the widely-told story that large numbers of
independent women were burned at the stake by vindictive Christian
ecclesiastics for the crime of practising naturalistic healing or
neopagan religion. Most scholars estimate that a total of 40,000 people
were executed as witches during the entire medieval period, and that
church authorities participated reluctantly in this process, which was
largely fuelled by the political turmoil of the Reformation.[107]
Demographics
The actual number of Wiccans worldwide is unknown, and it has been
noted that it is more difficult to establish the numbers of members of
Neopagan faiths than many other religions due to their disorganised
structure.[108]
However,
Adherents.com, an independent website which specialises in
collecting estimates of world religions, cites over thirty sources with
estimates of numbers of Wiccans (principally from the USA and UK). From
this, they developed a median estimate of 800,000 members.[109]
In the United States population alone, there have been many attempts at
finding a figure, with the 2001
American Religious Identification Survey estimating that at least
134,000 adults identified themselves as Wiccans, compared to 8,000 in
1990.[110]
Wiccans have also made up significant proportions of various groups
within that country; for instance, Wicca is the largest non-Christian
faith practised in the
United States Air Force, with 1,434 airmen identifying themselves as
such.[111]
"[The average Wiccan is] a man in his forties, or a woman in
her thirties,
Caucasian, reasonably well educated, not earning much
but probably not too concerned about material things,
someone that demographers would call
lower middle class."
In the United Kingdom, census figures on religion were first
collected in 2001. A campaign by the
Pagan Federation before the
2001 Census encouraged Wiccans, Heathens, Druids and others to
describe their religion simply as "Pagan"[citation
needed] but no deatiled statistics were reported
outside of the six main religions.[113]
For the
2011 census a more detailed breakdown of responses was reported with
56,620 people identifying themselves as Pagans, 11,766 as Wiccans and a
further 1,276 describing their religion as "Witchcraft".[114]
Acceptance of
Wiccans
The use of the inverted pentagram by the
Church of Satan has contributed to the misidentification
of Wiccans as
Satanists.
Wicca emerged in a predominantly
Christian country, and from its inception suffered opposition from
certain Christian groups and from the popular tabloids like the
News of the World. Some Christians still believe that Wicca is a
form of
Satanism, despite important differences between these religions,[115]
such as the lack of a
Satan-like
figure in Wiccan theology. Due to negative connotations associated with
witchcraft, many Wiccans continue the traditional practice of secrecy,
concealing their faith for fear of persecution. Revealing oneself as
Wiccan to family, friends or colleagues is often termed "coming out of
the broom-closet".[116]
In a similar way, some people have accused Wicca of being
anti-Christian, a claim disputed by Wiccans such as
Doreen Valiente, who stated that whilst she knew many Wiccans who
admired Jesus,
"witches have little respect for the doctrines of the churches, which
they regard as a lot of man-made dogma".[117]
In the United States, a number of legal decisions have improved and
validated the status of Wiccans, especially
Dettmer v. Landon in 1985. However, Wiccans have encountered
opposition from some politicians and Christian organisations,[118][119]
including former president of the United States
George W. Bush, who stated that he did not believe Wicca to be a
religion.[120]
In Canada, Dr.
Heather Botting ("Lady Aurora") and Dr.
Gary Botting ("Pan"), the original high priestess and high priest of
Coven Celeste and founding elders of the
Aquarian Tabernacle Church, successfully campaigned the
British Columbian provincial government and the Canadian federal
government in 1995 to allow them to perform recognised Wiccan weddings,
to become prison and hospital chaplains, and (in the case of Heather
Botting) to become the first officially recognized Wiccan chaplain in a
public university.[121][121][122]
The Bottings had been initiated into Wicca in 1966 by Gerald Gardner's
London-based high priestess,
Lysbeth Turner.
References
Notes
-
^
Pearson, Joanne; Roberts, Richard H;
Samuel, Geoffrey (December 1998).
