| Witch, Pagan or Wiccan All Witches are Pagans, but, all Pagans are not Witches. And most certainly, not all Witches are Wiccans. In other words, a Witch who practices Witchcraft does not necessarily mean that she believes in the religion of Wicca. A Wiccan involved in the religious practices of Wicca does not necessary practice Witchcraft and which makes them not a Witch. And some Wiccan Pagans feel that no magick should be practiced at all, as Wicca is a religion and not magick. As Scott Cunningham wrote in one of his books "Witchcraft: the craft of the Witch-magick, especially magick utilizing personal power in conjunction with the energies within stones, herbs, colors and other natural objects. While this may have spiritual overtones, Witchcraft, using this definition, isn?t a religion. It is just that some followers of Wicca use this word to denote their religion." So, according to Scott Cunningham simply being a Wiccan does not necessarily mean that you are a Witch. Witches of yesteryear did not go around calling themselves Witches. People did. Just as Jesus did not go around calling himself a Christian. People did. More likely than not, the villagers went to a wise woman who attended to the birthing, attended to the sick and was even consulted in matters such as love and monetary matters as well as discreetly providing some villagers with potions and spell kits, but she did not necessarily call herself a Witch, because in the earliest days of "witchcraft", practitioners were actually the village healers, teachers, story tellers, and midwives. It remained this way until the late 1400s when the Inquisition went sweeping across Europe and by some estimates, as many as 9 million "witches" were executed, most of them women and children. They talk about the Holocaust and what the Germans did to the Jews. What about what the Christians did to those pagan women and children in the name of Witchcraft. The word "Wicca" is a male gender term while "Wicce" is the female gender. I have read that Gerald Gardner chose the word "Wicca," as he wanted to stay away from the bad undertones of the word Witchcraft, which is very hard to believe. Instead of Gardner trying to show the rest of the World what Wicca was truly about, his exploits in his introducing Wicca to the media almost sent the religion back behind closed doors. Also, when one thinks of a Witch, they think of a woman, and they see her with her broom or bending over some cauldron. Even Halloween cards that has a Witch plastered on its front is that of a woman. There have been many fairytale stories of Witches and all of them are of women. One of the museums in Salem, Massachusetts has a manikin Witch flying on a broom, and it is a woman. When one thinks of a man performing magickal practices, he is thought of as a Wizard. Rarely is a Witch depicted as a man, and I do believe that that is why Gerald Gardner strayed away from the word Witch and its association with women and instead chose the word Wicca which is a male term. A man who so cleverly created the religion of Wicca could not have been so easily misunderstood in his spelling of the word and that is what some claimed happened. They call the pagan religion a Goddess religion, yet Gardner named it Wicca. Doreen Valiente, High Priestess along side Gerald Gardner and author of "Rebirth of Witchcraft" and other books, did not like using the word Wicca for that very reason, as do many other female pagans. There are many different practices of Wicca, just as you have the different practices of Christianity. Wicca actively worships both the Goddess and her Consort and claim to follow the old religion, whereas most Witches and Dianics, (while they recognize the existence of Her Consort), only actively worship the Goddess and actually do follow one of the oldest religions . Some traditions claim that to honor either the Goddess or Her Consort more than the other would be an imbalance and an injustice. However, simply honoring both equally does not make one in balance, because each of us carry more energies of the male or female in us and it is generally the male energy that we all carry too much of. In this modern technology world we live in today and using all that fire energy we need to rush around in our daily lives, we cannot help but carry too much male energy. Some Witches feel that both Wicca and Strega are too male oriented for their liking. In fact, most feel that Strega is actually Wicca with the name Strega attached to it. In the celebrations of the Sabbats, She is supposed to be honored equally with Her Consort. However, the Wiccan Sabbats and the Wheel of the Year, it seems as if things are centered more around the Sun God. He is born as Yule and then his growth is followed in the seasonal year, never realizing that it is Mother Earth who moves to and from the sun creating the seasons. Wiccan covens tend to put more emphasis on Sabbats whereas Goddess followers put more emphasis on Moon rituals. They feel the Sabbats are just celebrations without any formal circle, as it was in yesteryear times. The solstices and equinoxes are about the Sun and are what Gardner called the Lessor Sabbats while the Sabbats of Candlemas, Beltane, Lammas and Samhain are more about vegetation and Mother Earth and are called the Greater Sabbats and which are the true Celtic Sabbats. No where in any one tradition did pagans celebrate the 8 Sabbats. See Gardner Unveiled for more information. Gardner pulled from the different traditions to form the 8 Sabbats. It also must be noted that no where can it be found that any pagan tradition celebrated the Spring Equinox. Gardner pulled the Spring Equinox in to keep the Sabbats more balanced and to have a celebration every six weeks. You also see many groups calling themselves "Traditional Witchcraft." If their tradition