Much of the symbolism surrounding the cycle of the year, the festivals, and the idea of divinity, is sexual in nature. Wicca is a pro-sexuality religion, and you will find none of the superstitious, dogmatic or ascetic restraints that you find in other religions.
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Representations of the sexual, from phallic symbols to mythological stories involving procreation, are not hidden away from sight. But Wicca is not licentious - it simply has a mature and adult approach to sexuality. Wicca is one example amongst many New Religious Movements that have rejected the loathing of homosexuality found in traditional monotheistic religions. But in its foundation Wicca could not cope with homosexuality. But all of this changed. What they have in common is modernity and non-monotheism. We should all shed the weird and stifling sexual inhibitions preached by the world's traditional religions ; Sexuality is a pure form of pleasure, something that satisfies our deepest purpose in life.
Modern life allows us to enjoy sex without the risks of unplanned pregnancies and sexual diseases assuming that sense is taken. It is very optimistic, positive and healthy: This can only be expected of such a carnal religion of the flesh such as Satanism! Some people like quality, some people like quantity: Just be responsible, take emotions and consequences into account, and above all, enjoy your life! Liberal and Tolerant " Vexen Crabtree For commentary on sexuality in world religions, see the following pages but be warned, compared to the wisdom of Wicca, it is not happy or peaceful reading:.
Fundamentalism and Literalism in World Religions.
There is very little in the way of an impulse towards correcting others, telling them they're wrong and criticizing their beliefs. Even if two believers' theories about important aspects of their crafts are contradictory and impossibly conflicting, there is rarely much in the way of hatred, or even dislike, between them. Pearson puts it like this: In a world where fundamentalism seems forever on the rise many new religious movements represent a better side of religion , free from powermongering and free from the urge to enforce its doctrines on people for their own good.
The Pagan Federation's Introduction to Paganism webpage still states confidently, but wrongly, that "Paganism is the ancestral religion of the whole of humanity" This started with a campaign between and to promote a romantic version of the ideal English countryside, complete with ancient May Day celebrations Soon, it looked to all that such things were remnants from our pagan past.
Wicca in particular, throughout the s and s, promoted the idea that there was once a historical, European-wide mystery religion comprised of witches organized into secret covens, that met at night and in the woods 3 , 5 , Archaeological evidence began to look like it supported the idea of a universal, ancient mother-goddess religion. Academia was giving serious consideration to the idea that that Witch Hunts of the Inquisition of the Catholic Church was genuinely trying to stamp out the remains of an underground pagan religion The witches involved passed on secret, ancient wisdom, that was normally to do with healing, botany, magic and other esoteric and occult knowledge.
Modern Wicca, they held, is a modern revitalizing of this ancient religion complete with occasional pseudo-archaic English usage , and this historical story was once widely adopted amongst neo-Pagans of most kinds, not just by early Wiccans 73 and it still is believed by some pagans today But extensive and careful research has now found these ideas to be false 75 and based on the evidence, historians are now sure that our modern rituals and pagan religions are modern inventions 72 , The Director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor explains that the archaeological evidence for a universal mother-goddess had proven to be inadequate - most sites have no sign of religion, or of motherly figurines, and most decorative and non-functional artefacts are concerned with sex - with the sex act itself, especially phallic symbols and depictions of human sex Briggs 78 and "any links between Wicca and the Great Witch Hunt of early modern Europe, for example, are now seen in terms of self-identification rather than as historical facts" according to Joanne Pearson The earliest comprehensive historical investigations have been conducted by the academic Ronald Hutton, an expert in the relevant prime sources.
Hutton's full findings were published as " The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft " Wicca was at risk of falling into fundamentalism: Would Wiccans accept these historical facts, or would they disregard the evidence and descend into dogma and ignorance? Thankfully, influential historians such as Prof. Ronald Hutton became well respected, honoured and trusted within Pagan and Wiccan communities, for his honest and clear presentation of the historical facts. Given that Wicca is not the result of a hidden religion resurfacing, then, where did Wicca come from?