Nature Religion Today: Paganism in the Modern World.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. p. 6.
ISBN 0-7486-1057-X.
OCLC 39533917.
-
^
Ravenwolf, Silver (1998). Teen Witch: Wicca for a New
Generation. St Paul, Minnesota: Llewellyn. p. 25.
ISBN 1-56718-725-0.
-
^
a
b
c
Pearson, Joanne E. (2005).
"Wicca". In Jones, Lindsay. Encyclopedia of Religion
14. Detroit: Macmaillan Reference USA. p. 9730.
-
^
Crowther, Patricia (1974). Witch Blood! The Diary of a
Witch High Priestess!. New York City: House of Collectibles.
ISBN 0-87637-161-6.
OCLC 1009193.
-
^
Cunningham, Scott. Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary
Practitioner.
ISBN 0-87542-184-9.
-
^
"Charge of the Star Goddess-Starhawk".
Wicca-spirituality.com. 2013-04-20.
Retrieved 2013-05-02.
-
^
"Charge of the Star Goddess-"Book of the Goddess" (Co-edited by
Julie Ann Rhoads and Ann Forfreedom in 1979-80):".
Barsoomfishrap.org. Retrieved
2013-05-02.
-
^
Crowley, Vivianne. Wicca: The Old Religion in the New
Millennium. p. 129.
ISBN 0-7225-3271-7.
-
^
a
b
c
Buckland 1986, pp. 17, 18, 53.
-
^
Valiente, Doreen (1973). An ABC
of Witchcraft Past and Present. Hale. pp. Introduction.
ISBN 0-919345-77-8.
-
^
Huson, Paul (1970). Mastering
Witchcraft. Page 27. Putnam.
-
^
Sanders, Alex (1984). The Alex Sanders Lectures.
Magickal Childe.
ISBN 0-939708-05-1.
-
^
Mathiesin, Robert; Theitic (2005).
The Rede of the Wiccae. Providence, Rhode Island:
Olympian Press. Page 60-61,
-
^
Harrow, Judy (Oimelc
1985).
"Exegesis on the Rede".
Harvest 5 (3). Archived from
the original on 2007-07-28.
-
^ Lembke, Karl
(2002)
The Threefold Law.
-
^
Adams,
Luthaneal (2011).
The Book of Mirrors. UK: Capall Bann. p. 218.
ISBN 1-86163-325-4.
-
^
Zell-Ravenheart, Oberon;
Zell-Ravenheart, Morning Glory (2006).
Creating Circles & Ceremonies.
Franklin Lakes: New Page Books. p. 42.
ISBN 1-56414-864-5.
-
^
Lamond, Frederic R (2004). Fifty
Years of Wicca. United Kingdom: Green Magic. pp. 88–89.
ISBN 0-9547230-1-5.
-
^
Valiente, Doreen (1988) [1973]. An ABC of Witchcraft Past
and Present.
Custer: Phoenix Publishing. p. 264.
ISBN 0-919345-77-8.
-
^
Crowley, Vivianne. Wicca: The
Old Religion in the New Age (1989) London: The Aquarian
Press.
ISBN 0-85030-737-6
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^
Leland, Charles (1899).
Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches. David Nutt. Page
7.
-
^
Guiley, Rosemary Ellen (1999). The Encyclopedia of
Witches and Witchcraft (2nd ed.). New York: Checkmark Books.
p. 52.
ISBN 0-8160-3849-X.
-
^
Gary, Gemma (2008). Traditional
Witchcraft: A Cornish Book of Ways. Troy Books. Page 147.
-
^
Evans, Emrys (1992). Mythology.
Little Brown & Company.
ISBN 0-316-84763-1. Page 170.
-
^
Lamond, Frederic (2004). Fifty Years of Wicca. Sutton
Mallet, England: Green Magic. pp. 16–17.
ISBN 0-9547230-1-5.
