Wicca Totally Explained

Everything about Wiccans totally explained

Wicca, is a nature-based religion popularised in 1954 by Gerald Gardner, a retired British civil servant, who at the time called it Witchcraft. He said that the religion, of which he was an initiate, was a modern survival of an old witchcraft religion which had existed in secret for hundreds of years, originating in the pre-Christian paganism of Europe.
Various Wiccan traditions have since evolved from that established by Gardner, which came to be called Gardnerian Wicca. These other traditions have distinctive beliefs, rituals, and practices, and some remain secretive and require that members be initiated. Other traditions have also formed independently of Gardnerian lineage, including a growing movement of Eclectic Wiccans who don't believe that any doctrine or traditional initiation is necessary in order to practice Wicca.
The term 'Wicca' has somewhat different usage between Britain and North America. In Britain 'Wicca' has traditionally referred only to initiatory witchcraft in the lineage of Gerald Gardner and the New Forest coven (for example Gardnerian and Alexandrian Wicca), sometimes referred to as British Traditional Wicca in North America. In North America the term 'Wicca' has become more inclusive and encompasses a number of traditions inspired by but independent of that lineage.

Core concepts

Wicca is a pagan religion with distinctive ritual forms, seasonal observances and religious, magical and ethical precepts. Other forms of witchcraft exist within many cultures, with widely varying practices. Many Wiccans call themselves Pagans, though the umbrella term Paganism encompasses many faiths that have nothing to do with Wicca or witchcraft. Wicca has also been described as a Neopagan or a Mesopagan path. Because there's no centralised organisation in Wicca, and no single orthodoxy, the beliefs and practices of Wiccans can vary substantially, both among individuals and among traditions. Typically, the main religious principles, ethics, and ritual structures are shared, since they're key elements of traditional teachings and published works on the subject.
   As practised by initiates in the lineage of Gerald Gardner, Wicca is a variety of witchcraft founded on religious and magical concepts. As such it's distinguished not only by its beliefs, but by its practice of magic, its ethical philosophy, initiatory system, organisational structure and secrecy. They are sometimes symbolised as the Sun and Moon, and from her lunar associations the Goddess becomes a Triple Goddess with aspects of "Maiden", "Mother" and "Crone". Some Wiccans see the Goddess as pre-eminent, since she contains and conceives all; the God is 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 some traditions, notably feminist Dianic Wicca, the Goddess is seen as complete unto herself, and the God isn't worshipped at all. Wicca is essentially an immanent religion, and for some Wiccans, this idea also involves elements of animism. A key belief in Wicca is that the goddesses and gods are able to manifest in personal form, most importantly through the bodies of Priestesses and Priests via the ritual of Drawing down the Moon (or Drawing down the Sun).
   According to Gardner, the gods of Wicca are ancient gods of the British Isles: a Horned God and a Great Mother goddess. Gardner also states that a being higher than any of these tribal gods is recognised by the witches as Prime Mover, but remains unknowable. Patricia Crowther has called this supreme godhead Dryghten, and some link this to ideas of a pantheistic view of God, such as the Hindu Brahman.
   Some Wiccans have a monotheistic belief in the Goddess and God as One. Many have a duotheistic conception of deity as a Goddess (of Moon, Earth and sea) and a God (of forest, hunting and the animal realm). This concept is often extended into a kind of polytheism by the belief that the gods and goddesses of all cultures are aspects of this pair (or of the Goddess alone). Others hold the various gods and goddesses to be separate and distinct. Still others don't believe in the gods as real personalities, but see them as archetypes or thoughtforms. Janet Farrar and Gavin Bone have observed that Wicca is becoming more polytheistic as it matures, and embracing a more traditional pagan world-view.
   Beliefs in the afterlife vary among Wiccans, though some support reincarnation. Reincarnation is a traditional Wiccan teaching - Raymond Buckland holds that a soul always reincarnates into the same species, 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.
   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're ordered in pairs of complementary opposites, reflecting a dualism that's common throughout Wiccan philosophy. Some lineaged Wiccans also observe a set of 161 Wiccan Laws, commonly called the Craft Laws or Ardanes. Valiente, one of Gardner's original high priestesses, argued that these rules were most likely invented by Gardner himself in mock-archaic language as the by-product of inner conflict within his Bricket Wood coven.
   Although Gardner initially demonstrated an aversion to homosexuality, claiming that it brought down "the curse of the goddess", it's now accepted in many traditions of Wicca.

