Wicca
Wicca, is a modern pagan, syncretic, Earth-focused type of religion. Considered a new religious movement by scholars of religion, the path evolved from Western esotericism, developed in England during the first half of the 20th century, and was introduced to the public in 1954 by Gerald Gardner, a retired British civil servant. Wicca draws upon ancient pagan and 20th-century hermetic motifs for theological and ritual purposes. Doreen Valiente joined Gardner in the 1950s, further building Wicca's liturgical tradition of beliefs, principles, and practices, disseminated through published books as well as secret written and oral teachings passed along to initiates.
Many variations of the religion have grown and evolved over time, associated with a number of diverse lineages, sects, and denominations, referred to as traditions, each with its own organisational structure and level of centralisation. Given its broadly decentralised nature, disagreements arise over the boundaries that define Wicca. Some traditions, collectively referred to as British Traditional Wicca, strictly follow the initiatory lineage of Gardner and consider Wicca specific to similar traditions, excluding newer, [|eclectic] traditions. Other traditions, as well as scholars of religion, apply Wicca as a broad term for a religion with denominations that differ on some key points but share core beliefs and practices.
Wicca is typically duotheistic, venerating both a goddess and a god, traditionally conceived as the Triple Goddess and the Horned God, respectively. These deities may be regarded in a henotheistic way, as having many different divine aspects which can be identified with various pagan deities from different historical pantheons. For this reason, they are sometimes referred to as the "Great Goddess" and the "Great Horned God", with the honorific "great" connoting a personification containing many other deities within their own nature. Some Wiccans refer to the goddess as "Lady" and the god as "Lord" to invoke their divinity. These two deities are sometimes viewed as facets of a universal pantheistic divinity, regarded as an impersonal force rather than a personal deity. Other traditions of Wicca embrace polytheism, pantheism, monism, and Goddess monotheism.
Wiccan celebrations encompass both the cycles of the Moon, known as Esbats and commonly associated with the Triple Goddess, alongside the cycles of the Sun, seasonally based festivals known as Sabbats and commonly associated with the Horned God. The Wiccan Rede is a popular expression of Wiccan morality, often with respect to the ritual practice of magic.
Terminology
Definition
Scholars of religious studies classify Wicca as a new religious movement, and more specifically as a form of modern paganism. Wicca has been cited as the largest, best known, most influential, and most academically studied form of modern paganism. It is an eclectic religion, as opposed to reconstructionist paganism.Several academics also categorise Wicca as a nature religion, a term embraced by many Wiccans, and as a mystery religion. But because Wicca also incorporates the practice of magic, several scholars have referred to it as a "magico-religion". Wicca is also a form of Western esotericism, and more specifically a part of the esoteric current known as occultism. Academics like Wouter Hanegraaff and Tanya Luhrmann have categorised Wicca as part of the New Age, although other academics, and many Wiccans themselves, dispute this.
Although recognised as a religion by academics, some evangelical Christians have attempted to deny it legal recognition as such, while some Wiccans themselves eschew the term "religion", associating it purely with organised religion, and instead favour "spirituality" or "way of life". Wicca is distinct from other forms of contemporary paganism, but there has been "cross-fertilization" between these different faiths. Wicca has both influenced and been influenced by other pagan religions, making clear-cut distinctions more difficult for religious studies scholars. In Wicca, denominations are referred to as traditions, while non-Wiccans are often termed cowans.
Names
When the religion first came to public attention, its followers commonly called it "Witchcraft". Gerald Gardner—the man regarded as the "Father of Wicca"—called it the "Craft of the Wise", "Witchcraft", and "the Witch-cult" during the 1950s. Gardner believed in the theory that persecuted witches had actually been followers of a surviving pagan religion, but this theory has been disproved. There is no evidence that he ever called it "Wicca", although he did call its community of followers "the Wica". As a name for the religion, "Wicca" developed in Britain during the 1960s. It is not known who first used this name for the religion, although one possibility is that it was Gardner's rival Charles Cardell, who was calling it the "Craft of the Wiccens" by 1958. The first recorded use of the name "Wicca" was in 1962, and it had been popularised to the extent that several British practitioners founded a newsletter called The Wiccan in 1968.Although pronounced differently, the modern English name "Wicca" is borrowed from the Old English wicca and wicce, respectively the masculine and feminine terms for certain kinds of magic-workers in Anglo-Saxon England. It is the origin of the word witch. By adopting this Old English term for modern usage, Wiccans were both symbolically linking themselves to the ancient, pre-Christian past and adopting a self-designation less controversial than "Witchcraft". The scholar of religion and Wiccan priestess Joanne Pearson noted that while "the words 'witch' and 'wicca' are therefore linked etymologically, they are used to emphasize different things today".