-
^
Crowley, Vivianne. Wicca: The
Old Religion in the New Age (1989) London: The Aquarian
Press.
ISBN 0-85030-737-6 p.23
-
^
Simpson, Jacqueline (2005). "Witching Culture: Folklore and
Neo-Paganism in America". Folklore 116.
-
^
[1] Witchcraft today: an encyclopedia of Wiccan and neopagan
traditions - Page 238, by James R. Lewis
-
^
Huson,
Paul (1970). Mastering Witchcraft: A Practical Guide for
Witches, Warlocks and Covens. New York: Putnum. pp. 22–23.
ISBN 0-595-42006-0.
OCLC 79263.
-
^
Lamond, Frederic (2004). Fifty
Years of Wicca. Page 14. Green Magic.
-
^
Crowley, Vivianne (1989). Wicca:
The Old Religion in the New Age. London: Aquarian Press.
pp. 14–15.
ISBN 0-85030-737-6.
-
^
Gardner, Gerald (2004). Naylor, A R (ed.), ed. Witchcraft
and the Book of Shadows. Thame: I-H-O Books.
ISBN 1-872189-52-0.
-
^
Grevel
Lindop, ed. (24 May 2010).
"Robert Cochrane’s Letters to Robert Graves". The Cauldron.
Retrieved 8 June 2010.
-
^
Cochrane, Robert; Michael Howard and Evan John Jones (2003).
The Robert Cochrane Letters: An Insight into Modern
Traditional Witchcraft. UK: Capall Bann Publishing.
ISBN 1-86163-221-5.
-
^
"Beaufort House Index of English Traditional Witchcraft".
Beaufort House Association. 1999-01-15.
Retrieved 2007-04-02.
-
^
"Different types of Witchcraft". Hex Archive.
Retrieved 2007-04-02.
-
^
Guiley, Rosemary Ellen (1999). The Encyclopedia of
Witches and Witchcraft (2nd ed.). New York: Checkmark Books.
p. 169.
ISBN 0-8160-3849-X.
-
^
Howard, Michael (2009). Modern
Wicca. Woodbury, Minnesota: Llewellyn. Page 299-301
-
^
Smith, Diane (2005). Wicca and
Witchcraft for Dummies. Wiley Publishing. Pg. 125.
-
^
Guiley, Rosemary Ellen (1999). The Encyclopedia of
Witches and Witchcraft (2nd ed.). New York: Checkmark Books.
p. 234.
ISBN 0-8160-3849-X.
-
^
Heselton, Philip (November 2001). Wiccan Roots: Gerald
Gardner and the Modern Witchcraft Revival. Freshfields,
Chieveley,
Berkshire: Capall Bann Pub.
ISBN 1-86163-110-3.
OCLC 46955899.
See also
Nevill Drury. "Why Does Aleister Crowley Still Matter?"
Richard Metzger, ed. Book of Lies: The Disinformation Guide
to Magick and the Occult. Disinformation Books, 2003.
-
^
Bourne, Lois (1998). Dancing
With Witches. Hale. Page 51.
-
^
Heselton, Philip (2003). Gerald
Gardner and the Cauldron of Inspiration. Capall Bann. Page
254.
-
^
Fifty Years of Wicca,
Frederic Lamond, page 30-31
-
^
Gardner, Gerald B (1999) [1954]. Witchcraft Today.
Lake Toxaway, NC: Mercury Publishing.
ISBN 0-8065-2593-2.
OCLC 44936549.
-
^
Seims, Melissa (2008).
"Wica or Wicca? - Politics and the Power of Words". The
Cauldron (129).
-
^
Holzer, Hans (1972). The New Pagans. Garden City, NY:
Doubleday.
OCLC 281240.
-
^
Todd,
Douglas.
"University of Victoria chaplain marks solstice with pagan
rituals | Vancouver Sun". Blogs.vancouversun.com.
Retrieved 2013-05-02.