Ritual practices

When practising magic and casting spells, as well as when celebrating various festivals, Wiccans use a variety of rituals. 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: East (Air), South (Fire), West (Water) and North (Earth). This use of the classical elements is a key feature of the Wiccan world-view. Every manifest force or form is seen to express one or more of the four elements. Some add a fifth or quintessential element called Spirit (also called aether or akasha). The five points of the frequently worn pentagram symbolise, among other things, the four elements with spirit presiding at the top. Once the circle is cast, a seasonal ritual may be performed, prayers to the God and Goddess are said, and spells are sometimes worked.
Many Wiccans use a special set of magical tools in their rituals. These can include a broom (besom), cauldron, chalice, wand, Book of Shadows, altar cloth, athame, boline, candles, crystals, pentacle and/or incense. An altar is usually present in the circle, on which ritual tools are placed and representations of the God/Goddess may be displayed.. 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 and the circle is closed.
A sensationalised aspect of Wicca, particularly in Gardnerian Wicca, 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. Skyclad working is mostly the province of Initiatory Wiccans, who are outnumbered by the less strictly observant Eclectics. When they work clothed, Wiccans may wear robes with cords tied around the waist, "Renaissance-faire"-type clothing or normal street clothes.

Special occasions

Wiccans hold a wide range of occasions with religious significance. Each full moon, and in some cases a new moon, is marked with a ritual called an Esbat. Wiccans also follow the Wheel of the Year and celebrate its eight festivals known as Sabbats. Four of these, the cross-quarter days, are greater festivals, coinciding with Celtic fire festivals. These are Samhain, Beltane or May Eve, Imbolc, and Lammas or Lughnasadh. The four lesser festivals are the Summer and Winter solstices, and the Spring and Autumn Equinoxes, which are referred to by some groups as Litha, Yule, Ostara and Mabon, respectively. The names of these holidays 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. 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 Lammas (Lughnasadh), as this was the traditional time for trial, "Telltown marriages" among the Irish. 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 isn't necessarily expected or required to follow a Pagan path should they not wish to do so when they get older.

Book of Shadows

In Wicca a private journal or core religious text known as a Book of Shadows is kept by practitioners, similar to a grimoire. In lineaged groups, such as Gardnerian Wicca, the Book's contents are kept secret from anyone but the members of the lineage concerned (for example, those initiating and initiated by a particular coven). However, several proposed versions of the Book have been published. Sections of these published versions, such as the "Wiccan Rede" and the "Charge of the Goddess", as well as other published writings about Wicca, have been adopted by non-initiates, or eclectic Wiccans. For many eclectics, they create their own personal books, whose contents are often only known by themselves.

Traditions

A "tradition" in Wicca usually implies the transfer of a lineage by initiation. There are many such traditions and there are also many solitary or Eclectic Wiccans who don't align themselves with any particular lineage, some working alone, some joining in covens. There are also other forms of witchcraft which don't claim origins in Wicca. Traditions within the United States are well described in Margot Adler's, Starhawk's The Spiral Dance, and Chas S. Clifton's Her Hidden Children: The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America.
The lack of consensus in establishing definitive categories in Wiccan communities has often resulted in confusion between Lineaged Wicca and the emergence of Eclectic traditions. This can be seen in the common description of many Eclectic traditions as traditional/initiatory/lineaged as well. In the United States, where the confusion usually arises, Wiccans in the various linages extending from Gardner may describe themselves as British Traditional Wiccans.

Covens and Solitary Wiccans

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 isn't a necessity, and a few initiated Wiccans are unaffiliated with any coven.
A commonly quoted Wiccan tradition holds that the ideal number of members for a coven is thirteen, though this isn't held as a hard-and-fast rule.

History

Origins

The origins of Wicca are much debated. Gerald Gardner brought the religion to public attention in the 1950s. He claimed that after retiring from working in Asia, he encountered the New Forest coven and was initiated into it. Subsequently fearing that the Craft would die out, he worked on his book Witchcraft Today, releasing it in 1954, followed by The Meaning of Witchcraft in 1959. These books gave some details of the rituals and beliefs and attracted many new initiates from the 1960s onwards. Many of Gardner's rites and precepts can be shown to have come from the writings of earlier occultists and other extant sources (such as Aleister Crowley), and the remaining original material is uncohesive and mostly takes the form of substitutions or expansions within unoriginal material. Roger Dearnaley describes it as a patchwork. Gardner claimed that the religion was a survival of matriarchal pagan religions of pre-historic Europe, taught to him by members of the New Forest Coven; their rites were fragmentary, and he'd substantially rewritten them. It has been posited by authors such as Aidan Kelly and Francis X. King that Gardner invented the rites in their entirety, incorporating elements from the pan-European witchcraft thesis of Dr. Margaret Murray, incantations from Aradia and practices of ceremonial magic. Philip Heselton concludes that while Gardner may have been mistaken about the ancient origins of the religion, his statements about it were largely made in good faith.
Some, such as Isaac Bonewits, have argued that Valiente and Heselton's evidence points to an early 20th century revival pre-dating Gardner, rather than an intact old pagan religion. This argument points to some of Gardner's historical claims which agree with the scholarship of that period but contradict later scholarship. Bonewits writes, "Somewhere between 1920 and 1925 in England some folklorists appear to have gotten together with some Golden Dawn Rosicrucians and a few supposed Fam-Trads to produce the first modern covens in England; grabbing eclectically from any source they could find in order to try and reconstruct the shards of their pagan past." The idea of a supreme Mother Goddess was common in Victorian and Edwardian literature: the concept of a Horned God — especially related to the gods Pan or Faunus — was less common, but still significant. Both of these ideas were widely accepted in academic literature and the popular press at the time.

