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Wicca
The Science of Magick is not evil, for by the knowledge of it, evill may bee eschewed, and good means thereof may be followed.
~Albertus Magnus, 13th century scholar and philosopher
When we were young, we were likely raised on stories like Hansel and Gretel or the Wizard of Oz. These stories stick in our minds. I don't know why. But many fairy tales have something in common. They have witches. Whether as a worker of good or bad magic, the witch is often a pivotal point in the story. She has great sorcerous powers. She can turn someone into a newt or any other amphibian. They control the weather.
The witch that most of us rememeber at the word 'witch' is the Wicked Witch of the West. She has a warty nose and green skin, wears a black dress and a pointy black hat, flies on a broom, and commands a legion of flying monkeys who eventually turn against her.
But then there is Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. She wore a glowing white dress and looked like a fairy or a goddess. She travels in a bright bubble.
In other fairy tales, there are witches who have specific powers. And there are some who are 'green' witches who draw their power from the forest and 'blue' witches who get their power from the sea.
But are there still witches today?
Certainly! But they are not at all like the witches in fairy tales! Witches today often call themselves Druids or Shamans, and most often, Wiccans. The word 'Wicca', the name of the religion Wiccans follow, comes from the Old English 'wicce' which means 'female witch' and 'wicca', which means 'male wizard'. Wicca is an earth-based religion that treats the Divine as the God and the Goddess, also called the Lord and the Lady. Wicca focuses on the Goddess, partly as a protest against the traditional male deity of Western religion, partly because many Wiccans are female, but mostly because the Goddess is embodied in the cycle of nature, and represents the aspect of the All that is nurturing and compassionate, enabling growth, fertility, and gentleness. The Wiccan creation story is as follows:
Before people and before the creation of the earth, there was the All. The All existed in knowing, stillness, and silence, was alone, and was a female spirit. She created her other half, the male spirit. They intertwined, and although there were now two spirits, they became one, the two halves of the whole. And together they gave birth to the Universe. Then they made the solar systems, stars, moons, and planets. On Earth they made water and land, plants, animals, and people.
The All is both male and female, and no part is better than the other part. The male aspect is known as the God and the female as the Goddess. The Goddess chose as her physical form the Moon, radiant and calm, yet changable. The God chose the Sun, firey and bright. These celestial bodies remind Wiccans of the God and the Goddess.
Wiccans celebrate numerous holidays that coincide with Christian holidays. Many Christian holidays are in fact thinly cloaked in Christian disguise and have roots reaching far back to pre-Christian times. They celebrate Christmas at December 25, while Wiccans celebrate Yule at December 21, give or take a few days.This is, for Wiccans, the time the Lady gives birth to the Lord and rests from her labour. See the similarities to the myth of the birth of Christ? The Wiccan holidays are called Sabbats and mark actual events in nature. Christmas is set at the same time as Yule because Christian authorities could not stop the merry pagans from celebrating Yule, and, as everybody knows, pagans have the best parties! :) I will go into more detail of the Sabbats and many other aspects of Wicca in other sections.
Wicca is one of the more attacked religions. I have good reason to believe that it and Satanism (which has NOTHING to do with Wicca no matter WHAT the priest or the Christian know-it-all next door would have you think!) are the commonest targets of idiotic Christians who are utterly convinced that everyone is on a straight and easy road to Hell unless they get out and EVANGELISE! which is basically attempting to convert as many people as you can to save them from Hell and get quite a few good marks in God's good books at the same time. However, evangelists often strike at the worst of times. One Southern Baptist tract targets Hindus at the time of their Festival of Light, saying that 'Hindus worship their dark gods at this time.' Sadly, I do not know much about Hindu, but I know that the people who wrote those tracts have less knowledge about it than I.
Christians only have a few reasons to hate the Wiccans. First and formost, I think, is the words written in their unpleasant, if well-meaning, Bible. This horrible book stats somewhere that 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live' (Exodus 22, 18, although the Bible I use says 'You shall not permit a sorceress to live', presumably because it's a Revised Standard Edition, whatever THAT means) . This all springs from the terror of King James I. In 1604, King James passed his Witchcraft Act. Under this act, the punishment for practicing witchcraft became hanging. Earlier it had been on year in prison. The Witchcaft Act associated witches with the Christian Devil and made consorting with the Devil an act punishable by death.
King James as terrified of witches. He went so far as to alter the Bible. The Bible once stated 'Thou shalt not suffer a poisoner to live'. Sound advice, don't you think? But he changed it to 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live'. I am not a Christian and never want to be, but even I, a dedicated opponent of the religion, would not go so far as to alter the Bible, except perhaps to add a few amusing contents and to point out contradictions, as well as add little bits that say God demands you take the entire thing literally and must read ALL parts of it, something that is regretably not the common practice.
