Wicca

Explore Wicca

WHAT IS WICCA?

Wicca is a predominantly Western movement whose followers practice witchcraft and nature-based worship. Practitioners are referred to as Wiccans and consider Wicca to be a religion based on pre-Christian traditions of northern and western Europe. Wicca spread through England in the 1950s and subsequently attracted followers in Europe and the United States.

Despite variation within the Wiccan community, most believers share a general set of beliefs and practices. They believe in the Goddess, respect nature, and hold both polytheistic and pantheistic views. Most Wiccans accept the so-called Wiccan Rede, an ethical code that states “If it harms none, do what you will.” Wiccans believe in meditation and participate in rituals throughout the year, celebrating the new and full moon, as well as the vernal equinox, summer solstice, and Halloween, which they call Samhain. Wiccan rites include invoking the aid of the deities, practicing ceremonial magic, and sharing a ritual meal.

Most controversial to outsiders is that Wiccans call themselves witches, a term which most Westerners identify with Satanism. As a result, Wiccans are continually denying any connection with Satan or devil worship. Covens, which ideally number 10 to 15 members and are entered through an initiation ritual. As coven members master the practice of magic and become familiar with the rituals, they pass through two degrees of initiation. There is a third degree for those who wish to enter the priesthood.

The pentagram is a symbol commonly used by Wiccans. Wiccans often understand the pentagram's five points as representing each of the five elements: earth, air, fire, water, and aether/spirit. It is also regarded as a symbol of the human, with the five points representing the head, arms, and legs.

WHERE DID WICCA ORIGINATE?

Although there were precursors to the movement, the origins of modern Wicca can be traced to a retired British civil servant, Gerald Brousseau Gardner (1884–1964). Gardner spent most of his career in Asia, where he became familiar with a variety of occult beliefs and magical practices. He read Western esoteric literature, including the writings of British occultist Aleister Crowley. Returning to England before World War II, Gardner became involved in the British occult community and founded a movement based on a reverence of nature, the practice of magic, and the worship of a female deity (the Goddess).

Following the 1951 repeal of England’s archaic Witchcraft Laws, Gardner published Witchcraft Today and founded his first coven of followers, and developed modern witchcraft into what today is known as Wicca. It spread quickly to the United States in the late 1960s, when an emphasis on nature, unconventional lifestyles, and a search for spirituality divorced from traditional religions were especially in vogue.

Wicca gained increasing social acceptance and diversified to include numerous variations on Gardner’s original teachings and rituals. Moreover, new Wiccan groups emerged independent of the Gardnerians and the parallel Neo-Pagan movement, which also worshipped the Goddess and practiced witchcraft but eschewed the designation witch. A major controversy developed in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s, when a faction of Wiccans broke with Gardner’s notion that clothes inhibited magical workings and chose not to follow his practice of worshipping in the nude.

As the 21st century began, Wiccans and Neo-Pagans were found throughout the English-speaking world and across northern and western Europe. Estimates of adherents range dramatically, with the number of Wiccans in the United States believed to be between 100,000 and more than 1.5 million.

HOW TO PRACTICE WICCA

Leading Wiccan priestess Margot Adler stated that Wiccan rituals are not "dry, formalised, repetitive experiences", but performed with the intent of inducing a religious experience in the participants, thereby altering their consciousness. In fact, many Wiccans remain skeptical about the existence of the supernatural but remain involved in Wicca because of its ritual experiences. It is a religion of ritual rather than theology where the ritual is first and the myth is second.

Wiccan rituals usually take place in private and are used when celebrating the Sabbats, when 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 practitioner 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 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 to send healing or other magic to persons outside of the sacred space.

Rituals often include a special set of magical tools, including a knife called an athame, a wand, a pentacle and a chalice. 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.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.

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.

Wiccans celebrate several seasonal festivals of the year, commonly known as Sabbats. Most Wiccans celebrate a set of eight of these Sabbats.

In Wicca, there is no set sacred text such as the Christian Bible, Jewish Tanakh, Hindu Gita 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, which he would frequently add to and adapt. The Book of Shadows is a personal cookbook of spells that worked for the owner.

WHY PRACTICE WICCA?

In Traditional coven-centered Wicca, the student studies with the teacher and develops skills associated with Wiccan practice as well as personal work around spiritual growth, ethics, clergy spiritual counseling, weddings and funeral performance. In that curriculum is a host of assignments that require the participant to take a personal inventory and look at their own internal issues which leads to a variety of psychological benefits.

The practice of observing the Sabbats in a specifically Wiccan format also connects a person to the cycle of Life, Death, and Rebirth that we experience on this planet. This leads to a sense of increased well-being and calm when facing our own mortality and other difficult to understand life experiences.

Some suggest that Wicca helps people be kinder to the earth, animals, and the self as nature is neutral and life and death are part of the cycle of life. Others claim that Wicca has helped them find compassion where other religions did not. It helped find solace, comfort and reduced stress by spending more time in nature, Most importantly, it provided a spirit of gratefulness for all the experiences and lessons the earth and everything in it provides