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Wicca: Religions
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Wicca is a Neo-Pagan religion based on the pre-Christian traditions of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Its origins can be traced even further back to Paleolithic peoples who worshipped a Hunter God and a Fertility Goddess. Cave paintings found in France (and dated at 30,000 years old) depict a man with the head of a stag, and a woman with a swollen, pregnant belly. They stand in a circle with eleven mortals. These archetypes of the divine are worshipped by Wiccans to this very day. By these standards, the religion that is now called Wicca, is perhaps the oldest religion in the world.
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Wicca is "a pagan nature religion having is roots in pre- Christian Europe and undergoing a 20th-century revival" (AHD3). Only the most recently published dictionaries contain an entry for it; RHUD2 dates it 1975. "Wicca" is a revival of an Old English word that you can find in older dictionaries by looking up the etymology of either "witch" or "wicked". In Old English, _wicca_ was the masculine form of a word meaning "wizard" or "sorcerer". (The feminine form was _wicce_. "Witch" comes from _wicce_.) _Wicca_ and _wicce_ came from from a proto-Germanic (not Celtic) _wikkjak_, "one who wakes the dead", the first element of which comes from the same Indo-European root as "wake".
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During the 1980s Wicca experienced the effects of the New Age movement that promoted the self-styled Wiccan, whom stopped using the word "Witch" and made distinctions between Witchcraft and Wicca. A self-interpretive approach to Wicca lead to the turning away from structured Traditions and time-honored practices. There was a sharp increase in the number of people choosing Wicca for their religion, the majority of these individuals lack connections to established Traditions as guidelines or initiated Witches as teachers. The definitions of Wicca and Wiccans of the previous two decades now changed. The practitioners of the 1980s held more divergent views. There was a combination of vestiges of Judaic-Christian morality and philosophy imported from these religious backgrounds along with gender politics and sexual preferences, which transformed Wicca during the decade.
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The attractiveness of Wicca may be due to its friendliness towards women, its naturalistic view of sex and its promise of power through magick. It is very popular among women, and it is tempting to say that Wicca is women's revenge for the centuries of misogyny and "femicide" or "gynicide" practiced by established religions such as Christianity. Wicca, like the Celtic religion, allows women full participation in the practice. Women are equals, if not superiors, of men. Women in Celtic mythology are unusual, to say the least. They are intelligent, powerful warriors, ruthless, sexually aggressive, and leaders of nations.
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Wicca for the Rest of Us was originally intended for Wiccans and other Pagans. As such, it is written with the assumption that readers are already familiar with Wicca. This section is for those of you who are not. It is written with the assumption that the reader knows nothing about Wicca and is primarily intended for those who have only academic interest in Wicca: they are interested in what it is and What Wiccans believe but have no current interest in following it. Some questions/answers are specifically phrased to address the concerns of parents confronted with a child following Wicca because that is a common scenario that leads a person to seriously investigate our religion.
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The religion of Wicca is not accepted or tolerated in the United Spades of America. fathers (aka priests) - organized religion fanatics claim Wicca is the manifestation of Satan within man. Like Satan, Wiccans in their quest to control the world have taken many jobs from people in the U.S. -- and besides, they are often fat ugly chicks who dress in black (or in purple crushed velvet) and hardly ever get laid. Because of this, many of them have since begun seeking sex from other women, rather than men.
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