This rant has been coming for a long time. If you have any kind of a problem with my speaking about wicca in a negaitve light, then please do not read this.

The truth about Wicca

If you click on the back button and scroll to the bottom of my main page, you can clearly see the word "wiccan" as my religion. Now i know what you are thinking already.. some part of you just knows i'm going to slam the hell out of wicca, and if i'm going to do that why the hell would i call myself a wiccan? First let me say that i'm not going to "slam" anything. I do however want to point out some truths that have been danced over for years by modern wiccans. It is not my intent at all to upset anyone, but more so to state what i know as facts and let you make your own choices.

As for my calling myself a wiccan, well thats pretty easy to explain. In our society the word Witchcraft is almost always followed shortly by the word wicca. In the end my craft was what i wanted to express to others, not my faith... as you will soon see these two things are very different.

Authors such as Starhawk choose to call the wiccan faith by the name "WitchCraft". Buckland also does this, and freely intermixes the history of the Faith with that of ancient European Paganism. Some authors even go so far as to claim that what wiccans do today are the exact same practices followed by the Ancients. You might be told that Wicca is older than Christianity, or that it even finds it's roots as far back as 25,000 BCE! And all of these are incorrect.

Such claims that Wicca is so all-encompassing has both helped and harmed wiccans. One the one hand, it gave the trail-blazers of the Faith a ground to stand upon. It would be silly to think that Gerald Gardner (the creator of Wicca) could have ever popularized his system if he had claimed authorship himself. Almost every piece of Spiritual/Magickal literature in history that has had any real influence has done so through sketchy claims: The Keys of Solomon, the Zohar, the Five Books of Moses (the Torah), the New Testament, the Koran, The Thelemic Book of the Law, etc, etc. Some of these examples claim Divine Inspiration or Authorship (such as the Book of the Law); which has more of a spiritual validity than do those which claim authorship by famous figures (such as the Keys) or claim antiquity that they do not possess (such as Wicca). Often, people are interested in ancient words of Wisdom and Power, but will ignore contemporary material.

There were, indeed, a group of people in ancient Britain known as "Wicce" (pronounced Wee-cha). The existance of these people is the largest bit of ammo used by those who perpetuate the myth that Wicca has origins that predate Christianity. However, once the facts are brought to light, we will see how this "evidence" does not stand up at all.

Britain possessed the same kinds of Paganism as most of the rest of the world. And, like so many others, that Paganism was nearly destroyed forever by the crushing blow of the Church. The practices of the older Faiths receeded from the populated cities into the country side- guarded by the older people and passed down in fragmented bits and pieces. The Pagan Priesthoods were gone, a great number of the Celtic Gods found shelter in the new religion as Saints, but the practical knowledge gained over thousands of years held fast. These country people were midwives, healers, seers, soothsayers, diviners, etc.

The point which must be stressed here is that these people did not call themselves "Wicce". It has been claimed that the ancient Celtic Priesthood itself was known by that name; though I have yet to see a single piece of evidence to support this. Instead, it was the Christian city-folk who applied the name to the wise-men and -women who gave fortunes and folk medicines. The word "Wicce" itself translates directly as "wise one". Once the inquisitions began, a slang form of the word was created: "Witch".

The above is an identical story to what occured throughout the known world at the rise of the Church. You may recognize the term "wise one" in other languages as "Wizard" or "Magus". It is common knowledge that "Wizardry" is not a Faith at all, but a practice. Quite silly, then, to assume that "Wicce" was a Faith. In fact, if it were so, why would it have been labled so plainly as a Craft? Have you ever heard of "ChristCraft"? What we know as WitchCraft is simply a practice of Folk Magick. Then why is it that the words witchcraft and wicca seem to walk hand in hand?