-
^
"ATC Affiliates – Canada". Aquarian Tabernacle Church.
Retrieved 2013-05-02.
-
^
Buckland 2002, p. 96.
-
^
Buckland 2002, 10: Roots of Modern Wica.
-
^
Allen, Charlotte (January 2001).
"The Scholars and the Goddess". The Atlantic Monthly
(287).
OCLC 202832236.
-
^
Davis,
Philip G (1998). Goddess Unmasked. Dallas: Spence.
ISBN 0-9653208-9-8.
-
^
Briggs, Robin (1998). Witches and
Neighbors. Penguin.
ISBN 0-14-014438-2.
-
^
Bonewits, Isaac (2005).
"How Many "Pagans" Are There?". Neopagan.net.
Retrieved 7 April 2012.
-
^
"Statistical summary pages: W". Adherents.com.
Retrieved 7 April 2012.
-
^
Banerjee, Neela (16 May 2007).
"Wiccans Keep the Faith With a Religion Under Wraps". The
New York Times. Retrieved
7 April 2012.
-
^
Holmes,
Erik (17 January 2010).
"Respect healthy for different faiths". Air Force Times.
Retrieved 20 October 2010.
-
^
Ruickbie, Leo (2004). Witchcraft Out of the Shadows.
Hale. p. 177.
ISBN 0-7090-7567-7.
-
^
[Census 2001 Key Statistics - Local
Authorities KS07 Religion (Excel sheet 78Kb)
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/census/census-2001-key-statistics/local-authorities-in-england-and-wales/local-authorities-ks07--religion.xls],
Office for National Statistics
-
^
Office for National Statistics, 11
December 2012,
2011 Census, Key Statistics for Local Authorities in England and
Wales. Accessed 12 December 2012.
-
^
Davis, Derek; Hankins, Barry (2003).
New Religious Movements and Religious Liberty in America
(2nd ed.).
Waco:
Baylor University Press. p. 75.
ISBN 0-918954-92-4.
OCLC 52895492.
"Much to the chagrin of practitioners of Wicca, there has been
confusion in the minds of many about their religion, which is
often linked with Satanism, although there are important
differences."
-
^
'Bewitched' (2003-12-04).
"Witch Way". Slate.com.
Retrieved 2008-05-16. "Believe me, coming out of the
"broom closet" is a one-way trip."
-
^
Valiente, Doreen (1973). An ABC
of Witchcraft Past and Present. Hale. pp. Introduction.
ISBN 0-919345-77-8.
-
^
Silk, Mark (Summer 1999).
"Something Wiccan This Way Comes". Religion in the News
2 (2).
ISSN 1525-7207.
Archived from
the original on 2007-05-24.
-
^
"Barr's Witch Project: Lawmaker Wants to Ban Witches from the
Military". LawStreet Journal. 1999-11-01. Archived
from
the original on 2000-02-29.
Retrieved 2007-07-11.
-
^
"George W. Bush Justifies Off-The-Cuff Bigotry". Positive
Atheism Magazine. 1999-06-01.
Retrieved 2008-11-30.
-
^
a
b
"Wiccan Chaplaincy | Aquarian Tabernacle Church Canada".
Atccanada.org. 2012-11-29.
Retrieved 2013-05-02.
-
^
Todd,
http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2010/12/16/pagans-celebrate-solstice-with-yule-rituals/
Sources
Academic books
Journal articles
Wiccan literature
-
Buckland, Raymond (September 2002) [First published 1971].
Witchcraft From The Inside: Origins of the Fastest Growing
Religious Movement in America (third edition ed.). St. Paul,
MN:
Llewellyn Publications.
ISBN 1-56718-101-5.
OCLC 31781774.
-
Buckland, Raymond (1986).
Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft.
Saint Paul: Llewellyn.
ISBN 0-87542-050-8.
OCLC 14167961.
-
Farrar, Janet;
Farrar, Stewart (1981). A Witches' Bible: The Complete
Witches Handbook.