Later developments

Gardnerian Wicca was an initiatory mystery religion, admission to which was limited to those who were initiated into a pre-existing coven. Wicca was introduced to North America by Raymond Buckland, an expatriate Briton who visited Gardner's Isle of Man coven to gain initiation. Interest in the USA spread quickly, and while many were initiated, many more non-initiates compiled their own rituals based on published sources or their own fancy.
Another significant development was the creation by feminists in the late sixties and seventies of an eclectic movement known as Dianic Wicca, or feminist Dianic Witchcraft. Dianic Wicca has no connection of lineage to traditional Wicca, and creatively interprets published materials on Wicca as a basis for their ritual structure. This specifically feminist, Goddess-oriented faith had no interest in the Horned God, and discarded Gardnerian-style hierarchy and lineage as irrelevant. Rituals were created for self-initiation to allow people to identify with and join the religion without first contacting an existing coven. This contrasts with the Gardnerian belief that only a witch of opposite gender can initiate another witch.
In the United Kingdom, initiates of Gardner had begun to perform their own initiations, and a number of lines of Gardnerian descent began to arise. From one of these (although it was originally claimed to derive from a traditional, non-Gardnerian source) came the line known as Alexandrian Wicca. Increasing popularity on both sides of the Atlantic, and in other countries, along with the increasing availability of published material, meant that many people started to practice a form of Wicca without being part of a coven or having participated in an initiation. In response to this, traditionally initiated Wiccans in North America began to describe their version as British Traditional Wicca.

Demographics

Isaac Bonewits points out some of the practical problems in establishing the numbers of any neopagan group. Nevertheless some estimates have been attempted. The 2001 American Religious Identification Survey estimated that at least 134,000 adults identified themselves as Wiccans in the United States, compared to 8,000 in 1990. In the UK, census figures don't allow an accurate breakdown of traditions within the Pagan heading, as a campaign by the Pagan Federation before the 2001 Census encouraged Wiccans, Heathens, Druids and others all to use the same write-in term 'Pagan' in order to maximise the numbers reported. For the first time, respondents were able to write in an affiliation not covered by the checklist of common religions, and a total of 42,262 people from England, Scotland and Wales declared themselves to be Pagans by this method. These figures were not immediately analysed by the Office of National Statistics, but were released after an application by the Pagan Federation of Scotland. Adherents.com, an independent website which specialises in collecting estimates of world religions, cites over 30 sources with estimates of numbers of Wiccans (principally from the USA and UK.). Their median estimate for Wiccan numbers is 800,000 worldwide.

Etymology

The spelling Wica first appears in the writings of Gerald Gardner (Witchcraft Today, 1954, and The Meaning of Witchcraft, 1959). He used the word as a mass noun referring to the adherents of his tradition of witchcraft ('the Wica'), rather than the religion itself. He referred to the religion as witchcraft, never Wica. The word seems to be based on the Old English word ; similarly, wicca and its feminine form wice are the predecessors of the modern English .
Gardner himself claimed he learned the term from existing members of the group who initiated him into witchcraft in 1939: "I realised I'd stumbled on something interesting; but I was half-initiated before the word Wica which they used hit me like a thunderbolt, and I knew where I was, and that the Old Religion still existed."
The spelling Wicca wasn't used by Gardner and the term Wiccan (both as an adjective and a noun) wasn't used until much later, but it's now the prevalent term to refer to followers of Wicca.

Acceptance of Wiccans

In the United States, a number of legal decisions have improved and validated the status of Wiccans in that country, especially Dettmer v. Landon in 1985. However, there's still hostility from some politicians and Christian organisations.
According to the traditional history of Wicca as given by Gerald Gardner, Wicca is a survival of the European witch-cult that was persecuted during the witch trials (sometimes called the Burning Times). Since then theories of an organised pan-European witch-cult have been largely discredited, but it's still common for Wiccans to feel solidarity with the victims of the witch trials.
There have been assertions made that Wicca is a form of Satanism, despite important differences between these religions. 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".

References and footnotes

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