The true roots of Wicca are to be found as recently as the early 1920's, with an author by the name of Margaret Murray and her book entitled "The Witch Cult in Western Europe". Ms. Murray believed that societly had once been matriarchal (run by women), and that Europe primordially possessed a single unified Faith which she termed "The Old Religion". The main focus of her work was to prove that the practitioners of this Old Religion had been driven into hiding by the Church, and "Covens" were thus formed so the ancient Rites could be practiced in hidden places.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/wcwe/index.htm

Ms. Murray's main source of information in this regard were none other than the documents obtained by convicted "witches" by the Church itself!.... Remember that these confessions and descriptions were written by the Inquisitors themselves, and the accused were tortured into signing them. Regardless of this glaring fact, Murray felt that an idea of how real covens had operated could be gleaned from these reports if the "bias" of the Church was ignored. In her defense, there were other aspects of Ms. Murray's work that were on the right track. However, most of her facts have been refuted by those who continued her work. To this date, there has yet to be one single shred of convincing evidence that covens ever existed in the times of the Inquisitions.

Suddenly, groups began to "surface" all over Europe- entire covens of witches who claimed to practice the Old Religion. People who claimed to be from unbroken lines of initiation from the alleged "original Covens". Of course, none of them have (then or now) proved their claims. If Murray was incorrect in her theories, then the Covens who are exactly as she described can hardly be authentic themselves.

However, arise these Covens did; and ,despite their false claims, they eventually developed into something of their own. They mainly refered to themselves simply as the Old Religion. They were VERY secretive about themselves, based on alleged Coven Laws that were supposedly created at the time of the Inquisistion for safety reasons. The Neo-Pagan Movement was un-officially underway, if it did remain somewhat underground.

Now it is time to focus on one of these Covens specifically; or, as it is, a small group of related Covens known as the New Forest. They were structured according to Murray, and were following a psudeo-reconstructoin of ancient Celtic Shamanic Religion, with European WitchCraft as part of daily life and practice. Obviously they claimed a direct connection to the Wicce of ancient Britain.

Beyond this, the different groups had thier own particular focuses. One of them delved into a practice which had arisen in the early 1900s known as "Lonecraft"- a philosophy of natural living based largely on Amer-Indian concepts. Incidently, Lonecraft itself is the father of what we know today as the Boy Scouts!

http://www.sossi.org/lonescout/lshistory.htm

Another group- the High Preistess of which was the famous Dorothy Clutterbuck- focused somewhat more on the pracitces of Ceremonial Magick- adapting a version of the Qabalah as set forth by Israel Regardie in his book "The Golden Dawn". According to "Drawing Down the Moon" by Margot Adler, this book was owned by nearly every serious occultist of the day; a claim which can also be made for today!

Here enters the man known as Gerald Gardner, who became an Initiate of Dorothy Clutterbuck's New Forest Coven. Mr. Gardner was certainly no stranger to the Occult; also being a Masonic Lodge member, and member of the OTO (an organization run by Crowley); not to mention the various other systems he was familiar with (such as many Eastern, African, Middle Eastern, and even Judeo-Christian Traditions). He was, after all, an anthropologist.

He began by combining the many systems he was familiar with into a coherent whole: basically taking the models of Ceremonial Magick, assigning corrispondances from Celtic Paganism to them, and using them in the Murray/New Forest Religious structure. Just as everyone else did, he claimed that his creation was the very same "Organized Religion" spoken of by Murray finally come out of hiding... He decided to call it "Wicca" (Wik-ah) after the Healers described above. Gardner went public in the late 1940's, much to the agony of the many groups that quite enjoyed their secrecy and mystery.

So what does all of this mean you ask?

1. The word wicca was first used by Gerald Gardner

2. He baised his using the word wicca on Margaret Murray's book which was obtained via witch trials, which in turn described a witch as the ancient wicce. A book that claimed that modern covens were a hidden extension of the old wicce religion.

3. Being a wicce was not a faith at all, it was in fact a word used to describe people who did things, not a word to describe people who worshiped things.

Wow... I must admit that I feel better. I would challange anyone that would disagree with what I have written, to do so with facts, not assumptions. Just because wicca is not as old as most would claim does not mean that it is any less valid. Like i said before, people seem so much more interested in things that are ancient, and the modern is over looked. However calling yourself a witch means that you practice a craft, not worship a set of gods... there is just no way around it. In the end this is why i used the word wiccan in my profile, me being someone who uses the said craft would give me rights to the word wicce, from which wicca baised its name.