London: Phoenix Publishing.
ISBN 0-919345-92-1.
OCLC 62866821.
-
Farrar, Janet;
Farrar, Stewart (1984). The Witches' Way: Principles,
Rituals and Beliefs of Modern Witchcraft. Phoenix
Publishing.
ISBN 0-919345-71-9.
-
Farrar, Janet;
Farrar, Stewart (1987). The Witches' Goddess: The
Feminine Principle of Divinity.
London: Robert Hale Publishing.
ISBN 0-7090-2800-8.
-
Farrar, Janet;
Farrar, Stewart (1989). The Witches' God: Lord of the
Dance.
London: Robert Hale.
ISBN 0-7090-3319-2.
-
Farrar, Janet;
Farrar, Stewart (May 1992) [1981]. Eight Sabbats for
Witches.
London: Robert Hale Publishing.
ISBN 0-7090-4778-9.
OCLC 26673966.
-
Farrar, Janet;
Bone, Gavin (January 2004). Progressive Witchcraft:
Spirituality, Mysteries, and Training in Modern Wicca.
Franklin Lakes, NJ: New Age Books.
ISBN 1-56414-719-3.
OCLC 53223741.
-
Farrar, Stewart (1983). What Witches Do: A Modern Coven
Revealed. Robert Hale Publishing.
ISBN 0-919345-17-4.
-
Gallagher, Ann-Marie (2005). The Wicca Bible: the
Definitive Guide to Magic and the Craft.
New York: Sterling Publishing.
ISBN 1-4027-3008-X.
- Gardner,
Gerald B. (1988) [First published 1959].
The Meaning of Witchcraft.
Llewellyn Worldwide.
ISBN 0-939708-02-7.
OCLC 1059746.
-
Valiente, Doreen (1973). An ABC of Witchcraft Past and
Present. Robert Hale Publishing.
ISBN 0-919345-77-8.
-
Valiente, Doreen (1989). The Rebirth of Witchcraft.
London: Robert Hale Publishing.
ISBN 0-7090-3715-5.
OCLC 59694320.
Further reading
- Significant historical works
-
- Practices and beliefs
-
- History of Wicca
-
-
Kelly, Aidan A (1991). Crafting the Art of Magic: A
History of Modern Witchcraft, 1939-1964. Llewellyn.
ISBN 0-87542-370-1.76
-
Heselton, Philip (2000). Wiccan Roots: Gerald Gardner and
the Modern Witchcraft Revival. Capall Bann.
ISBN 1-86163-110-3.
- Heselton, Philip (2001).
Gerald Gardner and the Witchcraft Revival: The Significance of
His Life and Works to the Story of Modern Witchcraft.
I-H-O Books.
ISBN 1-872189-16-4.
- Heselton, Philip (2003).
Gerald Gardner and the Cauldron of Inspiration: An Investigation
into the Sources of Gardnerian Witchcraft. Capall Bann.
ISBN 1-86163-164-2.
- Wicca in different countries
-
- General
-
-
Buckland, Raymond (1 January 2002). The Witch Book: The
Encyclopedia of Witchcraft, Wicca, and Neo-paganism. Visible
Ink Press.
ISBN 1578591147.
- Lewis, James R (1999).
Witchcraft Today: An Encyclopedia of Wiccan and Neopagan
Traditions. ABC-CLIO.
ISBN 1576071340.
- Rabinovitch, Shelly; Lewis,
James R, eds. (2002). The Encyclopedia of Modern Witchcraft
and Neo-Paganism.
Kensington.
ISBN 0806524065.
- Lewis, James R, ed. (1996).
Magical Religion and Modern Witchcraft.
State University of New York Press.
ISBN 0585036500.
- Luhrmann, T M (1994).
Persuasions of the Witch's Craft: Ritual Magic in Contemporary
England. Picador.
ISBN 9780330329460.
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