Return to Information Return Home
Wicca is based on pre-Christian European tribal traditions. It celebrates the events of the agricultural year, which are called sabbats, the most important of which mark the planting season in the spring (Beltane) and the final harvest in the fall (Halloween).
Wicca's ideas of divinity have to do with Mother Nature, known in many ancient cultures as The Great Goddess, and with her partner in creation, the energy of the sun. We feel that ultimately the divine is One, but virtually unknowable at that level — and so we deal with what we can see and touch and imagine, and leave the great mysteries to be forever unknown, or possibly revealed only after death.
We do not have a central authority. Wicca is a religion of communities, reflecting its tribal origins. These days communities (and tribes) are no longer based on blood nor strictly on locale. However, we retain the dynamic of small, informal, autonomous groups (known as covens), led by elders (or the high priest and high priestess), or with leadership shared or alternated among the members or by consensus. In addition, there are many solitary practitioners. This is a comfortable arrangement for us, but it makes it difficult for us to deal with organized institutions, and for them to deal with us, because any Wiccan individual can only speak for him- or herself, or possibly his or her own group.
Wicca in its modern form started with an Englishman named Gerald Gardner who publicized his brand of neo-Paganism in the 1950s. He organized surviving fragments of folk practice and combined them with simplified bits and pieces from ceremonial magic (a medieval system of self-improvement and search for knowledge) and secret societies like the Masons.
Wiccans (and many people broadly called neo-Pagans) are regular folk, with jobs and families, who feel a spiritual need but are not drawn to conventional religion.
Wiccans get together for the eight seasonal festivals of the year (the equinoxes, solstices and cross-quarters) to celebrate life, and frequently at the full moons, which are times of introspective contemplation. These meetings are held outdoors when possible or in people's homes. Not having church buildings, we draw an invisible circle on the ground or the floor to serve as our temporary temple. Next, starting in the east, we call in the four directions, which we associate with intellect, will-power, emotion and action respectively, and which represent our human efforts to emulate the creativity of nature. We then call upon the Goddess and the God, which at their most basic we conceive of as matter and energy, and remind ourselves that out of their union comes life, including us. We then share wine or water and bread.
|
1. |
Wicca is not witchcraft in the common usage which is taken to mean the practice of evil. We seek to rehabilitate the term witch. Historically witches were harmless village herbalists or midwives who usually tried to be helpful, but sometimes imagined they could cast spells to cause harm to their neighbors, farm animals or crops. What was not imaginary was the suffering and death imposed upon them by the governmental and religious authorities, out of all proportion to their supposed crimes. |
|
|
We speak of our Horned God, but that is an image left over from prehistoric hunting days and then early agriculture, when people depended upon deer and cattle for food, and called upon the spirit of the animals to be generous. It is thought that the church took the image of the native god of the hunt to use as their visualization of Satan and thereby demonize the old pagan divinities. |
|
|
In mainstream Wicca there are roughly equal numbers of men and women; we normally have mixed groups, with both a priest and a priestess in the circle and we acknowledge both the male and female aspects of the divine. However, women and men may meet separately on occasion. True, there are considerable numbers of women who rebelled against the masculine images of the traditional Christian church and adopted Wiccan ideas and call themselves Goddess-worshippers, but they are an offshoot and not the majority. |
|
|
|
|
|
When we do magic, we look on it as a form of active prayer. Rather than humble solicitation, we work to make changes in the world to suit us, and in this our magic is more aligned with the spirit of technology than with the traditional western religious outlook. We feel that the world is an interconnected web and we are affected by everything we do, and so we strive never to do harm. Our personal magic is usually concerned with healing, employment and relationships, and on a larger scale we seek to make the world a better place for all. |
We are private, but not secretive. We welcome the opportunity to answer questions, but do not seek converts.