Where did Gerald Gardner and Alexander Sander get their ideas from, and why were they successful? These questions are answered in great length and depth by the historian Ronald Hutton in " The Triumph of the Moon: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain " There is one particular excerpt I wish to take from his work on this question; in this case, pointing out that British society had seen a flourishing of secret societies, overly serious fraternities and insurance cults, and that even some ordinary trades guilds were in the process of adopting ritualistic and dressed-up drama in their meetings.
In other words, in context , Wicca did not arise out of a cultural vacuum. Freemasonry though now generally lacking a genuine occult content was found even in small country towns, and had quite a high public profile; at Melrose in the Scottish Lowlands, for example, the local lodge paraded through the streets carrying torches every Midsummer's Eve.
All its branches preserved rituals of initiation and celebration which had a quasi-magical character, and Masons referred to the traditions collectively as 'the Craft'. Then there were Friendly Societies or Benefit Clubs, rudimentary insurance societies to provide members with sick pay, unemployment benefits and a decent funeral. These sprang up in both town and country in the early-nineteenth century, flourished until its end, and incorporated ceremonies loosely modelled upon those of Freemasons. They could be very dramatic; one initiation rite of the Oddfellows, for example, involved leading the newcomer blindfolded into a circle of members and tearing off the blindfold to reveal that a sword was pointed at this chest.
He then had to take the oath of secrecy and fidelity to the society. It is worth bearing in mind through all this that what he was actually supposed to be doing was buying an insurance policy!
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Membership of these groups was often linked to a particular trade or 'craft', and meanwhile the old-style trade guilds or 'crafts' still survived in many towns. Some adopted the trappings of the quasi-ceremonial societies; in Shrewsbury in , a trade guild bought up a job-lot of Masonic regalia for its meetings in order to add dignity and excitement to them.
Such groups continued to proliferate into the early twentieth century. Some were drinking clubs in which the rites were largely humorous, such as the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes.
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Others were much more serious. One of the most important was the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry [ Its leaders were called the Witan, Anglo-Saxon for 'wise'; and so its practices were 'the craft of the wise'. In , the Order went into schism, and split into a number of different groups, meeting at different places in the New Forest in subsequent years and developing their own rituals. Take particular note of the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry who splintered into a number of groups, some of them developing unique rituals and activities of their own.
It is in the very same New Forest that Gerald Gardner lived in for a few years in the late s. Wicca was not a revival of an old religion, it was yet another ritualistic secret society; albeit one with a great amount of effort put into it by its helmsman, who had himself already moved amongst occult and magical groups of the era for some time. It is easy to see, in the absence of its purported history, that Wicca was a gradual invention. In the s, News coverage of Wicca was quite fair - some ridiculed and opposed it 84 , but many simply described it more or less fairly.
This attitude, it must be stressed again, was relatively rare among journalists of the time. The newspaper had treated witchcraft only in passing after its big attempt to scaremonger in - until , when it printed [a few more balanced articles]. The names and addresses of the witches chosen as targets were printed along with their photographs, and the purpose next to that of increasing sales of the newspaper was clearly to ruin their public reputations and so their lives.
As a result of this horrible and ignorant campaign lives were destroyed. For example authorities took away one set of parents' daughter for a long period of three years in order to safeguard her against involvement in rituals which, of course, was out of the question. Real suffering resulted from the irresponsible sensationalist reporting of the News of the World , and, academics have noted that "most people's prejudices [towards Paganism] are based on misrepresentation by the media" At the end of the s, after the decade of ill-informed and hot-tempered sensationalism, Rupert Murdoch bought the paper in and added it to his empire, however, he did not have reform in mind.