By the end of his reign, James changed his mind about witches. He talked to a number of previous witnesses and they admitted that they gave false testimony and faked the physical ailments they had said the accused witches had given them. He decided witchcraft didn't exist, but his act and alteration remained in effect.
However, far greater evil had been perpertrated in the name of God about 200 years earlier. Pope Innocent VIII wrote a Bull about witches in 1484. Had this letter been written a few years earlier, countless deaths could have been avoided. The invention of movable type a short while before he wrote the letter insured that the words in it would travel to all corners of Europe and be responisble for the conviction of people the Inquisitors didn't like. Many of the accused were thought to be witches because they kept cats. Cats were thought to be demons that Satan gave to his witches to act as advisors and messengers.
Pope Innocent's bull paved the way for a book even viler than the Bible: the Malleus Maleficarum, or The Witches' Hammer. This infernal book was written by two German monks, Heinrich Kramer and Jakob Sprenger. It was a witch hunter's manual and was divided into three parts. The first proved the existence of witches and how dangerous they were, as well as stating that not believing in witches was heresy. The second listed the kinds of witches and their evil doings, such as having sexual relations with Satan and their ability to fly. It also told how to counteract their evil spells. The third part is the most terrible and teaches how to legally try and convict a person of witchcraft. They also suggested ways to torture or 'test' a suspected witch to make them confess. I do not wish to go into those details here but will in another section.
The Pope's bull and the Malleus Maleficarum led to uncountable deaths. It is likely that three quarters of the executed were women. It was though that women were easily suspectible to Satan and his demons because they were stupid, weak, and, if not occupied, were consumed with lust that tempted them to the services of Satan. Some estimate that 50'000 people we
re killed at this time. Others place the mark at nine million. Today, Wiccans refer to the times of the Malleus Maleficarum and Pope Innocent's bull as the Burning Times. But no-one knows for sure how many people were hung, burned at the stake, drowned, or tortured to death at the vile hands of the Inquisition.
re killed at this time. Others place the mark at nine million. Today, Wiccans refer to the times of the Malleus Maleficarum and Pope Innocent's bull as the Burning Times. But no-one knows for sure how many people were hung, burned at the stake, drowned, or tortured to death at the vile hands of the Inquisition.Christians also attack the Wiccans because of stupidity: they typically see only what they want, and they want to see Satanic influence. This is rather easy to spot because of two reasons: the God is often portrayed as having antlers on his head, and conservative Christians tend to see these as horns, such as those that Satan has. See the picture to the right, which is a typical representation of Satan. The other reason is the symbol of the Wiccans, a pentagram,
a five-pointed star. It has one point up and two down, and can be seen as an extremely stylised representation of the human form. Think of the famous picture of the man with arms and legs spread. The points represent the four elements, Air, Fire, Earth, and Water, and the fifth point at the top represents Spirit. Wiccans also use the pentacle, a pentagram within a circle. The meaning is the same and the points are in the same configuration, and have the same meanings. This is the most common misconception of Christians. They get it confused with the Satanic Pentagram and Sigil of Baphomet. The Satanic pentagram has two points up and one down. The Sigil of Baphomet is an inverted pentacle, so it has two points up and one down. It has a goat's head in the star, the top points being the horns, the two lower ones the ears, and the bottom being the muzzle. It is sometimes engraved with occult symbols between the points.
a five-pointed star. It has one point up and two down, and can be seen as an extremely stylised representation of the human form. Think of the famous picture of the man with arms and legs spread. The points represent the four elements, Air, Fire, Earth, and Water, and the fifth point at the top represents Spirit. Wiccans also use the pentacle, a pentagram within a circle. The meaning is the same and the points are in the same configuration, and have the same meanings. This is the most common misconception of Christians. They get it confused with the Satanic Pentagram and Sigil of Baphomet. The Satanic pentagram has two points up and one down. The Sigil of Baphomet is an inverted pentacle, so it has two points up and one down. It has a goat's head in the star, the top points being the horns, the two lower ones the ears, and the bottom being the muzzle. It is sometimes engraved with occult symbols between the points. Sadly, Christians rarely take time to differentiate between the pentacle of the Wiccans and the pentacle of the Satanists. I will go into that with more depth later.
And so you now know a small amount about Wicca and why it is attacked. I will go into many different aspects of Wicca on this page...the links are above. And I will also provide information about how to become Wiccan as well as about ritual tools, about spells and spellcraft, and more, in the hope that Christians will see these and see for themselves that they do not in any way, shape, or form relate to Satanism!
Merry meet, merry part, and merry meet again!