is religious in nature, then it is not necessarily Traditional Witchcraft, as the old "traditional" Witchcraft was not a religion but one practicing solely the arts of magick and not a religion. Following a "tradition" and "Traditional Witchcraft" are two separate things and one can always tells when someone is claiming they are "Traditional Witches" or practicing Traditional Witchcraft, and they are not, simply by observing if they practice the 8 Sabbats, or they practice any religion at all. Traditional Witches have no claim, nor do they want to, on Wicca. Most Trad Witches have no connection with a Deity. The 8 Sabbats are clearly a Wiccan practice. However, some disagree with this, but then they need to do some research on the matter. There are covens that believe that She would be nothing without the Sun, when it is She who created the moon, the sun and the stars. She is much more than just the sexual union with Her Consort, just as we, as woman, are much more than just a mate for our husbands. She stands alone in Her own power, just as we, as women, stand alone in our own power, and that is what Goddess followers are honoring and worshiping which is Her inner strength, Her power, Her nurturing aspect and Her magick of life giver. She creates the seasonal changes as She moves to and from the sun. The sun moves very little, while She dances the dance of life, for She is life itself. She is the moon with all its mysteries; She is the earth full of bounty. Besides a desire to get into touch with the Earth, another motivator of those who become Witches is a belief in the beauty, power, and holiness of womankind. Witchcraft is a celebration of the feminine principle. Many Witches wish not to participate in ritual nudity. Not because they are ashamed of anything but feel that it is not necessary. I also find it interesting that it always seems like it is the male who brings up the subject of nudity in ritual.....Leland in his Aradia, Gospel of the Witches and Gardner. It was was never proven that Leland received material by a gypsy who claimed to be a witch named Maddalena in 1887 and from which material he published his book Aradia, Gospel of the Witches in 1890. Leland was a writer whom published over seventy-three books. Most of those books were not on Witches. I have a feeling that Leland's material is no more authentic than Gardner's Wicca which has been proven that Gardner's Book of Shadows of Laws, rituals and initiations came from various sources including Key of Solomon and The Golden Dawn, to name a few and not from some ancient tradition in which Gardner came from. Most Witches also prefer not to honor the practices of the Great Rite, symbolic or otherwise, feeling that the sexual union between the Goddess and Her Consort is only a facet of who and what the Goddess truly is. Many Wiccan traditions put much emphasis on the Great Rite in its symbolic form in their Sabbat rituals by performing the athame to chalice in all their ceremonies and many Witches feel that only at Beltane would that be appropriate. As some may know, Aleister Crowley helped Gardner shape and form Wicca. He has been billed as the greatest magician of the 20th century but it is questionable whether he ever actually performed any feat of magick. In 1920, Crowley rented a villa and converted it into a sanctuary where he could explore all the nuances of sexual magick. According to one story in a London paper, life at Crowley?s sanctuary focused on "unspeakable orgies, impossible of description." Many Witches feel that Crowley is another reason why so much emphasis is put on nudity and the Great Rite in the Wiccan tradition. There are a lot of Witches who prefer not to put much emphasis on swords and prefer using the wand or staff in their casting a circle. The sword is definitely a masculine trait. Some Witches prefer using the sickle as it is the symbol of the Crone--of harvesting and death. I really do not believe that your average pagan woman of yesteryear had a sword hanging on her wall and if and when she drew a magickal circle on the ground, more likely than not, she used a branch from a tree and did not tote some sword through the woods. And she probably did not use a knife/athame to cast her circle either. The sword is purely a masculine invention, as it was used in wars to kill. Before there was a God and it was just the Goddess, there were no wars. More and more Witches are preferring to follow the Moon more so than the Sun and its Sabbat celebrations. The Moon, after all is our closest neighbor. The moon influences ocean tides and blood tides. The Moon is intimately connected to the ancient worship of the Goddess. Regarding initiation, when it is a female wishing to be initiated into the Craft, according to the Wiccan tradition, a male has to initiate her. There has been much controversy on this subject, as many Witches and Wiccans feel that a female should do the initiating, as it is the Goddess who is doing the initiating in the first place. However, whether we are pagans, Witches, or Wiccans, we must realize that the Craft has to evolve as we evolve. Being a follower of the Old Religion does not necessarily mean living in the past or trying to turn back the clock of the centuries. It means looking to those things which are really eternal, not merely old, striving to preserve those things which are worth preserving and being willing to change those things which ought to be changed. Fertility is something much more than simply producing crops and offspring's. There is fertility of mind and spirit which produces art, music, poetry, skills and creativity of all kinds. This is the kind of fertility of which we stand in need today, in order to regenerate our planet and save it from destruction. |
| WHITE MAGICK |
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