Its poor reporting continued, but with the backing of a large, rich and experience media empire behind it. Thankfully, the paper was closed in amidst scandals of its own - the large-scale phone-hacking of celebrities' phones. The bitter irony is that Wicca has turned out to be one of the most peaceable, conscientious and responsible new religious movements, with a record so much cleaner than the 'traditional' religions that the News of the World was no doubt much more in favour of. Adler, Margot Drawing Down the Moon: In " Belief Beyond Boundaries: Christianity's Creation of the Sex War in the West.
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Wicca - The Rise of a Western Mystery Religion Based on Witchcraft
Visit our Help Pages. Amazon Music Stream millions of songs. The author's name was not printed, although it had probably been produced by one of the figures involved in editing Pentagram , such as Gerard Noel or Doreen Valiente. In the s, the Gardnerian initiate Alex Sanders founded his own tradition, which became known as Alexandrian Wicca ; he used the terms Wicca and the Wicca in reference to the entire Pagan Witchcraft religion.
Doyle White argued that the practitioners' presentation of themselves as Wiccans rather than witches removed some of the social stigma that they faced. From onward, increasing numbers of books teaching readers how to become Pagan Witches were published; the earliest was Paul Huson 's Mastering Witchcraft , which made no reference to Wicca. The Complete Book of Saxon Witchcraft , in which he propagated his newly developed tradition of Seax-Wica ; utilising Wica as the name of the tradition, he also referenced the Wicca as the name of the religion as a whole. This was part of a phenomenon that took place during the s and s, as the term Wicca became increasingly associated purely with Gardnerianism and Alexandrianism together known as British Traditional Wicca in North America , rather than with other variants of Pagan Witchcraft.
It discussed a Gardnerian-based tradition. In ensuing years, many other authors would publish books containing Wicca in their titles which advocated solitary practice of Pagan Witchcraft; best known were Scott Cunningham 's Wicca: The term Wicca was employed in an increasingly eclectic manner by authors like RavenWolf, who considered it to be a synonym for witchcraft.
Reacting against the increasingly inclusive use of the term were Pagan Witches who instead characterised their practices as forms of Traditional Witchcraft. Many Pagan Witches who considered themselves to be Traditional Witches exhibited an us-and-them mentality against Gardnerianism and allied traditions, for whom they reserved the term Wicca.
Doyle White suggests that they had done so in order to distance themselves from the increasing influence of the New Age movement over the Wiccan mainstream with its "iconographical emphasis on white light", instead embracing the traditional European view that associated witchcraft with darkness.
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Contrary to a claim that is often used in the Pagan and occult communities today, Gerald Gardner, the founder of Gardnerian Witchcraft and the public face of the movement during the late s and early s, did not refer to his tradition of the Craft as "Wicca", and there is in fact no recorded instance of him ever using the word.
Instead, he referred to his faith as "the Craft of the Wise", "witchcraft", and "the witch cult", the latter of which was likely taken from the title of Egyptologist Margaret Murray's seminal proto-Wiccan text The Witch-Cult in Western Europe It is evident that Gardner used the term "Wica" with a very specific spelling to refer to the members of the Pagan Witchcraft religion and not just his own tradition as a group, and perhaps also individually, and believed that the word had been used by the faith's members since the Early Mediaeval period.
We feel it is tragick That those who lack Magick. Should start a vendetta With those who know betta We who practice the Art Have no wish to take part Seems a pity the "Wicca" Do not realise this Quicca.
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No proof of their existence has ever been brought forth, and while Gardner's biographer Philip Heselton and independent researcher Steve Wilson have defended his account, [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] other Pagan Studies scholars like Aidan A. Kelly and Chas S. Clifton have argued that it was a fabrication of Gardner's to cover up the fact that he founded Pagan Witchcraft circa Retrieved 30 September Retrieved 20 March Retrieved 17 July Retrieved 23 March The International Journal of Pagan Studies.
The Rise of Wicca and Paganism in America. Crowther, Patricia; Crowther, Arnold Douglas, Isle of Man: Doyle White, Ethan The Modern Coven Revealed. Field, Arnold 5 August