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Wicca history
Wicca history
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There’s no doubt that everyone is looking for the answers to life’s big questions. Why are here? Is there more to life? What happens when we die? Millions of people around the world find their answers to these questions in various religions. While nearly everyone knows about Christianity and Judaism in America, many people no little to nothing about Wicca. Unfortunately there are many misconceptions about contemporary Wicca, even that it is satanic worship or a cult. However, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Wicca is a very peaceful religion that hinges on harming none and being kind to the world around you. Wicca is sometimes referred to as the Old Religion because of the similarities of the Paganism of long ago, however contemporary Wicca is in fact one of the newest religions around, beginning in the late nineteenth century.
Wicca’s central belief system focuses around the worship of the Goddess and God. Religions all over the world believe in a female goddess that is the mother figure of the world. The Goddess is usually worshipped as the triple goddess which means the triple form of the great Goddess, Mother, Maiden and Crone. According to Doreen Brown’s Wicca for Beginners, the Great Goddess is “at once the Mother of all life, creation, and the nourisher of all beings” and in Wicca this is especially tied to the natural world and its cycles (Brown). This a principle belief in Wicca. The Maiden-Mother-Crone is a triple force that acts as one deity somewhat similar to that of Christianity’s trinity. Maiden is representative of new beginnings, morning, spring, innocence and beauty. The Mother represents summer, nature, responsibility, marriage and nurture. The Crone represents night and winter, judgment and wisdom. She...
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...gion, but it has shown no sign of decline. The idea of living your life as you wish so long as you harm no one is certainly a beautiful practice that doesn’t seek to punish and control human nature, but celebrate and trust in it instead. While Wicca is an eclectic, inclusive religion that hinges on individual belief practice, there is no doubt that many people all over the world strongly believe in Wicca and consider the Great Goddess and Horned God sacred. They are both transcendent and immanent through ritual and represent how close the Divine is to us in daily life.
Works Cited
Brown, Doreen. Wicca for Beginners: Spelling It Out!. Get Publishing, 2014.
Cunningham, Scott. Wicca: A guide for the solitary practitioner. Llewellyn Worldwide, 1988.
Sabrina, Lady. Exploring Wicca: The Beliefs, Rites, and Rituals of the Wiccan Religion. Career Press, 2006.
What images come to mind when you think of witches? Many people immediately imagine a black pointy hat, bubbling cauldron, green warty skin, and Halloween. Usually the image that comes to mind is something scary and evil. Real witches do exist. Most modern witches go by the label Wiccan now. Wiccans practice Wicca, which is a nature-based religion with many different branches or denominations. The basic tenant of all Wicca is called the Three Fold Law. The Three Fold Law states that whatever you do will come back to you times three, good or bad, so do not cause harm or, in other words, “harm none”. It is kind of like the concept of karma in one lifetime. There is debate over how old the religion actually is with some saying that it is an ancient religion that pre-dates Christianity and some saying it is more modern, starting in the 1950’s with Gerald Gardener. Regardless of how old the religion is, Hollywood’s portrayal of witches often does have some kernel of truth, albeit sometimes it is hard to find.
Liz, Kelly. “Moving in the Shadows: Violence in the Lives of Minority Women and Children” 10. Stonehocker, Kolbie“Witches, Wiccans and Pagans” Rita Morgan: Daily Life, Not Religion 2012 www.cityweekly.net 11. Annemaire de Waal Malefijt, “Religion and Culture: An Introduction to Anthropology of Religion” The United States of America 1989.
The term “Widdershins” (deriving from the Old High German words widar meaning “back/against” and sinnen, “to travel”) means “counterclockwise”, “anticlockwise”, “left-handed direction” or even “coursing in the opposite direction of the sun, in the Northern Hemisphere”. The earliest use of the word, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, shows up in 1513 in the form of the phrase ‘widdersyns start my hair,’, in other words, ‘my hair stood on end,’. ‘Hair standing on end’ or ‘wild/disorderly hair’, was the meaning of the term until the late 16th century, when its current meaning became particularly popular in the Lowland Scots and Scottish Gaelic.
Wicca is an old religion, having begun “more than thirty-five thousand years ago” as stated by Starhawk, a Wiccan (qtd in Allen 18). Even though it had started long before him and many events involving witchcraft had happened, research has shown that a man named Gerald Gardner was the one who brought the religion of Wicca to the public eye in the 1950s (Allen 19). Gardner said it was thought to be the pre-Christian religion of Europe called the “old religion” (Adler 637). ...
