Wicca- What it is and what it isn’t

Pop quiz: Who are Wiccans?

If you answered Satan-worshiping, spell-casting, demon possessed, drooling hags dancing naked around a bonfire while they raise the spirits of the dead by chanting ancient rhymes from the bouts of hell, you’d be wrong on every count.

Wiccans (or Pagans, as they are sometimes called) do not believe in the Christian figure of Satan, nor do they worship him. Very few of them believe in literal magic, spell-casting, or hexing. And they are certainly not demon-possessed spawn of the devil. The popular image of Wicca is largely due to portrayal in books and movies and age old prejudices that have stuck for centuries.

So what do Wiccans really believe and practice?

I sent an email to one of the leaders of a local Wiccan coven called the Order of the Red Grail. I told her about my interest in different religions, asking her what Wicca was all about. Here is her response:

In general, Wiccans believe in the sacredness of Nature in the form of the Divine Feminine and Masculine. We tend to believe in balance. Our concept of deity is both masculine and feminine. We honor the cycles of life and the turning of the wheel of the seasons. All beings are equally sacred. Humans are not ‘above’ animals in terms of importance in our ecosphere. They say that it’s really easy to get a gift for a pagan. A rock, stick, herb, bit of incense…little things of Nature are a delight. Details of individual beliefs vary according to the pantheon they relate to. For example, some connect with the God of the Forest or any of the Mother Goddesses. Some relate to Irish culture, others to Egyptian. Wicca is basically a Western European shamanistic religion with plenty of variety.

Wiccans are bound by only one law: the Wiccan Rede. It’s part of a longer poem but the words that people remember are “’an it harm none, do what thou wilt.” In essence, we can do anything we want as long as we do not cause harm to anyone or anything, even ourselves. This law sets a high standard, and when we dedicate ourselves to the God and Goddess we dedicate ourselves to being Stewards to the land and to each other. That’s a tall order and requires considerable thought.

There’s a lot of information in books and online that will answer your questions. The Grand Central Station of pagan websites is Witchvox.com. There are thousands of pages but the search engine is friendly. Resources like Witchvox are valuable because Wicca does not have a central book or central set of laws that everyone has to adopt.

Every Grail circle is different, but the underlying framework or focus is on transformation—personal growth. Like other Wiccans, we get together in sacred space quite often. Our liturgical year includes eight Sabbats, 12 or 13 full moons, 12 or 13 new moons. We also do rites of passage and special rituals for personal needs. In Transformational Wicca, our intent with ritual is to create an environment in which people can re-create themselves. We’re fairly orderly, try not to be chaotic, and tend to think things through. Pagans tend to share a code of circle etiquette which is based in respect and good behavior, and this is considered whenever we design a ritual.

During your exploration into different religions you will find many former Christians. In the Grail, only a couple of members were not raised some sort of Christian. My husband’s father was an evangelical minister. You could have quite a conversation with him and why he moved on. I’ve found that people come to Wicca in one of two ways. They are either moving/running *away* from the god-centered way of being, or they are moving *toward* spiritual duality, the balance of the Sacred Feminine and Masculine. The first generally involves a great hurt while the second is like a developmental step forward. Every person who has talked with me early in their journey has said that finding Wicca was like *coming home,* that they didn’t know there was a religion that matched what they believed.

My sister and I went to one of the Order of the Red Grail’s full moon circles, which I’ll cover in my next post. The website for the Order of the Red Grail is http://www.redgrail.com/


-Carmen