In early sources, "Wicca" referred to the whole of the religion rather than to a specific tradition. In following decades, members of certain traditions—those known as British Traditional Wicca—began claiming that only they should be called "Wiccan", and that other traditions must not use it. From the late 1980s onward, books about Wicca again used the former, broader meaning of the word. Thus, by the 1980s, there were two competing definitions of the word "Wicca" in use among the pagan and esoteric communities: one broad and inclusive, the other narrow and exclusionary. Among scholars of pagan studies, the older, broader, and inclusive meaning is preferred.
Alongside "Wicca", some practitioners still call the religion "Witchcraft" or "the Craft". Using the word "Witchcraft" in this context can result in confusion with other, non-religious meanings of "witchcraft" as well as other religions—such as Satanism and Luciferianism—whose practitioners also sometimes call themselves "Witches". Another term sometimes used as a synonym for "Wicca" is "Pagan witchcraft", although other forms of modern paganism—such as types of Heathenry—also use the term "Pagan witchcraft". From the 1990s onward, some Wiccans began calling themselves "Traditional Witches", although this term was also used by practitioners of other magico-religious traditions like Luciferianism. In some popular culture, such as television programmes Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed, the word "Wicca" has been used as a synonym for witchcraft more generally, including in non-religious and non-pagan forms.
Practitioners call themselves Wiccans, witches, or pagan witches. The terms wizard and warlock are discouraged.
Beliefs
Theology
views within Wicca are diverse. The religion encompasses theists, atheists, and agnostics, with some viewing the religion's deities as entities with a literal existence and others viewing them as Jungian archetypes or symbols. Among theistic Wiccans, there are divergent beliefs, and Wicca includes pantheists, monotheists, duotheists, and polytheists. Common to these divergent perspectives, however, is that Wicca's deities are viewed as forms of ancient, pre-Christian divinities by its practitioners.Duotheism
Most early Wiccan groups adhered to the duotheistic worship of a Horned God and a Mother Goddess, and practitioners of Wicca typically believe that they were the ancient deities that were worshipped by the hunter-gatherers who lived during the Old Stone Age, and according to practitioners of Wicca, the veneration of these deities was secretly passed down to the present day in the form of rites. This theology derived from Egyptologist Margaret Murray's claims about the witch-cult in her book The Witch-Cult in Western Europe published by Oxford University Press in 1921; she claimed that this cult had venerated a Horned God at the time of the Early Modern witch trials, but centuries before it had also worshipped a Mother Goddess. This duotheistic Horned God/Mother Goddess structure was embraced by Gardner—who claimed that it had Stone Age roots—and remains the underlying theological basis of his Gardnerian tradition. Gardner claimed that the names of these deities should be kept secret within the tradition, but in 1964, they were publicly revealed to be Cernunnos and Aradia; the secret names of the Gardnerian deities were subsequently changed.Although different Wiccans attribute different traits to the Horned God, he is most frequently associated with animals and the natural world, but he is also associated with the afterlife, and he is also viewed as an ideal role model for men. The Mother Goddess has been associated with life, fertility, and the springtime, and has been described as an ideal role model for women. Wicca's duotheism has been compared to the Taoist system of yin and yang.
Other Wiccans have adopted the original Gardnerian God/Goddess duotheistic structure but have also adopted deity forms other than those of the Horned God and the Mother Goddess. For instance, the God has been called the Oak King and the Holly King, as well as the Sun God, the Son/Lover God, and the Vegetation God. He has also been seen in the roles of the Leader of the Wild Hunt and the Lord of Death. The Goddess is often portrayed as a Triple Goddess, thereby being a triadic deity that consists of a Maiden goddess, a Mother goddess, and a Crone goddess, each of whom has different associations, namely virginity, fertility, and wisdom. Other Wiccan conceptualisations have portrayed her as a Moon Goddess and a Menstruating Goddess. According to the anthropologist Susan Greenwood, in Wicca, the Goddess is "a symbol of self-transformation—she is seen to be constantly changing and a force for change for those who open themselves up to her".