The controversies that surround Wicca start with its exact origin. There are some who believe that it has its origins in Witchcraft due to the similarities between the two. Witchcraft itself is a Pagan practice [polytheistic and non-Christian, Muslim and Jewish in origin] that began with the Celts around 700 B.C. As the movie The Burning Times depicts, the region during this time period was primarily a rural culture so the Celtic traditions were based completely on Nature. Their months were even named after trees and their festivals revolved around the solstices and equinoxes (Steiger). A polytheistic religion, they worshiped a host of female and male deities and are most notably associated with the concept of Goddess worship, a strong belief in the divinity of the female (Burning Times). These paganistic beliefs and rituals gradually over the centuries combined with other European religious practices, such as magic, potions, and ointments for healing, to form what we call in modern times Witchcraft. Groups who did not hav...
Wicca Spirituality,Beltane: The Great Rite,Erin Dragonsong,http://www.wicca-spirituality.com/great-rite.html 4. ] Internet Book of Shadows at sacred-texts.com,Beltane: Its History and Modern Celebration in Wicca in America,Rowan Moonstone,http://www.sacred-texts.com/bos/bos032.htm
The thought of magic, witches, and sorcery to be fact is seen as preposterous in modern America. Coincidence is accepted as such and accusations of possession and bewitchment is extinct. When North America was first colonized by Europeans, however, the fear of magic and the like was all too real. Alison Games’s “Witchcraft in Early North America” describes the effects of the Europeans’ on the Native Americans and vice versa. As decades progressed, the ideas on witchcraft of the Spanish and British changed as well. “Witchcraft in Early North America” introduces different beliefs and practices of witchcraft of Europeans before colonization, Native Americans after colonization, the Spanish of New Mexico, and the British Colonies.
feeling that their own beliefs and ideas did not agree with those of main world religions, Shara H, a Wiccan since her early teenage years stated, “ Christianity in general, started not to feel right” Denice Gold, a 64 year old who was raised in a Baptist household and is currently a coven
...tianity, to what makes sense in comparison with the teachings of Pagan religions; I searched for my own answers, and found them in Wicca.
Witchcraft is said to be the most widespread cultural phenomenon in existence today and throughout history. Even those who shun the ideas of witchcraft cannot discount the similarities in stories from all corners of the globe. Witchcraft and its ideas have spread across racial, religious, and language barriers from Asia to Africa to America. Primitive people from different areas in the world have shockingly similar accounts of witchcraft occurrences. In most cases the strange parallels cannot be explained and one is only left to assume that the tales hold some truth. Anthropologists say that many common elements about witchcraft are shared by different cultures in the world. Among these common elements are the physical characteristics and the activities of supposed witches. I will go on to highlight some of the witch characteristic parallels found in printed accounts from different parts of the world and their comparisons to some famous fairytales.
A Religion where spells are acceptable, the earth is celebrated and nature is a basic mold of the major concepts, paganism. The word "pagan" originates from the Latin term paganus which is defined as country dweller, at one point any person not being an active Christian was considered to be a pagan. Pagan followers have a different view on life, such as they believe in the natural forces of the earth, and consciously try to live with it. Another example illustrating how unique this religion is the fact that pagans are polytheistic, but have the one chief god that rules over the others, it's contradicting that a pagan can also have no belief in any one god. An interesting concept about this religion is that you are not told a certain way, rather you decipher it for yourself and believe what you think to be true. For example most pagans do not believe in a Christian God, but are not against him and do not try to convince others to be against him. Rather the pagan idea on a Christian god is that he is that if that is the God that makes you happy, he is okay for you.
WITCHCRAFT: The word witchcraft comes from the word “Wicca.” Wicca means the wise one. Witchcraft is to be believed as a pagan worship and or religion, a stereotype as a “magical phenomenon. In 1000 A.D., the practice of witchcraft became a threat to the Christians and their beliefs. They believe that wit...
magic to help others (Roy N. p.). In fact, the Wiccan creed is, “An it
Lehmann A. C. & Myers J. E. Magic, Witchcraft and Religion – An anthropological Study of the Supernatural (Fourth Edition) (Mayfield Publishing Company, 1997)
III. Smithson, Jayne. “Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion.” Class lectures. Anthropology 120. Diablo Valley College, San Ramon 2004.